Let somebody here hail King Jesus! Let’s hail Emmanuel, let’s hail the Ancient of days, let’s hail the Lord of lords, let’s hail the soon coming King, let’s hail the El-Shaddai, let’s hail the Lion of the tribe of Judah, let’s hail the Maker of the heaven and the earth, let’s hail the God of heaven, halleluiah!
Father in heaven we thank You; Eternal Rock of Ages, we bless Your holy name; we thank You for Your faithfulness, we thank You for Your love, we thank You for what You have done before, we thank You for what You are doing and what You will continue to do, we thank You oh Lord for heaven, we thank You Father as we are rejoicing this morning, one day we will rejoice in heaven in the mighty name of Jesus.
Father Lord we will be going into Your word, speak to us, give us understanding, and Lord God of heaven, let us see ourselves and prepare us for that great day in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You blessed Redeemer, I pray that these words will not stand against any of us in judgment, in Jesus wonderful name we have prayed. Praise the living Jesus!
I welcome you all, brethren, to the house of God, not because of the song but because the song already has done my ministration, so I will just try to put Bible verses to the things they’ve said, you know one says ‘when we get to heaven’, so it’s talking about heaven which is in line with the theme of the Convention.
By the way, the Convention is rounding up today, 72nd Annual Convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, and the theme is ‘Heaven’; it has been fantastic sessions before God, successful Convention, let us just thank God once again, Father we thank You, glory be to God.
Brethren in that hymn, one of stanzas says ‘when we behold a glimpse of Him, He will take away all the toil, all the trouble of this world, just one glimpse of Him in glory will the toils of life repay’, I pray that even today in this service, God will give us a glimpse of heaven in the mighty name of Jesus.
I would like to appreciate God in heaven for the gift of life, without Him was not anything made that was made, and is because of life that I’m standing here and that you are here, Father I want to thank You. I would like to appreciate our father in the Lord also, the Pastor in charge of Province, for the privilege to stand here before you, thank you daddy, God bless you in Jesus name.
Our PICP is at the Redemption Camp, the Convention is rounding up this morning and he’s there ministering, he’s not here with us but I know he’s here with us in spirit and he’s praying along.
There will be no prayer chain tomorrow; prayer chain is on Monday, 6: 30, but tomorrow we will stay off so that we can have time to rest from the toils of Convention, some of us just came in this morning, some of us are here, I came in this morning, so let’s take tomorrow to rest, but while resting, don’t sleep, we’ll still pray on our personal altars.
Midweek services start from Tuesday with ‘Digging Deep’, and we are starting a new series, we just finished the one on ‘The Weapons of our Warfare’, if you missed that, please go to our website and go through the series, you will learn a lot. We are starting a new one and the theme is ‘The Last Days’; for those of us who were in Sunday School, that’s just a tip of the iceberg, come for Digging deep, it will take us like 6-8 weeks.
We’ve been talking about events like rapture, tribulation, Armageddon, millennial reign, you want to ask questions, come to Digging Deep and learn, and the Lord will teach us under His unction in Jesus mighty name.
Romans 13: 11 – 14, “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. 12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
13 Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. 14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof”.
The topic before us this morning brethren, is ‘The Night is Far Spent, The Day is at Hand’, and I will take this in two distinct parts, so we’ll take the first part on ‘the night is far spent’, and then let us look at this day that is at hand, and by the grace of God, God will teach us and I pray that He will give us understanding in Jesus mighty name.
So let’s start with some definitions and explanation; what is the night? When I looked through some dictionary definitions, it says the night is the time before the sunset and sunrise. Now we have the sun, when the sunsets, from that time and when it comes up again is called ‘the night’, praise the Lord! Another one says that the time from dusk to dawn, when no sunlight is visible is the night.
And you know in our part of the world, the sun sets around 6:00 in the evening, but about 6:00 in the morning you will start seeing the sign of brightness again, so that tells me that the time of night, maybe about half of the day; sometimes because of seasonal changes, we can have longer day and longer night, but in approximation maybe about half of the day. Then what happens to the other half?
Brethren, there is no way we will talk about the night and not also make reference to the day, so what is the day? The day is the time other than the night, praise God! The day is the time between the sunrise and the sunset; the day is that period between two consecutive nights – the night of day 1, the night of day 2, the timing between it is called the day, hallelujah!
Having established that, we can make certain deductions: the first is that a typical day (as we know it, like today the 11th of August, 2024) is made up of the day and the night. Joshua 1: 8, the Bible tells us that we should meditate on the word of God day and night; so a typical day is composed of a day and a night.
Second deduction is that light represents the day and darkness represents the night. Genesis 1: 1- 5, the first introduction to the world, in verse 2, the Bible tells us that there was darkness; then in verse 3, God said this darkness is not good, so He decided to speak to the darkness to bring light; in verse 4, the Bible tells us there was light and then God looked at it and said the evening and the morning were the first day, praise the living Jesus! So light represents day, and darkness represents night.
Number three deduction is that what determines whether it is day or night is the positioning of the sunlight. When the sun is up, we say it is day, like we are here now, in another part of the world like Australia, it is dark/night because sun is not there right now, but the Bible tells us in Malachi 4: 2 that our God is the Sun of Righteousness, so the determinant of day or night is God; and in Psalm 113: 3 – 4, the Bible tells us that from the rising of the sun unto its going down; so the sun rises and it goes down.
The fourth deduction is that night and day – as we are looking at it, there’s a measure of time, there’s a measure of life. The number of nights that you’ve slept, if we can count it, then we can aggregate together and say this is how old you are, even if it’s by approximation. By extension, it also means last night has gone, another night is going, time is going, life is going, hallelujah!
So let’s go back to that passage again, verse 12, so what is ‘far spent’? Some other translations say far spent means nearly over; another one says it’s far gone another one says it’s almost gone. So if we look at it, we can say far spent means it’s almost finished, it’s almost over, it’s nearly done.
I gave an example in the morning; if you go to greet someone, maybe you are just coming from the office and say I haven’t seen brother Jacob for some time, let me just say hello. And then you gist into the night, they want to sleep, they have only one room, they are giving you signs and you are not getting it, then suddenly somebody says the night is far spent sir, what are they saying? Go back home, it is late.
So when the Bible says the night is far spent, what the scripture is saying is that time is gone, start getting ready to go back home. The best time to prepare for a day is in the night; I remember many years ago as a pre-teen or early teenage, my mother normally woke up at 3am; she would wake me up around 4:00am and say start studying. I was struggling with it originally but later it became a part of me and then I realized that the things that I did between 4 & 6, by the time the others woke up and we got to school at 7, I was already the teacher in the class. The day starts from the night, praise the living Jesus!
Having established the meaning of what we are going to look at, let’s take some of the key lessons, praise the living Jesus! I remember that song says ‘when we all get to heaven’, it didn’t say ‘if we all get to heaven’, you know why? There is an assumption already that we are children of God, and I’m trusting God that by this message, even if you are not, you will make up your mind to be one of this today so that you can sing that song, we can rejoice together in heaven on that day.
So the first lesson brethren is that our life (as we know it) starts from the evening, it starts with the night. Some people will say pastor you are making a mistake, I thought so too but my reference is from the Bible, so when we look at it and say oh, today is 11th, am and pm because that’s the way our mind has been conditioned, but pm is the lead.
Genesis 1:2 – 5, the Bible says “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep”, remember we said darkness is a synonym for the night; “3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”, then light came after darkness, light is a synonym for the morning. So the evening, followed by the morning; “4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day”; the day starts from the evening – night, praise the living Jesus!
So as a matter of fact if you are following this, we are just in the concluding part of yesterday evening, praise the living Jesus!
When God speaks to us or when God sends messages to us, He uses some pictures; He gives us a picture of something to come in a certain form now, called types and shadows. He uses types to tell us about things to come so that we can seamlessly walk into it when it comes, praise God!
Let’s look at Exodus 17:6, the Bible says “Behold, I will stand before thee (that’s God speaking) there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel (and water came out and people drank)”.What did Moses strike? The rock, that Rock is a type of Jesus Christ.
So now let’s go to 1st Corinthians 10:4, then the Bible says “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ; so the Rock that Moses struck was a type of Jesus Christ, how? When Jesus Christ was on the cross of Calvary, they put a spear into His side to kill the Rock and water came out – living water, so that Rock was a type of Jesus Christ that is to come.
In Numbers 21:8 & 9, when the people sinned against God and God sent fiery serpent to them and the serpent would bite the sinners and they died, after some time by His mercy, God said to Moses, okay raise a pole, make an image of a serpent, put it on the pole and anyone who is bitten by the real serpent, let him look up to the pole at the serpent and they will be saved. And the Bible says “And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived”. You know that song we used to sing, ‘look and live…’, look and live, that serpent on the pole is a type of Jesus Christ.
John 3: 14 – 16, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (was He lifted up? On the cross in Calvary), 15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”; (those who looked at the serpent in the wilderness lived, it’s a type of we looking at Jesus Christ and believing Him so that we will have eternal life), praise the living Jesus!
There’s a reason I’ve brought this concept of type, it is to be able to link the first lesson with the third one now, and that lesson is our existence here on earth, the life that we have now is the night, and I will tell you why; the Bible says and the evening and the morning were the first day, so our living here is like that evening, it’s the night.
Romans 13:12, and it says the day is at hand, the night followed by the day, so all the brightness that you see here brethren is the night, it looks bright, it looks beautiful, its the night. All the money in your bank account is the night, all the beautiful houses is the night, all the beautiful vacation places that we go to is the night, there’s a day coming, praise the living Jesus!
And then the scripture says the night is far spent, it’s saying we have been here long enough, start preparing for the day. Like I said, my mother would wake me up around 4am, maybe this is about the 4am, this is a wakeup call, get ready for the day so that we don’t get caught napping.
I gave examples in the morning, the transition between the night and the day here on earth, we can basically manipulate it, right? We know already that the sun will come around 6:00, so anyone that is doing anything that is not right will try to finish before that time so that when people wake they won’t even know that he has done anything.
For example, the people who take sacrifices all over do it in the night, have you seen anybody carrying sacrifice at 7am? So everybody at 7am looks like normal human beings, they finish it in the night because they know the day will come.
Somebody who takes another man’s wife to the hotel does it in the night, before the receptionist wakes up, he/she will just find the key on the table, he would have checked out because he doesn’t want the day to catch him doing the wrong thing.
What about the nannies? They brought children to you, their parents are going to work, you know that they would come back at 6, throughout the day you are maltreating the children, beating them, giving them sleeping pills, and then when it’s about time for their parents to come, you start playing with them so that the mother will see you; this day that is coming after the night that we are talking about that we are here will not give any notice, so it will be difficult for anybody to be able to manipulate it.
1st Thessalonians 5: 1-3, the Bible says “But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. (In the days when I was growing up, when thieves come they don’t tell people, they just come into your house unannounced, its only today they would say we are coming on a particular date and at a particular time, please expect us and prepare for us), For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape”. I pray that when this night is going to give way to the day, it will not catch you unawares in the mighty name of Jesus; and the way that it will not catch you unawares is that you start doing the right things now, hallelujah!
The night is far spent, our time here is going, if I may say, we are actually like on overtime because Matthew 24, all the signs are there, we’ve seen them all today, this is the end time, this is thr last days, praise the Lord!
The second part of it says ‘the day is near’; like we know already by now that this our world, our life is a night, it will one day transit to a glorious day and that day is near, on that day nobody can tell, so the best way to prepare for that day is prepare now, it can be the next minute, it can be the next month, it can be next year, it can be a thousand years, but so that you will not be found wanting, prepare now.
1st Thessalonians 5: 1-8, so how will it happen? We’ve seen that in the first three verses; it will come suddenly, it will not give any notice, it will not give anybody an opportunity to redress, that nanny eill not be able to sing for that baby again because the mother will come and catch her right in the act. That pastor that takes a member during vigil at night to his office and they are doing nonsense, and then because he has the timetable he knows that by 3:00 they will be doing benediction, so by quarter to pray he comes out, when this day comes, he will not be able to calculate it, it will catch him right there in the act.
The children of light, those who are genuinely saved, those who are waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ, only those will not be caught unawares, that passage tells us in verses 4 &5, praise the living Jesus! The children of light that are genuinely saved and are daily living for Christ, when that day comes, we are already in the day, so nothing changes.
Verses 5 & 6, and then every children of light, you and I, we cannot afford to blink, we cannot afford to tick a time out, we cannot afford to sleep because it is going to be sudden. You recall the parable of the Ten Virgins, Matthew 25: 1-12, they said let me go and buy oil, they slept off, by the time they came back the door was shut. The door will not be shut on you in the mighty name of Jesus. The other ones who made it, what qualified them? They were ready
Verses 6 & 7 say we must therefore be watchful and we must be sober. Brethren, let us not get carried away by the euphoria of this life, of this world; the Bible says we are here in this world but not of the world, let us remember always that we are pilgrims, we must be watchful and yoi must be sober, let your spirit be temperate, let your spirit be alive at all times.
Verse 8, and to do this we need faith and hope, so we must take on the breastplate of faith and love, and also use the helmet of hope of salvation. Some people will say ha, since my mother was born they’ve been talking about Jesus Christ coming and He has not come, it means He will not come; I will be hopeful, i will hope and wait tenaciously for His coming because I know He’s coming, the Bible tells me and I will have faith that is coming and you should do the same.
I will implore you to please visit our website and see the Sunday School series on Weapons of Our Warfare, it talks about breastplate of faith and helmet of salvation.
So what would this day look like? Brethren, I have seem different pictures, I’ve seen different videos , exciting ones if I play them, but I choose that let us use the scriptures to substantiate what we are going to talk about now.
First to start with, if this brightness here is called night as far as heaven is concerned, can you imagine what the real day will look like? I want you to stretch your imaginations: this is night, the real day will be much more brighter, praise the living Jesus! In Revelation 21 & 22, the Bible says that real day will take us to a beautiful city that nobody can describe because the Maker and the Builder is the Lord. Imagine there are wonderful architects all over the world but there’s none like God; if God designs a city and built it Himself, imagine what that city will look like.
The Bible tells us that the land is paved with gold, we’ll be walking on gold, not your 30-karat gold, pure gold transparent enough that you can see yourself through it, and then it goes further to tell us that the gates are made of pearls, Revelation 21: 21, “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: (imagine the beauty). In Revelation 21: 17 – 20, the Bible tells us that the walls are designed with beautiful stones.
Many years ago in a film that I watched, people were fighting over diamonds and there are much better stones than diamond, and they said even those ones are only fit to design the walls of heaven. 18 And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. Praise the living Jesus!
What is this day going to look like? The glory of the Lord is the source of light, because the Bible says God will be in their midst, hallelujah! Revelation 21: 23 – 25, the Bible says there is no need for sun, neither the moon to shine, because the glory of God will lighten it; imagine God sitting and His glory everywhere.
In Isaiah 6, the Bible tells us that the cherubim had six wings, two of their wings are used to cover their faces, you know why, because the brightness of God’s glory was too much for them, but God will give us that eye to be able to withstand it. Imagine the glory, you don’t need sun, no light, there will be no NEPA take light, praise God!
The Bible tells us in Revelation 22: 1 – 2 that the river of the water of life flows through the city and crystal clear, “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb”, hallelujah! There shall be no night there, there will be permanent light and it is going to be a day of endless glory because God is there, the glory of God will be there and forever.
Revelation 21: 3 says 3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: that glory will be there. endless glory, it shall be a day of endless joy. Revelation 21: 4, the Bible says “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying”; if all those things don’t exist, they will be replaced with joy, endless permanent joy.
It’s going to be a day of endless worship, Revelation 4: 8 -11 And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; not only the four beasts, even the twenty-four elders and everything that is in heaven, it’s a day of endless worship, I’m looking forward to that day, praise the living Jesus!
I couldn’t share this in the morning, brethren; many years ago, I used to work in Ilorin, so I was going back to where I resided in Ibadan, I was alone in the vehicle in the evening and I started hearing some worship, I had never heard anything like it before, ever, I wasn’t playing, I started hearing and I began to see the beauty and the glory of where this was coming from, heaven is a place not to miss, brethren, God will help us, please do everything and anything that it takes to make it to heaven.
As we summarize, our life, the time here, everything that we are celebrating is nothing but the night, and the night will give way to a glorious day, when it will happen, none of us knows, but one thing I also would like is that for some, it will come by death, for some, it will be rapture, but whichever way, if will come. Many people here want to go to heaven but sometimes when they talk about death, they’ll say I don’t want to die, I wonder how you want to go to heaven, if it’s not by rapture then it must be death, it will come one day, praise God!
In 2nd Corinthians 5: 1 -2, it’s going to be a permanent time, eternal, ; the Bible compares what we have now to a tent , it says if the earthly house of tabernacle were dissolved; another translation says if the tent was dissolved; it’s a tent, a tent is used when you go on a temporary vacation, when you finish you pack it up, we are going to pack this up one day, and then we will give way to a building – a building has foundation, it is solid and is meant to stay for long. That day is eternity for those who know God, praise the living Jesus!
The beauty of that day is stunning, it is a glorious place. I want us to listen to this and then we make the salvation call. The day is the same as the land that we are talking about and the same as heaven, when this night passes, for those of us who are children of the Most High God, we will go to heaven, for those who are not, who do not accept Jesus, who are fighting it, who are the wicked, they will go to another place of permanent temptation, permanent trouble called hell, a permanent darkness
[Music]
That day that we are talking about is the same as the land they are talking about here; our time here is the night, it will give way to a glorious day, a place where we’ll never grow old, where we’ll never die anymore, where there will be no sorrow, no pain, no crying, no loss, no night out; a place of endless, light, endless glory, endless joy, endless worship; brethren, how glorious will it be (like our hymn) when we all get to that place, it shall be a day of rejoicing.
[Altar call]
Let’s begin to give thanks to God, let us give Him thanks for the words that He has sent to us, for opening our eyes to what is to come. Father we thank You; thank You for teaching us, thank You for speaking to us, Father thank You for saving us, thank You for our souls, thank You for our salvation, thank You for everything, thank You for heaven, glory be to Your name forevermore, in Jesus mighty name we have given thanks.
I want us to pray brethren and say Father, please open my eyes, let me see myself as You see me. You know sometimes you think you are a Christian and God says you are not, far be it; let me see myself, now that I’m still here, now that I can still make a change, let me see myself oh Lord as You see me in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You my Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
Many of us sometimes when you look at yourself in the mirror, sometimes you don’t like what you see but you wave it off and say it doesn’t matter, when God reveals yourself to you, there are things that you may need to do, we are going to pray and say Father, please give me the grace to do everything that I need to do, to write my wrongs in the name of Jesus. To right my wrongs, to live for You, to prepare for that glorious day in the mighty name of Jesus, thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
And finally brethren we are going to pray; my brethren, whether it will come, it will come suddenly, unannounced, when? We do not know, how? We know, the best way is to be prepared. I shared a testimony in the morning, last year June, my mother passed, on a Sunday of a Father’s Day, June 18th (I think), he called me and said she was going to the hospital; normally for 40 years, she would just go and come back the next day, so we took it as one of those things,
I had a ministration the next day – Monday, so I went to see her on Tuesday morning, by Tuesday they said she’s ready to go home, so we said fine, go home, but they said come back on Thursday, we said instead of staying back and forth, just stay put and after we will then go.
Then the next morning they called us and said something changed, and after everything, by Thursday she passed, but I was by her side, she was a Deborah, she was a child of God but she did not see heaven coming until that last minute; brethren, it will come unannounced, the only thing that will take us is to be prepared.
We are going to cry to the Lord and say Father, please don’t let me miss heaven for anything, please help me Lord, don’t let me miss heaven, don’t let me miss Your coming back for any reason in the mighty name of Jesus
