Waking Up Without Becoming Afraid

A reader closes a book.

She has been on the architecture of the master clock for thirteen chapters, and the architecture has done its work. The dial of six thousand years has come into focus. The fingerprint of Our Father runs through every era. The closing decade has a date on it. The Bridegroom is on the road. The Bride is in her closing season. The next page of the calendar is the seventieth week.

She closes the book. She turns out the light. She lies down in the dark.

And the question that walks into the room with her, on the first night after she has finished reading, is the question every honest reader of this book is going to face. What do I do with what I have just read?

She is not the first to ask it. The early Bride asked it on the Mount of Olives the day Yeshua left. The disciples in Matthew 24 asked it. The household reading 1 Thessalonians in the year 51 asked it. Every generation of believers since has asked it on the night they first understood the size of what was coming. The answer Our Father gives in every century is the same answer. He gives it through a story that the prophet Elisha lived in the ninth century BC, in a village called Dothan, on a morning that begins as the worst morning of his servant's life and ends as one of the most settled mornings recorded in the Hebrew Bible.

This chapter is the answer to her question.

The morning at Dothan

Open Second Kings at chapter six. Read the scene the way a Hebrew family read it on a Sabbath afternoon.

The kingdom of Aram — modern Syria — has been at war with the kingdom of Israel for years. The Aramean general has been planning ambushes. Every ambush has failed. Every time the general moves his troops to a new location, the Israeli army somehow knows. He suspects a leak in his own staff. His officers tell him there is no leak. They tell him that the prophet Elisha, in Israel, hears every word the king of Aram speaks in his bedchamber. The general decides to deal with the prophet directly. He sends a small army of horses and chariots to surround the village of Dothan, where Elisha is staying, and to bring the prophet back as a captive.

The army arrives during the night. Elisha is asleep in the village. His young servant — the text does not give his name — wakes early. He goes outside the house to draw water for the morning. He looks up at the surrounding hills.

The hills are covered with Syrian troops.

Read the sentence in 2 Kings 6:15. Behold, an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. The young servant runs back into the house. He is frantic. Alas, my master! What shall we do? (2 Kings 6:15). He is twenty-something. He has woken up to find his master's life in the hands of an army he cannot fight.

This is the position the modern Bride finds herself in on the night she closes a book about the master clock.

The forces arrayed against her — the long shadow of the squatter, the slow pressure of a culture that has stopped recognising the language of the Bridegroom, the political instability of the closing decade, the personal weight of her own private burdens — look, in the early light, as if they cover the hills. The armies of the long afternoon are real. The closing seven years will not be quiet years. The household standing on the page in the closing decade is standing on a page surrounded by what looks, from outside, like overwhelming opposition.

The young servant's question is the right question. What shall we do?

Elisha's answer is the right answer.

The eyes that were opened

Read the prophet's reply carefully. He does not minimise the threat. He does not give the servant a pep talk. He does not say they only look like a lot, but really they are not. The threat is real. The servant has counted correctly. The armies are on the hills. Elisha says one short sentence and then turns to prayer.

Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, "LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:16–17)

Read the second sentence of Elisha's response slowly. He does not pray for fewer enemies. He does not pray for an angelic strike force to be dispatched. He prays for the eyes of the servant to be opened. The forces of Our Father are already on the hills. They have been on the hills the whole time. The armies of the squatter that the servant counted in the dawn are accurate but partial. There is a second set of armies, larger and more formidable, ringed in a higher circle around the smaller circle, that the servant cannot see with his ordinary eyes.

Our Father opens the eyes. The servant looks again. The mountain — the same mountain — is full of horses and chariots of fire. They are the angelic forces of the Architect, in the geographical position they have always been in. Their numbers exceed the Syrian forces by an order of magnitude. The servant has not become a different person. He has been given a different sight.

That is what the master clock does for the Bride who has read this book.

The forces arrayed against the Bride are real. They are not minimised by the calendar. The closing decade will not be quiet. The household that wakes up tomorrow morning will wake up in a world the news cycle is, more often than not, going to portray as a world in which the squatter is winning. But the Bride who has seen the dial does not have ordinary eyes any longer. She has the eyes Elisha prayed for. She can count the same Syrian troops the servant counted, and she can also see, on the higher ridge of the same mountain, the cavalry that has been with her the whole time.

That is the first thing the household reading this book is asked to do. Not to deny the lower armies. To see the higher ones.

Psalm 2 in the closing decade

The same posture is given a longer voice in Psalm 2.

Open the second psalm. It opens with a question that could have been written in the early hours of any decade of the master clock, including the one we are in:

Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us." (Psalm 2:1–3)

The nations rage. The kings plot. The rulers take counsel against Our Father and the Anointed. The picture is loud. Read the news cycle of any given week of the closing decade and the picture is the picture. The councils of the powerful are not, on most mornings of any given year, taking counsel for the kingdom of Our Father. They are taking counsel against it. Let us break their bonds. That is the soundtrack of the long afternoon and the closing seven years.

Then read the next two verses.

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure: "Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion." (Psalm 2:4–6)

He who sits in the heavens laughs.

That is one of the most underread sentences in the entire Old Testament. Our Father of Exodus 34, the Architect of the master clock, the One whose calendar runs from Adam to Hoshana Rabbah 2034, looks at the rage of the rulers of the long afternoon and the closing decade and laughs. Not because their rage is harmless. Their rage causes real damage in real lives. But because their rage cannot derail the calendar. The King has already been set on the holy hill. The dial has already been written. The appointment of the Goel's return is on Our Father's desk. The rulers are raging at the page of a contract whose ink has been dry for six thousand years.

The Bride who has seen the dial laughs the laugh of Psalm 2. Not the laugh of contempt. Not the laugh of complacency. The settled laugh of a household that has read the contract and knows the contract is going to be kept. The forces on the lower hills are real. The forces on the higher hills are larger. The rulers of the lower armies do not know that they are raging at a calendar they cannot edit. Our Father, watching from above, is not panicked. He is on schedule. The Bride He has set apart for His Son is on schedule. The household that has read this book is on schedule.

That is the second thing the household is asked to do. To laugh the Psalm 2 laugh. To stop letting the news cycle calibrate the temperature of the soul. Our Father is laughing. The Bride may laugh with Him.

Making herself ready

The third thing the household is asked to do is to be ready.

Read Revelation 19:7 again, carefully. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. The verb in the Greek is hetoimazo, the active voice — she has made herself ready. The Bride is not a passive figure. She is not waiting for the Husband to dress her at the door of the wedding hall. She is dressing herself, thread by thread, in the long hours of the engagement.

Five times in the New Testament the same imagery of being ready recurs in connection with the Bridegroom's arrival. The five wise virgins of Matthew 25 had trimmed their lamps and bought oil. The Bridegroom came at midnight and the wise went in. The faithful steward of Luke 12 was waiting for his master's return from the wedding — alert, with his loins girded and his lamp burning. The Thessalonians of 1 Thessalonians 5 were told to be children of the day, awake, with the breastplate of faith and the helmet of the hope of salvation. The household of Hebrews 10 was urged not to forsake the gathering together as the manner of some is, and so much the more, as you see the Day approaching. The bride of Revelation 19 has made herself ready.

The vocabulary across the five passages is consistent. Be sober. Be alert. Trim. Burn. Watch. Gather. Prepare. The activity of being ready is not a vague spiritual posture. It is a concrete set of small daily habits the Bride is asked to keep.

What does that look like for the household closing this book on a Tuesday night?

It looks like the morning prayer that gets prayed regardless of how she feels. It looks like the chapter of Scripture read at the kitchen table before the day starts. It looks like the meal cooked for the household with care, because the small acts of love are the threads of the dress. It looks like the conversation with the neighbour who does not yet know the gospel — held in honesty, in patience, in love, with no urgency to convert and no shame in naming the Name. It looks like the gift quietly given. The temptation quietly refused. The forgiveness quietly extended to the family member who has wronged her. None of these acts feel large in the moment. They are not photographed. They are not posted. They are not recognised by anyone who is not paying attention.

They are the linen.

Our Father is paying attention. The Bridegroom is paying attention. The angelic cavalry on the upper ridge is paying attention. Every thread is being woven. None of them go missing. The dress at the table on Hoshana Rabbah is not a dress someone else hands her. It is the dress she has been wearing, thread by thread, all along.

A short list for the morning

If the reader who is closing this book wants a short, practical list to start the next morning with, here it is. The list is not original. It is the list every faithful pastor of every century has given to a household standing in a window of unusual urgency.

• Pray. Not less than once a day, in a place where you will not be interrupted. Use the words you have, even if they are clumsy. Our Father reads the heart, not the syntax.
• Read. The Bible is Our Father's family album. The household that does not open it stops recognising the family. Choose a book of the Bible and read it through. Do not skip the genealogies. Some of the most important things you will see in this book — the Hidden Gospel of Genesis 5, the bullseye of 562 BC at the end of 2 Kings — were sitting in the genealogies and the closing chapters most readers had decided were unworthy of attention. Our Father writes underneath the surfaces.
• Gather. The Bride is corporate. Find a household of believers — a local church, a small group, a family that loves the Bridegroom — and walk with them. The lone believer in the closing decade is a target. The believer in fellowship with other believers is a unit of an army.
• Speak. The closing decade is short. The neighbours and family members and colleagues who do not yet know the gospel are listening, even when they pretend not to be. Speak honestly. Do not argue. Tell them what you have seen. Invite them to come and look at the dial themselves. Our Father converts. You speak.
• Live. The small obediences of the ordinary day are the threads. Do not despise them. Cook the meal. Forgive the slight. Refuse the temptation. Keep the appointment. Show up. The dress is being woven by the household that does the small things faithfully.

This is not a heroic list. It is, in fact, the list every settled believer has been given for two thousand years. The Bride who has read about the master clock is not given a different list. She is given a clearer reason to live the same list. The closing decade has not changed the assignment. The closing decade has clarified its urgency.

A blessing for the household

Let me close this chapter — and this book — where the long calendar closes.

You and I are standing at the closing edge of the dial this book has walked through. Our Father, who in chapter one introduced Himself in the cleft of rock as the Architect, Our Father, the Sovereign, the Covenant-maker, has been keeping His own calendar in front of His own people for six thousand years. Every appointment from Adam onward has been kept on the day. The next appointments lie within the lifetime of the readers of this book.

That should not frighten you.

Our Father who put a number in the foundation of the contract twice — Genesis 6:3 and Leviticus 25 — and got the same total both times is not a Father who is going to lose track of the closing days. Our Father who counted seventy years to the day for the Babylonian discipline is not a Father who is going to be sloppy with the closing seven years. Our Father whose arithmetic landed on the cross at Passover 31 AD with the precision of a Persian astronomical tablet is not a Father whose arithmetic is going to fall apart in the autumn of 2034. He has kept every appointment. He is going to keep this one.

That should settle you.

The next time the news cycle wakes you up at three in the morning and tries to tell you that the world is coming apart, lift your eyes. The forces on the lower hills are real. The forces on the higher hills are larger. Our Father is laughing the Psalm 2 laugh. The King is on the holy hill. The Bride is weaving her dress. The Bridegroom is on the road. The man on Mount Scopus is, by the projection of the master clock, only a few short years from the dawn he is waiting through.

Our Father has not cooled. He has been on the algorithm the whole time. The cooling — when there has been cooling — has been on our side. The warming begins where it always begins: in seeing Him again. Not trying harder. Not feeling more. Looking longer. At Him. At what He has been doing.

The household that closes this book and lifts its eyes to the upper ridge of the mountain has been given the eyes of the servant of Elisha. The fire is on the hills. The cavalry is in formation. Our Father is on schedule. The Goel is on the road.

Even so, come, Lord Yeshua. (Revelation 22:20)

The Bride does not need to be afraid.

She only needs to be ready.