We find the admonition of our passage in Mark today difficult to practice on an hour to hour, day to day and even week to week basis. Too often Christ's Church would seek to know more about the final coming of our Lord and Savior than we have been given in the Scriptures. Why is that? Is it intellectual curiosity that conditions inquiring minds who want to know, or is it the heartfelt desire to be with the Lord and to hurry His coming by any formula or recipe that would allow us to be encouraged that His great day is almost upon us? Personally, I tend towards the latter equation - that the almost overpowering interest in any and all scenarios for the last day are driven by the heartfelt desire to see His kingdom come in power and thus end the grand story in which we are involved in since creation.

Since there are at least five serious millennial theories concerning the last days, we must assume that all manner of men and women outline their hopes and dreams in the scenarios that they find the most pleasing and likely. Now, don't get me wrong I am not debunking the various theories of how this old world will end when Christ shall come in glory and all heaven breaks loose. I am only suggesting today that there is something more romantic than intellectual about our heartfelt dreams and desires. Otherwise, there would not be such serious passions aroused whenever the topic is studied, argued and discussed!

So let me bypass all the speculation and argument and detail hope this hope may indeed fill our hearts and point us to that great day when the Lord shall indeed return! The best description that I have heard of the romantic endeavor is a phrase from C S Lewis that romanticism at bottom is a: "Quest for something to fill the heart". May we observe both philosophically and theologically that, the ordinary human not only has a mind, but also a soul or spirit. Some might argue for a triple division of the personhood or personality, depending upon how precise you want to be with such a description.

At least one modern conservative author would follow the lead of the Old Covenant descriptions and give greater credence to a literal as well as a conceptual place for the human heart to have a part to play in the ordering of the psyche. Those arguments are well beyond the scope of this study however, but for our purposes, as well as those of C S Lewis, we would understand that there is a deeper motivation for the human spirit than the mental or intellectual alone. May we simply consider those emotional symptoms today as heart felt?

If we can agree on that presumption at least, then historically, philosophically and so on, we can assume that the ultimate driving force for humanity is deep within our personhood. Thus, the essential cravings for being may have motivations which can be influenced from great ideas, religious experiences and ideological commitments that defy reason, reality and all human and social pressures. Even a recent news magazine explored the mental perimeters of religion in the context of on going brain research. I believe that those studies will and must lead us to the conclusion that the human hard ware predisposes mankind towards a religious hope. However, unlike the obvious conclusions of humanistic study, we know that there is only one God and Father whose Son can fulfill and complete such an intellectual and emotional predisposition.

The old saw that some things are better caught than sought is appropriate here. While that is a difficult proposition to describe I would hope that the following examples may help explore exactly what romantic notions are going on in our hearts in this regard.

I once heard of an Army sergeant who collected six packs of beer cans, not so much for the contents but because in the course of his career and travels he had searched out every brand and variation of can that he could find. The walls in his private quarters were lined from top to bottom and side to side with the impressive results of his life long quest!

From that merely material quest, we may rise to the dizzying heights of Cervantes' impossible dream in Don Quixote de la Mancha and Tennyson's Idylls of the King, both of which stylize the phenomenon of idealized romanticism in a grand fashion. A secular author Geoffrey Ashe tells us: "In his Idylls of the King Tennyson attempted a fairly complete new telling. ... In Tennyson's treatment the Matter of Britain is allegory rather than history. .. The Idylls are about a spiritually inspired monarchy, embodying the highest in human nature, triumphant over the baser promptings. Arthur as Restitutor in Britain, where he masters the barbarians and 'makes a realm and reigns,' symbolizes the human soul in its noblest aspiration." In the same manner as the Quest knights of Arthurian tales, we all at some level have some compelling passion that drives us on to fill that empty space in our heart. Certainly this quest for something to fill the heart is not only material but also is ideological and even spiritual. Whatever individual passion drives us to some esoteric fulfillment, in that undertaking we may begin to comprehend the particulars of such a personal quest. C S Lewis makes a manly attempt to explain this passion which can often be fulfilled from the enjoyment and study of literature and even the contemporary media.

Once upon a time, I attended a fall social gathering while in graduate school. Since there was an international element to the group, it was an occasion to meet people from places where the typical American had not usually traveled. My experience was a little wider, thanks to my rich Uncle Sam who paid my way to Europe and back. At this party, I met a very interesting person with an Irish brogue. However, her dark complexion and exceptionally small stature seemed to belie the dialect. When I asked her if she was descended from the Black Irish, she told me an unexpectedly different story about her ethnic heritage. According to her family traditions, she understood her Irish roots to be atypical. Her ancestors, lived in the fields, forest and hedgerows. Living not in houses and having no regular employment, they ate what they could find and helped themselves to liquid refreshment from the neighborhood dairy cows. Children's clothing was selected from the local clothes lines at night. Because of their limited diet the families in this group were of slight stature and the local Irish began to tell suspicious tales about these nebulous Leprechauns who lived a will-o'-the-wisp life style

Now remember, we are discussing "romantic literature" and "romanticism" here! And being unable to verify the details - I know what you are thinking. Please understand that I have never had a single drink in fifty-some years, and I am only passing along the good story that I was told. Yet in the telling, we begin to get a grasp of what romanticism truly is. An illusive story, almost possible, but not entirely plausible! And if you sense the feeling of that moment in my life, you are beginning to understand what it means to be romantic [in the best sense of the word]. How many people can "honestly" say that they think they talked to a Leprechaun?

All my life I had heard of double rainbows and just a few years ago, while driving home I saw one. My father had seen two or three in his lifetime and he shared the excitement of that moment. He also told me a story of finding wild white Strawberries, at the family farm. These too, are as rare as duplex rainbows in the Midwestern Ohio. I shared that story with Joe and within a few weeks he to saw the same phenomena and excitedly reported the same to me!

In another instance I have met a man who was struck by lightning twice and lived to tell about it. When I asked him why he didn't get religion after the first time, like Martin Luther and Sergeant York, he admitted that he was a slow learner. Not that anyone would seek out such a frightful experience, but sometimes natural events do have more than just a romantic purpose, interest and feel to them. And if you take the trouble to look up the book The Pilgrim's Regress by C S Lewis, and read the wonderful "Preface" which has inspired my romantic notions, you may discover more than you expected.

It was in fact such a life long quest which made Lewis the Christian scholar and writer, for which he is most remembered. Listen to his own words: "What I meant was a particular recurrent experience which dominated my childhood and adolescence and which I hastily called 'Romantic' because inanimate nature and marvelous literature were among the things that evoked it. I still believe that the experience is common, commonly misunderstood, and of immense importance ... The experience is one of intense longing. ... this sweet Desire cuts across our ordinary distinctions between wanting and having. To have it is, by definition, a want: to want it, we find, is to have it. ...

To have embraced so many false Florimells is no matter for boasting; it is fools, they say, who learn by experience. ...

Once grant your fancy [heart felt sweet desire] ... it will have disappeared, would have shifted its ground, like the cuckoo's voice or the rainbow's end, and be now calling us from beyond a further hill."

The word which describes the process is "Florimel". And this process is the pursuing of one object so intensely that you are led indirectly to another object of more importance. C S Lewis says that this pursuit, like the pursuit of the gold at the end of an Irish rainbow is the basis for all romanticism in literature, art and music. And he strongly hints, that if we would allow ourselves some romantic license to pursue our best dreams, that seeking will eventually lead us to a greater object than we first pursued! This certainly was King Solomon's experience of which you can read chapter after chapter in Ecclesiastics. In the case of Lewis, his romanticism led him by a round about way to Jesus Christ! Of course in his case as well as in our own the key factor in our romantic pursuit is to be blinded by the spiritual light of the Holy Spirit so that we can indeed hear the whispered words of the real prophets of God whose words are always true.

The prophet Ezekiel long ago declared: "And when this comes to pass - surely it will come - then they will know that a prophet has been among them." Ezekiel 33: 33.

Further, the Apostle John tells us in Revelation 22: 6 that the angel said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place." The immediate sense of these words of John here may certainly imply the prophetic doom of Jerusalem within a very few years at his recording of these visions.

The specific implication is that the visions shown to John are from God the Father. If we today were to see our way clear to understand that, then some of the more specific passages in this book apply prophetically to the destruction of Jerusalem, then we could more fully be assured of the implications contained in the more obscure passages. Thus we may abetter understand that the book of Revelation is similar in structure to the book of Daniel. In that Old Covenant prophetic book there are very many chapters that are confirmed in greatest detail by later History.

However, at a certain point, Daniel like John looks beyond the immediate future and describes the end times still to come. Just like Daniel's prophecy we can see that hard times did come to the Jews in Jerusalem as John was shown by these visions. Just as certainly, we may be assured that all of the words of this book and all of the biblical canon are trustworthy and true. If we come to the point of accepting God's word as being true than we are ready for the promise in verse seven: "Behold, I am coming quickly!" The Apostle John was so overcome by this promise that he again mistakenly attempted to worship at the feet of an Angel. Like the Angel here, all of God's own ministers must remind their flocks that we are all fellow worshippers of our Christ. We are all called to worship God alone.

But, then we have a another calling to be obedient as we prepare for His coming. See that second phrase of verse seven? "Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book." There are also words of warning in verse eleven. Some will continue their present course and continue in sin. But others will continue to follow our Christ. And those who do will find comfort in verse twelve. "And Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me," A little further along in verse fourteen we find the blessing reserved for the elect. The New International Version translates the beginning of that verse this way: "Blessed are those who are washing their robes". Yes, that is what the Greek implies in its present tense. "Be washing" is our charge.

I remember when I was little, the four children in my family were newly washed and ready for Church. Mom and Dad sat us down and told us to stay clean while they put on their good clothes. Within five minutes someone found a mud puddle to wade in. None of the rest of us dared go drag him out! When Mom came out there was one of my brothers with his dirty socks off washing them in the tank of water used to cool the milk cans. He said "I be washing!"

So should our Lord find us. "Be washing" Certainly we are saved once and for all and cleansed from sin by our Lord Jesus Christ. However, we so easily defile ourselves day by day as we live in the pressures of this world, that it is necessary for us to be cleansed continually. "Be washing" If we are found in this activity we are promised the right to the tree of life and that we will be allowed through the gates of the heavenly city.

But be warned, there are several types of people who are locked out. They are described in verse fifteen. These people are not ready for Christ's coming. A while back a student asked me at the end of class one day what I wanted more than anything else. I answered that I wanted Christ to come again immediately. He choked and said he hoped not, because he wasn't anywhere near ready. Please don't want that he said! But this is to be our heartfelt desire as we see in verse seventeen.

The words there should also be translated slightly different like the phrase "Be washing" we should read "Be coming!" "Be coming" that is the ardent prayer to which the bride is moved by the Holy Spirit. And we are invited to join in that heartfelt chorus as well. And who is invited? Whoever is thirsty, whoever wishes! The gift of sovereign grace is free to all of the elect in Christ! This is the love of God, so touching and tender, which is addressed here to all those who have been made conscious of the need of living water. This is the gospel message to which we are solemnly charged to neither add to nor subtract from.

Do you accept these prophetic heartfelt words of Peter and John? Are you ready to earnestly pray the prayer at the end of verse twenty? "Come, Lord Jesus." If you are not quite that far into the heavenly kingdom, are you at least willing to hope for the final coming of our Lord and Savior? May "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people." Here we see that all who are willing to submit all their hopes and heartfelt desires to Jesus Christ will receive His grace. Amen. Come quickly Lord Jesus, come quickly!