| On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. John 2:1,2 |
Fellow Believers,Jesus usually uses the term "the third day" in connection with His resurrection. He said in Luke 24:7, for instance, "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again."
But when warned that Herod wanted to kill Him, He replied, "Go tell that fox, 'I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal'" (Luke 13:32). Since driving out demons and healing people are figures of speech that mean saving believers, the goal that He will reach on the third day has to be the completion of His salvation program.
In the same reply, in fact, Jesus tells Jerusalem: "Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" The Jerusalem that is desolate, or national Israel, is not expected to "see" Christ again until they stand before His Judgment Throne. It further implies, therefore, that by the third day, Jesus is alluding to the Last Day.
Speaking of the perceived "slowness" of Christ's second coming, God explains in II Peter 3:8, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years" In retrospect, we can now understand Jesus' remark to mean that He would be building His church in the first and second thousand years and bring His salvation program to perfection in the third.
This truth can also be seen in the historical parable in Exodus 19. Preparing to give the Ten Commandments, God told Moses, "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the peopleOnly when the ram's horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain" (vv. 10-13). Moses is a type of Jesus, of course; and the long blast of ram's horn, the Last Trumpet.
Significantly, even as Christ rose again at the very dawn of the third day, it was on the morning of the third day that God came down in a cloud of glory with thunder and lightning at Mount Sinai. Born in 7 B.C., Jesus is completing His first 2,000 years and beginning His third "day" in 1994. All this confirms that our Lord will indeed return imminently. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Third Quarter, 1994