Let not your heart be troubled by that which the Lord has seen fit to hide from us. The day and the hour is kept secret that we might be given to much holy living and prayer, always ready and never ashamed at the coming of the Lord. Many examples of disaster can be given of individuals and families who have pursued the secret things reserved for God. Let us pursue the revealed will of God and resist all deceivers seeking to give us a secret message from God concerning that which He has reserved only for Himself.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Matthew 25:6
In the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible, the Lord tells us that He created the Heaven and the Earth. He proceeds to give us a day by day, morning and evening account of what He created each of six days before resting on the seventh. He brings these great days of creation back to us on several occasions most explicitly in the 4th commandment, for in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day… (Exodus 20:11). Nevertheless, many well educated Christians approach the first chapter of Scripture and tell us that it doesn’t mean day in the ordinary sense of the word. They tell us it means, or could mean, something entirely different.
Perhaps it surprises us when that which seems to be written so clearly in Scripture is so confused by Christians. It troubles us that the perspicuity of Scripture seems to be ignored and a complex and difficult interpretation is presented in the place of the clear and plain. Such teaching seems to weaken the Christian witness to the world and brings reproach upon the Word of God as novel interpretations are given to what is so simple and elementary. Those who posit strange theories are rightly asked: “If the first chapter takes such elaborate interpretation, how will we ever understand the balance? If we cannot know whether or not God created in six literal 24 hour days how can we actually know whether or not Christ rose bodily from the dead?”
As Jesus left the temple in Matthew 24 he told His disciples that the temple would be torn down. The disciples asked him “When shall these things be?” Jesus then began his discourse both on the end of the Jewish world and Jerusalem as well as the end of the whole world and his return from Heaven. After warnings and instruction Jesus spoke of the end of the world in 24:36 with these words, “but of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven…”