I like newspapers (having edited one myself and have ink in my veins), and the front page of most of them has a masthead that relates to time. “The Daily Mail” for example. Other newspapers add the words “Courier” or “Herald” to show that they proclaim world news, national news, city news or local news.
The apostle Peter writes of prophecy as “a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.” We know the “Morning Star” to be the planet Venus, which remains visible to the eye after the sun has risen.
As the glory of every “star” of this spiritually dark world disappears into the ‘night’ of this present age, the Morning Star “rises” in our hearts to usher in the day of our Lord’s return and the beginning of his worldwide reign.
Venus, the Morning Star, is a celestial body that signposts the beginning of each day, but the real Morning Star is the Lord Jesus, who at present is in Heaven. As our Morning Star, Jesus ‘rises’ in our hearts with the dawn of each new day, and will continue to do so until THE day!
So, let’s not just live in expectation of the Lord’s return “someday” but rather expect it every day, bearing in mind that today might well be THE Day. It’s not for us to know “the day nor the hour” of our Lord’s return, but we ought to recognise “the signs of the times”.
When the Pharisees and the Sadducees tried to tempt Jesus by asking him to show them “a sign from heaven” his answer was: “When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, “It will be foul weather: for the sky is red and lowering. O you hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky; but can you not discern the signs of the times?” After telling them that the only sign their “wicked and adulterous generation” would be given was that of the prophet Jonah, he departed (Matthew 16:3-4).
The NT Greek word translated “times” is “kairos” which indicates a season of opportunity (as distinct from “chronos” which means chronological time; clock time. So, read the headlines, but remember that our Masthead — the One to whom the “signs of the times” all point — is Jesus himself and the certainty of his Second Coming, his return to his birthplace, which was Planet Earth. Heaven is a place to visit. Earth is a place to dwell.