I shall return!

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish explorer from the early 20th century, led an expedition to sail to Antarctica, and then walk to the South Pole. The expedition was going according to plan until the ice trapped their ship, the Endurance, and eventually crushed its hull. The expedition team set up camp on an unstable ice-floe, and then rowed lifeboats until they reached the comparative safety of Cape Wild, on the coast of Elephant Island.

However, they were still far from safe! They needed help, and they needed it quickly. Promising that he would return for the rest of the team, Shackleton announced that he would take one of the lifeboats and, with a crew of eight, and only a sextant to guide them, set off on the 800 mile voyage to the island of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic. Amazingly - some might even say, miraculously! - they succeeded and, having clambered over the island's ice-capped mountains, reached a whaling station, and the help they so desperately needed. A ship was despatched and, four-and-a-half months after having arrived at Cape Wild, the stranded crew of Endurance were rescued, with not one life having been lost. Their leader had kept his word.

That makes me think of a somewhat similar situation! As the Lord Jesus was preparing to leave His disciples, He promised to return. He sai: "If I go and prepare a place for you,I will come again, and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you will be also." (Jn.14:3). Then, after enduring the horrors of His passion and crucifixion - beside which, even the ordeal of Shackleton and his men pales into insignificance - He rose from the dead to provide eternal life for all who place their trust in Him, and in Him alone, as their Saviour. He lives with them, today, by God the Holy Spirit, Who indwells each one but, one day, He will return and gather them into His presence. Paul writes to the disciples of Jesus in Thessalonica: "For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord." (I Thess.4:15-17).

I find myself wondering if those who had been left behind by Ernest Shackleton were constantly looking to see if their was any sign of their leader. I suspect that they were, and that they would have noticed some sign - perhaps the top of a mast - before he actually arrived to rescue them.

Many disciples of Jesus are certainly looking for His return - and we are living at a time when signs of that imminent return are all around us! He is even more true to His word than was Shackleton to his. The rapture of the genuine disciples of Jesus is certain - because He has said so. 

Are you looking? Are you listening for the sound of the shofar? If you are His, He is coming for you. If you have not yet come to Him, in faith, and received the salvation that is available by the grace of the Father, then I urge you to think carefully about such matters. The time is now short, and it is only those who are truly His who will rise to meet with Him in the air. Will you be one of them?!