“Even the stork in heaven knows her seasons, and the turtle-dove and the swift and the thrush observe the times of their coming; but my people do not know the judgements of the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:7).
The birds in the sky take notice of the seasons and make preparation to fly north or south or wherever they must go for the winter or summer. When Lake Eyre begins to fill, birds migrate from all over Australia. They don’t hear of this flooding through television or read the newspapers, so how do they know? The answer is that they are in tune with God’s creation; they are upheld by the hand of God. If they didn’t observe the natural laws that God has placed in His creation, the birds would soon perish.
On the other hand, God’s people don’t know the judgements of God; the judgements of God are tied up in the prophetic seasons and His people, being trapped in religious comfort, cannot see and don’t want to know, what is taking place in the heavenlies.
This was the case with Israel too, who had embraced religious comfort and the doctrines of men so that, when their Messiah stood before them for three years, they couldn’t see Him!
There are three major constraints to understanding the times and seasons so as to know what to do. The first is that the revelation of the understanding is not given until the prophetic season is almost upon us; this is a constraint that comes from God.
Secondly there is the constraint imposed by human circumstance; we live in time and space and these tend to constrain our understanding of spiritual events until we see the consequences being worked out upon earth.
But by far the biggest thing constraining our understanding of the times is the human condition; the condition of unbelief; religious paradigms with their doctrines of men and their cultural traditions handed down from generation to generation. The fact is that God’s people don’t want to hear His voice; they don’t want to obey Him; they would rather do their own thing, obey their own voice and be their own gods.
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