<p>24:42&nbsp;<i>Therefore, stay awake For you do not know on what day your Lord comes</i>- Throughout Christ's discourses concerning his return, &quot;watch / stay awake&quot; is the key-word (Mt. 24:42; 25:13; Mk. 13:33-37; Lk. 12:37; 21:36). There are at least ten New Testament allusions to Christ's command for us to &quot;watch&quot; in the last days, and thus be found loving the appearing of Christ; this alone indicates how our lives should be characterized by this spirit of watching. I would go so far as to say that generally we seem almost unaware of this emphasis. &quot;Watch... watch... watch&quot; is the cry that comes out from our Lord himself. It seems almost unknown to us that we are&nbsp;<i>commanded</i>&nbsp;by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, with a great sense of urgency, to live in this spirit of watchfulness for His return. It is easy to think that the command to watch means that we should scan Bible prophecies and compare them with current world events, and thereby see the coming of Christ approaching. However, this is not the idea behind the word &quot;watch&quot;. We are told to watch precisely because we do&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;know the time of Christ's appearing; therefore Jesus cannot be telling us (in this command) to watch political developments as pointers towards the date of His return. &quot;Watch&quot; nearly always refers to watching our personal spirituality, and concerning ourselves with that of others&rsquo;. The Hebrew word translated &quot;watch&quot; carries the idea of defending, holding on as a matter of life or death, enduring with stamina, being awake. Thus Habakkuk speaks of &quot;watching&quot;, i.e. being spiritually sensitive, to what God is going to tell him (Hab. 2:1). Doing a study of New Testament allusions to Christ's command to &quot;watch&quot; yields conclusions which may seem unpleasantly negative to some. In Greek, the verb 'to watch' is related to the noun 'watch', referring to soldiers guarding something, or the period of guard duty. The idea behind 'watching' is definitely defensive rather than aggressive. In the same way as the gate keeper of a large house has to watch, to guard and protect, so should we in the last days (Mk. 13:34-37). Lk. 21:36 defines watching as praying always, concentrating our faith upon the fact that ultimately we will stand acceptably before the Lord Jesus at the day of judgment, and by His grace be saved from the great judgments which will surely come upon this world. The ideas of watching and praying often occur together (Lk. 21:36; Mk. 14:38; Mt. 26:41; Eph. 6:18; 1 Pet. 4:7). Prayer for our forgiveness, for acceptance by our Lord, must therefore characterize our watching in these last days. We must &quot; watch&quot; in the sense of being on our guard against the possibility of personal and communal apostasy from the faith (Acts 20:31); &quot;watching&quot; is standing fast in the doctrines of the one faith (1 Cor. 16:31), exhorting and encouraging others in the household of faith (1 Thess. 5:6,11), holding fast in ecclesias swamped by apathy and apostasy, strengthening what remains (Rev. 3:2,3; 2 Tim. 4:3-5), keeping the oil of the word burning in our lamps even though others have let it burn out (Mt. 25:13).</p><p>The blessedness of the 'watching&rsquo; is not that they have an accurate timeline in place; we must watch&nbsp;exactly because we&nbsp;<i>don&rsquo;t</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>can&rsquo;t&nbsp;</i>know the exact time of the Lord's return. We cannot, therefore, have a detailed timeline which tells us&nbsp;<i>for sure</i>&nbsp;that Jesus will return after event x or y. We can speculate, of course, but we cannot say for sure. The message is to be ready, to love Him and His return, just because we<i> don&rsquo;t&nbsp;</i>know when exactly He is coming (Mt. 24:42; 25:13). &lsquo;Watching' means holding to our faith and repenting of our weaknesses in Rev. 3:3- not interpreting latter day prophecies. This of itself won't make us spiritual people. The Greek word translated&nbsp;&ldquo;watch&quot; is usually translated &quot;imprison&quot; - the idea is of guarding oneself and ones' faith, &quot;vigilantly&quot; watching&nbsp;out against the Biblical devil same word in 1 Pet. 5:8, rather than searching for the understanding of latter day prophecy.</p><p>We do not know the exact calendar date of the appearing of Christ; and yet we should be watching for his coming with the same intensity&nbsp;<i>as if</i>&nbsp;we did know the day and hour. This seems to be the message behind Mt. 24:42,43, where Jesus reasons that if the manager of a wealthy house knew when the thief was coming, he would have watched carefully; 'And that', Jesus continued, 'Should be the intensity of expectancy&nbsp;<i>you</i>&nbsp;should have towards my return, even though you don't know the exact date'. Now this is quite something. If we knew the exact date of the Lord's return, we can imagine how we might behave the day before. It seems Christ is asking us to imagine that scenario; and then He asks us to live like this all the time. This is truly a high challenge. Our attitude to God's word, entertainment, hobbies, money, relationships; all these areas of life would probably be somewhat different to what they are now if we really took on board this idea: that we should live&nbsp;<i>as if</i>&nbsp;we expect the imminent return of Christ. This idea makes sense of two apparently contradictory strands in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching: that we do not know the exact time of His return (Mt. 24:36,42,44; 25:13; Acts 1:7), and yet He tells us clearly it will come &ldquo;soon&rdquo; (Rev. 1:1,3 and many other passages). Perhaps the implication is that we should read coming &lsquo;soon&rsquo; as meaning &lsquo;as&nbsp;<i>if</i>&nbsp;you know He is coming soon&rsquo;. For, we ourselves cannot know the exact time.</p><p>&nbsp;Am. 5:18 and Mal. 3:1,2 warn that just desiring the coming of the Lord isn&rsquo;t enough; for what end will it be, if we don&rsquo;t&nbsp;<i>truly</i>&nbsp;love His appearing? Yet Amos goes on to say that Israel &ldquo;put far away&rdquo; the reality of the day of the Lord, in their minds (Am. 6:3). And yet they desired it. We can study prophecy, but not really love His appearing in seriously preparing ourselves for that day. Indeed, we can subconsciously put it far from us. When we grasp for a fleeting moment how&nbsp;<i>very near</i>&nbsp;is the second coming for us; can we dwell upon it, retain that intensity? Or would we rather put it &ldquo;far away&rdquo;? This is surely why the Lord brings the list of signs of His coming to a close with some chilling parables concerning the need for personal watchfulness. It&rsquo;s as if He could foresee generations of believers straining to interpret His words carefully, correctly matching them with trends in the world... and yet missing the essential point: that we must watch and prepare ourselves for His coming, whenever it may be for us. Having given so many indicators of His soon appearing, the Lord then says that His coming will be unexpected by the believers (Mt. 24:36,44). He wasn&rsquo;t saying &lsquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll never properly interpret what I&rsquo;ve just said&rsquo;. He meant rather: &lsquo;OK you&rsquo;ll know, more or less, when my return is imminent; but all the same,&nbsp;<i>in reality</i>&nbsp;it will be terribly unexpected for most of you unless you prepare yourselves. You need to make personal changes, and be watchful of yourselves; otherwise all the correct prophetic interpretation in the world is meaningless&rsquo;.</p>