What to do before Christ returns: An Excerpt from Pastor Greg Laurie

Speaking to his congregation at Harvest Church in Riverside, Calif., on Thursday night, Pastor Greg Laurie shared what all Christians should be doing as they await the imminent return of Jesus Christ. While the Mayan Calendar's prediction that doomsday was on Dec. 21, 2012, was wrong, the Bible has a lot to say about Christ's return – his return is mentioned in no less than 318 times in the 260 chapters in the New Testament, Laurie said in his message, titled "Things to do before the end of the world." What if we knew somehow that Jesus Christ will be back for us at 3 p.m. tomorrow? The pastor asked. "I'm sure we'd all be saints at 2:45 … We'll be wearing our Sunday morning smiles and our come-quickly-Jesus attitude." Though we do not know when Jesus is returning, "shouldn't we have that same smile and that same attitude every day as if that were the day that Christ could come?" Those who doubt Jesus' promise to return due to the delay must read 2 Peter 3:9, Laurie suggested. The verse reads: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." The pastor went on to say he prayed in 1970 that Jesus should come soon, "but isn't it good that he didn't?" Many among the audience received Jesus after 1970, he pointed out. The purpose behind the revelation of Jesus' return is not to satisfy our curiosity or to allow us to have the exact date or time, but "to seek to be ready for his return," Laurie emphasized. "Otherwise, we are missing the point." The pastor based his message mainly on Luke 12:35-40: "Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."