Hallelujah!  The Lord’s good; amen?  His mercies endure forever.  We were talking about the hour that we’re living in and the apostle’s declaration of having finished the course, having finished the race that God had set before him, and his delight and rejoicing that that day had finally come.  And that’s what we’re laboring toward; amen?

The church today, more than ever, should have a longing for the coming of the Lord Jesus.  Did you think about Him today?  Did you think about His coming?  Is there a love?  Is there just a compulsion to continue, both in the Spirit and sometimes even in the natural, to look up and say, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus”?  This is not our home.  This life is just a breath of wind that blows by, over in a moment, and we are a people who were created for eternity.  Amen?  This short life isn’t what was intended for us.  Eternal life, an abundant life, a life in the Son, praise God!  Amen?  A life of fellowship and communion with Almighty God.  A life in a place that eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for us.  I want to go home, praise God!  Come quickly, Lord Jesus!  And yet we’re living in a place occupied by supposed kingdom children who are, in fact, earth dwellers.  They love this earth; they love this life.  They have no desire to go on and see Him, but, in fact, a desire to see their dreams come to pass.  I’d rather go see Jesus than the fulfillment of any dreams that I might have.  Everything you could imagine and think you want, the Bible makes it absolutely clear, you can receive it and you will not be satisfied by it.  It’s all vanity.  Let this earth’s treasures diminish in your eyes.  Amen?  Layup treasures in heaven, praise God, that can’t be taken from us.

This is what is going through the apostle’s mind here in Timothy as he’s speaking these words.  Remember, in this second epistle of Timothy, Paul’s writing from prison—Nero is the emperor at this particular time—and he’s lived a life that has been a very, very tough life.  He’s suffered; he’s been persecuted; he’s been lied against; he’s been betrayed.  His love for his own countrymen was very similar to the prophecy that spoke of Jesus—who said, “The more I love you, the more you hate me.”  And here he sits in that prison.  We won’t go through the description of it.  Many of us have heard it, but some of us able to go down under the streets of Rome and see the Mamertine Prison.  It gets overlooked a lot.  And everybody who’s asked me, “What should we do when we go to Rome?” etc., I’ve said, “Go to the Mamertine Prison.”  It’s become very obscure in these last decades.  It used to be a prominent thing on the tour guides, and they’ve almost scratched it.  It’s almost like Spurgeon’s Tabernacle.  The first time I was in London back in the seventies and I was trying to find Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, nobody knew what I was talking about.  The last time I went through London, they were advertising it in the subways.  And yet Europe is as dead as it’s ever been.  A secular state full of humanistic mentalities and haters of God.