A study on acceptable time periods and the importance of prayer  (Part 4)

It is here again – “THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR” – but seasons come and seasons go and before we know it, it will be gone and we will have to wait another year for this season to come around again. It seems that everything in our world goes in cycles.

A Brief look at Cycles in Time Periods:

One day is 24 hours. Each day is determined by the rotation of the earth on its own axis in relation to the sun.

One week is 7 days and the weekly cycle always begins with the first day:

~ “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. ³And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.” Genesis 2:2,3

 ~ “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first [day] of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.”  Matthew 28:1

Each month is determined by the rotation of the moon around the earth. The moon was one of the great lights that God created with a specific purpose in mind:

~ “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’:” Genesis 1:14  

There are twelve months in a year and we also know that the rotation of the earth around the sun determines the overall length of the year.

Those are, just in very brief, some of the many cycles we see in nature. There are also mysterious time cycles in Scripture. The Bible explains that it takes 4 generations (each generation being 40 years) to make up one complete cycle of sowing and reaping.

 ~ “The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. ² ‘Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? ³Tell ye your children of it, and [let] your children [tell] their children, and their children another generation. ⁴That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.’” Joel 1:1-4

After the 4^th generation, comes a new generational cycle beginning with a generation of RESTORATION, according to Joel 2:25.

~ “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, My great army which I sent among you.” Joel 2:25

God, in Exodus, also confirms this mysterious cycle of 4 generations of sowing and reaping:

~ “…visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate Me;” Exodus 20:5

Interestingly, history also flows in cycles.

~ “The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9  

 ~ “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.” Ecclesiastes 3:15  

And then there are “acceptable time periods”; occasions when God has visited His people with special favor and deliverance. What does this have to do with cycles? Let’s take a look:

~ “The spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to [them that are] bound; ²To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;” Isaiah 61:1,2  

The words, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,”  in the Hebrew are, “qara ratson shanah Yahweh,”  which really means, “to announce that the time of God’s good pleasure has come around again!”  The Hebrew word, translated “year” in Isaiah 61, is the word, “shanah,” which literally means, “a repetition” or “a cycle!” Another word for year in the Hebrew is, “yamin,” which literally means, “days,” but this is not the word used in Isaiah 61:2.

Now, although EVERY DAY is an “acceptable time” to receive salvation, on an individual level (2 Corinthians 6:2), there are also special occasions, “acceptable time periods,” when God has visited His people (as a whole) with special favor and deliverance. There are significant stories, proleptic stories, in the Bible, which we will later look at, that give us insight. But notice the following passage:

~ “Thou shalt arise, [and] have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. ¹⁴For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. ¹⁵So the heathen shall fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. ¹⁶When the LORD shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory. ¹⁷He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. ¹⁸This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.” Psalm 102:13-18

Wow! What a passage! So, although every day is an acceptable time to accept Christ, there is a specific time period (a set time) in earth’s history, which God foresaw and David, under inspiration, wrote about, where His people would be favored!

Acceptable Time Periods in History:

In the history of our planet there have been some very significant time periods in which God visited His people with special favor and deliverance; we can all think of a few notable ones:

• The flood
• The deliverance of Israel by Moses from their Egyptian bondage
• The end of the 70 years of Babylonian captivity
• The First Advent!

All are significant and worthy of study, but first we want to look at some of the mechanics of these “seasons” or “acceptable time frames.”

God is always ready:

God has ALWAYS been ready to do for His people ALL He promised to do, but since He can only work according to the laws of absolute freedom, which means working along with our choices, then He has to wait patiently until we are ready for more.

~ “I will go [and] return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early.” Hosea 5:15

When people have been suffering for a very long time, like the Israelites in Egypt, they seek God in a very serious way – “in their affliction they will seek Me early.”

It is human nature that when things get bad, we go to God. So the thing that enables God to work is that the people realize that they need Him! The thing that changes is the people’s realization; they were just as dependent on the Lord before but they just didn’t know it. So the reality hasn’t changed, but now, thankfully, they realize the reality.

Take, for example, Belshazzar (Daniel 5). He didn’t have a care in the world; he didn’t need a thing. He was having a good time making fun of divine things, drinking from the vessels of the Lord. The reality of the situation didn’t change one bit when the declaration of doom was written by an unseen hand and “his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another” (Daniel 5:6). It was his realization of the reality that had changed.

So there are times we can spiritually go to sleep but the reality has not changed in the least. Of course we hope to be quicker to accept the reality in our experience during this favorable time than Belshazzar was in his day. He realized the reality as God was pronouncing the doom on Babylon just a few minutes before he lost his life. So, our need of God doesn’t change, and God’s ability to supply that need does not change, but our readiness to receive God goes in cycles based on our realizations of the reality.

As always, freedom, being the foundation of Love, is very significant here. You see, God, being a God of love and freedom, cannot rush your mind or the mind of anyone. He has to wait for the even-flow of cause and effect to bring about cycles; to bring about circumstances that will cause us to realize the reality that has always been. When you are making bad choices you start getting bad results and there comes a point (as we saw in Hosea) when we realize and say, “I can’t do this anymore! I am sick and tired of being sick and tired,” and then we go to God. When we are all wrapped up with ourselves and say, “I can do it,” God has to wait until another “season,” another time, comes around when we are ready.

So, “To every [thing there is] a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”… why? Because of freedom. In nature we see this. There is a window of time for planting but if you wait until the window of time is past, planting would be in vain. In the middle of the winter you won’t see a farmer in the field trudging through the snow with seed. He knows it would be a waste of time. If he missed seeding, he simply has to wait until another “season” comes around again to plant.

God is the wise farmer, He knows when the time is right; He is always ready, but He must wait until His people are ready.

~ “I will go [and] return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early.”  Hosea 5:15

*In our next study – a POWERFUL Bible story of an acceptable time period that was heeded, giving us amazing lessons for our time!

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