It is a thing of timing in the ages of mankind right up to our present day in the 21st Century, that the mystery of lawlessness, wickedness, evil is allowed to continue.  Jesus Christ is in control of history and time, and Satan, the conductor of all evil, the fallen cherub, the mightiest of the unseen angelic realm, is answerable to God.  One day, perhaps soon, he and his son and the false prophet, and all the ungodly wicked followers, those who choose wickedness over righteousness, shall be judged and sent to a place away from God and His saints for all eternity.

Look around.  The world is getting worse.  Man will never have peace by his own imagined means.  Only Christ Jesus can and will do that!  In every century since the beginning of His church, wars, and killings, and persecution, and the blood culture-the culture of death-has dominated the years of peace.  Evil and wickedness abound; at times they seem to drown out the voices of righteousness-the true believers everywhere in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God, the Lord and Savior.  Why?

In the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in chapter 10, verse 7 (during the period of the future Great Tribulation which is to come upon the whole unbelieving earth), it is written:

…but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as He preached to his servants the prophets.

What is the “mystery of God?”  Two aspects seem to stand out.

The first, is Jesus Christ.  In the first chapter of Colossians, verses 25-27, the Apostle Paul wrote: 

…so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 

The second, is the “mystery” of lawlessness, and evil and wicked in the world.

William Kelly in his book, Lectures on the Book of Revelation (London, 1874), wrote: “The secret of His allowing Satan to have his own way, and man too (that is to say, the wonder of evil prospering and of good being trodden underfoot).  God checks, no doubt, the evil in a measure, partly through human government and partly through His own providential dealings.”

Perhaps Dr. W.A. Criswell summed it up best.  In his book, Sermons on Revelation, he wrote:

The mystery of God is the long delay of our Lord in taking the kingdom unto Himself and in establishing righteousness in the earth.  The mystery of God is seen in these thousands of years in which sin and death run riot.  There is no village and there is no hamlet without its raging, and there is no human heart without its dark, black drop.  There is no life without its tears and its sorrows.  There is no home that ultimately does not break up, and there is no family that does not see the circle of the home dissolve in the depths of the grave.  There is no life that does end in death.  The pages of history, from the time of the first murder until this present hour, are written in blood, tears and death. 

The mystery is the delay of God in taking the kingdom unto Himself.  That is the most inexplicable mystery that mind could dream of, the mystery of the presence of evil.  For these thousands of years, God has allowed Satan to wrap his vicious, slimy, filthy, cruel tentacles around human life and around this earth.  Does God know it?  Is He indifferent to it?  Is He not able to cope with it? 

Oh, the mystery of the delay of God!  That mystery has brought more stumbling to the faith of God’s people than any other experience in all life.  The infidel, the atheist, the agnostic and the unbeliever laugh and mock us, and God lets them mock and laugh.  The enemies of righteousness and the enemies of all that we hold dear rise and increase in power and spread blood and darkness over the face of the earth, and we wonder where God is. 

Our missionaries are slain, our churches are burnt to the ground, people in this earth by uncounted millions and millions are oppressed, living in despair, and God just looks.  He seemingly does not intervene; He does not say anything, He does not move.  Sin just develops.  It goes on and on.  Oh, the mystery of the delay of the Lord God!

But somewhere beyond the starry sky there stands a herald with a trumpet in his hand, by the decree of the Lord God Almighty, there is a day, there is an hour, there is a moment, there is an elected time when the angel shall sound and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.  

So shall all come to pass as it is written in the prophetic word of God.  May it ever be so.  Amen.