Jesus will come back openly to earth as King! History as we know it will reach its end, its climax. This is one of the most exciting, joyous, significant pieces of Christian doctrine! Scripture contains a huge amount about it for us to explore (a great deal of Jesus’ teaching; and one in every 20 NT verses, it’s been calculated), which we’re doing in other posts.
BUT!: what does this fact, that Christ our Lord and Friend and Master will visibly return, mean for us, in real-life terms, right now?
One thing is sure: it means joy! Not everything about Christ’s return is clear, but let’s start with what all Bible Christians are sure of, because it will fire up our hearts: Jesus really will return! Here’s Acts 1:11:
This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.
And here are the wonderful certainties of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord for ever! (NIV)
We don’t know when, but this much is certain. History has an end. Human independence in rebellion against God has been a tragic, even catastrophic failure. At some point the agony has to stop. God looks at all the damage and hurt we’ve caused and says, ‘Enough!’
We don’t know when that will be: in fact, we know it will be at a time that we don’t expect (Matthew 24:44). But we know the central things about what will happen. Jesus will return, in person, not to be born in a manger and crucified this time, but as the earth’s King to finally put things right. Amen! Everything will be put right and there will be glory beyond our imaginations. Our human race’s story has a good ending!
Grasp this and it will give us joy! Today there is so much fear about the future. Terrorist outrages: it’s not if they will succeed in hitting us where it really hurts; it’s when. Ecological breakdown: global warming, flooding, pollution. Economic struggles and unpredictability.
Joblessness. Disease; superbugs. The world out of control. Where’s it all going to end? We know! It’s not that things may turn out OK. They will turn out OK. Jesus is in control and He loves us and He’s coming back. Much of history is a disastrous mess, but it’s not going nowhere. God will not tolerate the evil for ever.
That’s why Jesus’ return will happen. It has to. This is not a ‘normal’ world. It’s a planet where the Fall has happened; where we’ve demanded our independence and ruined the world, and God has had to rescue it through the Cross, Resurrection and Pentecost. But still there’s so much misery. Forty thousand children die each day of hunger and preventable disease. God loves people. There has to be an end to all the evil. History does have other purposes in the meantime, but there will come a time when God’s goal in creating the eternal, global Church is complete, the gospel has spread to every nation and each culture is now represented gloriously in His eternal Bride; and God will tolerate the evil no longer. The end comes, everything is sorted out, and God’s creation becomes what it was created to be!
And meanwhile, Jesus is saying, hang in. (‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?’ [Luke 18:8]). God is faithful. Deliverance is coming. And from then on we will reign with Jesus for ever and ever!
Grasp that and it will indeed give you joy! But there’s more. Look at Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:42-50 and we’ll see five vital facts:
- Jesus’ return will be personal, 24:42. It’s your Lord who will come back. As Acts 1 says, the One who comes back is ‘this same Jesus’ that they already knew – and when He returns we will feel this too. Have you ever had the experience of finally meeting a friend or colleague whose personality you have known only by letter, and saying, ‘It’s you?’ That’s what we’ll say: ‘It’s You! I’ve felt You at the edge of my senses, and in my deepest, most profound moments; and now it’s You; You’re here!’
- Jesus’ return will be unexpected, 24:44. Don’t sit around waiting for signs, says Jesus. Yes, the population explosion, global warming and global pollution may make us think the end is near. Yes, some of what’s happened with Israel in the last century may make us think that (as some people put it) the ‘prophetic clock has started ticking again’. Yes, the gospel has almost spread to all nations, and we know when that has happened the End will come (24:14). But we really don’t know just when. It really will happen when we don’t expect it, says Jesus. So – to apply that exactly – it can happen today; at any moment. Maybe He will return today!
- If we grasp this it will change our lives. This vision is essential for holiness, says Jesus (24:48-49). 2 Peter says the same: loss of vision for Christ’s return goes with loss of vision for radical holiness (1:4 and 3:3-4). In 1 Peter 1:13-14, Peter makes a big emphasis on the choice of alternative desires we face, either of ‘evil desires’ or else desires for the glory to come ‘when Jesus Christ is revealed’. Our hope is our anchor, says Hebrews 6:19. And it is: to grasp that Jesus is coming back for us in colossal glory changes our whole attitude to goals, to promotion, to investment, to bitterness, to forgiveness. So, Paul tells us, think about it, and especially when you take the bread and wine and declare Jesus’ death for you, remember too that you’re only doing this ‘until he comes’ (see what he says in 1 Corinthians 11:26)! It’s ‘to those who are waiting for him’ that Jesus brings salvation (Hebrews 9:28; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). Reflect on this and give thanks for it (I would suggest) in your personal time with God at least once a week!
- When Jesus returns there will be judgement (24:39). Talking about this is something very countercultural. But it’s a fact, and it should fire us up to (as Paul says, 2 Corinthians 5:20) implore anyone we care about to be reconciled to the God they may soon stand before, while they still can!
But there’s also something here to challenge each of us. If you’re a true Christian – if you’ve repented, made Jesus your Lord and put your faith in His death to pay for everything wrong and stupid you’ve done – then there’s no question, you’re going to heaven and not to hell. But there’s something else that will happen (see v46): each of us will give an account of ourselves to God, as Romans 14:12 says. Why? Because God loves us and takes us seriously, and therefore He takes seriously what we do and how we live. And His Spirit is working hard to bring us to the point of 24:47 (the Master will put His servant ‘in charge of all his possessions’[!!]), through everything that happens to us. And part of that is the accountability that leads to growth. Think of the best father you can possibly imagine, sitting with us and talking it through with us, saying to us, ‘So tell me how it went’: that’s how it will be. And (because God the Holy Spirit is in every true believer, successfully making us more like Jesus), the end of this will be, as 1 Corinthians 4:5 amazingly expresses it, that each one of us will have praise from God. Imagine that!
And imagine also: this may happen on Tuesday next week (24:44)!
- And then there will be colossal glory. The world will be brought back as God intended. Right now it’s in bondage to decay (Romans 8:21); after Jesus returns, the wolf and the lamb will lie down together (look – I mean now – at the fantastic passage in Isaiah 11:6-9), and the earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea! And (Matthew 24:47) you will be involved in looking after this! The eye has never seen what God has stored up for us (1 Corinthians 2:9). Perhaps more wonderfully still – because, as Dallas Willard says so perceptively, God is ‘undoubtedly the most joyful being in the universe’(1) – He’s going to invite you, us, to ‘share’ His ‘happiness’ (Matthew 25:21). Can you wait?
And those five facts are just the start. So much of the Bible is about the second coming. Let me end this post with four practical things; and may I suggest that it’s worth stopping right now and turning them into prayer?
- Grasp the facts of Jesus’ return, and it will give you a passion for the lost. God’s offer of salvation has a deadline (see 2 Corinthians 6:1-2 and Matthew 25:1-13). To say ‘Not yet’ to God is actually saying ‘No’ to Him as your Lord, because it’s saying, ‘This is my life and I’ll do what I choose with it when I myself choose.’ Are you doing that? The terrible thing is that one day God may accept what we say. It would be utter tragedy to wake up at last to how things really are, and then realise we’ve missed the deadline. That’s why Paul says (2 Corinthians 5:20), ‘We implore you… be reconciled to God’ (emphasis mine)!
- Grasp Jesus’ return and it will give you a passion for distinctiveness. Our imagination is vital in this; the hope of our coming salvation is our helmet, says Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5: it protects our thinking. Our grasp of the heaven where we’ll soon be going, the priority of heaven, will help us towards a healthy detachment from overrating the issues of earth. ‘Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?’ asks Peter in 2 Peter 3:11. Jesus challenges us to lay up treasure that lasts, treasure in heaven, not on earth (Matthew 6:19-21). Career plans, money, possessions: grasping the second coming empowers us to hold these things loosely and not get too worked up about them. Glory is just around the corner; we will have a far better prize soon (Luke 16:11), and grasping that fact will help us not to be distracted away from the things that really count for the next million years!
- That in turn will inspire us to use what we have now for the lost worldwide, for the needy worldwide, and for the kingdom and glory of God. Maybe it’s good to read the second two stories in Matthew 25 in your personal time with God this coming week. They tell us about the Master who goes away and entrusts gifts and talents to His people, and then comes back and wants to know what they did with them. That’s for us too. He will ask what we’ve done with what He’s given us, for the lost, for the needy worldwide, and for His kingdom.
- And most of all, grasping the second coming will enable us to do what Jesus tells us: Be ready! Maybe today! ‘Keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back … If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping’! (Mark 13:35-36). To repeat, we will do well to reflect on this, briefly at least, in our personal time with God once each week. (And the first story in Matthew 25 – vv1-13 – is great for this.)
To summarise, then: Jesus’ return will be personal; it will be sudden, when we don’t expect it; it calls us to radical holiness, and passionate witness, and generous deployment of what God has entrusted to us till then; it will lead into our working through with our Father how we’ve lived here on earth; and from there onward to colossal glory!
Wonderful things! Time to pray??
(1) From a marvellous passage about God in Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (Collins, 1998), p72.
(This is a slightly edited version of a chapter from my A Guide to the End of the World, available on Kindle or in book form from https://instantapostle.com/books/a-guide-to-the-end-of-the-world/ .)
