The Future: The Return of Christ

Welcome! Today we begin the final section of our series on doctrine, focusing over the next four weeks on the future. As we have gone through our series, we have seen again and again that there are some things that are quite clear and uncontroversial, things that are presented quite clearly and explicitly in Scripture, but there are also other areas, other questions, other topics, that are quite the opposite. As we move to begin to discuss future events, it should be obvious that we are moving into areas where there is a lot of uncertainty. Next week Tim has the unenviable task of discussing the great tribulation and the millennium, some of the most uncertain topics of all. The following week John Farmer will talk about the great judgement, and then Fred will close out our series by talking about the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Who knows what the acronym TEOTWAWKI stands for? TEOTWAWKI stands for the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. Survivalists use this and many other interesting terms. They try to plan for how to survive a civilization-altering event such as nuclear war, a severe disease that wipes out half the population, a complete breakdown of our economic system, an electromagnetic pulse from a weapon or from the sun that destroys electronics and our power grid, a severe natural disaster such as a comet or large asteroid hitting the earth or a super-volcano eruption that leads to something like a nuclear winter, zombies, or the election of Donald Trump as president. I’m kidding on the last two. See if you can guess what some of these other acronyms stand for:

BOB, BOL, and BOV: bug-out-bag, bug-out-location, and bug-out-vehicle; what to bring, where to go, and how to get there if TEOTWAWKI hits.

GOOD kit and INCH bag: Similar to BOB, these are the get-out-of-dodge kit and the I’m-not-coming-home bag.

YOYO: You’re on your own. 

Well, today our focus is on the return of Jesus Christ to this earth. Unlike the other survivalist fears over things which may or may not happen, it is an absolute certainty that Christ will return, and it is equally certain that the return of Christ will be a TEOTWAWKI event! Before this happens, it is essential that you prepare with PYFIC. I made that one up, but can you guess what it stands for? Put your faith in Christ.

Now as I prepared this message, I was really astounded by just how many verses speak of Christ’s return. According to one theologian, in the New Testament’s 260 chapters, the return of Jesus is mentioned 318 times. Obviously we are not going to go through 318 passages today; we will need to be highly selective. But I think it is important to understand just how prevalent the theme of the return of Christ is in Scripture. I worry that we, the western Church, do not think about the return of Christ enough.

I want to start today by reminding you of Jesus’ departure from this Earth. We read about this in the beginning of the book of Acts:

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles He had chosen. After His suffering, He presented Himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” – Acts 1:1-5

The former book referred to here is Luke, but it is in the book of John that Jesus told them that He could not stay with them, that He would leave them so that the Holy Spirit could be with them. The passage continues:

Then they gathered around Him and asked Him, “Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:6-8

Jesus very clearly lays out that knowing the dates or times of TEOTWAWKI is not something man is to know. As it says in Matthew 24:36-37, 

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Matt. 24:36-37

Some people stumble over the idea that even the Son would not know the time of His return, but I think the way to understand this is that Jesus in His humanity limited Himself in many ways; one of the ways was that His omniscience was one of His attributes voluntarily suppressed while He was on earth. It is astounding to me that despite the clarity of these passages, leaders of many cultic Christian groups have tried to do exactly this, to name the precise date of Christ’s return. One example is William Miller, the founder of the Millerites who predicted Oct. 22, 1844. After this date failed, the group splintered and formed a number of groups including the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Advent Christian Church, and, indirectly, the Bahai Faith; the Bahai’s believe that Miller was correct and that 1844 was the birth of the Bab, one of three central figures in the Bahai faith. 

Another example is Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Watchtower Society of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who predicted 1874. After that date came and went, he argued that Christ was from that date invisibly present. He also predicted that the resurrection of the saints would occur in 1875 and that the rapture would occur in 1878; I’m not sure how he explained these after they also failed to pass. Jehovah’s Witnesses also claimed that Christ was invisibly present from 1914, and that the four horsemen of the apocalypse began to ride symbolically on that date. 

Herbert W. Armstrong, leader of the Worldwide Church of God, and his followers, gave multiple dates at various times – 1935, 1943, 1972, and 1975. More recently, Harold Camping, general manager of Family Radio, predicted Sept. 6, 1994, and more recently, May 21, 2011 and then Oct. 21, 2011.  Future predictions include that of Jeane Dixon, the so-called psychic, who predicted 2020, Alice Bailey, an early new-ager who, in 1946, predicted 2025, and physicist Frank Tipler, who predicts that the second coming of Christ will coincide with the “Omega Point” when, as I understand it, the universe itself becomes conscious. He hasn’t given an exact date but says it will happen no later than 2057.

I feel almost dirty after having even gone through that list; each of these groups had many more serious problems with doctrinal and theological error than just the return of Christ.  To try to get us back on track, let me reread the passage from Matthew, going a little further:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.  

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.– Matt. 24:36-39

The coming of Jesus is sudden. It is unexpected. People are unprepared. They are shocked when it happens. This in and of itself is an often repeated message in Scripture. Jesus taught multiple parables that made this point. Another similar passage is in I Thessalonians:

Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. – I Thess. 5:1-3

Who can expect a thief in the night? Every night you go to bed. Every night you fall asleep. Every morning you wake up. Except one. The evening seems just like any other evening. You turn out the light like on any other night. But on this night, the thief comes. It is completely sudden, completely unpredictable. This is what the day of Christ’s return will be like. Peter says something similar, speaking of the suddenness and unpredictability of Christs’ return:

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. – 2 Peter 3:3-7

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 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. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. – 2 Peter 3:8-10

If you have heard me give many messages you know I love many C.S. Lewis quotes. But I really love the following quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity on this topic:

"God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks onto the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right, but what is the good of saying you're on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else--something it never entered your head to conceive--comes crashing in; something so beautiful to us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love, or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down, when it's become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realize it or not. Now, today, in this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever; we must take it or leave it." (Mere Christianity)

I want to come back to our passage in Acts that we started with this morning. Jesus told them that the time and date of His return was not form them to know, and then He told them to go into the city of Jerusalem to wait for the Holy Spirit. We pick it up in verse 9:

After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? 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.” – Acts 1:9-11

After this angelic message the disciples fortunately did stop looking up and they did as they were told, and shortly thereafter the Holy Spirit came upon them as they waited together in Jerusalem, beginning what theologians call the “church age,” a time of fulfilling the task of being Jesus’ witnesses even to the ends of the earth, an age that we are a part of today.

But this age will end when, as the passage says, Jesus comes back in the same way that He went into heaven, that is, He will return among the clouds, descending back to earth. Revelations 1 repeats this by quoting Old Testament prophecies: 

“Look, He is coming with the clouds,” and “every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of Him.” So shall it be! Amen. – Rev. 1:7

The return of Jesus will not be a quiet event, with Him first appearing only to a few of His followers, as happened after the resurrection, or as He was born, where only the angels and a few others understood what was happening. The return of Christ will be quite the opposite. It will be a global event – the whole world will know! I should point out that this was utterly impossible, even unimaginable, until recently, when modern technology gave us the power to broadcast any news event globally, essentially instantly. Jesus Himself is quoted as saying something quite similar in Matthew’s gospel: 

And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. – Matt. 24:30b

Both Revelations and Matthew here talk about how the world will mourn when He appears. By the “world,” these passages refer to those who have not put their faith and trust in Christ. Why will they mourn? Because it will be clear to all that this is Jesus and that the Scriptures were entirely right about Him; furthermore, they will therefore finally believe the Scriptures that say that when He returns He will be coming to judge the world. Their eyes will be opened and they will know that they are deserving of judgment. It will be very different than today, when, for example, you go on campus and ask a person why God should let them into heaven and they say, “Because I’m a good person.” Throughout Scripture when people have come face to face with the power and presence of God, they come to their senses and say, “Woe to me, I am ruined!” The same will happen on a global scale when Christ returns. As the C.S. Lewis quote said, there will be terror, the terror of standing in the presence of God. All men deep down know that you cannot look upon the face of God and live. They will know that quite consciously on that day. 

How do you feel about TEOTWAWKI? Is it OK to feel a little afraid? I think it is appropriate. But at the same time, you should not fear Christ, if you have put your faith and trust in Him. He is your deliver; He is the one who has died to save you. He loves you so much that He did die for you, and He rejoices that you have renounced your old approach to life, that of putting yourself on the throne of your life, but have put Him on your throne. He knows you aren’t perfect yet – none of us are, not by a long shot – indeed, when He comes, I think even for believers, there will be a new understanding of just how selfish and sinful we have been even as Christians. But we should still long for Him, because He is good, because He is love, because being forever with Him will be infinitely better than anything we can possibly imagine. This too is a common theme in Scripture, that we should long for Him. For example, from Titus 2:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good. – Titus 2:11-14

Is He your blessed hope? This doesn’t mean hope in the sense of “I hope we have ice cream for dessert tonight,” but hope in the sense of “We are going to have ice cream! I can’t wait! It’s going to be awesome!” Of course, I shouldn’t have to say this, but just to be clear, although having ice cream for dessert is pretty awesome, Jesus is going to be infinitely better than ice cream.

To have Him as your blessed hope is essential to living a life really for Christ. The person who never thinks about these things is one in danger of being overwhelmed by the concerns of the world. The person who lives in this hope is aided by their very hope. From I John:

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure. – I John 3:1-3

Living with this continual hope in Him is a form of setting our minds on things above, as it says in Col. 3:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. – Col. 3:1-4

I will tell you that I have long clung to Col. 3:1-3, but it wasn’t until preparing for this message that I really connected verse 4 along with it and really understood that a key part of setting your heart on things above is to focus on the coming day when Christ appears, to hope in His coming. 

At the end of I Corinthians, the end of verse 16:22, Paul writes “Maranatha!” This means “Come, Lord Jesus!” Similarly, Revelations, the next to last verse, says, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” May this also be your heart. 

I want to spend my remaining time talking about some of the signs of Christ’s imminent coming, as this is also a repeated theme of Scripture. I have organized these signs in the same way that Grudem does in his book Systematic Theology.

The first of these signs is the gospel itself; this can be found in Mark 13:10 and Matt. 24:14:

And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. – Mark 13:10

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. – Matt. 24:14

Has this already happened? It depends, I think on what is meant by nations. The Greek word more literally is tribes, but even what that means exactly is hard to say as the word is used in multiple contexts. I would say that it is increasingly true. There has been an explosion of inroads of the gospel to the world in recent years. Of course there is much, much more to do, as many groups have had only the beginnings of exposure to the gospel, but I don’t think it is at all safe to say that Christ can’t come tomorrow because the world needs to hear more of the gospel first.

The second sign is a great unprecedented tribulation; I give the passages in Mark; there are parallel passages in Matthew and Luke:

When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. – Mark 13:7-8

 

… because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, He has shortened them. – Mark 13:19-20 

Has this happened? Some interpret these passages as referring to the events preceding and including the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70, and I think, like many prophecies, they have an immediate fulfillment to some degree in that event but also a greater fulfillment yet to come. But we live in a world where TEOTWAWKI can happen at any moment, through all the means I mentioned earlier (except for zombies and Trump); if you are old enough to remember it, think back on how shockingly sudden the fall of the Soviet Union was in 1989. The world is more dramatically more interconnected than ever before, and I also believe that because of the continued success of the gospel in saving people throughout the world, opposition to Christianity, both overt and covert, is rising dramatically; a TEOTWAWKI event could lead to immediate worldwide persecution of Christians. 

A third sign is as false messiahs; I give the exposition in Mark, but it also appears in Matt. 24:

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time. – Mark 13:21-23

I would say this has gone on continuously in the church age, but I think it will rise to a new level at the time of Christ’s return. But again, this could happen at any moment, and I would expect it to happen as soon as a TEOTWAWKI event occurs. Furthermore, given our modern technology, rumors and false messages can now be communicated globally instantaneously, so the world has never been more ready to fall for these false messiahs. And with today’s movie magic of special effects, anything can be made to look absolutely real today.

A fourth sign is heavenly events. Again, these are found in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, but I present the Mark account:

But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. – Mark 13:24-25

We are looking at the future, so we don’t know exactly what these verses mean. But there is no question in my mind that things like this could happen at any time. Again and again, scientists discover only at the last minute some new major asteroid or comet that has a near miss with us (relatively speaking). Plus the heavenly bodies are far more unpredictable than we like to think about. In the past year there have been times the sun has been entirely without sunspots on the side facing us; at other times it is blistering with activity. We have observed major changes in Jupiter’s great red spot and in other planetary behavior; who knows what might happen in the near future? There are also threats from outside our solar system. The universe is actually quite a scary place; it is only God’s protective Hand that has kept us safe. Again, my conclusion is that anything could happen at any time.

A fifth sign is the coming of the “man of sin,” also called the antichrist in Revelation and elsewhere. Here I give passages from 2 Thessalonians; Revelation goes into far more detail. 

Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. – 2 Thess. 2:3-4

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. – 2 Thess. 2:9-10a

Many through history have thought various tyrants to be the antichrist, from the Roman emperors Nero and Domitian to Hitler and Stalin. Some have said it was the Pope at the time the Roman Catholic Church severely persecuted Protestants. I John talks about how there are many antichrists, but there will be one day the antichrist. I don’t think we have seen him yet. But again, it could happen almost immediately with a TEOTWAWKI event.

The sixth and final sign we will talk about today is something that gives me great joy, the salvation of many Jews. Paul writes in Romans 11, speaking of the Jews,

But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring! … I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. – Romans 11:12, 25-26

Has this happened yet? I don’t think so, but we are dramatically closer to this now than we were even a few decades ago. In the past several decades the number of Jews who have come to Christ has gone from thousands to hundreds of thousands; by God’s grace I am one of them. Some have argued that all doesn’t mean every last one, and I completely agree, but others have argued that by all Paul only means up to the number that is meant to happen, a small subset of the Jews as a whole, and in this I don’t agree. Israel at present is a very secular nation; there are a small number of Jews who really believe in God at all. I think this will change. But once again, it could change extremely rapidly with a major world-shattering event.

The bottom line is that we should not only greatly desire Christ to come, but we should be expectant; as verse after verse says, we should be ready. I truly expect Christ to return during my lifetime, provided I don’t die sooner than I plan. J Truly, though, Christ could return at any time. Maranatha!