Clearing The Air: Misconceptions About The Second Coming Series

Clearing the Air: Common Misconceptions About the Second Coming

Introduction:

I heard this one country song by this man named John Connelly. John’s big hit was a song entitled “Rose Colored Glasses.” I have never looked through rose colored glasses, but I can only imagine how they might distort the actual appearance of something.

I heard a story of a young soldier who was looking at a regiment of British soldiers who were wearing red coats. He was looking through rose-colored field glasses. When you look at red through red it appears to be white and he thought they were white coats. You can imagine what happened to that poor mistaken soldier.

It is my belief that people have been looking at what the Bible says about the second coming of Jesus and the end of time on earth through the rose colored glasses of popular authorship and thus bringing these misconceptions to the Bible. If you were to go into a grocery store you would find numerous books regarding the second coming of Jesus. If you were to turn on a Christian television network you would soon hear a televangelist spouting of his views regarding the end of times. It is easy to see how many people become confused regarding the second coming of Christ. People have made bookoos of money writing fiction novels about this event; it is even a popular headline for many tabloid magazines. The issue of the coming of Jesus has become one of the most popular subjects in Christianity. People today are confused and misled about the Second Coming of Christ.

I believe that the issue of the second coming is an important issue in which there is much confusion, debate and disagreement. There are countless different views about the second coming floating around. Many of those views are honest attempts to interpret Scripture, but some are blatant abuses of the Word of God. I do not believe that a person is lost because they are confused on the Second Coming or if they disagree with me, however buying into some of the common misconception regarding the coming of our Lord can affect us in many different ways. I don’t by any means claim to have all the answers, in fact there are many things regarding Jesus’ coming and the judgment that I do not understand fully. There are people that can disagree with me if they want on some of these issues, they can be wrong if they like. Admittedly, the issues of end times are some of the most difficult issues to comprehend in Scripture.

This morning though I want to clear up a few common misconceptions regarding the coming of Jesus, which I believe the Bible makes very clear. I would like to point out some popular false teachings which I believe the Bible does address, and I want to pick up on the things that are absolutely clear in Scripture regarding Jesus’ coming.

As I begin this message I want you to do something with me. I want you to pretend that you have never read Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” you have never read any of the “Left Behind” series by Tim Lahaye. What I ask is that we look to the source of Truth; God’s Word to see what is real and what is just popular fiction made into popular theology. Therefore I ask of you to remove your rose colored glasses, to get rid of any presuppositions and let us see what the Truth is. Let me assure you that the Bible is a good commentary on popular authorship and I would encourage us to use it as our source for information on Christ’s coming. As we hear various teachings it is vital for us to hold those teachings up to the Word of God and let God’s Word dictate what is true.

With this in mind it is important to quickly define several terms that are associated with the second coming of Jesus.

1. The Antichrist—

Many people have attempted to identify a particular person as being the “Antichrist”. Many authors have taken the term and have made it into some sort of Frankenstein political monster. Some have tried to identify the Antichrist as such people as Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein. The antichrist supposedly will come into the world just prior to the Second Coming of Jesus. Some of the ideas about the coming of an antichrist come from taking passages from Daniel, II Thessalonians and the book of Revelation out of context. Perhaps many of the popular end times experts ignore what the Apostle John says regarding the coming of an antichrist.

II John 7

I John 2:18

I do not believe the Scriptures point to one particular man that is going to arise as the antichrist, but simply put there are many who antichrists are, and they have been in the world since the first century as John pointed out. We must be careful looking for one particular person and identifying them as “antichrist” especially since the Bible does not identify one particular person as “antichrist”.