The Second Coming
Revelation 21:1-5
Do you remember the days when you were young and spoke before you thought it through? I was in my fourth year of ministry and my first Sunday in a new church. I walked into the Fellowship Hall where one of the Sunday School classes met. I greeted the Sunday School teacher and saw a chalk board on two wheels with small writing all over it. She explained to me that they had been studying the Book of Revelation and the Second Coming of Jesus for the last year. We walked around the back of the chalkboard and it too was completely covered in small print, notes from their study. Then she asked me, “Pastor, what do you think of the Second Coming?” Without batting an eye or thinking a thought, I said, “I don’t think much about it.” At that moment, she froze as her mouth dropped wide open. With the look of horror on her face, you could almost hear a pin drop. Having studied the Book of Revelation for the last 12 months, she couldn’t imagine having a pastor who didn’t think about the Second Coming. What about you? How much do you think about the Second Coming of Jesus? In this series, we’ve been talking about heaven and hell. But you can’t talk about that without also talking about the Second Coming.
The second coming of Christ is the great expectation of the church. Followers of Jesus should look for as Titus 2:13 says, “that blessed and glorious hope appearing of our great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ”. As we learned in December, Advent means “the coming” and is meant to be a time of looking forward to and preparing not for the birth of Jesus but the return of Jesus. Unfortunately, the church has made Advent about the birth of Jesus and thus diminished our focus in the faith on Jesus’ Second Coming. But we Christians are meant to live expectantly as we prepare for the Second Coming of Christ.
Both the Old and New Testaments speak of how the world we know will end and that God is working out His plan of salvation until then. Jesus’ spoke of His Second Coming when he said in John 14:3 “I will come back and take you with me that you also may be where I am.” And in Matthew 24:29-30, he said, “Immediately after the distress of those days… the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky… They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.” At His ascension into Heaven as the disciples stared heavenward, two men dressed in white stood beside them and said: “Men of Galilee… 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 1:10-11. Dr. George Sweeting writes that “more than a fourth of the Bible is predictive prophecy...Both the Old and New Testaments are full of promises about the return of Jesus Christ. Over 1800 references appear in the O.T., and…in the N.T., there are more than 300 references to the Lord’s return-one out of every 30 verses. Twenty-three of the 27 N.T. books refer to this great event...For every prophecy on the first coming of Christ, there are eight on Christ’s second coming.”
Given the prominence in the Bible and the fact that this is goal of our faith, the thing we should look forward to the most, why don’t we think and talk about the Second Coming more? I think the reason we don’t is that our culture has shaped us to think only about today and the here and now. We rarely look forward to the future, evidenced by the fact that so few people are saving money for retirement and so few people actually have personal goals for the life or marriage. But as followers of Jesus, we called to look forward and to look for the day of Jesus’ return. What will that be like?
First, the resurrection of the believing dead will occur and will receive eternal life. Paul writes in I Thess. 4:16: “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 firs.” In Jesus’ day, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection but the Pharisees did. These two groups probably only made up less than 1% of the population and so the majority probably didn’t believe in the resurrection either. Today, most Jews believe when the Messiah comes the first time, the dead will be raised. This is evidence by the tombs on the Mount of Olives which is the most expensive place in the world to be buried because it is thought that the Messiah will come from that direction and these will be the first to be raised. But we Christians know that the Messiah has come in Jesus. He died and was resurrected and we look forward to the promise of His return when those who believed and have died will be resurrected. Jesus taught this repeatedly and emphasized that it will include all deceased believers: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.” John 5:28-29
Second, the resurrection is physical rather than merely spiritual as evidenced by the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:44) and by the resurrection of Jesus himself (Luke 24:39). The resurrection of the body is part of our total redemption. Paul writes in Romans 8:23, “Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” The Apostle Paul refers to our resurrection bodies as “clothes with our heavenly dwelling” or “an eternal house” not built by human hands (2 Corinthians 5:2,4). Our resurrection bodies will not be identical to the ones we have now, but they will be closely related to them. The disciples for example recognized Jesus by the scars in His hands and side (John 20:27).
Third, the living will be transformed. Believers who are still alive will be changed and transformed, so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, like Christ’s glorified, resurrected body. The faithful who are living at the time of Christ’s coming will be transformed into His likeness. Jesus said, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed…” 1 Corinthians 15:51and in Philippians 3:21 say that “by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Fourth, all Creation will be healed and restored. In the Garden of Eden, all things were as God intended and after God created the earth, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”” We were given responsibility to be caretakers of God’s creation but then sin entered the world. Animals have been sent into extinction, water and land has been defiled, the earth’s ozone layer has been diminished and the air we breathe has been polluted. Paul writes in Romans 8:20-21, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” The world we live in is a far cry from what God created and gave to us. Paul looked forward to Jesus’ return “when the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.” Acts 3:21 And so on that day of Jesus’ return all creation will be healed and returned to its original state.
Fifth, it will also be a day of judgment for the unbeliever and the unredeemed sinner. Both the just and the unjust will rise again and be judged. The unjust will be sent to Hell, a place of their choosing by the decisions they made and the life they lived. This terrible place is described in various ways: a place or state of everlasting fire (Mark 9:43, Matthew 25:41), a lake of burning sulphur (Revelation 20:10), a place of outer darkness (Matthew 8:12). It is described as a place of eternal torment and punishment (Revelation 14:10-11). Hell is something so awful no one in their right mind could be indifferent to avoiding it. A.H. Strong describes Hell this way: “The loss of all good, whether physical or spiritual, and the misery of an evil conscience banished from God and the society of the holy and dwelling under God’s positive curse forever.”
Many believe that a loving God could never send his own children to Hell and that God will forgive everyone of their sins, regardless of the life they lived. As we learned last week, people go to hell because of the choices they made and the lives they lived. Not only has God given us every warning needed to make the right choices in life, in Jesus’ death on the cross, he has provided every means to receive forgiveness, new life in Him and the gift of eternal life. The fact is there’s no biblical evidence for believing in the final restoration of the lost or the universal salvation of all people. Perhaps the clearest disproof of these ideas is the fact that the same word ‘eternal’ is used to describe both heaven and hell: “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” Matthew 25:46. So we must apply the same qualification to the destinies of the righteous and the wicked, their fate is eternal. God in His love has done everything necessary to redeem mankind. His justice requires that He punish sin, but His love provides salvation freely for all who accept it. Those in Hell are there because they refused or ignored God’s love; they are solely responsible for their condition. The realization of this truth will surely be one of the most painful experiences of Hell.
Sixth, the kingdom of God will be established, heaven here on earth. Heaven is most simply defined as where God is. It is a place of rest (Hebrews 4:9), of glory (2 Cor. 4:17) of purity (Rev. 21:27), of worship (Rev. 19:1), of fellowship with others (Hebrews 12:23) and of being with God. “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” Rev. 21:3. Upon His return, Jesus will defeat the last enemy, death. He will transform the world as the Judge. He will subdue all things to Himself. Finally, He will hand the kingdom back over to His Father, and God will become all and all.
Our hope for the future is to see with our eyes Jesus Christ, a sight that outstrips our human comprehension and to experience being in His presence forever, surrounded by His love, power and holiness. Heaven will be the most dynamic, exhilarating experience conceivable. It will be a time of great praise for as the words of a classic hymn Amazing Grace say: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.”
What roles should the Second Coming play in our life and faith today? The return of Jesus is an incentive for holy living: “And now, dear children, continue in Him, so that when He appears we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming” 1 John 2:28. “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” 1 John 3:3. Neither the prophets nor the apostles mention the return of Christ for speculative purposes but always as a motive for practical daily holiness. We could summarize this doctrine with Peter’s words “What kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives” 2 Peter 3:11. The Apostle Paul wrote “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:10-11
What do these dates have in common (1248, 1306, 1689, 1792, 1836, 1844, 1914, 1936, 1960, 1974, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1994, 2011)? They all represent the times in which people predicted that the second coming of Christ would occur. No one, not even Jesus knows the exact time of Christ's coming. Matthew 24:36 What we do know is this: Christ's coming will be unexpected and dramatic. "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up." 2 Peter 3:10 And for that reason, we should work outour faith in fear and trembling.” But because of the reward we will receive, we long for it and look forward to it with great hope and expectation.
