Recently, I was talking to an acquaintance who began to tell me about the Second Coming of Christ. His explanation went something like this. "Bible prophecies give signs of the Second Coming. A lot of those signs have appeared before, but now they have come together in a special way so that we know with precise accuracy that we are living in the last days and that Christ will come soon. In fact he will probably come in the year 2000." I pointed out to him that the sixth century scholar who calculated the years since Christ's birth set the date 4 to 6 years too late. The real year 2000 actually came a half dozen years ago without any great supernatural events. Computers may have a Y2K problem, but God doesn't.

Advent is a good time for thinking about both the first and second coming of Christ. Our Sunday School lessons have included both. And since there's a lot of talk about the second advent, I'd like to consider it this morning. I am not satisfied with my friend's interpretations. He reminds me of an uncle who set the date of Christ's coming as May 24, 1942. When that day came it was uneventful. If Jesus didn't know the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), how can we? My friend went on to assert that the rapture would soon occur, all Christians would disappear from the world leaving lots of driverless cars, trains, and planes, that a seven year tribulation would follow that catastrophe, and then Christ would complete the second half of his Second Coming by appearing in his glory in a way that everyone on earth would see him. Then he would rule the world for a thousand years. All of that is very appealing, but for me it is deja vu. I believed that view for a few years during the late 1940's. But as I continued my study of the Bible, I began to see that this view was a patch-work quilt made artificially from unrelated passages.

Take just one example, the rapture. The classical scripture for this teaching is I Thes. 4:13-18, which reads in part, "For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." (vv. 16-17). The word "rapture" means both transport into a new sphere of existence and extreme joy. So it is appropriate to this passage. But there is no indication that this rapture precedes a period of tribulation or that it is just half of the Second Coming. Most Christian interpreters have understood this passage to refer to the entirety of the Second Advent. To make it a prelude to a seven year tribulation requires the questionable interpretation that the Book of Revelation teaches a seven-year tribulation period, described between chapter 4 and 19, coupled with a clear misinterpretation of Rev. 4:1-2, in which John, the writer, says, "After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.' At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne!" The rapture interpretation requires the assumption that these two verses refer not just to John's being transported in a vision to a vantage point from where he could see future events transpire in heaven and on earth, but that it says that all Christians in the late 20th Century will be caught up to meet Christ in the air. It very clearly doesn't say that at all. When we read meaning into Scripture, we are adding to God's revelation, rather than interpreting it.

I had to tell my friend too that fifty years ago Christians who used this kind of interpretation also thought the rapture was just around the corner. Hitler was the antichrist, the Jews would soon rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and Armageddon would be a quite literal battle fought near Megiddo in Palestine.

I now believe that we can learn some things from the way the first coming of Christ fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and how saints of that time missed the true nature of the Messiah's first coming by their hunger for details. According to the New Testament, people who were looking for the Messiah in the first century were right about the certainty that he would come, but they had no clue about the fine points. In their view the Messiah would be a military hero and a literal, earthly king. True, Simeon and Anna recognized the Christ child, but Luke tells us that both did so at the prompting of the Holy Spirit (Luke 2:21 - 38). None of the Old Testament saints guessed that Jesus was to save us by his own suffering (Isa. 53) or that he would be God incarnate, or that he would have another advent at the end time. Nevertheless, in spite of their inability to know the particulars, they derived hope from these prophecies during the dark days of foreign oppression and so maintained a resilient faith.

I believe that's the way it is with you and me. God expects us to gain from the Old and New Testament prophecies, not eyewitness details, but a tenacity of faith even in the face of persecution and death, and the assurance that the end of the world will come not by tyrannical or capricious deeds of human beings, but by God's further implementation of his wonderful redemptive purpose. The hope that these prophecies engender provides comfort and a powerful motivation to avoid sin and pursue righteousness. In speaking of the second advent of Christ, the New Testament makes statements like the following: "Encourage one another with these words" (1 Thes. 4:18); and "the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ." (Tit. 2:11 - 13) This is implicit in Jesus' last statement to his disciples, ""It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 2:8 - 9). Our task is to let these prophecies produce in us this kind of faith.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws