Did Christ Already Return?
00:00:00.000 | We have eschatology questions today and on Monday.
00:00:08.720 | Here's the first one.
00:00:09.720 | "Good morning, Pastor John.
00:00:10.800 | I am a high school science teacher in Alabama.
00:00:13.920 | I love your passion and Christ-centered joy.
00:00:16.920 | I write because I recently had a student tell me that her church believes that the second
00:00:21.180 | coming of Jesus has already occurred.
00:00:25.680 | She said that they believe Revelation was written about the sacking of Jerusalem by
00:00:29.380 | Rome in 70 AD.
00:00:32.040 | I was caught off guard because I had never heard anyone say that Jesus had already returned.
00:00:37.560 | I believe the term for that belief is preterist.
00:00:40.400 | Have you come across this position and how do you respond to it?"
00:00:45.040 | Yes, I have heard this position, but let me see if I can distinguish between a view that
00:00:53.400 | says the second coming of Christ has already happened and the view that sees some of the
00:01:00.640 | book of Revelation as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
00:01:06.980 | The view that you are referring to, namely that the second coming has already happened,
00:01:11.080 | is a very rare view.
00:01:13.720 | I don't think it has ever been considered orthodox.
00:01:17.160 | It is sometimes called full or hyper-preterism.
00:01:23.440 | Now, preterism is the view of Revelation, the book of Revelation, that argues that much
00:01:32.520 | or all of it lies in the past from our perspective, not the future.
00:01:38.440 | Preter, Latin for past, hence preterism.
00:01:43.440 | It was future from the standpoint of John's writing, but now it has already happened.
00:01:50.400 | So full preterism, hyper-preterism, this rare and unorthodox view, I think, thinks that
00:01:57.920 | all of the book of Revelation, including the second coming, has already happened, meaning
00:02:04.520 | that the coming of Christ is interpreted in such a way that it only refers to his power
00:02:12.680 | being shown in various historical manifestations, like the sack of Jerusalem.
00:02:20.240 | He's not hidden somewhere in the world.
00:02:22.920 | You can get that out of your mind.
00:02:23.920 | That's not what they mean.
00:02:25.260 | He's not like hiding out somewhere in the world because he's already come back.
00:02:29.840 | He's in heaven and has "come back" in the sense that he showed up in judgment at the
00:02:38.320 | destruction of Jerusalem.
00:02:41.560 | Now what you might call partial preterism, that's the more common and I would say orthodox
00:02:48.400 | kind, doesn't think that the second coming of Christ has already happened, even though
00:02:56.040 | much of the events described in the Revelation have already been fulfilled in history, including
00:03:03.200 | the destruction of Jerusalem.
00:03:05.960 | Now the question I'm being asked, however, by this teacher, is how I would respond to
00:03:12.000 | a student who says that her church believes that Jesus has already come back and there's
00:03:19.640 | no future hope of Christ coming on the clouds personally, bodily, to establish his kingdom.
00:03:28.080 | And the way I would respond is to say to her, "The book of Revelation has perplexed Christians
00:03:35.680 | for 2,000 years, and I probably won't be able to set you straight on this point from the
00:03:45.240 | book of Revelation alone.
00:03:47.240 | Instead, what I would like you to do with me is to look at a few passages of Scripture
00:03:56.360 | in the letters of Paul, which I think simply will not fit into the scheme that says there's
00:04:05.600 | no future coming of Christ in judgment and salvation."
00:04:11.280 | And I would take her to 1 and 2 Thessalonians, probably, not only, but first.
00:04:18.620 | In 1 Thessalonians 4, 13, Paul is trying to comfort believers who have lost loved ones
00:04:27.000 | in death, and the way he encourages them is not by pointing to the fact that there's going
00:04:35.080 | to be a sack of Jerusalem someday.
00:04:38.200 | His way of encouraging them is by showing that those who have died will not miss out
00:04:46.480 | on the coming of Christ because they're going to be raised from the dead so that together
00:04:52.000 | with the living, they will meet the Lord in the air.
00:04:55.400 | So he says, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that
00:05:01.840 | you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
00:05:05.360 | For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring
00:05:12.440 | with him those who have fallen asleep.
00:05:15.320 | For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left
00:05:20.040 | until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep."
00:05:25.800 | Verse 16, "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the
00:05:34.480 | voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God."
00:05:39.280 | Let me pause right there.
00:05:41.160 | This trumpet blast at the coming is the way Paul describes the resurrection in 1 Corinthians
00:05:48.480 | 15, 52.
00:05:50.080 | It's not a point in history, like a battle against a city.
00:05:55.200 | It's the end of history as we know it, marked by the resurrection of all believers who have
00:06:01.080 | died.
00:06:02.240 | Now he goes on, verse 17, "And the dead in Christ will rise first.
00:06:08.000 | Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds
00:06:13.840 | to meet the Lord in the air.
00:06:16.400 | And so we will always be with the Lord."
00:06:18.600 | Now that's the description of a decisive coming of Christ that gathers all believers
00:06:25.720 | dead and alive into one people under the reign of Christ.
00:06:31.120 | It simply will not do to say that this is somehow a reference to an unseen visitation
00:06:40.280 | of Christ at some point in the past.
00:06:43.440 | And then he gets even more graphic in 2 Thessalonians where he says in chapter 1, "The Lord Jesus
00:06:49.920 | will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance
00:06:59.280 | on those who do not know God, on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
00:07:05.040 | They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the
00:07:10.040 | Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his
00:07:17.240 | saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you
00:07:24.880 | was believed."
00:07:26.760 | Or as he says in verse 6, "God will repay with affliction those who afflict you and
00:07:34.280 | grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from
00:07:42.000 | heaven with his mighty angels."
00:07:45.540 | This is God's judgment on all unbelievers and his rescue of all Christ's people.
00:07:53.840 | In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul argues that the day of the Lord cannot have already come like
00:08:02.040 | this.
00:08:03.040 | There were people in Thessalonica who were thinking, "It's already here, it's already
00:08:06.360 | here."
00:08:07.360 | And he says, "For that day will not come unless the man of lawlessness is revealed,
00:08:14.000 | the son of destruction, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and
00:08:20.880 | bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming."
00:08:26.160 | And I would say to my young student, I don't think these and many other references to the
00:08:33.800 | second coming of Christ in the New Testament can be legitimately interpreted as somehow
00:08:40.960 | symbolic references to the destruction of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
00:08:48.200 | Throughout the New Testament, the second coming of Christ is presented as a precious and blessed
00:08:55.080 | hope of resurrection for all believers and relief for all the living saints and rescue
00:09:04.580 | from the wrath to come.
00:09:07.080 | Over and over, the New Testament pictures the people of Christ waiting eagerly for what
00:09:12.800 | Christ will do for us at his second coming, not for something a long time ago.
00:09:19.480 | What will he do for us at his second coming?
00:09:21.800 | And here's an example I'll close with.
00:09:24.160 | Philippians 3.20, "Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the
00:09:33.440 | Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by
00:09:42.720 | the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself."
00:09:48.480 | And I would look at my student friend right in the eye and say, "Neither you nor I have
00:09:56.960 | such a glorious body yet, because the Savior has not yet returned, but he will, and that's
00:10:06.760 | our hope."
00:10:07.760 | Yeah.
00:10:08.760 | And as the end of the Bible teaches us to pray, "Amen, come Lord Jesus."
00:10:13.180 | We long for that day to come.
00:10:14.720 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:15.720 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:10:17.640 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast,
00:10:21.400 | all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:26.680 | We break for the weekend and return on Monday with another eschatology question.
00:10:31.600 | So the return of Christ has not happened yet.
00:10:33.880 | It's coming in the future.
00:10:35.400 | So what signs will signal to us that his return is imminent?
00:10:39.960 | That's our lead-off question next week.
00:10:41.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll be joined again with Pastor John on Monday in the studio
00:10:45.340 | for that one.
00:10:46.340 | We'll see you then, and have a great weekend.
00:10:48.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:10:56.180 | you