Popular Blunders About Christ’s Return
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back on this Friday, Pastor John,
00:00:06.400 | back in June of 2021, right here on the podcast.
00:00:10.200 | You gave us a personal update from your life
00:00:12.420 | and at the very end of that update,
00:00:14.480 | it was like a little footnote that you added at the end.
00:00:16.600 | You briefly mentioned that you were about to head off
00:00:18.640 | for a two month writing leave to write a whole book
00:00:21.780 | about 2 Timothy 4, 8 on the second coming of Jesus Christ.
00:00:26.320 | And that was back in APJ 1641 that you told us about that.
00:00:30.240 | And in God's kindness, the book you alluded to there
00:00:32.520 | got written, edited and published
00:00:34.620 | and is now out under the title,
00:00:35.960 | "Come Lord Jesus, Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ."
00:00:40.960 | I'm holding the book in my hand right now
00:00:43.720 | and we are gonna look at the book over the next week or so
00:00:47.560 | on the podcast and four episodes of questions
00:00:50.040 | that I have for you.
00:00:51.280 | First off in this new book,
00:00:53.120 | what becomes pretty obvious to any reader
00:00:55.200 | is that you don't spend too much time
00:00:57.640 | dwelling on wrong views of the end times.
00:01:01.120 | Your goal really was to clarify what actually happens
00:01:04.280 | when Christ returns and to celebrate it
00:01:06.960 | and to encourage us to love his appearing.
00:01:09.440 | That's the main theme of the book, to love his appearing.
00:01:13.000 | But I wonder if you'd be willing to take 10 minutes or so
00:01:15.600 | on this episode and sketch out for us
00:01:17.480 | some of the misconceptions, the blunders
00:01:19.520 | and the urban legends about the second coming
00:01:22.000 | that you hope your book will help people
00:01:24.840 | to avoid in the future.
00:01:26.680 | - In general, I do think it's right
00:01:28.480 | to do most good for the church,
00:01:32.640 | that we do most good for the church
00:01:35.120 | with regard to the second coming
00:01:37.680 | when we don't focus on distortions and misconceptions
00:01:42.680 | but rather on the truth and the beauty
00:01:46.240 | of what it really is in the Bible.
00:01:52.040 | And yet it's right now and then
00:01:55.360 | to make our people understand there are misconceptions,
00:02:00.360 | there are errors.
00:02:03.240 | And frankly, I'm really happy that my book is viewed
00:02:06.920 | as being mainly proactive and positive rather than critical.
00:02:11.920 | But of course, even that positive view can be overstated.
00:02:16.480 | If we never focus on what's wrong
00:02:19.080 | and show how harmful it is,
00:02:21.680 | we won't really be biblical
00:02:22.880 | because the biblical witness itself describes errors
00:02:26.720 | and their harmfulness like Jesus did
00:02:28.520 | with the scribes and Pharisees and Paul
00:02:31.360 | in exposing errors of false teaching
00:02:33.560 | in Colossians and other places.
00:02:35.160 | So yes, I am willing to point out some misconceptions
00:02:39.760 | about the second coming.
00:02:41.480 | And I'll name, I don't know how many I have listed here,
00:02:44.800 | but let's just take them one at a time.
00:02:47.200 | And I'll try to explain why I think they're a problem.
00:02:50.420 | First, I would mention the view
00:02:53.520 | that the second coming of Christ is far into the future.
00:02:58.280 | Let's have you far into the future.
00:03:01.080 | It will not happen until the kingdom of God is established
00:03:05.060 | as the ruling earthly power,
00:03:07.760 | including the Christianization of the cultures
00:03:11.660 | and societal structures of the earth.
00:03:14.840 | This is usually called post-millennialism,
00:03:17.760 | meaning that the second coming happens
00:03:20.020 | after or post the millennium.
00:03:22.300 | And the millennium in that view is understood
00:03:24.340 | to be an extended period in this age
00:03:27.740 | when the gospel has triumphed in such a way
00:03:30.820 | that a golden age of Christendom holds sway around the world
00:03:34.860 | and the powers of civil government, for example,
00:03:37.500 | are brought into the service
00:03:38.980 | of promoting Christian doctrine.
00:03:41.500 | Now, I think this view does not adequately come to terms
00:03:46.260 | with both the teaching and the spirit of the New Testament
00:03:50.780 | that we are to live with a consciousness
00:03:54.500 | of the nearness of the coming of the Lord.
00:03:57.980 | I don't think it comes to terms adequately
00:04:00.800 | with the teaching of the New Testament
00:04:03.620 | concerning this present age
00:04:06.040 | as lying in the power of the evil one, 1 John 5 and 19,
00:04:11.040 | or how Paul describes this age
00:04:13.740 | till Jesus comes as this present evil age,
00:04:18.540 | Galatians 1, 4, or the statement in Hebrews,
00:04:22.100 | here we have no lasting city.
00:04:26.660 | We seek a city that is to come,
00:04:29.500 | or how the movement toward the end
00:04:32.740 | is described with a movement of greater evil,
00:04:35.680 | not less evil, 2 Timothy 3, 1 to 5.
00:04:39.860 | And practically, I think this view pushes the appearing
00:04:44.620 | of the Lord so far out into the distant future
00:04:49.000 | that it becomes inconsequential
00:04:52.260 | in the daily consciousness of the churches
00:04:55.740 | that embrace this view.
00:04:56.900 | And I think it skews the mission focus of the New Testament
00:05:01.700 | away from world evangelization and personal disciple-making
00:05:05.740 | and the process of sanctification.
00:05:08.340 | And so it reorients people's passions
00:05:11.860 | onto culture transformation as a foregrounded goal
00:05:16.860 | rather than a possible secondary consequence
00:05:22.020 | of speaking truth and doing love to the glory of Christ.
00:05:25.940 | And the reason I say a possible secondary consequence
00:05:30.900 | is that the culture is not the report card of the church.
00:05:37.820 | There is no New Testament promise
00:05:41.180 | that the church in this fallen age
00:05:43.960 | will transform any given culture.
00:05:48.220 | It may, it has, and it may not.
00:05:52.100 | It is as likely in any given setting
00:05:56.780 | that martyrdom, not transformation,
00:06:00.840 | will be the effect of obedience.
00:06:03.020 | And when that happens, the church has not failed.
00:06:06.540 | Just read the book of Revelation.
00:06:08.900 | Martyrdom is not failure.
00:06:10.660 | - Yeah.
00:06:11.580 | - Second, there is a view of the second coming
00:06:14.260 | that basically says it's already happened.
00:06:16.660 | For example, in the events of 70 AD
00:06:19.140 | when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
00:06:22.860 | And in that view, it's not a very common view, I admit,
00:06:26.580 | but in that view, the descriptions of his coming
00:06:31.060 | that sound globally visible and world-shaking and obvious
00:06:35.580 | were really just traditional apocalyptic language
00:06:40.580 | to say that the Lord comes in historical judgments
00:06:44.420 | in this age, and then he carries out
00:06:46.700 | for the rest of the time his rule over the world
00:06:50.180 | through the church with no expectation
00:06:51.980 | of any literal second coming at all.
00:06:54.220 | And I don't think the language of the New Testament
00:06:56.360 | that describes Christ's coming can be reduced
00:06:59.140 | to symbolic statements of historical events like 70 AD.
00:07:03.060 | Paul's understanding of the second coming
00:07:04.980 | in 1 Thessalonians 4 is that it involves
00:07:08.660 | the resurrection of all the Christians from the grave.
00:07:11.780 | That did not happen in 70 AD or at any time.
00:07:15.100 | It's going to happen when the Lord's appearing comes.
00:07:20.100 | Third, I think it's a mistake to say
00:07:23.820 | that there are no events that are yet to happen
00:07:30.580 | in history before the Lord comes.
00:07:33.280 | 2 Thessalonians 2 describes an apostasy
00:07:39.300 | and the appearance of a man of lawlessness,
00:07:42.920 | and Paul gives these two realities as an answer
00:07:45.900 | to the question for those who thought
00:07:48.820 | that the day of the Lord was upon them.
00:07:50.700 | And he says in verse two of that chapter,
00:07:54.780 | let no one deceive you in any way,
00:07:58.620 | for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first
00:08:03.620 | and the man of lawlessness is revealed,
00:08:06.860 | the son of destruction.
00:08:08.260 | So 2 Thessalonians 2.3.
00:08:10.700 | Fourth, perhaps the most common misconception
00:08:14.100 | of the second coming is that it happens in,
00:08:18.780 | so to speak, in two stages.
00:08:20.620 | First, he comes and he takes Christians out of the world
00:08:25.500 | and returns them to heaven with him
00:08:28.820 | while there's a great tribulation on the earth.
00:08:32.500 | And then after a short time, maybe seven years,
00:08:36.700 | he returns with his saints to establish his kingdom.
00:08:40.140 | Now that's one misconception I do deal with in the book.
00:08:46.460 | I devote a whole chapter to it, in fact.
00:08:51.320 | So I'm not going to go into any detail here.
00:08:54.060 | It is probably the most common misconception
00:08:59.060 | and people will be surprised.
00:09:00.820 | Whoa, I didn't know that was a misconception.
00:09:02.580 | That's what I've always believed.
00:09:03.860 | And I grew up with this view.
00:09:05.820 | My dad held this view.
00:09:07.500 | I love my dad to death to the day he died
00:09:09.900 | and we got along just fine.
00:09:11.140 | But gradually I came to see that this view
00:09:16.060 | did not have the Bible on its side.
00:09:19.020 | I think the primary danger of a view like this
00:09:22.620 | is not that it undermines any important doctrines,
00:09:26.700 | at least I'm not aware of anybody going off the rails
00:09:30.580 | in any fundamental way because they hold this view,
00:09:34.180 | but the danger is that it fosters the expectation
00:09:39.180 | that God will spare his people from suffering
00:09:44.460 | in the latter days.
00:09:46.540 | And I think that's a mistake
00:09:48.140 | and it could be a harmful mistake
00:09:50.220 | if people lost their faith
00:09:52.620 | because suddenly they found themselves
00:09:54.780 | enduring end time hardships
00:09:57.140 | that they thought they were going to escape.
00:09:59.220 | And I think 1 Peter 4 or 17,
00:10:04.020 | when it says, "It is time for judgment
00:10:07.300 | "to begin with the household of God.
00:10:10.040 | "And if it begins with us,
00:10:12.320 | "what will be the outcome of those
00:10:14.020 | "who do not obey the gospel of God?"
00:10:15.900 | I think he's showing in that statement
00:10:19.380 | that God's own people, the apple of his eye,
00:10:23.580 | experience some of the suffering of judgment,
00:10:29.620 | but we don't experience it as punishment.
00:10:34.620 | Christ took our punishment.
00:10:37.180 | We experience it as testing, proving, purifying us.
00:10:44.540 | Finally, I think it's a mistake to say
00:10:49.540 | what the skeptics did in 2 Peter 3, verse 3.
00:10:54.440 | "Where is the promise of his coming?
00:10:58.460 | "For ever since the fathers fell asleep,
00:11:00.980 | "all things are continuing the way they have been
00:11:03.900 | "from the beginning of creation."
00:11:06.460 | That's a quote from 2 Peter 3.
00:11:08.780 | In other words, it's a serious mistake, Peter says,
00:11:14.620 | to think, "Well, it's just been too long.
00:11:19.620 | "Everything just goes on.
00:11:22.960 | "He's just not coming.
00:11:25.640 | "It was all a myth."
00:11:28.080 | That is a tragic mistake,
00:11:30.580 | and here's Peter's response to it.
00:11:33.940 | He says, next verse,
00:11:35.900 | "Do not overlook this one fact, beloved,
00:11:40.380 | "that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years,
00:11:45.380 | "and a thousand years as one day.
00:11:48.740 | "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise
00:11:53.740 | "as some count slowness."
00:11:57.980 | Wow, what a response, as if he knew.
00:12:01.780 | Well, of course he knew.
00:12:03.500 | He would be asking his questions.
00:12:05.860 | So again, Tony, like I said at the beginning,
00:12:08.780 | I would much rather spend 300 pages in a book
00:12:13.780 | meditating on the beauty and the power
00:12:17.040 | and the wonder of what's really going to happen
00:12:19.820 | when the Lord comes than I would talking about mistakes.
00:12:23.980 | So that's what I tried to do in the book.
00:12:26.280 | The aim isn't mainly to correct errors.
00:12:29.260 | It's mainly to help people love the Lord's appearing.
00:12:34.140 | - Amen, yeah, it's not like any other book
00:12:35.700 | that I'm aware of.
00:12:36.540 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:38.100 | And that 2 Peter 3, verses three to four text
00:12:41.060 | reminds me of APJ 891, which we titled
00:12:44.820 | "The End Is Near, Are You Ready?"
00:12:47.380 | "The End Is Near, Are You Ready?"
00:12:49.000 | You can check that out if you want a good follow-up
00:12:50.700 | to today's episode.
00:12:52.420 | Thank you for joining us today.
00:12:53.740 | Ask a question of your own, find APJ 891,
00:12:56.700 | or subscribe to the podcast all at askpastorjohn.com.
00:13:00.500 | Well, Christ is coming back, and that means
00:13:05.300 | we need to go to church and we need to go to work.
00:13:08.660 | Pastor John, you're back with us on Monday
00:13:10.260 | to explain why the imminent return of Christ
00:13:12.420 | should get us to work and get us to church.
00:13:15.300 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:17.100 | We'll see you next week, and don't be skipping church.
00:13:20.820 | We'll see you then.
00:13:21.780 | (upbeat music)
00:13:24.360 | (upbeat music)
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