Jesus Said He’d Return Soon, So Where Is He?

00:00:00.000 | Well, Jesus seemed to say that his return was soon.

00:00:07.220 | So where is he?

00:00:08.560 | And why has the church had to wait for so long?

00:00:10.600 | It's a question from a listener named Ron.

00:00:12.800 | Pastor John, I am writing from Switzerland and have greatly been blessed by your ministry.

00:00:17.400 | I have a question with regards to the New Testament belief that Jesus would come very

00:00:21.240 | soon.

00:00:22.580 | As I was studying with our children the need to evaluate prophets by biblical criteria,

00:00:27.640 | the following thought hit me.

00:00:29.320 | The Bible says in Deuteronomy 18 that a prophet whose predictions don't come true is not sent

00:00:33.940 | by God and that he should not be feared.

00:00:36.400 | However, in the New Testament we find repeated evidence of people whom we would call inspired,

00:00:42.400 | who evidently believed and sometimes claimed that Jesus would come back soon, even during

00:00:47.920 | the writer's own lifetime.

00:00:50.640 | Examples of this include 1 Peter 4, 7; Matthew 24, 34; Matthew 26, 64; 1 Corinthians 10,

00:00:58.240 | 1 Thessalonians 4, 15-17; and 1 Corinthians 15-51.

00:01:04.800 | How can we still consider them authoritative while discarding modern day messengers whose

00:01:09.440 | prophecies don't materialize?

00:01:11.840 | I am a bit uneasy that at some stage our kids will tell us that Paul was wrong about 1 Corinthians

00:01:17.080 | 15-51 and so he's not to be taken seriously.

00:01:21.360 | Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this tension?

00:01:25.000 | Yes, I do.

00:01:27.280 | Oh, good.

00:01:28.280 | It's a large issue and has several layers, and each one needs careful, patient attention.

00:01:37.160 | It's fairly easy to comb through the New Testament superficially and gather a lot of texts together

00:01:46.000 | that seem to indicate a false teaching about how quickly the second coming of Jesus would

00:01:53.960 | happen.

00:01:54.960 | But if you take each one, each text or each group of texts carefully, patiently, and study

00:02:02.360 | it out with the help of those who have perhaps given more thought to it, what I have found

00:02:08.320 | is that there are explanations of how to understand those texts that do not impute error or false

00:02:16.160 | prophecy to what Jesus or the apostles taught.

00:02:20.280 | So that's my first suggestion.

00:02:22.120 | Don't be superficial and simply gather a lot of texts together and impute to them something

00:02:29.600 | that they may not want to say.

00:02:32.040 | They may sound on the face of it incriminating about Jesus and his apostles, but individually,

00:02:39.200 | carefully, patiently studied out, you may find yourself regretting any conclusion like

00:02:45.280 | that.

00:02:46.680 | So maybe the best thing I can do would be to just give five pointers to the kind of

00:02:52.880 | solutions you will find if you study these out.

00:02:57.400 | So number one, sometimes the events that are expected soon are not the very coming of Jesus,

00:03:05.040 | but things leading up to the coming of Jesus.

00:03:08.440 | So here's an example.

00:03:09.800 | Matthew 24, 33, "So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near at

00:03:19.080 | the very gates."

00:03:21.080 | Next verse, and this is the problem verse for a lot of people.

00:03:23.920 | "Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take

00:03:30.520 | place."

00:03:31.520 | Now, notice carefully the phrase, "all these things that are going to take place within

00:03:37.620 | a generation" does not include the actual coming of the Lord.

00:03:44.400 | Because in the previous verse, it says, "When you see all these things," the very phrase

00:03:50.920 | of verse 34 used in verse 33, "you know he is near."

00:03:57.240 | Not already here.

00:03:58.860 | So the fact that these things will happen within a generation, these preparations for

00:04:04.920 | his coming, does not mean that his coming would happen in a generation.

00:04:10.800 | Now of course, it does say, "When they happen, he is near at the very gates," which leads

00:04:17.600 | to my second pointer.

00:04:19.800 | When the New Testament speaks of the Lord's being near, or at the gates, or at hand, it

00:04:26.640 | is not teaching a necessary time frame for the Lord's appearance.

00:04:33.320 | Rather, it's saying that Christ the Messiah, long-expected Messiah, has come once for all,

00:04:43.240 | decisively, in his life and death and resurrection, fighting the major battle.

00:04:49.480 | He has set in motion an end-time process of gathering Messianic people.

00:04:54.880 | He has fulfilled many end-time prophecies.

00:04:58.560 | We are in the last days, have been for 2,000 years, and therefore Jesus is like a king

00:05:05.560 | in complete control, standing with his army outside the city, waiting to take it captive.

00:05:11.600 | Nothing can stand between him and that capture except his own choice.

00:05:18.600 | That's the way I think we should read something like 1 Peter 4.7.

00:05:23.060 | The end of all things is at hand, or James 5.8.

00:05:27.340 | The coming of the Lord is at hand, or like Jesus says, he's at the gates.

00:05:32.600 | That is, he has appeared, he has fought the decisive victory, he has shown himself sovereign

00:05:38.820 | and unstoppable in the resurrection, he has fulfilled vast amounts of Old Testament prophecy

00:05:44.140 | concerning the end time, and he may step in whenever he pleases.

00:05:50.760 | That's the way I think we should understand near, at the gates, at hand.

00:05:54.960 | Here's the third pointer or observation.

00:05:58.480 | A third kind of text uses the word "soon," like in the book of Revelation where it says,

00:06:04.240 | "Behold, I am coming soon," Revelation 22.20.

00:06:09.000 | Now that Greek word "taku," soon, does not always or necessarily mean what we ordinarily

00:06:16.680 | mean by the word "soon," that is, after a short space of time.

00:06:20.560 | Rather, it regularly means quickly, suddenly, unexpectedly, fast.

00:06:26.820 | For example, it's used in Matthew 28.8, the women at the tomb, it says, "So they departed

00:06:33.580 | quickly from the tomb."

00:06:35.260 | That's the word, soon, translated soon.

00:06:38.340 | So we must always ask, is the Scripture teaching that the Lord's coming will be sudden, unexpected,

00:06:45.420 | quick, fast when it happens, in that sense, rather than soon in the sense of, say, within

00:06:51.820 | 20 years?

00:06:54.100 | Pointer number four.

00:06:55.980 | Amazingly, the gospel writers taught Jesus did not know the time of his coming.

00:07:01.740 | Now that in itself is kind of a problem, but that's what it says, and we will deal with

00:07:06.580 | it that the human nature of Jesus was not granted knowledge of the coming that the divine

00:07:12.740 | nature of Jesus had, in some way, that mysterious thing is affirmed.

00:07:17.700 | It says in Matthew 24.36, "Concerning the day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels

00:07:26.340 | of heaven nor the Son, but the Father only."

00:07:30.500 | Here's the implication.

00:07:31.700 | That means, surely, we should be very slow to impute to him predictions about the coming

00:07:41.020 | in a certain amount of time.

00:07:43.380 | The Bible says he doesn't know.

00:07:46.240 | So what are we saying about him when we say he predicted them?

00:07:50.460 | Surely, he would not have said, "I am coming in this time frame," if he didn't know.

00:07:59.260 | That's not just a prediction problem.

00:08:00.820 | That's a moral problem.

00:08:02.760 | We got a major moral issue that I am not going to impute to Jesus.

00:08:09.300 | So for example, when he says—how are we going to solve the problems then?—when he

00:08:14.180 | says in Matthew 16.28, "Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not

00:08:18.540 | taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

00:08:21.340 | What does that mean?

00:08:23.820 | Here's what's remarkable.

00:08:25.940 | What's remarkable about this saying is that it occurs in Matthew, Mark, Luke, always,

00:08:31.460 | immediately before the transfiguration.

00:08:34.800 | And Peter, who was one on the mountain with Jesus during the transfiguration, Peter, in

00:08:39.580 | his second epistle, chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, treats this experience of the transfiguration

00:08:47.460 | on the mountain with Jesus as a preview of the second coming, a validation—we would

00:08:54.100 | say today a movie trailer—of the second coming.

00:08:57.340 | You read that.

00:08:58.340 | "The second Peter," chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, and you'll see Peter takes the power

00:09:04.960 | and the coming of the Lord as a preview there on the Mount of Transfiguration, which means

00:09:10.880 | that what Jesus was saying was that some of his disciples, namely Peter, James, and John,

00:09:17.280 | would not die before they glimpsed the second coming or the coming of the Son of Man, namely

00:09:27.240 | in what they're going to experience on the mountain six days from now.

00:09:33.000 | Here's my last pointer.

00:09:35.320 | Number five.

00:09:36.560 | When Paul uses the word "we" to refer to those who may be alive at the Lord's coming, "we

00:09:44.440 | who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord," 1 Thessalonians 4, 15, I don't

00:09:52.400 | think we should say Paul is teaching that he must be alive when the Lord comes and that

00:10:02.080 | therefore the coming of Jesus must be within Paul's lifetime.

00:10:08.440 | If Paul really meant to teach that when he used the word "we," then what are we to

00:10:14.640 | make of his words in Philippians 1:20 and following where he says, "It is my eager

00:10:21.360 | expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage, now

00:10:26.560 | as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

00:10:32.560 | For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

00:10:36.280 | If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me, yet which I shall choose, life

00:10:40.600 | or death, I can't tell.

00:10:42.200 | I'm hard-pressed between the two.

00:10:43.800 | My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."

00:10:48.760 | That does not sound like an apostle who considers it part of his teaching that he cannot die

00:10:55.280 | before the second coming.

00:10:57.040 | No way.

00:10:58.120 | So I think when Paul says "we who are alive at the Lord's coming," he's simply referring

00:11:04.920 | to those who are alive at the Lord's coming, and he's including himself in that, in hope,

00:11:10.840 | in possible expectation, in general, but not with an intent to teach that Jesus therefore

00:11:19.160 | cannot come before he dies.

00:11:23.400 | So those are my five pointers.

00:11:27.160 | But my main suggestion—and the pointers are just that, that's all they are—my main

00:11:33.480 | suggestion for Ron is that he be very slow to assume that the apostles and Jesus himself

00:11:43.040 | show themselves to be false prophets because of a quick and superficial reading of the

00:11:49.600 | New Testament.

00:11:50.600 | Be patient and be careful.

00:11:53.440 | There are answers to these seemingly problem texts.

00:11:59.040 | Very helpful.

00:12:00.040 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for the question, Roy.

00:12:03.120 | And as we head out for the day, this is my chance to let you know you can subscribe to

00:12:06.400 | our audio feeds and you can search our episode archive and reach us by email with a difficult

00:12:11.160 | question you might be facing in life.

00:12:12.760 | Do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:18.960 | And on Friday, we're going to return to field a question from a listener who wants to interpret

00:12:22.360 | Scripture all by herself on a particular topic.

00:12:26.180 | So what are some tips and helps for navigating the Bible topically to make our own discoveries

00:12:30.360 | in Scripture?

00:12:32.120 | That is on the table Friday.

00:12:33.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:34.760 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

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