
When Will Jesus Return?
Who can tell us anything about the future?
Isaiah 41.21–24
Don Ruhl • Savage Street, Grants Pass, Oregon • March 10, In the year of our Lord Christ, 2019
Prelude:
- People keep trying to predict the time of the end of earth.
- They have predicted that it will end in environmental disaster.
- They have predicted that it will end in nuclear war.
- Have you noticed so far
- that they have gotten it wrong?
- Every. Single. Time.
- Do they learn from their mistakes?
- Do they learn from the mistakes of others?
- Nope!
- Will they ever learn?
- Apparently not!
- They are false scientists, false politicians, false whoever.
- Only the one true and living God can reveal the future.
- He challenges others to declare the future
- so that we can see if they speak the truth:
21 “Present your case,” says the LORD.
“Bring forth your strong reasons,” says the King of Jacob.
22 “Let them bring forth and show us what will happen;
Let them show the former things, what they were,
That we may consider them,
And know the latter end of them;
Or declare to us things to come.
23 Show the things that are to come hereafter,
That we may know that you are gods;
Yes, do good or do evil,
That we may be dismayed and see it together.
24 Indeed you are nothing,
And your work is nothing;
He who chooses you is an abomination.”
(Isaiah 41.21–24)
- He challenged them to reveal the truth about the past.
- Then to show what will happen.
- If they can reveal the past accurately,
- they can show the future.
- It is not just those in the secular world who try to predict the end, but
- many have tried to use the Scriptures to tell us when the end will be.
- Have you noticed that so far
- they have gotten it wrong?
- Every. Single. Time.
- Do they learn from their mistakes?
- Do they learn from the mistakes of others?
- Nope!
- Will they ever learn?
- Apparent not!
- They are false prophets.
- They do not know the Scriptures nor
- do they understand why God has kept the end a secret.
Persuasion:
- Predictions Made in the Past
- This has been going on since the first century.
- Christians at Thessalonica misunderstood Paul’s first letter and
- believed that Jesus would return during their lifetimes, or
- within a short enough time that they quit working.
- And why not?
- If someone persuaded me that Jesus will return by April 14th, 2019,
- I’m not doing my taxes.
- Would you?
- Something I would start doing is living a more holy life.
- The Lord knows that we tend toward that kind of thinking.
- Therefore, He said that His return will be like a thief in the night.
- Paul taught in Second Thessalonians that two things had to happen first.
- The Great Apostasy
- The Revealing Man of Sin
- Predictions Made in Recent Times
- Blood Moons Prophecy
- May 21, 2011
- October 28, 1992
- The “Jehovah’s Witnesses” believe the end will come or the 1,000 year reign of Christ will begin before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.
- Many people thought the war with Iraq in 1991–1992 was the Battle of Armageddon.
- A NASA scientist listed 88 reasons why he believed the Second Coming would happen between September 11 and September 13, 1988.
- Hal Lindsey who also looked to the time around 1988.
- I got an email last month, again using calculations, that the year is 2026.
- Why They Have Failed
- They believe that it will be earthly.
- They believe that it will have a countdown.
- They keep applying prophecies of His First Coming to His Second Coming.
- Interpreting the Bible politically in places where it should be the church.
- Misunderstanding the Land Promise to Abraham, Genesis 12.1, 7.
- Failing to understand the significance of the church.
- Failing to understand purposes of the first and second comings of Christ.
- Failing to understand how Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the church and in the first coming of Christ.
- Do We Have Any Idea at All?
36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only” (Matthew 24.36).
1 But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. 2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5.1–2).
- Do you know the day or the hour that a thief will break into your homes?
- Do you even know the times or the seasons?
- So it is with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
- We do not know the specific time and we do not know the general time.
- Only God Knows the End and Will Bring about the End
- Isaiah 46.8–10
8 “Remember this, and show yourselves men;
Recall to mind, O you transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’
11 Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it;
I will also do it.”
(Isaiah 46.8–10)
- Judah learned that the Lord God does declare the end from the beginning.
- He revealed through Moses that they would sin and
- bring on their captivity.
- Before it happened, He sent many prophets who gave the details, but
- Judah would not listen.
- Then He did exactly as He said that He would do.
- Here is what Jesus revealed about the time of the end.
- Isaiah 46.8–10
- When the End Will Happen
- Although Paul did not tell the Thessalonians
- that Jesus would come in the first century,
- that is what they believed.
- Remember First Thessalonians 5 said
- that we cannot know the times or the seasons, but
- that the return of our Lord will be like a thief in the night.
- He had to write Second Thessalonians
- to show that two major events had not happened yet, but
- that have now happened, and
- he wrote to tell them to get back to work.
- to show that two major events had not happened yet, but
- Peter wrote Second Peter 3 to explain to us
- that the earth continues to exist for only one reason.
- [Read]
- That fits in with what Luke recorded Jesus as saying:
6 “when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18.6–8).
- There will be Christians living on the earth when Jesus returns.
- That is why Paul could say
- that dead Christians shall rise first,
- then those alive shall join them in the sky, and
- the whole group shall then ascend further into the sky,
- meeting Jesus in the air and then He will take them to heaven.
- However, Jesus asked that question because
- He indicates that while faith will be on the earth,
- it will be rare, and
- from what Peter said,
- there will come a time when everyone who is going to be saved,
- shall have been saved, and then
- the Lord has no reason for the earth to continue.
- Although Paul did not tell the Thessalonians
Exhortation:
- Deuteronomy 18.20–22
21 “And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18.21–22).
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