Dave Burke

“Behold, I am coming soon!”

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We are going to take a scenic tour through the history of the church to see how different generations of Christians have interpreted the details of the Second Coming. We will pay special attention to the Millennium and Israel. We will see how a popular timetable of these events influences Western governments' foreign policy towards the Middle East. Finally, we will identify the things we can be certain about.

"I do not think that in the last forty years I have lived one conscious hour that was not influenced by the thought of the Lord's return"

Lord Shaftesbury - [1801 - 1885]

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Group Work - Jesus predicts his return

Matthew 24:1-35

· Make a list of the kind of things that must happen before the Lord returns [please resist making it too complicated, just observe what the passage tells you!]

· What does the story imply about how long we may have to wait before the Lord returns?

· Do you find anything shocking about the way this parable pictures the Lord's return?

Like most prophets, Jesus view of the future is not straightforward to interpret. The details point in several different directions. For example:

· Some of his teaching indicates a short wait ['This generation will not pass away…'] on other occasions he seems to imply a longer delay ['he went on to tell them a parable because… the people thought the kingdom of God would appear at once'].

· It is clear that Jesus coming will be sudden and unexpected [Like being burgled! See Luke 12:38-40]. Yet a series of signs of his coming are foretold, and we are told to read the signs as we read the weather[Matthew 24:33]

Prophecy is a difficult thing to interpret, and assembling a coherent account of the end times from the writings of several prophets may be impossible. But this has not stopped people trying and, in the process, coming up with very different timetables.

How Christians through the ages have read prophecy

The key passage in understanding the main systems of teaching about the Second Coming is Revelation 20:1-7. In this passage John describes a vision of Satan being bound and Christ reigning for a thousand years, this is the Millennium. But does Jesus return before it or after it? And what is the Millennium anyway?

1. The earliest interpretations - simple pre-millennialism

The most influential teachers in the first churches ^[1] expected that Christ would return to earth and then reign as king for a thousand years. Some of these teachers had been discipled by elders who knew the apostle John personally, so it is quite possible that the writer of Revelation had himself taught this. Today, we call this pre-millennialism, because Jesus is thought to return before the thousand years begins. There was some discussion about whether the millennium was a literal or a symbolic number, but they believed it lay in the future and that it would be an idyllic age heaven on earth: see Isaiah 11:1-10.

Pre-millennialists think a number of things must happen Before Christ returns:

· The evangelisation of the nations

· The Great Tribulation

· The Great Apostasy

· The appearance of the antichrist [2]

2. The amillennialist view

Within a few hundred years a perspectives changed. A bishop called Augustine [354 - 430 AD], who led a church in North Africa, became very influential. He was less inclined to take a literal view of the ‘thousand years’ preferring to see it as a symbolic number; it meant ‘a very long time’. He taught that the Millennium was the period between Pentecost and the return of Jesus. We call this view amillennialism because there is not an actual thousand-year reign, but a symbolic period. We are living in the middle of it right now! This is how Augustine tied up the details:

· Satan is bound during this time as taught by Mark 3:27.

· The judgement given the saints [verse 4] is the power to bind and loose given the apostles in the gospels.

· The first resurrection was spiritual rebirth and baptism.

· The idyllic world of Isaiah 11 is a future heavenly kingdom, and not an earthly paradise.

Throughout the Middle Ages, this view held sway and pre-millennialism slipped out of prominence. Then came the Reformation; [3] Luther, Calvin and others challenged the Catholic Church and its Pope. These Reformers, were amillennialist but they added a twist of their own; they held that the thousand years was a literal period in the past during which the gospel had flourished, Satan’s release at the end of this period had led to the rise of the powerful medieval Pope. He was the antichrist, and still is to those who remain deeply influenced by the theology of the Reformation.

3. Post-millennialism emerges

The reformation spread to Northern Europe, Britain and the New World. Here it was phenomenally successful. The leaders of the Puritan [4] movement began to sense that Christ could transform human society beyond anything yet imagined. Puritan thinkers [5] began to expect a wholesale conversion of mankind. Revelation 20 was said to describe a spiritual intervention of Christ, but not his actual return. The Millennium began to be seen as a period of preaching the gospel until almost everyone is converted and societies are transformed, then Christ will return. Since his return occurs after the millennium, this view is called post-millennialism.

This kind of teaching helped to power a new wave of missionary activity. George Carey [6] and other missionaries fanned out around the globe. But as time went on the gospel content of this view was diluted and absorbed into a general belief in the inevitability of human progress. The supernatural return of Christ was gradually airbrushed out of the picture by the influence of the Enlightenment [7] . Against this background, some Christians wanted to get back to basics.

4. Complex pre-milennialism

The result was a re-discovery of pre-millennialism. The belief that Jesus will one day return and reign for a thousand years. But now, Christians became more and more literal in the way they interpreted the details of prophecies and less willing to allow details to be seen as symbolic.

This tendency found its most powerful form in dispensationalism [8] . An Irishman called J.N. Derby and an American, Cyrus Scofield, pioneered and promoted this view. To them, the key to interpreting prophecy was the promises made to the nation of Israel.

"The Dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved, which is Israel; while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity."

Jesus’ first coming was to offer the Jews his Kingdom, they rejected the offer and so Christ turned to the gentiles and introduced the idea of the church. So the church age was really a ‘blip’ in God’s real purpose in restoring the Messiah as an actual King over the nation of Israel from Jerusalem. Derby taught that the essential stages were:

· The secret return of Jesus, and removal of his church to heaven [the secret rapture [9] ]

· The return of the Jews to Palestine

· The Great Tribulation. The world goes out of control because the Holy Spirit is withdrawn

· The Antichrist emerges

· Jews are persecuted

· The nations unite to attack Israel

· Christ’s public return to wage war at Armageddon and establish his one thousand year reign

Complex pre-millennialism teaches that Jesus' Second Coming will be in two stages separated by a seven-year period. First he will come secretly for his saints [the secret rapture], then he will come publicly with his saints [the revelation]. The rapture may occur at any moment, no prophecies need be fulfilled before it happens. The first indication that we are on the final approach to the tribulation will be the worldwide disappearance of Christians. This belief is at the heart of the ‘Left Behind’ books and films. Some of us oldies may remember the Larry Norman song about the tribulation…

Days were filled with guns and war and everyone got trampled to the floor,

I wish we'd all been ready,

Children died the days grew cold a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold,

I wish we'd all been ready,

There's no time to change your mind,

The Son has come and you’ve been left behind.

The rapture will be followed by a seven-year period on earth [Daniel 9:24-27] during which the gospel will be preached throughout the world, mostly by Jews converted after the rapture. There will be an unprecedented outburst of persecution against the people of God, this is the Great Tribulation 'the time of Jacob's trouble' [Jeremiah 30:7]. The antichrist will emerge and gather a huge army to confront the people of God at the battle of Armageddon [10] .

At this moment, Christ will return in Glory with his church to destroy his enemies and establish his throne in Jerusalem. The millennial reign of Christ will fulfill all the promises made to Israel in the Old Testament, a golden age at that the world has never seen before:

· The earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

· Worship will centre round a re-built temple in Jerusalem, to which all nations will go and offer praise to God.

· Animal sacrifices will be offered once again, as memorials of Christ's death.

Does it matter?

Whatever your own view happens to be [if you have got one!] it is important to be aware that there are equally committed Christians who love the Lord and honour the Bible who take a different view.

It is also vital to acknowledge that each of the views outlined above was, at least in part, a child of it's time. Current events can make Christians see things in the Bible that are not really there! The optimism of the Puritan revolution in Britain, and the revivals that followed helped make amillennialism the 'obviously right interpretation' of it's day. The creation of the state of Israel and subsequent history make dispensationalism very attractive today.

Each view has it's strengths and weaknesses.

The Certainties of the Second Coming

"The primitive church thought more about the Second Coming than about death or heaven. They were not looking for a cleft in the ground called a grave, but a cleavage in the sky called glory. They were not waiting for the undertaker, they were waiting for the upper-taker!"

Alexander Maclaren [19^th century preacher]

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Group discussion

What can we be sure of?

1 Thessalonians 4:15 - 5:11

· Make a list of the events around the Second Coming that Paul is expecting to happen.

· Are other events described elsewhere that should be part of this list?

· How should this expectation influence us from day to day?

[1] Papias [born 60 AD], Justin Martyr [born 100 AD], later, Irenaeus and Tertullian

[2] A person of great significance to the end times identified by John in 1 John 1:18 and Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4.

[3] A turbulent revolution in the church in Europe in the 1500’s

[4] People like Oliver Cromwell and John Bunyan were called Puritans, keen to apply the bible to every aspect of life

[5] Thomas Goodwin , John Owen, Thomas Brightman

[6] Founder of the Baptist Missionary Society

[7] A period of growing confidence human reason as man’s only true guide 1700’s to 1800’s

[8] This teaching divided history into seven phases or ‘dispensations’

[9] See 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18

[10] Revelation 16:16 the last battle of good versus evil