Christ’s second coming will be swift and sudden
“Watch, therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect,” (Matt. 24:42-44).
Ordinarily, the season of advent is a reminder that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will come again. However, His coming this time around is to judge. But the fear is that His second coming would be swift and sudden. Impliedly, there will be no opportunity for last minute repentance or bargaining. The choice we make now will determine our eternal destiny. Yet, the choice must be made.
The Bible says, “but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven but My Father only,”
(Matt. 24:36). A Bible commentator now said of it that “it is good that we don’t know exactly when Christ will return. If we knew the date, we might be tempted to be lazy in our work for Christ. Worst yet, we might plan to keep sinning and then turn to God right at the end. Heaven is not our goal, we have work to do here. And we must keep on doing it until death or until we see the unmistakable return of our Saviour.”
Notice, believers can no longer live anyhow or carelessly rather they need to watch and pray. But how are we preparing for His second coming? I still can feel it and I believe it is true “Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left,” (Matt. 24:40-41). Therefore, if one is taking and another is left, the question that should disturb us then should be, where will the one left spend his/her eternity? This then calls for sober reflection and meditation because no one can be too sure of who will be the one that will be left at the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Seriously, we need to watch for we do not know the hour. Also, what we read, the company we keep and the things we do should be of concern at this material time. How do they promote our relationship with God? Remember, the suddenness and swiftness of His coming should assist us to spend more time in prayer. For, if we are not on guard, no one will remember the good we had done in the past. We are likely to be judged by what is obtainable at the time of His coming. Are we ready?
It is very unfortunate, many still conduct themselves as if the end will never come. They cheat, kill, do all manner of evil as reflective of the moment without recourse to the divine. To this category of people let it be stated that the coming of Christ is eminent they need to beware! Remember, no one can successfully wish away the second coming of Christ. What should be uppermost in our hearts now should be on how to have a relationship with Him. We need Jesus as Lord and personal Saviour, no compromise.
Therefore, every child of God should be ready and must not be taken unawares. The time to be on guard is now. We join the hymn writer in Ancient and Modern
51 stanza one to meditatively sing:
Lo, He comes with clouds descending
Once for favoured sinners slain;
Thousand thousands Saints attending
Swell the triumph of His train
Alleluia (3 twice)
Christ appears on earth to reign
Ven. Ernest Onuoha, Rector, Ibru International Ecumenical Centre, Agbarha-Otor, Delta State.
www.ibrucentre.org
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1 Comments
New ideas are unacceptable, I know. There is, however, a contradiction between the thief-in-the-night coming (as quoted above), on the one hand, and the globally-public, highly illuminated, trumpeted coming, on the other hand, when even those, long dead, who pierced him, will see him.
The thief-in-the-night metaphor, which Jesus used, is a coming back to earth but in darkness and in secrecy (since no thief blows a trumpet, shouts loudly and switches on all the lights). Some people do not get to see Jesus on this return, for five of the ten virgins were shut out after the Bridegroom had arrived. They did not go into what was a secret meeting for a few or, at least, not for everyone.
I now understand the New Testament as revealing a private coming in the form of visits, such that Jesus moves from one place to another as quickly as lightning, so that there is no point someone saying that “he’s there or here or in the desert or in a house”. News reporters would always get there too late since he would have already moved on to his next visit.
His public coming will be different in that it will not consist of multiple appearances, but just one. In that one appearance, everyone on earth will stop what they are doing and stare at the gloriously light-filled coming of the Son of God in the sky.
Jesus once said, “You will not see me again until you say: Blessed is he who comes with the Name of the Lord”. This statement fits better with the private, multiple visiting return of Christ because it appears to allow for some people not to recognise the Person coming with the Name of the Lord – they therefore continue to be unblessed on account of not recognising him.
The private, visiting return of Christ will be the time when the servants who have increased the talents given to them are congratulated. It is also the time when those, who stated that they did not want him to reign over them, are brought into his presence at his command and killed in front of him.
If those, who refused to have him reign over him when he was last on the earth, are Jews, then the killing of these people will fit with Jesus’ statement that, when we see Jerusalem surrounded by militant groups (which is the present situation), then know that its utter destruction is about to occur. Jesus stated that Jerusalem would be destroyed together with her children in her.
Daniel tells us that seventy years is given to the destructions (note more than one destruction) of Jerusalem. Well, the first destruction occurred miraculously in 70CE although the Roman army had been about to attack the city in 68CE but didn’t because Nero died that year.
The next stand-alone seventy years is, as far as I can see, the year we are in now – that is, the seventy years from the passing of the resolution by the UN on 28 November 1947 that Jerusalem and Israel were to be built again and the Jews were to be allowed to return to accomplish this.
Maybe the private multiple visits of Jesus will begin to occur in this seventieth year, in order to end the old covenant of Judaism, and to usher in a new era of the New Covenant of the New Testament – without the Judaism of the old covenant being present on the earth anymore.
We will review and take appropriate action.