June 21
Jesus is coming back. There’s a statement that can generate gales of laughter or profound silence, depending upon the audience that hears the assertion. If you don’t mind exposing yourself to ridicule (or worse—depending on where you are when you say it), go ahead and tell people you believe He’ll return.
Even many who profess Christianity have dismissed the idea of Christ’s imminent return from their thoughts. They have faith in Him. They own Him as Savior and Lord, but when it comes to the notion of a day of reckoning for sin, of a day of accounting for deciding for or against Him, they don’t think beyond their own mortality.
There is a prominent world view that affirms a belief in Christ’s return, but the Christ they expect will not return as conquering Lord over sin and death and hell, but as the ‘second fiddle’ to an entity whose character is reflective of that of the Biblical antichrist. In the picture they paint of this returning Jesus, he is little more than the ‘hatchet man’ for their awaited one. Death and havoc rather than peace and love are in his wake.
This version of Jesus does little to affirm the notion that, “God will strengthen your hearts so you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord comes with His holy ones,” as stated in I Thessalonians 3:13. May the Holy Spirit give us a fresh revelation of who Jesus is, so neither laughter nor persecution can shake us of our resolve to “watch unto prayer” for His return (see I Peter 4:7).
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