When will Jesus return?
Assurance
The title of this article suggests Christ’s return is a certainty – and we believe it is! There is enough evidence in the Bible to show that the purpose of God is to send his son Jesus back to the earth to be a king over a kingdom he will establish here. The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament says of Jesus, that:
During the life of Jesus as recorded in our Bibles, he was asked by Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, if he was a king. He responded:
Of course, Jesus was never made king at that time, but was crucified in the most cruel way imaginable shortly after this exchange took place.
So if he didn’t take to the throne at that time, what did his words mean? He must have been talking about the future. The promise of the angels to Jesus’ disciples at the time of his ascension gives us the clearest promise:
The state of God’s people
Here Peter reassures us that God’s promise will be kept, although Jesus also made it perfectly clear to his followers that they were not to know the specific date and time:
However, we are not left completely in the dark as there are certain ‘signs’ described throughout scripture which consistently indicate when we might expect the fulfilment of this promise to finally take place. One of the most noticeable of these signs in our own day and age concerns the established state of the Jews, God’s chosen people (Ezekiel 34:30), who we have discussed extensively throughout this series. We have seen how the Jewish race has been scattered throughout the world and spent many centuries without a homeland. Yet in 1948 the State of Israel was declared, many Jews having returned to the land of Israel and since then the population of Jews in Israel has grown dramatically. This was foretold in exact detail in the Bible, many centuries before it happened, as we read in Ezekiel for example:
Having this event take place in living memory provides us with a very real sign in the earth today of God’s word being fulfilled.
The state of the earth
There are other signs concerning the wider world at the time of Jesus’ return, such as its social and political state. Paul wrote to Timothy about these ‘last days’ and mentions that people would be
which has never been more true. Luke records other signs of the ‘last days’, with a symbolic description of the earth’s political distress at the time of God’s future intervention:
The following verse in Luke makes it very clear that these are the indicators we are to look for when awaiting the coming of Jesus Christ, saying that:
However, this coming of Jesus will only mean redemption for us if we read the Bible and follow its instruction on how to please God.
A call to action!
The whole of Christ's teaching revolves around how men and women can overcome the inevitable curse of death and live for ever in God's kingdom. Jesus not only brings this kingdom to the earth at his return, but is to be the divinely appointed judge to separate the faithful from the wicked. If we therefore wish to be judged faithful at his coming, we must learn from the Bible and in particular the instruction to us all that we should,
So, when can we expect Jesus to return? Each generation has thought that “...all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” (2 Peter 3:4), but we have seen that these things could happen at any time, for as we read in the gospel of Matthew:
How urgent, then, is the call to take action and be ready! Events is the world suggest the return of Christ is very close! So we urge you to respond to the wonderful hope offered in the Bible as it most certainly is time-limited. Delay too long and you may find Christ has returned and it is too late to do anything about it!