Jesus Didn’t Return Last Night, and That’s a Bummer
A few days ago, someone told me he looked forward to reading my book about the return of Christ. “But wouldn’t it be awesome,” he added, “if Jesus returned before its release?”
Indeed, it would have been awesome if Jesus had returned last night.
But I woke up this morning to the sound of my iPhone vibrating on the nightstand, not to the thunder of the rider on the white horse splitting the sky.
And that was a bummer.
Perhaps you’ve heard people say they want something to happen before Jesus comes back. Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. “Lord, please come back . . . but could you let me get married first?” “Please come back, Lord, but could you let me have a year of retirement after all these decades of work?” I’m sure some authors might even want their book to come out before Jesus returns, even if they wrote about the glorious return of Christ.
There are better and worse reasons to want Christ to delay. All of us have friends and family members who seem far from the Lord, and it would be right for us to want the Lord to give them more time so that the people we love could find repentance and faith. This is a good reason to want the Lord’s return to delay.
The apostle Peter describes the Lord’s patience in his return for this very reason: “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:8–9).
Still, Peter adds to this reason for delay that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Peter 3:10). That will be a better fireworks show than anything that will happen in Washington, D.C., on America’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday.
I’m so thankful for the partnership with Baker Books on The Restoration of All Things: How the Promise of Christ’s Return Brings Us Comfort Today. From the beginning to the end, they saw what I hoped to do and made it better. After nearly seven years of work, I’m thankful it’s finally available for purchase.
Recently, I did an interview with Baker about the book, talking some about why I wrote it. “For many years,” I said, “Christian teaching about the return of Christ has tended to focus on the controversial matters of the end times. The average Christian now mainly associates the return of Christ with debates, as though the Bible’s clear and repeated teaching on the return of Christ were actually a fuzzy, peripheral doctrine. The writers of the New Testament couldn’t have seen it more differently. They confidently saw Christ’s return as bringing Christians the ultimate happily-ever-after: all of God’s people finally and fully glorifying him and enjoying him forever in a recreated and perfected paradise.” Then I mentioned that when we “relegate the return of Christ to controversy, we lose Christian hope and comfort.”
And it’s this comfort that I want you to have. I believe it’s the comfort God wants you to have, especially if you are suffering. When we suffer, it tends to pull our gaze downward and inward. But God wants us to look up. And when we look up in faith to his return, a resilient hope comes from knowing that if the worst happens in this life—if the shaking building really does fall and collapse on you while you’re inside—there is a life coming with no more sorrow, no more pain.
That will be a wonderful day. Come, Lord Jesus.
* You can read the full interview about the book on Baker’s new practicing theology website, and you can buy the book at most online retailers, including, of course, Amazon. I’d love for you to check it out.
** Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
