10 Good Books about the End Times and the Return of Christ
Most Christians don’t read books about the return of Christ. And that’s a shame.
Most Christians in most churches I’ve been part of over the past twenty years haven’t read a single book about the return of Christ and the end of everything. Our general affluence keeps us from thinking about the need for Jesus to come back. And long seasons of suffering can also make it difficult to think about the future, even though that’s often what we need.
But the main reason most people don’t read about the return of Christ is that the end-times market—if you want to call it a market—is dominated by books that focus on the weird and fantastical, the debatable and controversial. That’s a shame. It turns Christians off the topic completely, and thus many have never studied all the good stuff that happens when Christ comes back. And for the believer, the good stuff about the return of Christ is the main stuff.
As I’ve studied this topic, many books have given me hope and comfort, and I want to share a few with you and encourage you to consider reading them. But before I suggest ten books about the return of Christ and the end of everything, I need to mention the one book more important than all the others. The best book to read about the return of Christ and the end of everything is, of course, the Bible.
I don’t think most Christians realize how saturated the New Testament is with verses about the return of Christ. (There are a whole bunch of passages in the Old Testament too.) I put together an ebook that compiles a great list of passages in one place. You can get it by subscribing to my blog (subscribe here). When you do, I’ll send you what I call Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ. The other year, I printed out all these same verses and spent time each morning meditating on a couple of them.
As you look at the books on the list, if you notice that you’ve read some of them, let me know your favorites in the comments. And if you don’t see your favorite books on the list, be sure to share those with me too.
This book can be intimidating because of its size; the epic subtitle gives you that clue. If you’re holding the book or see the 560-page count on Amazon, you might feel the same way. But it’s super readable. One time, I heard a friend joke that Alcorn built too much on C. S. Lewis rather than on the Bible. And there is a lot of Lewis in his book. But there is far more Bible than there is Lewis—or any other author. My favorite takeaway is that in heaven there will be no idolatry, so we’ll be able to enjoy all of God’s gifts in a way that doesn’t compete with our love for him. I highly recommend the book.
Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today
by Chris Davis
I love Chris’s book. I’ve read it several times. When I began working on my book, Chris was kind enough to give me some time on the phone, and he’s encouraged me all along the way. Chris does a great job of highlighting the positive aspects of Christ’s return, especially through the Bible’s main motifs (the warrior king, the bridegroom, the judge, and the resurrecting one).
Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ
by John Piper
This book is a classic example of Piper being Piper. He dives deep into the ocean of the Bible, then swims to the surface and holds up treasure for readers to see and savor. Grab this one if you want your head and heart expanded in such a way that you’ll find yourself echoing the prayer at the end of Revelation.
The Bible and the Future
by Anthony A. Hoekema
This book is more of a textbook, and it feels that way. I read it during seminary and then again the other year. During the reread, I found myself saying, “I forgot how good this book is.” The author writes from an amillennial perspective, but that emphasis is small compared to the overall focus on what happens when the end arrives. I think most readers will get to around page one hundred before they notice this specific view, which says something about the author but also about how much all the views share.
Always Longing: Discovering the Joy of Heaven
by Stephen R. Morefield
Stephen is my friend. He says that if Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven, which I highlighted first on this list, had been smaller, he wouldn’t have written his book. But Alcorn’s book is huge and Stephen’s isn’t. He structures the book in the form of questions and answers. Each of the seven chapters answers a common question about the end times and eternity. When I’ve suggested this book to others, they’ve loved it.
Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation
by Nancy Guthrie
I have always believed that God gave us the book of Revelation for our good. How could a Christian think otherwise? But all the imagery, all the debates, and all the confusion sometimes make that belief difficult and have given me hesitation from teaching the vision John received on Patmos. Guthrie’s book, however, made it easier to see how Revelation, with all its twists and turns, is not only eminently preachable by ordinary pastors to ordinary believers but also eminently believable and livable.
Are We Living in the Last Days?: Four Views of the Hope We Share about Revelation and Christ’s Return
by Bryan Chapell
Don’t be misled by the intensity of the cover design. I think the publisher is trying to appeal to readers who want end-times books to look like end-times books. Well, mission accomplished, I guess. But the book is actually a very even-handed explanation of the four main orthodox views of the return of Christ. If you often get confused with the different views (dispensational premillennialism, historic premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism), Chapell will help you navigate the issues, seeing the strengths and weaknesses of each view. He’s been both a professor and a pastor, so he knows how to make difficult concepts accessible. I was helped by the book.
A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times
by Kim Riddlebarger
Don’t hate me for including a book from my personal end-times theological camp. If that camp has always seemed sketchy to you, reading someone like Riddlebarger will hopefully help you understand that the biblical roots of amillennialism run deep. You could also read Sam Storm’s book Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative, which I also recommend. But Storm’s book can be a bit spunky and goes way deep into details, such as Daniel’s prophecies and who “all Israel” is in Romans 9. But some people like to get into the weeds, which Riddlebarger, I suppose, does too.
Gilead: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
Okay, this is a sneaky pick. It’s not really about the end times or the return of Christ, but it is a novel that wrestles with death and eternity. Robinson casts the book as a long letter from a pastor to his son, set in the fictional town of Gilead in rural Iowa in the 50s. The pastor is so old and his son so young that he wonders whether he’ll live to see him grow beyond boyhood. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twenty years ago. (If the book sounds interesting to you, you might want to know that it became the first part of a four-part series, which I’m currently re-reading.)
The Restoration of All Things: How the Promise of Christ’s Return Brings Us Comfort Today
by Benjamin Vrbicek
Yes, I included my own book. If I were to rank the books on this list, I wouldn’t put my own book first; there are too many other, better books. But I also wouldn’t rank my book last. ;-)
* Photo by Slava Auchynnikauon Unsplash
Jesus Didn’t Return Last Night, and That’s a Bummer
If you’re reading this, my book came out after seven years of work. But after almost two thousand years away, Jesus didn’t return—yet.
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
An Encouraging Seminar about the Return of Christ
Details about an event hosted by our church. We’d love to have you attend and get a book . . . for free.
Invitations to destination weddings have always seemed to me like not-real invitations. I’m not trying to be mean, but only your closest family and your very closest friends can come to your wedding on an exotic white sandy beach in Maui. When you invite a hundred people, sure, it would be neat if they came, but I always felt those invitations weren’t real because it’s so much effort to travel so far for a single weekend.
And that’s okay. It’s still nice to get the invite, know about the wedding, and feel like you were thought of by the couple, even if your attendance can’t happen.
I’m afraid I might do something similar with the invite I’m about to make. On Saturday, June 27 from 9:00–11:30 am, our church is hosting “Come, Lord Jesus: An Encouraging Seminar about the Return of Christ.”
At the seminar, we’ll have light refreshments, I’ll be teaching about the return of Christ, and we’ll sing songs and hymns about the return of Christ. There’s no cost, and we’re giving away free books to anyone who registers (signup link here). So, this seminar isn’t about our church getting anything; we’re trying to give. There’s also an optional lunch for those who want to stay for a Q&A.
I should mention that in the two teaching sessions I won’t be teaching any particular view of the end times. Instead, we’ll be celebrating the wonderful truths that all Christians believe. I really do hope that we titled the seminar appropriately and that it will be encouraging. My conviction about the seminar is the same as in the book: we often spend so much time on the debatable details that we hardly get to the good stuff we all believe.
I know several people who subscribe to my blog know me from church as one of their pastors. And that’s great. That means you already know about this event, and maybe you’ve already signed up. Thank you for doing that!
For others, you live in Iowa or Missouri or Arizona or… Malaysia, and this is kind of like a non-invite to a destination wedding. If it feels that way, you don’t need to send a wedding present. You can just sign up for the book’s launch team (here). ;-)
But if you happen to live near Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and you’re free on Saturday, June 27, we’d love to have you. Indeed, I’d love to have you. The invitation is real.
Soon and Very Soon: The Restoration of All Things
Soon and very soon my book about the return of Christ will be published.
A gospel song from the 1970s belts out the lines, “Soon and very soon we are goin’ to see the King.” I’ve been singing it over and over for the last few months. It’s super catchy and happy and reminds me of the goodness of the return of Christ.
If you also want it stuck in your head, you can listen to the original singer and songwriter, Andraé Crouch, perform it live here, or you can watch another more modern version here, still featuring Crouch, but also with CeCe Winans. “No more dyin’ there, we are goin’ to see the King, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, we are goin’ to see the King!
Try to sing that and not smile. You can’t do it.
This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot—not just for the last few months, but for the last few years. Soon and very soon, the book I wrote on this topic, The Restoration of All Things, will finally be released by Baker Books. Launch day is less than a month away. But I actually wrote the first chapters of this book over six years ago! It took a while to get it published, but that’s another story.
Today, I’d love to invite you to pre-order the book. I know that’s a few dollars, and I feel weird asking. But I really believe in the book’s theme, specifically that remembering the return of Christ pours hope into a Christian’s life. And who couldn’t use more hope in their life?
You can pre-order the book at a number of places, Amazon or Baker Books, for example. The book releases on June 23, but pre-orders likely ship early, maybe even a week. And this might not be apparent to the average reader, but I’m told that the Amazon algorithm gets a lot of “juice” from pre-orders, so if you’re going to get it anyway, buy early and often, as they say.
On the Baker Books website, you can click the “look inside” button to read the entire first chapter. I have also listed the table of contents below. Most books tend to get less engaging as the pages and chapters progress. I think this book gets better and better toward the end.
And if you’d like to learn more about a seminar we’re hosting at church on this topic, we built an information page with all the details (here). It’s on Saturday, June 27. We’ll sing together some of the old hymns about the return of Christ, along with some of the best new ones. I’ll also teach two sessions about it. There’s an optional lunch and Q&A for those who have time. If you live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania or want to take a road trip, registering for the seminar is a great way to get a free copy of the book (register here). If you’ve already pre-ordered, then you’ll have two copies: one to keep and one to give away!
Thank you,
Benjamin
Table of Contents
Introduction: This Train Is Bound for Glory 9
1. Feasting for the Famished 35
2. Rest for the Weary 51
3. Bodies for the Broken 71
4. Family for the Forsaken 93
5. Justice for the Wronged 111
6. Glorification for Strugglers 131
Conclusion: Loving His Appearing 151
Discussion Questions 161
* Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash (with Baker Books cloud image added)
The Contemporary Church Has a Giant Blind Spot to the Return of Christ
Events keep occurring that remind me how little we think about Christ’s second coming.
When I say the contemporary church has a giant blind spot to the return of Christ, I’m not just pointing the finger at other churches. Recently, I did a deep dive into all the lyrics of all the songs we sing on Sundays, and I wrote about how rarely our church sings about Christ’s return.
The reality of our blind spot hit me again last week in a different context. I’ll explain.
Our church evaluates potential members for our pastor-elder team through several steps, one of which is an extensive theological examination. The test consists of almost seventy questions that cover a variety of topics, ranging from classic trinitarianism and the age of the earth to the practice of spiritual gifts and Reformed soteriology. We also ask about contemporary issues such as marriage, sexuality, and systemic racism. Some of the questions have what we consider to be right and wrong answers, as when we ask about the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Other questions tend to fall into the category of philosophy of ministry, which help us assess ministry alignment and, therefore, are less about right and wrong and more about wisdom and passion.
Anyway, as I spoke with another staff member about a potential pastor-elder joining our team, the conversation arose about his particular view of the end times, which, from the top of our minds, we didn’t know. “Oh,” I said, “I have his theological survey right here. Let’s check that to see.”
So we did. We read all the questions and all his answers. And we still had no idea of his views on the end times from our theological survey, because, apparently, we didn’t consider it necessary to include a question on that topic.
And my oversight is even worse than it sounds. Not only did we not ask a single question, but neither of us even realized that we hadn’t asked. After a decade of using the theological survey, I hadn’t even noticed.
This is what I mean when I say we, not just the contemporary church, have a giant blind spot to the return of Christ. We tend to think so little of the end times that we don’t even ask a single question about it on a theological exam ostensibly created to explore important topics and surface potential disagreements. Perhaps because many of us grew up in a culture of end-times excess we have subconsciously swung the pendulum the other way.
My anecdote isn’t to complain or shame. One of my best friends wrote the original draft of the theological exam, and I talked about this with him before writing. My hope in this post is to be part of the solution. Rather than the return of Christ remaining in our blind spot, I want the blazingly bright promise of the victorious rider on the white horse to become one of our guiding lights along the path of obedience. Certainly other lights guide our way too, but without the return of Christ, the path of obedience will only be darker and more precarious. And I know I need all the resources God offers. You probably do too.
I recently submitted a book manuscript to a publisher about the return of Christ. It won’t be released until the summer of 2026, so this is not a promotion for the book. I simply bring up the writing context to say that during the process I spent over a year ransacking the Bible for all the passages that discuss the end times in general and the return of Christ specifically. The final iteration of my list of end-times passages had nearly seven thousand words. I printed the list despite the size, and many mornings before my daily prayer and Bible reading, I’d spend a few minutes reading a page from the list and pondering the truths.
A list of verses that long could seem a bit overwhelming, so I refined it, aiming to make the list as focused as possible on those passages that seem to have the most direct encouragement. I’ve put the list of forty-nine Bible passages below.
I also compiled the verses into a short ebook, so that you can easily have them in one place. If you’d like a copy, sign up below, and I’ll send it to you. I’m calling the booklet Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ.
As you and I store up truth about the return of Christ in our hearts, God will strengthen our faith and equip us for every good work as we await that glorious day.
Obedience always demands effort. But following God gets more hopeful and less precarious when additional light shines on our path.
“Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).
* * *
49 Passages about the Return of Christ:
Matthew 24:29–31
Matthew 26:64
John 14:1–3
Acts 1:11
Acts 17:30–31
Romans 8:18–24
Romans 14:10–12
Romans 16:20
1 Corinthians 1:7–8
1 Corinthians 4:5
1 Corinthians 11:26
1 Corinthians 13:12
1 Corinthians 15:50–58
1 Corinthians 16:21–22
2 Corinthians 1:14
2 Corinthians 5:8–11
Philippians 1:6
Philippians 2:9–11
Philippians 2:16
Philippians 3:20–21
Colossians 3:3–6
1 Thessalonians 1:9–10
1 Thessalonians 2:19
1 Thessalonians 3:12–13
1 Thessalonians 4:15–18
1 Thessalonians 5:23–24
2 Thessalonians 1:6–10
2 Thessalonians 2:8–10
1 Timothy 6:13–16
2 Timothy 4:1–8
Titus 2:12–14
Hebrews 9:23–28
Hebrews 10:24–25
James 5:1–10
1 Peter 1:3–21
1 Peter 4:7, 12–13
1 Peter 5:1–5
2 Peter 1:16–19
2 Peter 2:9
2 Peter 3:1–13
1 John 3:2–3
Jude 1:17–21, 24–25
Revelation 1:1–20
Revelation 11:15
Revelation 19:11–16, 20
Revelation 20:1–10
Revelation 21:1–4
Revelation 22:1–5
Revelation 22:12–20
* * *
* Photo by Tobias Stonjeck on Unsplash
I Reviewed All the Lyrics Our Church Has Sung This Year and Noticed a Troubling Pattern
When I looked at all the lyrics we’ve sung so far this year, I noticed a troubling pattern: we don’t sing very much about the return of Christ.
Recently, I wrote about the music that most churches sing on Sundays and how it has changed over the years. And I don’t mean that music has changed in obvious stylistic ways. I mean in terms of the content of our songs, specifically that today we do not often sing about the return of Christ.
Matthew Westerholm, a professor of worship, did his doctoral research comparing extensive collections of worship songs from our era and previous eras. “Among many similarities,” he notes, “one difference was striking: Our churches no longer sing about Christ’s second coming as much as we used to.”
While reading D. A. Carson’s book about prayer, I noticed he made a similar point back in the early 90s (Praying with Paul, 27–29). He asks rhetorically how many congregations sing with fervor and with anticipation about Christ’s second coming? The implied answer is not many. Then, to prove his point, he quotes at length two old hymns explicitly about the second coming. Not only had I never sung the hymns that he highlights as well-known examples, but I had never even heard of them.
This got me thinking not so much about the broader church in America and beyond, but about our own church here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. How much do we sing about the return of Christ?
I asked our worship pastor for the list of all the songs we’ve sung together this year. The number stands at fifty-eight different songs. Some songs we sang frequently, such as “His Glory and Our Good” by CityAlight, which became somewhat of an anthem for us as we preached through 1 Corinthians last year. Several others we only sang once.
When I looked at the list, about two-thirds of the songs we sang were written in the last fifteen years. I thought fifteen years would serve well enough as an arbitrary time marker for what constitutes a “new” song. The rest of our songs were older. The modern classic “In Christ Alone” is more than twenty years old. Other songs, like “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,” are almost two hundred years old.
When I think about the indictment made by Professor Westerholm that most churches do not sing about the return of Christ as much as they used to, I checked to see if our modern songs followed that trend. Upon reviewing all the lyrics, I found out he is right. Our church hardly sings about the return of Christ, at least explicitly.
If you broaden the criteria to include songs that generally speak about a Christian’s death and resurrection, as well as our bright future with God and his people, then we actually sing a number of those. Consider the song, “Abide,” which goes,
When I pass through death as I enter rest,
I depend on You, I depend on You
For eternal life to be raised with Christ,
I depend on You, I depend on You.
(written by Aaron Williams, Aaron Keyes, and Jake Fauber)
These lines clearly lift our eyes toward eternity. Also consider “Behold the Lamb.”
When the age of death is done
We’ll see Your face, bright as the sun
We’ll bow before the King of Kings
Oh God, forever we will sing
(written by Kristian Stanfill, Melodie Malone, and Phil Wickham)
The modern hymn “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death” by Keith and Kristyn Getty and Matt Papa is filled with lyrics centered on eternity and celebrates the well-known first question of the Heidelberg Catechism. Sandra McCracken’s song “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” certainly looks toward our eternal feasting. Additionally, the songs “On That Day” and “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me,” both by CityAlight, emphasize the theme of eternity. We sang all of these multiple times.
Also worth mentioning is “The Lord Is My Salvation” by Keith & Kristyn Getty, which has clear lines about the hope of resurrection.
And when I reach my final day
He will not leave me in the grave
But I will rise, He will call me home
The Lord is my salvation
(written by Nathan Nockels, Jonas Myrin, Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty)
However, when I examined the lyrics, I noticed that very few of the modern songs we sing on Sunday at our church have the explicitness about the return of Christ found in “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” by Edward Mote from the 1800s. “When he shall come with trumpet sound,” the hymn goes, “O may I then in him be found.” Or consider the lines, “Lord, haste the day” from the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.”
Indeed, out of the thirty-six modern songs we have sung this year, I found only three that include lines about the return of Christ. The hymn “Christus Victor (Amen)” by the Gettys, Bryan Fowler, and Matt Boswell contains some wonderful lines, such as,
O Most High, King of the nations
Robed in praise, crowned with splendor
On that day who will not tremble?
When You stand, Christ the Victor
Who was, and is, and is forever
The language of “on that day” is biblical shorthand for the return of Christ (see 1 Cor. 3:13; Heb. 10:25).
The song “O Praise the Name (Anástasis)” by Hillsong also has overt lyrics about the second coming. Anástasis, by the way, is the Greek word for resurrection.
He shall return in robes of white,
The blazing Son shall pierce the night.
And I will rise among the saints,
My gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
(written by Benjamin Hastings, Dean Ussher, and Marty Sampson)
Our church has also enjoyed singing “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery,” which speaks explicitly of the second advent.
What a foretaste of deliverance
How unwavering our hope
Christ in power resurrected
As we will be when He comes
(written by Matt Boswell, Michael Bleecker, and Matt Papa)
If the Bible had little to say about the return of Christ, then it would make sense for churches to sing little about it. However, the Bible has much to say about the return of Christ; I would guess that we could find over one hundred references to it in the New Testament. Part of what it means for a Christian to grow in maturity must involve consuming a well-rounded theological diet, not only through personal Bible reading and preaching but also in our Sunday singing.
Let me come back to D. A. Carson again as he writes about a passage in 2 Thessalonians 1. “We are losing our anticipation of the Lord’s return, the anticipation that Paul shows is basic to his thought.” Then he adds, “Even though we do not disavow central truths, for many of us their power has been eviscerated. The prospect of the Lord’s return in glory, the anticipation of the wrap-up of the universe as we know it, the confidence that there will be a final and irrevocable division between the just and the unjust—these have become merely creedal points for us, instead of ultimate realities that even now are life-transforming” (Praying with Paul, 27).
I do not expect my blog post to have much effect on those singers and songwriters who will shape the next generation of the church because I don’t know many of them. However, I encourage anyone reading this who possesses these skills and aspirations to serve the Lord and the church by providing us with more songs and hymns that celebrate Christ’s return.
We cannot completely blame the worship leaders and pastors of our church for not singing much about the return of Christ. Our leaders thoughtfully select the best theological songs that can also be sung congregationally. Unfortunately, there simply are not that many new songs available that cover this territory.
But as much as the worship leaders and pastors of our church (and other churches) have influence over the theological diet in our preaching and singing within our local contexts, let us approach this with a focus on preaching and singing about all that God has said in his Word. May it never be that the promise of the return of Christ becomes for us, as Carson puts it, a mere creedal point, something we might acknowledge , yet also something that causes us to yawn.
* Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
When He Shall Come with Trumpet Sound
They don’t make songs like they used to.
Today we speak less often about the return of Jesus than we did in the past. This neglect in Christian conversation and in Christian preaching affects our singing on Sundays. And our singing on Sundays certainly affects our living on all the other days.
I doubt any of us know definitively and exhaustively the reasons why, but I suspect part of our aversion to discussing the return of Jesus stems from an overreaction to perceived end-time obsession. Some Christians see every detail about the end times as crystal clear. That’s all they seem to talk about. Other Christians, myself included, look at this certainty and feel that the answers are too clean and tidy, maybe even a little contrived. This can lead to mistakenly overcorrecting by hardly ever talking about the second coming of Christ.
Perhaps our neglect also stems from the relative affluence of the Western world. In our wealth, we forget that we need a second coming to usher in heaven on earth. We try not to even think about our death. This is a relatively new phenomenon. “Throughout the history of the church, from the desert fathers to the Puritans, Christians have used the practice of meditating on death,” writes professor Kelly M. Kapic. “That is partly because the question was not about the possibility of pain but how to live with it.” Building on the work of a historian, Kapic notes, “Prior to modernity the question was not ‘a choice between pain and sickness or relief, but between a willing and a reluctant endurance of pain and sickness,’ since all were constantly in some level of physical discomfort” (Kapic, Embodied Hope, 60). To say it differently, only in our modern era has the desire for perfect health been anything but a fairytale. And the fairytale can cause us to neglect looking to the hope that God will bring in the end.
The experience of the cloud of witnesses, whether in the Bible or from the first century to modern times, was strikingly different. And this neglect of the afterlife and second coming has influenced the worship music we sing together when we gather. So many of the classic hymns so cherished by older generations of Christians featured climactic final stanzas that lifted eyes to the promise of heaven.
Consider the classic hymn “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” by Edward Mote from the 1800s. After a few verses that explore the trials we experience in this life and how Christ remains a rock and anchor for believers, the hymn celebrates the return of Christ with a trumpet. “When he shall come with trumpet sound,” we sing, “O may I then in him be found.” These lines celebrate a theme Paul writes about often, as in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (see also 1 Thess. 4:13–18).
Matthew Westerholm, a professor of worship, conducted his doctoral research on this subject, comparing extensive collections of worship songs from our era and previous eras. “Among many similarities,” he notes, “one difference was striking: Our churches no longer sing about Christ’s second coming as much as we used to.”
I do not want to argue with anyone about the musical beauty of hymns compared to modern worship songs. And I do not want to dictate what churches should or should not sing. But when examining the lyrics of most modern songs, many churches that sing for thirty minutes during their weekly gatherings include few songs, if any, whose lyrics explicitly direct believers to the hope of the end. This should not be.
To shift focus to God’s blessings now, to the exclusion of his blessings at the end, we do not lose a part of Christianity; we lose Christianity. Consider the analogy of the human body. In a tragic accident, a person might lose a finger or an arm and still remain very much alive. We cannot, however, lose the function of vital organs, such as our brain, heart, or lungs, without dying.
When the apostle Paul considers the implications of losing the doctrine of the physical resurrection of believers—the event that happens upon the return of Christ and when the trumpet sounds—Paul states that without the future resurrection, Christian preaching becomes in vain and misrepresents God, while the Christian faith becomes meaningless and futile, leaving us to perish forever in our sins and become the most pitiable of people (1 Cor. 15:12–19). The stakes could not be higher.
Of course, rather than complete avoidance of the indispensable doctrine of the return of Christ and the life everlasting, something more partial typically happens. We may not turn off the faucet completely, but we should not be surprised by our thirst when we only allow a trickle.
To quote Kelly Kapic again, “When the homes of believers are hit by chronic pain or mental illness, they often find the contemporary church strangely unhelpful, even hurtful” (38).
Perhaps songs that major on God’s blessings in the here and now, coupled with little emphasis on God’s blessings in the end, contribute to why suffering believers often find the church so unhelpful. Indeed, from a biblical perspective, to be the most helpful to believers suffering in the now, we must remember that the truth we regularly confess about the end—and the truth we regularly sing about the end—changes how we live today and every day. We must believe it all, and sing it all, to have it all.
* Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash
In Heaven Even Their Evil Footprints Shall Not Be Known
This quote from pastor J.C. Ryle has become one of my favorites about heaven.
I’m nearing the final stages of completing a full rough draft for my next book. It’s about how the promise of the return of Christ brings hope to every believer, especially to those who are suffering. Unfortunately, it won’t be for sale until June of 2026.
In the meantime, I wanted to share that the project gave me the blessing of reading over and over the passages in the Bible about the end of everything. I also had the blessing of reading a bunch of good books on the topic. A British pastor named J.C. Ryle has become one of my favorite writers from the past, and I loved his collection of remarks about the hope of heaven.
In one place, he writes about God’s complete removal of the various types of evil from heaven such that “even their footprints will not be known.” What a sweet promise. Here’s the quote in it’s fuller context.
There are many things about heaven revealed in Scripture which I purposely pass over. That it is a prepared place for a prepared people; that all who are found there will be of one mind and of one experience, chosen by the same Father, washed in the same blood of atonement, renewed by the same Spirit; that universal and perfect holiness, love, and knowledge will be the eternal law of the kingdom—all these are ancient things, and I do not mean to dwell on them.
Suffice it to say, that heaven is the eternal presence of everything that can make a saint happy, and the eternal absence of everything that can cause sorrow.
Sickness, and pain, and disease, and death, and poverty, and labor, and money, and care, and ignorance, and misunderstanding, and slander, and lying, and strife, and contention, and quarrels, and envies, and jealousies, and bad tempers, and infidelity, and skepticism, and irreligion, and superstition, and heresy, and schism, and wars, and fightings, and bloodshed, and murders, and law suits—all, all these things shall have no place in heaven.
On earth, in this present time, they may live and flourish. In heaven even their footprints shall not be known. (J.C. Ryle, Heaven: Priceless Encouragements on the Way to our Eternal Home, 8).
* Photo by Anya Smith on Unsplash