Jesus’ Second Coming

Intro

Every first Sunday of the month the kids stay in for the service. I want to ask you kids a question. Do you like surprises? Like surprise birthday parties. I love surprises too. Adults like surprises too, good surprises. So, I have a surprise for you. Today we are going to have a special guest. I’m glad you kids are here for this, because in about 10 minutes, someone special is coming to our church and they are going to have something very special for you. So sit up and pay attention. Get ready! You’ve never seen anything like this and you are going to be surprised that this person is coming to our church. They are coming all the way from… Well, I’m not going to tell you that may give it away. So just watch the clock and be ready. I’m going to start our teaching for today for a few minutes, but I want you to watch the door and when our guest comes, I’ll welcome them up here and you’re going to be blown away. Are you ready? Are you excited? Ok, just a few more minutes. Let’s read our Bible passage today while we wait.

We are in the book of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Remember that this book was written about 51 AD, that’s less than 20 years since Jesus was crucified. For those of us who are in our 60’s that doesn’t seem like very long. (That’s like 9/11 or the Tsunami 20 years ago, for many of us. At that time these new Christians were being persecuted for their faith and although they were growing in their faith, they needed encouragement because there was confusion about the second coming of Jesus.

There is still confusion today. But when we watch the news and see the lawlessness the moral breakdown in the world, the escalation of war with Israel now with Iran, and we know that Megiddo plains in Northern Israel where there is to be the final war called Armageddon, it makes you wonder, is Jesus coming sooner than we think. These are exciting times and this is an exciting passage from the Bible. So while we wait for our guest, let’s read our passage from 2 Thess. 2.

Passage

English Standard Version Chapter 2

2 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, 2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Ok, our guest isn’t here yet. Just a few more minutes I’m sure. Are you ready? There is a lot of things here in this passage, that we really just don’t fully understand. Who is the Man of Lawlessness? Who is the restrainer of this lawlessness and what is the order of the events to come. But we can be sure of several things from this passage and that is what we are going to focus on. First

1. Jesus is coming back - it will be glorious!

In 2 Thessalonians Paul writes to encourage these new believers to be faithful in the middle of persecution and to be hopeful Jesus is coming back for His own. Did you know that there are about 1800 references to Jesus’ second coming in the Bible (300 of which are in the New Testament.” There are all kinds of beliefs about Jesus’ second coming, even the Muslims believe that Jesus will come again. There are many interesting passages in Daniel 11, Revelation, the gospels and here in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. It is not completely clear, exactly how or when these events will occur. There are many clues but it’s not always perfectly clear.

It’s interesting because since John wrote, in 1 John 2 “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.” That’s 2000 years ago, so every generation has thought that their generation would be the last. I know I’ve thought that. We kind of think, can it get worse than this. In the world it seems like “can evil become worse when we’ve had ISIS and Al Queda.” The Covid virus seemed to stop the entire world. Israel is surrounded now, and it seems that Jesus could come at any time.

The only thing that is perfectly clear is that Jesus will come back again. Jesus said Himself, in Matthew 25 31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

I know that when I was a kid, there were all kinds of really kind of scary movies about Jesus coming back. And we sang a long in our youth group “I Wish We’d Been Ready” and the last line, was haunting. Do you remember it? “You’ve been left behind.” So if I came home from school one day and no one was home, I might get freaked out that Jesus had come and I was left behind. Jesus Himself talks about his coming 21 times in the New Testament. So this is an important truth in scripture. Jesus says:

Matthew 24:40: “Two men will be in the field; and one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

This was kind of scary. But Jesus doesn’t want us to be afraid, he just wants us to be ready, waiting and expecting His return, and it will be a glorious day for sure. You know the first time Jesus came it was in a little town in the middle of nowhere, the angels did proclaim to the shepherds, but the rest of the world was asleep and didn’t know. But His second coming, as Leslie said last week, the whole world will know. I love the passage in Revelation 19, that says that He will come riding a White Horse, with fire in his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth. His robe is dipped in blood and on His thigh is written King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

That is going to be unbelievably glorious! Artists have tried to draw what we read in Revelation. (Here are some pictures). This is what is called “The Day of the Lord.”

A pastor in the U.S., John Piper said this: “The promise of Jesus second coming is for our hope in resurrection of Christians who have died. It is for relief for those of us who are alive and believe, and for rescue from God’s punishment. It will be a glorious day.

Jesus’ second coming will be like nothing we have ever seen. Even though Jesus had ascended back to heaven only about 20 years, the Thessalonians were told that Jesus had already come. Paul was writing to say, “no” He has not come. Which leads us to our second point.

2. Don’t Be Deceived by False Prophets

Ok, is our guest still not here? I don’t know what happened. Ok, I deceived you! Actually, no one is coming today, you’re stuck with just me. Why did I trick you? To warn you not to be deceived, so I do have something for the kids here, some candy and oranges to make up. Why did I do that? Usually preachers don’t as my mother used to say “tell stories/lies.” I did that because in my lifetime there have been many people who have predict that Jesus would come back on a certain day.

People have predicted this many times since Jesus ascended to heaven. Maybe part of it is the wars (especially in the Middle East), famines, earthquakes that have happened that made people think, surely Jesus is coming soon. I know many people thought that Jesus was coming back in the year 2000. Remember we had the Y2K. Some people did the calculations of there was 4,000 years before Jesus; then 2,000 years since Jesus came. A day is like a thousand years for God, so this is entering the 7th day a 1000 years of rest is coming with Jesus’ return. So you can see how people can go down these trains of thought. The truth is we are all susceptible to being deceived.

I have a book that I bought back in 1988. I saved it. It’s called “88 Reasons Why The Rature Will Be in 1988.” People really believed this.

Harold Camping was an influential American Christian radio broadcaster and evangelist who predicted that the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011, because of a formula that he was able to calculate represented by the equation of Atonement x Completion x Heaven = End Time.

The Man of Lawlessness

One thing that we often hear about in the last days is the “Anti Christ.” Here in our passage this person is called “The son of destruction, Man of lawlessness.” The thing that distinguishes the anti-Christ is that he will come to deceive the people and proclaim himself to be God. The word Anti- in Greek actually means a substitute for Christ.” He is against Christ, but this man puts himself in Christ’s place as god. He will do even miracles, so we must be careful not to be deceived.

It seems like every so often someone emerges on the scene who will say they are Jesus. Rev. Moon in Korea who said that He was the Messiah. David Koresh in Waco, TX said he was the End Times Christ. But there are others, here are three that National Geographic did an article on. Japanese Jesus. Then there is the Brazilian Jesus INRI, and there is also an African Jesus, in Zambia who also drives a taxi during the day, I’m not kidding. I don’t think we will be fooled by people like this, but I think throughout history, I’m sure people thought Nero was the Anti-Christ, or maybe Hitler. Some people even said, Ronald Reagan. That started when the winning lottery number on election day in 1980 was 666 and Reagan won, part of it, was that Ronald Wilson Reagan’s name each had 6 letters in his name. Some said, Obama was the Anti-Christ. People are looking for strange things that really don’t make sense. But many will be deceived when the real Anti-Christ comes. So we must be careful not to be deceived.

I do want to say something more about this passage beginning in verse 7. Concerning the “mystery of lawlessness,” that we see all around us today. Deception doesn't just go to extremes immediately, it gradually progresses without us noticing. Look at what has happened in society. These gradual changes in morality have now fallen off a cliff and things are happening that we could never have imagine just five or ten years ago, things with gender issues and language. What the world does is it, gets us used to something by causing us to hear or see it over and over again. You know what I’m talking about in just language that you hear in movies and songs. It’s kind of like when we come to Thailand and we first see someone riding a motorcycle without a helmet, and we think, that’s crazy. Then we see a whole family riding without helmets zooming down the street. At first we think, that’s crazy. But then one day, we want to get home faster and we think, I’ll get on the back of this motorcycle taxis it’s not very far, I know I don’t have a helmet. Then we do it again. Then we think it’s easier to get around a motorcycle. Maybe I should get one, and before you know you are riding down Bangna-Trad, with you kid on motorcycle going 80 and neither of you have a helmet on. It’s not a sin to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, that’s just my example, but you get the point.

What God is saying here in this passage, is that sin is deceptive and it’s a slippery slope. Whether it’s our language, abortion, moral issues. This lawlessness that we are seeing today in society is a mystery to me. How can someone believe that is true? This lawlessness is at work in the world, and it seems that “because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion” We must stand firm in the truth, even when the world says that we are now the crazy ones for not accepting deception and the world’s values. This is the deception that we all face today.

I do want to show you very briefly the different interpretations of what Biblical scholars have written over the centuries regarding the second coming. There are basically three main views and one adapted view. I don’t want to get stuck on this, but I encourage you to study it yourself. These views they all are named referencing the “1,000 year reign” of Jesus on earth, or the Millennium. These all have support from scripture, they all focus on five key aspects of Jesus return, and 1. When Jesus returns 2. 1,000 year reign on earth (Rev. 20:4) 3. The rapture - When Christian are taken to heaven. 4. The actual final judgment of all people and 5. Eternity in heaven.

Amillennialism:

This is the simplest. A means “no” Basically there is no future “1000 years” we are in this figurative 1000 years now and God reigns in heaven and that Jesus’ coming and the Final Judgement happen at the same time. It’s not two different times.

PostMillennialism is pretty simple also: And it looks almost like Amillennialism, except there is one big difference that you can’t really see in the graph. That is there is a literal 1,000 years that happens when the church, grows so influential in the world and that the world is transformed by the Gospel, and basically the verse in Psalm that says, Jesus returns when the church does what it suppose to do, and all God’s enemies are put under Jesus’ feet, and then Jesus returns to earth to reign after a period of peace and prosperity. This could be seen as Christian nationalism which is viewed quite negatively by society. This is difficult for example on the issue of abortion when Christians advocating against abortion and we are accused of being Christian nationalists, I don’t think that is what we are trying to do. I think that Jesus said, that His Kingdom is not of this world. I do think we as believers should be engaged and influencing in society as salt and light, but not militantly trying to conquer nations in almost a kind of colonialism.

Premillennialism - Divided into two kinds

And this focuses on the 7 years of tribulation referenced in Revelation 4:1-2 and Daniel 9. When this seven years occurs is what divides these two view. For Classical Premillenialism, the Tribulation (designated as the T in the diagram), this time comes during the church age, and we are here during this time of persecution and hardship. Then the rapture occurs, Jesus comes to reign on earth for 1,000 years and then there is a final judgement after this.

Finally PreTribulational Premillenialism: This has been the more popular view that has been written about in the Left Behind series and in movies over the past several decades where the believers/the church is taken up into heaven and then there is intense persecution on earth for seven years. Then at the end of the seven years, Jesus returns to set His Kingdom here and then reigns for 1,000 years and then there is a Final Judgement.

So, what does all this mean for us? Jesus is coming back! It is interesting to study this but no one really knows exactly how or when these things will take place. But He is coming back. So I think there’s no need to have this strong, dogmatic theological stance on one of these views. These are secondary issues like, unlike things like Is Jesus God. Is the Bible the Word of God. How are we saved. Did Jesus rise from the dead. Was Jesus born of a virgin. These are the truly important, but you can believe any of these and still be a believer.

3. Be Ready, Expectant and Hopeful

I hope this is helpful, and it leads to our last point. That we are to be ready, expectant and hopeful. Jesus gave parables about those who were ready and those who were not when the master returned. This sense of readiness and expectation should motivate us to meet with God daily, it helps us keep short accounts with people. It helps us to do what we know we should do today. It shouldn’t be a fear of punishment for those of us who are believers, but it’s like you getting ready to go home. I think many of us can identify with that.

Just reading about Jesus’ return in Revelation, about this great gathering of people from every tribe tongue and nation around the throne of God, imagining this fills us with a sense of expectation and joy. There was a song that many of you probably remember, I love that song, “I Can Only Imagine.”

For many of us, Thailand is not our home, but early in our marriage Julie and I had been married just a short time and I had been here in Thailand already for about a decade, but she was missing home in the U.S. God spoke to her and reminded her and let this remind us, that the U.S. (or whatever country you are from) is really not our home. This aching in our hearts, this homesickness reminds us that actually this world is not our home. We realize this when we go back and we realize, “oh, that’s not what I was expecting.” However, Jesus has prepared a place for us for all eternity.

Conclusion

Heaven in our home, much more so than just going back to your home country. He is the home that we long for and only He can quench that thirst we all have for “home.” Going back to our home is very expensive, especially during Christmas holidays, but someone has to pay for those tickets. The price for you and I to go home with God was beyond what we could pay, so Jesus paid the price for us, and now we wait for that Great Day of the Lord.

I’ll end with this. One of the most powerful speeches I’ve ever heard was from Martin Luther King Jr. on April 3rd, in Memphis, TN. He spoke to a crowd of people and he said, “I don’t know what will happen now. We have some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountain top. Like anybody, I’d like to live a long life, but I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do the will of God and He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seeeeen, the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land, so I’m happy tonight that I am not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Because mine eeeeeyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Have you seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. We have nothing to fear and everything to Hope for in Jesus’ coming.