That the World Might be Saved

One of the problems with repeated false alarms is that those around you begin to yawn. They grow weary and even distrustful.

One of those false alarms, of which the church must admit its guilt, is the perennial conga-line of Christians predicting the return of the Lord and the identity of the antichrist.

If you’ve been moving in church circles for more than a decade you will likely have come across those who believe the end is nigh. One chap I spoke to recently said he thinks, given the daily news, Jesus will return before the current year is out. He can’t imagine things getting any worse.

Martin Luther said the same thing five hundred years ago.

The Millerites (Seventh Day Adventists) predicted that Jesus would return before March 21, 1844. When this date passed, a new date was predicted, April 18, 1844. A number of Anabaptists in the 16th century believed that the second coming would occur in 1533.

During World War I, The Weekly Evangel, an official publication of the Assemblies of God, carried this prediction: “We are not yet in the Armageddon struggle proper, but at its commencement, and it may be, if students of prophecy read the signs aright, that Christ will come before the present war closes.”

Hal Lindsey predicted the Lord’s return would occur in 1988, Harold Camping said it would happen in 1994. Ronald Weinland predicted Jesus would return on 29 September 2011. Jack Van Impe predicted 2012. I could go on.

Some of these people based their predictions on news in the daily paper alongside various readings of books like Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew and Revelation. Others based their predictions on the dimensions of Noah’s Ark and some drew their inspiration from Revelation 12:1-2,5 and an alignment of planets and stars on September 23rd, 2017.

As to an antichrist, contenders have included, Nero, Pope Leo X, Napoleon, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Barney the Dinosaur, Hitler, Barack Obama, Bill Gates and, more lately, that sinister little man, Yuval Harari.

Most of those who make these predictions have sought their justification by pointing to how bad they think things are getting.

You can appreciate how both believers and non believers could easily become jaded by all this fruitless fortune telling.

But what if the key to understanding and anticipating the return of Christ was not how bad things were getting but how good they were getting? Not grounded in our pessimism about the world, but grounded in our optimism about the gospel?

Rather than getting our end times theology from the BBC, the ABC or the CBS, the Bible teaches us to interpret scripture with scripture.

At His resurrection, Jesus told us at that all power and authority had been placed in His hands (Matthew 28:18). This rule and reign is further emphasised by the fact that Jesus is currently seated at the right hand of God (Daniel 7:13-14, Acts 2:33, Romans 8:34, 1 Peter 3:22).

The Bible also tells us that Jesus is coming back and the very natural question that follows is, when?

Drawing his inspiration from Psalm 110:1, Paul told the Corinthian Saints that Jesus would not return until God had placed all of His enemies, bar the last enemy, death, at His feet. His return to raise the dead would then deal with death.

But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:24-26)

In other words, the day before Jesus returns, this world is going to look like a vastly different place from the one we see today.

Between now and then, we are told to expect the kingdom of God to grow (Daniel 2:35, Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 2:2,3, Matthew 13:33, John 12:32).

This does not mean there won’t be plenty of dark days enroute to The Promised Land. But it does mean that the death and resurrection of Jesus did not simply make the salvation and the transformation of this world, our world, the one we’re standing on, possible, but certain. Like a mustard tree, this Kingdom is growing slowly, and like yeast in a batch of dough, it’s often growing imperceptibly. But it is growing and our Lord’s enemies are, little by little, being placed under His feet.

This calls for faith, not to mention a fair degree of excitable joy.

In addition to dark days, we are also told to expect direct opposition (Matthew 13:18-23, 36-43).

One class of opponents will be those who deny the sonship of Jesus. These are regarded by the Apostle John as an antichrist.

John is the only writer who uses the word antichrist, and he mentions it four times. Of an antichrist, John says,

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. (1 John 2:18)

According to John, as the last days of the Old Covenant and the final blow – the destruction of the temple that represented that covenant  – drew near (Hebrews 8:13):

• There were many of these characters already running around (1 John 4:3).
• Sadly, they came from within the church (1 John 2:19).
• They denied that Jesus was the Christ (1 John 2:22) and,
• They denied that He was fully man (1 John 4:2, 2 John 1:7).

Have we seen the last of such characters appearing within the church? Probably not. But we are also told not to fret about such opposition. In fact we’re told to expect it.

Jesus tells us that this growing Kingdom, this flourishing wheat field, will take place in the midst of thorns, thistles, tares, birds and the like (Matthew 13), and that this kingdom will nevertheless be built and that the very gates of hell will not prevail against it. We are told that the yeast is already in the dough, and sorry, no, it cannot be removed.

We have been told that the kingdoms of this earth have suffered a fatal blow, and that the stone which the builders rejected has brought them down and is slowly becoming a great mountain that will one day fill the earth (Isaiah 25:6-9, Daniel 2:35, 44).

This is the Good News and the hope of the Gospel.

Given Paul’s words to the Corinthian church above, if current events tell us anything, it’s not that the end is nigh, but that the kingdom of God is only just getting underway. 2,000 years from now, children will be sitting in Sunday school scratching their heads because they can’t remember which of our early church fathers, John Wesley or John Piper, came first.

It’s this belief in God’s plan of redemption for this world that motivates us to plant and build. Not as those who have no hope, but as those who hope in what Christ has already done and what He will continue to do until all of His enemies are under His footstool and the world is fully and finally redeemed.

And this is why, as believers, we are not pessimistic but optimistic. For Christ has come, not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved (John 3:17).