5 Reasons Jesus is Coming Soon

Jesus is coming again. The Bible foretells His return physically, visibly, audibly, personally. Everyone will hear His arrival; everyone will see it. None living have experienced anything like it.

There will be a complete change. Everyone will be affected. Something that can’t be explained by science is about to happen. A moment will come when God will act, the page will be turned, every person will be weighed in heaven’s moral balances. It will be pass/fail time. No more sliding, no notes from your teacher, your doctor, your parents, no more excuses, do-overs, or forgiveness. Everything will be measured and settled for eternity.

But in our world where there are so many opinions, different understandings, different interpretations; why should someone listen to us?

I want to share with you five reasons that you should anticipate that Jesus is coming soon. I’m going to start with a logical reason, and follow that with four Bible reasons.

1. The Unprecedented Nature of the Present Situation

One reason is the unprecedented nature of this present situation.

1. Never before has the world been so delicately and economically interconnected
2. Never before have governments and citizens been mired in so much financial debt
3. Never before have we experienced so much control of our movement
4. Never before have we experienced so much control of our bodies
5. Never before has so much controlled narrative been broadcast by such a self-important tiny group of the wealthy
6. Never before has there been so much censorship
7. Never before has the world seen so much monopoly
8. Never before has the state been stronger or the church weaker
9. Never before has there been so large a population
10. Never before has been seen so much control of the population by a wealthy elite so concerned about overpopulation

You might have expected some “never befores” I have not listed. And I refer you back to number five...

2. The Prophetic Prediction of Globally-Controlled Population

Revelation 13 foretells developments for us. God gave us a gift. He showed us what would happen at the end of time. There is an entity, a power. It is represented as a beast that sounds like a lamb, has two horns like a lamb, yet speaks as a dragon. It so happens that our nation—the United States, comes onto the scene at the very time specified (close of the 1260 days/years, i.e. 1798) and has two founding principles: Protestantism, a church without a pope, and republicanism, a state without a king, a republican or representative form of government. This nation founded upon the broad foundations of civil and religious liberty.

Look what this power does. Verse 13 it performs great signs. It makes fire come down from heaven. Verse 14, it acts, it makes an image to the beast. What is the speaking? The little horn power of Daniel seven speaks through its mouth; it speaks blasphemies and pompous words. But the lamblike/dragonlike beast speaks differently. It speaks through its legislative and judicial authorities. So, making an image to the beast would be the action of these legislative bodies.

What happens? We can be sure all those juicy Constitutional and Declaration of Independence rights are not lost in a moment. The shift is gradual, always under color of some good purpose. But verses 15-17 tell us we will come to a time when you cannot buy or sell unless you do what the government says. If you refuse to obey men, the false prophet, the lamblike/dragonlike beast, will mark you for murder. You will be forced to engage in activity which in effect is a worship of the beast or the state threatens you will be killed. It gets very simple in the end.

It boils down to control. Personal freedom evaporates and the church-state combination comes to almost absolute control over the bodies and souls of men.

How many powers are there on the planet capable of enforcing such things? Exactly one. Someday America will do this, a hybrid of state and non-state power. Revelation 13 predicts this.

3. The Normalcy-then-Sudden-destruction Paradigm

The Bible foretells a world that has accepted a global master-narrative but which then is totally upended. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3:

But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. For when they say “peace and safety,” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they shall not escape.

The collapse of the global master narrative will be sudden. First Thessalonians five portrays the suddenness and absoluteness of this fall. You know that Rome was a Republic, then suffered a series of severe internal conflicts, and was changed into an empire where absolute power was held by the Emperor--from distributed power to centralized power held by an absolute dictator. You’ve heard of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. They saw their nation as an endless empire. At its height it extended from Northern England to the Persian Gulf.

“Peace and safety,” was a slogan for the government providing all security. Paul warns that when people are trusting in the controlling power of a vast state entity, then destruction will come. This is the description of Babylon’s final fall. You can read about it again and again in the Bible. Daniel chapter five, king and cronies are engaged in a drunken party and literal Babylon falls in one night. Revelation 17 and 18, spiritual Babylon is engaged in its drunken party controlling the bodies and souls of men; in one hour it is destroyed.

4. God’s Moral Goal for Humanity

There is another element we should remember when we think about the Second Coming of Jesus: God’s moral purpose for humanity. Heaven isn’t waiting for wicked men to demonstrate how low they can go. Heaven is waiting for people to show what happens when they take Jesus seriously.

This is why in Romans 10:4 the Bible writer said, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Jesus is the end of the law, that is, He is the telos, the goal of the law. God’s law revealed to man is also a revelation of Christ, of the character of Jesus. God’s law shows us what Jesus is like. He doesn’t steal, commit adultery, and so on. He is the perfect opposite of those negatives in the law, and the perfect example of the positives in the law.

So He is the perfect son, the perfect sabbath-keeper. He is the perfect example of someone who has no other Gods before God the Father. Jesus is our pattern. God reveals truth so that we will become more like Jesus. Jesus is the way, the truth an the life. He is the pattern for how humans are actually designed to live. He is the example and you and I are the copiers of the example.

We see God’s moral purpose again in Ephesians 4:17-24:

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Here is a moral “ought.” We “should” no longer walk as the rest of the gentiles walk. But we have learned something from Christ. What? To put off our former conduct, and to be renewed, to put on the new man, which was what? “Created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” When was this man created? When the man was made new, when the man accepted Jesus, when the man turned toward the cross and said Yes, all and everything for You Lord Jesus!

Earth is His laboratory and God is filling it up with test subjects. He doesn’t compel, He doesn’t force. It would only be for the common good of all men that we would become good and unselfish in Him, but He will not force us to be good, not even for the common good. Becoming a Christian is voluntary. Joining with Christ is voluntary. Copying the pattern is voluntary. God has a moral purpose in setting before us Christ and Him crucified. He wants us to see what goodness looks like and to be drawn toward God’s goodness through His gift of the selfless Jesus.

As God earlier put the morality of His servant Job on display (see the book of Job), in the end-time, He puts the morality of His end-time believers on display. He tells the universe “Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

5. The Gift of Christ

Finally, we live in a time of nullification of values. Supposedly, there really is no right or wrong, or, right and wrong is merely the consensus of a group of people who have significant control. Then right and wrong I non-existent or it is made by humans. The dominance of these theories means that moral values have plummeted all around us. If we can’t know them or if they are human-created, then they are not transcendant or absolute. So, take a look at the world that has left us with and weep. It is a very cold place, a moral disaster. There is no benevolent God who gives you anything. What you do have has been given you by impersonal nature, clawed out in countless bloody murderous encounters between creatures until the most violent prevailed. Life is a zero-sum game where the best murderer is king. Can you really build a positive and lasting civilization on top of that theory?

But in contrast to that comes Christianity. God made the creation in harmony with itself. It was a deathless paradise. He made the highest beings moral and gave them free choice. That free choice was abused, sin and death ensued, and then God Himself provided a solution. Men with corrupted natures could be transformed, brought back to holiness if they would simply receive forgiveness and strength to obey from God. God the Father gave Jesus. He entered into His own creation, taught unselfish life, suffered torture and murder at the hands of the creatures He had made, forgives all who are willing be be changed, and changes them. Through Jesus we can be restored to healthiness, happiness, and holiness.

Jesus was given as a gift to you, to die in your place, to receive the punishment properly due you for your sins. In contrast to the hopeless, futureless, moralityless, empty present you are offered by a world that does not know God, God the Father offers you the gift of His Son Jesus to be your Redeemer. He not only offers you such gifts, but gifts that matter, not neutral gifts but good gifts. Jesus died in my place to give me eternal life if I would receive it.

Will I receive it?

Those are the questions which confront us today.

Conclusion

Five reasons that we should believe that Jesus is coming again:

1. The unprecedented nature of our present situation
2. The prophetic prediction of a globally-controlled population
3. The Normalcy-then-sudden-destruction paradigm
4. God’s moral goal for humanity
5. The gift of Christ

Even so, there are many who will not wake up, not even venture to consider the possibility that they have hitched their wagon to a collapsing system, the system of sin and death. God offers them life but they have a covenant with death. They are too busy to consider life. Too busy dying. Oh listener, reader, person in distress, person comfortable, whoever you are, where ever you are, turn and look. Look to the cross. There hangs Jesus making explicit the offer of God of life. He was nailed there for you and I. He is healing this world. It is almost over, almost ready to be rebooted for eternity.

Jesus is coming again.

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