Second Coming of Christ - Part One

SECOND COMING OF CHRIST - Part One

 

Point to the Lord Jesus Christ as the coming One.

 

Christ leaves the earth.

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After the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, His disciples saw Him many times. He talked with them of many things, but He did not remain with them forever. The day came when He was ready to leave them. He took them with Him outside the city to a mountain called the Mount of Olives. There, He promised that they should receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and that they should be His witnesses. As He spoke to them He rose from the earth, and He ascended up to Heaven. The disciples stood watching Him, till a cloud hid Him from their sight. Then they still stood looking up where they had seen Him disappear. Perhaps they expected that He would come back again.

As they stood looking up into Heaven two angels stood by them in white robes, and said to them, Ye men of Galilee, why do ye stand looking up into Heaven? This same Jesus who is taken up from you into Heaven shall come again in just the same way you have seen Him go. But you must go back to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit which He

gave you.

 

This was a clear promise that Jesus would come again. He did not go to Heaven to stay there forever. He is coming back to this earth again. He had told them the same thing in John 14:1-3—“I will come again and receive you unto myself.” We have His sure word that He is coming again. 

 

We know it, too, from the Old Testament. Let us find in the book of Isaiah in the 11th Chapter the promise that all the wild animals will become tame; that the serpents will lose their sting. That has not happened yet. But it will happen when Jesus comes. Then, too, there will be peace on earth, such as there never has been before.

 

Just how is He coming and what will He do? 

 

The second coming of Jesus is something like His first coming in one way. It does not take place all at once. At His first coming, transfiguration and the crucifixion and the resurrection. When He comes again, many things will happen, too.

 

Now we are living centuries after the birth of Jesus and we do not know how long it will be before He comes back. But some day, and it might be today, Jesus will come back; not all the way to the earth, but in the air. He will call us Himself and all the believers who have died will be raised from the dead. All believers who are alive will be changed and made like Jesus. So He will take us to Heaven with Him. We read all about that in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Let us turn to it and read it together.

 

After that great event come seven years when the earth will be having a terrible time. Can you imagine what this world would be like without a single Christian in it? For that is what will happen, you know, when Jesus comes. He will take every believer out of the world. Great judgments will be poured out on the earth, there will be famine and earthquake, disease and war. At the end of the seven years there will be a great war—the greatest of all. In the midst of that war Jesus will come back to earth, from Heaven, bringing us with Him. He will stop the war and judge the nations, and set up on the earth, His own kingdom which will last for a thousand years.

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