How beclouded the air over the next coming of Christ is!
Especially since His ascension into heaven over two millennia ago. As religious claims abound that the Messiah hasn’t even come in the first place and so it is needless to speak of any return, some are therefore still expecting His first coming. Yet some admitted that He was indeed born of a virgin but was so powerful that He didn’t truly die before ascending into the clouds and so He would surely come back but that second coming would be to die.
Hmm, while some sects believe in His first coming and death, they don’t even believe in His bodily resurrection, they believe He rose up as a Spirit only and do expect He would be back the second time but straight into Armageddon, others believe He has even come the second time already and left us. Views and counter views just never stop coming, expect more.
While it’s not enough just to know that Jesus is coming back but what exactly He’s coming back to do, it’s equally important to beware of arrant dismissal that He’s coming again. For it is not uncommon to hear that He is not coming at all. We are already at the point where doubts pervades about His day of arrival. Which is fuelled largely from failures of bold permutations.
But what did His disciples who lived with Him, saw Him die, saw and heard Him bodily again after resurrection wrote about His return? How quick did Jesus mean when He told John, ‘Behold I Come Quickly’?
The answers lie in the Sign of His day of arrival which was the second question His same disciples asked in Matthew 24 verse 3 and the last question He sorted out. This coming is a Sign full of signs. It’s a sign everyone expecting His arrival would relish as we get caught up in the sky. It’s not a sign that should catch anyone unawares or unprepared to meet with Jesus.
Precisely, from verse 26 of Matthew 24, Jesus began to expound this Sign of signs. Chief again among them is the sign of deceit. This time a deceit of localizing His return to a place. In verse 27 to 28, Jesus made it plain His coming would be too obvious to be localized to an open desert or an enclosed inner room. It wouldn’t be a drone view of Isrealis’ temple building crushings. Isreal would see Him right at the same time as every other nations sees Him while her welcome of adulation is just their local reaction, some other countries would react in other ways without necessarily chorusing: blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus’ coming would be global just as Noah’s flood.
The speed of His coming would be as fast as the lightings spread east west. Excatly as privately revealed to Paul, it’s in the twinkle of an eye! And should anyone still linger in doubt or have forgotten the prevailing event before His coming, Jesus was quick to remind us here again in verse 29 – it would be ‘after the tribulations of those days’.
Next sign is stellar showdown. The sun would blank out should you be in the day at that moment. The moon by extension goes dark in case your wrist watch at that twinkling moment shows you are in the night. And for the stars, anyone exploring the space stations would see them shower, just as those on the ground watch them bite the dust. All would set the sky stage such that everyone sees Jesus coming in a glory that doesn’t need the enhancing effect of natural studio of light.
And when Jesus said where the carcass is, the eagles are gathered in vs 28, it literally resonates with what the Angel standing in the blotted out sun called for at Jesus’ appearance as John wrote in verse 12 – 13 of Revelation 19; birds to feast on the bodies of the defeated ruling embodied superpower. But it may also figuratively connote where Christ’s body is, the believers would be gathered when Luke 17:37 is pictured. But guess what, the very interpretation of that anyway is the least of the issues here.
What matters now is to be where Jesus would be at that moment. That moment of sunless moonless glory. It would be too hard not hear the trumpets even from sleep as those sounds of victory over death and grave would awaken anyone dead in Christ from lounging in Abrahams blossom. Then we that are alive, transformed alongside immediately into incorruptible physical bodies – all lofted from all cardinals would be caught up with Him. What a supermoment!
Just in tandem with Revelation’s flow of events in verse 11 to 18 of chapter 19. Certainly the arrival of Christ ensures the defeated beasts and false prophets are cleared up by birds.
So, what happens thereafter? Do we keep going up into the heaven? Oh not yet, as we are to reign a millennia on earth with Him but I’m certain it’s a place He has gone to prepare for us. This is where the evangelised Rapture from the grave and the earth meet the Second coming of Jesus in the clouds - in one gravity suspension moment that rests all brotherly arguments! How long that is? I don’t know yet. But that way, catching us up in the air with Christ and leaving anyone behind in itself is a form of judgment. Isn’t this separation the beginning of judgement when He said in verse 40-41 of Matthew 24; Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will begrinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left!
It opens into the era of rewarding every man according to their works.
You and I would have just been rescued from that nightly days of the world, not end of the earth yet. But that of this treacherous present world which is a system, for the earth is the Lords and the fullness and we fulfil God’s blessings of dominion in it. Which is why, while in this 1000 years of Revelation 20 verse 4, Satan’s free fall into a bottomless pit continues. Even if the 1000 years turned out so short as a day before the Lord, it is up to God how He makes time counts. Our lot is to be wherever He would be, even if it meant that the place He went to prepare for us in His fathers mansions descends with Him. Imagine a thousand year of reward according to your works where you live for real with Adam, Enoch, Job, Abraham, Rehab, David, Moses, Elijah, Esther, Isaiah, Hezekiah, Mary, Peter, Paul, Deborah, Liadons’ Gods Generals, Idahosa, Ayo Babalola, your slept ones in the Lord and great grand children- this is what His coming can do!
His trans-generational millennial superEden kind of life reigns upon rewarding His believer goes on enrapturing until Satan is released one last time to deceive again according to verse 11 of Revelation 20. Why? His release only shows us that God wouldn’t force anyone into believing Him at any dispensation just as He didn’t force mankind in Eden before the fall. I suppose by that, the fairness of choosing to obeying God or not would have then been served across all generation. Think about it that even if you have celebrated your super-methuselah birthday in the millennial, some generations would just be newly born in that millennial like Adam. All humans must have a fair chance to chose God‘s Word in the presence of a free and bragging devil.
That Satan’s second return, if I may call it so, would be met with Christ words of fire that would chaff this old serpent along the Gog and Magog he has deceived and gathered in Armageddon war into his terminal burnt. You see how far away Armageddon is! It is not your battle now, not even then.
Thereafter, comes the second resurrection that closes the final verses of Revelation 20. It’s amazing how Daniel got this too in Daniel 12:2-4. All dead and all alive, before and after the millennia reign, godly or not, great and small, everyone of all dispensations would be raised into final judgement based on names in the book of life in which you should be enlisted , just as paralleled in the latter half of Matthew 25. This is when death would be been killed and grave buried!
By the time you leaf this beautifully revealed scriptures to Revelation 21, it’s already a new heaven and a new earth downloaded. The old heaven above us and this earth would have passed away as Jesus would often bet with His words. Remember, heaven started passing away from the moment Lucifer was found with sin up there, as this with Earth since Adam’s fall. And just as it was in Eden, the new earth begins with a marriage between Christ and His bride, though a parable in Matthew 25 but clearly defined in verse 4 of Revelation 21, the new Jerusalem he promised to prepare - His bride!
Dear, you shouldn’t miss entering through that revealed gate of the New Jerusalem brazen with the old testament’s 12 tribes of Israel. That everlasting city raised on the foundation of the new testament’s 12 disciples as revealed in the marriage sequence of Revelation 21 is yours. Little wonder He chose Peter and made him a rock. So, it appears to me that surviving the deceit of the devil in this tens to hundred of years of ours before Jesus’s second coming is first to prepare us for His reward of a millennia reign with Him, and then conquering his deceit at Armageddon at the end of the millennia confirms our bodily life to eternity where the calendar is up to timelessness!
But all these are downers. They are beautiful to know, at times interesting to debate, but what is it that matters now?
Taking to heart how Jesus closed up Matthew 24. Before anyone among the curious disciples could ask, He volunteered the timing of His coming and was laser specific . “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” This further shows is that, God when seen as a Father is known for secrets belonging to Him, when manifested as the son is known for revealing things in part so that we know in part but when seen as the Holy Spirit, He reveals all things. And the Spirit revealed just same to Paul. In the twinkle of an eye! What did He tell you? So How Quick Jesus comes is a secret God has kept from all as the father. Jesus’ coming is God Quick. It’s on His time. Stop Your observatory calculations won’t help. Isn’t a thousand year just like a day to Him and the reverse the same?
Jesus validated Noah’s flood with a lot of warning that rhymes with the last chapter of John’s Book of Jesus’ Revelation. At the heart of it all is for you to Live Ready now. So reads verse 44 of Matthew 24, “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect”. Not even any of the ten virgins expecting Him as narrated in Matthew 25 parable knew the hour the bridegroom arrived. You are first a virgin by His righteousness imputed in you at believing that Jesus came the first time, died for you, resurrected bodily and is coming back to catch you up to Himself.
That‘s some readiness. And it’s like having the lamp of His word unto your feet. Next is being filled with the anointing of His Holy Spirit of Wisdom: having enough to burn and light your path that would get you flight ready even when caught asleep. Expect Him to come when you don’t expect!
Join us in BICQ 4 as you get filled with this Spirit of love that FRIGHTEN YOUR FEAR.
“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work.”
Topic Writer – Olusanya Olusola
Edited by Olusanya Racheal
