“From Thence He Shall Come”aaaaaaaaa,/center>
What the Second Coming of Christ Is—and Isn’t
a sermon on 1 Thessalonians 4.13—5.11
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
The doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus reminds me of a windsock. Just as you
can look out a window at a windsock and see which way the wind is blowing and
how hard, you can tell a lot about a church by how much they talk about the
Second Coming and what they say about it. If you tell me nothing about a church
except what it teaches about the Second Coming, I can probably tell you nearly
everything else about that church.
Churches tend to either make the Second Coming their main focus or to ignore it
altogether. The tragedy is, many of those who shout it longest and loudest do
the poorest job of interpreting the Bible. Meanwhile, other Christians seem
embarrassed by it, as if we were more sophisticated than those poor, ignorant
early Christians who expected Jesus to return. And all the while average
Christians go without the comfort and courage we see Paul draw from a sober
understanding of the Second Coming in today’s passage.
Last Sunday I preached about Christ’s ongoing work in the present. Today I
preach about his future work. This sermon will answer a series of questions
about the Second Coming: Why should you believe it will happen? What should you
believe about it—including what should you not believe about it? And what
practical difference does it make today?
Why should you believe Jesus will come again? Modern, scientific people find
something almost inherently offensive about the idea. Can we actually believe
Jesus will descend bodily from the sky? That is essentially the pill we have to
swallow. Some passages speak simply of his appearing (the Greek word is parousia),
without trying to picture how that will happen. Others, such as Acts 1, which we
read last week, and today’s passage paint more of a picture for us. Isn’t that a
bit too much to believe? And hasn’t it been a very long time? I mean, if it were
going to happen, wouldn’t it have happened by now? Paul’s use of the word “we”
in verse 17 of our text may indicate that Paul expected to still be alive when
Christ returned. How long do we wait before we give up?
These seem to be the most common objections to the Second Coming. As for the
first, if you can believe there is a God and that he raised Jesus from the dead,
why not a Second Coming? As for the second, the timing is not important. God
does not experience time as we do. We do not know his timing, and scripture
repeatedly warns us not to try to figure that sort of thing out. What matters is
that the same Jesus who died and rose again returns, not when he does it.
We have several good reasons to hope he will come again. First, scripture
clearly teaches it. We find this hope throughout the New Testament. It is
neither obscure nor isolated. This is our best reason. Second, the creeds teach
it. Of course it is in the creeds because it is in scripture, but you know it is
important because it is in the creeds. “From thence he shall come …” This hope
has been woven into Christian life in every generation. Third, the logic of the
gospel demands it. Either Jesus has already done everything he plans to do—and I
certainly hope not, considering the condition of the world and the church—or he
has more to do. If he is going to fulfill all those promises about peace,
justice, new creation, and the glory of God filling the world, we should expect
him to come again even if scripture didn’t state it plainly.
Believing Christ will come again is one thing. All Christians who follow the
Bible and the creeds do. But what ought we to believe about it? What should we
expect? What will it be like? What will happen? Here we discover a lot of
variety among Christians. What do you believe about it? What do you think of
when I say, “The Second Coming of Jesus”? Do you think of television evangelists
with giant, wall-sized murals behind them with a full time-line of end-times
events? Some of these guys manage to work out all the little details. Or perhaps
you think of the popular “Left Behind” series of books. These books are a
creative blend of theology and fiction, following imaginary characters through
events around the Second Coming. The fiction is good; the theology is poor.
Allow me to explain.
When I was a boy—maybe 10 years old—I learned at church about the Rapture. Some
of you may not know what that is. The general idea is this: When Christ comes
again, proponents of Rapture theology suppose, he will evacuate Christians from
the earth. Those who are dead will be raised to new life. Those who are alive
will be transformed. All will be taken up into the air to meet him, and then
they all go off with him to heaven. Meanwhile, God begins to pour out judgment
on the earth. There are several variations on this theology, depending on
whether one takes the thousand year reign mentioned in Revelation 20 literally
and whether it comes before or after the judgment gets poured out. If you are
getting confused, that’s OK. I find it all a bit confusing too—not so much
making sense of it but trying to figure out how people read the Bible and come
up with all of it.
Anyway, at church I learned about the Rapture. Many churches find this idea a
useful tool to persuade young people to make a commitment. After all, no one
wants to be left behind. The books take this same angle. I don’t think my church
was using it quite that way. They were simply teaching it, and of course I found
it fascinating. Jesus was coming, and in the twinkling of an eye all his
followers would be raptured to heaven. One of my friends spent all afternoon
staring out the front window so he would get a good view in case Jesus came back
that day.
Later in the week I was talking with my mother. She was putting away laundry or
something because she was standing in front of a closet. For some reason she
went into the closet and was kind of behind some clothes. I did not see her go
in. From my perspective, I was talking with her, and suddenly she was gone. You
can imagine what ran through my mind. I called out, but she was behind some
clothes and didn’t hear me. A few second passed. I was alone. I decided Jesus
must have come and for some reason—a defect in my faith, probably—I was not
taken. Panic set in. Then, just before I lost my mind, my mother appeared again
from the closet. Jesus had not returned. I had not been left. Everything was OK
… for now.
For a long time, until I learned to read and study the Bible well for myself, I
believed in the Rapture. I don’t anymore. Let me share why. First of all, I have
learned to distrust what I call “blender Bible study.” That’s when someone takes
a few of the prophetic books from the Old Testament, a few saying of Jesus, a
few passages from Paul, and the Book of Revelation; rips them entirely out of
context; puts them in a blender; and mixes. So much of the end-times scenarios
preachers and book writers peddle is this sort of mixture. They start with the
assumption that all these parts of the Bible mean one thing and it has to do
with the future. No need to read the passages in context. No need to grapple
with how the author and first readers would have understood them. They take bits
and pieces and build elaborate theories. That’s not a good way to read the
Bible.
Plus, it is a fairly new way. I am always interested to see what the great minds
of the church have thought about things. I have a lot of systematic theology
books because I like to see how the best minds of today tackle the classic
problems. This is the second reason I do not believe in the rapture anymore. I
can’t find credible theologians who believe it. I can’t find it in Saint
Augustine or Luther. I am sure it is not in Calvin. In fact, I don’t think any
Christians had heard of or believed in a rapture until the 18th or more likely
the 19th century. Someday I’m going to have to dig up the origin of it, but I
haven’t done so yet. I have also read solid Presbyterian theologians such as
Shirley Guthrie and John Leith. No rapture. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, Ted
Peters, Robert Jenson, and more. No rapture. I expected to find it in Stan
Grenz’s Theology for the Community of God because he is a Baptist. Before his
death he taught at Regent College in Vancouver. The copyright to his book is
held by Broadman and Holman Publishers, the Southern Baptist publishing outfit.
I looked. Four times. It’s not there. Now of course we have to do our own
thinking, but I get mighty suspicious of any teaching not taught by the best
Christian minds of the past and today.
Third, and most important, I believe the rapture misreads the biblical texts.
And today’s text is the prime example. At first reading, you can see how someone
could read this text and get the idea of a rapture. But they’re bringing too
many assumptions to the text. What happens when we come to the text with just a
little knowledge about the Old Testament background Paul is drawing on and the
cultural background. What did Paul mean, and how would the Christians in
Thessalonica have understood him?
We start with Paul’s purpose. He was writing to address a specific pastoral
problem in the church at Thessalonica. Paul had started a church there, and the
Christians were initially enthusiastic. Then something happened. Some of them
began to die. Early in his ministry, Paul expected Jesus to return sooner rather
than later. He had no doubt passed that expectation on to them. They were
excited about God’s coming kingdom. Once some of them began to die, however,
they got worried. Would those who had died miss out on the wonderful things God
was planning? Of course not. That’s what Paul was writing to tell them. If they
understood what would happen when Christ came to finish his work, they would
find comfort in their grief and motivation to live as Christians.
Paul mentions the Second Coming in 1 Corinthians [15.51-54] and Philippians
[3.20-21] matter-of-factly. Here, however, he paints a vivid picture. Paul draws
on at least two Old Testament passages. The trumpet and shout echo the story of
Moses on Mount Sinai. In Exodus 19, when Moses goes up the mountain to the Ten
Commandments, a loud trumpet blast causes the people to tremble. Daniel chapter
7 is the other Old Testament connection. There the people of God, symbolized by
a human figure, come with the clouds of heaven and God exalts them over their
pagan oppressors. It is an image of God rescuing his people and keeping his
promises to them. Paul and the Thessalonians both suffered persecution. Daniel 7
meant something personal to them, and Paul draws on it here as he presents the
Second Coming in vivid terms. My point is: when Paul tries to imagine the Second
Coming, he goes back to what the Old Testament tells him about how God does
things, and he builds with those materials.
Finally, and this is the most important bit of background, Paul has in mind a
different kind of parousia—a different kind of royal visit. From time to time
ancient Roman emperors would visit their colonies. When they did it was a grand
occasion. As the emperor and his entourage approached a city, the leading
citizens and officials would leave the city to go meet him in the countryside.
Then they would turn right around and escort him into the city. This would have
been very familiar to the Thessalonian Christians, and I believe this is how
they would have understood “meeting Jesus in the air.” Not: we meet him in the
air, then he whisks us off to heaven (The text doesn’t say that!); but rather,
we meet him in the air to welcome him as he returns to make all things new and
see that God’s will is now done on earth as it is in heaven.
When we read this passage with a proper understanding of its background, and
keep in mind what Romans 8 and Revelation 21 say about renewed creation, the
idea we get is not the evacuation of Christians so that God can destroy the
earth and those left behind. Instead we realize Jesus will return to finish up
his work. All God’s promises for justice, peace, and righteousness will be
fulfilled. God’s glory will fill all of creation, so that doubt will be
impossible. I do not care whether you read our text literally or figuratively.
Either way it points to something real Jesus will do. He will return to finish
his work.
OK, so I no longer believe in the rapture, although I do believe Christ will
come again. What can we know about his coming? What ought we to believe?
First, that he will return. We’ve covered that ground. Second, his coming will
be unexpected. In the second half of our text Paul uses the same language Jesus
did: It will come like a thief in the night or like labor pains. In other words,
we don’t know when Christ will come. We have no need to know and no way to
figure it out. Third, when it happens, it will mean transformation. This is the
point Paul was making. The dead in Christ will be raised. Those alive will be
transformed from mortality into immortality and from weakness to glory. And
Christ will establish God’s kingdom. Heaven and earth will be joined together.
God’s glory will flood all of creation. Sin, death, and sorrow will be no more.
What about the warnings? What about judgment? Of course it will mean judgment,
but not, I suspect, in the way popular Christian imagination supposes. God’s new
creation ends the old creation. This is why Paul goes on to tell us to live as
children of light. We belong to the new creation. The sooner we leave behind the
old ways the better. The more tied you are to the old order, the worse for you.
And of course, some will be completely tied to it. There are always those so
happy in their sin, or so enslaved to it, that they prefer it to what God
offers. Jesus’ Second Coming will mean judgment in much the same way his first
coming meant judgment. John wrote, “the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” [Jn
3.20].
As you can see, there’s really not much to know about the Second Coming beyond
the return of Christ to set the world right. Living as we do in this broken
world, Christians have always found this hope meaningful. It has pulled us
through the very worst of times. And this brings us at last to our final
question: What difference does Second Coming hope mean for Christians today? The
answer is simple: The same thing it always has.
What did Paul tell the Thessalonians it meant for them? Two basic things:
Comfort and motivation.
When loved ones die … when tragedy strikes … when the world starts falling apart
… when society begins to unravel … when life stops making sense and you can’t
take anymore bad news … (I call those “weekdays” but I include Saturday along
with Monday though Friday) … does it help to know that God will someday, somehow
make things right? I helps me. I am no romantic, but I cling to the utopian
vision of no more war, no more poverty, no more children suffering—a world of
harmony, in which human dignity is respected and God alone is worshipped. I am
enough of a realist to know that human beings are never going to make that
happen. Yet I believe God will. I believe this because I believe the Father
raised Jesus from the dead. He is alive. The work of redemption, which he came
into our world to do, he finished. Even now he reigns with the Father and
intercedes for us. Through his Holy Spirit and his people he is present in our
world and working. Someday … someday he will make everything right. I hold on to
that. Sometimes it is all we have to hold on to.
The other side of hope is motivation. Because we know God’s kingdom is coming,
we ought to live now as kingdom people. It may be nighttime now, but dawn is
coming, so we ought to keep awake and live as daytime people. When Paul says
this, he means we ought to live holy lives that honor God. We know what this
looks like. He also means serving others in Jesus’ name.
Because we know God wins in the end, we know everything we do for him now is a
good investment in the future. We can be fearless in our mission. What can we
possibly lose that God will not restore many times over? Imagine you devote your
whole life to serving Christ, as Paul did. What would become of you when Christ
returns?
My favorite part of our reading is the ending: “God has destined us not for
wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for
us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore
encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you are doing.” That
says it all. Do not fear the Second Coming. Live in hope, and let that hope
motivate you to live a life pleasing to God. Amen.
rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
May 20, 2007
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