WHY YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS CHRIST

What does Jesus Christ reveal to us about His Second Coming? 

We know from the Bible that Jesus Christ came the first time two thousand years ago. We know that Jesus delivered the Gospel and ministered to many, performing miraculous healing of body, mind, heart, and spirit for three short years as the self-declared Son of Man and Son of God. Then Jesus was crucified. He died on the Cross for our sins, and was buried in a tomb, only to rise three days later as the Resurrected Christ to sit at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. 

Jesus gave as His parting gift the earthly presence of the Holy Spirit, who resides within Christian believers; who woos and convicts individuals throughout the world: the Helper, who along with God the Father and God the Son, are the One God in Three Persons: the Blessed Trinity.

Just how does Jesus Christ return? Why does He return? What happens on Earth and in Heaven as a result? 

The Bible says, and we Christians believe, that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God, returns to Earth to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42; 2 Timothy 4:1; 1 Peter 4:5). 

Read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and see for yourself how Jesus urgently wants us prepared for His Second Coming:

“But understand this" says Jesus: "If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:43-44 NIV).

Did you notice how Jesus describes Himself coming as a ‘thief in the night?’ 

The Apostle Paul adds: “I don’t think, friends, that I need to deal with the question of when all this is going to happen. You know as well as I that the day of the Master’s coming can’t be posted on our calendars. He won’t call ahead and make an appointment any more than a burglar would. About the time everybody’s walking around complacently, congratulating each other—“We’ve sure got it made! Now we can take it easy!”—suddenly everything will fall apart. It’s going to come as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3 MSG). 

But how do we prepare? Jesus came the first time to show us how: 

JESUS THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Jesus describes Himself as the Good Shepherd who carries a lost sheep home on His shoulder. He is now into 2,000 plus years of gathering His flock, all the while guiding and providing for them.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” 

(John 10:27).

Do you listen to Jesus' voice? 

Read the Gospel of John. 

You will hear it there.

Jesus adds this directive:

“If you love me, obey my commandments” 

(John 14:15 NLT). 

Why must we obey Jesus' commandments? He tells us quite clearly:

“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. 

The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide 

for the many who choose that way. 

But the gateway to life is very narrow 

and the road is difficult, 

and only a few ever find it” 

(Matthew 7:13-14 NLT). 

“But"—Jesus adds, giving us hope and the awareness 

we cannot do this on our own—

"with God, all things are possible!” (Matthew 19:26).

As the blind hymn writer Fanny J. Crosby wrote: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.” 

Why? Because suddenly, out of nowhere—no one but God the Father knowing the day or the hour, not even Jesus—The Son of Man returns!

MARK 13:32

“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, 

and all the angels with him, 

then he will sit upon his glorious throne. 

All the nations will be gathered in his presence, 

and he will separate the people 

as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 

He will place the sheep at his right hand 

and the goats at his left” 

(Matthew 25:31-33 NLT).

THE LION OF JUDAH 

We do well to take in now what Jesus declares to us today: 

“Stand up for me among the people you meet and

the Son of Man will stand up for you before all God’s angels. 

But if you pretend you don’t know me, 

do you think I’ll defend you before God’s angels?“ 

(Luke 12:8-9 MSG).

In the Book of Revelation, the Second Coming begins with judgment:

"The Angel swung his sickle, harvested earth’s vintage, 

and heaved it into the winepress, 

the giant winepress of God’s wrath” 

(Revelation 14:19-20 MSG).

There are other Biblical names for Jesus' Second Coming: 
The Day of the Lord 
The Day of Christ
The Day of Judgment 
The Coming of the Son of Man

At the Great White Throne Judgement, Jesus Christ consigns all who have ever lived on Earth as damned to Hell, along with the Devil. Those redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb are saved from perishing and resurrected into Heaven. Earth and Heaven are then transfigured into the New Jerusalem, or the New Heaven/Earth or Peaceable Kingdom.

HEAVEN & HELL

In the Peaceable Kingdom, people stream forth alongside the River of Life and the Tree of Life; a place where God is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and the Prince of Peace reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit world without end: where at long last, 

"They will be my people, 

and I will be their God” (Jeremiah 32:38).

NEW HEAVEN EARTH

WHY YOU WANT TO READ THE BIBLE

 

Dr. Dan Montgomery

As a Clinical Psychologist for 40 years, as well as an ordained Christian minister and theologian, I offer up my lifetime assessment of Homo Sapiens historically and today: 

That apart from God’s grace and guidance, 

we human beings are vain, fickle, and recalcitrant. 

I share this view with world famous existential psychologist Rollo May, who coined this phrase and personally shared it with me 40 years ago.
 

I still commend these classic Rollo May books: The Art of Counseling; Psychology and the Human Dilemma; Love and Will; Power and Innocence; Courage to Create); and The Discovery of Being. 

Are Dr. May and I alone in this assessment? Are we overly pessimistic? 

Or are we reflecting the view of humankind revealed in the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis through Revelation? 

Read the Bible cover to cover this month, 

without rationalist, humanist, or liberal-progressive agendas, 

and find out for yourself. 

The New International Version (NIV), New Living Testament (NLT), and The Message (MSG) are solid and current translations. BibleGateway offers excellent online resources. 

The Bible portrays the universal human condition as sin-filled and estranged from the holiness and purposes of God: individuals who do what’s right in their own eyes:

 "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes 

and clever in their own sight"  
(Isaiah 5:21 NIV)

They follow a pathway that seems rational or ethical or religious to them, but lacks a holy relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: A personal relationship, one that replaces rote lip service to a static image of the Trinity for the vibrant Triune God who created this Cosmos, yes, but who longs for each person of every culture or belief or DNA or sex, to know Him personally and trust him in all life choices.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Three Persons in One God, invite us to live a Spirit-led daily life in conversation with Him about the most intimate goings on in our lives. 

“Lord, I pray to you for help in my relationship with my daughter. We’re picking at each other too much. Please reveal a path for us that I can understand.” 

The Trinitarian God invites us, beseeches us, to engage Him twenty fours hours a day, 365 days a year, decade after decade—until in death we each meet Him face to face. 

At that point, we are either excluded from His eternal presence as a consequence of impenitent lifelong sin (Hell), or we are included in the glorious company of the redeemed, born again individuals who know, trust, and obey the Lord God Almighty (Heaven).
 
My suggestion to all seven billion or so persons who currently inhabit Planet Earth? 

Seek the Lord while He may be found, 

for today is the day of salvation.

 

SEEKING JESUS

If you haven’t received His blood atonement for your sins, pray for this free gift of new life in the Spirit and grace-filled reconciliation to God. 

This gift comes if you confess in your mind and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ gave his Life and Blood on the Cross as a once-and-for-all atonement for your sins so that you can: 

• have life in Him, and have it more abundantly.
• know the truth that sets you free
• follow the resurrected and spiritually ascended Jesus

 You make Jesus the Lord of your life by doing the Father’s will in loving God with your whole human nature, and loving your neighbor (the Family of Humanity) as you love yourself” (Luke 10:27).

God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God. 
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God. 

2 Corinthians: 6:16-18 (MSG)

Socrates, Jesus and Human Search for Truth

My high school conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of seventeen changed my course of life and search for for truth. So viscerally did the Holy Spirit enter me at the regeneration of my soul that my body reverberated with peace. I felt peace and love for people, where suspicion and macho-minded aggressiveness had reigned before.

Love and Peace of Christ

By the end of my senior year, I had led about twenty of my peers to know Christ. The principal of the high school, who had threatened to throw me out for drinking and fighting the year before, now asked me to say the public prayer at the baccalaureate service for my graduating class.

Then came the time of testing. I witnessed, all too glibly I'm sure, to a neighborhood girl four years my senior who had returned for the summer after graduating from the University of Wyoming.

Sarah listened carefully to my personal testimony about what my life had been like before meeting Jesus. How the invitation for him to forgive my sins and enter my heart had brought a turnaround. How the Holy Spirit and the Word of God brought me guidance and inspiration. 

Then it was her time to speak, and speak she did.

"Dan, I'm not at all impressed by your overly dramatic story about some drastic change of character brought about by an invisible being, who we all know died centuries ago. So you're impressed with the ideas of Jesus. Well, what about Socrates, Plato, George Hegel, John Dewey, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Sir Bertrand Russell?"

Socrates

I didn't recognize half the names on her impromptu list.

"But Jesus said..." I started to say, before she lifted her hand and flashed a scornful smile.

"Don't tell me about Jesus until you've read the history of Western philosophy and wrestled with the existential questions of humanity. Then I might have some respect for your opinion."

That ended our first date -- at least my feeble attempt at having a first date with a highly educated woman who the next day dropped off on my doorstep a copy of Aldous Huxley's Heaven and Hell, with a note that said, "Happy reading!"

Looking back on that event from my vantage point forty-five years later, I can see the hand of God in our encounter. Christ had nurtured me tenderly the first year of my Christian formation, but with this baptism of criticism Jesus was actually challenging me, as I later discerned, to take a Master's degree in Philosophy.

I specialized in the history of Western philosophy, with a sub-theme of integrating philosophy, humanistic psychology, and Christian theology—all preparation for my life calling as a theologian-psychologist.

My thesis featured a comparison and contrast between the relative truths that Socrates and the philosophers teach and the absolute Truth that Jesus Christ is. 

Jesus Christ: Son of Man and Son of God

I suggested that either a personal-transcendent Creator God reveals and anchors human truth within his Being, or we humans are adrift in a sea of relativity, with no way out but a pitiful death.

I still believe this is the case. And I know I have the advantage of watching the Holy Spirit work in my own life and thousands of others, making real the presence of Jesus in human existence, and directing the life path of those who call upon the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

For more on the integration of theology and psychology that places Jesus at its center, read:

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY:

Where Theology & Psychology Really Meet

Compass Psychotheology

How To Replace Fear of Life with Trust in God

It’s one thing to say we trust in God. It’s another thing to actually do it, especially in times of trouble and pain, when fear of life can overwhelm trust in God.

Here’s an action step to help you learn to lean on God with expectant trust, especially when life is too hard to handle by yourself: 

LEANING ON THE WALL TECHNIQUE

If you are willing, wherever you are right now, I’d like you to get up and walk over to the nearest wall.

Now lean against it. I mean tilt into the wall at a steep enough angle that if it didn’t support you, you’d fall flat on your face. 

Lean on Wall

Let the feeling of trusting in the wall spread throughout your body. 

Notice that you can even relax while the wall is effortlessly upholding you. 

This physical sensation of leaning into the wall epitomizes what it means to trust the Lord with your mind and heart, body and spirit. 

God delights in this experiential surrender to him.

Here is a prayer to help transfer your experience of leaning on the wall to leaning on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

“Dear Lord, I apologize for any ways I’ve been holding back from you because of fear or worry. I’m going to believe that you are here with-and-for me every day. Help me trust you as genuinely as I trust this wall to hold me up. Without you I will fall flat. But with you I can do all things. I love you. Amen.”

Lean on God

For more, read:

FAITH BEYOND CHURCH WALLS

Finding Freedom in Christ