Jesus is coming back really soon

Is the stuff we see happening all around us “signs of the times”?

Here’s my answer. I’ll warn you, most people won’t be satisfied. Either…

1. “No.”
2. “I don’t know”.
3. “I doubt it”.

North American Christians are immersed in an end-time eschatology that believes things will get worse and worse until Jesus appears in the clouds to rescue us from all the mess that we find ourselves in.

And, of course, he won’t wait much longer because things are really getting bad.

Bad, worse, awful is a matter of perspective. And since, most North Americans fail to pay attention to history and world situations, most fail to realize that we are living in one of the most comfortable, prosperous, and healthy times in human history.

Maybe not the most comfortable of times in recent history, but certainly a lot better than the centuries of the Black Plague, no antibiotics, and poor sanitation.

Questions about the return of Jesus annoy me. Not because I don’t believe that he is coming back – I do.

But this emphasis on the physical return of our Lord to clean up the mess we are in is often a denial that he is already here and has given us everything we need to work in his name, with his power, to see change.

The expectation that Jesus is going to rescue us from what we find ourselves in, is, at least in part, a denial of the truth he gave us repeatedly, “in this world, you will have tribulation” and he told us how to respond to that.

• ·  He told us it would be hard
• ·  He told us how to cope and stay grounded in the faith until the end.
• ·  He told us that power was in sacrificial love and suffering and those were our tools to overcome the world.

But we, like many in Jesus’ day, have rejected those tools and prefer anger and seeking after power.

And things are getting worse. We shouldn’t be surprised.

So many in this time, live with this expectation that Jesus is going to come to save us when we have rejected his ways and demand that things be done our way.

Is Jesus coming back real soon?

Here’s the biblically answer

• · He’s already here and he’s told us what to do.
• · We are to live wisely, ready for the bridegroom.
• · Not because we are going to be rescued, but because Jesus is bringing the new heavens and new earth.