Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 34)
Part Two – The Timing of the Second Coming
Chapter 6 – Conclusion on the Timing (continued)
In our conclusion we should also make clear that nowhere in the New Testament does it say that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ has occurred. Therefore, it would be wrong for anyone to claim that it does say such a thing. What it does say – repeatedly and emphatically – is that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was to occur in that generation. Therefore, it is up to
us who believe the New Testament, and who live after that generation, to say the Second Coming of Jesus Christ has occurred. That is, the New Testament does not explicitly say that the Second Coming is accomplished fact, but given what the New Testament does explicitly say about the Second Coming, we have to believe it is accomplished fact if we are to believe the New Testament.
Just as the Old Testament does not say that Jesus is the Messiah (because it was written before He was born), but is the very tool God gave to prove that He is the Messiah, even so the New Testament does not say that Jesus has come again (because it was written before He came again), but is the very tool God gave to prove that He has come again. If we do not believe the promises, then Jesus stills chides us, “O foolish and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25)
The Old Testament proves that Jesus is the Messiah in primarily one way: the promises about Messiah are seen fulfilled in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament, however, proves that Jesus has come again in primarily two ways.
First, since it says He is coming soon and its witnesses are unimpeachable, and since all the visible signs Jesus predicted are confirmed as having occurred, then we may assure ourselves that sometime in the 1st Century A.D. after the year 70 when Jerusalem’s temple was destroyed, that Jesus indeed came. By the multitude of consistent statements they made, it had to have occurred sometime in the latter part of the 1st Century A.D. Since that time period has long since passed we know that Jesus has already come again. Only if we are willing to say Jesus and His apostles were wrong about the timing, can we hold to the notion that the Second Coming is yet future. I hope you are as unwilling as I am to say that Jesus and the apostles were wrong about anything they taught.
The second way that the New Testament proves Jesus has already come again, as if we needed another one, is that its description of the Second Coming can be shown to have been fulfilled. It is to that task we now turn. Or to put it another way, having paid closer attention to when Jesus and His apostles said the Second Coming would occur, let us now pay closer
attention to what they said would occur.
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