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 37)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 7 – How the Bible Describes Truth
Flesh and Spirit…and the Second Coming
This use of multiple visual images to communicate a single spiritual truth certainly occurs with the subject of the Second Coming where, for example, Jesus may be spoken of one moment as “coming on the clouds,” and the next as “coming like a thief in the night,” and the next as “coming as the master of the house.” It’s hard enough to understand if you’re trying to keep up spiritually, but if you’re bent on taking everything in a physical sense you become absolutely dizzied by the images.
In the dizziness, some people have tried to cope by interpreting the different images as different events. Thus you have the pre-tribulation, mid-trib (there are so many positions, a shorthand has developed for identifying them), and post-trib views of one aspect of the Second Coming. There is also the pre-mill (“mill” is an abbreviation of millennium, a reference to the thousand-year period mentioned in Revelation), post-mill, and a-mill (meaning no millennium). He’s coming back this time for the church and that time for everyone else. There’s a rapture which is different from the Second Coming. Such interpretations proliferate and have even found their way into popular Christian literature. Yet, such explanations are impossible to reconcile. All this confusion is as if the non-Israelite woman had responded, “Look, Lord, I’ll help you find your lost sheep and I’ll even sweep up the mess on your kitchen floor; but once we’ve solved your animal and children problems, could you please help me with my daughter?”
Some, in an honest and appropriate response to all these conflicting opinions about the Second Coming, have humorously declared themselves to be “pan-mill” believing it will all “pan out” in the end. The good news I bring to you in this book is…it did!
The different images of the Second Coming are not different events but different ways of expressing the arrival of the King and His Kingdom. The Kingdom itself is described in different images. In Matthew 13, Jesus gives a series of parables to explain it. It’s “like a seed sown,” “like a man sowing seed,” “like a mustard seed,” “like leaven,” “like treasure hidden in a field,” “like a merchant seeking fine pearls,” “like a dragnet catching fish,” and so on. The very fact that multiple images are used to explain a single reality is proof that no one of those single images can fully explain it. For if all the truth of the kingdom of God could be revealed in one image, why would God confuse the issue by bringing up more images?
(This section of the chapter will be continued tomorrow)
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