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 58)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 9 – How the Apostles Explained the Prophets
The Nature of God’s Transitions (continued)
The Second Coming of Jesus Christ was a work of God that occurred in an instant of time (“like a flash of lightning,” “in the twinkling of an eye”) but that was set within a great gradualness. Hebrews 12 quotes the prophet Haggai who promised that God would “shake the heavens.” In the instant of Jesus’ coming, the invisible thrones of the spiritual dimension were abolished. In the resurrection, Jesus had been set above these “spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,” but in the return, Jesus demolished them – which created the new heavens.
The new heavens are the explanation for why polytheism was the dominant worldview before the Second Coming and monotheism has been the dominant view since – and always will be. History tells us that polytheism, animal sacrifice, idol worship, each nation having its own deity, and related practices began to fall into disuse from the time of the 1st Century. It was not just among Christians that these things changed; it was, practically speaking, across the entire world. It did not happen uniformly or instantly; it took centuries. But there was nonetheless a precise moment when the spiritual fabric of the universe was changed, when the words of the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled, “And the Lord alone will be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:11). In the same passage, Isaiah went on to say that it would be a time when men cast away the idols they had made.
If the goal of ancient Israel was to establish monotheism in the world, and that was a mission assigned to Abraham and his descendants, it can be rightly said that they achieved it. For when Israel’s Messiah took the throne of the universe, all competing spiritual powers in the heavens were vanquished. The problem of polytheism was dealt with at the root.
The consequences of the Second Coming are still being worked out today. For though the Second Coming was spiritual, that does not mean that it was not to have physical consequences. Those consequences would be great and will continue for all eternity. For in the Second Coming, God was not overthrowing earthly kingdoms but spiritual ones. Do we think that the men and women of antiquity were so much dumber than us because they believed they lived under a heavens populated by multiple spiritual powers while we know better? Not at all. Our perception of spiritual reality is different from theirs because the reality itself is different. We are still searching and seeking to understand that reality. But praise be to God that we are not afflicted with the heavenly beasts our fathers in the faith had to fight. There is but one God dominating the heavens and those beasts have been thrown down to earth for us to fight where we are on equal footing. Yet, through God, they shall be crushed under our feet just as they were crushed under the feet of the New Testament generation (Romans 16:20).
(This concludes this section of this chapter.)
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