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

Overflow

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(Today’s Reading)

The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact

(Book Installment 68)

The Plan Behind the Second Coming

Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan

The Importance of Implications

Belief and unbelief are upstream causes…with downstream effects. In other words, there are consequences to believing the Lord and consequences to not believing Him. Recall this word picture painted by the prophet Jeremiah, and think through how it applies to the Second Coming:

Jeremiah 17:5 Thus says the LORD,
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
And makes flesh his strength,
And whose heart turns away from the LORD.
Jeremiah 17:6 “For he will be like a bush in the desert
And will not see when prosperity comes,
But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness,
A land of salt without inhabitant.
Jeremiah 17:7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD
And whose trust is the LORD.
Jeremiah 17:8 “For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit.

I used these words from Jeremiah to demonstrate to you the dichotomy of perception in Chapter 2. Those who were looking for a physical Second Coming were like the man who would “not see when prosperity comes.” How could such a thing happen with the Second Coming? It was unbelief in what Jesus had said about the timetable. Recall that He said:

Matthew 10:23 “But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.

Matthew 16:28 “Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”

Matthew 24:34 “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

As you know from reading The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact, or from your own study of the Bible, I could be showing you many more Bible verses making this point. But since the Bible says we should let everything be decided by two or three witness, we’ll let these suffice at this point in our discussion.

But the ripple effects – the implications – of missing the Second Coming due to the blindness brought on by unbelief are of far more importance than just “missing” the event. They also cause distortion in one’s understanding of all the themes associated with the Second Coming – which includes the last days, prophecy, revelation, glory, inheritance, new heavens and earth, judgment, and more. The unbelief especially distorts one’s understanding of God, of the church, and of the kingdom of God.

The consequences of not believing in the Second Coming as accomplished fact are made even worse by the fact that it calls into question our faith in His resurrection. For if “we are of all men most to be pitied” if the resurrection we believe in didn’t actually happen, we are similarly to be pitied if the Second Coming didn’t actually happen because the kingdom of God is here and now and we haven’t even noticed it…or its implications!

Now we’re ready for the rest of the book – the bulk of the book. We’re ready to examine what a completed Second Coming does for our understanding of God, our personal relationship with Him, our relationship with other people – believers and unbelievers alike – and other important teachings of Jesus that have been negatively affected by two thousand years of a blind spot caused by unbelief.

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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

Overflow

***

(Today’s Reading)

The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact

(Book Installment 67)

The Plan Behind the Second Coming

Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan

The Importance of His Second Coming (continued and concluded)

One of the things I like about the apostles’ claim about Jesus’ resurrection, especially the way Paul lays it out in 1 Corinthians 15, is that the claim is falsifiable. That is, it is capable of being proven false. If something cannot be proven false, it cannot be proven true either. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is based entirely on history – specifically, eyewitness testimony. This doesn’t allow for “my truth” or “your truth.” It’s either true or it’s not.

Another thing I like about this claim of the resurrection is that it is corroborated by written prophecies that had been preserved for centuries before the event occurred. As to this point, Paul inserts “according to the Scriptures” twice in the resurrection claim he lays out. And just as there were multiple witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, there were multiple prophets who predicted it would happen. How many other ancient events that we accept as historically reliable are supported by evidence of this quality and in this quantity – much less, ones that include predictive testimony as well as eyewitness testimony?

Jesus’ ascension into heaven was also witnessed by the apostles and others (Acts 1), but the two prophecies Jesus invoked at His trial, that I showed above, were, as I said, spiritual events – not physical ones. This means that while Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension could be seen, His seating at the right hand of God and His coming in the clouds could not. How can we believe in spiritual truths – that is, realities we cannot see? By finding a source that has been proven reliable through validation of physical truths. About this process, Jesus said:

John 3:11 “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony.
John 3:12 “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

Jesus is thus laying out for us the process by which we may accept His seating in heaven and coming in the clouds (“heavenly things”) as factual; it is to first accept the credibility of His resurrection and ascension (“earthly things”). But the sad irony is that organized Christianity has, by and large, accepted by faith Jesus’ seating at the right hand of God, but not His coming in the clouds. Thus has the Second Coming been detached from the resurrection of Christ and made into a separate and optional doctrine of Christ.

By “separate,” I mean that the organized church has insisted on physical proof of Daniel 7:13-14 fulfillment when they haven’t for Psalm 110:1 fulfillment. Thus they’ve separated the two boundary markers that Jesus had presented as a set. By “optional,” I mean that all sorts of positions on the Second Coming are allowed …as long as it’s deemed future and not past!

It was Jesus Himself who said that man should not separate what God has joined together. Jesus designated that His resurrection and Second Coming were to occur in the same generation. He also said, in effect, that we were to accept both by faith. The organized church has not honored His wishes in this regard.

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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

Overflow

***

(Today’s Reading)

The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact

(Book Installment 66)

The Plan Behind the Second Coming

Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan

The Importance of His Second Coming

It was this testimony that got Him convicted that night…and crucified the next day. Two quotations from the Old Testament. Both were prophecies. Both were about spiritual, not physical, realities. The first one (prophesying Jesus’ resurrection) comes from David (who lived in the 10th century BC). The second (prophesying His Second Coming) comes from Daniel (who lived in the 6th century BC). Here’s how each quote looked in its immediate context.

Psalm 110:1 The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

Daniel 7:13 “I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.
Daniel 7:14 “And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.

Thus “the last days” were inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection and concluded by His Second Coming. These were the two boundary markers He set for the timeline that had to conclude before His generation passed away. Again, Resurrection began “the last days” and the Second Coming ended them.

As to the resurrection, Paul famously laid out the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. Then he went on to explain why it mattered so much:

1 Corinthians 15:12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1 Corinthians 15:13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised;
1 Corinthians 15:14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.
1 Corinthians 15:15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.
1 Corinthians 15:16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised;
1 Corinthians 15:17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
1 Corinthians 15:18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
1 Corinthians 15:19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

I love how comfortable Paul is, saying that if Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead as claimed, then faith in Jesus is pathetic. That’s putting everything on the line, and gives us the clearest possible choice to make. The apostles were not double-minded. We shouldn’t be either.

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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

Overflow

***

(Today’s Reading)

The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact

(Book Installment 65)

The Plan Behind the Second Coming

Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan

The Importance of Christ

These next three sections – the last three of this chapter – will summarize all I have explained to you in this book up to this point. These three sections will also provide the pivot to the remainder of the book: the three implications. Everything in the book to this point has been introductory. I’ve been laying a substantive foundation upon which we will build our understanding of each implication.

To fully grasp each implication will indeed require a strong foundation. That foundation is the broader context in which each implication is discovered, analyzed, and remembered. The majority of this book will be taken up with discussing the individual implications, but we will constantly be referring back to this foundational material to keep those discussions thoroughly grounded in what the Bible explicitly says – not in philosophy, theology, conjecture, or speculation.

In the first three chapters, I gave you sufficient biblical descriptions of the Second Coming for you to realize how profound a change it was to the entirety of creation. In this fourth chapter, I’ve shown you how the Second Coming is a part of something bigger than itself: the plan of God for the redemption of His fallen world. Then I showed how even that plan is part of something bigger than itself: Christ Himself.

Christ is the solution – the total and complete solution – to what went wrong with the world when Adam and Eve sinned. Thus God’s plan was Christ Himself. And the Second Coming was the completion of that plan. This landmark event left the world as Paul described it would be:

Ephesians 1:10 …an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth…

Therefore, we cannot separate the understanding of Christ from the understanding of God’s predetermined plan, and we cannot separate the understanding of God’s predetermined plan from the understanding of the Second Coming, aka the coming of the kingdom of God.

What all this means, among other things, is that if we misunderstand the Second Coming, we’re going to misunderstand Christ. Recall from chapter 3 that one of the most prominent themes of the Second Coming was the revelation of Christ. Jesus even called His return,

Luke 17:30 “…the day that the Son of Man is revealed.”

No wonder people who push off the revelation of Christ into the indefinite future struggle to understand Christ as God. They’re choosing to ignore revelation that is currently on offer – and has been for almost two thousand years.

Further, it seems to me that, when confronted with the question of whether the Second Coming is past or future, more and more people are, in effect, throwing up their hands and saying to themselves, “At this point, what difference does it make?” It makes a lot of difference, because without the information that the Second Coming brings about Christ, we will not adequately know Him and appreciate who He is. You’ll know exactly what I mean by the time we’ve finished “Implication One: Christ Is God.”

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