Today, Saturday December 18
The “Second Coming of Jesus Christ
Revelation 1:1-3 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants--things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.”
Today I want to make sure you know what we mean when we use the phrase “the second coming of Jesus Christ”. Sometimes there is some confusion because Christ’s coming again is in two phases.
First we want to note that the reason we called it the “second coming” is because we believe that Jesus had a “first coming”. His first coming was when He was born of the virgin Mary in the city of Bethlehem two-thousand years ago. His first coming was literal! It is historical fact that a man named Jesus lived on planet earth for about thirty-three and a half years. His life was so significant that history dates our calendars based on the year He was born! It can be properly said, “2021, The Year of Our Lord”. Every time you write down the date you are recognizing His birth on earth!
The Old Testament is full of prophesies concerning the coming of the Messiah. But what is confusing is that those prophesies do not specifically separate His first coming from His second coming. The prophets could not see the period of time in-between the two comings which we call the church age, which was a hidden mystery on the Old Testament.
To be sure, most of the prophesies concerning His coming in the Old Testament were about the Messiah coming to earth to restore His people Israel and set up His glorious Kingdom where He would set on the throne of David and rule the earth! So in Jesus time, when the Jews were under Roman rule and oppression, they were looking for the Deliverer, the Messiah to come and set them free. They failed to realized He first had to fulfilled the OT prophesies concerning His first coming, like Micah 5:2, where He would be born in Bethlehem. Like Isaiah 53, where He would be despised and rejected and die as a lamb taken to the slaughter and be buried in a rich man’s grave.
Jesus in His first coming literally fulfilled all those prophesies! That is why I believe He will also fulfill all the prophesies concerning His second coming literally also. Now concerning the two phases of His second coming, we need to understand that it begins with Jesus coming in the air to rapture His church! (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:51-58) After that event the Old Testament prophesies concerning the “Time of Jacob’s Troubles” will be fulfilled in the seven year tribulation.
After the seven year tribulation we have the second phase of His second coming when Jesus comes back literally to the earth and sets up His glorious Kingdom. One of the clearest prophesies of this event is found in Zechariah 14:1-5, “Behold, a day is coming for the LORD, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward.” Read also Revelation 19 with this.
My friend, if Jesus literally fulfilled every prophesy concerning His first coming, you can be assured that He will literally fulfilled every prophesy concerning His second coming! Jesus Himself said, “I will come again...” (John 14:3). Are you ready?
God bless!