1. 20% of Christians say Jesus won’t return.
Seriously? More than 20% of the self identifying Christians say Christ won’t return or they don’t know if he will return. This should be 0%. As Christians don't we find hope in His return? Plus Jesus himself said he would come back. Take a look at Matthew 24.
2. Only a third of Christians say it will get worse before Christ comes back.
I realize there is a lot of debate on this issue, but I find it hard to believe only a third of Christians think it will get worse. I personally believe the Bible gives us an indication that the church will be in ruins, there will be more suffering and an anti-Christ will emerge. Are we really at that place in time yet? Maybe I’m wrong on this point. As a pastor friend told me this morning, if Jesus comes tomorrow we won’t say, “Oh, you didn’t make it hard enough on us.” After all we have been anticipating the end times for 2,000 years.
On a calmer note, some other results on the survey were about what I expected. Will Jesus return in our lifetime? Who knows, other than God, right? And there’s a split on if the Bible gives the time of the second coming. Jesus talks about the future but also says no one knows the exact time other than the Father.
I find the last question on the survey to actually be quite interesting and something I’d like to hear thoughts about, because in the end, I don’t really think we know the answer.
Can people and nations affect when Christ returns?
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Comments (16)
As I looked at the survey in detail, I noticed that 95% of white evangelicals believe in a literal second coming as do 92% of Black protestants. Belief in a second coming also dips in mainline protestant churches to 60%.
According to the American Catholic Update here is what they believe and teach;
"Scripture doesn’t use the phrase second coming, but speaks of various comings of the Lord, often using the Greek work parousia (“presence, coming”). Jesus promised his disciples that he would come back to them, and he did come back after the Resurrection, breathing the Spirit upon them and fulfilling the promise that the Father and he would make their dwelling with them (and with us). In Matthew’s Gospel, his last words are, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).
We believe that his presence will be manifest in a much fuller way at the end of the age, which will be the parousia. We shouldn’t picture this as an arrival from outer space, as though he had to come “from a distance.” The image of Jesus “seated at the right hand of the Father” expresses honor, not geographic place. The image of Jesus coming on a cloud is an apocalyptic expression, taken straight from the Book of Daniel—“I saw one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” (7:13)—and should not be taken literally.
The Eucharistic Prayer for Children III expresses all this quite well: “Jesus now lives with you (Father) in glory, but he is also here on earth among us....One day he will come in glory.”
We don’t really know what it will be like when Jesus, already present among us, fully manifests himself in glory at the end of the age. It will be probably be as different from our expectations as was every other “parousia,” including the incarnation.
Is the end of the world near? No one has any idea. It could be 40 million years away (the sun has at least that much fuel) or it could happen a week from Tuesday."
Though even if I am wrong about that, I am not sure what difference it makes. Christ will come when He comes.
On the other hand, since it's almost 2,000 years now and he hasn't appeared yet, either the promise of his return is hogwash or it has been interpreted in the light of wishful thinking by those who went before. I'd like to propose another approach: take Mt. 24:33 (Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.) and see if the various End Times prophesies (all these things) have been fulfilled yet. Even more interesting is the question whether they could have been fulfilled at any time in the past. It turns out that only now, with our current technology, do we have the means to do things like force all 7 billion people to wear a mark that is the only legal tender for buying and selling. Only now can we build an interactive communications system that can force everyone--all 7 billion--to worship an image on pains of being identified as dissidents and killed. The idea that this could have been possible at any time in the past is just silly.
The ancient prophets saw things they couldn't possibly identify when they reported on their visions for the End Times. We can read those prophesies and recognize technologies we have now or can be expected to deploy in a near future. Such a reading leaves nothing that couldn't happen in Nature at any time, or couldn't be built with our current technology. In other words, real soon now, as software developers like to phrase their delivery dates, "all these things"--every prophesy whose fulfillment is to precede Jesus' return--will either have come true or be feasible at any time, say, through natural disasters or the availability of the necessary technology. Now that's an interesting fact, in my opinion.
With this in mind, I wrote a novel describing the End Times as happening in a near future, as a futurologist would interpret the prophesies. It's on the Web as a free e-book, Walkabout: The History of a Brief Century. Enjoy!
As for affecting the time of Christ's return, I think we can indirectly by ensuring that "every nation, tribe, people and language" (Revelation 7:9)hears about Christ. Other than that, I don't think there's much we can do or not do.
As far as whether what we do has any effect (affect? help me out here) on when Christ is returning, one possible answer is Mark 13:10: "The gospel must be preached to all nations." This seems to imply that the sooner the work of world evangelism is complete, the sooner Christ will come. So in a sense what we do does have an effect, although I am sure that the actual date has been fixed since the creation of the world in the counsels of God.