How Will It All End?

Each time I think on the great doctrine of "Last Things" and those events that must yet take place in human history before the final consummation two experiences come to mind. One took place in a Japanese church, the other in a seminary in the United States. Halfway through my sermon, an elderly Japanese doctor interrupted my preaching.
"Will you please repeat what you just said?" the Christian physician asked. "Say it more slowly because I want to write it down!"

The doctor came from a culture strongly oriented to a cyclical view of history with civilizations rising, falling, but going nowhere in particular. This radical view of biblical history having a goal and a climax under Christ's Lordship so appealed to him that he wanted to make it his own interpretation of history.

In another setting, in a somewhat liberal seminary, I gave a message on the eschatological parable of the ten virgins emphasizing the importance of preparedness should Christ's Second Coming be delayed. I had hardly touched the subject when I noticed a decidedly nervous shifting and restlessness in the student audience. Their body language told me that something I said disturbed them. On the way out I heard one of the students say, "I am certainly never going to preach on that parable again."

Disappointed in the response. I asked the seminary dean to interpret the student reaction. His answer was simply, "Here we believe that Christ came back the second time when He poured out the Spirit at Pentecost, and we have nothing more to expect." Then I began to understand the students' confusion. They had embraced the doctrine of "Realized Eschatology," believing that prophecy was fulfilled either at Pentecost or in 70 AD when Titus, the Roman general, sacked Jerusalem and plunged the church into persecution. No wonder hearing that Christ will literally return again, possibly in their own lifetime, caused such agitation.

The contrast of the two reactions still lingers with me. To the Christian Japanese doctor, the certainty of Christ's being Lord of history brought hope; to the divinity students, a sense of distress. But what bothers me even more is the reaction of evangelical Christians today to the possibility' of Christ's return - not surprise, not wonder, not unbelief, but just yawning detachment. Admittedly, the subject of the Second Coming has been manipulated to promise certain dates and seasons, but we must not allow misguided teaching to cheat us of the great hope of Christ's return.

Nor should we misinterpret the delay to mean the rescinding of the promise. In 2Peter 3.9 God gives us His reason for this delay of history's climax: He is longsuffering and does not want sinners to perish.

Jesus clearly informed the disciples in the upper room. "The times and seasons are in the Father's hand " (Acts 1:7) referring to the passing of time and the significant events to accompany the consummation of history. God has not called the Church to be stage managers of the time of Christ's return. Rather, our mandate is to "wait" for the Spirit and "to witness," beginning at our Jerusalem and going to the ends of the earth. Jesus went away in order to return. He is waiting for the Church to hasten His return by completing His command to carry the gospel to all areas of the earth.

When we come to the book of Revelation, we do not find believers huddled in a corner hoping to ride out the storm. Rather, we see a multitude no man can number waving triumphant symbols, shouting that at long last Christ the King has come!

We, therefore, can go forward, making bold plans for the cause of world evangelization, knowing that the end is already predicated in victory!

                     - Helmut Schultz, OMS OUTREACH