Your Bible Questions Answered, April 10, 2024

LET US NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE, AS THE DISCIPLES OF
JESUS, IN ASSUMING GOD’S KINGDOM “MUST” BE IMMINENT—IMMEDIATELY ON THE HORIZON

We document this point in our book 45 Common Mistakes About Last Days Bible Prophecy Cleared Up … It can be found on our website educatingourworld under the heading of Bible Prophecy. It is a free download.

At the outset, we need to recognize a mistake that Jesus’ disciples made at His First Coming—one that we do not want to repeat with respect to His Second Coming—they were assuming God’s kingdom was coming to earth immediately.

In fact, what we will discover, is that Jesus not only warned His disciples before His death not to expect His kingdom to come immediately, but also His first words to them, after His resurrection from the dead, was a rebuke for not properly understanding what the Scriptures, along with Him Himself, had specifically predicted about the future!

It seems they so desperately wanted the kingdom of God to appear immediately that they ignored the clear predictions of Scripture, as well as Jesus’ own predictions.

WE DO NOT WANT TO REPEAT THE SAME ERROR AS HIS DISCIPLES

In the same way, we should not so desperately desire to see Jesus’ return that we ignore what the Bible actually says about the signs of His coming. To the point, we should not embrace any interpretation of Scripture that specifically tells us when He is returning, or that He must come back very soon.

While the signs of His return are certainly there for all to see, as we have documented in our book 25 Signs We Are Near The End, there is a huge difference between believing that the Lord “may” or “can” come back relatively soon, as opposed to the idea that He “must” return soon because the Bible specifically predicts it. We cannot overemphasize this fact: Scripture teaches no such thing!

One glaring example is the misunderstanding of Jesus’ parable of the “fig tree.” Many Christians have mistakenly believed that the fig tree represented Israel and the budding leaves in His parable was a sign that when Israel returned to its homeland in the last days, then prophetic clock would start. It would then be only a matter of a generation, forty years, to the time when Christ must return.

In this book, we have documented in detail that the parable of the fig tree has nothing to do with Israel’s return to their homeland in the last days, and that the forty-year generation who sees their return are not promised to see the Second Coming of Christ.

To the point, there are no signs in Scripture, whatsoever, that give us a certain time frame as to when Christ must appear to catch up the true believers, the rapture of the church, and then come again to earth to set up His kingdom. Therefore, nobody has the right to say that His coming will be imminent or must happen any day now. Indeed, interpretations like this have caused discouragement as well as disillusion among Bible believers.

So, how do we go about not making mistakes like these? In other words, what should be our approach in coming up with a biblical answer as to what we should expect to see in the last days?

First, we are to make every effort, to be diligent, to do all that we can, to be someone worthy of God’s approval. How do we do this? Specifically, it is by accurately handling, or dealing straightforwardly, with the Word of the Truth!

To do this, first and foremost, we need to understand the “big idea,” or “ideas,” that the author desires to bring across. We can only do this by reading each biblical book, or letter, as a unit.

The one thing we must not do, in attempting to determine precisely when certain biblical events will take place, is to set dates, or to assume that some passage of Scripture forces us to conclude that Christ must come back at such and such a date, or that His Second Coming is immediate. None of us are able to say this!

Again, our attitude should be this—the signs are certainly obvious that Jesus’ Second Coming to the world is on schedule, it will indeed take place! However, we cannot know for certain “when” it will happen and we certainly cannot assume, like Jesus’ disciples, that it “must” happen immediately.

There is an Old Testament passage that sums up what our attitude should be as we live in these “last days:”

From Issachar there were 200 leaders and all their relatives at their command—they understood the times and knew what Israel should do (1 Chronicles 12:32 NET).

Therefore, as our Lord commanded, we must “occupy,” engage in “doing business”—to fulfill our “present duties”— while we are waiting patiently for His return.

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