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INTRODUCTION
Today, a favorite subject of our church - the end times. Most popular Sunday School Classes. I
preached often. Imagine the End Times Headlines:
- People WHERE DID ALL THE PEOPLE GO?
- The Wall Street Journal DOW JONES PLUMMETS AS WORLD ENDS
- Successful Farming NO MORE FARM BILL - NO MORE FARMERS
- The Futurist IT’S HERE
- Better Homes and Gardens MAKING YOUR MANSION YOUR HOME
- The Fundamentalist Journal WE TOLD YOU SO
- Christianity Today WHAT HAPPENED? THREE VIEWPOINTS
- Time Magazine MAN OF THE YEAR/HISTORY: JESUS CHRIST
Timely Truths that Transform Us. (Timeline of Future Events)
We believe in THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST: that His coming in the air to rapture His Church,
which is our blessed Hope; is pre-tribulational; is always imminent; that when He has first by
resurrection of the dead and translation of the living removed from the earth His waiting
Church, He will then pour out the righteous judgments of God upon the unbelieving world in the
tribulation and afterwards descend with His Church and establish His glorious and literal
kingdom over all the nations for a thousand years. Then He will create the New Heaven and the
New Earth. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 5:1-3; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; James 5:7-8; Hebrews 10:37;
Jude 14, 15; Revelation 19:11-16; 20:4-7; 21-22.
Do you believe that time line? Do you believe Jesus is coming again?
But, it has been nearly 2000 years since Jesus said: John 14: “I will come
again...” About 2,000 since the angel at the ascension said in Acts 1:11:
“This Jesus, who has been taken up form you into heaven, will come in just the same way
as you have watched him go into heaven.” Revelation ends with Jesus telling us:
Rev. 22:20 “Yes, I am coming quickly.”
After 2,000 years, what’s the hold up? Come on, why the wait?
Those questions are not new. Been asked for 2,000 years. The Apostle Peter in
2 Peter 3:3-13 provides (4) answers to those waiting questions for
us today.
1. God has Participated in history before. 3:3-7
- Do you believe Jesus is coming again? Many do not.
- v. 3, 4, 5a Mockers ask same questions, ridiculing those
who believe.
- “it escapes their notice” that God has personally stepped
history before. “deliberately forget” NIV. They insist that
nothing has changed since the beginning of time. Uniformatarnism.
- Evolutions fits into this. The cosmos is all there is, time and chance has
determined everything. There is no outside force to influence this. We are a
closed system, just a continuing process of evolution.
- v. 5 But they forget on purpose, that God stepped into
history at the very beginning when He created universe out of nothing. God started
history.
ILLUS: Movie “Expelled” About Intelligent Design. Documents the
modern day mockers of creation. Mockers are still around...
- v. 6 The mockers also forget that God stepped again a
second time with the flood. Evolutionists seek to deny this one too.
- But the flood took place, the evidence is all around us in the rock layers, the
lay of continents, the glaciers, the rivers lakes and oceans. We have oil because
of the flood - fossil fuels. Most fossils formed at the flood.
- God has participated in history before. Peter didn’t mention these: but
tower of Babel - changed languages. The Nation of Israel. Every miracle in the
Bible is a record of God participating in history.
- v. 7 If God participated in history in the past, He will
direct the future.
- Greatest of all: Only way we can be saved is God stepped into history. First
coming of Jesus is God participating in history to save you and me.
1 John 5:11,12: “And the testimony is this, that God has given us
eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he
who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.”
- Think of that... That is most dramatic of all act of God, focus of Bible. Has God
participated in your personal history? Are you saved???
- After 2,000 years what’s the hold up, why the wait for 2nd coming?
2. God has a different Perspective of Time than we do. 3:8-9
- God lives outside of time, lives in eternity, and views time differently.
- He waited 4,000 in time from the creation until Jesus came the first time, His
coming was “when the fullness of time came God sent forth His son, born
of a woman...” Gal. 4:4
- For us today, we have only been waiting 2,000 for His second coming.
- With a 1000 years like a day, world created six days ago, Jesus lived 2 days ago.
God is patient. He wants time to be used for the advantage of saving souls. That
is grace and mercy at its utmost - He doesn’t want any to perish, but all to
repent. We who live in time are destined for eternity.
ILLUS: Grandpa Butler believed Jesus would come in his lifetime. Died in 1984.
Yet in past 24 years - any of you saved since 1984?
- After 2,000 years what’s the hold up, why the wait for
2nd coming?
3. God expects believers to be Prepared while we wait. 3:10-12
- v. 10 The coming of the Lord will be sudden, and
instant. Like a thief in the night. Unannounced. For unsaved, unwanted. For the
saved, wanted.
- “The day of the Lord“ is a description of the whole end times
events beginning with the rapture and continuing through the Millennium and
destruction of the heavens and the earth. We don’t know when it comes, it
begins with rapture, but while we wait we need to be living:
v. 11b, 12
a). “in holy conduct” - separated to God, different from
world, called out of the world to be separated to the Lord in righteous
behavior.
b). “godliness” - like God, devoted to pleasing God.
c). “looking for and hastening the coming of the Lord”
- wanting Jesus to return, praying for His return.
- We believe Jesus’ return is “imminent” - it can
occur at any moment. It is not necessarily “immediate”
The return could be decades away, or before our next breath.
“Be on the alert for you do not know which day your Lord
is coming.” Matt 24:42
- But we apparently can hasten it - Matt. 24:14 “This
gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a
testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
- The sooner the church finishes her work of ministry, Jesus will
come again. Thus witness boldly and aggressively, support world
evangelism, Bible translation. We have the technology today...
- Thus, waiting is for our advantage. God uses time for our advantage.
- The advantage of salvation first. So please make sure you are saved. Do you
believe the gospel? Have you repented of your sins?
- Serious fact: If you are an unrepentant sinner you are now living
under the wrath of God and each day you live is one day closer to hell.
- While the world is heading to hell faster than the speed of light, God always has
a remnant of His people left, a minority of people, but saints none the less. My
desire, is that my family and my church will be a part of that holy remnant. Is
Jesus your Personal Savior?
- While we wait, we have the advantage of sanctification - The wait for us is good
to mature in our faith, and work for the kingdom: Luke 12:43 “Blessed is
the slave whom his master finds working when he comes.”
- After 2,000 years what’s the hold up, why the wait for 2nd coming?
- God has Participated in history before, He will again.
- God has a different Perspective on Time.
- God expects believers to be Prepared while we wait. And finally:
4. God has Promised He will Come Again. 3:13
- Best reason to wait, best answer to why, we know He will come!!!!
- Do you believe Jesus is coming again? Absolutely - God promised!
- Isaiah 65:17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the
former things will not be remembered or come to mind.”
- Jesus said in Revelation 22:12-13 “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My
reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
- The Triune God keeps His promises. The rainbow is His promise from Genesis of no
more flood which He is keeping. The restored nation of Israel in 1948 is His
promise from Ezekiel which He is keeping. The Old Testament is filled with over
300 promises of the first coming of Jesus which He kept. The entire Bible is
filled at least that many prophecies of Jesus’ 2nd Coming which He is
keeping. He is coming again. Promise!!!
- When He does, v. 13 - look what He will gives us - a new
heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells - a perfect world, where all
the people live righteously. Rev. 21-22.
- Live confidently that God has promised. AMEN…
CONCLUSION
It’s Ok to wait. If you are a believer... If you are saved... If not...today is the day
of salvation. Before Jesus comes, will you come to Him.
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