Sunday May 30, 2004
"Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.'" (2Peter 3:3&4)
It is my pleasure to take up a subject this morning that I am sure that almost everyone here on the Baptist Board agrees on. No, that was not a poor effort at humor. The matter(s) of contention, when we look at eschatology (future events), centers around exactly what happens at what time.
It is not my intent here to advocate a certain eschatological view, but, to look at a fact that, indeed, almost all of us agree on: The fact that The Lord Jesus Christ is returning to this earth; That God will keep this promise, just as He has kept, or will keep, all of His promises.
Has Christ forgotten His promise? After His resurrection, He returned to heaven to wait as Peter said, "...until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began."
(Acts 3:21).
Ever since the primeval promise in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15), God's inspired prophets have kept assuring the people of God that He would come as Savior of the world and then again as everlasting King, removing the curse of sin and death and bringing in everlasting life and righteousness.
But the centuries have come and gone, age after age and the world continues to decay, growing worse and worse. With global pollution, disease pandemics, ever-increasing crime, and countless other intractable problems, there may be nothing left if He doesn't come soon!
He has not forgotten His promise. Peter says, in the same chapter:
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slacknes, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." (v.9)
He has not yet returned because there are not yet enough who have "come to repentance."
We need not dispair, but simply: "...consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation..." (v.15)
His promise is sure, and one day He will return indeed! Therefore Peter concludes:
"Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." (v.13)
Let us not be as the scoffers, but let us join in the refrain of the apostle John, in the next to last verse of the Bible:
"Even so, come Lord Jesus!"