Home Page: www.ProphecyWatch.bizReadiness for the Second Advent
John Paulien, Ph. D.,
Chairman, New Testament Department
Andrews University Theological Seminary
When as Adventists we think about the End, we tend to do so more with the head than with the heart. We find it much easier to discuss current events in general than our own personal hopes and fears. We find it easier to expound on details of prophecy and history than to have a living relationship with God. We find it much easier to speculate on the nature and timing of the events of the End Time than to give people a practical path toward readiness for those events. Talk is cheap. Genuine life change is challenging.
What does it really mean to get ready for Jesus' return? How can I get ready in the midst of the rough and tumble busyness of the Information Age? These are questions that we will address briefly in this essay. But before we talk about how to get ready, let me explore some dead ends along the path to readiness. In my experience with Adventist audiences on six continents, I have learned that there are four unhealthy ways that Adventists approach the issue of getting ready for Jesus' return.
Overplaying the Nearness of the End
The first type of unhealthy approach to the End is a tendency to overplay the nearness of the End, to set dates and seek to build people's excitement about the absolute nearness of End-Time events. While hard date setting has thankfully diminished since the turn of the millennium, it is not necessary to set an exact date in order to "hype" the End. General statements such as "this is the final generation" are vegetarian versions of date-setting, but they can be just as distracting from genuine readiness as the real thing. And one day, someone will set a date that seems near, but turns out to be too far in the future and many will rest in false security until it is too late.
What we desperately need is the clarity and certainty of His soon coming without the time factor. The coming of Jesus is truly near for all of us, even if He does not come within our lifetime. My Uncle Gunther, for example, always lived in the full confidence that he would be alive to see Jesus come. A few years ago he spent three delightful weeks with my family around Thanksgiving time. On the Saturday night before his return from Andrews to Lincoln, Nebraska, I invited him over to my house for some "one on one" time. Since he was a retired college professor, I suggested we watch the video Mr. Holland's Opus, a magnificent portrayal of the long-term effects of lifelong, self-sacrificial teaching. The moving story stimulated a couple of hours of deep sharing that lasted until midnight. He was lucid, peaceful and seemingly in perfect health.
The next morning he got into his famous beat-up VW bus and headed home. Around the middle of the day we received a call from an Illinois state trooper. Uncle Gunther had suffered a stroke, pulled over to the side of the road and died quietly in the trooper's car on the way to the hospital. He had believed that the coming of Jesus was very soon. But in terms of his awareness and experience the coming of Jesus was even sooner than he expected. You see, from a Seventh-day Adventist perspective, unconsciousness in death means that the next thing a believer experiences after death is the coming of Jesus!
So even hyping the nearness of the End just isn't soon enough for those who die suddenly. The final events will take some time, anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. But many of us will not live that long. We need to be ready now, for none of us knows if our lives will finish out the day. A student once approached a rabbi and asked, "When should I get right with God?" The rabbi answered, "The day before you die." The student responded, "But when am I going to die?" The rabbi replied, "No one knows, therefore the Scriptures say, 'Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.'" Overplaying the End is not a healthy way to be ready for Jesus' return. Not only that, it is the major culprit in the second unhealthy way that Adventists tend to approach the issue of getting ready for Jesus' return.
Ignoring the End
The rejection of date-setting and speculation about the End has its own darker side. As people become disgusted with the excesses of "true believers" there is the strong temptation to swing the pendulum to its opposite extreme and give up all interest in final events and often even in the faith itself. Many Adventists today are fed up with teaching and preaching about the End. They don't want to hear sermons or seminars on the subject. They don't want to read essays like this. They say, "We have heard that the End is near for forty years, over and over, on and on, and nothing has happened. I'm sick of hearing about it." Others are sickened by events like those that happened a decade ago in Waco, Texas. Christians who have derived energy from a constant anticipation of the End eventually grow weary. When the End does not come and time moves on, people become more and more cynical about discussions of the End, and lethargy is the result.
Worse yet, more and more Adventist thinkers, in settings where they feel safe enough to be totally candid, are willing to raise the question of whether or not there will ever be a second coming. The ongoing delay (from our perspective) has finally raised, even among Adventists, the figurative cry, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." (2 Pet 3:4).
Many other Adventists still believe in the reality of Jesus' coming, but just want to hear about practical Christianity and living for Jesus in today's world. These are very important themes, but in themselves they do not constitute the full witness of Scripture. The Bible is full of teaching about the second coming of Jesus. Nearly a quarter of the New Testament is concerned with events related to the second coming in one form or another. No matter how painful it may be for some to talk about the End, ignoring the End is not an option for New Testament Christians. The New Testament is truly an Adventist book. Ignoring the End will certainly not achieve the goal of readiness for Jesus' return.
But what of those who have begun to doubt that there will ever be a literal coming of Jesus along with a literal End to history? They are not the first Christians to doubt, Paul faced a similar issue in Corinth. His answer then is no less relevant today. "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the first fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him." (1 Cor 15:12-14, 19-20, 22-23).
In this text Paul takes direct issue with those who would argue for both a "spiritualized" resurrection and second coming of Jesus, or even for the absence of that blessed hope. If we claim to be Adventists, yet doubt the reality of the second coming, Paul argues that our faith and our preaching are useless (1 Cor 15:12-14). We are even worse off than pagans and atheists, who have tasted nothing better than this life and therefore hope for nothing better. According to Paul, to have tasted the gospel without hope of Jesus' return is to be in a most pitiable condition. To preach the reality of the second coming is not to preach some pie in the sky by and by. Belief in a real and literal second coming has a profound impact on the way we live today. To deny the reality of the second coming is to give up the essence of what it means to be an Adventist.
For Paul the reality of the second coming is not grounded in calculations of its nearness, or in evidence from recent events. For Paul the reality of the second coming is grounded in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus was raised from the dead back in A.D. 31, our own resurrection at the return of Jesus is guaranteed. To doubt the second coming is to doubt the resurrection of Jesus. And if Jesus is not raised from the dead, then the gospel is an empty promise of good things.
It is understandable that the passage of time, and repeated speculations regarding the timing of the End, might cause many to question whether the coming of Jesus is truly near. But we must never allow our discouragement over the timing of the End to undermine our faith in the reality of the End. The gospel and the second coming should be distinguished as two acts of God, but they should never be separated in terms of reality. If the one is real, so is the other.
Shaming to the End
Another unhealthy way that many Adventists approach the issue of getting ready for Jesus' return is to try and figure out who is to blame for the delay of the End. People read statements like "Christ could have come ere this" if His people had only been ready, or "Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of himself in the church." They sometimes take the next step and seek to identify who is unready so they can shame them into action.
"If only those young people would stop bringing all that rock music into the worship service, then Jesus would come."
"If only people would keep the Sabbath the way they used to, Jesus would come." "If only people would discover the true teaching about the human nature of Christ, the world would listen and Jesus could come." Many find it necessary to graphically and repeatedly portray the sins in the church and the world that might delay the Lord's return. They seem to believe that by thundering against the sins of the church they can shame many to wake up and take their Christian duties more seriously.
The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that God is in control of events at the End (2 Thess 2:11; Rev 17:17). He is fully qualified to reform the church or discipline it as needed (Rev 3:19). The visible separation between faithful and unfaithful takes place only at the End, the Second Coming (Matt 13:37-43; cf. 13:47-50; 25:31-33). We should not expect to attain an absolutely pure, visible body of believers on this earth before then. Until the Second Coming, believers may have a certain level of discernment, but only God will be fully able to judge. Until then there will always be cases in which believers must leave the judgment up to God.
The biggest problem is that shame and blame theology doesn't work. It feels effective but accomplishes little. It doesn't get anybody ready to meet Jesus. Those who dwell continually on their own shortcomings tend to get worse rather than better. On the other hand, those who focus on the sins of others find it easy to live in comfortable denial of their own shortcomings. When we spend our time examining the faults of others, we lose sight of the One who appears at the End.
"The closer you come to Jesus, the more faulty you will appear in your own eyes; for your vision will be clearer, and your imperfections will be seen in broad and distinct contrast to his perfect nature. This is evidence that Satan's delusions have lost their power; that the vivifying influence of the Spirit of God is arousing you.
"No deep-seated love for Jesus can dwell in the heart that does not realize its own sinfulness. The soul that is transformed by the grace of Christ will admire his divine character; but if we do not see our own moral deformity, it is unmistakable evidence that we have not had a view of the beauty and excellence of Christ." --Steps to Christ, pp. 64-65.
The closer you come to Jesus, the more clearly you see the defects in your own character, and the less-inclined you become to blame the delay of the Advent on the shortcomings of others. There is a better way to promote readiness for the End than to shame and blame those who are not as far along the spiritual path as you or I may perceive ourselves to be.
Fearing the End
Perhaps the most common unhealthy approach to getting ready for Jesus' return is fear. Many Adventists worry about the persecution and martyrdom that the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy seem to predict for the final days of earth's history. Recently a ten-year-old girl said to me, "I used to want Jesus to come back real soon, but now I don't want Him to come back soon, because I'm afraid of the things that will happen before He comes."
Where did she learn that? I know in that particular case that she didn't get that message at home. Did she learn about it from her friends? In church school? In Sabbath School? Does it really matter? Let's face it, reading the Book of Revelation and the book Great Controversy can be scary business. Hiding in the mountains to escape prison, torture and death is no one's idea of fun. Life is better for most people when the action and the adventure happen to someone else. No one wants to be hunted and despised. No one wants to be rejected by friends and family. No one wants to be imprisoned and tortured. Only the suicidal and certain terrorists want to die.
Is it possible to face the End without fear? Is there a healthy approach to the more frightening events that lie just ahead of us? A helpful starting point is to remember the message of 1 Cor 10:13: "No temptation has seized you, except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
The message of this text needs to be burned into Adventist hearts. If you can't handle the events of the End, God won't ask you to go through them. Ellen White goes so far as to say that God will lay some people to rest before the End-Time because He knew they couldn't handle what was coming. God is in control of the events of the End. If you commit yourself to Him, He will see you through. God knows what you can take and what you can't. You are safe trusting in Him.
I have another idea about the End that not everyone will agree with, but I base it on the history of some of the martyrs from the past. Servetus was condemned by Calvin to be burned at the stake for his heretic teachings. Now I don't agree with what Calvin did, but the part of the story that interests me here is that Servetus screamed in pain for thirty minutes as he burned. By way of contrast, the godly reformer Huss sang hymns throughout his burning, right up to his last breath. He apparently never felt the flames.
What I get from this is that among the spiritual gifts there seems to be a gift of martyrdom. It is a gift that you can only exercise once! But if God should decide to allow you to witness for Him unto death, there is nothing to fear in the ultimate sense. You will not receive more than you can bear. God will be with you and give you whatever it takes to make it through. If God should choose you to be one of His ultimate heroes, He will give you all the courage and all the pain control that you will need.
On the positive side of End-Time persecution we need to remember that Jesus is worth whatever we have to go through to get to Him. The time of trouble is nothing more than a passageway to Jesus.
I remember a video I saw a long time ago called Princess Bride. In the story a young man falls in love with a princess, but he is not allowed to have her. She is kidnapped and moved far away. The young man follows. He crosses a passage in rough sea. Then he climbs a thousand-foot high cliff by rope. Then he faces the world's best swordsman. After defeating him he must face a giant hurling boulders at him and then engaging him in a wrestling match. After defeating the giant he outsmarts a wizard who tries to trick him into drinking poison. He then tumbles down a steep hill, passes through a valley where fire belches up out of the ground, takes on rodents of unusual size, and is finally captured and tortured nearly to death.
Unable to walk and barely able to move, he must now engineer the storming of a heavily defended castle with a force of only three men (including the swordsman and the giant who have come over onto his side). After desperate battle he finally gains his bride. And at the end of the video it is clear from the look on his face that it was worth it all in order to be with her.
So it is with the troubles of the End-Time. Surely what you may have to go through in the time of trouble will not be much worse than what that young man went through to attain his bride. And the prize will be all the greater, for Jesus is the greatest person you could ever know or ever want to know. If you know Him, the troubles of the End-Time will be a short interruption on your way to Him. It will be worth going through because at the End you will see Him face to face and carrying on a living, breathing, talking, listening and doing relationship with Him. When you attain eternity, the troubles of the End-Time will appear as nothing by way of contrast.
How to Get Ready
Now that we have looked at some unhealthy approaches to readiness for the coming of Jesus, we come to the matter that transcends all others as we approach the End. We have noticed earlier that the End is about Jesus more than it is about events or ideas. The following text is illustrative. "Now this is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).
In his message to the last-day church, Laodicea, Jesus says, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (Rev 3:20).
The tragedy of the lost at the End is not the quality of their theology, or the lack of good deeds; rather Jesus laments, "I never knew you." (Matt 7:21-23; 25:13) The climax of the End-Time is not the battle of Armageddon, but the "glorious appearing of our great God and Savior; Jesus Christ." (Titus 2:13)
Ellen White emphatically agrees that knowing Jesus is the key factor in a healthy approach to the End: "The shortness of time is urged as an incentive for us to seek righteousness and to make Christ our friend. This is not the great motive. It savors of selfishness. Is it necessary that the terrors of the day of God be held before us to compel us through fear to right action? This ought not to be. Jesus is attractive. He is full of love, mercy, and compassion. He proposes to be our friend, to walk with us through all the rough pathways of life. He says to you, I am the Lord thy God; walk with me, and I will fill thy path with light. Jesus, the Majesty of Heaven, proposes to elevate to companionship with himself those who come to him with their burdens, their weaknesses, and their cares. He will make them his dear children, and finally give them an inheritance of more value than the empires of kings, a crown of glory richer than has ever decked the brow of the most exalted earthly monarch" (Review and Herald, August 2, 1881, p. 89; Emphasis supplied).
What a beautiful summary of the centrality of a relationship with Jesus in a healthy anticipation of the End! It is the daily walk, the daily companionship that sets the stage for our expectation of an eternity with the same person!
And who is Jesus after all? Why would anyone wait for Him? Why would anyone want to be in relationship with Him? Because He is far greater than any sports figure, greater than any movie star, greater than any earthly ruler. Jesus is the ruler of the entire universe. Most earthly rulers have enough trouble ruling themselves. To know Jesus is to know the greatest there is. He made everything there is, everything worth having or talking about. He is the ultimate superstar.
But better than this, He knows all about you. Very few people who admire Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, Hillary Clinton, Jackie Chan or Nelson Mandela have ever met them, much less become known by them. But the King of the universe knows all about you, everything you have ever done, thought, or said. "Uh, Oh," you are saying to yourself right now, "I'm in really big trouble!" That's just it. Not only does Jesus know all about you, He loves you just the way you are. No matter what you have done, what you have said, or where you have gone, you are infinitely precious to Him.
A beautiful thing about this is that your relationship with Jesus doesn't require secrets. There is nothing He could find out about you that he doesn't already know. You needn't worry that He will come up with something you did a long time ago, or even something you're thinking right now, and say, "Oh, if that's the way you are, I won't have anything more to do with you!" There is no reason to fear confessing the truth about yourself to Him. He already knows! Nothing you could reveal about yourself could cause Him to leave you or change His mind about you. Your relationship with Him is secure as long as you are willing.
But best of all, He lives forever. He will never abandon you through death. Your relationship with Him is totally secure. These four special qualities (the King of the universe, who knows all about you, yet loves you just the same, and will never die) make Jesus the greatest possible companion any human being could have. A relationship with Him is worth more than any movie star, more than the whole world, more than the universe, more than life itself. A living relationship with Jesus is so precious that thousands have willingly gone to their deaths rather than renounce their relationship with Jesus.
How to Know Jesus
The concept of a living and vibrant relationship with Jesus, however, raises a problem. How do you have that kind of relationship with Him? How do you get so close to Him that you know that you are ready for whatever the End-Time could bring? How do you get so close to Jesus that the second coming becomes your longing desire? How do you overcome the greatest obstacle to a relationship with Jesus? What obstacle? The obstacle of distance. How do you have a relationship with someone you cannot see, hear or touch? How do you have a relationship with someone who is not physically there?
When I first wrote these lines we had just come through the great craze over the movie Titanic. Titanic earned twice as much money from theater admissions as any other movie of all time. What was the reason for this "titanic" excitement? One major factor was the apocalyptic interests of the director, James Cameron. An avid student of Biblical apocalyptic (an earlier movie unabashedly copied the basic plot of the Book of Revelation), he turned a movie about an 85-year-old disaster into a parable of our times. In the sinking ship many in the audience sensed a prophetic pronouncement about the fragility of human technology and even the future of the human race itself.
But there was another, more trivial, reason for the popularity of the film. Millions of teen-age girls in North America became smitten with the handsome young male lead, Leonardo DiCaprio. Many went back to see the movie several times, some claim to have seen it over forty times! They were developing a relationship with someone they couldn't see, hear, or touch! Few of them have ever seen him in person.
But wait a minute! Couldn't they see and hear him in the movies he has made? Yes, in a sense. But the movies are not Leonardo. The movies are only a witness to the reality that is Leonardo. How do you know Leonardo DiCaprio even exists if you've never met him, heard him, or touched him? You have millions of people testifying to his existence. You hear about him on radio or TV, you read about him in magazines and newspapers. No one doubts his existence, even though few have met him.
The existence of Jesus is even more secure. Where millions will testify to the existence of Leonardo DiCaprio and the influence he may have had in their lives, billions over the centuries have testified to the existence of Jesus, including the testimonies found in the sacred and inspired pages of Scripture. The craze over Leonardo DiCaprio testifies how you can have a real relationship with someone you cannot see, hear or touch. You develop that relationship by spending time with the witness about that person. You read about him, you listen to others who know him, you sample his own testimony about himself on TV, radio, or in a magazine. And for some young women in today's world, their relationship with Leonardo was the most significant thing that has ever happened to them, even though they have never met him in person.
So it is with Jesus. If you want to have a living and vital relationship with Him, you need to spend time with the Witness about Him in His Word. You need to invest serious time in Bible study. You need to talk to other people who know Him, and hear their testimonies about His impact in their lives. You need to get involved in the mission that He left for His disciples (Matt 28:20) to accomplish.
Can you imagine what it would be like for a young woman, who has spent weeks of her life getting to know Leonardo through film, TV, and magazines, to suddenly have the opportunity to meet him in person? Or to become his companion? To know him and be known by him? Would she be willing to pass through all kinds of difficulties in order to be with him? Of course she would.
Yet Leonardo is nothing compared with Jesus. Jesus is the King of the whole universe, Leonardo has enough trouble ruling his own emotions. Jesus knows all about you, Leonardo could care less whether you or I exist. Jesus loves you as you are, Leonardo cares only about a small circle of family and friends. And Jesus will be looking great throughout eternity. Will Leonardo look nearly as cute when he is 87 (I'm trying to get a spiritual point across here, I'm not trying to offend octogenarians)? A relationship with Jesus is the greatest thing a person could ever pursue.
More than a decade ago I taught a couple of classes at Helderberg College in South Africa. I spent five whole weeks away from my wife for the first time. It was not an easy experience. What do you think? As the "delay" in our relationship grew longer and longer did I begin to forget her? Did I get tired of waiting and begin setting imaginary dates for my return? No! I spent those five weeks thinking about her more than I had ever thought of her before. In fact she was never sweeter, never more beautiful to me than she was during that period of absence. The longer the time went the more eagerly I anticipated our eventual reunion. I "tasted" our relationship over and over in my mind's eye, and my longing for her grew and grew.
So it is with the return of Jesus. He is worth all the time and energy we could possibly expend in getting to know Him. He is worth going through all the troubles of the End-Time and then some. He is worth at least a thoughtful hour every day, reviewing His character in our minds' eye. As our relationship with Him is renewed every day, our desire to be closer grows. Getting face to face with Jesus is what anticipation of the End is all about. And when our attention is constantly fixed on Him no amount of delay will spoil our eagerness to see, hear, and touch Him.
So what is the bottom line for today? If you are spending more time with the Leonardos of this world than you are with Jesus, you have made an important choice in terms of your priorities. And I can assure that Leonardo will not be there for you when the End-Time comes! If you are spending more time with Titanic and other media productions, or in listening to secular music, than you are with your Bible, Jesus cannot be the all-in-all priority that you need Him to be in your life. Getting to know Jesus means spending time with the great Witness about Him in Scripture. It means talking to other people who know Him, and hearing their testimonies about their own relationship with Him. It means getting involved in His mission to the world.
As we approach the End-Time, life confronts us with two great witnesses to individuals with whom one can have a real relationship even though at a distance. These witnesses are the Bible and the movie Titanic. Which is worth more investment of your time? Titanic may be a real attention-grabber, but one day it will be forgotten (to some young people it is already ancient history). The Bible, on the other hand, will always be there. The male lead of Titanic can never compare with Jesus. Jesus is the Greatest. So the choice is really a simple one. Remember, the Word of God will last forever. Titanic, on the other hand, is going down!
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