Our Creed: For Every Culture and Every Generation by Mark G. Johnston

Author:Mark G. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Religion, Catechisms, Systematic, Christian Theology, Christianity
ISBN: 9781596384484
Publisher: P&R Publishing
Published: 2012-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

6

When Jesus Comes Again

t he New Testament refers some three hundred times to the return of Christ, so this event is not something we can easily ignore or sideline in our understanding of

the faith. Yet, it is an aspect of the Bible’s teaching that has been largely overlooked in recent times—at least in many Reformed churches. There may well be several reasons behind this oversight in the current teaching patterns of the church.

On the one hand it may be a reaction against the obsession with eschatology and parousia theology which dominated the post-war and Cold War eras of the twentieth century. The general uncertainty of those times, with national emotions still raw from the memory of two world wars and the very real fear of a nuclear holocaust , meant that apocalyptic literature in the Bible seemed all too relevant. Authors like Hal Lindsay had a field day playing fast and loose with imaginative exegesis of every end-of-the-age prophecy from Daniel to Revelation. But, when it turned out that Henry Kissinger was not the False Prophet after all and the European Common Market did not become the final catalyst for the Rapture, credibility of these doomsayers began to wane. That in turn has fed into a growing cynicism, fuelled more recently by the multi-million dollar Left Behind industry.

On the other hand, the movement away from interest in the Second Advent has also been fostered by the apathy that has emerged out of growing global prosperity. The sense of our having “heaven on earth” with a relatively comfortable standard of living, and of war becoming an increasingly regionalized phenomenon, has steered interest away from the age to come. (One can only watch with interest to see what will happen if we end up in a prolonged global recession and an escalation of international conflicts.)

Regardless of where public interest—both Christian and secular—may currently be leaning, we cannot ignore the weight and frequency of biblical references to this theme. Indeed, going back to where we left off in our last chapter, the Christ who is resurrected, ascended, and enthroned is the Christ of whom the angels said, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). So, as we follow the creed at this point, it takes us from the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus to his return in glory. Having acknowledged his exalted status at “the right hand of God the Father Almighty,” its next clause goes on to say, “from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.”

It would be impossible to do justice to all that is contained in that brief statement, but let me try to tease out three major implications of this strand of theology that come to light in one of Christ’s own references to his return: “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matt.

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