Why Hasn’t Jesus Returned?

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to The Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome to Words of Life. I'm Cheryl Gillum.

And I'm Bernie Dake. We're so glad that you're with us again. And sadly, this is our final episode in this series, Skeptics Welcome. We want to share our gratitude to Captain Ken Argot for putting this series together. I think he's definitely been the right pastor for this series. And if I could say, he's my pastor, or what we call in The Salvation Army, a core officer, and he always comes prepared.

So I'm not surprised by what he's been giving us throughout the series. Yeah. And in this final episode, Ken discusses end times events and addresses the question, why hasn't Jesus returned?

Yeah. I mean, how many times have you thought in the madness of this world that Jesus just come back? There's just so many questions. But at the end of the day, I think we have to obviously put our faith and our trust in the Lord. He knows what he's doing. We don't always know the big picture. And we're a small part of everything that he has in store for humanity and the hope that is to come. He does give us glimpses of the mystery of this, though. I mean, he does say in his word that only the Father, not even Jesus, knows the date and the time, or the day and the time, right?

Not the angels in heaven, nobody except for the Father. But he does say you can be discerning about the times, about the season we're in. And if we read through the Bible, it gives us description of the way the world will be.

But bottom line is, is that while we're here in the midst of that, we need to be living our lives in such a way to be witnesses of who Jesus is, that he's coming back again. Amen. And that he loves us. Amen. He loves this world.

And he's not finished yet. Nope. Thank God. There's more to come.

Yes. And it's such a privilege to share any part of this time on earth together with you, our listeners. And we hope that you will come back and join us for our next series.

If you're looking for any more information related to Words of Life, check out our website, SalvationArmySoundcast.org. God bless you. Tell me, Lord, what could I bring? Truly worthy of a King. A humble offering to show how much I'm grateful. You gave up heaven for this earth.

Sacrificed to show my world to a God who died to save me from my sin. I have not much to give you, Lord, for that great love which made you mine. I have not much to give you, Lord, but all I have is yours.

All my talents, gifts, and time. I gladly give you all that's mine. Knowing all you have required is my surrender. No gift of mine would be enough to repay this act of love.

So, Father, let this faithful heart speak ever for me. I have not much to give you, Lord, for that great love which made you mine. I have not much to give you, Lord, but all I have is yours alone. I have not much to give you, Lord, for that great love which made you mine. I have not much to give you, Lord, but all I have, all I have is yours. I have not much to give you, Lord, but all I have is yours. I have not much to give you.

Good morning. It has been my privilege to walk through these questions with you over the past 11 weeks, and this is now our final episode of what we're calling Skeptics Welcome. I hope you have struggled with these questions that you yourself have asked.

Chances are you might say, I never answered your question, and you're probably right. In fact, I might have been somewhat intentional in that, because in truth, none of us can really know the mind of God. Theology is not static, it's actually dynamic, and while God never changes, the way we see God and interpret God actually changes throughout history.

Let me illustrate it this way. Some have asked, what happens when we die and how will the world come to an end? Well, the earliest concept of the end of days was echoed in these words, the day of the Lord. It was his messianic kingdom in which God would come and destroy all evil and reign on his throne in Jerusalem.

That was until the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD. So in many ways, the early church developed the concept of a spiritual Jerusalem, one in which, if they survived the persecution of their day, Christ would come and usher in his earthly kingdom, in which Christ would reign for a thousand years. But then there were these theologians in the school of Alexandria, like Clement and Origen, who said, there really is no thousand years, literally, it's actually all figurative. And when Christ returns, that's it.

Judgment will come and the eternal kingdom will then be established. In fact, a symbolic thousand year reign of Christ was the dominant understanding of the end times during the days of Martin Luther and even John Calvin. It was until the late 1600s when a man named Daniel Whitby proposed a new hypothesis, that the gospel would go out to all nations and all the world would be converted. That God's grace was so irresistible that all the world would become saved and then Christ would return and build his eternal kingdom in heaven. This view was called post-millennial, after the millennium. And it was the dominant belief, actually throughout the early 1900s.

William Booth and other great revivalists like Jonathan Edwards believe this. And as the gospel went out, communities would be transformed, poverty would be erased, it would cease to exist, and if people came to Christ, the entire world would be transformed into a utopia that God loved. And then came World War I. And then came World War II.

And the optimism of the colonial age moved to this skepticism, despair, and protectionism. The church went from preaching in the streets to hunkering down in their pews. More churches were built after World War II than at any other time in American history. Jesus, save us from this sinful world, we began to cry. You may not know this, but a theology of the rapture is actually less than 200 years old.

John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, a group of legalistic Puritans, founded fundamentalism. And with it, a concept of dispensationalism that divided God's revealing history into seven sections, noting as well that these, that this last section, was the last days. The idea here is a return to the early days of Christian teaching, where Christ would return after a great time of persecution. And that somewhere in the midst of this persecution, God's people would escape, maybe in the beginning or mid-tribulation or post-tribulation, and then the world would just burn without him. If you've read the Left Behind series or watched the movie A Thief in the Night back in the 70s, you understand all this. You see, the problem here is that the church has set itself up as anti-world.

And whenever you are against something, you lose the ability to speak into it. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Do we still believe that the whole world could be saved? Or actually, have we given up?

Let it all burn? Which begs the question, why hasn't Jesus come back already and saved us from all this? What if I told you he did? But not altogether. Jesus is present in his church, in his people, and we still bear the responsibility to go and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Spirit and teaching them the right way to live. For lo, he is already with us, even until the end of the age. And if God is for us, my friends, who could be against us? We need not fight the world.

We need to save the world. And I know it's difficult when we have all of these questions, often without answers. We understand that the scriptures contain answers to some of these questions, but often there's these numerous interpretations that we've looked at, and they leave so many dazed and confused.

Others feel prejudged, and others still somehow feel that God's standard is too high. But my friends, God loves you, you and all of your doubts and insecurities and fears, your skepticism. And he calls you into conversation, prayer, if you will, to wrestle with him until the sun comes up, for he will never, ever let you go.

It's been my pleasure to be with you. May his light and his truth be revealed in your journey as you move towards him. May God bless you. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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