“In any study of Christ’s promised return, make sure you keep to a path between two extremes”

It seems that every media outlet I turn to has something to say about the oddity of Harold Camping predicting that the End of the World will take place May 21. 

As believers, while we should rightly shake our head at Camping’s predictions, we should never be embarrassed about Christ’s promises. Jesus said he would return. He said it often. The Apostles Jesus commissioned to communicate his message said he would return. They said it often. Comments about Christ’s return in 500 places in the New Testament: in 23 of the 27 New Testament books.

In my book for seekers, The Anchor Course: Exploring Christianity Together, I outline four ways that life is better when you believe in the return of the King. Here’s how that chapter ends:

It changes the way you view life when you look forward to the return of the King. You know you’re wanted and valued, you know that things will be set right, and you live with a commitment to faithfulness, knowing that a thorough review is coming. Because of these advantages, the Apostle Paul told us to “eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:7 NLT). Jesus taught us to pray for his arrival. In fact, that’s what you’re praying when you say, “Thy kingdom come,” as you recite the Lord’s Prayer. However, in any study of Christ’s promised return, make sure you keep to a path between two extremes: speculation and skepticism.

On the one extreme, we must avoid speculation. The same Jesus who told us to hope and pray for his return also told us not to try to predict it. Faithfulness in following him is the proper response of believers, not idle conjecture. Sadly, though, there’s no shortage of those who speculate about the timing of Christ’s return. When such wild predictions make headlines, people turn away from the rest of the Christian message.

Don’t let fanatical speculations about Christ’s return make you cynical. Jesus himself warned against predicting a date for his return. “No one knows about that day or hour,” he said, “not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). During his time on earth, under the limitations of being human, he admitted that even he did not know this information. So, it’s the height of arrogance for some to claim to know what Jesus himself said he could not know.

On the other extreme, we must avoid skepticism. We need to make sure that the embarrassing incidences of failed speculations don’t make us turn away from a serious look at Christ’s frequent promises to return.

A few decades after Christ’s earthly life, Simon Peter wrote, “It is most important for you to understand what will happen in the last days. People will laugh at you. . . . . They will say, ‘Jesus promised to come again. Where is he?’” The Apostle went on to point out that, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:3-4, 8 NCV). In other words, though it’s been nearly two millennia since Jesus left with his promise to return, from the perspective of eternity, beyond the confines of time, it’s been little more than a couple of days.

Some would say that Christ’s promised return has lost its relevance after so many years, but that reminds me of what a research scientist said after the eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo. Hundreds of people lost their lives, in part because they had built their homes and businesses on the side of this active volcano. When asked why so many had built up a domestic life on the slopes of a volcano, the scientist said the matter had an easy explanation. For six hundred years, Pinatubo had shown no signs of activity. “They forgot it was a volcano,” he said, “and they began treating it like it was a mountain.”

Likewise, we can build our lives within a universe that has remained the same for many centuries, forgetting that our homes, our businesses, and our nations are all in the realm of a King who has promised to return.

So, we must chart a course between the extremes of speculation and skepticism as we try to understand what this great moral teacher named Jesus said about his return.

Believers are convinced that, in the words of the Creed, “he shall come to judge the living and the dead.” We have concluded that since we cannot run from God we should run to him, asking him to be our Forgiver and Leader. “I am coming!” Jesus said. In the last words of the Bible, we are given the right reply to this news: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20 HCSB).