Eschatology — He Is Coming Back, and It Changes Today
There are two ways to get prophecy wrong. One is to ignore it — to treat the return of Christ as a footnote, a doctrine for charts and conferences, irrelevant to the way you live this afternoon. The other is to obsess over it in all the wrong directions — date-setting, newspaper-headline matching, breathless speculation that never once makes anyone holier.
The New Testament does something neither of those crowds expects. It takes the return of Jesus with deadly seriousness — and then aims that truth, almost every single time, straight at how you live right now. The Bible’s response to “Christ is coming back” is never “so go calculate the date.” It is always “so be the kind of person who is ready.”
Read It Like It Means What It Says
Start with a commitment that shapes everything downstream: read the prophetic Scriptures the way you read the rest of the Bible — plainly, in their grammatical and historical sense, letting the words mean what they say. This is the heart of a futurist, premillennial reading. The promises God made to Israel were not quietly cancelled and reassigned; the kingdom Christ will establish is a real, future reign; and the return of Jesus is a literal, bodily, visible event, not a symbol for something already past.
Why does that matter for holiness? Because a return you can spiritualize into a metaphor makes no claim on your Tuesday. A literal Christ who is literally coming back, at an hour no one can predict, makes a claim on everything. Jesus could not have been clearer about the timing:
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”
Matthew 24:36 (NASB1995)
No one knows. Not the angels. That single sentence demolishes every date-setting scheme ever sold to nervous believers — and it does something better in their place. It removes the option of preparing later. If you knew the date, you could schedule your repentance. Because you do not, the only sane posture is to be ready now, and to stay ready.
The Olivet Discourse Is About Readiness
Jesus’ longest teaching on the end — the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24 and 25 — is built around a single repeated command. After laying out the signs, the tribulation, and the certainty of His coming, He does not turn the disciples toward speculation. He turns them toward watchfulness.
“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. … For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.”
Matthew 24:42, 44 (NASB1995)
Then He drives it home with story after story, and every one is about readiness measured by present faithfulness. The faithful servant is the one caught doing his job when the master returns (Matthew 24:45–46). The five wise virgins are the ones who kept oil in their lamps (Matthew 25:1–13). The good steward is the one who put his master’s resources to work instead of burying them (Matthew 25:14–30). The point is relentless: the way you wait is the way you live. Readiness is not a feeling you summon at the last minute. It is a life already pointed in His direction.
God Keeps His Promises — Which Is Why You Can Trust His
There is a quiet pastoral payoff buried in the futurist reading, and it is worth naming. If you take seriously that God made specific, unconditional promises to Israel and intends to keep them — that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29) — then you are holding onto a God who does not abandon His word when centuries pass and circumstances change. The same God who will be faithful to ancient promises is the God who promised you resurrection, an inheritance, and a Savior who will not lose one of His own.
That is not a dry technicality about Israel and the Church. It is the bedrock under your assurance. A God who keeps His promises to a nation across thousands of years is a God whose promise to come back for you can be leaned on with your full weight. Prophecy, rightly read, does not just inform you. It steadies you.
The Apostles Aim Prophecy at Your Character
Watch what the apostles do with the second coming, because it is remarkably consistent. Peter spends a chapter describing the day the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed. A modern reader expects him to land on a timeline. Instead he lands on you:
“Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?”
2 Peter 3:11 (NASB1995)
Paul does the same thing. The grace of God, he says, trains us — and the training is explicitly future-facing:
“…instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”
Titus 2:12–13 (NASB1995)
And John, writing about the day we will see Him as He is, makes the connection unmistakable:
“And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
1 John 3:3 (NASB1995)
Three apostles, one reflex. The certainty of Christ’s return is the engine of present holiness. Hope that He is coming does not make you escapist or passive. It makes you pure. It puts steel in your obedience, because you live every day in the awareness that the One you love could appear at any moment, and you want to be found doing what He asked.
Hope That Holds Under Pressure
This is also why the return of Christ was never meant to terrify the believer. For the watching Christian it is the blessed hope — the great, settled comfort that history is going somewhere, that evil does not get the last word, that the Judge of all the earth will set every wrong right.
The same event sobers and steadies. It sobers you, because He is coming as King and Judge, and the masks will come off. It steadies you, because if you are in Christ, the One returning is not a stranger but your Savior — the very One who already bore your judgment at the cross. You are not bracing for wrath. You are watching for a face you already love.
- Live ready, not anxious — readiness is faithfulness, not fear.
- Refuse date-setting; no one knows the day, and that is by design.
- Let the certainty of His return fuel obedience, not speculation.
- Keep your eyes on the King who is coming, not just the calendar.
So Be Ready
Here is the decision the whole doctrine presses on you. Not “can you decode the next sign?” but “if He came today, would He find you faithful?” Stop scheduling your obedience for a day you cannot see. The Master could be at the door.
And if that question exposes how far you have drifted, the gospel is still open. The same Christ who is coming as Judge first came as a Lamb, bearing the sin of all who would trust Him. Run to Him now, while the door stands open, and the day of His appearing becomes not your dread but your hope. He is coming back. Let that change today.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist