Jesus ended His great prophecy sermon not with a chart, but with a question about what you are doing right now. The certainty of His return is meant to change today.
The longest sermon Jesus ever preached about the end of the age is the Olivet Discourse — Matthew 24 and 25 — delivered on a hillside overlooking the temple, days before the cross. Whole libraries have been built on its details: the abomination of desolation, the great tribulation, the sign of the Son of Man in the heavens. Read it in the plain, straightforward way the words demand, and it describes real events, in real history, culminating in the literal, bodily return of Christ. But watch where Jesus lands the sermon. He does not end with a timeline. He ends with a servant, a household, and a question: when the Master comes back, what will He find you doing?
Read plainly, the return is certain
The futurist, premillennial reading of prophecy is not a novelty; it is what you get when you take the prophetic words as seriously as you take the words about the first coming. The prophets said Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, pierced, buried in a rich man’s tomb — and every word came true literally. That same interpretive honesty applied forward yields a literal second coming, a real tribulation, a real kingdom. Jesus Himself refuses to spiritualize it away.
“For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be… And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”
Matthew 24:27, 30 (NASB1995)
This is not a mood or a metaphor. It is an event — visible, global, unmistakable. And Jesus anchors its certainty in the most solemn guarantee He can give: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). You can build your life on this. He is coming back, in person, in glory. The only thing withheld is the day.
The one thing deliberately hidden
And that is the point most date-setters miss. The certainty of the event and the concealment of the timing are both intentional.
“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)
Jesus compares the moment to the days of Noah — people eating, drinking, marrying, carrying on as if the ordinary would last forever, right up until the flood took them all away. The problem was not that they lacked a calculator. The problem was that they were not ready. So Jesus gives the command that governs everything after it: “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42). The hiddenness of the hour is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a summons to be ready every hour.
Two servants, one absent Master
Then comes the sermon’s real climax — a short parable that turns the entire discourse from information into examination.
“Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.”
Matthew 24:45–46 (NASB1995)
Both servants in the parable believe the master is coming back. The difference is what the delay does to them. The faithful servant keeps working — feeding the household, doing the assigned task, living every ordinary day as if the master might walk in at the end of it. The other servant does the math the world always does: “My master is not coming for a long time” (Matthew 24:48). And that single sentence rots him. He begins to abuse the other servants and to drink with drunkards, because a return that feels far away stops governing behavior. Then the master arrives “on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know” (Matthew 24:50) — and finds him exactly as he really was.
The engine of present holiness
Here is the whole doctrine in one line: the certainty of Christ’s return is meant to be the engine of how you live today. Prophecy was never given so you could impress people at a Bible study with your grasp of the seals and trumpets. It was given to produce a certain kind of servant — awake, faithful, doing the assigned work, unwilling to let the delay make him careless. The New Testament makes this connection everywhere it discusses the return.
“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
1 John 3:2–3 (NASB1995)
Everyone who has this hope purifies himself. That is the litmus test of a healthy eschatology. If your interest in the last days makes you sharper about newspapers and duller about holiness, you have taken the sermon and thrown away its point. The man who truly believes Christ may return today is not the man frantically decoding headlines. He is the man who does his work honestly, guards his eyes, keeps his word, feeds the household he was put in charge of, and would not be ashamed if the door opened this afternoon.
Watch, in the only way that counts
So watch the signs soberly — Israel, the nations, the drift of the age — the way a sailor reads the sky. But never forget that Jesus turned the telescope around at the end of His own prophecy and pointed it at you. The question He leaves ringing off that hillside is not “Can you name the year?” It is, “When I come, will I find you faithful?”
He is coming back. The words will not pass away. And the readiness He asks for is not a chart on your wall but a life He would be glad to walk in on. Do the next right thing as if He might arrive before you finish it — because one ordinary day, He will.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist