Eschatology

The Second Coming of Christ (part 1)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-2

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: RR313A1

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us begin with prayer. All glory, praise and honor be unto Thee oh God who of Thy grace and mercy has made us Thy people. Our hearts are ever filled with joy and thanksgiving at the knowledge that we are the heirs of salvation, that Thou hast made us priests, prophets and kings in Jesus Christ, that Thou hast given us an eternal and glorious destiny. Fill our hearts with joy and thanks giving always, that we may praise Thee and serve Thee in triumph, that we may be mindful that greater is He that is with us and in us than he that is in the world, that we are in Christ Jesus more than conquerors. Send us forth oh Lord in Thy power, by Thy Spirit, and armed with Thy word, to bring all things into captivity to Christ our king; in His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is 2 Peter 3:1-15. 2 Peter 3:1-15, The Second Coming of Christ.

“3 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance:

2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:

3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

14 Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.

15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;”

The second coming of our Lord is the fulfillment of the promise of the resurrection; it is also the fulfillment of the ascension. Christ arose as the first fruits of them that slept, according to scripture, and His resurrection we are told is the assurance of our resurrection at His coming.

The angels told the apostle in Acts 1:11 that Jesus would return in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven. Now that verse is a good one to begin a consideration of the second coming with, because one of our problems in the texts concerning the second coming is that certain words are exploited to give a meaning that is not in the text. What did the angels mean when they said ‘Jesus will come in like manner as ye have seen Him depart?’ Very simply this, He will return physically.

Now consider, if we pushed the meaning of that- not that scholars have done so, nor preachers, but they have done this sort of thing with other texts- it would mean that just as His ascension was something only witnessed by a limited number of people, so would His second coming be; but that contradicts other scriptures. So it is obvious that when we are told that ‘He shall return in like manner as He has departed’ the meaning is simply: ‘He will return physically, even as He has departed physically.’

The resurrection was the great victory of Christ over sin and death. That victory climaxes in His second coming. We are told by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:25 that ‘He shall reign till He hath put all His enemies under His feet ‘ and then He shall return. And then the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed.

So very clearly we are told that there shall be a great and a growing victory that precedes the final and total victor of His second coming.

Now, we have considered some things ahead of the second coming: the resurrection of the body, and the last judgement. Both of these are aspects of Christ’s return, His coming means the advent of total justice and the total fulfillment of the promises of the covenant, of creation, and of the potentialities of man. The power of the resurrection was unleashed when our Lord arose from the dead; it was unleashed to remake the world through us, and the church was commanded to go forth and to make disciples of all nations, teaching them all things that the Lord has commanded; a new humanity was born with the resurrection, to replace the old humanity of Adam, the second or last Adam gave birth to a new humanity, and with the second coming total salvation comes, and the total reign of justice.

But to deal specifically now with what Peter says: Peter’s main concern in this passage is not to talk about the details of the second coming. The sad fact is there is too much preaching about the second coming today which uses scripture to be faithless to scripture, because its emphasis is on what is going to happen; and in some Sunday School classes there will charts on the wall- I’ve seen many of them- giving step by step ‘what’s going to happen before the second coming, and how it’s going to happen.’ But Peter makes it clear throughout this text, throughout the chapter, that as he speaks of the second coming it is to tell men: “Look, this means you must work now. Work.” Why? “You must bring in the righteousness or justice of God. You must walk by faith and in purity of mind, you must be mindful of scripture; you must trust in God’s promises, you must avoid ignorance of the word. You must be holy in your behavior, and Godly, and live in peace without spot; unblemished in your Christian assurance.” So that the emphasis on the second coming as Peter makes it, and as does all of scripture, is practical; it is not to satisfy our curiosity about the end, but to incite us to Christian action now, to faithfulness to the Lord who is to come.

Above all, what Peter says is: “We must not be impatient with God. It is God who is patient and long suffering with us, not we with Him.” There is a passage in the 15th verse that I wish you would memorize. I think every Christian should memorize it, remember it, and remind themselves of it continually. It is this: “The long suffering of God is salvation.”

Now, we hear a great deal of preaching about the grace of God unto salvation, and rightly so, because we are saved by the sovereign grace of God. But even when we are saved let us remember this: it takes a lot of patience and long suffering on God’s part to put up with us. So His long suffering is salvation. What would we do if we were junior Gods, so to speak (which is what we try to be). Why we would wipe out the whole church again and again out of exasperation would we not? And the sad fact is there are too many Christians who are impatient with every other member of the church, and with every man in the pulpit, and with every man in the pew, and with their husband and their wife and their children, and the Christians who live next door. They are impatient with them all- it is a good thing they don’t have the power of God, or they would be wiping out the whole human race over and over again.

And this verse which we need to memorize and remember: The longsuffering of God- the long suffering of our God- is salvation. It took grace to save us, and patience to keep us alive and to continue us in the state of salvation. Now, if that is true of every one of us, we must remember to be long suffering one towards another. This is a great verse; I believe it’s an important one to remember. It is humbling to realize, even though we may not like to, that it takes a great deal of patience on God’s part to put up with us, a great deal of long suffering. We will come in a little while to what Peter says about that long suffering, and how dare we be short in our patience one with another.

We must manifest God’s long suffering towards one another.

Then second, Peter establishes the doctrine of the second coming, first on the Old Testament prophets, and then says: “We the apostles have affirmed this. It is not a new doctrine, it is what God purposed from the beginning, and what He is manifesting in the fullness of time.

Then third, he says that in the last days there shall be scoffers. Now here we come to a very much-abused term. Over the centuries, from the days of the early church, there have been people, preachers, who have said we are in the last days because there are scoffers around. Well, the scoffers were there in the days of Rome; the scoffers were there as they moved out after the fall of Rome to evangelize Europe, the scoffers were there in Medieval Europe, the scoffers were there at the time of the Reformation, and in the Enlightenment, and in every era subsequent to that; and today. Does that make this the day before the second coming, or the year, or as some would say: “1984, for sure.” Some of the same people who declared 1975 was going to be the second coming in terms of their reasoning. No. The term ‘the last days’ applies in scripture to the time from the 1st coming to the 2nd coming, Hebrews 1:2 makes it clear, there we are plainly told, and in many other passages where this same phrase is used, that these are the last days.

We read in Hebrews 1:1-2 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…” So the last days began with Christ, with His first coming, they end with His second coming.

Now, there was some overlapping because Hebrews subsequently speaks in the Hebrews 12:18-following, with the Old Testament era ending with the fall of Jerusalem, which was 66-70 A.D. in the Jewish Roman war, and with that the great shaking, the shaking of the nations which marked the old era, culminates in the shaking of Jerusalem; and then, he says, ‘There will be now another great shaking, for our God is a consuming fire, and until all those things which can be shaken are done away with, and only those things which cannot be shaken shall remain.’

There were scoffers, Peter said, because the first and primary reference of almost every passage in scripture is the day of the writer; so Peter says: ‘There are scoffers now. Scoffers who deny the resurrection and the second coming.’ We know there were. After all, Peter was a missionary to the Jewish communities throughout the dispersion, as well as in Judea. The Sadducees, heavily influenced by Greek thought, were uniformitarian in their thinking. ‘All things continue as from the beginning.’ Uniformitarianism is basic to the theory of evolution. According to Uniformitarianism there can be no catastrophes, no dramatic events in history, and so Peter says: ‘They are willfully and willingly ignorant that God who made the heavens and the earth, creation, also brought a great catastrophe in the flood.’ And so he says: “These men say that all men who have been born from the beginning are asleep, are dead, and you talk about a resurrection and the second coming of this person who is resurrected?” Well, Peter says, “All such are reserved unto judgement.”

Then fourth, Peter deals with time. Man is very time conscious. Man is also time-bound. But God is not. We sin when we demand that God compress His eternal and temporal plan into the span of our lifetime- and you know, this has been a constant problem in the church. Everybody wants to see God’s whole plan work itself out while they are alive. And so they say: “Surely, this is the generation when all these things will be fulfilled.” So people have been expecting a second coming from the days of the early church, because they want God to compress all of history into their lifetime, and of course our life time includes our knowledge of what went before us, the past. “Alright God, now wind it up while we are still around to see it.”

But Peter says, quoting the Psalms: “A thousand years are as one day in the sight of God, and one day as a thousand years.” Do not impose your time framework on God. It is arrogant to believe that God is going to wind up things while we are around to see it, and it is sin. The Lord, he says, is not slack concerning His promise, rather He is long suffering to us-ward. Again, that word ‘long suffering.’ Peter reminds us: “God is patient with us, and we are impatient with Him. We say: “God, wind things up. I am tired of seeing sinners have their way. Come quickly Lord Jesus and wipe out these no accounts all around us; bring judgement in.” So we are impatient with God and say to God: “Do it now, this is the time. Don’t you realize God, we’ve figured it out, we’ve got our charts to prove that this is the time for the second coming; so come.”

And God is long suffering with us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And how dare we be impatient with God? And this is what we are whenever we complain about circumstances and the way things are going, we are saying: “God, your plan doesn’t suit us. Your plan takes too long.” Or, “You’re plan doesn’t think of things that I think of. In my great wisdom, I know Lord that this is what you should do; so get with it Lord, didn’t you hear me pray about this last night and the week before, and the month before?” and so we are impatient with God, who is long suffering with us.

Then Peter goes on to say: “The coming of the Lord, the day of the Lord, will come as a thief in the night.” And this is a text that has often been very much abused. What does it mean? It means simply a thief comes unannounced, and so does Christ at His second coming. That is all. To push the analogy and say: “Well, He comes like a thief to those who are sinners but not as a thief to those who are not” and so on, is pushing a figure of speech beyond its intention, all it says is: “Like a thief comes unannounced, so the Lord will come unannounced, and whether we are believers or unbelievers His coming is unannounced. No man knows the day or the hour. No man. So all the charts need to be junked, and all the predictions about 1984 by the likes of Hal Lindsey need to be recognized as coming from men who are sinning when they so speak.

His coming is unannounced, it is physical, and it brings in the totality of His kingdom. We are then told that the heavens and the earth are consumed with great heat, they are recast, they are made anew, made the place for total justice. We shall deal with the new creation separately so we will pass on at this point.

Then Peter goes on to emphasize again that his teaching is practical: “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” Again and again, the whole point comes down to us. We must manifest citizenship now in the new creation; we must manifest it daily. As Peter says in the final verse of this chapter: “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” Grow in grace. And as he has said previously: “Cultivate long suffering and patience one towards another. Forbearance, humility, grace in our dealings with one another; because God who is long suffering with us, and whose long suffering, whose patience is our salvation, requires us to manifest the same one towards another.

Peter’s teaching throughout this epistle is very practical. In the second chapter, verses 1-10 he predicts that false teachers shall arise, and indeed have arisen; they shall have a superficial success, but their destruction, their ruin is assured. So we need not trouble ourselves about such; we must go about our work and be faithful unto Him.

Then in this chapter, the 3rd, he says: “Scoffers shall ridicule the faith, but they too are doomed. They are reserved already to judgement. Therefore work, believe and obey, and remember God is long suffering, and so should we be one to another.”

The word that Peter uses when he speaks of the coming of the Lord is ‘Parousia’. This is an interesting Greek word, it normally means ‘a person’s coming’ in other words, it is a highly personal word, so that when Peter says the day of the Lord will ‘come,’ ‘parousia,’ the day of Christ will come, he is referring to the person of Jesus Christ.

History, in other words, is personal and covenantal. There is a personal accountability because there is a personal covenant lord. We prefer to impersonalize everything; including our fretfulness and our impatience. We are impatient because of things and because of the timing of things, so we blame impersonal things because we are not honest enough to say: “Lord, we don’t like your timing, we don’t like the climate or environment you’ve created; we don’t like the circumstances you’ve ordained.” We try to dilute our complaining because we want to dilute accountability, and whenever we impersonalize anything we have a dilution of accountability, of responsibility.

But the day of the Lord will come, it is a personal coming, because there is a personal accounting for everything from the first day of creation to the last. And we cannot sweep a tremendous area of our life into a closet and say: “Lord, these things don’t count because all our fretfulness about these things has reference to things impersonal. So we had reason to be impatient and angry and irritable about those things.” No, it is a personal coming and a personal accounting of all things.

This is why, when we wait on things impersonal, when we impersonalize the universe and we wait on ‘things’ to happen, we are disappointed; because all things come from God, and it is only as we wait on the Lord that we find that we are blessed. So that His Spirit, even when those things which we hoped would happen do not happen, and things that are bad in our sight happen, the Spirit makes them a blessing to us. The Spirit gives us grace, and the Spirit gives us growth, and gives us power.

When we wait on the Lord we are not impatient and fretful, rather we are aware of His long suffering as our salvation. We see then that time and circumstance are His creation, and the Alpha and Omega of the whole of creation, of every moment of time of every atom in the universe is Jesus Christ. Not only were all things made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made, but all things are brought to their glorious conclusion in Him, and by His second coming. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, by Thy Spirit bring home these words to our heart, not only now but day by day, that we may ever know that it is Thy long suffering… [tape skips] salvation, that we have no cause to be fretful and impatient one with another, and Thou art daily and moment (?), year in and year out, long suffering and patient with us. Make us faithful, make us obedient, make us ever members one of another; that we might ever joyfully serve Thee, knowing how great is Thy purpose, how great is Thy patience with us, how great is Thy salvation, and how great and glorious the conclusion in Christ. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now concerning our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] In Matthew 24 Christ had just spoken to the disciples regarding what was going to happen to the temple, the destruction, total destruction of the temple in verse 2; there are three questions that are asked by the apostles in verse 3: When will these things be, what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world, I assume the sign of the end of the world. The text as it goes on through verse 35 is pretty clearly to me anyway speaking of the destruction of the temple, and the things the disciples should do to recognize its coming, how to prepare for it and what to do. There seems to be a very abrupt change in verse 36 that is to me very awkward, I don’t understand it, because all of a sudden it is speaking ‘of that day’ but that seems to be speaking of the same day of the destruction of the temple. I wonder if you could deal with that; and then the second question is in verse 40-41 speaking of the two women: “One shall be taken and the other left” I wonder if you could deal with that one.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The 24th chapter deals with three questions, as you indicated. One with regard to the prophecy concerning the destruction of the temple, and indeed of Jerusalem. This would happen within the lifetime of those standing there, in not too many years, in the war of 66-70 A.D. And so our Lord gives the signs of that event to prepare them. He warns them that: “Let him that is on the housetop not come down to collect his things, because he must run for his life.” And we know from the earliest records that no one died of the Christian community in the siege and fall of Jerusalem, because in terms of the warning in these verses of Matthew 24, they left immediately.

Then the next question was the sign of His coming, and of the end of the world. Now, our Lord makes it clear that His coming is in judgement in every age. We first meet the reference to coming in clouds of judgement in the Old Testament, so that the coming in the clouds of judgement has reference to the judgement on the nations of antiquity; it takes place again and again in history. So our Lord makes it clear that He comes in judgement again and again, on Jerusalem, on Rome, on the powers of our day as well.

But then there is the final coming at the end of the world, and of this He says: “No man knows the day nor the hour.” That in the days of Noah, no one expected any dramatic change to take place; the world was going its own way very comfortably and contentedly, and the flood came. “And so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” And even as the flood took some, and rescued others, a very small handful in that case, so at His coming again some shall be taken and others left for destruction.

Here again we have the analogy of the thief, that even as the coming of a thief is unexpected, verse 43, so also is the coming of the Son of man. “Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”

So, what we must conclude is this: we are told there shall be a great victory, that all his enemies, save death, shall be put under his feet. But we don’t know how long after that the return shall be, it can be ages after. We know that in that victory here on earth the saints shall reign, and from pole to pole there shall be a Christian order; but this does not mean that all men will be perfectly sanctified, or all men satisfied with the rule of Christ, but it means it shall be a Christian order. So, some shall be left.

Thus, Matthew 24 covers the whole ground, distinguishes between the destruction of Jerusalem- and gives more attention to that because that was of the greatest concern to the disciples, after all they felt about it as we would feel if we were told that tomorrow or within our lifetime, Washington D.C. would be totally destroyed, and not one stone left standing upon another. This would concern us tremendously, and with reason; so they too were concerned. Yes?

[Audience Member] You mentioned the factor about judgement, the Lord coming in judgement repeatedly, and it seems to me like one of the aspects of that verse three which is not brought out sometimes is that it seems to be the presupposition of the disciples that when these things come about that it will be the Lord who accomplishes that, that it will be a judgement from the Lord. It seems between that first question and second question: “Tell us when these things shall be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming?” It is almost like they connect His coming with judgement as if He is the only one who could accomplish that judgement.

[Rushdoony] Yes, clearly it was His judgement, but not at His physical return. Moreover, you remember I spoke earlier of our prevailing sin throughout the ages, of saying: “Well, look what is happening today, this means it is the end time.” So they assume that if Jerusalem is going to fall, it is the end of the world. And this has been a constant attitude, when Rome fell people thought it had to be the end of the world, and that is still the prevailing attitude. So, they connected everything together, because they said: “If our world ends it has to be the end of the world.” Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us bow our heads in prayer. Oh Lord our God who art ever long suffering with us, we rejoice in Thy loving kindness, Thy patience, Thy grace. Send us forth to work with patience and with grace, each in our appointed place, ever mindful of Thy so great salvation, of the privileges of Thy kingdom, and the glory that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.