Our Lord, Come

On Things Unseen this week, we’ve been reflecting together on the return of the Lord Jesus. And we’ve been deliberately trying to focus our attention, not on the details—the chronology, the geography—but on the Lord Jesus Himself, and actually, aspects of His return that aren’t obscure or controversial because there is much about Christ’s return that’s still mysterious to us. The great biblical scholar Geerhardus Vos was surely right when he wrote that there are prophecies about Christ’s return in Scripture whose best and clearest exegesis will actually be only their fulfillment. Only then will everything be clear to us. So, it’s wise to be modest in our statements and to focus on the main things. And as the Westminster Confession reminds us, the main things about our salvation are usually fairly clearly stated in Scripture, and often in several places, and it’s important for us to have that in mind, as we’ve seen.

Jesus prayed before His crucifixion that all of His people would, in the future, be with Him to see His glory. I think you can understand why He wanted that, even from a human point of view. After all, His closest friends, the Apostles, had been and would be with Him through the days of His suffering and see Him in the depth of His humiliation. And they would come to taste suffering for Jesus themselves. So, of course, He wanted them to see Him in His glory and in His triumph. And Jesus wants the same for us, too, because there’s a sense in which most of us, probably all of us, have actually seen and experienced Jesus being humiliated by others, and we’ve been humiliated with Him. And that’s one of the things that makes us long to see Him as He really is on that day. And if we ask the question, Well then, how will Jesus come? The central answer is: He’ll come gloriously. And there are three New Testament words that express this.

His coming will be an apocalypse—that is, literally, an unveiling. Jesus is now glorified at the right hand of His Father, but we don’t see that yet. But on that day, the thin veil between earth and heaven, time and eternity, will be drawn back and we will see Him as He is. And surely, we will gasp with awe at the glory of His person.

And then second, the New Testament says that Jesus coming will be an epiphany, an actual appearance. Every eye will be able to see Him. How that will be, we simply do not know. But that it will be, we are promised in Scripture. Think of it: every eye will see Him.

And then thirdly, the New Testament speaks about Jesus coming as a parousia, a word that was used for the arrival of a king coming into his kingdom or a general returning in triumph. And Jesus’ second coming will be all three of these rolled into one: apocalypse, epiphany, and parousia. And because of the way it will come to pass, it will be the single most glorious moment in the history of the whole cosmos.

So, there are three things to look forward to according to the Scriptures. First, that Jesus will return visibly, every eye will see Him. And He will not come alone. He’ll be accompanied by His holy angels. It’s wonderful to think that this world is already populated by angels who are God’s ministering spirits. We do believe in extraterrestrial life after all, but their ministry is largely invisible to us. But on that day, that other world, that heavenly branch of God’s family that’s invisible to our naked eyes will become visible. And it may seem to us as though there is no space left in the heavens, as the army of the Lord of Hosts accompanies Him in His return.

He’ll not only come visibly; He’ll also return audibly. Remember how in the Old Testament, the year of Jubilee, the Sabbath year of Sabbath years, everything was symbolically restored to its proper condition. And that was announced by the blowing of a trumpet. And that’s what the New Testament says will happen when Christ returns. Whatever this means, the trumpet will sound, Christ will come with a cry of command, and the dead shall rise (1 Thess. 4:16). You know, the early fathers used to say that if Jesus had not cried out specifically, “Lazarus, come forth,” everyone in the graves would’ve come forth. But on that day, that day that is still to come, there will not be that limitation, for at the cry of command, all the dead in Christ shall rise.

And that’s why Scripture tells us, in the third place, that Jesus who will return visibly and audibly will also return triumphantly—so triumphantly that as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, He will destroy the man of sin by the breath of His mouth (2 Thess. 2:8). He’ll simply blow him away. And then every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, kyrios, that Jesus is God the Son. And then Jesus’ prayer in John 17:24 will be finally and fully answered: we will see Him in the glory that His Father gave to Him from before the foundation of the world. Surely that makes us say with the New Testament Church, maranatha, our Lord come. And one day, indeed He will.