The Second Coming of Christ

Is Jesus coming again? Absolutely! Unfortunately more and more uninformed people are getting their “theology” from sources like the Left Behind series rather than good, solid Biblical exegesis. It’s amazing to me that there are those who believe, for example, in a violent Second Coming of Christ even though the Scriptures do not teach this. And what’s especially disturbing is that if those who insist on a violent Second Coming have little children at home, I fear for the violent image of Jesus those children are being subjected to and the negative impact that will have on their spiritual development (or lack thereof). In our Nazarene hymnal we have a hymn that nicely sums up what we believe about the non violent Second Coming. In the last verse of the hymn “Living By Faith” (hymn # 566 if you are interested), written in 1918, it says, “Our Lord will return for His loved ones some day, our troubles will then all be o’er; the Master so gently will lead us away, beyond that blest heavenly shore.” Maybe more of us would actually look forward to Christ’s return if we really knew Who we believed in!