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Sunday, December 7
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  • As we consider the advents of Christ, today we are going to examine the timing of Christ’s advent. In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul uses the following expression in Galatians 4:4 regarding the timing of Christ’s first advent.
    Let us read Galatians 4:4-5
    Galatians 4:4–5 NASB 2020
    4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.
    In 1654, Nostradamus wrote:
    In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
    Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
    while the fortress endures,
    the great leader will succumb,
    The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
    Nostradamus, who lived from 1503 - 1566 and is best known for his book titled, The Prophecies, a collection of poetry, which allegedly predicts future events. The books was first published in 1555 and over the centuries, it has attracted many supporters, along with many main stream media, credit him with accurately predicting many major world events, such as the collapse of the twin towers in NYC.
    However, Nostradamus did not have any genuine, supernatural prophetic ability. His prophecies are generally vague, meaning that they could be applied to virtually anything. Moreover, his prophecies have often been mistranslated, and sometimes deliberately mistranslated. In addition, there are sometimes fraudulent attributions to Nostradamus, such as the Twin Towers prophecy. Perhaps you noticed that I said that Nostradamus died in 1566 and the Twin Towers prophecy was supposedly penned by him in 1654, which is 88 years after his death!
    The Twin Towers prophecy was actually written by a university student in in 1997 in his web-published essay on Nostradamus as an example of how to write an important-sounding prophecy through the use of vague imagery. 
    Nostradamus may have a wide and popular appeal in our culture but his prophecies are about as accurate as my predictions that in the future, there will be a horrible even in nature that will cause millions of dollars of damage and cost the lives of people.
    On the other hand, every single prophecy in the OT related to the first advent of Christ was fulfilled with amazing accuracy.
    Today, our focus will be on the timing of Christ’s advents.
    I. Christ’s Timing for His First Advent
    First, let’s look at Christ’s timing for his first advent.
    Let me give a brief historical background. In 605 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and carried vast numbers of its citizens into captivity. Among those taken into exile was a young fourteen-year old teenager named Daniel. Sixty-eight years later, in 537 BC, Daniel was now eighty-two years old when he wrote this:
    Daniel 9:1–2 CSB
    1 In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, a Mede by birth, who was made king over the Chaldean kingdom— 2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be seventy.
    Daniel could look back over sixty-eight years of faithful service to God in a culture that was completely hostile to his covenant God. In all his years, with just a handful of others, he had stood alone for God and not compromised on any occasion to be unfaithful to God.
    As Daniel read his Bible, not like the Bible that we have but in biblical scrolls, he read in the Prophet Jeremiah something that caught his attention. There, right before his eyes, he read:
    Jeremiah 25:11 NASB 2020
    11 This entire land will be a place of ruins and an object of horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
    The Babylonian Empire had been taken over by the Medo-Persian Empire but it was still the same territory that was once called Babylon. Daniel had lived in captivity for sixty-eight years. According to what he was reading, the duration of the exile would last only two more years!
    Daniel’s excitement must have grown when he realized what he had read. So, he wanted to know more and kept reading and came to these words.
    Jeremiah 29:10–14 NASB 2020
    10 “For this is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will let Myself be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’
    There it was again!
    Right before his eyes was the promise that the exile would end after seventy years. If God’s people turned to God, God would restore them to their Promised Land!
    Can you imagine what was going on in Daniel’s heart and mind? Sixty-eight years earlier, as a fourteen-year old teenager, he and thousands of others left the city of their birth. He had never lost his desire to return to Jerusalem. In fact, for sixty-eight years, he had prayed towards Jerusalem, with his windows open. (And that had landed him in huge trouble earlier in his life. But God had marvelously intervened.)
    Daniel decided to act based upon God’s promise. Many people think the very opposite of what Daniel did.
    “God has promised this will happen at the end of 70 years. Whether I do something or do nothing, God’s promise will be done. I can’t make it happen and I can’t prevent it from happening so I will sit and be comfortable until then.”
    Instead, Daniel’s thoughts were more like:
    “God has promised that after seventy years we will go home. That is his divine promise. I will therefore pray and seek God with all my heart so that he will fulfill his promise.”
    We need to remember this.
    God’s promises will always move God’s people to action.
    God’s people will never become inactive.
    Daniel then prayed one of the great prayers that is recorded for us in the Bible. In Daniel 9:3-19, Daniel pleaded with God for forgiveness on behalf of the people of God. He appealed to the great name of God and his covenantal faithfulness in petitioning that he would returned the exiles to Jerusalem.
    We often think of prayer as an inactivity. I don’t know what to do so I will just sit and tell God my thought. But listen to this.
    Daniel 9:20–23 NASB 2020
    20 While I was still speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, 21 while I was still speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. 22 And he instructed me and talked with me and said, “Daniel, I have come now to give you insight with understanding. 23 At the beginning of your pleas the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, because you are highly esteemed; so pay attention to the message and gain understanding of the vision.
    While Daniel was still doing one of the greatest activities that we can do, God’s messenger, Gabriel responded.
    Daniel 9:24–27 NASB 2020
    24 “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the wrongdoing, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. 25 So you are to know and understand that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with streets and moat, even in times of distress. 26 Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. 27 And he will confirm a covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come the one who makes desolate, until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, gushes forth on the one who makes desolate.”
    Commentator Dale Ralph Davis writes in his commentary on this passage:
    In a “Peanuts” cartoon Linus is interpreting a nursery rhyme. He tells Charlie Brown, “The way I see it, ‘the cow jumped over the moon’ indicates a rise in farm prices.” Linus asks if Charlie agrees. Charlie confesses, “I can’t say; I don’t pretend to be a student of prophetic literature.” We may be ready to disqualify ourselves in a similar way as we face Daniel’s seventy weeks revelation. I well recall the first time I had to lecture on this passage in a liberal arts college. I worked through the Hebrew text and spent hours reading secondary sources—and almost came to a Charlie Brown position. But at least I had a title for my lecture: “Seventy weeks and twenty problems.”
    We aren’t going into a detailed analysis of the “seventy weeks” here. But the overview is this.
    The start of the “seventy weeks” is most likely the decree of Artaxerxes in 444 BC, authorizing Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8). According to the notes in the CSB Study Bible, “There will be a period of seven weeks of years (forty-nine years) followed by sixty-two weeks of years (434 years), making a total of sixty-nine weeks of years or 483 years from the decree until the coming of an anointed one, a prince. The starting point of the prophecy would have begun on Nisan 1 (March 5), 444 BC, followed by sixty-nine weeks of 360-day biblical/prophetic years or 173,880 days, and culminated on Nisan 10 (March 30), 33 AD, the date of Jesus the Messiah’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:28–40).”
    I think it is possible—even likely—that because Daniel was so prominent in the early days of the Medo-Persian Empire, his writings were placed in the libraries of Persia. Centuries later, scholars were doing research in the basement of one of those libraries. It was about 4 BC and they pulled out and studied Daniel’s writing. They discussed it among themselves and came to the conclusion, “The time is right about now that the anointed one spoken of in this section of Daniel’s writing should be born.”
    At the very same time, these scholars were puzzled by a new star in the sky, which seemed to be an indication to them that a great king had been born. They went back to Daniel’s writing, and saw that the great king should be born about that time, and that he could be found in Jerusalem.
    These scholars from the east gathered together gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and journeyed many weeks to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they asked:
    Matthew 2:2 NASB 2020
    2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”
    Hundreds of years after Daniel wrote about the timing of Christ’s first advent, the wise men from the east read his writing and arrived in Jerusalem looking for the baby Jesus. They had correctly understood and interpreted his writing in what we now call the Old Testament regarding the timing of the first advent of Christ. And we are grateful to them for doing so.
    II. Christ’s Timing for His Second Advent
    Second, let’s look at Christ’s timing for his second advent.
    Hal Lindsey wrote a book titled, The Late, Great Planet Earth, published in 1970. Lindsey wrote that we were in the last days before the imminent return of Christ. He speculated that the rapture might occur in the late 1980s, since that was one generation after the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
    If you are wondering, Jesus did not return.
    There have been multiple predictions of when this second advent will happen. There are books, articles, and papers written with people’s predictions of the date. There are still more and you can do an internet search and find all kinds of ideas and reasoning about future dates. Every date which has been picked and that date has passed has been wrong. Just in case you are wondering. And no, Jesus didn’t come back and he is not sitting in a temple somewhere reviewing the names written in the book as one false religion claims.
    Does the Bible give us any indication of the timing of Christ’s second advent? Could we examine the Bible for clues as to the timing of Christ’s second advent, like the wise men did in Persia, and successfully arrive at the right time?
    During his last week on earth, Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.
    Mark 13:2 NASB 2020
    2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.”
    On the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately.
    Matthew 24:3–4 NASB 2020
    3 And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” 4 And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you.
    Jesus then gave an overview of the events to come, both near and distant future. But when it came down to the timing of these events Jesus said:
    Matthew 24:36 NASB 2020
    36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.
    If Jesus did not know the timing for the second advent, then we cannot guess it with any accuracy at all. No matter how good we are at logic, at math or anything else, we cannot know the when. While the timing of the second advent is unknown, what we can be sure of is that the second advent will happen. Of that we can be sure.
    Untold numbers of people were unprepared for the first advent of Christ. But, after he came the first time, they could still turn and worship him, as did the wise men from the east.
    In preparation for the first advent, people could worship God for the promise. After the first advent, people could and can turn to God and worship him.
    When Christ comes the second time, that will be the end of history. There will be no more chances for anyone.
    The word of God gave so many prophecies about the day of the Lord that even scholars in a foreign land could read the scrolls and understand the time of the first advent.
    But we don’t know the date, we aren’t supposed to know the date for the second advent. What we are to do, is we must make sure that we are prepared for that day to happen. And we are to be prepared every day, as if tomorrow is that day.
    First, we must live “holy and godly lives” and “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace.”
    We should not scoff at the promise of the second coming and we must believe the second coming will happen. Remember, God’s promises will always move God’s people to an active Christ-following life.
    Second, the second coming must lead us to share the gospel. If we are God’s people and we know the second coming will happen, then we should make every effort to help lead people to Christ so they too can be ready.
    Are you ready? Are you praying? Are you leading others to Christ?
    Let’s pray.

      • Galatians 4:4–5NASB2020

      • Daniel 9:1–2NASB2020

      • Jeremiah 25:11NASB2020

      • Jeremiah 29:10–14NASB2020

      • Daniel 9:20–23NASB2020

      • Daniel 9:24–27NASB2020

      • Matthew 2:2NASB2020

      • Mark 13:2NASB2020

      • Matthew 24:3–4NASB2020

      • Matthew 24:36NASB2020

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