Is Jesus Ever Coming Back?
- David Schrader, PhD, National Pastor
- Sep 3
- 8 min read
As evil and anarchy continue to manifest, every generation since Jesus left the earth has wondered, could Jesus come back in my lifetime? Are the conditions right for his return?
The Apostle Paul weighed in on this when he wrote to the Thessalonian believers in 2 Thess. 2:1-3:
Now dear brothers and sisters, let us clarify some things about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and how we will be gathered to meet him. Don’t be so easily shaken or alarmed by those who say that the day of the Lord has already begun. Don’t believe them, even if they claim to have had a spiritual vision, a revelation, or a letter supposedly from us. Don’t be fooled by what they say. For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed—the one who brings destruction.
Note Paul’s specific words for when the time and condition will be right for Jesus' return, “For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed – the one who brings destruction.”
Look around you and ask yourself this question. Are there indications today that people and governments are rebelling against God? Do we see anything happening that would show we are living in a lawless and godless society?
The current laws of our land are increasingly becoming softer on perpetrators of crime and either indifferent or dismissive of victims. Immorality, child sexual abuse, kidnapping and child exploitation is endemic. Pornography flourishes unabated.
Our government is acting more totalitarian towards Christians. Churches have been burned, and our government has been silent. Our government is less empathetic towards the safety of Jews, while visible and hateful demonstrations of antisemitism go unchecked. This should alarm us! History is screaming, “remember the Nazis.” And our mainstream media is not helping matters either with their bias and selective coverage.
Antisemitism in Canada has reached perlious, record setting heights. The total number of reported cases of hatred targeting Jews reached an apex of 6,219 incidents in 2024. [1]
Yes, every society since Jesus lived has faced similar problems. Just as it was in the prophet Isaiah’s time, so it is today. The difference is that Israel recognized their problem. Take a look:
We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord. We have turned our backs on our God. We know how unfair and oppressive we have been, carefully planning our deceitful lies. Our courts oppose the righteous, and justice is nowhere to be found. Truth stumbles in the streets, and honesty has been outlawed. Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who renounces evil is attacked. The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice. (Is 59:13–15).
Does that sound familiar? Does that not mirror what’s happening today in our nation? But unlike Israel, many seem calloused about our current condition. Isaiah warned the culture of his day, “How terrible it will be for people who call good things bad and bad things good, who think darkness is light and light is darkness, who think sour is sweet and sweet is sour (Isaiah 5:20).” I see evidence of what Isaiah mentions all around me. To put it bluntly, our world is upside down and all mixed up.
In his book, Renovation of the Heart, philosopher Dallas Willard makes this observation, “Societies the world around are currently in desperate straits trying to produce people who are merely capable of coping in a nondestructive manner with their lives on earth.”[2]
The daily evidence supports Willard’s conclusions about our place in these desperate straits. One only needs to look at the violence and destruction breaking out in cities around the nation, as proof that we are not coping in a non-destructive manner, nor are we heading in the right direction. (You will not see any proof of this from our main stream media, they are heavily funded by our government, but you can see our nation's reality from places like Rebel News, as they receive no government funding at all.)
Here in Canada, with our motto of “Peace, order and good government,” we view our country as a peaceable kingdom marked by less crime than our American cousins with their declaration of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The problem, however, is once again the media and the government are to blame for keeping us in the dark about the true condition of our country. While homicide rates have declined since 2014 until present, the violent crime rate (murder, robbery, assault with a weapon, etc.) has risen 44% per cent in Canada while in the US it only rose 5 percent. [3] And that five percent is in the country with the second amendment and not in our country where the government wants to roll out a gun buyback program. Is it any wonder that 79 percent of Canadian households now have a security system.
So, who or what is to blame for this increase in violent crime? Some say it is racism, poverty, and poor living conditions. Others will say, it is a lack of jobs and a need for better schools. Others will say we need more social programs and community services. The problem is – this is the same rhetoric we have been hearing for the last fifty years. The more time passes, the more things get worse.
Dr. Martin Seilgman is a best-selling author and a professor of psychology at The University of Pennsylvania. He says that back in the 19th century, violent and destructive behavior was a result of a lack of character. A person’s character was emblematic of how Americans explained both good and bad behavior.
However, in the twentieth century, a new perspective began to emerge in the social sciences. This new big idea claimed that it was not bad character, rather, it was growing up in an unhealthy environment that caused crime. Therefore, it is the person’s environment, not one’s character that provides a better explanation of his or her behavior.
Seligman pointed out that this has led to several major changes in the way that social scientists and government officials approach violence and crime. Now, if the twenty-first century view is correct, individuals are not responsible for their actions. The environment, rather than the person, is the root of the behavior; hence, governments will need to intervene and spend vast sums of money to correct the social ills that degrade the environments.
But clearly this approach to crime is failing us miserably. Seligman will tell you that it is a character problem, and that character needs to be taught and emphasized. I do not think that anyone would disagree with him; however, I would go even deeper. I think that it is a spiritual issue. It is a problem of the heart.
Few people today seem to believe that the violence and destructiveness we are seeing from people is a visible manifestation of a selfish, sinful heart. Modern people do not believe in the prophet, Jeremiah, and his description of the human heart, that it is “…more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Nor do they embrace what Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adultery, theft…(Matt. 15:18).”
This is not a popular message in today’s culture. Still, I believe that it offers the only plausible explanation for what is happening in our world.
Robert Coles is a very unusual man. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, having written more than eighty books. He is also a prominent child psychiatrist and a literature professor at Harvard University. He teaches literature to business majors instead of psychiatry to medical students, and the reason he gives is simple: “We have systems here to explain everything, except how to live.”[4]
Coles spent his life interviewing and listening to people. What has he learned about the human condition? He said:
Nothing I have discovered about the makeup of human beings contradicts in any way what I learned from the Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos, and from the book of Ecclesiastes, and from Jesus and the lives of those he touched. Anything I can say as a result of my research into human behavior is a mere footnote to those lives in the Old and New Testaments.
Cole says that he receives a great deal of criticism from those in his profession because he speaks of human nature in terms of good and evil, light and darkness, self-destruction and redemption. He says, “They want some new theory, I suppose. But my research merely verifies what the Bible has said all along about human beings.”[4]
The moral erosion, now evident in society, didn’t happen overnight. Fifty years ago, secular Psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, lamented the absence of sin in the everyday dialogues of American society when he wrote:
In all of the laments and reproaches made by our seers and prophets, one misses any mention of 'sin,' a word which used to be a veritable watchword of prophets. It was a word once in everyone's mind but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles—sin with an ‘I’ in the middle? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented of or atoned for? . . . Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?[5]
While the word sin may have disappeared from everyday conversations. The evidence of sin is still apparent everywhere. Reinhold Niebuhr wryly observed that “the doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith." One of the signs Jesus gave us about the condition of the world as the end draws near is this, “Sin will be rampant everywhere (Matthew 24:12).”
The evidence around us increasingly points to the return of our Lord. We are not experiencing a societal malaise where money and social programs will suffice; it’s a malady instead, and the disease is sin and evil. The only cure is to repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ.
To answer my opening question – could Jesus come back in our generation? Yes, absolutely! But remember, there is a reason why he lingers. In 2 Peter 3:9 we read, “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed but wants everyone to repent.” It’s because of his love for everyone in the world that he delays his return.
Until he returns, I will sign off with the final words Jesus and John say in the book of Revelation. Jesus said, “He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” And John answered, Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20).”
[2]Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ, Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002; reprint ed. 2012, ps20.
[3] Livio Di Matteo, “Crime rates in Canada growing faster than in the United States”, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/crime-rates-canada-growing-faster-united-states, Nov. 29. 2024.
[4] Robert Coles, The Moral Intelligence of Children, (The Penguin Group, New York, 1997), p. 20.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? 6th ed. (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1974), 13.
Comments