Ecclesiastes 3:11 NKJV says “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. This is a promise that though we can’t predict earthly events, as Christians, we know one thing for sure – Jesus is coming back, just like he said he would.
Some of you might remember the word eternity lighting up the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the year 2000, as a tribute to the work of Arthur Stace. Dr Ross Clifford, Principal of Morling College in Sydney, sat in Stace’s lap as a child. He thinks eternity is an important lens through which we can view current events.
Clifford says some of the things we’re seeing right now, like apostasy, famine, and disruption on a global scale, suggest that second coming is coming closer.
Now that doesn’t mean I’m saying He’s coming back tomorrow, or next year. But what it does say is that we are people who live in the imminence of Jesus’ return.
Dr Baruch Korman, in a recent 20Twenty interview, discussed the “birth pains” Jesus said will proceed the end times. Dr Clifford agrees this is another important idea for us to remember. “He’s saying these signs will always be with you, wars, rumours of wars, famine, etc. But before I return, it just gets more and more intense.”
“The signs are always with us. But there’s an intensity that occurs towards the coming again of Jesus, which might be a thousand years away, it might be a day away. But discipleship is living in the picture of Jesus’ return. And when everybody out there’s interested in it, my fear is we’ll talk about everything else but what the community’s asking.”
Dr Clifford thinks the Church can be hesitant to talk about the end times. But he believes it’s a topic of great interest for people of other faiths, and even those without faith.
“Islam has the return of Christ. New spirituality has the return of Christ. Christianity has the return of Christ. Judaism is looking for the Messiah. So the harvest is ripe.”
