All Nations and the Second Coming

As the apostle Peter taught about the return of Christ and the end of the world, he told us what we should be doing about it in the meantime:  "Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?" (2 Peter 3:11-12 NKJV italics added).  Hastening?  Isn't the Lord's return a set event on God's calendar?  In what sense could we move up the clock?

Prayer might be a factor.  In the Model Prayer Jesus taught us to pray that the kingdom would come.  The apostle John certainly believed in praying for the end to hurry up and get here.  At the end of the book of Revelation after the Lord has promised three times to come quickly (22:7, 12, 20) John adds the prayer, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"  It seems John understood that he could ask the Lord to hurry because of Jesus' own promise.

There is another possibility for how we might hasten the Lord's return.  Matthew and Mark record that Jesus taught the disciples about the end on the evening of His arrest.  Both accounts tie the timing of the consummation with the preaching of the gospel to all nations.  Mark has it this way: "And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations" (13:10).  "First" implies a sequence of events; the gospel must reach all ethnic groups before the end comes.  This sequence is stated even more clearly in Matthew's version of the same saying:  "And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (24:14).  All of us who love His appearing (2 Timothy 4:8) will do all we can to hasten it.  This possibility gives us a further motivation for getting the gospel to the nations.

Note how even in the conclusion to history the two themes of the person of Christ and the purpose of God stand out.  When Jesus comes in glory, He will be fully vindicated.  Every eye will see Him, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.  We will see Him as He is.  That full, undeniable revelation of the person of Christ is linked to the preaching of the gospel to "all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues" (Revelation 7:9).  From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is about two things:  first, "that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day" and second, "that repentance and remission of sins should b preached in His name to all nations" (Luke 24:46-47).

Let us pray today that the Lord will hasten His return.  Let us pray also that we will do our part in taking the gospel to the nations so that all possible conditions have been fulfilled.