The End of All Things (2): The Idea of the Signs of Christ’s Coming

Knowing the Time

I took a brief break from the series that I intend to write on the end of all things. To that series I now return.

The end of all things is the subject of the section in theology known as eschatology. Eschatology means the study of the last things. Those last things are all the events that must happen in the new dispensation after the ascension of Christ as they are ordained by God to culminate in the appearance of Christ, the final judgment, and the coming of the everlasting age in the new heaven and new earth.

I began this series on eschatology by examining the calling of the whole church and the individual Christian to know the time. This is the concern of the apostle Paul in Romans 13:11–12:

11. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

The Christian must know the time in the sense that from his own time and place in the history of the unfolding of God’s counsel he understands what time it is on the clock of history. Time rushes forward to the coming of the end. Nothing stands still. All creation and every creature—whether willing or not—are working according to the power of God’s counsel for the coming of that end.

Our salvation is nearer than when we believed!

The night is far spent!

The day is at hand!

Some say that when the apostle Paul wrote those words, he labored under the misunderstanding that Christ would come in Paul’s own day. But that is impossible. For the apostle writes later of the expectation of his own death and that he would through death be with Christ (Phil. 1:20–25). Paul writes to the Thessalonians, who thought that Christ could come at any moment, that the day of the Lord cannot come at any moment, but first there must “come a falling away,” and there must be the revelation of the “man of sin,” “the son of perdition” (2 Thess. 2:3).

Rather, the apostle is speaking of the advance of Christ and his kingdom in the new dispensation as Christ comes at every moment and in every event. It is not true that Christ will merely come at some future point in time. The whole new dispensation and all its events are but the footsteps of the coming Christ. For the creation as a whole, Christ is always coming, and always he comes nearer. When he comes for our salvation, then he comes nearer. There is also a personal application for the child of God of the truth that his salvation is nearer than when he believed, for the day of the Lord for the believer will be at the moment of his death, and surely every Christian can say, “I fly away quickly!” His day, the day of his death, and so the day of the perfection of his salvation, comes quickly and is nearer now than yesterday.

Yet it is especially with a view to the completion of the whole purpose of God in Christ with his church, kingdom, and covenant that the apostle says that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed and that the night is far spent and the day is at hand.

The day is at hand! The entire new dispensation is the last hour of night before the rising of “the Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2).

As far as scripture is concerned, then, the rest of the new dispensation has been night with the Dawn at hand. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. With the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Christ, we have come to the very threshold of Day.

This means, then, that for the Christian the main character of this present time is yet night. It is night because the present state of the world is still sinful, groaning and travailing under the curse, and characterized by death. This night the Christian also carries around with him in his nature, so that he must say about himself, “I am carnal and sold under sin.” He is not carnal in the sense of the man of the world. The things of God are no longer foolishness to him. He delights in the law of God after the inward man. But his condition yet is that he has his old flesh and in his members the law of sin still operates and takes him captive, so that the good that he would, he does not do, and the evil that he would not, that he does. He too groans within himself, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of his body. The Spirit who is in the Christian also groans, with groanings that cannot be uttered, in that perfect intercession for the Christian’s perfection in heaven.

Yet it is not all night. The day is at hand. In the dimness of the early light of the dawn, the Christian lives by faith and not by sight. He sees through a glass darkly the coming glory of the kingdom of Christ. The Christian does not yet know as he is known. He sees only in the light of scripture, which indeed means that he has “a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.” In hope he looks forward to that time when “the day dawn[s], and the day star arise[s] in your hearts” (2 Pet. 1:19). He does not yet see face to face and with his eyes behold the majesty of Christ and the glory of his kingdom, but by faith the Christian lives in hope of that coming glory.

The day is at hand! The entire new dispensation is the last hour of night before the rising of “the Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2).

The Christian, then, must know the time. He must know that now the clock of history is in its last hour. The coming of Christ is quick. Oh yes, it seems that Christ delays, but he does not. He is working speedily all things that must happen according to God’s counsel in order to appear in his time on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Christ comes with irresistible power. Like the labor of a pregnant woman that has begun and cannot be stopped, so the coming of Christ is begun and cannot be stopped. The church in the new dispensation lives in the hope of the consummation of all things. The church in the old dispensation saw the coming of Christ as a single event, a mingling in her vision of the first and second comings of Christ, seeing at once both his humiliation and his future glory. Now we understand that Christ’s coming has two great parts to it: his coming in his humiliation and his coming in his exaltation; his coming to confirm God’s covenant and his coming to perfect God’s covenant. In the first coming Christ entered into our night to bring the clock of history forward to its last hour. In the second coming he will arise in all his glory as the day to chase away forever the night that came on the world in Adam, and the time will come for the creation when “there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). In John’s vision of the holy city, the perfected church

21. had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

22. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.

23. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. (Rev. 21:23–25)

And now it is the last hour!

This the Christian must know!

The Signs and Their Relationship to Christ’s Coming

It is with a view to the Christian’s knowledge of the time, then, that in eschatology we speak colloquially of the signs of times. If the Christian must know where on the clock of God the hands are pointing so that he can as it were read that clock, then there must be indicators of what time it is. It is these indicators that are the focus in this article.

In theology we call those indicators of the nearness of the end the precursory signs. The word precursory is akin to the word forerunner. A forerunner is one who precedes the coming of another and announces that the other will arrive shortly. This is also the idea of the word precursory. The precursory signs are, then, those events in the realm of creation, society, and the church that indicate that the coming of Christ is near and approaches quickly.

After Christ had prophesied to the disciples of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, they asked him about these signs. So we read in Matthew 24:1–3:

1. Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

2. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

The disciples correctly connected Christ’s teaching about the destruction of Jerusalem to the end of the world and the coming of Christ. In the destruction of Jerusalem, there is a kind of type of the end of the world, especially in the aspect that the world power puts out of existence the false church and makes the true church the target of its persecution. The end of Jerusalem was also the definitive end of the economy of the old dispensation. That there would no longer be a temple meant that the keeping of the Old Testament laws was impossible even for the false church of Jesus’ day and that the observation of those laws denied that Jesus is the Christ. The disciples correctly saw that with the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the economy of the old dispensation that the last hour had come on the world and with it the revelation of Christ in his glory. So the disciples asked concerning the signs. Christ responded by teaching the disciples about the signs of his coming and of the end of the world under the type of the destruction of Jerusalem. These verses in Matthew 24 are then basic to understanding those signs, what they are and what their purpose is.

A proper understanding of the relationship between the precursory signs and the coming of Christ is basic to a proper understanding of the signs. The relationship between the signs of Christ’s coming and the coming of Christ itself is not merely that there are events that happen to occur in creation, society, and the church that incidentally remind the church that Christ is coming. So the relationship between the signs and Christ’s coming is not like the relationship between the timer that you set and the cake that you put into the oven. When the timer goes off, it reminds you to take the cake out of the oven. But there is no essential connection between the timer and the baking cake.

Rather, the relationship between the precursory signs and the coming of Christ is more akin to signs of a thunderstorm and the arrival of that storm. The coming storm has its signs: the lowered barometric pressure, the rising humidity, the ominous cloud formations, the lightning show in the cloud bank, the rumble of thunder, the sudden calm, the blast of wind as the storm’s front moves toward you, and then the storm itself breaks over you. The relationship between that storm and its signs is that the storm itself creates its own signs. In a sense the storm is its signs, and the storm itself comes in those signs. In this way also the coming of Christ creates the precursory signs. The coming of Christ happens in those signs and is really indistinguishable from those signs. For instance when there is a massive disaster, then it is not merely the case that the disaster reminds us that Christ will come, but in that disaster Christ has come. Or, to use another analogy, the huge iron ore freighter moving through the water creates a massive bow wave in front of it, and so the massive event of the coming of Christ pushes before itself and creates the bow wave of the precursory signs.

The lordly and controlling figure in all eschatology is Jesus Christ. His coming is the central event of all history, and this is true also of the history of the new dispensation. The central reality of all that history is simply the coming of Jesus Christ. This is what Christ meant when he said, “Behold, I come quickly.” The meaning is not that he will quickly come in the sense that in the future he will soon appear on the clouds of heaven to judge the quick and the dead. The meaning, rather, is that Christ is coming throughout all the history of the new dispensation, and his coming creates all that history. Christ as it were strides through history like a gigantic storm sweeps across the Great Plains of the American Midwest, or as a great ship the coming of Christ pushes before him the bow wave of the history of the new dispensation.

The purpose of these signs then is for the church. They are not for the world.

Christ dominates and controls all history according to God’s counsel. Christ is first in that counsel, and all things were created in that counsel by him and for him, and all those things serve him and the salvation of his church and the manifestation of that counsel in the eternal kingdom of God. This controlling power that Christ has in all history is in part what the apostle has in view in Romans 8:28, where he says that “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” The “good” is God’s glory in the finishing of his purpose in Christ. To this end all things work. It is not that all things consciously and willingly work for this good purpose. The brute creation does not know that it is working for this purpose, but it is. The devil, the ungodly world, and the false church in their persecution and affliction of God’s people are consciously seeking to destroy this good purpose of God, but by the power of God’s sovereign counsel, they are in fact working for good to those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. So the meaning is that the entire universe and all that is in it and all that occurs in the universe are according to God’s counsel—by the active and sovereign governance of God—working together for good, which is nothing less than the coming of Christ and the perfect revelation and manifestation of God’s eternal kingdom and covenant.

The Purpose of the Signs

What distinguishes these signs then from the rest of the events of the new dispensation? According to the description of the history of the new dispensation, all history is in reality an effect of the coming of Christ. So what makes these signs stand out? It is the character of these signs themselves as they interrupt what becomes for man an ordinary course of events. There is seedtime and harvest, the daily rising and setting of the sun, and the Christian goes about his day and begins to lose sight of his hope in the coming of Christ. And then an event startles him back to that central reality of his own life and of the whole universe that Christ is coming. The Christian hears the gospel preached for twenty years, and suddenly he hears the lie preached! He sees that generations hear and receive the same truth, and then he sees a generation that departs from the truth. He follows the weather and observes its rather ordinary patterns, and then a massive hurricane comes and devastation follows. It is not that these signs are any less or more connected to the coming of Christ than any other event in history, but only that they are designed by God to catch the attention of the church.

The purpose of these signs then is for the church. They are not for the world. The world, of course, can observe the signs, for they do not happen in a corner but before the whole world. But the reaction of the world is unbelief and to blaspheme the God of heaven. What John saw in his vision in Revelation of the pouring out of the vials of God’s wrath upon the antichristian world power is true of the signs generally. John writes in Revelation 16:10–11, 

10. The fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain,

11. And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

From this viewpoint the coming of the Lord is as a thief in the night for the ungodly world. So the apostle Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:1–4,

1. Of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

2. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

3. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

4. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Over against all God’s judgments on the world and the false church, they assure themselves of peace and safety. They redouble their efforts to overcome the purpose of God and build for themselves a kingdom of man and of man’s peace on the earth, and they set themselves more stubbornly to oppose the truth and the church of God. And sudden destruction comes on them.

But for the church it is not so. She observes the signs and knows the times and the seasons of the history of the world. Christ speaks of the purpose of these signs for the church in Luke 21:28–31:

28. When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

29. And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;

30. When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.

31. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.

The reference of “these things” is to all the precursory signs of which Christ had just spoken. The purpose of these signs for the church is to take the church’s focus from the earth and from her very limited and shortsighted goals and even her frequently carnal living and to lift her head up in expectation again of the grand and all-encompassing purpose of God in the coming of Christ. A wife whose husband must travel for work for a time can bury herself in the work of the home, and she almost forgets that he is gone. Then he calls her, and she is reminded of her desire that he return as soon as he can. So is the function of these signs. They are words to the church from her Lord; they call to the church to lay aside the sin that so easily besets her, to be sober, to shake off the sleepiness of the world, to turn from the deceitfulness of the things of this world, and to turn again to her hope and ardent expectation in the coming of Christ.

When we begin to examine the question of which are these signs, then we must immediately recognize that there is one central and controlling sign that takes place throughout the history of the new dispensation. That sign is the worldwide preaching of the gospel. That the preaching of the gospel is the central and controlling sign is the meaning of the appearance of the white horse, running first out of the book with seven seals that Christ opens:

1. I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

2. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. (Rev. 6:1–2)

The white horse appears first not in the sense of a temporal order, but in the sense of the primacy of that horse and his rider in all history. That horse represents the running of the gospel throughout history. The central and controlling place of the preaching of the gospel among the signs of the end is also the meaning of Christ when in his discourse on the precursory signs he says, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). The meaning is that until the gospel is preached in the whole world, the end and all that comes with that end cannot come. The dominant position that the preaching of the gospel has among the precursory signs is also the implication of the apostle’s teaching about apostasy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” The Thessalonian Christians had mistaken or misused the apostle’s teaching about the quickness of Christ’s coming in 1 Thessalonians to mean that Christ could come at any moment. The apostle wrote
2 Thessalonians to put that false idea to rest. In chapter 2 he says that the day of Christ cannot come except there come a falling away first. This falling away is the massive apostasy that fuels the rise of antichrist, who is the man of sin, the son of perdition. Christ cannot come until apostasy comes. But apostasy cannot come unless the gospel has first come. Apostasy is always a parasite of the gospel. The implication is that the day of Christ does not happen until the gospel has gone everywhere that God determined that it would go. In this light then the greatest event that happens throughout the history of the new dispensation is the pure preaching of the gospel, and that preaching has a universal and controlling power. In every sermon Christ draws near to his church, and with every sermon he hastens the day of his coming.

Other precursory signs are mentioned by Christ and by the apostles. Christ in Matthew 24 and in Luke 21 gives a rather extensive exemplary list of the precursory signs. Second Thessalonians 2 focuses on the two great signs of apostasy and the personal antichrist. The book of Revelation is full of descriptions of the precursory signs. It is to these other signs that I will turn next time and to the question of how these signs indicate where the world is in the calendar of history.