Advent is the appointed time to contemplate Christ’s return. But we need to be careful not to do that in a “Left Behind” kind of way. Those who speculate about the End Time and calculate its day and hour often get lost in interpreting current events and trying to identify the anti-Christ, while neglecting who Jesus is and why He is returning.
Every age seems to be a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. I remember reading that Mikhail Gorbachev is the anti-Christ, what with that red birthmark on his head. Before that, it was Henry Kissinger. As a child, I came across a very old book on my grandmother’s bookshelf that described some 19th century European treaty as the 10-nation confederation cited in the Bible as a herald of the End Times.
Such expectations go all the way back through church history, including the time of Luther. That every age seems to fulfill the Scriptures simply means that Christ’s return could happen at any moment. But Christ’s coming again in glory is not supposed to scare us. To be sure, the unbridled wickedness of the world as depicted in the Bible should scare us. But Jesus comes to squelch that evil once and for all. That’s bad news for the evildoers who are being squelched, but it’s good news for us evildoers whom Christ has forgiven.
I came across an article on Luther’s advent preaching by John Pless, a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary, entitled Learning to Preach in Advent and Christmas from Luther in the Concordia Theological Quarterly (1998). He writes:
Luther’s preaching for the Second Sunday in Advent is replete with warnings regarding the quickness of the Lord’s return to judgement and the need for constant watchfulness lest that Day overtake people unprepared, [but] he strives to have his hearers “discern Judgement Day correctly, to know what he (Christ) means for us and why we hope and await his return.” After describing how the pope preaches a Christ who is a stern judge with whom we must be reconciled by our works, Luther goes on to preach the comfort which is to be found in Christ’s final advent:
. . . in this Gospel he teaches us differently, namely, that he will come not to judge and damn us but to redeem and save us, and to fulfill all for which we have petitioned him, and to bring us his kingdom. To the ungodly and the unbelievers he will come as judge and punish them as his enemies and the Christians’ foes, who have afflicted Christians with all kinds of misery. But to the believers and Christians he will come as a redeemer.
In a similar fashion, Luther chides the fanatics for robbing Christians of the comfort of the Lord’s return.
The godless fanatical preachers are to be censured who in their sermons deprive people of these words of Christ and faith in them, who desire to make people devout by terrifying them and who teach them to prepare for the last day by relying on their good works as satisfaction for their sins. Here despair, fear, and terror must remain and grow and with it hatred, aversion, and abhorrence for the coming of the Lord, and enmity against God be established in the heart; for they picture Christ as nothing but a stern judge whose wrath must be appeased by works, and they never present him as the Redeemer, as he calls and offers himself, of whom we are to expect that out of pure grace he will redeem us from sin and evil.
What a marvelous thought: That Jesus will come “to fulfill all for which we have petitioned him.” All of the prayers for mercies, healings, comfort, needs, and other desperate requests that He did not seem to answer, He will answer then.
So we should think about Christ’s coming to raise the dead and to create a new heaven and a new earth with anticipation and joy. As St. Paul says, we are “ waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
Come, Lord Jesus!
Illustration: The Last Judgment by Hans Memling (c. 1467-1471) – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6884588
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