Jesus Will Come Again. We Don’t Know When. Do His Will Now.

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Jesus Christ 

Matthew 24:36

Evidently, Jesus was supposed to come again a  couple of weeks ago. The due date was Tuesday, September 23, 2025.

I wasn’t aware of this until late on the evening of September 22, when a family member told me that another family member was unavailable to help with a small family crisis because they thought that “Jesus was coming again.”

Even then, I had no idea what this was about. I went ahead and dealt with the situation at hand. Then, later, I asked one of my sons about it. Evidently, a preacher from South Africa had predicted that Jesus would come again on September 23, 2025, and quite a number of people, including my relative, believed it.

I’m writing about this now because I have a couple of things I’d like to say. 

First of all, people have been running these traps for 2,000 years. Here’s a tiny sampling of the many such predictions. 

Way back in 200 AD, Hippolytus of Rome predicted that Jesus would return in the year 500 AD. 

In the 19^th century, a Baptist preacher named William Miller predicted that Jesus would come again during the year 1843. When that didn’t happen, a follower of his (evidently, quite a lot of people believed Miller’s prediction) recalculated the date and announced that Christ would come again on October 12, 1844. When Jesus didn’t show up, the non-event became known as “the great disappointment.” 

The founder of Jehovah’s Witness, Charles Taze Russell, predicted Jesus would come again in 1874. His successor, Joseph Rutherford, predicted that Jesus would return in 1914, 1918 and 1925.

Hal Lindsey wrote a bestselling book, The Late Great Planet Earth, which suggested that Jesus would come again very soon, probably in the 1980s.  

I could go on. But you get the idea. 

Jesus Himself told us these phony predictions of His return would happen: 

The days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing. And they’ll say to you, “Look, there he is,’ or “Here he is,” but don’t go out and follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so it will be on the day when the Son of Man comes.

Jesus’ description fits many American Christians today.  

We are constantly being flogged with unending outrage, lies and chaos. Our beautiful America, the bastion of freedom, is being attacked from within by — of all people — the man we elected president and his stooges in Congress and on the Supreme Court — and we are full of anxiety and fears we don’t know how to name, much less face.

We’d like a moment of peace, a break in the tension; just one day without another loathsome bit of crazy falling on our heads like a rock. We want an off-ramp. Jesus coming again to rapture us away to heaven sounds like the best off ramp we can imagine. 

So when a religious Pied Piper comes along and plays the “Jesus is coming again next Tuesday” song, a lot of people start packing up. 

The problem is that the only part of this “prediction” that is true is that, yes, Jesus will come again. But nobody knows when, and as Jesus Himself made very clear, we can’t hasten it, and the only way we can prepare for it is to simply trust in Him. 

Like the lightning that streaks across the sky, it will just happen, and nothing we do will cause it or delay it. It’s out of our hands. 

What is in our hands is how we live our lives and what we do with the time we have been given in this life, right now. If Jesus is coming again tonight, and you have repented of your sins, trusted Him with your soul and tried to follow Him with your actions, if you have loved God and other people, then you don’t have anything else to do to get ready. 

The thief on the cross said I deserve my punishment. Then he turned to Jesus and said, Remember me when You come into your Kingdom. It was — and is — as simple as that. 

The truth is, every one of us has their own personal end of time. We die. Then we stand before God. 

A former pastor of mine used to say that when we die, someone will say to us You belong to me. 

We choose now, in this life, who will say that to us when that time comes.  

That’s why I really don’t get what my relative — who is a very sincere Christian and a good person — was thinking the other night. When Jesus comes again, we won’t have to pack for the journey. When — as is far more likely — we go to Him, there’s nothing we can take with us except the faith, hope and love we have built up during our time here. That is the treasure we get to keep. Everything else stays behind. 

So, why would you refuse to help someone in need just because Jesus is coming again? Jesus is coming again. I know that. You know it. He’s coming. It’s far more likely that we’re going to die and go to Him before that happens. But one day, as the lighting streaks across the sky, He will come. 

Either way, the only preparation we need to make in terms of our eternal destiny is to love Him and follow Him and love other people. If you don’t do that, nothing else you do will save you. If you actually do that, you’re ok.

That leads me to the other thing I want to say. If I truly thought that Jesus was either coming again or that I  was going to die tomorrow, what would I do?

That day will come. What will I do? 

I think that, if I had the time I would go to confession, and if possible, ask the priest to anoint me. But even more than that, I would want to tell everyone I love how much I really do love them. I’ve already made my amends as far as possible to the people I’ve hurt. But if there was any loose end, I’d try to knit it up as best as I could. 

But the main thing, the extremely important thing, is to tell people to turn to Christ. If I honestly believed Jesus was coming again tomorrow, I’d like to think that I would go straight down my block and knock on every door and say “Are you ready to meet God? Will you pray with me right now?”

When the building is burning down, you pull people out. 

My advice to other Christians is to stop looking for an exit ramp in these troubled times. You’re here, right now, alive in this moment, for a reason. 

You were chosen to be here now to do your part to save this country and return Christianity in America to worship and followership of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are here to do your part to end the idolatrous worship of false political gods that right wing clergy are pushing. 

Robert Frost wrote The only way out is through. Our way out of the chaos and destruction coming at us is go through it carrying the banner of Christ. We need to stop running, turn around and stand for the great Truths of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. 

Integrity, justice, compassion, the common good that protects and enhances the dignity and worth of every human being made in the Image and Likeness of the Living God; those things are the social and political manifestations of the Gospels. 

We need to stand for Christ and Him Crucified.

If you do God’s will and follow Him in these times, God will see you through. When it’s your time, you will see Him face to face in heaven, and He will say well done, good and faithful servant. 

Note: The description of the prophecy of false prophets who will incorrectly predict Christ’s return (The days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing …) is a direct quote from Jesus Christ from Luke 17:22-24. The conversation between the thief on the cross and Jesus is from Luke 23:41-43. The phrase “Well done good and faithful servant” is a direct quote from Jesus Christ from Luke 25:23. The quote from Robert Frost is taken from his poem, A Servant of Servants.