A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times

by Kim Riddlebarger

The reason Jesus did this was surely intentional. He set forth the tension between the signs that precede his coming and the suddenness of his coming so that his people would live every moment in light of the promise of his coming. Yet, not knowing the day or the hour when he will come again, we are to live every moment to the fullest, going about our divinely mandated tasks of fulfilling the cultural mandate—marrying, raising our families, fulfilling our callings, and taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is the same tension we find throughout the New Testament between the already and the not yet. The signs that point to the certainty of our Lord’s return stand in direct contrast to the teaching about the suddenness and unexpected nature of his return, about which no one knows the day or the hour.[45] Jesus’s point was that his coming will shake the very heavens, picking up on the earlier image he gave of lightning flashing from east to west in verse 27. When Jesus returns, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken” (v. 29).