What did Jesus say about his return?

Thus Jesus, after speaking of the many mansions in His Father's house, and of going there to prepare a place for His own, said, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." It is clear that He did not mean death, nor the destruction of Jerusalem, nor the end of the world. He Who was going away promised to come again. If it was a real and personal departure of Jesus, it was to be as real and personal a return, not to reign over them in their place, but to take them to His place that He and they might be in heavenly bliss together. Right therefore it is, that our hearts should feel how very distinct a thing our going to Him is from His coming to receive us unto Himself in such sort as this.

The truth is that now as then, the hope of the Lord's personal return for His sleeping and waking saints is in no way connected with prophetic times and seasons, but rests quite simply, but none the less surely, upon the Lord's own promise before His departure His words were, as you know, "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." — John 14:2-3. Is not this promise sufficient to assure us that He is really coming back again?

He said that He would go away. It was not a phantom departure, but He went in person. And he said "I will come again." He did not mean a spiritual return, but a personal coming again. His words cannot be interpreted in any other way. Furthermore the two men in white apparel said to the disciples "this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). Wherever His return is mentioned in the New Testament it means the return of the same One who lived on earth, who died on the cross, was buried, rose again and ascended up on high. It will be a visible return

Will Christ really return then? we ask. He will, firstly, because He said so. "I will come again" (John 14:3).

Whoever carefully considers Old Testament prophecies must be struck by two contrasting and seemingly contradictory lines of prediction concerning the coming Messiah. One body of prediction speaks of Him as coming in weakness and humiliation, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as a root out of dry ground, having no form nor comeliness, nor beauty that He should be desired. His visage is to be marred, His hands and feet pierced, He is to be forsaken of man and of God, and to make His grave with the wicked. (See Ps. 22:1-18; Isa. 7:14; Isa. 53; Dan. 9:26; Zech. 13:6-7; Mark 14:27.) The other line of prophecy foretells a splendid and resistless Sovereign, purging the earth with awful judgments, regathering dispersed Israel, restoring the throne of David in more than Solomon's splendor, and introducing a reign of profound peace and perfect righteousness. (See Deut. 30:1-7; Isa. 11:1-2, 10-12; Isa. 9:6-7; Isa. 24:21-23; Isa. 40:9-11; Jer. 23:5-8; Dan. 7:13-14; Mic. 5:2; Matt. 1: 1; Matt. 2:2; Luke 1:31-33.) In due time the fulfillment of messianic prophecy began with the birth of the virgin's Son according to Isaiah, in Bethlehem according to Micah, and proceeded with perfect literalness unto the full accomplishment of every prediction of Messiah's humiliation; for sin must first be put away, before the kingdom could be established. But the Jews would not receive their King in the form in which He was presented, "meek and sitting upon an ass and a colt the foal of an ass," and they crucified Him. (See Zech. 9:9 with Matt. 21:1-5; John 19:15-16.) But we must not conclude that the wickedness of man has baffled the deliberate purpose of God, for His counsels include a second advent of His Son, when the predictions concerning Messiah's earthly glory will receive the same precise and literal fulfillment as did those which concerned His earthly sufferings. (See Hos. 3:4-5; Matt. 24:27-30; Luke 1:31-33; Acts 1:6-7; Acts 15:14-17.) The Jews were slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken concerning the sufferings of their Messiah; we are slow of heart to believe all that they have spoken concerning His glory. Surely the greater reproach is ours, for it ought to be easier to believe that the Son of God would come "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory" than that He would come as the babe of Bethlehem and the carpenter of Nazareth. Indeed, we believe the latter because it has happened, not because the prophets foretold it, and it is time we ceased to reproach the Jews for their unbelief. If it be asked how they could possibly be blinded to the evident meaning of so many and such unequivocal predictions, the answer is that they were blinded in exactly the same way that many Christians are blinded to the equally evident meaning of a far greater number of predictions of His earthly glory, namely, by the process of "spiritualizing" Scripture. In other words, the ancient scribes told the people that the prophecies of Messiah's sufferings were not to be interpreted literally, just as some modern scribes are telling the people that the prophecies of Messiah's earthly glory are not to be literally interpreted. The second advent is a promise to the church as well as to the Jew. Among the last words of comfort and exhortation addressed by our Lord to His perplexed and sorrowing disciples before He accomplished the sacrifice of the cross were these: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:1-3). Here the Lord speaks of His coming again in precisely the same terms as of His departure. The latter was, we know, personal and bodily. If we say that the former is impersonal and "spiritual," surely to such a forced interpretation of simple language we ought to be constrained only by the most imperative and unqualified Scripture elsewhere. But no such passages exist. But we are not left to doubt upon this vital point, nor to draw conclusions of reason, however irresistible. In the very moment of our Lord's disappearance from the sight of His disciples, "Two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:10-11). To the same purport is I Thess. 4:16-17: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

I pass by all the passages in other gospels to one well-known passage in John. To His disciples, when just on the eve of His departure, and conversing with them respecting it, Jesus says, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14:1-3.) Here we have not only the fact of His return to His disciples, but the object of it, at least, as far as they are concerned. We find that He is to come for them, as well as to them. It is for us, my brethren, that He is gone to the Father — to prepare a place for us with Himself in the Father's house. And as surely as for this purpose He has gone away, so surely will He come again, and receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. If it had not been so, He would have told us. And with assurances like these from the Saviour's own lips, what can be our hope, save this promised return of His, to receive us to Himself, that where He is, we may be for ever?

The sign of the Son of man in heaven. — "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the nations of the earth (or, land) mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). The disciples had asked, "What shall be the sign of thy corning, and of the end of the age?" The Lord had already instructed them about the end of the age; now He tells them that the sign of His coming will be the coming itself, for they should see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The expression, "sign of thy coming," is the genitive of definition, for Mark and Luke give the substantial coming of the Son of man without referring to it as a sign.

The wrong interpretation of the word "generation" is responsible for the erroneous conception so prevalent in our days. It is said that "this generation" must mean the very generation, the people who lived then upon the earth, when the Lord spoke these words. It is easily seen how, if this is the meaning of "this generation," the events predicted by our Lord must have been fulfilled within the life-time of the people living then. What other event could be meant than the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70? Thus the wrong interpretation of these two words, "this generation," has led the large numbers of Bible teachers and readers of this discourse astray. But let us get the right meaning of "generation" and all will be clear. The word _genea means not necessarily the same persons living, but it has also the meaning of race. The English word "generation" has this meaning of "family or a race of a certain class of people." And so has the Greek. It is used in that sense in Luke 16:8. "This generation" is the race sprung from Abraham, God's chosen earthly people. Well have they been called "the everlasting nation;" better still we could call them "the nation of destiny." God has kept this race, and is keeping them for the fulfilment of His own great, revealed purpose. The verse, however, has also the meaning that the people living, when the end of the Jewish age sets in, will behold its termination; it will all be accomplished in a small space of time. Yea heaven and earth may pass away but His Words will not pass away. How solemn this is! Here we read still the same great and mighty Words, which were hated by thousands of God's enemies in the past; words which have been attacked and denied. And still the old enemy of the written Word is at it, and through his chosen instruments (alas! many of them in the midst of the professing church) attacks and belittles these Words. They stand! They are as eternal and divine, as infallible and true, as He, the eternal Son of God, is from whose lips they came.

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of the heavens, but my Father alone" (verse 36).

This makes the matter still more solemn. That day and hour, which will usher in these mighty events, of which the Lord speaks in His discourse, culminating in His own personal and glorious manifestation, is unknown. In the Gospel of Mark the Holy Spirit adds, "nor the Son." This addition is made in Mark because there our Lord is viewed as God's servant, and a servant "does not know what his master doeth." The Father knows the day and the hour, when all this is to come to pass The beginning of it is liable to occur at any time. How foolish, then, to speculate on the possible time of our Lord's return -- and the setting of years and days. It dishonors the Word and brings reproach upon Prophecy.

The Watching Servant. — The kingdom in power it became evident was a future one, for they were to seek it. And the King of God's kingdom (Col. 1:13) was addressing them both as children of the Father, and as His own servants likewise. So He now tells them what they should be as servants. They should be waiting, or looking, for their Lord. They should be working, too, during His absence. For of His departure from earth for a time, before they could have the kingdom, He here warns them. Hence watching for His return, for He will return having received the kingdom (Luke 19:15), was to mark them, like servants who with girded loins and lighted lamps await an earthly master's return from a wedding feast, ready at any moment to open the door to him. It is an illustration from ordinary life that we here have, and no reference to the marriage supper of the Lamb of Rev. 19:7-9. So, in perfect harmony with the teaching elsewhere of the Lord's return for His own without any premonitory signs (1 Cor. 15:52), disciples are admonished to keep themselves in readiness. Blessed would they be, who should thus be found watching. And wonderful favour and honour would be theirs, a favour which no mere servant of an earthly master could look for. The Lord will minister to such. For, girding Himself for service, He will make these, who had been girded whilst waiting for Him, sit down to meat, and He will come forth and serve them. Sudden will be His return. It may be in the second watch, or in the third watch. He does not here speak of the fourth. For it will be whilst the night is still going on, ere daylight begins to light up the scene, that He will come for His own. Hence to be ready, not knowing the hour of His return, He would impress on us all.

"This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11) The Lord had Himself promised the same thing. "I go to prepare a place for you. … I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14) That the Son of man will literally return, and be revealed, is also clear from Luke 12:35-46, Luke 17:22, 37, Luke 18:1-8, Luke 19:11-27, Luke 21:27-36. The last is the more important, because it shows the fallacy of such as suppose Matt. 24:30, Mark 13:26, to have been fulfilled in the siege of Jerusalem under Titus. Past and present disasters, "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," are fully described already in Luke 21:20-24. Next follows the closing scene — distress of nations with perplexity; and men see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. "This generation" (i.e., the present unbelieving race of the Jews) lasts till then; it shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. For "the world to come," grace will convert "a generation to come." (Ps. 102:18) In a word, death, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the destruction of Jerusalem, are all distinct things from the advent of the Lord Jesus. He is coming, and quickly. (Rev. 12:7-20.)