Almost two and one half years later General MacArthur faithfully fulfilled his earlier promise he had made while in the Philippines. In an extremely significant meeting at Pearl Harbor with President Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur bravely questioned his superior's strategy of emphasizing the war in Europe so heavily and eventually won authorization to return to the Philippines instead of continuing to Formosa. His troops successfully invaded (October 1944) Leyte and then other islands of the archipelago, decisively defeating the Japanese forces on Luzon in August 1945.
Beloved, 1,915 years before that famous reappearing of General MacArthur, the Captain of our Salvation, the LORD Jesus Christ, announced to His distressed disciples "I will come again!" As sure as the General returned to the weary citizens of Philippines, so our LORD Jesus shall return for HIS blood bought Church.
Great controversy and consternation has arisen over the reality of the LORD Jesus returning to the earth. Our LORD will surely come again, to be sure. How would anyone positively know? Jesus promised that He would certainly return. During the evening, of what has become known as "The Last Supper," Jesus graciously consoled the anxious hearts of HIS perplexed disciples by saying, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. {2} 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. {3} 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 KJV)
The credibility of Christ as well as the veracity of Holy Scripture is at stake. To impugn this glorious doctrine of "The Second Advent of Christ," as Bible students properly refer to it, is unconscionable. We have the very Guarantee of Jesus: "I will come again!" The LORD cannot lie. It is impossible for Jesus to lie and still be the LORD. Since the Scripture is replete with the evidence manifesting the reality that Jesus is LORD God come in the flesh, we humbly accept the accuracy of the Apostle John's report, because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. The Bible explicitly teaches us that "it was impossible for God to lie" (Heb 6:18). God "cannot lie" (Titus 1:2). Christ Jesus our LORD will definitely return to the earth one day!
However, the actual timing of the second coming of Christ has proven to be debatable to say the least, very divisive in its most extreme form, and quite destructive to brotherly love among Christian people. Not only has the timing of the Second Coming caused intense contention, the manner and method of Christ's coming has been hotly debated as well. These arguments ought not to be.
Mark it down: Jesus shall return in a visible, physical, tangible, glorified body! To deny this is to question a cardinal doctrine of the faith and to impugn Christ's truthfulness. When shall Jesus return? That's the disputed question. As our LORD emphatically insisted while on earth: "But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." (Mark 13:32 KJV)
Much divisiveness has arisen due, primarily, to the growing confusion regarding Jesus' statements made privately to Peter, James, John and Andrew (See Mark 13:3), in what is commonly referred to as the Olivet Discourse found in the synoptic gospels (Mathew, Mark, and Luke) concerning HIS coming in judgment in AD 70, when the temple was at last utterly destroyed as Titus, the son of Vespasian, marched into Jerusalem and burnt the once Holy city. Christ's coming actually occurred then. What is at stake is the veracity of Jesus. It was Jesus that said that "all these things shall happen unto this generation." (See: Matt 23:36)
By missing the significance of Jerusalem's ruination and the Destruction of its famous Temple of the Jews (John 2.20), it has wreaked havoc among the brethren. Far too many men have been, so it seems, permanently blinded by theological systems of thought, as well as techniques of teaching, that have inadvertently obscured the historical, contextual, grammatical, geographical, and political setting of a given passage of Scripture. Rather than being earnest truth seekers like the noble Bereans "that ... received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (See Acts 17: 11), men in our era have been instructed by "pop prophecy preachers" to prop up their systems with texts that are too frequently out of context, a practice referred to by this Pastor as "Text tearing." This old adage is still true: "A text out of context is a pretext!" Oh, that men - preachers - would heed the exhortation given by the Apostle Paul to his protégé, Timothy, when he wrote: "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." (2 Tim 4:2 KJV)
The reality is that Jesus did, in deed, come in AD 70, just as He had predicated forty years earlier that HE would do. It was HIS coming, however, in judgment, in which He used the Roman armies, much like the Assyrian armies had been employed in antiquity (See: Isaiah 7.17). In any case, in AD 70 it was sentence upon the apostate Jews, who had eagerly opted for statism (They foolish cried, "We have no king but Caesar.") rather than humble themselves unto HIS Messianic leadership.
Jesus, we know by reviewing the Holy Writ, came to a number of men in times past when He had appeared unto men of old in a pre-incarnate form, known in theology as a theophany or a Christophany. Who would deny that it was Jesus who walked in the cool of the garden with Adam, or spake unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
Moses, the New Testament says, responded to Christ (See: Heb 11: 26). Joshua faced he Captain of the host of the LORD, who it is believed was none other than a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus. "The Angel of the LORD" Who appeared unto Gideon, it is generally accepted among serious Bible students, was Christ Jesus our LORD in HIS a pre-incarnate form.
The simple point is that since the LORD Christ Jesus had come a number of times before becoming incarnate, it is exceedingly feasible to accept the reality that Jesus actually came, as HE had promised, in judgement. As those former appearings/comings certainly did not prohibit Jesus from coming in the flesh via the virgin birth as Scripture states:"when the fulness of time was come" neither would HIS AD 70 judgment coming primarily against the disobedient Jewish apostates hamper HIM from coming again in the end of time. Our LORD Jesus Christ shall absolutely be coming again in the end of history to this very earth. Jesus will arrive to earth at the precise time of which God the FATHER has appointed for Him to return. When Jesus comes, it will be literally visible; it shall be in that precious, glorified, physical body in which HE ascending up into Heaven long ago.
Luke records the account in (Acts 1:9 KJV) "And when he (Christ Jesus our LORD) had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. {10} And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; {11} 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