THE OLIVET DISCOURSE - FUTURISM IN MATTHEW 24

In these increasingly darkening turbulent times, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is especially dear to the Christian. It is this present glorious hope, not some fleeting earthly agenda, that encourages believers to be “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of [the] faith” (Heb. 12:2). The Apostle John encourages us today, not just his immediate addressees, to anticipate this climactic event. “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (I John 3:2). Here is no promise of some mystical, unreported or unobserved revelation of Christ, as some preterists might suggest concerning 70 AD, but the one who John earlier described as He who was “from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands [following His resurrection], concerning the Word of Life” (I John 1:1). This is the Jesus who John observed ascending into a cloud and then received the angelic promise that this same Jesus “will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). This is indeed the glory of futurism... (Read or download the whole document).