I Was Wrong About the Second Coming! Part 1

Still Waiting After All These Years

Life was filled with guns and wars and everyone got trampled on the floor, I wish we’d all be ready… Larry Norman

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Coming of age in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, I was surrounded by the 2nd Coming of Jesus mania.

Almost every Jesus People Music/Contemporary Christian Music artist featured at least one song per album about the imminent return of Jesus, from Larry Norman to Andrae Crouch to BJ Thomas to The Second Chapter of Acts, and the list goes on and on.

The theme turned up in movies. Many from my generation will remember having the bowel movement scared out of them after watching A Thief in the Night, usually shown at night to church youth groups. I heard more than one story about someone who had seen that movie, coming home to an empty house, suddenly convinced they’d missed the Rapture (where Jesus apparently comes and takes Christians to heaven leaving the rest to experience unimaginable torture at the hands of the Anti-Christ).

Even Hollywood got into that act with the Omen movies, about the Anti-Christ.

Evangelists like Billy Graham, TV preachers like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell, and radio evangelists, made the 2nd Coming a staple of their preaching menu.

There were even rumors about a super-computer in Belgium called, The Beast (a reference to a character in the book of Revelation). This beast would eventually mark us all with the number 666 or something like it. If we didn’t get the number, we wouldn’t be able to buy or sell.

Even bar codes were accused of being the Mark of the Beast.

On top of that, Rapture Practice, where youth groups would jump into the air, hands raised to the Heavens, to practice being Raptured by Jesus when he comes back (spoiler alert, the word rapture is not in the Bible).

Perhaps some of you remember bumper stickers like this:

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It won’t be long… til we’ll be leaving here. It won’t be long… we’ll be going home. Andrae Crouch.

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Then there were the books.

But before I get to them, a bit of background into my immersion in all things 2nd Coming.

I was, admittedly, a weird kid. I wanted to be a pastor since 2nd grade so at a young age I was reading theology-type books—or more to the point—theology books written for the masses (and nothing wrong with that!).

One day, it had to be around 1973 or so, I received a really cool looking magazine in the mail. (Actually, I think it was for my parents).

The cover featured a very modern, hip looking painting of Jesus with the title: Jesus Christ: Solid Rock.

Expecting to open the pages and find some interesting stuff about Jesus I was hit with these words:

Any moment now—night or day—millions will suddenly disappear. It will happen in the twinkling of an eye—a split second. Every true Jesus person will vanish from the earth to meet Jesus in the celestial heavens; leaving a shocked world behind. This is not a joke—it is not a fantasy—it is the absolute truth. Jesus Christ is coming soon!

There was more—From David Wilkerson:

Not only have all these signs of His return begun—they have nearly all be fulfilled. This can only mean that the earth is living on borrowed time. The clock has already touched midnight.

And this from Bob Summers:

So, Jesus says this generation is headed for a showdown. A rendezvous with destiny!

And this from singer Pat Boone (Debby’s dad):

All history is now clear. Russia is now in her place. Israel is in her place. So are Europe and China.

I’m leaving out a lot of pieces but the long and the short of it is this: This magazine was saying something I had never heard before. All of the Biblical signs (whatever they are) pointing to the return of Jesus have come true and…

Jesus will be returning IN MY LIFETIME!

ARE! YOU! KIDDING! ME!

It changed everything for me.

I started reading every 2nd coming book I could get my hands on.

I started with the Granddaddy of them all, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. I remember reading that book during rest time at Bible Camp and cheering out loud when Hal recounted what will happen when Jesus returns and his enemies are destroyed.

Hal listed out all of the signs in the Bible that he believed indicated when Jesus would return. Viewing the Biblical book of Revelation as a book about the 2nd coming (spoiler alert, it’s not), he opened my eyes to stuff I’d never seen before. Certainly my Lutheran pastors weren’t giving us this kind of insight!

From there, any book that spoke about the 2nd coming and the signs of Jesus’ soon return, I read.

Among them a book called, 666, by Salem Kirban. It was a look at the reign of the Anti-Christ put in novel form, a precursor to the massively popular Left Behind series in the 1990’s.

Eventually, I could articulate the signs and the timelines of the 2nd Coming with the best of them. In fact, in my Sr year of High school, I preached a sermon on the 2nd Coming at our all school chapel. (I attended a Christian HS so please, no comments about church and state! :)) All of the music had a 2nd Coming message (because, again, tons of artists were including 2nd coming songs on their albums. Cam Floria, of the Continental Singers, even wrote an entire musical based on The Late Great Planet Earth! called It’s Getting Late (for the Great Planet Earth). I loved that musical. Very groovy!)

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I don’t know, how long I’ll be here, ‘cause Jesus, said he’d come again. And where he leads, I will go with him, When I hear him call my name. I wanna be ready… BJ Thomas

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By the time the Left Behind series powered its way into mainstream America in the 1990’s, I had done a massive re-think, not about the 2nd Coming, but about that particular interpretation of the 2nd Coming.

Once again, that pesky Bible got in the way. But more than that, a gracious, not an angry, God got in the way.

Assuming Jesus doesn’t come back before next week, I’ll go deeper then.