John 14:1-6 “Let not your heart be troubled; you 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 to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Ever since Jesus ascended into Heaven after His atoning death for the sins of the world, his death-defeating resurrection, and His ascension into Heaven, people have been asking when is Christ going to return, but rarely think of asking why the Lord is going to return? The symbolism of the Galilean wedding ritual of the betrothed couple gives a clue. The bridegroom goes away to his father’s house and takes time to build a room addition onto the existing house for him and his wife-to-be. The day and the hour that the bridegroom will return for his bride is not known, so the bride and the wedding guests have to be ready and waiting. John the Baptist, in speaking of the Christ, stated in John 3:29 “He who has the bride is the bridegroom. Jesus Christ is the bridegroom gone to His Father’s House to prepare a place for His bride and is coming back to take her home. This is why He is coming back.
The bride is Christ’s Church, the universal body of born-again Believers worldwide. We are in the “Age of Grace” between when the Lord left and His return for His Bride. As in the days of the ancient Hebrew wedding rituals, only the Father knows when Jesus will return for His Church. Until then, we are to be ready; waiting, watching and working in kingdom ministry until He comes.
This is the point of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:1-13 “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Let's get busy.
It really doesn’t matter when the Lord returns. The real question is: Are you ready?
In Christ, Brian
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