Books by Ian Rogers
Books by Ian Rogers
I am hoping to take the Christmas Day service at the chapel I attend this year. I was due to do so last year (2020) but it was cancelled because of Covid lockdown. I realise with the threat of the omicron variant, that this may happen again - second time around. It’s ironic really. Through Advent (the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas) I, and others, traditionally think about the prophecies and actions leading up to Jesus’ birth and also about his promise to return to earth from heaven. When his disciples asked when his return would be – see Mt 24 v4 - Jesus said: “The Son of Man [a name he called himself] will come like the lightening that flashes across the whole sky from the east to the west”- that is, his return will be unmistakable. He was making a contrast between his return from heaven and the claims he knew would be made by false messiahs (see Mt 24 v27). However, he warned his disciples that: “No one knows… when that day and hour will come, not even the angels in heaven but only (God) the Father.” (Mt 24 v36).
I have never been entirely happy about Jesus’ second coming. It all seems a bit weird, beyond common sense and, by some interpretations of scriptures, it breaks the known physical laws of the universe. There are chunks about it in the book of Daniel, in St Pauls’ letter, in the book of Revelation and, of course, in the Gospels which contain Jesus’ own words. He refers to ‘signs of the times’ (Mt 24 v4-26) which people are supposed to notice and act upon if they are living after Jesus has gone to heaven. Those people who are not ready will be left behind when others are lifted into the sky to be with Jesus. He told his disciples “Two men will be working in the field. One will be taken (to heaven) the other will be left behind.” (Mt 24 v40). However, this doesn’t seem to be the end of things. Although Jesus sweeps up the believers and goes away, leaving those behind to struggle through an age of evil, eventually there is a final day of judgement In Mt 25 v 31 Jesus says: “When the Son of Man comes… the people of all nations will be gathered before him. He will divide them into two groups, …. the righteous on his right and the others on his left…”. The righteous will be blessed forever and the others sent to eternal punishment. What a lot of comings and goings! And how can we square ‘eternal punishment’ with an all-loving God? What on earth are we to make of all this stuff? Many, many people have tried to tie it all together and have produced a whole range of competing timetables and theological views. Some people become obsessed with their timetables and with picking out the warning signs despite Jesus saying that no one knows the day or the hour!.
One way out of this scriptural mayhem is to fix on Jesus’ words: “Live each day as if it was your last”. Like the rich farmer in Jesus parable (Luke 12 v16-20) we don’t know the day of our death. Without being morbid, it could be 10 years hence or it could be tomorrow. As Christian Carrie Ten Boom wrote, we need to keep short accounts. If we confess all known sin as soon as we are aware of it and if we regularly ask God to forgive our iniquities (sin we are too insensitive to recognise) we have Jesus’ assurance of the Father’s loving forgiveness. We can walk through life in the peaceful knowledge that whenever and however we die, we will go directly to our heavenly home. Unlike Monopoly, we will not ‛Go to jail’ nor have to pass ‛Go’. This peace also saves us from needing to untangle the ‘signs of the times’ referred to earlier. Sadly these signs (war, famine, earthquakes, and etcetera) are all too common and have been happening throughout recorded history. Beware of those who predict a precise date and of those who state with certainty that ‛time is short’. The only way to be ready - rather than living in perpetually heightened expectancy - is to live in grace and peace every day. For a waterproof person, it doesn’t matter whether it rains or not.
This does not mean the second coming is irrelevant. While 90% of attention through Advent is given to Christ’s first coming as a baby and only 10% or less is given to the second coming, this imbalance actually demeans Gods’ amazing plan of salvation.
At the coming Christmas service, I hope to have an activity that will involve any children present and which will, I hope, stick in their memories. I plan to stretch some plastic netting over a rectangular frame. I may tie it to the legs of an upturned table. At one end I will place a light ball (e.g. a table tennis ball).The netting represents the fabric of space and time (suitably explained for children). Onto the opposite end of the netting I want them to drop, one at a time, a variety of objects: a tennis ball, a cobble off the beach, even an iron cannon ball I happen to have. The bigger the object the greater the vibration transmitted to the small ball, jiggling it. The stone when dropped, may cause the table tennis ball to bounce up a few centimetres. The cannon ball may conceivably crash right through the netting but if it doesn’t, it may make the small ball leap dramatically into the air. Whichever happens, it should get people’s’ attention!
The net represents space and time, the table tennis ball is earth and the heavier object is a black hole. When black holes collide, they send gravity waves through space that affect the Earth. In fact, they travel across the whole universe.
Jesus’ First coming was spiritual dynamite to a fallen universe.
“Who would have thought it? Who would have conceived it” as Isaiah the prophet said.(Is 53 v1,2). God from heaven squeezed down, stripped of honour and power, into a weak and limited human baby. One who was not special. “He had no special beauty, was not noticeably special in anyway,” (Is 53 v2). Only a few selected people received the revelation of this world-shattering event - a young girl, her husband, some shepherds and a few foreigners. The ‘we’ above means the great masses of humanity, particularly the powerful rulers and religionists of the time. Yet ‘God with us’- Emmanuel’ (Is7v14) - would resist evil (‛In him no sin was found’ 2 Corinthians 5 v 21); he shows Gods’ love, mercy and grace; died a sacrificed death to conquer sin and death for all of mankind who would trust in him; and he opens the gates of heaven for us.
Jesus’ promised second coming is a comparable, universe wide, world-changing spiritual event. All sin and evil will be removed as those alive for the event are transformed and elevated to the heavenly plane (an inadequate description of glorification and eternal life). Like Jesus’ transformation of water into wine, there will be a new, remade heaven - expanded to accommodate all of us!- without even the memory of sin - and a new earth (for which read ‘an entirely new physical cosmos’! Bringing total harmony, unity and peace, the transcendent nature of the second coming crowns and fulfil the transformational descent of God to earth as a baby. The physical universe is later transformed and raised up to God. Wonderful though the first coming, it is incomplete without a comparable second coming. Let us not demean Christmas by relegating the second coming to a rather embarrassing side-show.
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