018. Does the Bible teach that Jesus Christ is coming back to this earth personally and visi...
Does the Bible teach that Jesus Christ is coming back to this earth personally and visibly?
It does. There is nothing more clearly taught in the Bible than that Jesus Christ is coming back to this earth personally, bodily and visibly. In Acts 1:11 the two men in white apparel who stood by the disciples as they gazed steadfastly into heaven after Jesus as He was taken up before their eyes, said: “This same Jesus which was received up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” Now they had seen Him going into heaven personally, bodily, visibly, and they were told He was to come back just as He had gone. An attempt has been made by those who deny the personal return of our Lord to say that “in like manner” means “with equal certainty,” but the Greek words translated “so in like manner” permit of no such construction. They are never so used. Literally translated they mean “thus in the manner which,” and are never used as describing anything but the manner, the precise manner, in which the thing is done. Jesus Christ is coming back exactly as the disciples saw Him going, personally, bodily, visibly. The same truth is taught in John 14:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17; and many other passages. In Hebrews 9:28 we are told: “So Christ was offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” The word which in this passage is translated “shall appear” translated literally would be “shall be seen.” It is a word only used of seeing with the eye. In Revelation 1:7 we read: “Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which bruised Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.”
These very plain promises cannot by any fair system of interpretation be made to refer to the coming of Christ in the Holy Spirit, as some would say. The coming of Christ in the Holy Spirit is in a very real sense the coming of Christ (see John 14:15-18; John 14:21-23). But it is not the coming referred to in these passages, and cannot be made such except by perverting the plain words of God. Nor is the coming described in these passages the coming of Christ to receive the believer at the time of his death. The details given do not fit the death of the believer.
Neither do these passages refer to the coming of Christ at the destruction of Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem was in a sense a precursor, prophecy and type of the judgement at the end of the age, and therefore in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 the two events so described are in connection with each other. But God’s judgment on Jerusalem is manifestly not the event referred to in the passages above given. After the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and after the destruction of Jerusalem, the coming again of Jesus Christ, which is so frequently mentioned in the New Testament, is the great hope of the church, and is still mentioned as lying in the future. (See, for example, John 21:22-23; Revelation 1:7; Revelation 22:20.)