Second Coming

• 1. Introduction

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  The Second Coming is the belief, held by Christians and Muslims, that Jesus Christ will return to Earth after his ascension to Heaven. In a 2010 survey, about 40% of Americans said Jesus was likely to return by 2050. Among white evangelical Christians the figure was 58%. It was 32% among Catholics and 27% among white mainline Protestants. Gaps like these hint at a belief with no single shape. Will Jesus arrive all at once, or stay for a long season? Will he come in person, in spirit, or inside each believer? Who gets to say when the waiting is over? Some groups hold that a founder of their own already carried the mission forward. One faith rejects the premise entirely. The Greek New Testament offers the first clue, because it reaches for more than one word to name the event.

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• 2. Words For Arrival

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  In the Greek New Testament, the word epiphaneia, meaning appearing, refers to the return of Christ six times. The more famous term is parousia, which appears 24 times. Seventeen of those uses concern Christ. The word can mean arrival, coming or presence.

  At Matthew 24:37, parousia describes the period in which Noah lived. That use matters, because it points to a stretch of time rather than a single instant. Another Greek word, eleusis, also means coming, but it is not interchangeable with parousia. On this reading, Christ's parousia would be a presence unlike anything that came before it. The same word is applied six times to individuals, namely Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus, Titus, and Paul the Apostle. It is used once for the coming of the lawless one.

  The scholar Gustav Adolf Deissmann showed in 1908 that parousia was already in use as early as the 3rd century BC. It described the visit of a king or dignitary to a city, a visit arranged so that the people could admire the visitor's magnificence. Early readers of the Gospels may have heard a royal visit in the word.

  Islam has its own vocabulary for the event. The term Rajʽa, written الرجعة in Arabic, refers to the Second Coming. It is most commonly used by Shia Muslims.

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• 3. Scholars Reread The Gospels

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  Scholars in the third quest for the historical Jesus mostly picture him as an eschatological prophet who preached the Kingdom of God. Some critical scholars think his predictions of an imminent parousia turned out to be mistaken. Many others point to the conditional nature of judgment prophecy. Readings of the phrase Kingdom of God have ranged across apocalyptic, realized and inaugurated eschatologies. No consensus has emerged.

  The picture of an apocalyptic Jesus remains mainstream, but it has serious challengers. Scholars of the Jesus Seminar assign apocalyptic expectations to the early Church rather than to Jesus himself. Some argue that the Q Source and the Gospel of Thomas preserve earlier traditions with no apocalyptic eschatology in them.

  R.T. France and N.T. Wright offer a different reading. They argue that the Gospels borrow apocalyptic language from the Old Testament to describe the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. In Mark 13:26, the "coming" of the Son of Man would then concern his vindication at the Right Hand of God. There he receives new authority as the Temple falls.

  The label for tying the Second Coming to first-century events such as the fall of Jerusalem is Preterism. Some Preterists place the fulfillment of the Son of Man's coming in glory at the death of Jesus on the cross. They hold that signs such as "the sun will be dark" have already happened. Critics reply that many signs are still missing. They cite the passage in which the heavens pass away with a great noise and the elements melt with fervent heat.

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• 4. Ancient Churches Wait

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  The Catholic Church teaches that the Second Coming will happen in a single moment, suddenly and unexpectedly. Not even the angels, the saints or the demons know when. It will bring the fullness of God's reign, meaning that God's victory over sin, suffering and Satan, won on the Cross, becomes plain to all. Until then the victory shows itself piece by piece through the sacraments. Baptism, the forgiveness of sin, the casting out of Satan, holy unction and the relief of suffering all belong to that unveiling. The church compares this to the way God revealed himself gradually to Israel before the birth of Jesus.

  The Catholic Church also names roads that will not lead to the end. It does not expect a catastrophe such as a nuclear war or an extinction event. It does not expect someone claiming to be Jesus through reincarnation. It rules out progress such as abolishing slavery or curing disease, and it rules out the church gaining political power. It also rejects double predestination.

  In Catholic teaching, the event is suspended until Jesus is recognized by "all of Israel". After it comes a final temptation to apostasy, caused by the antichrist. Three things are said to hasten the day: celebrating the Eucharist, living with the mind of Jesus, and praying for the Second Coming.

  Matthew 25:31-46 links the Last Judgment to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Catholic teaching treats the practice of those works during life as a decisive factor. The pairing of judgment and mercy shows up often in the pictorial tradition of Christian art.

  Orthodox Christians preserve a view from the early Church that the Second Coming will be sudden and unmistakable, "a flash of lightning". They generally hold that Jesus will spend no time on earth in ministry or preaching. He comes to judge mankind. The ministry of the Antichrist is expected to take place right before.

  The Ethiopian Orthodox Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox communion. It teaches that the second coming will be radically different from the first, which "was to save the lost world".

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• 5. Creeds, Rapture And Presence

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  In Lutheran and Anglican liturgies, worshippers recite the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed. Both say that Jesus "shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead". The same liturgies proclaim the Mystery of Faith: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." An analogous statement appears in the Pauline Creed at 1 Corinthians 15:23.

  Methodist denominations connect the Second Coming to the Last Judgment, as the Creeds profess. They disagree about its nature. The United Methodist Church does not teach a rapture. The Evangelical Methodist Church Conference calls the coming personal, pre-millennial and imminent. It separates the Rapture, in which Christ comes in the air to receive his saints at any moment, from the Revelation. In the Revelation he comes down to earth with those saints, after the gathering of Israel and the manifestation of Antichrist.

  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that Christ will return in power and glory to claim the earth as his kingdom. His coming will mark the start of the Millennium. It will be a fearful, mournful time for the wicked and a day of peace for the righteous. The church and its leaders now make no predictions of the date. Leaders speculated in the past, particularly before about 1900, but those statements need not be treated as doctrine today. Members expect the restored gospel to be taught everywhere first. They also expect increasingly severe wars, earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters. Latter-day Saints also believe Jesus appeared to his "new world disciples" in the Americas after the crucifixion, a central tenet of the religion.

  Fundamental Belief #25 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church calls the Second Coming "the blessed hope of the church". It says the return will be literal, personal, visible and worldwide. The righteous dead are resurrected and, with the righteous living, taken to heaven, while the unrighteous die. Because the time has not been revealed, believers are urged to be ready at all times.

  Jehovah's Witnesses rarely say "second coming" and prefer the word presence. They read Jesus' comparison with the days of Noah, at Matthew 24:37-39 and Luke 17:26-30, as pointing to a duration. In their reading, biblical chronology marks 1914 as the start of Christ's presence, which lasts until the final battle of Armageddon. Witnesses believe his millennial reign begins after Armageddon.

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• 6. Descent At Damascus

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  In Islam, Jesus, known as ʿĪsā, is a Messenger of God and the masih, sent to guide the Israelites with a new scripture, the Injīl. Belief in him, like belief in all the messengers, is required of a Muslim. Muslims believe he was born of the Virgin Mary and performed the miracles of the Gospels with God's permission. They do not recognize him as the Son of God, since God has no equals. They also hold that he was never crucified or resurrected.

  Sura An-Nisa 4:157 says of those who claim to have killed him: "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but another was made to resemble him to them." Verse 4:158 adds: "rather, Allah raised him to Himself." Sura Al-Ma'idah 5:116 and 5:117 imagine a scene on judgment day. God asks Jesus whether he told people to worship him and his mother as gods. Jesus answers "Glory be to You!" and says he told them only what he was ordered to say.

  The Quran also signals his return. Sura Az-Zukhruf 43:61 calls Jesus "a Sign (for the coming of) the Hour (of Judgment)". The commentator Ibn Kathir cites this verse as proof of the second coming in his exegesis, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim. Hadiths foretell it as well. In Sahih al-Bukhari, the Prophet says the Hour will not come until the son of Mary descends as a just ruler. He will break the cross, kill the pigs and abolish the Jizya tax. Money will be so abundant that nobody will accept it as charity.

  Islamic tradition places his descent in the midst of wars fought by the Mahdi, the rightly guided redeemer of Islam, against al-Masih ad-Dajjal and his followers. Dajjal means the false messiah and is synonymous with the Antichrist. Jesus will descend at a white minaret east of Damascus, wearing saffron robes, with his head anointed. He will join the Mahdi and slay Dajjal. Then everyone among the People of the Book, meaning Jews and Christians, will believe in him, and there will be one community.

  After the Mahdi dies, Jesus assumes leadership, a time Islamic narrative associates with universal peace and justice. Texts also allude to Ya'juj and Ma'juj, known as Gog and Magog, who disperse and cause disturbance. In answer to Jesus' prayers, God kills them by sending a type of worm into the napes of their necks. His rule lasts around forty years. Then he dies, and Muslims perform the Salat al-Janazah, the funeral prayer. He is buried in Medina, in a grave left vacant beside Muhammad.

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• 7. Return Reimagined

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  Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century scientist turned theologian, saw the Age of Enlightenment as a time of darkness and doubt for the church. The historian Marguerite Beck Block reports his view that a new church was needed and that the Lord himself must therefore return. Swedenborg rejected the popular picture of Christ appearing in the clouds with angels and trumpets. He wrote that the Second Coming "is not a coming in person, but in spirit and in the Word". The clouds of heaven, he said, mean the Word in the sense of the letter. He claimed the Lord had manifested himself to him and sent him to teach the doctrines of the New Church.

  Max Heindel's esoteric Christian teaching separates the cosmic Christ, or Christ without, from the Christ within. The Christ within is the true Saviour, who must be born in each person. The goal is the future Sixth Epoch and a "new heavens and a new earth" called the New Galilee. In this tradition the Second Coming happens in a new soul body on the etheric plane, not in a physical body. Its day and hour are unknown. A preparatory period is said to begin as the Sun enters Aquarius, the coming Age of Aquarius.

  The Indian guru Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi, took a related path. His two-volume commentary on the Gospels, published in 2004, is titled The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You. He wrote that the true Second Coming is the resurrection within you of the Infinite Christ Consciousness. He pointed to Luke 17:21: "the kingdom of God is within you."

  Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who lived from 1835 to 1908, founded the Ahmadiyya movement. Its followers believe he was the promised Mahdi and Messiah. Most other Muslim sects widely reject this, and some do not count Ahmadis as a legitimate sect of Islam. Ahmadis read the prophecy as the coming of a person "similar to Jesus", mathīl-i ʿIsā, not the physical return of Jesus. They compare it to John the Baptist resembling the biblical prophet Elijah. They also hold that Jesus survived the crucifixion and later died a natural death.

  The Baháʼí Faith describes the Second Coming as a gradual process running alongside the advance of civilization. In its view, the founders of the major religions each return the Word and Spirit of God, so all major religions form one progressive revelation. The Báb, a forerunner, is said to have fulfilled prophecies in 1844, followed by Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh announced that he was the returned Christ. In a letter to Pope Pius IX, he wrote: "Open your eyes, O concourse of bishops, that ye may behold your Lord seated upon the Throne of might and glory." Baháʼís compare this to Jesus' own fulfillment of Jewish prophecies. In both cases, they say, people expected a literal fulfillment and so rejected a symbolic and spiritual one.

  In the early development of Rastafari, Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian Emperor, was regarded as a member of the House of David. He was worshipped as God incarnate and thought to be the "black Jesus" and "black messiah", the second coming of Christ. It was claimed that Marcus Garvey preached the coming of a black messiah on the eve of Selassie's coronation. For the poor Christian populations of Jamaica, Selassie became a source of inspiration. They believed he would liberate black people from the grip of European colonists.

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• 8. Doubters And Storytellers

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  Judaism teaches that Jesus is one of the false Jewish Messiah claimants, because he did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies. Those include building the Third Temple, per Ezekiel 37:26-28, and gathering all Jews back to the Land of Israel, per Isaiah 43:5-6. They also include an era of world peace, as in Isaiah 2:4: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore." The last is the spread of knowledge of the God of Israel, which Zechariah 14:9 describes as the day when "God will be One and His Name will be One".

  The organization Ohr Samayach answers the Christian idea of a second coming directly. It calls the idea "a contrived answer, since there is no mention of a second coming in the Jewish Bible". It also asks why God could not accomplish his goals the first time round. Rabbi David Wolpe has a different diagnosis. He believes the Second Coming "grown out of genuine disappointment", as true believers had to compensate theologically for the disaster of Jesus' death.

  Popular culture has kept returning to the idea. The Seventh Sign, a 1988 film starring Demi Moore, follows a pregnant woman whose new tenant turns out to be the Second Coming of Christ. Left Behind became a film and book franchise, running from 1995 into the mid 2010s, built by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Patience Prence's 2010 novel SCARS follows a girl named Becky through the Great Tribulation. Stony Graves' 2011 novel At the End of All Things takes place after the Rapture.

  Scott Pinsker's 2014 novel The Second Coming: A Love Story features two men who each claim to be the Second Coming and call the other a liar. Only one is telling the truth. The Adult Swim series Black Jesus, created by Aaron McGruder and Mike Clattenburg, aired in 2014-2015 and again in 2019. It places Jesus in modern-day Compton, California, where he spreads love and kindness among corrupt preachers and a hateful apartment manager. In Good Omens, the Second Coming is the focus of the 90-minute finale.

  The oddest treatment may be Christ Landed in Grodno, a historical fantasy novel first published in 1972 by the Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkievich. It is a drama with elements of comedy and a travesty of the Second Coming. A drop-out student travels with twelve wandering actors, and a weird coincidence leads Belarusian folk to take him for Jesus.

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