When will Jesus come back?
The short answer
No one knows, and Jesus said so plainly: of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels and not the Son in his earthly life, but the Father only. Christians differ over charts of the order of end time events, but the timing itself is not an open question the Bible leaves us to calculate.
The fuller answer
The direct answer is that nobody knows, because Jesus closed the question himself. Of that day and hour, he said, no one knows, not the angels of heaven, nor the Son in the days of his earthly humiliation, but the Father only. Every date announced since, and there have been many confident ones, has quietly expired, and each failure underlines that he meant the sentence exactly as he spoke it.
No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Matthew 24:36 (BSB)
When the disciples asked the risen Jesus whether the kingdom would now be restored, he refused them the timetable a second time. Times and seasons, he said, are fixed by the Father's authority and are not theirs to know; their business was to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. Curiosity about the calendar is gently but firmly redirected into faithfulness in the present assignment.
Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.
Acts 1:7 (BSB)
Peter explains the apparent delay in a way that removes the mathematics altogether. With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years; the delay is not slowness but patience, because God does not wish any to perish. The interval between the ascension and the return is therefore mission time, given for repentance, and counting it as a failed prediction mistakes mercy for absence.
The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 (BSB)
Christians do differ here, and it should be stated fairly: they differ over sequence charts, over the order of the return, the resurrection, a tribulation and a millennial reign, each side arguing from texts like Thessalonians and Revelation. Those charts are where Christians differ, and this site takes no house side on them. But the timing is not a differ point. On the date, the text is settled, and it says no one knows.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.
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