Relationship Between the Imminence of Christ’s Coming and World Missions
The imminence of Christ’s coming should enhance the need for missionaries and servants of God to proclaim the gospel and save the lost for Christ’s return is always at hand.
John Soper says:
“History is not just an endless recycling of meaningless events and actions. What happens in a country or a nation has importance because history is going somewhere. It’s moving towards a goal (a culmination) and that culmination is an event, the return to the earth of Jesus Christ.
My personal choices ought to be made and my personal actions ought to be taken in the reality of Jesus Christ is coming back.
Linked to the fact of the return of Jesus Christ in the Bible’s teaching is when He returns every human being will face what the Bible describes as the judgement seat of Christ. We will be accountable to Him for every thought, every word and every action
Summarization: The whole focus of the New testaments teaching about the return of Christ can be summed up in two simply propositions
1. Because Christ is coming we need to be ready. (living our lives pure, steadfast, prayerful, holy and reverent).
2. Because Christ is coming we need to finish the task that He gave us to do. “The preaching of the gospel to all the nations.”
A.B. Simpson was asked by a reporter when Jesus Christ would return? His reply was from Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (KJV). Here is one relationship between the imminence of Christ’s coming and world missions – the fulfillment of preaching the gospel to all nations, and the end of the age.
World missions can start from your local church, to your neighborhood, to your town to your city, to your county to your state,… and to the world. As the apostles were told by Jesus in Acts 1:8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8 KJV).
Jesus also commanded us through the great commission in Matthew 28:18 – 20; to go and teach all nations whatsoever I have commanded you. We are to go out and preach the gospel to the lost and dying souls that they too may be reconciled back to God even as we are. Missions then become an integral part of Christ’s second coming as our ruling and reigning King in a physical and tangible way. The burden should be the willingness to proclaim the gospel of Christ because we long to see the “blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” (Titus 2:13 KJV).
In Christ,
Greg