Revelation 1:7-8 - Getting The “Second Coming” Wrong (Part 1)
Watch this blog on this week’s episode of The PRODCAST.
INTRODUCTION
Why do evangelicals keep getting the end of the world wrong? Because if we do not answer that question correctly, we will be doomed to repeat the error. And, I want to answer that question in two ways. This week, I want to talk about WHY evangelicals get Revelation wrong. And then next week, in part 2, I want to talk about WHERE we have gotten this wrong in history. From apocalyptic apostolic fathers to viral videos on YouTube, the predictions pile up like trash in a theological landfill, and we must be the generation that helps reclaim good and Biblical eschatology.
So today, I want us to walk through that landfill, and I want us to examine the root causes of why so much speculation about the end ends up like garbage in church history's landfill. I want to think clearly about this so that we can see good reasons why this happens, which will motivate us to work hard and not repeat them. Because rightly understanding eschatology isn't a side issue. It is foundational to Christian hope, Christian mission, our Christian witness and reputation, and Christian maturity moving forward.
So here's our game plan for this week: we're going to read today's passage, and lightly prove from the context how it was fulfilled in the first century, and then we'll launch into why so many people get this passage wrong. We will spend more time on this passage, proving in a very in depth way how it can only be fulfilled in the first century, but for today, we are only going to summarily prove it, so that we can get to our point for today, which is why are these failed predictions happening.
So with that, let's read today's text:
"Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the Earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen. 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.'" — Revelation 1:7–8
So to that end, let us dive in with:
PART 1: A BRIEF VIEW OF THE SECOND COMING
If Futurism were a skyscraper, Revelation 1:7 would be its load-bearing beam. Remove it, and the whole structure collapses. For the modern evangelical, this verse is supposed to prove that Christ will come again soon in bodily form, descending from the sky in global visibility. But that is not what the text says, and it is certainly not what the text means.
What I want to show you today conclusively is that Revelation 1:7-8 does not describe a future, global, physical second coming of Christ. It describes a first-century, covenantal judgment coming against Israel. Once that's clear, the futurist model doesn't just wobble—it craters.
Let's walk through the proof, step by step.
1. THE BOOK BEGINS WITH TIME-SENSITIVE LANGUAGE
Revelation opens with a time stamp that most readers ignore entirely. Verse 1 says: "The revelation of Jesus Christ… to show His bond-servants the things which must soon take place." The Greek here—en tachēi—means soon, quickly, shortly. And verse 3 doubles down: "for the time is near." That phrase appears again in Revelation 22:6 and 22:10: "Do not seal up the words… for the time is near."
In other words, Revelation begins and ends by telling us that this is not about the distant future. The prophecies are immediate. The events they describe were imminent for the first-century audience. The book is a message to them, not a mystery for us.
2. "COMING ON THE CLOUDS" IS JUDGMENT LANGUAGE
The phrase "coming on the clouds" does not originate in Christian prophecy circles. It originates in the Old Testament, especially in judgment texts. In Isaiah 19:1, God comes on a cloud to judge Egypt: "Behold, the LORD is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt; the idols of Egypt will tremble."
Jesus picks up this exact phrase in Matthew 24:30, connecting His coming on the clouds with the destruction of Jerusalem. And in Mark 14:62, He tells the Sanhedrin: "You will see the Son of Man… coming with the clouds of heaven."Not your grandchildren, not future generations, but you. And they did when the temple burned and the Old Covenant collapsed.
Cloud-coming language is not rapture language. It's retribution language.
3. "EVERY EYE WILL SEE HIM" MEANS THOSE WHO PIERCED HIM
Verse 7 continues: "Every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him." This isn't about global visibility through satellite or smartphone. It's about covenantal visibility through vengeance. The ones who would "see" Him were those who pierced Him.
Who is that? The text is clear: first-century Israel. Acts 2:23, 3:13–15, and Zechariah 12:10 all identify the covenant people as those who betrayed and executed their Messiah. And this passage says they will see Him again—not in tender mercy, but in terrifying majesty.
They were warned in Matthew 23. They were condemned in Matthew 24. And they saw the clouds gather in Revelation 1.
4. "TRIBES OF THE EARTH" IS REALLY "TRIBES OF THE LAND"
Futurists love the phrase "all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him." It sounds global—like the world is glued to the same video feed, maybe one that has been surgically implanted in their heads. That is, until you realize that the Greek Word gē means "land," not a spherical globe. And that the word "tribes" is not a description for twenty-first-century people in all of our variously assorted nations. No. Tribes connotes the Jews, who were one of the only countries in history who was organized by tribal allotments. In this sense, the judgment is not global; it is covenantal. These are the tribes of Israel, the Mosaic tribes, the Sons of Jacob.
This is not the United Nations gasping in horror at a global event. This is Old Covenant Israel mourning the fall of her temple, the loss of her nation, and the judgment of her King.
If you doubt that, read Zechariah 12:10–14, which is directly quoted: "They will look on Me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn… every family by itself." That's the mourning of a covenant people, not a collection of secular countries.
5. THE LORD HIMSELF GUARANTEES THIS READING
Verse 8 closes with the divine seal: "I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." In other words, you can take this to the bank. The God who transcends time has tethered this prophecy to a specific time—the First Century Fall of Jerusalem. And because He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, we are not guessing. We are reading what He revealed.
So what do we take away?
We take away this: Revelation 1:7–8 has already happened. It does not describe a future return of Christ to Earth; it describes a past return of Christ against Israel. The second coming already occurred—in judgment, in clouds, in the collapse of the Old Covenant world.
That doesn't mean Christ won't come again. He will. Gloriously, finally, bodily. But Revelation 1:7 is not about that day.
It is about this day: AD 70. The day the temple fell, the tribes mourned, and the Judge of heaven kept His Word.
And that leaves us with two unavoidable questions:
Why do so many Christians still get this wrong?
Where has this gone wrong in history—and what can we learn from it?
That's where we will go now, looking at:
PART 2: WHY FALSE PREDICTIONS EXIST
REASON 1. BAD THEOLOGY (FUTURISM)
False predictions don't grow in a vacuum. They grow in a greenhouse of bad theology. And no theological framework has been more effective at cultivating confusion than Futurism.
Futurism isn't just an interpretive misstep—it's a comprehensive worldview that warps the entire narrative of redemptive history. It imagines that God has two peoples with two distinct plans: national Israel and the Church. And once you buy that premise, the rest of Scripture gets hijacked. Prophetic passages meant for them become threats for us. Near-time warnings to first-century rebels get projected onto twenty-first-century headlines.
It's not that the text is unclear. It's that people are wearing the wrong glasses.
Think of it like this: if you put on sunglasses with blue lenses, everything you see will have a blue tint—even things that aren't blue at all. That's what Futurism does to eschatology. It's a theological lens that stains every passage it touches. "Soon" becomes "someday." "This generation" becomes "some future era." "Coming on the clouds" becomes "coming through the atmosphere." Nothing is allowed to mean what it clearly means, because the system won't permit it.
And that's the issue: the system is in charge. The text is not.
Futurism trains people to reinterpret time-sensitive warnings as time-insensitive metaphors. It turns Jerusalem's imminent judgment into an indefinite dread for the modern Church. It separates Christ from His Kingdom, the Church from Israel, and the reader from reality.
But the Word of God is not silent. It doesn't hint. It declares. Revelation begins and ends with crystal clarity: "The time is near." The Olivet Discourse puts the crosshairs squarely on "this generation." And Jesus Himself tells the Sanhedrin, "You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds."
You don't need a timeline. You need a text. And the text says: it happened.
The only reason people still don't see it is that they're wearing futuristic glasses—glasses that filter out the obvious, distort the glorious, and delay what Jesus declared would come quickly.
If we want to stop the plague of false predictions, we must first smash the system that created them.
REASON 2. FEAR-BASED EMOTIONALISM
If Futurism gave the Church bad glasses, then emotionalism gave it a twitching eyelid. Even when the text is clear, fear clouds the heart, and fear sells.
Let's not pretend otherwise. Panic is marketable. Crisis builds platforms. The fastest way to sell a book, get a million views, or pack a pew is to whisper, "The end is near," while ominous music plays in the background. Fear is the currency of false prophecy, and business is booming.
Y2K didn't crash civilization, but it did launch a thousand "prophetic" ministries. Blood moons rose and set without incident, but not without book royalties. COVID-19 wasn't a prelude to rapture—it was a pretext for more eschatological fiction parading as fact. Turn on the so-called Christian media ecosystem, and you'll see it: countdown clocks, trembling voices, red-circled maps, and urgent pleas to "wake up."
But here's the truth: fear is not a fruit of the Spirit. It's a byproduct of theological immaturity.
"God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind." (2 Tim. 1:7) That verse is not a motivational poster—it's a rebuke. A sound mind doesn't spin in circles chasing signs and portents. A sound mind is grounded in the prophetic certainty of what Christ already said and already did.
Jesus warned us of this exact error: "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed." (Matt. 24:6) That command wasn't optional. It was a direct shot at fear-based sensationalism.
But modern Christians didn't just ignore that command—they turned it into a business model.
Fear has become a kind of reverse virtue in the evangelical world. The more anxious you are, the more "serious" you seem. If you're calm, hopeful, and biblically grounded, you're labeled naïve. But if you tremble at headlines and see antichrists in every election cycle, suddenly you're "awake." It's eschatological Gnosticism—hidden knowledge, secret fears, and spiritual prestige for the paranoid.
But the true Church doesn't walk by the light of panic. She walks by the lamp of the Word. The true prophet doesn't shout about mystery blood moons—he preaches the finished blood work of Jesus Christ, enthroned and reigning.
So why do false predictions persist?
Because fear keeps people buying the next one. And only a Church that fears God rightly will stop fearing man, markets, or made-up raptures.
REASON 3. PSYCHOLOGICAL COMFORT
For some, false prophecy is not about fear—it's about control. The illusion of certainty is more comforting than the call to faith. The itch to know when becomes more important than obeying now. And that's precisely why false timelines are so attractive.
The timeline is a drug. It gives people the illusion of mastery over the future. "If I can just decode the signs… if I can just crack the code… then I'll know how to prepare." But that preparation isn't about holiness. It's about psychological safety. It's not about faithful living—it's about avoiding surprise.
It's not piety. It's preemptive self-protection dressed in religious garb.
This is why people who get duped by false date-setters don't stop—they double down. After "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988" failed, people still lined up for "89 Reasons Why…" After Harold Camping's 1994 prediction failed, he circled back in 2011—and again, people sold homes, drained retirement accounts, and waited on rooftops for a Christ who had already come… just not in the way they were told.
Why? Because the timeline feels safe. The calendar becomes a coping mechanism. But Jesus destroyed that idol with one sentence:
"No one knows the day or the hour." (Matt. 24:36)
Not the angels. Not the apostles. And certainly not your favorite YouTuber.
Even after the resurrection, the apostles asked, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" And Jesus answered, "It is not for you to know the times or epochs…" (Acts 1:7). In other words: Stop asking. Start working.
But false systems thrive on false certainty. They offer a fake eschatological GPS that makes people feel "in the know."Instead of faith, they cling to charts. Instead of worship, they refresh news feeds. Instead of building the Kingdom, they bunker down for Armageddon.
It is all a grasp for control in a world that demands trust.
The tragedy is this: the one thing futurists fear most—missing the second coming—has already happened. They missed it not because they weren't watching, but because they were watching the wrong thing. They wanted a calendar. Jesus gave them a cross.
REASON 4. SPIRITUAL IMMATURITY
If fear drives some and control drives others, then immaturity is the engine under it all. False end-times predictions don't just appeal to the anxious—they appeal to the spiritually underdeveloped.
Let's be blunt: many Christians today want entertainment, not edification. They don't want theology—they want thrills. They want dragons and earthquakes, not doctrine and creeds. They're more familiar with fictional novels about the end times than they are with the Nicene Creed or the Westminster Confession. And when given the choice between the wild-eyed "prophet" on YouTube and the seasoned elder with a Bible in his lap, they chase the one who stirs the blood, not the one who guards the soul.
It's not that the Church is too dumb to understand good eschatology. Far too many are still infants—babies in Christ, sipping on eschatological Kool-Aid instead of chewing on the meat of covenant theology.
Hebrews 5 hits this hard: "Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God." The people weren't stupid. They were stunted. They preferred milk when they needed steak.
The same is true today. Immature Christians obsess over signs. They scan headlines like horoscopes. They're tossed by every wind of doctrine, especially if it comes with a countdown. And when someone finally tells them that Revelation is about Jesus as King, not jets, beasts, or biometric chips… they roll their eyes and ask if you've heard the latest from Israel.
But spiritual maturity doesn't flinch at global chaos. It doesn't chase novelty. It opens the Scriptures, plants its feet, and builds.
It's time to grow up.
Ephesians 4:14 calls the Church to no longer be "tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine." That's not a suggestion. It's a command. The Church must graduate from speculative hysteria and return to biblical sobriety. The end times are not supposed to make us manic—they're supposed to make us mature.
The Church will never escape false predictions until it outgrows them.
REASON 5. CULTURAL DESPAIR
One of the most seductive reasons for false second-coming predictions is that people confuse the decline of their culture with the end of the world. This is especially true in the West.
Modern evangelicals see drag shows, debt ceilings, and declining church attendance and assume the countdown has begun. Every Supreme Court ruling feels like the opening of a seal. Every war in Israel becomes an end-times bulletin. And every whisper of global chaos is treated like a trumpet blast number six.
But here's the problem: they're interpreting current events using first-century prophecies—prophecies that were already fulfilled.
When Jesus said, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars…" (Matt. 24:6), He wasn't giving a timeless warning about war in general. He was giving a specific, contextual sign to a particular generation. The people listening to Him lived under the Pax Romana—a time of enforced Roman peace across the empire. So when wars and civil unrest began breaking out (like the Jewish revolts of the 60s AD), it was an unmistakable alarm bell for them, not us. It meant their world- the Old Covenant world—was coming to an end.
We see the same pattern in prophetic passages like Isaiah 9 and Zechariah 9. In both, the rise of the Messiah's Kingdom is marked by an increase in war as the old world order crumbles, followed by the decrease and final abolition of war as the New Covenant matures:
"For every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult, And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his Kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this." - Isaiah 9:5–6
"And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem… and He will speak peace to the nations." - Zech. 9:10
In other words, wars increase as the Kingdom breaks in, but they do not signal the end—they signal the beginning. Over time, Christ's Kingdom will dismantle war itself.
That's why obsessing over today's global tensions is a form of covenantal amnesia. Christians forget that the wars Jesus predicted already happened. They forget that the signs He gave were fulfilled in their generation, just as He promised. And they forget that the ultimate direction of the Kingdom is not chaos, but conquest. Not despair—but dominion.
Futurists see cultural collapse and assume Christ is coming to rescue us. But postmillennialists see cultural collapse and know Christ is coming to reform us.
He's not retreating. He's reigning.
And His Kingdom won't end in a mushroom cloud. It will end in shalom—as the nations beat their swords into plowshares, and the knowledge of the Lord covers the Earth like the waters cover the sea.
REASON 6. ECCLESIOLOGICAL COWARDICE
Not every false prediction is a con. Some are just a cop-out.
False eschatology doesn't always come from hucksters—it often comes from pulpits. And while some predictions are built on delusion, many are born out of cowardice. An entire generation of Christians has used the second coming of Christ as an excuse to abandon the mission of Christ. Instead of advancing the Kingdom, they're just counting down.
This isn't just doctrinal drift—it's a strategic failure, a mutiny, a retreat from responsibility disguised as faithfulness.
The result? A Church that claims Jesus is King while living like He's in exile. A Church that talks about glory while acting like survival is the goal.
But Christ did not give His bride a rapture plan. He gave her marching orders.
The Great Commission doesn't say, "Hunker down until I return." It says: "Go… make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey." (Matt. 28:19–20) That is not the language of a dying age—it's the manifesto of a victorious King.
From the beginning, the mandate was clear: "Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. Subdue it." (Gen. 1:28) That wasn't postponed. It was perfected. Psalm 110 declares that Christ now reigns until every enemy is under His feet. Isaiah 9:7 proclaims that the increase of His government will know no end.
Yet Futurism tells the Church, "Don't engage—evacuation is imminent." It silences pastors, pacifies fathers, and anesthetizes entire congregations that think faithfulness means hiding in the hills waiting for extraction.
This is not harmless confusion. It is covenantal insubordination.
Worst of all, it feels spiritual. It wraps cowardice in robes of piety: "Why start Christian schools if Jesus is returning?" "Why reform unjust laws or rebuild broken cities if the rapture is tomorrow?" But obedience was never optional just because hardship came close. The call to dominion doesn't pause because the world looks dark. It intensifies.
The postmillennial vision restores what cowardice has surrendered. It insists that Christ is reigning now, that His Kingdom is expanding now, and that our work is not wasted because it participates in His conquest.
False predictions endure because they excuse disobedience. But the King has already been crowned. And He did not command His Church to crouch. He commanded her to conquer.
REASON 7. HISTORICAL AMNESIA
False predictions persist not because the Church is uninformed, but because she refuses to remember. The problem isn't lack of access to truth—it's a willful disregard for the past. It is an amnesia that infects the mind and blinds the eyes to the long, humiliating history of prophetic failure. And until that memory is restored, the pattern will continue: a new claim, a new date, a new round of delusion, and then—silence. No retraction. No repentance. Just forgetfulness dressed in fresh urgency.
This isn't a recent problem. It spans centuries. Medieval preachers warned of apocalyptic destruction as the year 1000 approached. In 1844, the Millerites ascended hillsides waiting for Christ to appear, only to experience what history now calls The Great Disappointment. In the 20th century, it was Hal Lindsey and "The Late Great Planet Earth." Then came "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988." Then Harold Camping. Then Y2K. Then the blood moons. The names change, but the cycle stays the same: a bold prediction, a gullible audience, a failed result, and a clean escape.
The real scandal is not just that these predictions are made—it's that they are made without consequence. Prophets who get it wrong are not marked as false. They are given second chances, bigger platforms, and more book deals. Churches that once preached "Christ will return in our lifetime" simply adjust the forecast and move on, as if the Spirit of truth is now open to editorial revisions. But the Word of God is not vague about this. Deuteronomy 18:22 gives us a standard: "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken." The biblical response is not to rebrand—it is to reject.
The Church's failure to remember these things is not a minor oversight—it is a direct violation of the prophetic mandate. The New Covenant community is supposed to be anchored in truth, shaped by remembrance, and guarded by discernment. But when we forget the past, we are destined to relive it, and we hand the microphone to charlatans who will say what itching ears want to hear.
We'll examine this failure more closely next week, where we'll walk through the wreckage of false second-coming predictions across church history. But for now, see the pattern for what it is: a cycle sustained by forgetting. False predictions endure because the Church has a memory problem. And until she regains her historical spine and covenantal discernment, she will keep running in circles, crying wolf, losing credibility, and missing the real mission right in front of her.
REASON 8. MONETARY & PLATFORM INCENTIVES
False predictions don't just survive—they sell. And in today's evangelical industrial complex, nothing sells faster than fear dressed as prophecy.
Books fly off the shelves. Conferences fill stadiums. YouTube channels explode overnight. And while the faithful are preparing their families for what they believe is the final trumpet, someone else is cashing in their royalties, building their brand, and planning the next release. Prophetic speculation has become a business model, and the second coming has become clickbait.
The market rewards exaggeration. Vague forecasts generate intrigue. Headlines like "Ten Signs the Antichrist Is Alive" or "Why This War Could Be the End" are pure gold, not because they're biblical, but because they're viral. And once the algorithm rewards that kind of content, you don't need integrity—you need volume. False prophecy becomes a genre, and fear becomes a subscription service.
But it's not just about money—it's about the platform. False predictions offer people the chance to play prophet without the cost of accuracy. They provide instant relevance in a culture addicted to doom. And as long as you speak with confidence, use a few verses out of context, and flash enough charts, someone will always listen. And once the prediction fails? Just say you miscalculated, rebrand your graphics, and release a new video.
It would be laughable if it weren't so blasphemous.
Biblically, the prophetic office was a sacred trust—one mistake, and you were done. In today's evangelical subculture, one mistake makes you more relatable. The system doesn't punish errors—it platforms them. It doesn't cast out false prophets—it crowdfunds them.
But let's be clear: Christ did not shed His blood so you could build an email list. He didn't rise from the dead, so you could manipulate the market with vague forecasts. He didn't give us Revelation so we could peddle panic in His name.
If your eschatology builds your brand but not the Kingdom, it's not just wrong—it's wicked.
False predictions endure because there's a market for them. And as long as the Church keeps rewarding the merchants of mayhem, the marketplace will remain open.
But the Word of God is not for sale. And the second coming is not a product. It's a throne, a judgment, and a kingdom.
And it belongs to Christ alone.
REASON 9. DEMONIC DISTRACTION
If the enemy cannot make the Church evil, he will make her ineffective. The demonic goal has always been the same: redirect, deceive, and distract. Few distractions have been more potent than false end-times speculation.
The Church was meant to be a sword-wielding, gospel-proclaiming, kingdom-advancing army. But false prophecy has convinced many to trade their armor for a telescope. Instead of building, they're scanning the skies. Instead of waging war against real evil, they're unraveling conspiracy threads and waiting for a global collapse that never comes.
This is not neutral error—it is strategic demonic distraction. It is spiritual misdirection orchestrated by the principalities and powers that still linger in rebellion against Christ's rule. Their playbook is simple: if the truth can't be denied, then distort it. If the Church cannot be silenced, then sideline her.
And it's working.
Instead of destroying strongholds, many Christians spend their time speculating about shadows. Instead of taking thoughts captive to Christ, they allow their imaginations to run wild with beast theories and Antichrist guesses. Instead of standing firm in the evil day, they're fleeing from a battle that Christ has already won and called them to continue enforcing.
Paul didn't call us to escape. He called us to engage. "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses." (2 Cor. 10:4) "Put on the full armor of God… resist in the evil day." (Eph. 6:11–13) Our mission is not to survive until Christ rescues us—it's to stand, fight, demolish lies, and disciple the nations in His name.
The demonic strategy is to keep the Church distracted while real battles go unwaged. And if eschatology becomes a tool for that distraction—filling people's heads with fantasy instead of truth—then it's not just misinformed—it's dangerous.
The obsession with false futures has made the Church blind to present responsibilities. And while demons don't need to destroy a Church they can't beat, they'll gladly watch her sit down.
False predictions endure because they divert the army of God away from the front lines and into prophetic fog.
It's time to clear the smoke and pick up the sword.
REASON 10. LACK OF CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST'S PRESENT REIGN
At the root of every false prediction, beneath the speculation, the fear, and the failed timelines, lies a deeper sin: unbelief. Not in the second coming—but in the first enthronement. The Church doesn't keep getting the future wrong because she misunderstands Revelation. She keeps getting the future wrong because she doesn't really believe the present.
She doesn't believe that Christ is reigning now.
Futurism insists that Jesus is offstage, waiting for a cue, seated in heaven but not yet enthroned. It teaches that His Kingdom hasn't started, that His victory is postponed, and that the world must spiral into chaos before He can reign. But Scripture teaches precisely the opposite. Jesus has already been crowned, He is already seated, and the Kingdom has already come—and it is advancing.
Psalm 110:1 does not describe a future moment—it is true right now: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." That is not a delay—it is a decree. 1 Corinthians 15:25 echoes it with iron clarity: "He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet." Not "He will reign after." Not "He might reign later." He must reign until.
And Isaiah 9:7 seals the point: "Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end." That's not escapism. That's expansion. That's not a bomb shelter—it's a throne room bursting into every inch of creation.
But Futurism blinds people to that glory. It convinces them that we're losing when we're actually advancing. It trains Christians to retreat when they should be rebuilding. It persuades them to long for Christ's coming because they've lost sight of Christ's current conquest.
The result is a Church with her eyes on the clouds and her feet off the ground.
Postmillennialism brings clarity that cowardice has clouded. Christ is not absent—He is active. He is reigning now through His Word, His Spirit, and His Church. The Gospel is going out. The Kingdom is growing. The mountain of the Lord is rising. And the final enemy—death—will be defeated only after all others are subdued.
We are not watching the collapse of the Church. We are watching the birth pangs of dominion.
False predictions endure because the Church has lost sight of her King. But once you see Him—truly see Him, enthroned, victorious, reigning now—everything changes. You stop waiting for victory and start walking in it.
And now that we've examined why false predictions exist, from the theological systems that blind the Church, to the spiritual cowardice that excuses her retreat, we also need to look at examples throughout church history, to see how a bad eschatological hermeneutic will poison the Church and lead to her embarrassment and ruin. But, we will have to leave that goal for next week, because now it is time for our:
CONCLUSION
So what have we seen?
We've surveyed the wreckage of false assumptions and fear-filled fantasies. We've exposed the theological termites—Futurism, emotionalism, cowardice, and control—that have hollowed out the modern Church's spine. We've shown that Revelation 1:7–8 does not describe some distant, delayed, dramatic descent from the sky. It describes a present-tense judgment that thundered in the first century—on time, on target, and just as Jesus said it would.
The text said, "These things must soon take place." And they did.
Jesus did come on the clouds. He was seen by those who pierced Him. The tribes of the land did mourn. And the temple, that grand symbol of the Old Covenant world, did fall, never to rise again. Christ came in judgment, not as a distant deliverer, but as a reigning King who dismantled the obsolete order and established the dominion of the New Covenant. That's not conjecture. That's history. That's Scripture. That's fulfilled prophecy.
And that reality leaves no more room for speculative timelines and pop-prophecy panic attacks.
It rebukes the rapture rocket. It exposes the suitcase theology. It silences the sky-staring, bunker-dwelling, headline-scanning delusions of an escapist church that forgot her mission.
We are not waiting to be whisked away from the world.
We are called to win it.
So stop living like an orphan on borrowed time. You're not waiting for your King to show up—He's already enthroned. You're not trapped in enemy territory—you're standing on conquered ground. Jesus owns this world. He purchased it with His blood. He crushed His enemies under foot. He razed the Old Covenant world to the ground and raised up a kingdom that will have no end.
So what now?
Now, you build.
Now, you labor.
Now, you reform the ruins of a world still limping in rebellion and ignorance.
You don't need to check the clouds. You need to check the culture and conform it.
You don't need a countdown. You need a commission.
You don't need a passport to heaven. You need marching orders on Earth.
Because our mission isn't escape—it's conquest. Our vision isn't evacuation—it's transformation. Our hope isn't in sky-gazing—it's in Christ reigning.
So here's the call: look around you.
Wherever you see a deformity, conform it.
Wherever you see a decay of what once was, reform it.
Wherever you see rebellion, raise the banner of the King.
You are not spectators in this story. You are soldiers. You are sons. You are stewards of a kingdom that has already begun. And we will not stop, not until every inch of this world bows to Jesus Christ and confesses Him as Lord.
So stop packing your bags and start picking up your tools. Stop waiting for a rescue and start working for reformation. The King has come, and he is reigning, and he is not retreating.
He is restoring.
And we are His instruments.
