Are You Ready to Meet Jesus?

25 August 2026  2 Thessalonians 2:1-3,14-17

“We beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind…that the day of the Lord has come.”  (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2) 

The 1840s were a time of intense spiritual restlessness in the United States. It was a time of rapid technological change, deepening divisions over slavery, and the revival known as the Second Great Awakening was reaching its peak. Conditions like that have always created deep anxiety, leading many to investigate religious consolations. A Baptist lay preacher named William Miller, after intense study of the Bible, concluded that the Second Coming not only was imminent, but was certainly going to occur on October 22, 1844. About 100,000 people gave away all their possessions, and waited in churches or on hilltops all that day, expecting Jesus’ return. When October 23 arrived, it began what was called the Great Disappointment.

Best then that when Jesus comes He should find us doing the things that He talked about most – bearing witness, making disciples, feeding the hungry, and loving one another.

The Millerite movement dissolved, and eventually was reconstituted as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, whose essential teachings no longer include certainty about the date of the Second Coming.

First and Second Thesslonians are the earliest documents in the New Testament, and we find there that the Thessalonians were intensely interested in the Second Coming of Jesus, so much so that some had decided no longer to work, but wait for the Lord’s imminent return. St. Paul gave them some tantalyzing details about the “Day of the Lord,” that it would come only after the time of the “Man of Lawlessness,” who was being restrained for the time being, but one day those restraints would be removed, and there would be a final conflict that Jesus would certainly win. No doubt the Thessalonians were burning with anticipation to know the identity of the “Man of Lawlessness,” the nature of the restraints on him, and the time of the last battle.

Paul never gave them these details. The truth is he may not have known them, any more than we do. Instead Paul urged them to “hold fast to the traditions that you were taught” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

Fevered speculation about the “Man of Lawlessness” and the date of the Second Coming may make for some amusing clickbait, but too much attention to them, perhaps any attention to them, subjects us to the fate of the Millerites, who abandoned their homes and resources, abandoned their unpersuaded neighbors to wait inside churches or on mountaintops while the rest of the world went to hell. When Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” and Peter answered that he did, Jesus didn’t then give him a timetable of future apocalyptic events. He said instead, “Feed my sheep” (cf. John 21:17) Jesus taught his disciples as well that “no one knows the day or hour” of the Second Coming (cf. Matthew 24:36). Best then that when He comes He should find us doing the things that He talked about most – bearing witness, making disciples, feeding the hungry, and loving one another.

Ezekiel spoke of the apocalyptic Last Battle, when God would say to Gog of the Land of Magog (whoever that is), “You will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land” (Ezekiel 38:16). Any English teacher will tell you that this is sloppy writing. Who is like a cloud covering the land? Is it Gog, of the Land of Magog, or is it God’s people Israel? The way this verse is written, it’s hard to say. Of course, maybe we can read that ambiguity as intentional. Perhaps God’s people Israel being as numerous as “a cloud covering the land” is up to us. Perhaps we have some decisions to make.

Feed my sheep.