One of the frustrating things about watching soccer for American fans—as many of us experienced watching the World Cup this past summer—is that you never actually know for sure when the match is over. After the prescribed ninety minutes, the teams keep playing until the referee, somehow keeping track of “stoppage time,” blows the whistle—and then you know it’s over. In basketball and football, those good old American games, all you have to do is look at the clock to know exactly how much time is left in the game. And in baseball, it’s clear that when the final out is recorded, the game is over.
The Clock that Matters
So that’s sports. But what about the only timer that really matters? The clock that is ticking away until Jesus’s second coming? We know it will happen, as surely as the day we were born. Scripture describes the day like this, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thess. 4:16). For those of us who know Jesus, that will be the greatest day of our lives, for on the day he appears we will “meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). On that day “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Surely, this is our “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
But for those who don’t know Jesus, it will be the worst day of their lives, for “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire,” he will inflict “vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thess. 1:7-10). They will be like the rich man in the story Jesus told about Lazarus, who ended up in torment in Hades unable to cross over to Abraham’s side where Lazarus was because “a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us” (Luke 16:22-26).
When Will the Second Coming Be?
With so much riding on that day, it’s worth asking: Is there any way to know when Jesus will return? The disciples certainly wanted to know, and so they asked him in Matthew 24:3, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus went on to give signs that would happen before his return, but then he concluded by saying, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matt. 24:36). The most closely guarded secret in the universe!
And yet what is easy to overlook in this Olivet Discourse is that Jesus gave a clear indication of when his second coming would not happen. He won’t come back until something else happens first. What is that something? It’s right there in Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations [emphasis added], and then the end will come.” Jesus said he will not return until the gospel has been preached to all nations throughout the whole world!
Jesus reinforced this in the Great Commission, his final command to his followers: make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). Do you see the common theme? The Great Commission, reaching all nations with the gospel, has to be completed before he will return.
When Will the Work Be Completed?
So how will we know when it is completed? We simply need to know two things: (1) how many nations there are in total and (2) how many nations have had the gospel preached to them. For when all nations have had the gospel preached to them, “then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).
A great deal of discussion and research has gone into trying to answer these questions in a quantifiable way. Common missiological practice agrees that there are around 17,000 nations, or people groups, in the world, and that about 10,000 of these have had the gospel proclaimed among them to a sufficient degree that the rest of the people in those groups at least have access to the gospel. That’s good news!
But the bad news is that leaves 7,000 people groups or “nations,” with an estimated population of 3.2 billion, that have yet to have the gospel proclaimed and disciples made among them. That’s a lot of work left to do.
So what can you do? That is what our annual REACH conference is all about! Listen to past REACH sermons and choose one step you can take to help finish the task.
