How Should We Now Live?

This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.
–Acts 1:11

A recent survey asked Americans this question: “Which better describes how you feel about the way things are going in the world these days?” The survey offered two possible responses. Response number one: “Everything will be all right.” Response number two: “Things are going to hell in a handbasket.” The majority of Americans chose the second response. That is how many people feel about the world condition. People are asking, “What is the world coming to? Where are we headed? Is anybody in charge?”

The answer to all those questions is found in a single event toward which all history is marching. That event is the Apocalypse–the unveiling, the revelation, the return of Jesus Christ. This week we are going to talk about the return of Jesus Christ and how we should be living as believers in light of His return.

Over and over again in Scripture, we find the promise of Jesus that He will come again. His coming is certain. In John 14, Jesus was meeting with His disciples before He was crucified and resurrected, and He made this promise: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (v. 3). Jesus promised, “I will come again.” We see that promise from Genesis to Revelation about the Lord’s triumphant return. Although Christians have always differed on some of the details of His return, the constant refrain from the beginning of Christianity has been this: Jesus is coming again.

We see the certainty of the Lord’s return in Acts 1. In this passage, Jesus had been on the earth for 40 days after His resurrection. He was in His new body, and thousands of people saw Him. Finally, He gathered together with his followers at the Mount of Olives and ascended into heaven. Can you imagine what that scene was like? The disciples looked up and saw the Lord lifted up into heaven. And as they were gazing at the sky, the angels said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (v. 11). The angels were saying, “This same Jesus, the One you have been with for these last three years, the One you saw go into heaven–He will come back from heaven in just the same way.”

The angels said that Jesus will return the same way He left: literally, visibly, bodily, for everyone to see. That’s the promise of Scripture. His coming is certain.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “How Should We Now Live?” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2015.

Dana Blanton, “Fox News Poll: As Election Nears, Voters Say Things Are ‘Going to Hell in a Handbasket,’” Fox News, October 15, 2014.

Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.