Good Morning!

On New Year’s Eve, I wrote about anticipating our Lord’s return. https://hislightshines.com/2018/12/31/2018-12-31-you-also-must-be-ready/ I would like to make this who I am – a man who is eagerly looking for Jesus in the clouds. As with anything new, I will need to practice it. You may hear much more of this in the posts to come.

Eschatology is what they call this. It is defined as the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think too much of that word. It’s too, I don’t know, too technical or something. It sounds sterile or clinical as it rolls off the tongue. I suppose there has to be a word for it, but I would prefer something that sounded better – an onomatopoeia of some sort.

I suppose it all depends on your point of reference. For those of us in Christ, that is those who are born-again, this will be a day liken to the Resurrection, maybe even better because it will be a day that Jesus takes us to be with him. On the other hand, for those who are his enemies, it will be the beginning of something dreadful, the likes of which the world has never known.

How will Jesus return? What will that look like? For this, let’s put on our imagination hat and let the words develop a picture in our minds.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 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. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

First of all, there will be a lot of noise. I’m not sure if the cry of command will be from Jesus or not, but here’s what his voice sounds like and perhaps would be the voice like we see in other places. Let’s take a look at one.

Revelation 1:15b and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

Many waters. Have you ever heard ocean waves crash into the shore? It’s deafening. Same with a raging river. The sound is overwhelming. I would think this would be what the “cry of command” will be like, as opposed to the sound of a whisper when God spoke to Elijah (1 Kings 19:12).

How about the voice of an archangel? Given the limits of time this morning, we’ll have to just imagine how loud a creature could be that is fully capable of destroying huge swaths of mankind as we see in Revelation. Just think, one can hear a lion roar 5 miles away. In the grand scheme of Jesus’ return, the mightiest lion is less than a flea on Fido.

And the trumpet? I played one of those bad boys in school. I could really blast that thing. What do you think God could do with one?

Anyway, picture these things in your mind. Not one person anywhere, over the whole earth, will miss this sound. I wonder if the sound itself will be that which wakes the dead in Christ. Imagine that!

Father, I can’t wait for that day! It’s going to be something! Wow! Amen!

Copyright © 2019 Scott Powers