The phrase, “in the year 2000,” was frequently invoked to suggest either the most significant culmination of trends or inception of unimaginable developments be it positive or negative. Thus, as we crept nearer to that momentous hour, half the world was anticipating something of splendor and hope, while the other half of the world hunkered down in dread of the fulfillment of their darkest expectations.

Although that moment arrived and benignly slipped into the rear-view mirror without so much as a quiver, the sense of undefined significance mysteriously lingers. Add to it the mounting likelihood of holy wars super-charged by weapons of mass destruction and the sense greatly increases that we must square with the meaning of our time.

For many, the year 2000 signified the 2000th anniversary of Christ’s promise that he would return. Is the world coming to an end? Are these the “last days;” the days of the apocalypse?

Christ’s Return

The return of Christ is probably one of the most divisive topics of faith. It is the cause of much division amongst people of faith. That circumstance is rooted in the wide range of understandings regarding the purpose of Christ’s mission when he returns.

Hebrews 9:28 reveals that when Christ returns, he will not come to suffer and die again, but rather, “to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”

What will be the nature of that salvation? Acts 3:21 says, “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.”

That could only mean that God wants to recover a previously existing circumstance or potential. Thus, the content of “salvation” becomes explicitly clear. God wants to restore and then fulfill the environment of the original parents who were selected to “be fruitful, multiply and have dominion under the true God of love.

God had intended that Adam and Eve become True Parents and inherit God’s life and love; passing it on to an eternal line. He intended that his line would expand from family, society, nation and world. That hoped-for world would display the ideal of “one family under God” from sea to shining sea. This is the “everything” that Christ comes to restore.

I Peter 1:5 says that believers waiting for Christ to come “will be shielded in faith, until the coming of the salvation that is to be revealed in the last days.” That means a “final salvation” will be revealed in the age in which it is to be implemented. If that is so, then we know that it has not been revealed in the Gospel that has served as our “shield” since the time of Christ and will remain our shield “until” that revealing.

Salvation Fulfilled

How is the salvation that we have received through Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be extended and fulfilled? Didn’t Jesus completely save us when he shed his blood for us on Calvary’s cross?

Of course, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit we have been born again and adopted into the family of God. In Christ we have conquered death and our sins have been washed away. What more “salvation” could there be?

Although we are completely saved, yet when we form the bond of marriage and conceive the next generation, we are still promulgating the physical line of the dead Adam. Although we are born again spiritually; physically we continue the legacy of sin and death. Thus, that child and all children must still find the way home through the event of their own spiritual rebirth.

Jesus is returning to grant a new sanction to the blessing of marriage. It is a blessing that will take the regeneration made possible for individuals and extend it to the family. With this new authority, children will be conceived and brought forth from the womb under the same sinless quality with which Jesus himself was born. This will be the hoped-for “redemption of the body” to which Paul referred in Romans 8:23.

Death will do us part no more

In such a time, marriage will no longer be a temporal event limited to the earthly plane. Never again will we pledge, “until death do us part” because it will be a new era where our loves on earth will endure forever in spirit. Not only will the individual enter heaven, but husbands and wives, parents and children, as well.

When children can be born under God’s original ideal, then the time will be upon us when the hope of becoming “fruitful, multiplying and having dominion” can be realized; and with it the ideal of one family under God.

Therefore, the time of Christ’s return is not a moment to dread or to fear. It is the end of the world in the sense that the world’s ways of conflict and suffering will pass away. But more importantly, it will be the emerging of a new world, under the universal recognition of Christ’s love. It will be a love that covers the world as completely as the waters cover the sea. It will be a love that will be most perfectly magnified within the family.

Discussion

1. How did you feel on New Year’s Eve 1999? Do you have some inner sense about the significance of this present day?

2. How have you envisioned the “Last Days” and the return of Christ?

3. Why was it so hard for people to recognize Jesus when he was on the earth? If he returns in a similar way what kind of struggles will ensue?

4. Most Christian doctrine sees marriage as an earthly only experience and that when we go to heaven, our earthly experience of love has been nullified. Does that sound consistent with the heart’s desire for eternal love?

5. Why are strong families so vital for a society?