Since the beginning of 2020 and into 2021, the world population has been living with heightened vigilance and anxiety caused by a virus capable of killing over four million people. But COVID-19 only added a new level of pain to what we were already experiencing. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reports that 2019 is considered to have had more disasters than any other year in recent history.
The year 2020 continued the same pattern. There was an increase in suicides, addictions, abuse, divorce, depression, anxiety, and violence.Clearly, recent events have demonstrated our complete inability to save ourselves and our world, or to control adversity. Minds that are perverse in the extreme have converted this world in a garbage heap, war zone, and cemetery. As Jesus commented: “An enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28).
As we recognize this reality, we must take courage from the Bible promise, “Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgement on all’ ” (Jude 14, 15). Jude’s statement is also a promise of the hope of the second coming of Jesus Christ, who will end every kind of evil. In it we find several important truths about the Second Coming.
Who announces the promise. In Genesis 5, in the seventh generation from Adam, nearly 3,300 years before Christ’s birth, we find a record of Enoch. God revealed His promise to Enoch before the Flood in order to benefit his generation and those to come.
Who wrote the promise. Jude begins his epistle with the words: “Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (verse 1). The Gospel of Mark describes Jude as a brother of Jesus and of James: “Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon?” (Mark 6:3). This information is important, because even though Jesus Himself announced the promise of His second coming, when Jude wrote his book, about 67 A.D., he repeated the announcement of Enoch from 3,300 years before, indicating that they were both the same promise.
Christ will come. Enoch had declared: “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints” (Jude 14). Clearly, this is an announcement promising the second coming of Christ Jesus. No one else could come with “ten thousands of His saints.”
Enoch’s behavior. Let us look closely at Enoch’s behavior. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The knowledge Enoch had about the promise of Jesus’ second coming inspired him to share this hope with others and to live closer to God—so close, in fact, that “God took him” (verse 24).
Today, the Holy Spirit invites you to embrace this hope. He wants you to know that Jesus Christ is coming and has been announcing it for a long time. Prepare to meet Him!
The author is an international speaker. He writes from New York.
