Chapter 1: The Return of Jesus Christ: The Coming Turning Point

“For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27).

Many end-time prophecies describe how bad the world will become. Millions of people will lose their lives due to increasing warfare, religious deception, famine and disease epidemics (compare Matthew 24:7-8, 21, 29-30 with Revelation 6:2-17). Yet humanity will not be destroyed.

Instead, we will be saved from destroying ourselves. “Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved,” Jesus said, “but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).

How will humanity be saved from destroying itself?

Our Savior—the One who came to earth to make it possible for us all to be saved from our sins—will return to rescue us from total destruction.

Jesus Christ “will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).

What will the return of Christ be like?

The world Jesus returns to will be a very dark place.

The purpose of this publication isn’t to cover all the details about the dark time preceding Christ’s return. You can learn more about those prophecies in our booklet How to Understand Prophecy.

But here’s a brief summary of what the world will be like at that time:

The environment will be horribly polluted—likely, at least in part, the result of nuclear fallout and the effects of meteorites pummeling the earth’s surface (Matthew 24:29; Revelation 6:12-13). Fierce global warfare will have killed and traumatized billions of people. Many will be on the brink of starvation. Powerful armies will converge to fight a climactic battle in the Middle East that will likely include weapons of mass destruction so deadly they threaten human existence (Zechariah 14:1-4; Revelation 16:12-16).

But before this battle takes place, something will occur that will stop everything.

It will begin with a sound coming from the sky—not a sound produced by anything man-made, but the ear-piercing blast of a supernatural trumpet (Matthew 24:31; 1 Thessalonians 4:16)!

Throughout history, trumpet blasts have been used to get people’s attention. This trumpet, blown by an angel, will be like none ever heard!

Have you ever been near a bolt of lightning striking the earth, its energy so powerful you could feel it to the core of your being? Such a loud crack can bring grown men to their knees, but the sound of this trumpet blast will be much more powerful. It will grab the whole world’s attention.

As people cower and cover their ears, they will look up and see the sky open, revealing a glowing and radiant spirit being, followed by a host of other spirit beings. This will be the returning Savior Himself, Jesus Christ. The sheer power and glory of His presence will cause “the heavens and earth” to shake, and the mountains to “quake before Him” (Joel 3:16; Nahum 1:5).

No one in the world will miss this event—“every eye will see Him” (Revelation 1:7). Jesus said: “They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30).

The apostle John, seeing Christ’s appearance in a vision, tried his best to describe what He looks like in glory: “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters” (Revelation 1:14-15).

When He returns, Christ will look nothing like how people have commonly pictured Him, which will likely cause great confusion about who this actually is.

Christ’s first act—the resurrection of the faithful

After that powerful trumpet blast, something truly miraculous will begin to occur. Around the world, those called by God in this lifetime who have died over the centuries will awaken from death, come up from their graves in glorified bodies and rise into the air. People dead for thousands of years— people like Noah, Abraham and King David—will live again. And not just those notable names from the Bible, but all of the faithful throughout the ages.

The apostle Paul described this resurrection this way: “We shall not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

At this moment, these faithful people will be born into the spirit family of God as His glorified, immortal children (Romans 8:21; Hebrews 2:10). It’s what the Bible calls “the first resurrection” (Revelation 20:6).

Imagine thousands of people rising out of the ground—having been changed from dust to immortal spirit!

And it won’t just be the dead! God’s faithful who are alive will also rise into the air and be glorified. Together, both groups will rise to “meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17; see also Matthew 24:31).

It will be a family gathering like no other!

But what happens next?

Why Christ will make war before peace

After this resurrection, attention will then turn to the earth to which Christ is descending.

John described the armies of the earth uniting to fight the returning Christ. “And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army” (Revelation 19:19).

Satan will delude them to believe they can somehow challenge and stop these powerful beings descending from the sky, so instead of welcoming Jesus as their Savior, a group of nations will launch a counterstrike against Him and His saints.

This is why the returning Christ will “go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle” (Zechariah 14:3; see also Revelation 19:11)—the only thing these arrogant, God-defying armies will understand is overwhelming superior force. So He’ll come wielding “a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations . . . He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:15).

He’ll first defeat the governmental and religious heads of these armies (verse 20), then easily destroy the rest (verse 21). Zechariah provided a gruesome description of how these human armies will fall: “Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12).

The scene of millions of people literally melting where they stand will be a stark lesson to humanity that Jesus Christ is all-powerful and cannot be challenged (2 Chronicles 20:6; Psalms 110:5-7; 135:6; Daniel 4:35).

Does that sound cruel? Consider first that Jesus prophesied that He will have to do this to “destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18), and that unless He intervened in such manner “no flesh would be saved” due to the cruelty of man (Matthew 24:22). In order for warfare and suffering to end, those who wage war and cause suffering must first be defeated in the most decisive manner. (Yet, as we will see, the Bible shows that God will give them a chance to repent later.)

This massive display of supernatural power will so frighten people that they will try to hide in utter terror (Isaiah 2:19). This will break their pride and humble them before God—“the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (verse 17).

Recognizing Jesus Christ’s limitless power will be the first step to learning to fear and honor Him as their God (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; 9:10).

By watching this display of power, the whole world will learn the answer to the questions “Who can stand before His indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?” (Nahum 1:6).

The answer is definitive and undeniable: Nobody.

But rebellious human beings won’t be the only opposition Christ deals with when He returns.

The adversary captured and imprisoned

The armies trying to challenge Christ will be under the influence of another being. The Bible calls him “the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12:9).

This fallen angel and his demons are a primary source of our world’s troubles. Before his fall, Satan was a mighty archangel who served God, but pride and lust for power led him to organize an angelic rebellion against God. Though he understood God’s superiority as well as anyone could, he became so deluded that he actually convinced himself he could overthrow his Creator and take His throne (Isaiah 14:13-14).

God quickly and easily defeated his attempted rebellion, and Jesus described seeing “Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).

Satan’s violent rebellion occurred before the creation of mankind (Ezekiel 28:16; Genesis 2:7). Since that time, he has been confined to this earth, but his hostile attitude toward God never changed. Paul identified him as “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4) because his influence has provoked the violence, suffering, deception and evil this world has experienced.

So he and his demons will have to be dealt with immediately. After Christ crushes the human armies, He will send an angel to capture and imprison the rebel spirit beings.

John described this future event in Revelation 20:1-3: “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished.”

This confinement will render Satan completely powerless to influence anyone for 1,000 years.

This reference to Satan’s 1,000-year banishment is significant because it’s the first time the Bible defines a time frame of Christ’s initial rule after His return. The Old Testament contains hundreds of prophecies about this time, but not until this verse, at the very end of the Bible, are we given the length of time that Christ will rule over the human inhabitants of the earth who survive the climactic end time.

This period, the 1,000-year reign of Christ, is often called the Millennium—from the Latin mille (thousand).

Immediately after Satan and the demons are imprisoned, the Millennium will begin. So one of the first major things we learn about this Millennium is that Satan will be gone, and his absence will be a major factor in allowing a new and better world to be built.

What does the Bible tell us about the various themes of Christ’s millennial reign and the effects they will have on people over time?

We’ll begin exploring this in the next chapter, as we look at the foundation upon which this new world will be built—the government of the Kingdom of God.

The Millennium and the Kingdom of God are strongly connected, but they aren’t the same thing.

The Kingdom of God exists right now, with its throne in heaven where God and Jesus Christ reign. When Christ returns, He will establish that reign on earth.

The Millennium is the first 1,000 years of that reign on earth—the period between the binding of Satan and his temporary release (Revelation 20:3, 7). During this 1,000 years, the Kingdom will rule over this earth, but not everyone living during the Millennium will be in God’s ruling family, which is the Kingdom of God. Humans will be its subjects, but humans cannot inherit the Kingdom while they are flesh and blood (1 Corinthians 15:50).

The major distinction between the two terms is that the Millennium is temporary, ending after 1,000 years, and the Kingdom of God is eternal and will have no end (Isaiah 9:7; Daniel 7:18).