Imagine the following story: a child is kidnapped, and the parents pay a huge ransom to the kidnappers in order to get their child back safely. Only one problem: After paying the demands, the parents never go to get the child. They just leave him where he was.~
If that sounds ridiculous, it’s as ridiculous as the idea of Jesus Christ not returning to the earth at the Second Coming. Why? Because He paid a very expensive ransom for us: His own life—and the Second Coming is Jesus coming back to get us, we whom He had ransomed with that life.
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
“For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time,” (1 Timothy 2:5–6, NIV).
The Bible says that were redeemed by “the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). The idea of “redeemed” carries with it the same idea as “ransomed.” Christ paid for our redemption with His own life. What could be more ludicrous, then, for Him to have done that, to pay such a great price for us, and yet not come back and get what had cost Him so much?
And that is what the Second Coming is: Jesus returning to get what He, Himself, had paid for at His first coming. The whole purpose of the first coming was the Second. The first coming of Jesus is the guarantee, written in blood, Christ’s blood, of the Second. If Jesus doesn’t come back, then everything He did at the first coming—from His incarnation into human flesh, His sinless life, and His death on the cross—all becomes a waste.
And who believes that?
