"He shall come again..."

Throughout the New Testament there is the eager note sounded again and again about “waiting for the coming our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some of the very earliest Christians made the mistake of trying to pin down the time of Christ’s return, as there have been those throughout history who have made the same mistake — forgetting that our Lord taught us that “no man knows the day or the hour” of His return.

 
But we do believe that Christ will return to us. We believe that “He shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead.” We live in the “last days,” and they began with the conception, birth, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

At the time of His ascension into heaven, the promise was given to the apostles that “this Jesus, whom you have seen taken from your sight, will return in the same way as you have seen Him go.” 

The second coming of Christ is a doctrine of our faith, and it is the underlying theme of the season of Advent, that time before the Feast of His Nativity when we commemorate Christ’s first coming into the world.

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Icon: "Our Lady of the Sign" 18th c.

Transfiguration Church, Kizhi Monastery, Russia