Missions and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

This particular Blog post will be applied to next weeks visit of Missionary Chris Trombetta who will be speaking with us next week at Church instead of tomorrow January 11th due to forecasted inclement weather. You can find out more about Chris by visit the ministry's website  http://crosswaterministries.org

A/G missionary Chris Trombetta will be speaking to us this morning on his burden for the American Indian which is his missionary calling. Chris and his family are part of the renowned Assemblies of God missionary thrust which has its roots in the turn of the century Azusa Street Pentecostal revival. From its inception the modern Pentecostal movement has placed a high premium on home and foreign missions. When the Assemblies of God was organized in 1914, missions was at the forefront in their list of priorities. But what was the motivating force behind this all out commitment to missions? The answer was and still is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In 1914, the First World War had broken out which shattered the hopes of many that the world was getting better and that we were finally learning how to get along with each other. Others had hoped that as things got better and Christian ideals were at the forefront, this would usher in the millennium with Christ coming to rule over what had become an orderly world with hunger conquered, social problems ameliorated, and war abolished. It didn’t happen that way. Even before the war, Pentecostals and other evangelicals were warning that things would deteriorate, that world-wide conditions would get worse and that we were running out of time for world-wide evangelism. The goal of such Christians, therefore, was to reach as much of the world as possible before world wide Tribulation would culminate in the Second Coming of Christ, who would come among other things to unseat the unprecedented concentration of evil embodied in the last world emperor, the Antichrist.

Much has not changed since then. World problems have become increasingly more intense (another more horrible world war happened and the present terrorist threat are like birth pangs (see Matt.24:8); half the world is hungry and without pure water, the use of weapons of mass destruction is looming on the horizon which would exacerbate already critical ecological concerns; and for the first time in human history, it is now possible for one person to rule the entire planet (see Rev. 13, IIThess. 2:1-10). This last development is due to the unprecedented advances in travel and communications technology (some quote Daniel 12;4b on this). We live with these realities every day and that is why we can only find hope in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. While we are not permitted by our Lord to make predictions (see Matt.24:36) we also remember our Lord’s pronouncement that “when you see all these things BEGIN (caps my own) to come to pass (see above), look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28). But he also commanded us to “occupy till I come.” (Luke 19:13, implied). Let us be inspired by our beloved missionary role models and be about the Master’s business until he comes.