Second Coming – Far or Near

Second Coming – Far or Near?

In a world of estrangement, the concepts of nearness and distance are no longer unequivocal.  Is someone near because he happens to sit next to me?  Some people may live together for years and experience nothing but loneliness, as if they were miles away from each other in their estrangement.  And in reverse, people may live miles away from each other, separated by mountains and oceans, but in spite of this feel each other’s closeness in unbreakable friendship.

There is a saying that expresses the paradox of closeness and distance in the words:

The greatest closeness is: being far and feeling near,
The greatest distance is: being near and feeling far.

Between these extremes human relationships grow or starve.

Only one being on earth is simultaneously present everywhere and near to each human being separately, as if that human being were the only one He is concerned with.  His presence is as the air that envelops the earth like an invisible mantle.  The apostle Paul expressed this omnipresence with the words:” In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Since his Second Coming, Christ is present every day, just as truly as the air in which we live and move and have our existence.

For each of us, and for humanity as a whole, there will come a moment in which all that surrounds and carries us will fall away, when the moment has come to go through the eye of the needle.  Then only He will be close to us and lead us to a new form of existence.  That is the reason why Paul, who was the first to see His Second Coming, could say: “Rejoice! … The Lord is near!” (Phil.4:4-5)

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, December 13, 2020