Tag: Second Coming

This World’s Last Night

“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »

When the Curtain Comes Down on the Play

“It seems to me impossible to retain in any recognisable form our belief in the Divinity of Christ and the truth of the Christian revelation,” C. S. Lewis remarked, “while abandoning, or even persistently neglecting, the promised, and threatened, Return.” The world likes Christ’s first coming, His nativity, because we get presents and feel-good Hallmark movies—you know, that amorphous “Christmas spirit” that is bereft of the Christ of Christmas. The Second Coming concept, though, as Lewis notes, is, for some,… Read more »

Lewis: How to View the Second Coming

For the second Saturday in a row, I want to share some of C. S. Lewis’s thoughts about the Second Coming of Christ. Last week, his comments made it clear that this is a central doctrine of the faith. Yet he also wants us to be wary of trying to pin a date on it. In his essay “The World’s Last Night,” he offers this caution: We must never speak to simple, excitable people about “the Day” without emphasizing again… Read more »

C. S. Lewis on the Second Coming of Christ

As a college student back in the 1970s, and caught up in the Jesus Movement of the era, I anticipated the Second Coming to be very near, probably sometime in the 1970s, of course. Even though I was spiritually immature at the time, that doesn’t mean the Second Coming is some kind of fantasy. As C. S. Lewis explains, it is essential to a proper understanding of the Christian faith. In an essay entitled “The World’s Last Night,” he had… Read more »

The Ultimate Hope

The whole country is breathing a sigh of relief now that the government is fully funded again. We’re comforted by the thought that all things are up and running once more. But I’m reminded of the time when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from the assassination attempt back in 1981. His top cabinet officials all came to see him at the hospital. At the time, he had a tube going down his throat and couldn’t yet speak, but he was writing… Read more »

The Real End of the World

So here we are: October 1, and the government is in limbo with its funding. The way it’s being portrayed, we’re in sight of the end of the world. Well, I’m not of that opinion. I have it on very good authority that the end will look something like this: And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. …. Read more »