Karen :    Who, what, when, and where? These are all important questions to explore when looking at the topic that David Mains and I have focused our attention upon this month of December. That is the church season of Advent.

David :    The who of Advent is Jesus. The what of Advent was his first coming to earth. As you know by now, Advent means coming. So that’s the what. The coming to earth of the Christ child, God’s Son.

Karen :    And the when was around the time history changed from BC, Before Christ, to AD, or the year of our Lord. The where was located near a small town called Bethlehem in Judea. Who, what, when, and where?

David :    Scripture teaches us to prepare for a second coming or Advent of Jesus Christ. So, it’s the same who, Jesus. The what is this return of King Jesus in power and great glory.

Karen :    Well, the event of this return will be observed by human beings everywhere around the world. Then there’s the when. We’re not informed as to the when. That’s information known only by God.

David :    But we’re given clues. In this podcast visit, we will look at a few extensive passages. The first is written by the Apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about the when of this second coming or Advent of Jesus the Christ.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains  and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David :    We extend our warmest Christmas greetings to you, friend.

Karen :    And we also give you right up front here the thrust of this final Advent visit before Christmas Day.

David :    We have been in a series about Advent, the season Christians celebrate the first coming of Christ into the world.

Karen :    And also, about his yet-to-happen second coming. Here’s our key sentence for this visit.

David :    Contemporary Christians would do well to frequently remind ourselves that our King’s return, his second Advent could soon be taking place. You want to repeat that, Karen?

Karen :    Contemporary Christians would do well to frequently remind ourselves that our King’s return, his second Advent could soon be taking place.

David :    Said differently, we could well be that generation of stewards on duty when these end time events happen.

Karen :    So, our text is 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12. And let’s read these verses for you.

David :    OK, listen closely. I’m going to kind of give you a quiz at the end of this. Ok?

“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you brothers not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed. The man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple proclaiming himself to be God.”

Karen :    “Don’t you remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things and now you know what is holding him back so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.”

David :    “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan, displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.”

“For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie; and so that all will be condemned to have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”

Ok, that’s a long passage, much longer than normal that we would read. We started with who, what, when and where. I’m going to give you true false statements, ok? I’ll read the statement to you, and you tell me whether it’s true or false according to what we have just read.

The return of Jesus to planet earth has already happened.

Karen :    Well, his first coming has happened, but his second coming is not, so I’d say false, right?

David :    Yes, false. The return of Jesus to the earth will not occur until first the man of sin is revealed. Is that true or false?

Karen :    True.

David :    This evil man will claim himself to be God.

Karen :    Yes, that’s true.

David :    That’s true. At present an unnamed force is prohibiting this evil man’s rise to power and this force will always be present.

Karen :    Yes, true.

David :    Nope, that’s alright, it means we’re listening closely and trying to figure this out. The unnamed force that prohibits this evil man’s rise to power is there, but it’s not always going to be present. It will be taken from the earth.

Karen :    Ok.

David :    The man of lawlessness will be able to perform counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders.

Karen :    True.

David :    Ok. God will also send a powerful delusion on the earth so people will believe the lies of this man of lawlessness.

Karen :    That’s true.

David :    Yeah, that’s amazing, isn’t it?

Karen :    Yeah, that’s amazing.

David :    Those who are confused by the lies of this man of lawlessness will be excused. It’s all very confusing so God will excuse them.

Karen :    No, that’s false.

David :    At his second coming, Jesus will battle this lawless impostor to a draw.

Karen :    He’ll overcome him.

David :    Ok, let’s talk about the world as you and I see it. Ok?

I would say the world is moving toward the rise of powerful autocratic leaders, just like what’s being described here in this passage.

Karen :    Right. So, you see this all over the world. I was doing some internet research and I came across this group called Nations in Transit. And the article that I pulled, just so I’d have some understanding of where they were coming from since they studied this, was that Eastern part of Europe, and then all those nations that are kind of in that vortex in there, there definitely is the rise of autocratic leaders there. But we know from observing this that it’s happening kind of all over the world. It’s kind of an amazing thing.

David :    Just about half of the nations of the world have an autocratic leader. They’re not democratic if you put it that way. And I would say that there’s consistently talk of that possibility happening soon in America. As impossible as that sounds.

Karen :    Well, if you listen to conversations, there’s, I wonder where people are coming from sometimes. We’ve been pride at ourselves in being a democracy and I actually feel that democracy is a system that was designed by God and given as a gift to Americans. And we’ve been held up as the life for democracy across the world. But we do see a movement. You see it in nations close to us in South America. There’s some in the Far East, very definitely. North Korea and China. I mean, it’s really interesting.

David :    Russia is obviously autocratic. In fact, Karen, the massive nation of India is moving more and more toward an autocratic rule.

Karen :    Right.

David :    So, the world is shifting in many ways. I would say that the United States is no longer the America in which we were raised. It’s a vastly different country. We’re not even the shining city on the hill that we once were. I would say just as an illustration of this and not to belabor the point, America used to be known as a truthful nation.

It was the Abraham Lincoln, the George Washington. I cannot tell a lie. Now lies are just commonplace. And in fact, when you talk about, say, a recent figure, George Santos, he may be the extreme of that, but even the Congress saying we can tolerate who he is because we need his vote right now. That never would have happened 50, 60 years ago. And it was thought people would even keep the thought to themselves for the most part.

Karen :    Right.

David :    Because truth was very important in this nation. But that’s changing in an incredible way. I would say also in terms of America, I got on a run here, but I’ll open up a topic to I think that the church is not the force in America that it once was. You think that’s fair?

Karen :    We have a declining church in America. We have a dying church. Now there are new churches that are being planted, but the proportion that are dying and closing their doors is larger than the ones that are being planted.

David :    There are obviously exceptions of marvelous, incredible churches, but the overall picture is not that. Where we are going as a nation is, I would say, losing the younger people. They’re not coming to church like they used to.

Karen :    Or they come every so often. There’s not that regular attendance.

David :    And the church as its influenced is no longer the powerhouse that it once was in America.

Karen :    So, what we need to do, David, I think that you have hit on this topic very much in your ministry is we need to become a rigorously praying people. Because the collapse of all of these things need to be offset by a movement of prayer. And in your study of church history, or the history of movements of the Holy Spirit, or renewal, or revival, if you want to use that terminology, it always seems to begin with a group of devoted people who are concerned about our nation, who feel that God’s work is not being done in God’s way, that they’re inhibitors. And they say, “Well, we need to pray about this. And so, they’ll start a little prayer group maybe once a week.”

I love the story of the church in New York City. There was a man who was on a church staff. He’d been brought on. He was kind of a layperson. And he began to pray every day.

David :    We need to see that happen again, but I’m not even sure that the church in America is a praying church, for the most part. It hasn’t yet picked up the burden, praying for a new day to offset the evil that we’re seeing.

Karen :    Or the collapse of a moral base. I mean, we can say this in a hundred ways. There’s a concept that I love that I don’t even remember how I stumbled across this concept of Kairos time. I think I’m pronouncing that right. It’s spelled K-A-I-R-O-S. And it’s sort of defined in a lot of different ways.

One of the definitions is the right time or an opportune time. So, I think this is kind of a Kairos moment when we need to, through our prayers and through our earnestness and through our feelings of the seriousness about the moral collapse in our country and the decline of churches. Begin to live in that time.

David :    You need to define it again.

Karen :    Well, it’s what many philosophers refer to as deep time, or the right time, or the opportune moment. And if we want to take this into scripture, scripture shows that Jesus filled earthly time with all these Kairos moments.

David :    That’s helpful.

Karen :    The miracle world, or the spiritual world breaks through and he is able to make it clear through his teaching. There’s a healing. So, Jesus, I think, lived in Kairo’s time his whole life.

David :    I’m sure that very well said gives me the goosebumps.

Karen :    It does give you the goosebumps. So, I think at this advent season, it might be good, and we’ve talked about the first coming at Christ and the second coming at Christ, to ask that God will help us to live in Kairos time. Let me give a personal example out of my life. As you know, I’m a person who ramps. I’m ramping because I’ve got to get this done, I’ve got to get that done, I’ve got to get this done.

Not only do I think this heightens the blood pressure, but I think it’s also a sin, because I think I need to live in God’s moment every day. I need to capture the reality of that. And when we’re thinking about Advent, the first coming and the second coming, one of the things I think that needs to be intertwined in that Kairos moment is this reality of Christ coming back again. Now, we’ve talked about it so much and I’m almost in tears. I’m getting very emotional, just even speaking about Christ coming again. And the restoration of the world to His design and the overcoming of the evil ones, you know.

I mean, it’s just all you long for that day. And so that’s my prayers for myself, that I will live more and more in Kairos time, in the opportune moment.

David :    I think Kairos time is God’s time.

Karen :     Oh, yes.

David :    And God knows when is the opportune time to return, when is to His benefit. When the trends are such that it’s a disadvantage to God to let it go on, then He intervenes. I think we’re beginning to see that more and more clearly as His followers in today’s world.

The return of the King may not be that far off. I say that so I don’t sound like I know it all. But it’s to the place of saying, if you’re looking for the signs, it would be to God’s advantage now to return as simple as we are as human beings, you know, to figure out what God should do. But this is a time to begin to say, we’re coming to the place where evil will more and more be personified.

Karen :    Yes, right.

David :    One of these leaders will rise up. It’s inevitable, you know, that someone is going to rise to power over the world.

Karen :    One of these autocratic leaders is… yeah.

David :    And that’s going to be awful for the world. It doesn’t present a good picture when you study that in Scripture. It’s a very frightening picture if you are wanting to be an open follower of Jesus Christ. You become a hidden follower in a lot of ways because it’s your only option.

Karen :    Dean, I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about this. You’re so informed.

Dean:      Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned the Kairos time. Of course, Kairos comes from Koinei Greek. It’s one of the two Greek words for time in the Greek language. A word that we’re a little bit more familiar with in regard to time is the word Kronos. But Kairos is a word that the Greeks use to indicate a critical time. And one of the places it appears in Scripture is in Romans Chapter 13:11-14.

This is what the passage says. And do this understanding the present time. And in this case, Paul uses the word Kairos because it’s a critical time. It could be translated in do this understanding the present critical time.

“The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently as in the daytime. Not in carousing and drunkenness. Not in sexual immorality and debauchery. Not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”

Nothing characterizes America today than to say that it is a country constantly seeking how to fulfill the desires of the flesh. And this call from Paul in the 13th chapter of Romans back when he was writing to that Christian church in Rome that he had not yet had the privilege of visiting was to wake up and recognize that the critical time is here.

I think that’s important for us to understand. We talked a while ago, David, about a study that was done by the Pew Research folks talking about what’s going to happen to Christians in America in the next 40 or 50 years. And they developed four scenarios talking about the decline of the church. And in each of these four scenarios, the number of Christians declines to the point where it becomes less than 50% of the people in America claiming to be Christian. And in some cases, it goes as low as almost down to one-third of the population of the United States claiming to be Christian. That is something that should concern every one of us.

Karen :    Thanks, Dean. It’s great stuff.

David :    I’m glad you asked Dean. Dean is a huge resource. He’s somebody that I’ve encouraged to enter into the discussions, but he’s reluctant to do that. But good for you.

Karen :     It’s wonderful.

David :    In fact, you put him on the spot, Karen, and then Dean’s able to respond like that. It’s wonderful.

Karen :    Thanks, Dean, for giving us all that information. It’s wonderful. Well, let’s pray for Kairos time. Is that what you’re thinking to live in Kairos too?

David :    Well, I’m going to put our sentence back again. This is what started us down this road. Contemporary Christians would do well to frequently remind ourselves that our king’s return, his second advent, could soon be taking place. And even as I read that sentence, we work hard on those sentences, kind of raise goosebumps on me. Do I believe that’s true? I believe that’s true with all of my heart, and I wish I could say it in such a way that people would respond in the same fashion. Say, “Even so come quickly, Lord Jesus.” I was going to read one of the passages, but I think I won’t because it may even detract, but this was from Peter. We read from Paul, but it’s saying the same thing. There are scoffers. They say, from the beginning of time, people have said the king is going to come back again, and nothing’s happened. And then he counteracts that with his writing.

Karen :    I have in my notes that the word Kairos time is mentioned in the Bible 87 times.

David :    Yeah and let this be one of the most incredible advent because we’ve thought not only about his first coming, which is phenomenal, but also the coming that is yet to take place.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2023 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.