Podcast: John Piper Answers Common Questions about the Second Coming (John Piper)

February 27, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Most Important Question about the Second Coming of Christ

In today's episode, John Piper talks about some of the most common questions related to the second coming and makes the case that although these questions are important and worth asking, there's an even more fundamental question that we all must ask ourselves: Am I truly longing for Christ's return?

Come, Lord Jesus

Come, Lord Jesus

John Piper

John Piper explores Scripture’s command to love the second coming of Christ, and what it is about this event that makes it so desirable. While encouraging Christians to have a genuine longing for Jesus’s presence, Piper addresses pressing questions about the end times. 

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:53 - Do You Love the Lord’s Appearing?

Matt Tully
John, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

John Piper
Thank you. Great to be with you. Privilege.

Matt Tully
Today I’m excited to ask you a bunch of questions about a topic that I think many of us wonder about—the second coming of Jesus, when Jesus is going to come back. Although I think a lot of us have a lot of questions about this topic, at the same time, I can confess—and I think many others might resonate with this—that I can go long stretches without really thinking a lot about Jesus’s return. To start us off, have you ever observed that dynamic, whether in other people who you have pastored or counseled, or even in yourself, that paradox of wondering about this, but maybe not always thinking much about it?

John Piper
Like, everywhere! Yes. I don’t think we’re in any danger today, except for a few little pockets of prophetically obsessed people—and those people tend to loom large when we talk about the problems with prophecy. I don’t think there are very many of those, frankly. I think when you take the scope of global evangelicalism, that group is small and unrepresentative. What’s representative is obliviousness. People don’t think about the second coming as much as they should, according to the priority and importance that the New Testament gives to it. So yes, and yes in my own life. Part of the reason I wrote this is because when I was reading through the Bible a few years ago, knowing I’d love to write a book about the second coming, the text that stabbed me and took hold of me was the passage in 2 Timothy 4, where Paul says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7–8). I don’t think the crown of righteousness is gravy or icing; it’s salvation. Which means loving the Lord’s appearing is what Christians who are going to inherit righteousness do. And you take a deep breath and say, Oh my goodness! How many people, young to old, in the church today would say my affectional experience is love for the Lord’s appearing? Because that’s the word: love for the Lord’s appearing. It’s not I know about it. I can doctrinally affirm it. But do you love it? And I think the reason Paul was willing to put that much weight on loving the Lord’s appearing is because of what he said, and others said (Jesus said it, James said it) in 1 Corinthians 16:22: “He who does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.” So it’s not just he does who does not believe in the Lord, let him be accursed, but he who does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Or Jesus said, “If you love son or daughter more than me, you’re not worthy of me.” So this whole issue of loving Jesus, which then becomes loving the appearing of Jesus, is no small thing. Therefore, when I look at the church, when I look at my own life, I say something’s off. Something is really off in the way we have come to relate to the second coming, and I suspect there are a lot of reasons for that. Among them is just the worldliness of our own lives, the ubiquity of utterly fascinating worldly entertainments, and we find ourselves just swept into the stream of the way the world thinks. And you can believe the world is not thinking about the end of the world, with the sky splitting open and the Son of Man appearing on the clouds of heaven with millions of angels, with his sword in his hand, and the voice of the archangel. That’s not what’s on their mind. So, my book is to try to rectify my own imbalance, and I hope others as well. It’s really about helping people love the Lord’s appearing.

Matt Tully
How much of that dynamic—the dynamic of not thinking about this and not loving this more than we do—how much of that is an issue of apathy, of affections, as you’ve kind of explained, where we're wooed away by the world’s offerings and we don’t care enough? Or, how much of it is even theological in the answer in nature? Not to separate those two things from each other, but how much of it is that we don’t understand how important his return is? We don’t fully grasp the ultimate significance, the meaning of his return, and why that matters for our salvation itself? Do you understand the question there, and do you think there’s a distinction there?

John Piper
Well, I’ll tell you what I hear, and then you can correct me if I’m not answering the right question. I think both of those issues—the doctrinal, marginal nature for most preachers and students of the word today is one issue, and then the affectional minimizing of the heart today—are both feeding into a lack of love for the Lord’s appearing. Let me say a word about each of those. My guess is a good many pastors have so many unanswered questions about the second coming that they shy away from it. And I would just encourage pastors that you don’t need to have all the detailed answers. People are going to ask you about Daniel’s seventy weeks or the symbolism of revelation. Here’s a little secret: if you go to the ten pages of indexed Scripture references in this book—it’s just dense with Scripture—you’re going to find this much on the book of Revelation.

Matt Tully
For those who are listening, it’s like an inch and a half of space between your fingers.

John Piper
That’s right. Ten pages, and you get that much on Revelation. Here’s the reason for that: I don’t understand revelation in many ways. I think I get the big picture, but the details, after seventy-seven years of life, have not solidified to the point that I’m going to write a book about this and tell everybody what it means. However, when I read Jesus and when I read Paul, things get really gloriously clear. And I would just encourage pastors that you can say some amazing things about the second coming of Christ from the apostle Paul and from the words of Jesus with high levels of confidence, I think. So that’s the doctrinal piece. I would just encourage pastors to go for it. And here’s one other thing about that: when you worry about maybe being excessively obsessed with end time dates and events versus indifference to the second coming and never thinking about it, the Bible itself, through Jesus and Paul, addresses both of those issues. They addressed hysteria—Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2. They were out of mind. They were just losing it because they were so obsessed with the day of the Lord having come. And then Jesus talking about, If you say, ’My master is delayed’ and begin to get drunk and beat your servant, he will overtake you when you do not expect. So they were aware of both the issue of indifference and the issue of obsession. And so the Bible itself gives the balance we want to bring to our churches. That’s the doctoral piece. The affectional piece—and I’m a Christian hedonist; my whole ministry has been devoted to say God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. Or, at the second coming, Christ will be most glorified in you when you marvel most at him (2 Thess. 1:7). Therefore, I think the resistance to speaking about affections and to cultivate a life of robust affections in the life of our people then translates into a relationship to the second coming that’s just doctrinal. It’s just head knowledge, because in most areas of their lives relating to doctrine, we haven’t pushed through the doctrine to the affectional response to the truth that would be appropriate. So I think both the doctrinal piece in preaching and the affectional piece in failing to put the right emphasis on that is part of what’s feeding into the situation we have.

10:28 - When Is Jesus Coming Back?

Matt Tully
As you already said, that’s what makes, I think, this new book that you’ve written so distinct from a lot of other good books that speak to eschatology and to the Lord’s return. You have an emphasis on pushing through into the emotional, affectional, spiritual impact that these truths should have on us as God’s children. But as you said, there’s also sometimes doctrinal questions that we have that can maybe prevent us from feeling those things. We can just feel stuck in those. And so I wonder if you could address a few of those right now. Probably the main question that maybe a younger Christian would have, if you were to sit down with them over coffee and they just said, I have a question for you about the second coming of Christ, it would have to just be that simple question, When is Jesus coming back? I wonder how you would respond to that simple, basic question if a new Christian were to ask you that?

John Piper
Probably the first thing I would say is I won’t dodge the question, but I’m going to shift it first and say my main concern in talking with you right now, friend, is not first to help you know when, but to help you really want it. That’s the first thing I would do. Do you want it? Because if he says, Not really. I’m just curious, I’d say we don’t need to talk about your curiosity. We’ve got deeper issues here; real deep issues here. And frankly, I think that’s where a lot of people who ask that question are. They’re just curious.

Matt Tully
They want to fill it in on their timeline chart or something.

John Piper
Yeah. Who wouldn’t be interested in that, right? If they knew the world would end in three years, that’s a big issue. But my first question is, Do you want it? Once I’ve reoriented his mind and now I know where he is coming from, then maybe the best thing to say would be He’s coming at a time you do not know. And I would quote Acts 1:7 where the disciples said, Are you going to restore the kingdom in Israel now? You’re raised from the dead, you’re the Messiah, you’ve said the kingdom is here. Do it! Defeat the Romans! Come on! And he says, Yours is not to know the times and the seasons. Yours is to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and spread the gospel to the ends of the world. That's probably where I would go. Jesus says it’s none of your business to nail it down. However, then having said that, just to clear him of the sense that Jesus wants us to penetrate through to have the mind of God, who, according to Jesus, the Son of God doesn’t even know the day or the hour. That’s a Trinitarian mystery that’s hard to get your head around. Then I would probably say, Nevertheless, I think the way the New Testament speaks about the coming of Christ as being at hand, he is at the gates, he is coming soon—all of that, from beginning to end, is designed to make you expect the near return of the Lord and to want it. And so I don’t think it’s a mistake that we have these problem passages in the New Testament that make us think, Wow! If it was soon 2000 years ago, then that’s a mistake. I don’t think the authors of the New Testament, if you pushed on ’them and said, Are you saying this?, when they know good and well they don’t know. They don’t know the time. So they’re not about to contradict themselves and say something morally wrong by saying, I do know when I don’t know. Nevertheless, I think those are meant to make us want and expect a soon return. So I think to say this, Okay, he hasn’t come for 2000 years. Therefore, it’s unlikely that he’s going to come for another 500 years. Therefore, we don’t need to live in the expectancy of a near return—that is a logic that the Bible explicitly addresses is wrong. And 2 Peter is written directly to that. Already, when 2 Peter was written, people were saying, Oh, it’s been so long. There’s no way. The world’s gone on. Always, from the beginning, it’s become the same. And Peter’s answer, and this is one of my three answers to the question of what does soon mean, Peter said, By the way, a day with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. He does not count slowness the way you do. And I would say to this new believer who’s asking me this question, Have you ever thought that Jesus has been gone for two days? And he’d have to say, Well, am I going to take that statement literally? Yes! Yes! In God’s way of reckoning, the Lord Jesus left this planet two days ago. That’s not a long time. Don’t reckon slowness as some count slowness. And there are numerous other ways to address the issue of soon as well, but that’s amazing that that’s in the Bible, I think, that 2 Peter already was dealing with the issue of delay in such a way that that was the answer.

Matt Tully
I think that’s such an important point, that on the issues of the timing of things and even on the issue, like you mentioned before, just the preoccupation with this versus apathy towards this issue, Scripture already kind of saw this coming and gave us some insight into how to think about those things. And I want to get into a few of these passages that you referenced in just a minute, but kind of going back to that person sitting across from you, your response is that God doesn’t want us to know, at least the specific time. The natural next question is, Why? Why not? Why can’t we know when he’s coming back? Why would he want to keep that a secret from us, his people? How would you respond to that follow up question?

John Piper
Even though the fear of being caught doing something you shouldn’t do is a bad motive, nevertheless, it has its place. It has its place. Jesus told numerous—a handful, half a dozen—parables (stories) to the effect that he’s coming at an hour you do not expect. Blessed are those servants who are found doing their master’s will when he comes. Meaning, if you don’t know when he is coming, then you better be alert and vigilant and spiritually awake so that when he comes, you won’t be found asleep or drunk or walking in disobedience. So there is a kind of simple, childlike—this is what we do with our kids. We want them not to get into trouble by doing bad things. And if it helps during a season of their life that they might be caught doing them, that’s okay. They’ll get beyond that motive eventually. So that’s one answer. I think God has his purposes for delay, some of which I think are more or less plain to us, and others are not. I’ve thought 2,000 years of delay is not unlike the 2,000 years of Israel under the law. How many of us have asked, Why didn’t you send the Messiah about ten years after the call of Abraham? Why didn’t you send the Messiah during the exile? Why didn’t you send the Messiah during the monarchy? Why 2,000 years of this awful story in the Old Testament? I think we get close to an answer in Romans 3 where it says that the whole, their mouth is stopped and they’re brought to the conviction you cannot be justified by works of the law. The history of Israel—2,000 years—is a lesson book for what you can’t do with the law. Now, here we’ve got 2,000 years and we have gospel, we have Holy Spirit; and yet, just like the slowness of our own sanctification, we don’t have consummation yet. And what would God be saying? Well, what I hear in 2,000 years of the church’s miserable appropriation of power is that we are so sinful. We are desperately dependent on grace. So, just like the first 2,000 years of redemptive history was You need grace, so our 2,000 years is You need grace. And every day when you look around the world and how it’s going to hell in a hand-basket and how the great commission is not yet finished, you say, What’s wrong with us? Or, really, what’s wrong with me? And you look in the mirror and say, I’m a hopeless case. I am hopeless. If there’s not grace, if there’s not mercy, then I and the church are done for. So that’s the practical effect I think it’s supposed to have as to why he delayed.

Matt Tully
Not to get too into the weeds of the depths of Trinitarian theology, but you alluded to the fact that we see in Scripture that Jesus says he doesn’t know the day or the hour of his return. And that’s another one that is just so perplexing to us, and it doesn’t seem like the answer you just provided for why we don’t know really fits with Jesus. Why would God, in some mysterious sense, why would the Father hide from Jesus the day or the hour of his return? How do you answer that?

John Piper
I don’t know. Two thoughts. One is I think we have this mysterious distinction between the divine nature and the human nature of the one person. I think the divine nature of Jesus knows, and the human nature doesn’t. Mind boggling. Second, the human nature of Jesus, as the Son of Man, is intended to be part of who we are. He is the representative man. He was tested in all points, like we are, yet without sin, and to withhold from him the knowledge binds him together with us, even at that level of ignorance so that we can’t say, Well, Jesus is different from us in his humanity in that he knows this, when, if fact, the Father withheld it from him. And so perhaps in order to carry through the consistency of his identification with us, that might be part of it.

22:26 - Challenging Passages about the Return of Christ

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about a few of the New Testament passages that you’ve already alluded to that maybe seem to suggest that Jesus was going to come back sooner than he is. There are a few passages where the apostles and early disciples seem to be saying things that indicate he would be coming back soon, even within their own lifetimes. You address a number of these in the book, and I’ve just picked out three that I thought are kind of representative of some of these challenging passages. The first one I was hoping you could read for us and then we could talk a little bit about is Matthew 16:27 through Matthew 17:2.

John Piper

”For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.

My understanding of all these several connections between coming within one generation—“some are standing here that will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming”—I think this particular passage is intended to say Peter, James, and John are those “some are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man.” And then he took them up on the mountain and showed them a preview of the second coming. Now, the reason I say that is not because it is immediately obvious from this text, although the juxtaposition of the end of Matthew 16 and the transfiguration suggests that to me. My main reason is that in 2 Peter 1, that’s the way Peter treats the transfiguration. He treats it as a preview of the coming of the kingdom. So, Peter, James, and John did not taste death until they saw the preview of the second coming on the mount of transfiguration. That’s my understanding of that text.

Matt Tully
Another passage that is equally challenging sometimes is Matthew 24:30–34. Could you read that one and then walk us through that as well?

John Piper

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

The key there to understanding what it’s saying about the second coming is to understand what “these things” refers to. “When you see all these things”—this is verse 33—“when you see all these things, you know, he is near.” So the “these things” does not include the coming of Jesus. It’s the run-up. “He’s at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” In general, here’s my take. In my understanding, there are various ways that you can understand the nearness or the sooness of the Lord’s coming. One of them I call the prophetic perspective, or the holistic perspective. And that means that when the prophets, or Jesus in this case, looked at the future—in fact, I’m looking at the screensaver on my computer right now, which has about ten mountain ranges in it. On a misty day, those ten mountain ranges look like one mountain range. And if you say that it’s one mountain range and then you see something happening on that mountain range, you say that’s happening soon because that first mountain range is not far away. As time goes by, as you move through the mountain range and you realize, Oh! There were a lot of valleys between that particular peak and the ones that went just before it. Now, when Jesus talks here, I think he’s scoping out, or he’s describing, the kinds of things that will happen. Some of them in 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed; some of them all through the last days. We’re in the last days. That mountain range, from ten years out to 2,000 years out, is the last days. And anything in the last days is, in a sense, near because they’re present. We are in the last days. So, my understanding here is yes, these things—these kinds of things—were happening already. Earthquakes have been happening, wars have been happening, the kinds of stresses and anxieties that are coming have been happening, and they are within a generation. But it explicitly distinguishes, “Then you’ll know that he has not yet come”—when Jesus described some of the things he said—“but the end is not yet”—earlier in the chapter in verse 24. That’s my effort to see how the things here can happen in a generation, and yet Jesus himself not arrive within a generation.

Matt Tully
Let’s look at one last passage, this time in Paul’s writings, in Philippians 4:4–5. He says something here that can be a little bit perplexing to us.

John Piper

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; [Literally, you could say “the Lord is near.”] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

The Lord is at hand. James says “he’s at the gate”—which is interesting. I think those mean basically the same thing. There’s no huge distance between the gate right here—my life, this world—and God’s existence, as though Jesus would have to traverse a long, long travel in order to get to the gate. It is at the gate, and it could break in at any moment. That is near. I argue against an any moment return, but I could say there’s an any decade return. I think the times between now and his coming and the things that Paul says need to happen in between is such that the time is very short. I’m 77 years old. I fully anticipate it could happen within my lifetime. I don’t know if I’ll live that long, but that’s the way I think about it. If you said, Paul, you know that Jesus said we don’t know the day or the hour, so when you’re saying this, are you telling us it has to say within twenty years? I think Paul would say, No, no, no, no. I’m not making that kind of prediction, because that would go against what Jesus actually said and what I’ve said elsewhere. So, no. I think it means potentially near. When I say “potentially near” I mean it seemed like Jesus told parables to say if you say my master is delayed and begin to beat your servant, he will come at an hour you don’t expect. And then Paul says, “But we are not children of the night. We are children of the day. That day will not overtake us like a thief.” So those who get drunk and are morally and spiritually asleep are going to be overtaken in an instant, and the “soon” will catch you off guard. For those who are awake and alert and expectant, they’re going to discern the timing so that as the Lord draws very near, they won’t be overtaken. They’ll be morally awake. And so we should be like that. We should be alert and expectant and ready for his soon coming all the time.

32:01 - Trusting in the Fundamental Truth of God’s Word

Matt Tully
As I know you know, there are sometimes non-Christians, those who are opposed to our faith, who will point to passages like these as evidence that the Bible contradicts itself, or these first Christians were so severely misguided. They thought their Savior was coming back, and then he just never showed up. I think sometimes Christians can hear those critiques and read these passages, like the ones we just talked about, and it can cause us to worry, wonder, and to doubt, ultimately, what probably would have to be the core of our faith—the idea that Christ is returning to save us, finally and fully. For those who are listening to you explain these three passages and still have questions or maybe feel like that didn’t fully satisfy, what encouragement would you give to the listener who’s in that spot right now regarding some of these difficult passages?

John Piper
When I preached through Romans years ago—I spent about eight years preaching through Romans—I think I got to Romans 3:1–8, which doesn’t relate to the second coming directly, but it’s an extremely complex set of verses. I took a whole week and just devoted a sermon to that. I think I titled it “Why Did God Inspire Hard Texts?” The Bible says—2 Peter says—there are many things in the apostle Paul that are hard to understand; perplexing to us. I think I’d go there with people and say you’re not alone in finding some passages in the Bible perplexing. Relax. You’re not alone. The Bible itself knows this, and there are all kinds of difficulties. Some are just complex. Some, like these, seem like, * Boy, that hasn’t happened. At least not the way it looks like it was going to happen*. And I would show them but the Bible is aware of this. The answer I gave was something like I think God wants two things to happen in giving us a book. He wants the crucial, essential things to be really plain so that anybody can have a real, deep, solid confidence. Jesus existed. He was the Son of God. He lived a perfect life. He died a substitutionary death. He bore my sin. He rose from the dead. If I trust him, I can be forgiven for all my sins and have eternal life. Those central, glorious realities are clear enough for children to grasp and adults to grasp. And then there are aspects of the Bible that have bent the minds of scholars for thousands of years, which is what you would expect in a book from God, right? God wrote this book, and he has the gifts to make it complex and he has the gifts to make it plain. And the complex parts are intended to make us desperate for him, to make us cry out for him, to make us humble so that we’re willing to learn from each other. He’s appointed teachers in the church so that we are knocked off our horses to think we can just ride through these texts without the slightest difficulty and make perfect sense out of all of them. So, that’s probably the approach I would take, but I would try to go text by text and give them at least plausible answers. Here’s one more thing to say about difficulties in Scripture. If Christ has won your trust—and that’s where I would start—has your reading of God’s word and your exposure to the beauty of Christ and the goodness of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the strength of Christ, the love of Christ won you over and won your trust so that you now trust him and you’re a Christian? If that has happened, now, as you move out from that central trust in Jesus, grow in your confidence of all that he said, because he said very strong things about the Old Testament being true and very strong things about preparing for the New Testament to be true. Let your confidence in Christ grow so that you are confident in him. And then when you meet up against difficult things, ask him for help, but be very, very patient because he has won your trust. Don’t let problem texts call into question the glorious central revelation that you have received through the word that has won your trust in Jesus.

Matt Tully
As you reflect on your own life and your own study of the scriptures, can you testify to how approaching God’s word with that fundamental trust in God and being willing to dig into those difficult passages? I remember in a previous conversation we had you used the metaphor of coming to Scripture and ringing it out like a sponge, getting every last little drop out of it. As you’ve tried to do that in your own personal study of God’s word, have you found that some of those texts that at one point in your life kind of disturbed you or worried you or confused you, have you made progress on those? Sometimes I think we can wonder, Will I actually make progress in how I’m feeling about this? What would you say?

John Piper
Definitely. I think at the end of 2 Peter he says, “Grow in the knowledge and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s a command. Grow in knowledge. Well, I’m seventy-seven. I hope I still obey that command. I want to understand some things better tomorrow than I do today. And if you’re twenty-five, oh my goodness! You’ve got fifty years to work on this! I mean, really! Here’s a little practical thing. When you’re reading your devotions, which I think everybody should do. We should immerse ourselves in the Bible every day. Whenever you do it, however you do it, meditate on the law of the Lord day and night. You will inevitably, if you’re a thoughtful reader, regularly bump into things you don’t quite understand. Odd things in the Psalms, odd things in Deuteronomy or Leviticus, texts about the second coming that you don’t quite get. If you let yourself every day be roadblocked and stymied and you just stop and lose it, you won’t ever finish your devotions. So, my practice is to keep a little notebook or something of problem texts. Jonathan Edwards had seventy resolutions. One of them was, Whenever I discover a problem in divinity to be solved, to do as much as I can in the moment to solve it, or to resolve later to try to solve it. Well, that list can get pretty long! You may be in a small group where you could ask people, you may have friends who have read more of the Bible than you have and you can get some help there, but keep going. It’s like a love letter. I can remember the days when I was crazy in love with Noël. Before we were married, I was at a camp in South Carolina working as a water safety instructor. She’d send me letters every day from seven hundred miles away, and I would smell them, first of all. I would skip lunch, I would go out in the woods, I would open it. These were her, as it were, in the present. Now, suppose she got her grammar wrong or left out the word “not”—that’s an important word. Or she put “not” in—I do not love you—and she meant to say, “I now love you.” I make that typing mistake all the time. “Not” and “now”—that’s just deadly. Don’t do that! Don’t do that! So if I saw something that was totally out of character and it did not make sense, I didn’t start doubting her love for me. I just put that on hold and went on enjoying the letter. And that’s what I would suggest for people is don’t minimize and don’t become a denier of problems, but put them aside, plan your response, but keep on going in the love letter from God and let him minister to you soul.

41:16 - What Do You Believe about the Rapture?

Matt Tully
That’s so encouraging, and such helpful advice for us. Maybe a few final questions—quicker questions—about Christ’s return. What do you believe about the rapture, and how important is our understanding of the timing of the rapture?

John Piper
The word “rapture”—I just checked this out because I had heard somewhere along the way that it came from the Vulgate, the Latin version of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which says, “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” Now, that word “caught up together with him into the clouds” in the Vulgate is (I don’t know my Latin well enough) rapiemur. So that’s the word from which “rapture” comes, rapiemur. It simply means the being caught up together with the Lord in the air. So yes, I believe in the rapture. It’s in the Bible, right? First Thessalonians 4:17—we’re going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Now, the question mainly is, Are we caught up as a welcoming entourage to accompany him down to establish his kingdom? Or are we caught up to return (in the pre-tribulational understanding of things) for seven years in heaven while horrible things happen on the Earth? Then, the day of the Lord of the second coming finishes with its second manifestation, and he comes. Now, I don’t believe that’s biblical. I think we are caught up to meet him. I give eight reasons for that in the chapter on that, but just to save time I’ll mention one. We are caught up with him for a meeting. What is that word “meeting”? We’re caught up for a meeting. That word is used two other times in the New Testament. One is in Matthew 25:6 where the servants of the bridegroom go out for a meeting. Here comes the bridegroom. He’s coming for the wedding feast. They go out for a meeting, and they bring him in. It’s the same word. And that’s a picture of the second coming. And the other one is not related to the second coming. It’s just Paul at the end of Acts 28; he comes, he lands on the coast of Italy, and as he is walking in towards Rome, the Christians come out for a meeting. They welcome Paul back into Rome. So I would say the most natural reading of the verse is that the meeting of the Lord in the air is a welcoming committee. It’s an entourage to say, Come, Lord Jesus, all the way and finish your work. There are seven other, I think, very compelling reasons why we shouldn’t believe that we are going to be snatched out of the world for seven years and then brought back. But rather, he comes once in his second coming, not twice in his second coming. Maybe one last thing is I remember when I was growing up I grew up with that view. My dad held that view. I loved my dad and we got along just fine when I changed my mind on this, and I don’t ever want to make that disagreement with somebody to be a test of fellowship with them. But I grew up with that. And one of the things that never quite seemed right to me—and maybe because I was a Bible-saturated teenager and I just read my Bible so much—that we are supposed to escape the suffering of those times—the wrath of God. And I thought, *I don’t think the New Testament portrays Christians as escaping in times of suffering, even when it’s caused by the wrath of God, because the wrath of God for Christians is purifying. The wrath of God for non-Christians is punitive. And that distinction between God’s pouring out these horrific sufferings on the world isn’t something that’s unloving towards Christians.

Matt Tully
You talk in the book about how Scripture speaks of martyrs—of Christians who remained faithful but were under great persecution in the end—and that would seem to maybe be this time. Is that right?

John Piper
Yes. Martyrdom is symptomatic of faithful Christianity throughout the entirety of Christian history. But it does appear in Revelation 6:12, where there is a set number of martyrs. He says, “The souls of the martyrs are crying out under the altar, ‘How long, O Lord?’” And he told them to rest “until the full number of your brothers who are to be killed comes in.” God has planned a certain number of martyrs to be killed. And so, yes, I think in the last days, with the rebellion that Paul talks about and the man of lawlessness, it will be bleak for Christians. We would do well as pastors not to tell our people you’re going to be snatched away from that suffering, but to rather give them a theology of suffering that enables them to make sense of it.

47:10 - End-Time Alertness

Matt Tully
Maybe another quick question here: In the book you talk a lot about end-time alertness. What does that mean and what does that look like in our lives?

John Piper
I think there’s a picture in the movie series about the second coming, which was based on a pre-tribulation rapture, of somebody each night going over and pulling the shades and looking up into the sky. And that’s given as a kind of interpretation of, Watch. Watch! Jesus says, Watch! Be awake, watch, be alert, be vigilant. You get all these words describing, and it’s plain, when you look at them, that they don’t mean go to the window and look up. They mean be spiritually doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And the clearest example of that is the ten virgins. You got five wise virgins, five foolish virgins; and they are supposed to make ready when the bridegroom comes. Well, they’re all asleep! All ten of them are asleep when the trumpet sounds! The five wise virgins wake up, trim their lamps, light, go out to meet him, bring him in. The five foolish virgins, they were off to get more oil, and they’re left out. So, watch can’t mean stay awake in the literal sense. It means do what you’re supposed to do. Be spiritually alert. Don’t be drunk with the world. Don’t be so worldly that you love this world more than you love Jesus. Be children of the day, not children of the night. And I think that’s the way the New Testament wants us to understand be alert, be watchful, be vigilant, be on your guard. It means when you read the Bible, wake up! Wake up to realities. I’ll give you a concrete example. While we are recording this, I don’t know when you’re going to show this, but there’s been another earthquake in Turkey, right? Right now there are 10,000 people who died in this earthquake. The one about twenty years ago killed 30,000 people in Turkey. Now, Jesus said there will be earthquakes as the end draws near. Why did he say that? What are we supposed to draw from that? And I don’t think this is the answer is, Ah! There’s the earthquake that says it must be within a year, or two years, or five years. If that’s not the meaning, what is this supposed to mean? Why in the world did he mention earthquakes, for goodness sake? What’s that got to do with the second coming? And the answer is, it’s like birth pangs. It’s like the earth is pregnant and about to give birth to a new age, and when those things happen, and increasingly happen, we’re supposed to wake up! Wake up, world! I think every time we look at a horrific calamity in the world, the message from God is, Unless you repent, you, too, will be buried under a building. Wake up, world! Wake up, world! Right now, I just sent a big chunk of money to—I won’t mention the Christian relief agency—but I want to help, right? I care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. I would like to be a Christian on the ground, or at least pay for those who are on the ground, helping relieve immediate suffering. But I want everybody to wake up so that they realize we’re all going to be buried under something someday if we don’t repent!

51:00 - Don’t Ever Think That Your Life Is Over

Matt Tully
Maybe a final question, John. You’ve mentioned a couple times that you’re seventy-seven years old this year. Your birthday was back in January. On January 11th, on your birthday, you posted a tweet, a kind of an interesting, perplexing tweet as to what you were getting at. Here’s what it says:

At 77 Grandma Moses started painting.
At 77 John Glenn traveled into space.
At 77 Bob Dylan released More Blood on the Tracks.
At 77 Jeanne Socrates sailed solo around the world.
At 77 Ronald Reagan had been president 7 years.
At 77 Walter Wangerin and Larry Crabb went to heaven.

I wonder how you would finish that if you were to add your own name to the end of that. At 77 John Piper . . . what?

John Piper
My prayer at the beginning of every new year, whether it’s birthday year or calendar year, is, God, make this next year the most fruitful yet. Which seems unlikely, because I’ve been doing a lot of things for a long time. And yet I think that’s the way we should pray: You have a way to make the foolish things of the world, the weak things of the world—which would include getting old—powerful, to bless people. I want to bless people and glorify God. So that’s how I turn it into prayer. But maybe this would be the answer: Back in the early 90s, I went to a chapel service. I snuck in the back because I was on a writing leave and I didn’t want anybody to see me. I snuck in the back of a chapel service at Trinity Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. And the reason I did is because there was a great, old, grand missionary statesman there. And one of the things he said—he was eighty-nine years old—and he said, I have written a book every year since I was seventy. That’s nineteen books. I’m sitting there, and I was in my fifties, I suppose, at the time. I thought, Yes! Yes! Life starts at seventy! Life starts at seventy! So every time a year goes by, I think, I want to do that. I’m up to that. I’ve done that so far. I’m seventy-seven and seven books in. Could I do that? Well, maybe not because I got these other priorities, like Look at the Book, that I’m supposed to do. But I don’t like the concept of retirement. I really don’t like it. Ralph Winters said that men in America don’t die from old age; they die from retirement. And I think what he means by that is we are made to make. Whether you make a garden or whether you make a mission agency or whether you make a disciple or whether you make a meal—we are made to make, to do. Why is it that in Greek the word for make and do is the same Greek word, poieo, from which we get the word poem? I think it’s because doing is always the bringing into being of something. We’re making something happen when we do. We are made to be doers. We’re made to subdue the earth. We’re made to work in a wholesome, happy, cheerful, productive way. We are not made to play games from age seventy to ninety. We’re not. People will go insane. They think they’re tired when they turn sixty-five or seventy, and really what they want is to just rest and put their feet up. If we don’t find something fruitful and useful to do, little by little our souls will shrink. And if we replace productivity with the television or with some hobby that has no point in it at all or with some sport, our souls will die within us. So the point of that tweet was to encourage everybody—don’t ever think, My life is over! Now, I got to be careful here. Maybe one more caution. I just did the funeral at the graveside for my mother-in-law the day before yesterday. She was 101. She was 101. For five years she pretty much lay in bed. I’m not expecting her to write a book. I’m not expecting her to go to the mission field. Well, what are you expecting her to do? I’m expecting her to do whatever she can do. Be kind to the nurses, pray for her great-grandchildren, read her Bible. Whatever you can do, do! And at 77 I’ve still got enough energy. I can see, I can hear—even though I’ve got hearing aids in my ears—I can still do things. So that’s the point of the tweet, encouraging myself and others. Don’t ever think that your life is over, that there’s nothing to accomplish. And probably you can do more than you think. Probably you can do more than you think.

Matt Tully
John, thank you so much for writing this book, in your late seventies, and for helping all of us to maybe a little bit better understand not just what’s going to happen in the future with Christ’s return, but to long for it and to love his return more than we did before. We appreciate it.

John Piper
Amen. Thank you.

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