Is Jesus Coming Soon? What About the 'Signs of the Times'?

Christ will certainly return, and Christians rightly live in expectation of it. But on the question of when, Scripture is unusually blunt, and its answer disappoints the prophecy-chart industry: no one knows, and no one is supposed to. “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). When the disciples pressed Jesus for a timeline, he shut it down: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). Every attempt across history to calculate the date—and there have been many—has done two things: it has failed, and it has embarrassed the Church. Date-setting is not bold faith; it is disobedience to a direct command.

What about the “signs”—wars, earthquakes, famines, apostasy, persecution? Read Jesus’ own words carefully in Matthew 24: he lists these very things and then says, “see that you are not alarmed… the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6). Far from being a countdown clock, these troubles have marked the entire period between his first and second comings. There has never been an age without wars and disasters. We have been in the “last days” since the apostles (they said so themselves). So current events, however dramatic, are not a secret cipher to be decoded into a timeline. Christians in every generation have seen their own turmoil as surely the final sign—and every generation so far has been wrong about the timing.

The reason Christ withholds the date is pastoral, and it reshapes how we live. If we knew the day, we would procrastinate until the eve and then scramble. Because we don’t, we are called to be ready always: “you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44). And any delay is mercy, not neglect—God is “patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).

So could Christ return soon? Yes—today, even. Should you try to figure out when, or panic at the headlines? No. Live each day as one he might return to find you in: faithful in your callings, near his Word and Table, watchful and unafraid. That readiness is the same whether he comes tonight or in a thousand years.