The popular doctrine of the “Second Coming” or the “Return of Christ” is an essential part of modern-day evangelical Christianity. Hundreds of millions of sincere Christians believe that Christ will return physically to Earth to set up His kingdom in the nation of Israel. Then He will put an end to evil, make all things perfectly well, solve all our problems, and create a wonderful paradise—all in the twinkling of an eye.

This amazing promise—that all evil, all suffering, all sickness, all fear, and all terror will disappear the second that Christ sets foot on Earth—has inspired billions of believers to focus their entire life on this fantastic event! The old world of darkness will be gone, and a beautiful new creation will emerge—just like that!

Countless books have been written to prepare the Church for this mighty moment of divine deliverance. Thousands of conferences have been organized, where millions of people heard their popular pastors proclaim the coming of Christ any moment now. Every well-known Evangelical preacher predicted, with great fervency and deep conviction, that the return of Jesus Christ would surely occur during their lifetime. They passionately preached it from their pulpits, daringly declared it on radio and television, taught it in mass conferences, and wrote numerous books to prepare mankind for this absolutely amazing apocalypse.

However, as time went by, one generation followed another, and all these powerful preachers peacefully passed away, a sobering reality dawned on the minds of the honest observers. No matter how much zeal these fantastic forecasts were spoken with, and how widely they spread, ultimately none of them came to pass. Every single prediction about the imminent rapture and return of Christ proved to be false. Nothing of the sort happened. Never. Nowhere.

The spectacular book “Late Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey, which sold fifteen million copies and assured an entire generation of Christians that Christ would return during the 1980s to set up His kingdom on Earth, came to nothing. The mega mind-blowing “Left Behind” series that turned the authors into Evangelical millionaire celebrities by describing how the world would look after the rapture proved to be worthless.

Tens of thousands of fervent prayer warriors at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City have been praying day and night for decades on end for Christ to return to Earth. They, however, woke up in shock as they stared the harsh reality in the face that their highly enlightened charismatic leader Mike Bickle turned out to be a merciless abuser of women, dragging several families into the abyss of destruction. One moment he was on the platform of IHOP declaring the imminent return of Christ, insisting everyone needed to prepare, and the next moment he was in bed with one of the ladies of his church. 

Meanwhile, not a single one of the many prophecies uttered by the prophets at the world-famous IHOP ever came to pass, and the whole castle of deception came crashing down.

The toxic tsunami of faulty forecasting continues unchecked, as the internet is buzzing with countless videos, articles, and books that constantly announce the same apocalyptic events. If they don’t happen as predicted, the date is simply moved a year ahead. Year after year, again and again, the coming of Christ is prophesied to happen during every single year: 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, … 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, … 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, … 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, … 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, … 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025… and so on, and so on, and so on. 

Thousands upon thousands of predictions have been made from countless pulpits that all proved to be false—literally every single one of them! No matter how wonderful the pastors were who announced the imminent return of Christ, they were all wrong. Nothing happened.

We now observe the absurd phenomenon that the Church has become the greatest false prophet in the history of mankind. We have uttered more erroneous revelations than anyone else since the creation of the world. That is not an achievement to be proud of, to say the least.

Naturally, this widespread wave of whoppers has crushed the credibility of Christianity in our time. Wikipedia features extensive lists of famous false prophecies about the end of the world—most of them made by popular Christian ministers! That is extremely serious. 

What is even more grave is that nobody is ever held accountable for their phony predictions. And so the treacherous tsunami of faulty forecasting continues unhindered and unchecked.

This level of fraud is not without consequences. The false prophecies are causing crippling confusion in the lives of countless precious children of God. Millions never prepare for retirement and end their lives in deep poverty and disillusionment. Parents fail to dream big for their children, believing “the end of the world” is upon them. Youngsters refuse to study for their future, thinking all God requires of them is to pray for a rapture to take them away. Christian leaders all over the world end up in burnout because they believe the end is near and they need to run as fast as they can to save a few last souls.

But not only has the massive misguidance mangled millions of beloved believers, it has also dramatically decreased the effectiveness of God’s people on the Earth. For many centuries, Christians used to be the forerunners in the world, who pushed back the powers of darkness and established the kingdom of God wherever they went. They built the very first schools and hospitals, established caring for the poor and the elderly, and put an end to public slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. Throughout the centuries, the followers of Jesus Christ created a world that is safer, healthier, and wealthier than it had ever been. Public slaughter and torture were cancelled, and the global oppression by magic, sorcery, and demon-worship was largely stopped. A significant portion of mankind encountered—for the first time in history—the true God of love and goodness. Historically, the Church has always been an unstoppable army of love and deliverance that put a halt to the works of evil and established the kingdom of God. They created a brighter future for the next generations.

But since the rise of false predictions about the end of the world and the return of Christ, the increasing influence of God’s people was severely sabotaged. Millions of believers stepped away from their place of authority and impact in the world. “If Christ is about to wipe out the Earth, why would we spend any effort trying to heal it?” 

The focus of the Church shifted from impacting our world to escaping it. The once brave warriors of Christ who powerfully expelled darkness from our societies are now hoping to “get the hell outta here” as quickly as they can.

As a result of this shift in theology, Christians in general have become the least relevant and least effective people in our world. We have indeed been “left behind,” but not in the way the popular books told us...

The Church stepping away from her call to reign with Jesus Christ also opened the gates of our cultures wide for the ancient powers of darkness to return to our once Christianized nations. Demonic forces that had been pushed back by our Christian ancestors are once again poisoning our societies. The Church observes this influx of evil passively, thinking it is a “sign of the end times” and therefore inevitable. Instead of rebuking the renaissance of darkness, many even applaud it because they were led to believe it is evidence that Christ will return very soon now.

Never before in the history of the Church did a doctrine cause such devastation as the widespread idea of the rapture and the Second Coming. Still, most Christian leaders stubbornly refuse to spend even a few minutes of their lifetime pondering the terrible condition of Christianity. Where did we go off track? What caused us to miss the mark so badly? Is it truly the will of God that His people are the worst deceivers and false prophets in all of history? Does Christ revel in the crippling confusion of His people, who run back and forth, stumbling over one another, constantly proclaiming the end of the world without ever doing anything truly impactful for humanity? Is it truly the message of the Bible that all Christians, throughout the course of history, should wait their entire lives for an “imminent” event that never happens, causing them to waste their lives in useless anticipation, instead of powerfully marching forward, fulfilling their God-given dreams?

I want to ask all who read this: 

are we truly meant to live our lives in this kind of intense confusion, fueled by a toxic tsunami of false prophecies, without even the remotest form of accountability? 

Is it acceptible that pastors and preachers, ministers and authors, Christian celebrities and influencers can go about announcing earth-shattering end-time events that never come to pass, without ever having to face the dire consequences of their mad messaging?

Or should we come to a screeching halt and look each other deeply in the eyes while we pound our chests in conviction, understanding how far we have gone into the depths of darkness, running to our doom without ever giving it a second thought? 

I say doom for a reason, because millions of precious people of the Most High God have been led to their doom, ending their lives in devastating disillusionment, painful poverty, and fatal failure, because everything they had built their lives on proved to be fundamentally false.
They ignored their children, ruined their marriages, and never paid attention to the future of their loved ones because they considered the world to be doomed and that everything would end “any moment now.”

With every new world leader, we cry, “He is the Antichrist!” just as we yell during every catastrophic event, “The end of the world is near!” 

Many churches are like ships without a compass, lost at sea during the storms raging in our world. Their captains constantly shout, “Christ is about to save our ship any moment now,” only to end up crashing against the hidden rocks of the shorelines, drowning most aboard.

We have become the local village idiots, the least respected individuals on the face of the Earth. The real world sees us and laughs their heads off. Such morons! Always running around like madmen, crying doom and the end of the world without ever having a truly transforming impact on our communities. We hide in the buildings we erect, singing songs of deliverance while the people outside of the shiny doors are dying on the steps of our sanctuaries.

What has happened to the Christian Church? Where did we lose track of the truth? What made us so vulnerable to this incredible wave of destructive deception that has been terrorizing the minds of billions of God’s children for so long?

The only way we can find out what went wrong is if we have the humility and honesty to return to Jesus Christ, sit quietly at His feet, and learn to listen. 

Not shout this and that, wave our Bibles in the face of Christ, and object to what He says. But kneel down and listen. Become students of the Master all over again. Hear what the King has to say about the end of the world, His return, and the future. Only when we do that can we learn the lessons we all need so desperately. Shall we do that, please?

Can we stop our mad apocalyptic rat race and sit down at the feet of the King of kings, listening to what He has to say?

This post is page 17 - 22 from the revolutionary book "What Nobody Told You About The Return Of Christ". Order this book below.