#178 The Day of the Lord [2] | The Return of Jesus Christ

Welcome to Episode #178 of the Way of the Bible podcast. This is our second of eight episodes in our Twenty-Third mini-series entitled The Return of Jesus Christ [Part 2]. On today’s episode, we’ll continue our look at Old Testament passages that speak of the most written about time in the Bible, the return of Jesus Christ to judge the world in righteousness on the Day of the Lord.

Before we get there, let’s remember a couple of things. First, I am not here to convince anyone to believe the eschatological position I adhere to (view of the end times or the end of time). Based upon my own studies, I hold to a pretribulation and premillennial view, which ascribes to the aerial return of Jesus for the snatching away of His bride before the wrath of God is unleashed. I’ll cover this in detail on later episodes.

There are at least four and as many as six, alternative eschatological positions out there. Each having their own scriptural basis’, historical applications, and theological understandings. Of all the positions, the one I hold is the oldest and now least held within Christendom today. You can think of my view as the remnant of eschatological entropy. 

I encourage you not to believe just because I say so, but to do your own research and see where the Scriptures lead. Hopefully, I’ll give you an inkling of the many places to look for the answers, as there are answers. But there is also tension in the Bible, purposefully placed there by the Holy Spirit for His reasons yet disclosed.

Here’s the maxim to remember. Your epistemology (how you know what you know; your theory of learning), determines your hermeneutics (how you approach the Bible, Liberally-The Bible is interpreted metaphorically and allegorically; Or Conservatively-The Bible says what it means and is interpreted to mean what it says). Your hermeneutics determines your Eschatology (What happens at the end of all time – The end of the story). Your Eschatology determines your Ecclesiology (Role of the Church – the Body of Christ – in the world until the END).

And it is within that maximal web that the dispersion of end-time views originates. And the beginning of the dispersion occurs immediately in the first three chapters of the Bible. The Creation account. Is this metaphorical, allegorical, a myth, or did it happen as the Scriptures insinuate? (Adam, the first man, is included in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:38; Jesus quoted verses from Genesis 1 and 2, saying in Matthew 9:4-6 – “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”).   

All this to say that as I proceed, I am presenting text, believing God meant for the text to be understood to mean what it says; unless otherwise noted. God used man and the language of the day at the time the texts were written to communicate to us in 2025 what he wants us to know. God sees all things at the same time from the end to the beginning. Thus, He was able to give prophetic utterances by the Holy Spirit to the writers who were guided by the same Spirit to write what was given to them to write. My studies have convinced me that even the letters and spaces between the letters were all preordained by God and contain unphantonable treasures of wisdom and knowledge for those willing to look.  

With that, let’s jump into a few passages on the Day of the LORD. The first one is from Isaiah. I included it in an earlier episode, but it is one worth repeating. Listen as the extent of the destruction on this day. The scale is not just local but is global in scale. God is coming to judge the world and the sinners in it. The earth itself will wobble on its axis of rotation…