The Second Coming
Two angels promised the apostles He would return the same way He left. Nobody knows the day. That combination — certain event, unknown hour — is the whole of what we are asked to live with.
Talk about the Second Coming usually arrives in one of two shapes. Either it comes as a chart, with sequences and tribulations and a rapture slotted in somewhere and dates calculated and quietly recalculated when they pass — or it comes as an embarrassment, a doctrine left carefully alone because too many people have been too publicly wrong about it.
Both reactions miss what scripture actually does with the subject. The return of Jesus Christ is stated plainly, promised repeatedly, and described in detail — while the timing is withheld just as plainly, and withheld on purpose. Neither the chart nor the silence takes the text seriously.
The Promise Was Made at the Ascension
The apostles watched Him go. While they were still standing there looking upward, they were given the promise that frames everything after it.
“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
Notice the precision in that sentence. Not a symbol, not an influence, not the spirit of Christ spreading through the world — this same Jesus. The same resurrected man with wounds in His hands, returning bodily, in the manner they had just watched with their own eyes.
And notice the rebuke tucked inside the promise. Why stand ye gazing? The angels did not tell them to watch the sky. They told them to get on with it, which is the first practical instruction ever given about the Second Coming.
Nobody Knows When
This is where most speculation runs aground, and the Savior closed the door Himself in the plainest words available to Him.
“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
Read who is excluded from that knowledge. Not just the crowd listening to Him, and not just the disciples sitting closest. The angels of heaven do not know it either, and the Son says so plainly while speaking about His own return to the earth.
So what should a person make of anyone who announces a date? The verse answers it before the question is finished. Every calculated date in Christian history has shared one feature, and it is not that the arithmetic was faulty. It is that somebody claimed information the Lord said the angels do not have.
Signs Are Given, and They Are Not a Timetable
If the hour is hidden, why does scripture spend so much space on signs? Because the two do different jobs. Signs tell a watchful person the season. They do not tell anyone the date.
Doctrine and Covenants 45:39–40
“And it shall come to pass that he that feareth me shall be looking forth for the great day of the Lord to come, even for the signs of the coming of the Son of Man. And they shall see signs and wonders, for they shall be shown forth in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath.”
He that feareth me shall be LOOKING FORTH. That is the posture asked for — attentive, not calculating. A farmer reads the season from the fig tree without pretending to name the morning the harvest begins.
And every generation that ever lived has believed its own wars and plagues were the final ones, which is not an argument against the signs so much as a standing warning about reading them too confidently from inside them. The signs are real. Our certainty about which ones we happen to be living through is not.
“What About the Rapture?”
Many Christian readers arrive expecting a secret removal of the faithful before a period of tribulation, and expecting Latter-day Saints to argue about the sequence. It is worth answering directly rather than sidestepping.
We do believe the righteous will be caught up. Paul says plainly that the dead in Christ rise first, and that those who remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). That is scripture and we hold it.
What we do not find anywhere in the text is a SECRET catching-away, occurring quietly years in advance, that spares the faithful from every difficulty that follows it. Paul’s account is anything but quiet — a shout, the voice of the archangel, the trump of God. And the Saints are nowhere promised exemption from tribulation. They are promised that He comes, and that they will be with Him when He does.
What Actually Happens
The Shape of the Day
- He comes in glory — openly rather than in the obscurity of Bethlehem, and every eye shall see Him (Revelation 1:7).
- The righteous dead rise first — the first resurrection continues, and the faithful living are caught up to meet Him.
- He reigns personally — a thousand years of peace, with Christ Himself upon the earth (Articles of Faith 1:10).
Beyond that outline, scripture gives images rather than a schedule, and the honest thing is to say so. Anyone who can lay the whole sequence out with confidence is supplying detail the text withholds.
How to Live Toward It
Here is the practical answer, and it is unglamorous. The preparation the Lord asks for is not a stockpile and not a calculation. It is a life you would not need to change if He came on Thursday.
And that is very likely why the hour is hidden at all. A known date would produce exactly the wrong thing in almost everybody — a great rush of repentance at the end of it and comfortable complacency for all the years before, which is repentance aimed at a deadline rather than at God. An unknown hour asks for something steadier and far harder. Readiness that does not expire.
And for most of us the personal question arrives sooner than the global one. Whether the Lord comes in our lifetime or long after, every person meets Him. The preparation is identical either way.
So the angels’ question at the ascension is still the right one. Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? He is coming. Go and do something worth being found doing.
See also The Millennium, The Resurrection, and What Happens After Death?