Yesterday on Things Unseen, I mentioned the church tradition that at the beginning of the Advent season, we look forward to the second Advent, the return of the Lord Jesus in glory.

And doing that reminds us that at his first coming, he inaugurated his kingdom, but only

at His second coming will he consummate it.

And that's why we pray each day, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it

is in heaven.

One day God's will will be done perfectly on earth

as it is already in heaven when Jesus comes again to rain. I suspect some of us get just a little

nervous when we hear people speaking about the Second Coming.

And there may be several reasons for that.

One is, to be honest, that some Christians become so fixated on the Second Coming that the details of it almost become a test of orthodoxy as far as they're concerned.

And they can be obsessed with whether Jesus will come before the tribulation or after the

tribulation, or will the rapture be secret or public.

I think it's really important for us to see there's a big difference between convictions

about the teaching of the whole of Scripture and a fixation on one particular

element in it.

I often say there's no theology without psychology.

And one way in which that manifests itself is when someone is an almost neurotic interest

in one facet of truth but doesn't commit the same emotional

weight or energy to, for example, the biblical teaching on the humanity of the Lord Jesus or

on the holiness of God. Their emotional commitment is out of proportion, disjointed. And for some

reason, that often happens in connection with the Lord's

second coming. So this week, I'm not planning to stray beyond what the New Testament basically

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