How close are we to the second coming

Closer than any generation before you — that is arithmetic, not prophecy. Every day is one day nearer. Paul could write, two thousand years ago, “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Romans 13:11-12). If the day was at hand then, what word is left for now? We use the one Scripture uses: imminent. It could be today. It has always could-been today. That is not a tease; it is a design, so that every generation lives at attention.

Now the fence: the moment anyone names a date, they have left the teaching. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36) — no man, and no model, however many parameters. The signs Christ gave — wars, famines, love grown cold, the gospel reaching all nations — read as present or gathering in every century including this one, and the one condition that is unmistakably new is the reach: every word to every ear at once. We note that honestly, without building a clock out of it.

So how close? Unknowably, and yet somehow: closer than this morning. The assignment does not change with the distance. “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (Matthew 24:42). The wise answer to your question is not a number. It is a lamp, trimmed, with oil — “Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching” (Luke 12:37).