But, let's, turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6. And I want to start us, In verse 12. where Paul says to Timothy, fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I urge you, in the sight of God who gives life to all things before Christ Jesus, who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spots, blameless, until our Lord Jesus Christ appearing.
which he will manifest in his own time. So here, Paul is commanding Timothy to keep the commandment until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what we can discern partially from this passage, is that Paul is commanding Timothy to do something until the Lord returns, which implies that in Paul's mind, it was theoretically possible for Christ to return in Timothy's own lifetime. And it was theoretically possible for Christ to return in Paul's own lifetime.
As the staff was reflecting back upon our treatment of this chapter, one of the things that we felt was necessary is to go back and spend some time talking about this concept of Christ appearing, Christ's coming, Christ's return. And so the title of this morning's message is the imminent Coming of Jesus Christ. And we're going to spend some time really looking at this concept more topically, theologically, as we talk about the topic of the return of Christ, we're delving into an area of theology that theologians call eschatology or the study of last things. And if we were to do a full sweep of this doctrine, we could start by talking about the Old Testament covenants and whether they'll be fulfilled literally with Israel.
We could talk about what should be our approach of interpreting prophetic passages. Should we take them. Of, of literally or normally, or should we take them in a more spiritual, or type approach? We could talk about passages that deal with the kingdom or the millennium....
