Once upon a time there was an American Community Quality of Life Board at a NATO base in Italy. There were quarterly board meetings in the Navy Admiral Base Commander’s conference room attended by Board committee chairmen (all Officers except for a lone Sergeant Major) and the Admiral, who called upon each of the committee chairmen to provide a status report on their respective issues.

The various committee representatives would take turns sitting in a special corner chair next to the Admiral, present their status reports, and answer the Admiral’s questions. It was not uncommon to hear committee chairs stutter and stammer if asked a tough question. The SGM was however an exception to the pattern. He was heard more than once replying to a question from the Admiral with “I don’t know the answer to THAT, but I do know THIS!”, followed by the latest news about the topic at hand.

OK, so what’s the point?

Thanks for asking! In reply, let me ask you a question. When’s the last time you were engaged in a discussion with another Christian about an interesting topic like say, end times prophecy and the second coming of Christ? After all, there are several different views, some of which have been so carefully thought out and articulated they have been given formal names ending in “ism”.

It’s quite common for us Christians to think we need to subscribe to one “ism” or another and then discuss why our particular favorite “ism” is either the best one or even THE correct view. Am I wrong? I didn’t think so.

Perhaps a better approach might be to learn about the different views, discuss them with other Christians and maybe even end up with a personal preference without needing to come to a conclusion. Instead, remain friends with your discussion partners and just wait and see how it all turns out.

At the same time, we can certainly search the scriptures to determine what we can definitely know and, as Bible believing Christians, agree upon.

The second coming of Christ is a good example. I realize that there are some who will tell you that Christ’s 2nd coming is a done deal (one of those “isms”) but we won’t go there. If we want to discover what we can absolutely know about it, we can turn to Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian church.

Paul wrote those letters because certain people in the church had been teaching that the Lord had already come and that Judgment Day was upon them (2 Thess 2:1–2). Worse yet, those false teachers were alleging that their message came from Paul. Paul wrote to let them know that the “day of the Lord” was still in the future and described the events that would occur at Chris’s coming.

First of all, Christ’s return would be rather noisy and missed by no one. We’re talking about at least three audible manifestations; “a cry of command,” “the voice of an archangel,” and “the sound of the trumpet of God” (1 Thess. 4:16).

Second, at His coming Christians who had already died, as well as Christians who were still alive would be resurrected to meet Christ in the air and forever remain with Him (I Thess 4:16-17).

Third, severe judgment and everlasting punishment would befall the remaining unbelieving world (2 Thess 1:5-9).

Lastly, Paul’s concern for the Thessalonians is a prominent theme in both of his letters to the Thessalonians This concern is rooted in his deep pastoral care and commitment to the spiritual well-being of the believers in Thessalonica, as well as the well-being of Christians wherever he founded churches.

I suppose it’s quite common for Christians to want to understand everything in the Bible. However, that desire has resulted in a lot of ‘isms’ (for lack of a better word) that claim to have it all figured out when the Bible isn’t really clear. To make it worse, the creators of ‘isms’ through the decades have an uncanny knack of discovering those texts that they claim to ‘prove’ their conclusions but really only ‘imply’ that they might be correct. Some call that “eisegesis”, which is reading into the text what they want it to say. We would be far better off if we just stick to what we KNOW it says and leave the rest in God’s hands.

To summarize, the next time you are involved in a discussion about a biblical topic that has various differing interpretations among genuine Christians, try and steer the conversation toward discovering what we can actually know from the text of scripture. The “isms” will be all sorted out later!

BE BLESSED!