The day is near

Week 7 of 7 in End Times Fundamentals

✝️ Revelation 1:3 (ESV)

3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

John opens Revelation by pronouncing a blessing on the reader before a single seal is broken. The nearness itself is treated as good news. What follows asks what that nearness means: how near, in what sense, and what a reader is supposed to do while it stays hidden.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Prophecy. Acts 1 gives a direct verbal promise: "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, ESV). Two angels state it in plain words, at the moment of the ascension itself: Christ's return is coming, and it will be visible and bodily like His departure.

Lessons about Jesus

He did not name the day when He was asked: "concerning that day or that hour, no one knows... nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32, ESV). The weight of that sentence falls on whose prerogative the date is rather than on what the Son lacked. Asked the same question again after the resurrection, He answered the same way and gave the reason: "the Father has fixed" them "by his own authority" (Acts 1:7, ESV). What the verse does and does not say about Christ's knowledge is worked out in The Day No One Knows.
His return will match His ascension in kind: bodily, visible, "in the same way" (Acts 1:11). It is not merely spiritual or figurative.
He delays because He is patient: 2 Peter's letter calls Him "our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" throughout (1:11; 3:18), and it is that same Lord who "is patient... not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9, ESV).

Memory verses

✝️ 2 Peter 3:8 (ESV)

8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

✝️ Mark 13:32 (ESV)

32 But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

✝️ James 5:7 (ESV)

7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.

Be Transformed

Think. Notice any pull toward fixing an exact date for Christ's return. Mark 13:32 puts that knowledge outside even the Son's stated awareness during His earthly life. Treating a calculated date as settled fact claims more certainty than Jesus Himself claimed.
Attitude. James wrote "be patient" to believers being economically exploited by the wealthy (James 5:1-6). His patience is endurance under real pressure.
Do. Jesus left His servants "each with his work" (Mark 13:34, ESV). Name the work He has given you at home, at church or in your job, and this week do one piece of it you have been putting off, as for the Master who is coming (Mark 13:35).

Prayer

Father, the times and seasons are fixed by your own authority, and not even your Son Jesus named them when He was asked, so I am not going to work them out either. You are patient with a world you could justly judge today: you do not want anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance. Thank you that the delay itself is mercy. Give me the same patience you show, endurance under real pressure. Give me work to do: watching, praying, telling others. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Be patient while the time is hidden

✝️ James 5:7 (ESV)

7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.

James writes this to believers under real economic pressure. The paragraph immediately before it (5:1-6) condemns wealthy landowners who have cheated their labourers of wages, and 5:7 opens with "therefore", which ties patience to that injustice.

Be patient translates μακροθυμήσατε (makrothymēsate, from μακροθυμέω, makrothymeō, G3114), literally "long-tempered". It is a patience aimed at people and circumstances. Greek keeps a separate word for endurance under suffering, hypomonē, and James uses both in this passage: makrothymeō again at 5:8, and hypomonē at 5:11.

The farmer cannot make rain fall or grain ripen faster by wanting it. That is disciplined, active waiting for something whose timing he does not control.

That same verb reappears in 2 Peter 3:9, where the Lord Himself "is patient" (μακροθυμεῖ, makrothymei) toward those He is waiting on. James commands of believers the identical quality Peter says God is already exercising. The patience asked of the reader is modeled on God's own.

✝️ Mark 13:32-37 (ESV)

32 "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning-- 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake."

This closes the Olivet Discourse (see Signs of the end of the age below for the section that opens it). It answers the disciples' "when" question by declining to answer it. No one knows (οὐδεὶς οἶδεν) is stated in a chain that runs from angels to the Son Himself, stopping only at the Father, and where the chain stops is the point of it. That is the answer He gives again after the resurrection, when no incarnational limit is in view (Acts 1:7). How the Son's own knowledge is to be understood here is a real question, and a separate one; The Day No One Knows takes it up. The parable that follows reframes not-knowing as a job description. A servant left in charge doesn't need the master's arrival time to do the work assigned, so "stay awake" has to mean something more than watching the horizon.

A day like a thousand years

✝️ 2 Peter 3:2-8 (ESV)

2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Peter is answering a specific objection. Scoffers (ἐμπαῖκται, empaiktai, G1703, from ἐμπαιγμονή, empaigmonē, "scoffing," G1701) argue from apparent delay to disbelief: if the fathers died and "all things are continuing as they were" (3:4), the promise must be empty. Peter's rebuttal in 3:5-7 is that this ignores precedent. The created order has already been catastrophically remade once, by water, and Scripture says it will be again, by fire. Continuity is an assumption the scoffers haven't earned.

Verse 8 is the answer this site builds its six-then-seventh reading of history on. Where Peter took it from, what his readers already believed about it, and the pattern it carries, from the Sabbath and Hebrews 4's rest to Revelation 20's thousand years and the year 6000, are worked out in A Day Is a Thousand Years. Peter himself moves from the ratio in verse 8 to patience in verse 9 and holy conduct in verse 11, and never to a calculation.

Signs of the end of the age

The disciples asked, "what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (Matthew 24:3, ESV). Jesus answered with a sequence: false messiahs, wars, famines and earthquakes as "the beginning of the birth pains" (24:8), then persecution, and the gospel of the kingdom proclaimed to all nations (24:14). This site reads that sequence in its final form as the opening of Daniel's seventieth week, after the church is caught up, with AD 70 as its near fulfilment. The Olivet Discourse works through the passage, Immediately After sets out the case for that reading, and The End of the Age follows the gospel to the nations through those seven years.

In the same way

✝️ Acts 1:11 (ESV)

11 and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

In the same way translates ὃν τρόπον (hon tropon). τρόπος (tropos, G5158) means manner, fashion, way of doing something. Grammatically, the angels' promise is a claim about how Christ returns (visibly, bodily, matching how He departed). The when is what Mark 13:32 above says stays hidden.

Discussion questions

James commands believers to have the same patience (makrothymeō) 2 Peter says God Himself already has (3:9). Does it change how "be patient" lands, to know God holds Himself to the standard He sets you?
Mark 13:32 names the Father alone as knowing the day and hour. How do you hold that together with everything else Scripture says about who Jesus is?

References & Recommended Reading

ESV Bible (Crossway) -- primary translation quoted throughout, per this repo's translation conventions.
World English Bible (WEB) -- used for translation comparison; no meaningful divergence found on any passage in this study.
MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets (SBLGNT), queried via this repo's references/build/bible-text.db -- source of all Greek morphology and Strong's numbers cited above.
ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2016) -- notes on 2 Peter 3:1-13 and 3:8-10 and Acts 1:6-11 and 1:11, consulted to check this study's own reading of "in the same way" against a standard evangelical commentary.
The Olivet Discourse, Immediately After and The End of the Age -- the signs of Matthew 24:4-14 and where this site places them.
A Day Is a Thousand Years -- the companion study, and the full treatment of 2 Peter 3:8, Psalm 90:4, and the Second Temple, rabbinic and patristic witnesses to the thousand-year day, and the six-then-seventh pattern of history.