In Acts 1:6-7, Jesus was speaking to his Jewish disciples who had not yet been filled with the Holy Spirit and were only interested in the fleshly concerns of Israel’s political future and making Jesus King of Israel. Jesus was basically saying they were on the wrong track, which they were.
Rightly divide the Word of Truth. Scripture does NOT contradict itself. The word to believers about this is 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly...”
In general, I agree with that.
Certainly none of us can know the day nor the hour. But we can certainly know the season. The Pharisees couldn’t.
It’s hard to say. Keep praying and watching!
“The word to believers about this is 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, ‘But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly...’”
What did they know perfectly? That Jesus will return suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thief who does not announce when he is coming beforehand.
Let us suppose that Jesus will be returning in the very near future, in our lifetimes. Let’s speculatively set the time frame to be sometime in the next 30 years. Please do not misunderstand me to be predicting or date setting. I am simply using this as an illustration of the consequences now and during the days of the apostles. Are we to assume and suppose that the apostles, such as Paul who wrote the above passage, and the Thessalonians who were the first and primary recipients of his letter, were expecting Jesus to return for them and their loved ones between 2018 and 2048?
I think such a claim is not only preposterous but has absolutely zero Biblical basis. Now, I am not making a straw-man argument, as I am not accusing you of making such an argument. I am just trying to illustrate how it is unreasonable to take a present-day belief of having figured out when Christ is coming back and then try to fit such a claim into passages such as this one in order to accommodate our present belief. That is not what the passage means.
The Thessalonians DID NOT KNOW that Jesus was not going to return in His glory in their lifetimes. They DID NOT KNOW that none of them were going to remain alive until His return or that not a single one of them would get the opportunity to live until His return by being part of the final generation of believers who will never experienced death.
Biblically, the final generation of believers will know when Christ is returning because they, like all faithful believers of previous generations, are watching and waiting for his return with anticipation. The final generation will know that Day is rapidly approaching because the signs of it will be apparent. And when those signs occur, we will also know that His return is imminent. That is, after the signs He gave us do occur, His return can only then be described as “at any moment”.
Right now we do not look for Christ by stargazing. We do not stay up late at night to look at the sky wistfully and wonder if He is about to arrive. We watch for Him by watching for the signs of His appearing. Once all of those signs have occurred, then WE WILL look up, knowing He is about to come for us.