Answer: Matthew 24:36-44 declares, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come…So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him.” At first glance, these verses would seem to provide a clear and explicit answer to the question. No, no one can know when Jesus is coming back. However, those verses do not say that no one will ever be able to know when Jesus will return. Most Bible scholars would say that Jesus, now glorified in Heaven, knows the timing of His return, indicating that the phrase “nor the Son” does not mean Jesus will never know when He will return. Similarly, it is possible that while Matthew 24:36-44 indicates that no one at that time could know the timing of Jesus’ return, it is possible that God could reveal the timing of Jesus’ return to someone in the future.
With that said, let us be abundantly clear, we do not believe that God has revealed to anyone when Jesus is coming back, and we see nothing in Scripture which indicates that God will ever reveal to anyone when Jesus is coming back. Matthew 24:36-44, while spoken directly to the people in Jesus’ time, also contains a principle. The timing of Jesus’ return and the end of the age is not for us to know. Scripture nowhere encourages us to try to determine the date. Rather, we are to “keep watch, because we do not know on which day our Lord will come” (v. 42). We are to “be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when we do not expect Him” (v. 44). The force of Jesus’ words diminishes if at some point in the future someone will be able to determine when Jesus is coming back. If the date is discovered, we no longer need to “keep watch” or “be ready” until the date is approaching. So, with the principle of Matthew 24:36-44 is mind, no, it is not possible for anyone to know the date that Jesus is coming back.
Despite this clear biblical principle, many throughout Christian history have attempted to prophesy the date that Jesus is coming back. Many such dates have been proposed, and all of them have been wrong. Today, there are two popular proposed dates: May 21, 2011 and December 21, 2012. The December 21, 2012 date is related to the Mayan calendar, with no biblical data used as evidence. The May 21, 2011 date is proposed by Harold Camping of Family Radio. It should be noted that Harold Camping previously predicted that Jesus would come back in 1994. Obviously, Camping was wrong. This should give us yet another reason to doubt the validity of his prediction of May 21, 2011. Camping, does, however, claim to find evidence for the May 21, 2011 date in Scripture. By using a speculative date of 4990 B.C. for the Flood, and then applying the “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years” of 2 Peter 3:8 to the seven days of Genesis 7:4, and then counting down the 7000 years from 4990, the year 2011 results. Then based on “the seventeenth day of the second month” from Genesis 7:11 and using the Hebrew calendar, the date of May 21 is determined. So, is there any validity to Camping’s methodology?
First, Camping conveniently ignores the second half of 2 Peter 3:8, “and a thousand years as one day.” Further, 2 Peter 3:8 is not providing a method for dating the end times. Rather, 2 Peter 3:8 is simply saying that God is above and beyond time. God is timeless, infinite, and eternal. Second, nothing in the context of Genesis 7:4-11 indicates that the “seven days” and “seventeenth day of the second month” are to be interpreted as applying to anything other than what God was specifically saying to Noah. Third, the Flood being dated to 4990 B.C. is speculative at best, with no explicit biblical evidence. Camping’s calculation of May 21, 2011 falls apart with even the most basic biblical scrutiny. Now, is it possible that Jesus be coming back on May 21, 2011? Yes, but it is just as possible that He will come back on any other date. Does Harold Camping’s particular dating methodology have any biblical validity? No, it does not. Assuming that Jesus does not return on or before May 21, 2011, Camping, and others, will surely calculate new future dates and will attempt to explain away mistakes by “errors in the formula” or something to that effect.
The key points are: (1) the Bible nowhere encourages us to attempt to discover the timing of Jesus’ return, and (2) the Bible gives no explicit data by which the timing of Jesus’ return can be determined. Rather than developing wild and speculative calculations to determine when Jesus is coming back, the Bible encourages us to “keep watch” and “be ready” (Matthew 24:42-44). The fact that the day of Jesus’ return is unknown is what should motivate us to live every day in light of the imminence of Christ’s return.
Do we have guardian angels?
Answer: Matthew 18:10 states, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” In the context, “these little ones” could either apply to those who believe in Him (v. 6) or it could refer to the little children (vs. 3-5). This is the key passage regarding guardian angels. There is no doubt that good angels help protect (Daniel 6:20-23; 2 Kings 6:13-17), reveal information (Acts 7:52-53; Luke 1:11-20), guide (Matthew 1:20-21; Acts 8:26), provide for (Genesis 21:17-20; 1 Kings 19:5-7), and minister to believers in general (Hebrews 1:14).
The question is whether each person—or each believer—has an angel assigned to him/her. In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel had the archangel (Michael) assigned to it (Daniel 10:21; 12:1), but Scripture nowhere states that an angel is “assigned” to an individual (angels were sometimes sent to individuals, but there is no mention of permanent assignment). The Jews fully developed the belief in guardian angels during the time between the Old and New Testament periods. Some early church fathers believed that each person had not only a good angel assigned to him/her, but a demon as well. The belief in guardian angels has been around for a long time, but there is no explicit scriptural basis for it.
To return to Matthew 18:10, the word “their” is a collective pronoun in the Greek and refers to the fact that believers are served by angels in general. These angels are pictured as “always” watching the face of God so as to hear His command to them to help a believer when it is needed. The angels in this passage do not seem to be guarding a person so much as being attentive to the Father in heaven. The active duty or oversight seems, then, to come more from God than from the angels, which makes perfect sense because God alone is omniscient. He sees every believer at every moment, and He alone knows when one of us needs the intervention of an angel. Because they are continually seeing His face, the angels are at His disposal to help one of His “little ones.”
It cannot be emphatically answered from Scripture whether or not each believer has a guardian angel assigned to him/her. But, as stated earlier, God does use angels in ministering to us. It is scriptural to say that He uses them as He uses us; that is, He in no way needs us or them to accomplish His purposes, but chooses to use us and them nevertheless (Job 4:18; 15:15). In the end, whether or not we have an angel assigned to protect us, we have an even greater assurance from God: if we are His children through faith in Christ, He works all things together for good (Romans 8:28-30), and Jesus Christ will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5-6). If we have an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God with us, does it really matter whether or not there is a finite guardian angel protecting us?
Are angels male or female?
Answer: The Bible does not necessarily support the idea of angels being male or female. Whenever gender is specifically “assigned” to an angel in Scripture, it is male (Genesis 19:10-12; Revelation 7:2; 8:3; 10:7). However, this does not necessarily indicate that angels are male. Matthew 22:30 seems to indicate that angels are “sexless,” without gender: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” If angels do not procreate, there is no need for gender, at least not in the sense of human gender distinctions.
In a similar manner, God always refers to Himself in masculine language, although God is neither male nor female. God uses masculine language when He speaks of Himself because it more adequately describes who He is and what He does, especially in the patriarchal cultures in which the Bible was written. If angels do have a gender in some form, Scripture would indicate that they are predominately or universally male. It is more likely that angels are genderless, just as God is, and that masculine language is used to describe them and their role in serving God.
What happens at the final judgment?
Answer: The first thing to understand about the final judgment is that it cannot be avoided. Regardless of how we may choose to interpret the end times, we are told that “it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Just as John graphically recorded in the last book of the Bible, each of us will one day find ourselves standing before God. No one will escape this climactic moment—his divine appointment with our Creator:
“And I saw a great white throne, and Him sitting on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And a place was not found for them. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before God. And books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead in it. And death and hell delivered up the dead in them. And each one of them was judged according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death. And if anyone was not found having been written in the Book of Life, he was cast into the Lake of Fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).
This remarkable passage introduces to us the final judgment—the end of human history and the beginning of the eternal state. We can be sure of this: no mistakes will be made in our hearings because we will be judged by a perfect God (Matthew 5:48; 1 John 1:5). This will manifest itself in many undeniable proofs. First, God will be perfectly just and fair (Acts 10:34; Galatians 3:28). Second, God cannot be deceived (Galatians 6:7). Third, God cannot be swayed by any prejudices, excuses or lies (Luke 14:16-24).
As God the Son, Jesus Christ will be the judge. All unbelievers will be judged by Christ, and they will be punished according to the works they have done. The Bible is very clear that unbelievers are storing up wrath against themselves (Romans 2:5) and that God will “give to each person according to what he has done” (Romans 2:6). Believers will also be judged by Christ, but since Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to us and our names are written in the book of life, we will be rewarded, but not punished, according to our deeds. At the final judgment our fate will be in the hands of the omniscient God who will judge us according to our soul’s condition. Therefore, the final judgment will be a time of rejoicing for a few and the ultimate nightmare for everyone else. Jesus said that only a few would be saved while the rest would be lost (Matthew 7:13-14).
However, for now, our fate is in our own hands. The end of our soul’s journey will be either in an eternal heaven or in an eternal hell (Matthew 25:46). We must choose where we will be by accepting or rejecting the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, and we must make that choice before our physical lives on this earth come to an end. After death, there is no longer a choice, and our fate is to stand before the throne of God, where everything will be open and naked before Him (Hebrews 4:13). Romans 2:6 declares that what we do in our lives goes into the books that will be opened at our judgment. God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” It is on that final judgment day that God will open His arms and declare those profound words, the very essence of our fervent hope upon this earth, “Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:21).
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