Deleted Scenes: James 5:7-12. Is Jesus’ Coming Near?

On Sunday, I spoke about patience. When you speak on something like patience, I get the sense you don’t even need to say much. People hear the word, and they say, “yep, I’m guilty. I need more of that. That’s not a strength of mine.” Literally zero people came up to me on Sunday and said, “I’ve already mastered patience, what else you got for me?” (Literally zero people have said that to me about patience ever, never mind on Sunday.) Of course, I still had a lot to say about the matter, and even then, there were aspects of James 5:7-12 I didn’t touch on. And that’s exactly why we have this little “Deleted Scenes” blog, so I can come back to stuff like that!

In James 5:8, James says that the coming of the Lord (as in, Jesus Christ’s return) is near. He says in verse 9 that “the Judge is standing at the door”. Verses like these have given rise to the accusation among some that Jesus, along with the early church as a whole, was deeply mistaken about the timing of the end. This line of thinking says that the early Christians expected Christ’s return within their life time, which would mean that verses like James 5:8 are simply mistaken. The Lord’s coming wasn’t near after all, and it still hasn’t happened 2000 years later. Those silly early Christians with their naive, misguided beliefs!

Or maybe not. If you’ve read The Chronicles of Narnia (written by C.S. Lewis), you’ll remember a theme running throughout that series. There are two different realms that interact with each other to some extent: the land of Narnia and 1940s England. However, the way time progresses in these two realms is very different. In one book, the Pevensie children (the main characters) spend decades in Narnia, only to stumble back into their 1940s home and find that almost no time had passed at all. This isn’t just a literary device. It seems to illustrate an important point about God’s relationship with time. At the end of the fifth book of the series (one of my favourites, Voyage of the Dawn Treader), Lucy has this conversation with Aslan, the Christ figure of Narnia. Aslan says to her, “’Do not look sad. We shall meet soon again.’ ‘Please, Aslan’, said Lucy, ‘what do you call soon?’ ‘I call all times soon’ said Aslan.”

This is the same point that 2 Peter 3:8-9 makes: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” A day is like a thousand years. All times are soon in Him. Yes, the Lord’s coming is near. He stands just outside the door. His coming has been near from the moment he ascended to the Father.

This is also important because of the obsession some Christians have had with figuring out dates and times for the “last days”. From what I can see, so much of the speculation and disagreement about the timing of the end misses a fundamental point in the New Testament. That point is that we are always to be ready for His return. As Jesus says in Matthew 24:42, “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.” What follows are parables that illustrate the danger of not being ready. Instead of consuming ourselves with creating timelines, let’s be consumed with being the kind of people who will welcome the Lord and be welcomed by Him when He does come.

To sum up: yes, the Lord’s coming is near. What that means in our human perception of time is unknowable to us. What is certain is that whenever it happens, we want to be found faithfully serving our coming Lord.