The Return of Christ: Five Errors We Cannot Afford to Make

Few subjects in Christian theology generate more confusion, more controversy, and more misplaced energy than the return of Jesus Christ. On one extreme, there are those who obsess over dates and timelines, constructing elaborate prophetic charts and bold predictions — none of which have ever proven accurate. On the other extreme, there is a growing indifference within the church, a collective shrug that treats the second coming as a distant abstraction with no bearing on everyday life. Both responses miss the mark entirely, and both have roots in errors that are as old as the church itself.

Second Peter 3 confronts these errors head-on. The chapter addresses false teachers who had gone so far as to mock the idea of Christ's return altogether, dismissing it as wishful thinking. In ridiculing the promise of his coming, they were not merely critiquing a theological concept — they were holding Christ himself in contempt. Their errors were serious, and they are worth examining carefully, because the same errors have a way of creeping into the thinking of believers today.

Error One: A Low View of Scripture

The first mistake was a failure to hold Scripture in high regard. Peter urges his readers to remember the words of the holy prophets and the commands of the Lord passed down through the apostles. This is not a passive suggestion. It is a call to active, intentional engagement with what God has said.

Consider this: of the 27 books in the New Testament, 23 explicitly mention the return of Christ, and an additional two allude to it. Only Philemon and 3 John, each a single chapter, omit it entirely. The second coming is not a footnote in the New Testament — it is woven into the fabric of nearly every book. To dismiss it is to dismiss the testimony of Scripture itself.

Error Two: Revisionist Biblical History

The second error is what Peter describes as a willful forgetfulness. The false teachers chose to overlook the evidence of Genesis 1 through 10 — the account of creation and the catastrophic flood that reshaped the world. They assumed that the natural processes observable in the present have always been exactly as they are now, a view that conveniently eliminates the need for divine intervention in the past or the future.

This is not a modern invention. It is the same assumption that underlies much of contemporary secular thought — that the universe is a closed system, operating by uniform natural laws that have never been interrupted and never will be. But the Bible tells a different story. Creation itself was a singular, unrepeatable act. The flood was a cataclysm that fundamentally altered the world. The resurrection of Christ defanged death in a way that changed the very nature of reality. To assume that tomorrow will simply look like today, indefinitely, is to ignore the most significant events in the history of the cosmos.

Error Three: Confining the Eternal to the Finite

The third error is perhaps the most philosophically significant. Drawing from Psalm 90, Peter reminds his readers that a thousand years in God's sight are like a single day, and a single day like a thousand years. The false teachers were measuring God's timetable by human standards and concluding that because Christ had not yet returned, he never would.

But God exists outside of time. He created time. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was and is and is to come. He is not bound by the calendar. Galatians 4:4 tells us that when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son. Not a moment too early, not a moment too late. If there had been a better moment in all of history for the incarnation, an all-knowing, all-powerful God would have chosen it. The same precision governs the timing of Christ's return. What feels like delay from inside time looks entirely different from the perspective of the one who created it.

Error Four: Mistaking Patience for Inactivity

The fourth error follows naturally from the third. Because God had not yet acted in judgment, the false teachers assumed he was either indifferent or powerless. Peter corrects this sharply: God is not slow in the way that some count slowness. He is patient. His heart is that none should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

This is a profound truth that cuts in two directions. It should produce humility, because every one of us has been the beneficiary of that patience. It should also produce urgency, because that patience is not the same as indifference. God does not settle every account immediately, but there will be a settling of all accounts. His grace is not a signal that consequences have been canceled. It is a window of opportunity that will not remain open forever.

Error Five: Dismissing Future Judgment

The fifth and final error is a dismissiveness toward coming judgment. Peter describes a day when the heavens will pass away with a roar, when the elements will be dissolved, and when the earth and everything done in it will be exposed. This is not symbolic language designed to be softened into irrelevance. It is a sober warning that the world as we know it is not the final word.

For those who are in Christ, this is not a message of terror — it is a message of hope. God has not destined his people for wrath, but for salvation. The day that will come suddenly upon those who are unprepared will be the day of redemption for those who are watching and waiting.

Living in Light of His Return

What does all of this mean for how we live today? It means anchoring hope to the reality of Christ's return rather than retreating into either obsession or indifference. It means loving Scripture and trusting what God says about his own timetable. And it means rejoicing in the gracious patience of a God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love — a God who, as the psalmist declares, does not deal with us according to our sins, but removes our transgressions as far as the east is from the west.

The return of Christ is not a theological curiosity. It is the horizon toward which all of history is moving, and it has everything to do with how we live right now.