This really is a big question, because if there’s one thing that Jesus gave an iron-clad guarantee on, and more than once, it’s that he would come back to earth to take those who choose him as their Saviour, to be with him forever.

For example, Jesus said,

Do not let your hearts be troubled.You believein God[a];believe also in me.2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going thereto prepare a place for you?3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come backand take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:1–3.)

The undeniable reality is that the first Christians, and in particular every one of the writers of the New Testament, thought that Jesus would be returning in their day. But they died, and he hadn’t returned.

Well, ever since then, for the last two thousand years, the followers of Jesus have been waiting for Jesus to come. And he hasn’t come back yet.

In fact, the longer that Christians waited, the more that the nature of the Christian church changed. The church became institutionalised, and various teachings that tried to explain the delay became formulated as doctrines.

So, this is a really important question: why hasn’t Jesus come back already?

Some followers of Jesus believe that it’s their fault that Jesus hasn’t come back already. They think that they haven’t been obedient enough, or that they haven’t preached to enough people.

But I reckon that to think that the second coming of Jesus is up to us is rather self-centred thinking.

Surely, if you believe in God, then you have to also believe that he rules, and that Jesus will return when he is good and ready, and according to his own timeline.

And God does give us one clue about why he hasn’t returned yet. Referring to the second coming of Jesus, the Bible tells us that,

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 (2 Peter 3:9.)

This means that despite our impatience, God is being patient with this world, because he wants for as many people as possible to be saved.

At the end of the day, and because we’re talking about the end of the world, I can say that, basically we just need to trust God. We just need to recognise that He is God and we are not. When we can’t understand his reasons, we would agree with him if we knew what he knows.

And I’m happy with that.

The reason why this is an interesting question is because people who aren’t Christians have different ideas about what it means to be “saved.” You might be surprised to know that even Christians have different things in mind when they say they’ve been saved!

• For some Christians, being saved means to stop doing some things and start doing others. For them it’s all about their performance.

• For other Christians, being saved means joining a church. For them, being saved means mainly belonging to one specific church. If you’re in, you’ve been saved. If you’re out, you’re not.

• For some, being saved means being filled by the Holy Spirit so that you feel different and receive special spiritual gifts. Their focus is principally on the experience of having been saved.

• For others, being saved means that whatever you do down here, when you die, you end up in heaven. Their focus in being saved is all about the future, and what God has promised to do down the track.

• And there are many Christians in the world who believe that being saved means discovering a better way to live so that you are more successful in your finances, health, and relationships. For them, it’s mainly about personal development, health family happiness, as well as a big focus on financial and business success.

All those things are good in some way or another, but none of them are what it fundamentally means to be saved in the Bible.

It is true that the Bible refers to things like physical healing or liberation from one’s earthly enemies as “salvation.” It is still important to know what the core of salvation is all about.

You see, the main mistake that people make when talking about salvation is to confuse the actually being saved with the results of being saved.

Yes, being saved from cancer or a relationship breakdown or financial loss are wonderful things. But fundamentally, these are not the reasons why God sent his Son into the world to die for us.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that you could have more money in your bank account. Jesus didn’t even die on the cross so that you might have an easier life on earth. In fact, Jesus said that he hadn’t come to bring peace, but a sword. He meant that if you thought that being saved would mean an easier life, then you hadn’t understood what salvation was fundamentally about.

The core meaning of being saved in the Bible means that you have accepted eternal life as a free gift from God, based on his Son Jesus having taken your sin at the Cross and dying in you place. As a result of what Jesus did, you are declared to be righteous, perfect before God. Then he comes into your life through the Holy Spirit to lead you and help you grow as his child.

This might be rather challenging for people who are more interested in the material things of this earth, than those things that the spiritual. And there is no question that being saved can result in many blessings in this world. But that’s not what salvation is fundamentally about.

It’s a change of spiritual status, through which your status is changed from sinner to saint through the sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary. Focus on that, because everything else that is good will flow from there.

Have you been saved?

Since 1947, the members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have maintained the doomsday clock. This clock represents the threat to humanity of a global man-made catastrophe.

The Bulletin’s board monitors new scientific and technological developments that could inflict irrevocable harm to the human race. In 1947, when the doomsday clock was started, the key issue was a global nuclear disaster, but since them other factors, such as climate change have been added.

In the clock, global catastrophe is represented by midnight, and how close the world is to catastrophe is reflected by the number of minutes to midnight. The furthest the clock has been to midnight was 17 minutes in 1991. In 2022, the clock was the closest to midnight it’s ever been, at 100 seconds to midnight.

The reality is that despite humanity’s ability to proliferate and dominate the biological and natural resources of the planet, there are plenty of examples from history of entire civilisations that completely destroyed themselves. The “four horsemen” of the apocalypse represent key factors that contributed to the collapse of these civilisations. These are war, natural disasters, famine and plagues.

While some of these factors are random events of nature, there are many ways in which these civilizations have contributed to their own demise.

But those were individual civilisations that were replaced by others. And in our highly connected and globalised world, now, for the first time in history, we are looking now at the possibility of the destruction of the entire human race.

Here is just one pointer. In 2021 The Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Israel published a study that compared human-made mass with all the living mass, or biomass, on the planet. Human-made mass is all stuff that humanity has made, including all the rubbish it has produced. The study showed that for the first time in human history, human-mad mass has surpassed the biomass of the planet, or will do so in the very near future.

From whatever perspective you look at it, we have many reasons to be very worried. That is, unless you bring God into the equation.

The Bible repeatedly tells us how the end of the world will play out, and it won’t be through humanity destroying itself. Instead, it is God who will be the agent of the destruction of this world, at the second coming of Jesus.

It won’t be because he hates the world and the people in it. Instead, it will be because God loves the world and wants to rebuild it as a perfect home for all those who choose him, who love over hatred.

As much as you might look around you and think that this world is spiralling out of control, you can trust that God is still on the throne. And he will create a new earth where love and righteousness will reign, and where there will be no more unfairness, suffering, or pain.

The only thing most people know about the Ark of the Covenant is whatever they saw in Stephen Spielberg’s 1981 film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this action-adventure film, Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones, in a race against the German Nazis to find the long-lost ark of the covenant.

That’s about all that some people know about the Ark of the Covenant, and it’s wrong. It never happened.

The Ark of the Covenant was the most sacred objects of the ancient Israelites. It was a wooden chest covered with gold, and with a solid gold lid. It had been built by Moses by God’s command, and it held within it the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, Aaron’s rod, and a pot of manna.

God would speak to the people of Israel from between the two angels, and in the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant was responsible for acts of great power.

The last time the Ark of the Covenant is mentioned in the Bible was during the reign of King Josiah of Judah, when it was in Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Forty years later, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. That was in 587 BC, and it was the last time that the Ark of the Covenant appears in history.

So, what happened to the ark? Did Nebuchadnezzar capture it and destroy it? Did the Jews manage to hide it away before the horror that engulfed the temple?

Perhaps the non-Biblical book of 2 Maccabees gives us the best clue. It tells us there that just before the Babylonian invasion, the prophet Jeremiah took the ark and hid it in a sealed cave on Mount Nebo.

But there are other theories, including that it was hidden somewhere under the Temple Mount. Another view is that one of the Dead Sea Scrolls is basically a treasure map showing the location of the Ark of the Covenant. Some believe that it is somewhere in Ethiopia, Egypt, or Israel.

Even the Irish claim the Ark of the Covenant as theirs! They argue that the Ark of the Covenant is buried under the Hill of Tara in Ireland, and that it is the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

In the end, no-one except God knows what happened to the Ark. And you know what? I don’t think it’s all that important, because the Bible tells us that the Old Testament temple and everything in it, were all just simply shadows that pointed forward to the glorious reality of the Christ and the salvation that he would reveal to the world.

Even if the Ark of the Covenant still exists somewhere, there’s no magical power to it anymore. It’s lost its importance. What’s important is Jesus and what he did on the Cross.

Well, let’s first understand how archaeology works.

Wars, natural disasters, and the ravages of time and of humanity have erased much of the archaeological record that once existed. Even today, whole cities lie unexcavated under fields and under other cities due to lack of money and resources. Archaeology is a very expensive business. So, the archaeological record is always incomplete. What archaeologists have discovered is but a tiny fraction of what has survived, and what has survived is but a tiny fraction of what used to exist.

As a result, just because archaeologists haven’t discovered evidence of the existence of a person or a place or an event, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. The reverse is also true: that finding archaeological evidence, for example of a particular individual named in the Bible, is remarkable corroboration of the existence of that individual. The reason is that the chances of it having survived is remarkably low.

The amazing thing about the Bible is that the more that archaeologists dig, the more that what they discover provides powerful evidence that what the Bible tells us about history is true. One example is the discovery of the signet rings of many of the Biblical kings of Israel and Judah.

When we want to certify a document today, we use our signature. In ancient times, people didn’t use “signatures.” Instead, if you were an important person back then, you would have had a personal seal that was unique to you. You would have had the seal on a signet ring on your finger.

When you wanted to certify a document, you would put a blob of hot wax at the bottom of the document, and then press your signet ring to it. This would leave an imprint of your seal on the document.

Finding a person’s signet ring from ancient times is powerful evidence that the person really existed.

Here’s the thing. Archaeologists have actually found the signet rings of many of the kings of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, including famous figures like Queen Jezebel and not-so-well-known figures like Baruch, who is mentioned in the book of Jeremiah as his secretary. This is astonishing in itself!

More than that, we’ve discovered hard archaeological evidence for the existence of people like Pontius Pilate, mentioned in the Bible, and less-well-known people like Erastus, mentioned by the apostle Paul as a high-ranking official in the city of Corinth. And there’s much, much more.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn’t say that archaeology “proves the Bible,” but the more we dig, the more evidence we uncover that strongly affirms that events, people and places in the Bible really did exist in history.

The answer to this question is yes, there are many monsters in the Bible, but they’re not necessarily the monsters you might think.

The monsters that the people in Biblical times were afraid of were mainly the ones in the natural world around them. They didn’t need to create too many make-believe monsters when they had lions and bears nearby!

However, the Bible does talk about two monstruous creatures, and no one really agrees on what they were.

The first one is called the “leviathan, mentioned in Job, Psalms, and Isaiah. From the description given of the leviathan, it seems to have lived in the sea. It seems to have been like a serpent, and it was big, and had sharp teeth. It is even described as having many heads, and as being able to spit fire from its mouth. Sounds rather fanciful to me.

The problem we have is that all the passages in which it is mentioned are highly poetic and not really literal. A lot of people think that the leviathan might have actually been a crocodile, with some poetic license thrown into the descriptions.

The other monstruous creature is called the behemoth, and we read about it in Job 40. This animal is very strong, with a long tail, and ate grass. It lived in or near waterways, and had a tough skin. Some people think this might have been a hippo, though I’m not sure about how the long tail fits in.

There are some Christians who think that dinosaurs survived the flood and that the creatures I’ve just mentioned could be dinosaurs. They would say that in subsequent literature they were called “dragons,” and even that phenomenon such as the Loch Ness monster could be a surviving dinosaur.

Talking about dragons, there are actually dragons in the Bible too, but not as literal creatures, but instead as symbols in prophecy. A dragon in the Bible was considered to be a huge serpent. In the sense that the devil first appears in the book of Genesis as a serpent, the dragon in prophecy comes to represent the devil. I guess that the greatest monster of all is the devil.

But we don’t have get so spiritual to find monsters. There are many monsters much closer to home.

Think of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Think of monsters closer to home, such as those who prey on our children in our neighbourhoods. And what about the monsters who are abusive in relationships, or those who use others for their own benefit, callously uncaring of the pain and the hurt that they cause?

We see, in the annals of history, many examples of the monstrous deeds of which human beings are capable when we forget God and who he created us to be. We find that in the Bible too. It turns out, that apart from God, we are ourselves the worst of monsters.