What will happen when Jesus returns?

Question 10012.

What happens when Jesus returns is mapped in Scripture with far more detail than most Christians suspect, and the map matters, because vagueness about the programme produces confusion about the hope. When Jesus returns to earth, He comes not as the visitor of Bethlehem but as the King of kings, and a rapid, world-transforming sequence unfolds: the destruction of His enemies, the judgment of the nations, the restoration of Israel, the binding of Satan, and the establishment of a kingdom this planet has never seen. Let me walk you through the order of events as the prophets and apostles gave it.

The Arrival: Every Eye Shall See

The Second Coming is physical, visible, and glorious. The angels’ promise at the ascension fixes its character: “This Jesus… will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11), bodily, on the clouds, to the Mount of Olives, “and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two” when His feet stand upon it (Zechariah 14:4). John’s vision supplies the pageantry: heaven opened, a white horse, eyes like flame, the armies of heaven following, “and on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:11-16). This is no secret event: “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him” (Revelation 1:7). The contrast with the Rapture, when He comes for His saints in the air, could hardly be sharper, as I show in my article on the difference; at the Second Coming the Church comes with Him, “the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen.”

When Jesus returns, He arrives at the darkest hour in human history: the armies of the nations gathered against Jerusalem at Armageddon, the Beast’s system at its height, Israel at the point of annihilation. The timing is deliverance, not just display.

The Reckoning: Antichrist, Armies, and Satan

The first business when Jesus returns is judgment on organised rebellion. The Beast and the false prophet are “captured… and thrown alive into the lake of fire,” their armies destroyed by “the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse” (Revelation 19:20-21), His mere word, the same voice that made the worlds. Paul says the lawless one is brought “to nothing by the appearance of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Then the dragon himself: an angel binds Satan “for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit… so that he might not deceive the nations any longer” (Revelation 20:2-3). Do not rush past that clause. For the first time since Eden, human history will proceed without the deceiver’s whisper. Every philosophy that blames evil on environment alone is about to receive its thousand-year test.

Following the destruction of the armies comes the judgment of the living nations, the sheep and the goats of Matthew 25:31-46, determining who from the Tribulation’s survivors enters the kingdom. This judgment is of the living at His return and must not be confused with the great white throne, which follows the thousand years and judges the resurrected dead (Revelation 20:11-15). Keeping Scripture’s judgments distinct untangles half the confusion in popular eschatology.

The Reconciliation: Israel Looks on the Pierced One

At the centre of what happens when Jesus returns stands a family reunion the prophets could hardly describe without weeping. “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child” (Zechariah 12:10). The nation that missed the hour of her visitation recognises her Messiah at His return, and “a fountain opened… to cleanse them from sin” (Zechariah 13:1) fulfils the New Covenant’s national clauses, as I set out in my article on the New Covenant. This is Paul’s “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26), the regrafting of the natural branches, and the moment every promise of regathering, cleansing, and heart-circumcision converges.

Joseph’s story was the rehearsal: the brothers who sold him standing before the ruler they did not recognise, and the ruler weeping, “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold” (Genesis 45:4). When Jesus returns, that scene plays at national scale, and heaven’s Joseph is not ashamed to call them brothers.

The Reign: What the Kingdom Will Be Like

Then the throne. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory… he will sit on his glorious throne” (Matthew 25:31), the throne of David in Zion, as covenant required, a fulfilment I traced in What is the Davidic covenant?. The prophets describe the administration: law going forth from Jerusalem, international disputes settled without war, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares… neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4); creation’s hostilities healed, wolf and lamb together, “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9); longevity restored so that a centenarian is reckoned young (Isaiah 65:20); the desert blossoming, the resurrected saints reigning with Him “a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4-6). Six times in six verses John repeats the thousand years; the repetition is the point, a real span of real history under a present King.

And the Church? Raptured before the Tribulation, returning with Him, judged and rewarded at His seat, she reigns alongside her Lord: “they will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6). Whatever your responsibilities then, they are being apprenticed now, which gives Monday morning an unexpected dignity: faithfulness in little is the training programme for cities (Luke 19:17).

After the Thousand Years

The Millennium is not the end; it is the last administration before the end, the seventh of the dispensations I have surveyed elsewhere. At its close Satan is released for a final revolt, gathering those born during the kingdom who rendered outward obedience without inward faith, proof that a perfect environment cannot regenerate a heart, and fire ends the rebellion (Revelation 20:7-10). Then the great white throne, the last resurrection, and death itself thrown into the lake of fire, before “a new heaven and a new earth” descend into view and God dwells with man for ever (Revelation 21:1-4). When Jesus returns, in other words, He begins the endgame whose final move is a universe with no curse in it.

That sweep, return, reckoning, reconciliation, reign, renewal, is what the early Christians meant when they prayed the oldest recorded prayer of the Church: Marana tha, our Lord, come (1 Corinthians 16:22).

Getting Ready for When Jesus Returns

The New Testament never describes the Second Coming to satisfy curiosity; every major passage turns the map into marching orders. Peter, having described the day of the Lord and the dissolving elements, draws the conclusion in one sentence: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11). The Lord Himself followed His Olivet programme with parables of readiness: lamps trimmed, talents traded, servants found feeding the household when the master arrives. And Paul ends the great resurrection chapter not with speculation but vocation: “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Prophecy’s grammar is always imperative at the end: because He is coming, therefore watch, work, purify, encourage. Any interest in when Jesus returns that does not issue in holiness has missed the passage’s own conclusion.

There is also a word here for how believers should hold the world’s bad news. If you did not know the programme, the gathering storms, lawlessness, apostasy, Israel encircled, would read as chaos winning, and despair would be reasonable. Knowing the programme, the believer reads the same headlines as stage directions: the very darkness is scripted to end at a white horse and an opened heaven. That is why Christians of all people should be the calmest readers of the news and the least surprised by evil’s crescendo, “when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). Heads up, not heads down: that is the posture the Second Coming assigns. The world braces for an ending; the church watches for an arrival.

So, now what?

Let the programme reshape your prayers and your nerve. When you pray “your kingdom come,” you are asking for everything in this article, and not one clause of it is uncertain. When the news reads like collapse, remember that history’s next public event after the Church’s departure is not chaos winning but the heavens opening. And ask yourself the question the map forces: at which point in this sequence do you meet Him, caught up with His own before the storm, or summoned before the throne after it? When Jesus returns, neutrality expires. Settle your allegiance while the King still stands at the door as Saviour.

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.” (Revelation 19:11, ESV)