What is the doctrine of imminence?

Question 10081.

The doctrine of imminence is one of those phrases that sounds like seminary furniture until you notice how much of your life it touches. Put simply, it means that the Lord’s coming for His Church could happen at any moment, that nothing in prophecy has to occur first, and that no believer is entitled to say “not yet.” It is a claim about possibility rather than certainty. Imminence does not say He will come today. It says He could, and that no one can prove otherwise.

I hold this position and I want to explain why, because it is more often assumed than argued. The doctrine of imminence is not a mood or a taste for excitement. It rests on the way the New Testament writers speak to living Christians about a coming they expected to experience themselves, and on the plain absence of any required sign standing between the Church and that coming.

What the doctrine of imminence actually claims

Three things belong together here. The coming in view is signless, meaning no prophesied event must be fulfilled before it. It is undated, meaning no timetable is given. And it is expected, meaning believers are told to look for it now rather than to look for something else first. Take away any one of those and the doctrine of imminence collapses into ordinary future hope, which is a much weaker thing.

It also helps to say what imminence does not claim. It does not claim that the Lord must come soon by our reckoning. Nearly two thousand years have passed, and the position has survived every one of them intact, because possibility is not the same as immediacy. Nor does it claim that we can sense His approach in our spirits. The doctrine of imminence is a statement about the structure of prophecy, not about spiritual intuition.

Notice how modest the claim is when you state it precisely. The doctrine of imminence does not require the Lord to come within any particular span. It requires only that nothing stands in His way, so that a believer waking tomorrow morning has no scriptural reason to say the day cannot be today. That is a smaller claim than the critics usually attribute to it and a larger one than the sceptics usually allow.

The texts that teach an any moment coming

Paul writes to the Thessalonians about the dead in Christ rising and the living being caught up, the verb being harpazo, to snatch away, from which the Latin rapturus and our word Rapture come (1 Thessalonians 4:17). What is striking is the pronoun. He says “we who are alive, who are left.” Paul places himself among those who might never die. That is not rhetorical warmth, it is expectation.

To the Corinthians he says, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51). Again the assumption is that some believers will be alive when it happens, and there is no hint that a queue of prophetic events must clear first. He tells Titus that we are waiting for our blessed hope, and the participle carries the sense of present, ongoing expectation.

James tells scattered believers that the coming of the Lord is at hand and the Judge is standing at the door. John writes that when He appears we shall be like Him. Peter says the end of all things is at hand. Not one of these men writes as though a seven year period, a rebuilt temple and a world ruler stood between his readers and the event.

Why the doctrine of imminence supports a pretribulational Rapture

Here is where the argument becomes load bearing. If the Church must pass through the Tribulation, then a great many prophesied events stand between us and the Lord’s coming: a covenant with Israel, an abomination in the temple, the mark of the Beast, cosmic upheaval. On that reading no first century believer could have expected the Lord in his lifetime, and no believer today can expect Him until the covenant is signed. Imminence disappears.

The pretribulational position keeps the two comings distinct. The Rapture and the Second Coming are not two phases of one event but two events with different characters, different purposes and different requirements. The Second Coming has abundant signs attached to it. The Rapture has none, which is exactly what the doctrine of imminence would lead us to expect.

This is also why I remain unpersuaded by posttribulationism and by the various midway positions. Each of them, in its own way, has to explain how believers could be told to watch for a coming they could not possibly see until other things happened first. The explanations offered are ingenious. I have not found them convincing.

The objection from Peter’s death and the Great Commission

The strongest objection deserves a straight answer. Jesus told Peter by what kind of death he would glorify God (John 21:18-19), which means Peter knew he would not be caught up as a young man. Does that not break imminence at the outset?

It qualifies it for one man for a period of years, and it does so by special revelation rather than by prophetic sign. That difference matters. The doctrine of imminence concerns what the prophetic programme requires of the Church as a body, not whether God may tell an individual apostle something particular about his own death. By the time Peter writes his letters he is himself urging his readers to look for the day of God.

The commission to reach the nations is sometimes raised in the same way. But a commission is a task rather than a prophetic precondition, and Scripture never states a threshold of evangelised nations that must be crossed before the Lord comes. If it did, we would be back to calculating, which is precisely what date setting gets wrong.

There is a wider principle here that saves a good deal of confusion. A particular word to a particular person is not a general prophetic sign. God told Paul he would stand before Caesar, which meant Paul knew he would survive a shipwreck, and nobody thinks that overturned imminence for the church at Corinth. Special revelation to an individual and the prophetic programme for the Church are different categories, and the doctrine of imminence operates in the second.

What imminence is not

Imminence is not soonness. I have heard preachers use the doctrine of imminence to imply that the Lord’s return must fall within a generation, usually with a nod towards some current event. That is not what the word means, and it smuggles a timetable back in through the side door. The New Testament writers held imminence for decades while dying of old age, and nobody accused them of error.

Nor is imminence a licence for irresponsibility. The believer who stops planning, saving or committing himself because the Lord may come tomorrow has misread the parables. Faithfulness in the ordinary is the shape watchfulness takes. The doctrine of imminence produces steadiness rather than agitation, and where it is producing agitation in someone I usually want to know what else they have been reading.

Neither is imminence a claim to superior spiritual insight. I have met believers who talk as though they can feel that the Lord is about to come, and while I would not want to quench anyone’s expectancy, that is not what the doctrine teaches. The whole point is that no one can tell. If the timing could be sensed, the coming would not be a thief in the night, and the parables about a master returning at an unknown hour would lose their force. The doctrine of imminence guarantees uncertainty rather than removing it.

How this doctrine changes the way you live

Paul draws the practical line himself. The grace of God trains us to renounce ungodliness and to live self controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope (Titus 2:12-13). Waiting and living are held together in one sentence. The doctrine of imminence is given as a moral incentive, not as a spectator sport.

It also reframes what we are afraid of. A believer who expects the Lord at any moment holds his reputation, his career and his grievances more loosely, because the settlement of all things is nearer than the next appointment. I find that this doctrine does its best work not while I am reading Revelation but when I am tempted towards bitterness on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Consider what imminence does to procrastination. Most of us live with a quiet assumption that there will be time later, time to deal with a besetting sin, time to mend a relationship, time to speak to a colleague about Jesus. The doctrine of imminence removes the later. It does not create panic, but it does remove the comfortable middle distance in which most spiritual intentions go to die. That is a healthy pressure, and I feel it most when I am putting something off.

So, now what?

Ask yourself a plain question. If the Lord came before you next opened your front door, is there anything in your life you would want to have finished first, or hidden, or put right? That question is the doctrine of imminence doing its proper work. It is not designed to frighten you. It is designed to keep you current with God and with the people around you.

Take the comfort as well as the challenge. The same hope that unsettles a careless believer steadies a grieving one. He is coming. He may be very near. Nothing has to happen first. What difference would that make to this week if you actually believed it?

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Titus 2:11-13 (ESV)