The day of the Lord

[Colonel]

2 Peter 3:3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.
4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."

8 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.
9 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.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

11b You ought to live holy and godly lives
12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming

There is a dynamic in the above between God postponing Jesus' return because he wants people to be saved and our speeding its coming by impacting the world and getting people saved. God could always wait longer for more people to be saved but he will call it quits at some point. We will not be able to tell when it is time for him to call it quits, that decision will come like a thief.

Many Christians operate with a timetable for the end times where the Lord's return is always happening within decades. It has been that way since Pentecost. During the dark ages it would have been a better idea to define the timetable in terms of millenia or even "never, unless the Church changes drastically". For the simple reason that very little was happening in terms of furthering the actual gospel. Which meant that God was being very patient. A thousand years is like a day to the Lord, so he can afford to be.

The ever-present timetable of "the Lord will return within decades" has the ability to get believers stressed out about the details of the timetable. All of a sudden every event in the book of Revelation and in Thessalonians is supposed to take place within those same decades. Including the two witnesses. Then people try to "force" the timetable to work and Elijah is suddenly returning from heaven in a chariot of fire to prepare the Lord's people since the same Elijah is supposed to be one of the two witnesses and that is supposed to happen within a decade or something like that.

This is placing the cart before the horse. God doesn't operate with a fixed end times schedule which then forces events leading up to the major prophetic events to play out accordingly and then we find ourselves forced to get along with that schedule. To the contrary, our lack of getting much done is precisely what postpones that schedule, or elongates it.

When will the Lord return ? Well that is up to us, to a large degree. Maybe, just maybe God will call it quits because the world will get so awful in some way that there isn't much point in continuing. Just maybe. If the whole world looked like North Korea then maybe he would be forced to. When will that happen ? It certainly will not happen because it has to in order to fit into God's fixed end time schedule where the end arrives within a couple of decades. It would probably happen some time in the future. Let's hope we will get the job done before it gets that bad and God decides to call it quits because he is well pleased with our efforts and success in bringing people to repentance. Meaning Jesus' return is success driven, not failure driven.

It will probably be a bit of both, regardless. Great success means great opposition and the resulting climate will probably lead the Lord to call it quits. Meaning he is both well pleased and thoroughly appalled. That is at least better than the boring version where the world turned utterly bad and we aren't getting anything done either.