Simo Frestadius
Foundational Truths - the coming King
In the final article on Elim’s foundational beliefs, Simo Frestadius explores our faith and hope in the return of Jesus.
Belief in the coming king is the fourth side of Elim’s Foursquare Gospel – our belief that Jesus Christ is the (1) Saviour, (2) healer, (3) baptiser in the Holy Spirit, and (4) coming king.
This statement affirms the “personal, physical and visible return of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
It means that the same Jesus who lived, died, and rose from the dead during the first century will return to this earth. This will not be an impersonal, non-corporeal, or hidden event, however.
Neither will Jesus send someone else on his behalf. Rather, the incarnate Son of God will himself come to us again.
When Jesus comes, he will “reign in power and glory”.
On the cross he declared, “It is finished” (John 19: 30), as he took “away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29).
But despite his finished work on the cross, God’s eternal purpose regarding the salvation of the world has not yet been fully realised.
The end of history as we know it will only come when Jesus returns and reigns in power and glory, and in so doing will “put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15: 25).
At this moment death will finally be destroyed (1 Cor 15: 26) and Jesus will deliver “the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Cor 15: 24).
We are already living in the “end times”, because we are between Jesus’s first and second coming. This is why we can already experience many of the delights of God’s kingdom but must also still face the hard realities of a fallen world.
In Elim there are different views about certain aspects of eschatology.
This is particularly the case regarding how we should interpret the thousand-year (millennial) reign of Christ in Revelation 20.
Historically most within Elim have been premillennialists, believing Christ will come back before the thousand-year reign.
Others, however, prefer amillennialism, which maintains that Christ will indeed “reign in power and glory” but Revelation 20 should probably be interpreted symbolically rather than as a literal thousand-year reign.
Some advocate for a post-millennial position, which typically emphasises that we are already experiencing the rule of Christ and that he will return after his millennial reign.
There are also different understandings about the so-called “rapture”.
Some in Elim believe in a secret rapture of believers before or during the period of tribulation and Christ’s visible return to earth. Others simply affirm that those in Christ will be “caught up” or “raptured” (1 Thess 4: 17) when – not before – Jesus visibly returns.
Despite these different perspectives, our belief in the coming king should both fill us with hope and encourage us to live in the here and now as citizens of the coming kingdom.
Because our king is coming, let us “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord” our “labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15: 58).
If our king will redeem this world in its fullness – including people and wider creation (Rom 8: 18-25) – then we should boldly bear witness in both word and deed to our coming king’s transforming power.
The coming king: what Elim believes
We believe in the personal, physical and visible return of the Lord Jesus Christ to reign in power and glory
Why teaching about the coming king matters
• We have a hope that this world will be transformed when the coming king returns and reigns in power and glory
• Living between the first and second comings of Christ means the Kingdom of God is “already” in our midst but has “not yet” been fully realised
• Belief in the coming king should encourage us to live and minister as citizens of the coming kingdom
Simo Frestadius is Dean of research and Executive Director of the Institute for Pentecostal Theology at Regents Theological College.
This article first appeared in the September 2022 edition of Direction Magazine. You can order copies here.
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