Jesus vowed to return. He’s coming back! He promised, “If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3).
After becoming our substitutionary sacrifice, and forty days after His miraculous resurrection, Jesus ascended to Heaven. “He was taken up as (the disciples) were watching, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen him going into heaven’ ” (Acts 1:9–11).
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote, “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17).
Who is the Lord coming to retrieve? His church. The next time we’ll see Jesus will be when He returns to find the church, His beloved bride. The story of Isaac foreshadowed this still-future event.
After sacrificing the substitutionary sacrifice on Mount Moriah, Abraham returned to the foot of the mountain where his servants were waiting. “Abraham went back to his young men, and they got up and went” home (Genesis 22:19).
Is someone missing? Did Isaac come down the mountain with his daddy? Where was Isaac? We can be confident that he didn’t stay on the mountain, but he’s not mentioned in the Holy Writings for two more chapters.
We finally read about Isaac when the aging Abraham sent his servants to obtain for Isaac a wife. “Go to my land and my family to take a wife for my son Isaac” (Genesis 24:4). “Go find a bride for my son…”
Though Isaac isn’t mentioned, we can be certain that as Abraham returned home, Isaac was safely at his father’s side. And, even though nobody has seen Jesus for two-thousand years, but be assured, He’s safely at His Father’s side.
Isaac reappears in the story when it’s time for him to take a wife. Jesus will reappear when He comes to take His bride.
When will Jesus come for us, His bride? Nobody knows (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32; Acts 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2), but it could be soon… very soon.
“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).
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