John MacArthur
The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. It is not minor, it is not unimportant, it is not secondary or tertiary, it is critical. It is a substantial reality in our faith. In fact, in some ways the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the most important of events because it’s the end of the story, because the Second Coming consummates everything, everything. To minimize the Second Coming is to minimize everything else because this is the finale, the culmination. His return consummates the history of the world and the history of redemption and the fulfillment of all God’s pledges and promises and covenants and threats and warnings. All blessing and all judgment in its final disposition is connected with the coming of Jesus Christ. World history seems sometimes to be careening sort of helter-skelter, pell-mell into blackness, sort of uncontrolled. But that is not the case. While men’s behavior becomes less and less controlled, the very movement of history is under the sovereign control of God, who is moving it inexorably, exactly to the point which He has predetermined, and that is the return of Jesus Christ.
John MacArthur