4.3.6 Islam And The Return Of Jesus

Islam teaches that Jesus will return from Heaven, destroy the Antichrist, and lead believers into an era of peace, ruling over all the earth- and then, He will die and be buried next to Muhammad. Again, the God who is ignorantly worshipped must be declared… this is all true, in that Jesus Christ will return and do these things: but He will not die! The Kingdom He will establish will be eternal. If He didn’t sin - and He can scarcely be in the presence of God for 2000 years if He did sin - then why should He have to die? The Old Testament prophets speak of Messiah reigning eternally; and His priesthood, after the order of Melchizedek, being eternal, in that he ever lives to make intercession for His people (Ps. 110:4).

Jesus will return in glory: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the star shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other ” (Mt. 24:29-31). Right now, His face shines as the sun (Acts 26:13; Rev. 1:16). How can this be, if He is just another of many prophets, who will return to earth and die? When Jesus appears, “we shall be made like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2). He comes to give us life, to make us like Him, in that in this life we shared through baptism His death and resurrection. It cannot be that He then dies. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:48,49).

The Qur’an in 3.49 and 5.113 says that Jesus has the power to raise the dead given to Him by God. This is what the New Testament teaches too. However, the question arises: Why should Jesus have this power rather than any other prophet? Clearly there was something unique about Him. It is only the true Christian Gospel which can give an answer to the question why only Jesus has this power. It was because He was our representative, He died and rose again, and therefore He can share that life and resurrection with those who associate themselves with His death and life through baptism, and through living out in their lives “in Christ” what these things demand. Only because He was the Son of God could Jesus have such power over death: “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will…For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (Jn. 5:21,26)