Many years ago, I read a book written by Jan Van Rijckenborgh, the former head of a small Dutch Rosicrucian organization (Lectorium Rosicrucianum). He was kind of a mysterious figure and a strong mystic. He wrote many books about the need of self-development and transformation. He mentioned a staged Return of Christ in his book Unmasking, published in 1958 (but written a couple of years earlier). He  talks about entities in a 'reflection-sphere' which is the realm where the deceased reside. In the natural order of things, the lower energy body of the deceased will dissolve too. But some of these entities do not want to evolve and rise to the higher spiritual planes. They need life energy to extend their stay in this reflection sphere. They need to get it from the living, and that is why they will stage a Return of Christ because this will engender a release of a lot of life-energy by those who will believe in it. These entities work together with certain people still in the physical body to create this Great Play.
Lectorium Rosicrucianum now has centers in many countries, and the book Unmasking should be available. However, there is only center that sells the book online: http://www.goldenrosycross.org.au/ . There is also a PDF version.
The following are quotes from Unmasking so you can make up your own mind. It is interesting that Van Rijckenborgh published this book in 1959. He must have had some good source of information, as some of the things he describes can be correlated to information that only recently has become widely known.
Comments in brackets are mine.

“There is going to be staged neither more or less than the Return of Christ, as we find it described in various apocalyptic prophesies. This performance will be put over with power and gigantic phenomena based on natural science.
The entire world will be affected by it, and no spot on this earth will be left untouched.
Everyone will see it with his own eyes, and all will experience it: “The Lord is coming in the clouds of the sky, with all His holy angels!”
The regimes of all countries will be interfered with and a world government instituted. The whole world be resound with the 'peace on Earth' motive.
Except for a few minor but fundamental details, it will be so perfectly 'real' that no doubt practically the whole of humanity will take the sham for the reality and react accordingly.
The details of these exceptions will be that, for instance, the wolf is not going to live on peaceful terms with the lamb; and the kid will not lie beside the leopard – unless both are made to do so by means of injections!
However, all mankind will gather in the places of worship for thanksgiving and prayer meetings...And meanwhile, the true Ekklesia-on-earth, who sees through the whole play its very incipience and refuses to be a party to it, will be abused and persecuted. And the multitude will jubilate at her seeming downfall.”
“By totally new means and directed from an hitherto unknown center-point, this great idea aims at the constitution of a theocratic world state encircling all countries, all peoples and all races, a state of peace exceeding by far the boldest expectations of communists, Bellamyists, socialists and all other idealists. A perfect heaven on earth will be the leading motive!”
“The one to which all really earth-minded souls will necessarily come is the institution of an all-embracing, truly theocratic world fascism.”
“The brotherhood of the reflection-sphere (where the deceased are who don't want to evolve) still have great power on earth, and have their settlements in the material sphere filled with numberless entities possessing their physical bodies. In other words, the 'ministry of propaganda' has the power and the ability to carry out all the phases of its program.”
“Some day in the near future, in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evening, people will be listening to their favorite radio programs, be they sermons, other speeches, plays or concerts.
At one of the high points of the broadcast, when the attention is supposed to be the greatest, the sound will suddenly fade away – become inaudible – and all listeners will hear a voice, a beautiful, deep, loving voice, announcing that there has been no interference at the broadcasting station, that the broadcast will resume very soon, but that is only a short interruption for a communication which is addressed to all in the name of god, and intended for all. It will be stated that the Great day of the Lord has come, the Day of the return of Christ, and that all the people are invited to prepare themselves for that day and hour.
This radio incident will take place at the same moment as regards all broadcasting stations then in operation.
The incident will last only a few minutes. And, in fact, the ordinary program will resume the next moment. Neither the preaching minister, the playing orchestra, nor the staff of the broadcasting station will know at the time what happened; for actually there will not be the least interference!
The, a little later, in all directions, people will be on the telephone, asking what was the matter and protesting in all keys! For, here and there, in many a living-room, someone will have had a fainting from fright.”...
A few days later, the phenomena will be repeated, with a similar message, and this time with much more success; for you can imagine that everyone is now glued to his radio! Communications from all parts of the world will confirm the fact that the same thing occurred again that the same message came through.”
“You know that a radio program is broadcast and received by means of electricity; their radiation waves have a certain length, according to mutual agreement. Well then, most wonderful and ingenious applications of electrotechnics make it possible to absorb , without impairment, the energy send out by a broadcasting station, in such a way that not the least energy or radiation
from the broadcasting station reaches the radio sets; whereas, at the same moment, the thus blocked broadcasting station can be imitated with another apparatus.
The entities, performing this work belong to certain orders or brotherhoods who have their domicile in the Polar regions, as, for instance and among others, in Greenland. These are entities of a male and female nature, of whom frequent mention will be made in the near future; for the mention of these orders will be used for the Great Play in very many ways, about which we shall inform you as fully as possible.
These people are masters of popular psychology and know better than anyone else how they will have to handle certain nations and races.
The machinery just mentioned, with which they will achieve their radio-effect, can rightly be called a combination of technics and magic. It is undoubtedly of a technical construction, but so extremely sensitive that it can be controlled and applied by the powers of trained and commanded will and thought. Therefore, you can fancy how, apart from the explained radio-effect, government and other authorities can also be influenced directly with the aid of this machinery. The more minds and hearts are captured by the psychological consequences of the radio-effect, after the first act of the great play, the more people will become will-less victims of the orders mentioned, with their magical-technical machinery.”
“After the strange and so-breathtaking radio message about 'the Day of the Lord' which has come, the Great Play will continue in producing atmospheric phenomena of a mass-enrapturing nature all over the world. All those who have been familiarized from childhood with the exoteric interpretation of the Holy Language of the Bible, and all those who have long forgotten this Language, and those who have misused this language or desecrated it, or can only scoff at it – they will all shudder and, in great terror and fear, rush to the churches and places of worship that they used to attend in the days of yore. There will not be enough room to seat them all!
Mass meetings will be organized which will be called 'humiliation assemblies'; millions will offer up supplications to the various deities for salvation at the eleventh hour, now that 'the Great day of the Lord' has come, and sense of sin has been tardy and weak. In this manner, the production of lightpower will be tremendous. And this will increase the strength of the hierarchy of the reflection-sphere.
What will happen next?
Above all metropolitan and housing centers, in all countries and all sections of the world, without a single exception, the atmospheric phenomena in question will be seen at set times, with steadily increasing frequency, finally even daily. People will think that heaven has opened! A great silence will come. The sky will be covered with beautiful blendings of pastel colors. Traffic will stop and all will look up.
Then mighty music will resound, heavenly singing will be heard, and faces will appear around One, who will be recognized by all as Jesus the Lord.
There will be a multitude which no one can count!”
“Following these powerful scenes of the Great Play, further developments are but a child's play, namely, the positive, actual appearance of the hierarchy already mentioned! They will come to the front and establish complete leadership in all countries of the world. And this is not only ecclesiastically, but also politically, in order to institute, a would-be Christ-theocracy, carried through and made concrete as a Great Play.
Technically, magically, scientifically and theologically, the brotherhood mentioned is fully up to such a task; and, after the thorough, magical preparation described, mankind as a whole will be mere puppets in the hands of the said brotherhood.''

It is also interesting to note that Van Rijckenborgh also predicted that “At about the end of this century, to be exact in the year 2001, the epoch of the Great Pyramid ends. Then it will not become a thing of the past, a monument which reminds one of former times, but then it immediately begins anew from the bottom up. Because there are intercosmic currents and radiations, which have an orbit of 6300 years.” Whatever he means by that, a lot of change has happened since that year, both worldly events as an immense growth in people's consciousness. He explains that if humanity reacts in a positive way then mankind can walk a new Path of Liberation, if it makes the right choice.