Today on Easter Sunday, millions of pastors around the world will be delivering sermons on the last hours of the crucifixion and the wonderous resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians will hear the familiar stories of their savior appearing to the disciples and the women at the tomb, and the message will most likely conclude with a reassuring reminder of Jesus' promise to return again. To believers, the second coming of Christ heralds the end of the world, the judgment of non-Christians, the punishment of Satan and his demons, and the inheritance of the faithful into the kingdom of Heaven. Yet one interesting detail that will probably be omitted from these sermons is the expected imminence of Christ's return, not for the near future, but during the time of his first followers. According to many writers and figures of the New Testament, the second coming was already bearing down upon them by the time of the first and second centuries.

I. Jesus Predicts His Return

Taken at face value, these verses seem to clearly suggest that the apocalypse and the second coming would occur within just a few decades of Jesus' time. Luke 21:25-32 echoes these same predictions. However, Christian apologists are quick to cleverly interpret these passages as referring to a generation of the distant future, not the generation Jesus was speaking to when he made his predictions. Mental gymnastics are indeed helpful to those who are unwilling to admit to any possibility of failed prophecies in their messiah, but there are other verses which are a lot more difficult to brush away.

This verse apparently suggests that Jesus would return before the disciples could complete their missionary work in Israel. Most devout Christians will point out the ambiguity of the ending portion of the verse though, claiming that it does not necessarily refer to the second coming. Yet it is difficult to ascertain the probability of another interpretation when the surrounding context involves Christ's instruction to his disciples on how to deal with persecution in his absence. Could the verses be referencing the ascension instead of the second coming? The disciples had not even started their evangelism until after the resurrection, and it is unlikely that they were persecuted much before then. Some bibles have a footnote for Matthew 10:23 which implies that it is a prediction of the destruction of the Jewish temple, but how is that even slightly represented in the phrase, "the Son of Man comes"? To my knowledge, no account exists that claims Jesus personally returned to demolish the temple or witness its destruction.

Here we have a practically irrefutable example of Jesus' belief that he would return to judge the world within a few decades of his own lifetime. The passage refers to Christ coming back with angels and dispensing rewards, two elements that are not part of any resurrection story. It clearly states that some of the people standing there in Jesus' audience would not die before his second coming. Friends, approximately 1,975 years have passed since the alleged crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and there is still no sign of his return.

II. The Apostles Predict His Return

Just as we get the impression from Jesus that his second coming was to be very soon, we also find similar sentiments among his apostles. In James 5:8, the apostle James advises his fellow believers to "be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near." Paul explains further in 1 Corinthians 7:29,

Do these verses use language that we would expect of a warning of events nearly 2,000 years into the future?

Christians can attempt to rationalize these verses however they choose, but the evidence demands a verdict. The authors of the New Testament would probably not have expressed such a dire sense of urgency over the impending return of their messiah if they had known that over a thousand and nine-hundred years would pass without Christ's triumphant second coming.

III. Christians Defend His Return

One way that Christians attempt to resolve the problem of Jesus' immediate return as told in the New Testament is by claiming that the authors of the bible were simply writing under the influence of God, and to God "a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day" [2 Peter 3:8]. Yet this still doesn't quite explain or excuse God inspiring his apostles to give a false sense of urgency to the early Christians.

Additionally, the popular cop-out response of 2 Peter 3:8 is often invoked without any real basis. There is no criteria given for determining which passages dealing with time refer to literal, human time and which ones refer to 'God time'. Were the nine hours of Jesus' crucifixion really nine-hundred years? Could the six day creation in the book of Genesis be metaphor for fourteen billion years? The trouble is that even in the original Hebrew and Greek, many of the passages concerning the duration of time utilize words that denote literal interpretations, not metaphorical or symbolic ideas of thousand year long "days". Jesus himself confirms that a day is 12 hours long in John 11:9. 2 Peter 3:8 most likely refers to how God experiences the passage of time, not how he deceptively misrepresents time just because he can.

Another common excuse for Christians is found in this section of scripture where Jesus says that no one except God the Father knows the time of the second coming:

If Jesus is really stating that he does not know when he will return, what is he thinking by predicting his second coming anyway? Shortly before the statement of Matthew 24:36, Jesus tells of the signs to accompany his return, and mentions that the generation hearing his words will not pass away until he comes back (verses 29-34). Was Jesus mistaken about the generation not passing away or was he mistaken about not knowing when he would return? Either way, these verses pose some serious problems for Christians who are eagerly anticipating the literal second coming of their savior.

One other bit of interesting information is the absence of any reference to a second coming in the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Nowhere does it state that the Jewish messiah would need to make two trips to Earth in order to accomplish his divine mission, yet this is exactly what Jesus supposedly has to do. Assuming that a historical Jesus Christ did exist, perhaps his followers realized that his death came too soon for him to have been the promised messiah. This might have led them to concoct the resurrection and the second coming myth, so to allow their deceased savior to fulfill the remaining messianic prophecies from beyond the grave. He had to make two trips or else he couldn't have truly been the messiah in any sense!

IV. Signs of Impending Doom or Salvation

Can you imagine Christians being very devout believers if Jesus had actually told them, 'I'll be back to see you all again in a few thousand years'? The Old Testament even describes the impatience of the Israelites after they had supposedly seen miracle after miracle during the exodus out of Egypt, only to turn to idolatry when Moses spent a few hours too long on Mount Sinai. Perhaps there is some strategic value in making every generation of Christians believe that the second coming is due to happen at any moment. It keeps their eyes on the prize, so to speak, and possibly makes it easier to gain converts when you can tell them that the world is about to end soon and your messiah will come to judge those who don't belong to his one true religion. A very useful way to do this would be to make the signs of the second coming applicable to all generations.

There have been wars, conflicts, and disasters long before the bible days and there will continue to be many more. These things are commonalities for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is religion.

Jesus himself came to people declaring that he was God incarnate. There's nothing that unique about someone pretending to be a deity or a famous leader/influential figure. There were attention-craving individuals doing this before Jesus and long after Jesus, to the present day.

In every location and time period, there are at least a few people who perceive their generation negatively. All of these signs are purely subjective and relative to the culture and the era. People existed who fit ALL of these descriptions long before Christianity and there have been people like them in each and every decade following the authorship of 2 Timothy.

Most, if not all, of the prophecies regarding the end times are vague and ambiguous enough to apply well to any generation of humans in any part of the world. We are a species known for conflict and selfishness, and it doesn't take a 'prophet of God' or a 'son of God' to realize that. The easiest way to tell just how nebulous these predictions really are is to do a little research on the number of times that Christians have interpreted their bibles as prophesying a particular date for the apocalypse - a date that later came and went without any fuss. A fascinating compilation of 220 apocalyptic predictions may be found at www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm.

V. Why the Rush?

There is an overwhelming market for the second coming today, demonstrated most prominently by the tremendously successful book and movie series Left Behind, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The appeal of the apocalypse is rooted in our simplest human desires and feelings. We fear the unknown, we fear death, we long to see immoral behavior punished, we idealize peace and comfort into an entire afterlife, and so on and so on. There is a good chance that the New Testament authors knew these things to some extent when they wrote their predictions of the second coming. They chose to stress the imminence of Christ's return to exacerbate and emphasize the importance of their religion.

Fear is a compelling tool, and if the looming threat of Judgment Day cannot persuade non-believers to mend their wicked ways and get right with God, it can at least provide escapism and justification for some Christians to behave more radically, thinking that their ticket to paradise is just around the corner. Speaking from my own past experience as a believer, it is indeed exciting to contemplate that your redemption may be merely a day away, or a week away, or even a month away. It gives one that sense of urgency about everything: to minister more openly to your unsaved friends, to shun the temporal things of this world for the ever-approaching things of eternity, and to generally put your religion above every other person or thing in terms of importance. Like I said, the idea of the immediate return of Jesus is a very useful strategy for keeping people faithful and for spreading Christianity.

Like the early Christians, believers in our modern world anticipate the second coming within their own lifetimes. Although many of them will admit that it could happen at any moment, most of them are either convinced or wishful that it will take place soon, so that they can bear witness to it. These convictions help to keep the believer firm in their faith and largely uncritical of it, they help to instill fear and uncertainty in non-believers to prime them for conversion, and they help to 'glue together' the messianic prophecies Jesus had yet to fulfill before his untimely death. However, if you intend on holding out for the real return of Jesus, you may be disappointed to know that even he and his disciples seemed to believe that he would have been back by now.

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