How do Christians cope with Jesus not coming back in 2000 years when he said he was gonna be back really soon
How do Christians cope with Jesus not coming back in 2000 years when he said he was gonna be back really soon
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Talk religion
How do Christians cope with Jesus not coming back in 2000 years when he said he was gonna be back really soon
Do you mean in revelation? Which instance?
>Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand
>Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
>Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom
>Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
And many more
Christians will twist the language all kinds of ways to alter the meaning of what Jesus is saying here. Sometimes they’ll say that Jesus wasn’t talking about the generation he was speaking to but about some other generation, 2000+ years later. Or they'll say that by “generation” he meant something other than “generation” like race, or nation. All these conclusions would be impossible for someone to arrive to just by taking the words at face value, but Christians have to invent their own meaning to avoid coming to the conclusion that Jesus was a failed prophet. The problem is if they can take Jesus words here and twist them to suit their own beliefs, then anyone can take anything Jesus says in the Bible and claim he meant something else. There’s no reason to take the Bible literally in any way then.
"This generation" is literal. "The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give it's light, the stars will be falling from heaven" is apocalyptic.
They cope by saying “generation” means the entire species or some bull shit
Christ established the kingdom of hand at His death & resurrection. The living are part of the kingdom of heaven.
I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
That's even worse than "I'll be back later".
None of those say "soon"
The "this generation" prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD
"At hand" means "close in time; about to happen."
>None of those say "soon"
Ok? You're just being pedantic. Synonyms for soon and context clues exist.
>The "this generation" prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD
When was the gospel preached to all nations? When did all the tribes on Earth mourn and see the Son of Man coming in power and glory? When were the elect gathered from the four winds?
Pentecost, 70 AD and ongoing
>Pentecost, 70 AD
This is an insane cope. No one preached the Gospel to the native Americans before 70 AD and we have 0 accounts of anyone saying their entire tribe mourned (and all their neighboring tribes) and saw the Son of Man coming in power and glory.
>ongoing
The verse says "until all these things have happened". It can't be ongoing.
What verse?
Matthew 24:34
I was in mark 13
I'm not following the criticism. If the elect are still being gathered, then "this generation" can't have passed away?
I grant that v 31 is included in the "all these things" of v 34, but it's simply eisegesis to say that "gather his elect" means reach the Amerindians and Koreans and everyone else prior to the passing of that generation.
The way I see it, the figurative trumpet has sounded and "they" started to gather the elect from "the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other". This is just a way to say "everywhere". If I said "food banks will feed the hungry on Christmas", does that necessarily mean every hungry person will be fed before Christmas ends, and nobody will be hungry after Christmas?
>I was in mark 13
It's the same in Matthew, Mark, and Luke
>If the elect are still being gathered, then "this generation" can't have passed away?
So are the apostles still alive somewhere? What does "pass away" mean?
>but it's simply eisegesis to say that "gather his elect" means reach the Amerindians and Koreans and everyone else prior to the passing of that generation.
I wasn't saying that the elect were gathered from there, just that the Gospel was preached their because that is one of the prophecies.
>the figurative trumpet has sounded and "they" started to gather the elect from "the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other".
Then that means all the other prophecies have happened as well because the verse says "until ALL THESE THINGS have happened"
>how can they reflect a vain hope amongst the early Christians Christ will return in their lifetime?
"Biographies written by non-eyewitnesses decades after the person died have 0 truth to them at all. We can't know anything about a historical person unless the biography is written contemporaneously by eyewitnesses."
You aren't understanding me
You have no argument
He was talking about the generation of 1914
No, it is being fulfilled today.
It hasn't been 2000 years. The parousia happened in 1914
Jesus is magic
>But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
>But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.[
2 Peter 3:8-10
Jesus actually coming back would be compromising for the meaning narrative, so the answer is: very easily.
Only earth has a concept of time. When "The End" comes, no one will be ready. Only those who saw the prophecy in the scriptures and kept preparing themselves. Even like the days of Noah. Only 8 people were saved on the final day of the flood, despite being warned decades in advance.
Please have mercy on all of us Jesus Christ. Especially me. Have mercy on those who love us porn.
Only mercy and faith can save us. No one is truly worthy of dying and going straight to Heaven.
So now we're back to believing the noah boat of incest story is true
Yes. Even science agrees with a great flood that once occurred. How else do you explain whole entire bodies of the Easter Island statutes being dug up. All this time, it was just the heads that we saw. Now, it's whole entire bodies of these sculptures being discovered under all this mud. The only thing that could cause this is a flood.
Archaeologists don't just dig shit like this up out of the blue. Stuff like this have to be BURIED first. The one thing that can cause this is a flood. All sorts of ancient civilizations were buried by way of water. Even freaking Atlantis.
Easter Island wasn't even populated until ~1200AD
>Your dad will be back from the gas station real soon Timmy, he's just buying all the cigarettes so he doesn't have to leave again
This shit really is an instance of atheist cucks' wanting to have their cake and eat it too. If the Gospels are not early documents, neither produced by eyewitnesses nor with their insight, decades after the crucifixion of Jesus and after the destruction of the Temple, how can they reflect a vain hope amongst the early Christians Christ will return in their lifetime? It's nonsense.
Jesus: brb guys
Last online 2000 years ago
>no argument
kys
The gospels are early and were within the range for living witnesses to still be around, this is the mainstream view. You think modern scholarship assumes Matthew was written in 150AD or something wtf?
>Mark (70AD) same year as temple (70AD)
>Matthew borrows heavily from Mark (85AD) and Q and other sources
>verse in question in Matthew could have been written earlier than 85AD
>crucifixion (30-36AD)
>at most 85-30=55 years
So yes living witnesses were around when it was written, and it turned out to be false. These are both true.
They will ignore the fact that it was a consensus among early Christians that Jesus would be coming back very soon. Paul even had to reassure his anxious fellow Christians to be patient since the second coming was only 2 weeks away. If they knew it was really over 2000 years away they would have reverted to mainstream Judaism.
He did, in 70 A.D.
Everyone needs to be preached to first. There are still too many uncontacted peoples who haven't heard the Good News.