Jesus told his disciples, as recorded by Matthew at 10:23, 16:27-28 and 24:34, that he would return before some of his listeners, ‘this generation’, had passed away.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He is the unchanging One, the only constant in this crazy world. The alpha and omega, the first and the last!
His integrity is critical. If he made one mistake or false prophecy, everything else he said would be suspect.
The Bible defines a false prophet as one who prophesies events that do not come to pass. If someone prophesied that a specific event/s would occur at a specific date or time and that time were to come and go without the event happening, he could legitimately be labelled as a false prophet.
But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name, a word which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How will we recognise the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ When the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not happen or come true, that is the thing that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you are not to be afraid of him. Deuteronomy 18:20ff.
Jesus made many, many promises to his disciples. Some of these promises were prophecies about his second coming. For example:
When you are persecuted in one town, flee to the next. I tell you the truth, the Son of Man will return before you have reached all the towns of Israel. Matthew 10:23
That was part of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples. And that happened!
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father and will judge all people according to their deeds. And I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” Matthew 16:27-28.
That happened too! And then Jesus, after pronouncing the woes upon the leaders of Jerusalem, said:
“Therefore, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers of religious law. But you will kill some by crucifixion, and you will flog others with whips in your synagogues, chasing them from city to city. As a result, you will be held responsible for the murder of all godly people of all time—from the murder of righteous Abel to the murder of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you killed in the Temple between the sanctuary and the altar. I tell you the truth, this judgment will fall on this very generation. Matthew 23:34-36. We know all those things actually happened –exactly as we read in the New Testament! They are history.
And then only days before his passion
I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene until all these things take place. Matthew 24:34.
And yes, all those things Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24 were in the near future, but they happened in the 1st century! All of them! And before his generation had died out!
How can we know this?
Read Paul’s 1st letter to the Thessalonians 1, verse 10 written about AD 65, certainly within ‘this generation’:
And they speak of how you are looking forward to the coming of God’s Son from heaven—Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. He is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgment.
What judgment did Paul mean? These believers suffered persecution from the unbelieving Jews in their community. So we read 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16:
And then, dear brothers, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews. For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus. Now they have persecuted us, too. They fail to please God and work against all humanity as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last..
Ask yourself this question: if those Thessalonians were wrong by expecting Jesus to come within their lifetime, why didn’t Paul correct them? Why didn’t he write to them saying, ‘no, you’ve got it wrong, Jesus won’t be coming for a long, long, time!’
But Paul did not correct them. Instead, he continued to encourage them as he wrote this letter to encourage them and then followed it with another letter, which we call Second Thessalonians, with further encouragements.
So why do you, dear reader, still expecting Jesus to return soon or in the future? That is logically impossible if you trust Paul’s letters to be the word of God. Paul reports similarly in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 10, 2 Corinthians, Philippians 2 and in his other letters.
And then there are what Peter wrote and James as well. They all expected Jesus to come very soon.
I know it is so difficult to throw off false teaching that has taken such a hold on Christians everywhere, such that people, including theologians, call Paul into question, saying that Paul was just wrong.
But why are the apostles of Christ, men filled with the Holy Spirit, the ones who are wrong? Why is it that we can be persuaded to think that Paul and the others were in error, rather than to question our own underlying premise of what we have been taught?
Who is it that is wrong – the apostles or the teaching of men that we have been exposed to?
What is more probable: that our understanding is wrong or that Paul’s was right? And if not only Paul was wrong, but that Jesus must have lied to his disciples living in the first century, that he was coming back soon, before their generation had all gone.
Or if men teach that he was mistaken, as C S Lewis did when writing in his book ‘The World’s Last Night’, are they then not anti-Christ?
Where do you stand? What do you think?
Ian Thomson 