This article is very brief.
Following my post about the End please read some additional exciting remarks.
Please study these words Jesus said to the disciples in the Olivet Discourse:
But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. Mat 24 13-14.
The word for ‘world’ that Jesus used here is oikoumene. It’s meaning is found in Luke 2:1 where we read that Caesar Augustus sent a decree to tax the whole world (oikoumene).
This cannot mean the whole planet! For Jesus and all Jews it can only refer to where Rome was ruling. By AD70 the gospel had certainly been preached throughout the whole Roman Empire.
How do we know that? Paul many times declared this had happened (see e.g., Rom 10:18, 16:26; Col 1:6, 23).
Who is the audience here? The disciples of course, Peter, James and John, who were present then. Jesus’ words will be fulfilled sometime in the first century. Mat 24:32-35. He was not warning us, right?
Now there are two very important things here:
Firstly, Jesus said the one who endures to the end will be saved. He was warning them about the trials they and others would experience so they would not perish.
Then those who endued to the end would be saved. That can only mean the end would come within their lifetime, right?
Secondly, Jesus plainly told them when the End would come. It would come when the gospel of the kingdom ‘would be preached in the whole world’.
If the End has come 2000 years ago, it logically follows that the second coming of Jesus has already taken place!
Prove me wrong please.
Ian Thomson 