Jesus came back within the generation of his peers!
Please look up and study very carefully Matthew 24 :32–34.
And when you’ve studied this passage carefully, perhaps you will come to a different opinion when you can understand that Jesus came back within the lifetime of many of his contempories.
Was Jesus mistaken? The esteemed writer C S Lewis said Jesus was mistaken! Jesus did not come back as he said (See his book “The World’s Last Night”). That is also the view of many liberal scholars and Islamic writers. This discredits Jesus. They fail to look at the rest of the New Testament.
Christ has already come back long ago. He came at the ‘end of the age’ i.e., the end of the Jewish (Mosaic) age, the end of the Old Covenant. It was NOT the end of the world or the end of history. It was the end of Judaism. Jesus came when Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Temple were utterly destroyed (the great tribulation). It was a divine visitation.
This is just unbelief period, plain and simple. This unbelief is so dishonouring of our Lord. it must break his heart. Of course, he is so forgiving. That’s amazing.
Let’s think about Peter, James and John listening to Jesus, when He spoke of the sign of Jesus’ coming:
30 And then at last, the sign that the Son of Man is coming will appear in the heavens, and there will be deep mourning among all the peoples of the land. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with the mighty blast of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen ones from the four winds—from the end of the sky to the other. 32 Now learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branches bud and its leaves begin to sprout, you know that summer is near. 33 In the same way, when you see all these things, you can know his return is very near, right at the door. 34 I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene until all these things take place. (Matthew, 24:30-34)
How did these disciples and other apostles such as the apostle Paul respond to this information? That’s very easy! We can tell how they responded by their writings in the NT. They wrote unaminously of Jesus’ coming using terms like “right at the door,” “soon,” “near” and “at hand”. These do not mean 2000 years.
Right?
The first believers “waited eagerly” for his appearing (1 Cor 1:7-8, Gal 5:5 , Phil 3:20, 2 Tim 4:8, Heb 9:26-28).
Question: But could the disciples have possibly thought that by ‘generation’ Jesus meant something else far into the future, like some today who twist the scriptures saying that ‘generation’ here meant ‘race’ (the Jewish race) or others that say that by ‘generation’ Jesus meant some future generation who would see the signs of the end. No!
How can I say that? Because they took his words plainly and seriously as we can see in the rest of the New Testament!
Let God be true and every man a liar (Rom 3:4). Truth matters, evidence matters. We have been told a terrible lie. How can we behave so unfaithfully, ignoring what Jesus actually said?
Have you been brainwashed, deceived, indoctrinated? People will believe whatever they hear and do whatever they’re told by famous commentators, commentaries, or pastors. They have all been groomed by ‘dispensationalism,’ and they will follow that to the edge of a cliff. If you’re still oblivious to the fact that you’ve been brainwashed into some sort of cult, it’s probably because you’ve already been indoctrinated.
Time to wake up. It’s time to stop waiting for the ‘rapture’. Time to spread the word of God.
Ian Thomson 