Friday, 6 August 2010
Morning Scepticism: 2nd Coming
Jesus was supposed to have died nearly 2000 years ago, since then there have been those predicting his second coming. Even these days people are still predicting Jesus will return with many dates of the end times still flying right by with the world still in-tact. At what point will people just give up on the idea and get on with their lives?
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The bible specifically states that none shall know the time of His coming.
Matthew 16:28 & 24:1-34 appears to me to suggest otherwise. But I'm not really interested in the fulfilment of biblical revelation, rather the futility of waiting so very long. At what point will people give up? 500 more years? 1,000? 2,000? 5,000? When is the thought that Jesus is not going to return be entertained in a substantive way?
I'm not asking to mock, I'm genuinely curious. When would be enough time?
> When is the thought that Jesus is not going to return be entertained in a substantive way?
I would think at about the same point that Christianity dies as it is a rather central belief. Exactly how he comes back is debated quite a lot in Christian circles but Him coming back isn't.
More specifically, Jesus will come back when God's plans for the world are complete.
Matthew 24 and in particular verses 36 for the time and 14 for the reason for when it will happen. So at least from those verses you will never know when it will happen and it is determined to happen when God's plans are completed.
The length of the wait is really immaterial. The bible doesn't really rest on when it is going to happen, only that it will happen so the wait could be 10,000 years or 10 million years. I would hazard a guess as say that it would be in the thousands of years though.
I guess from my perspective it would seem that there's no way of ever knowing if you're wrong, and there's little utility in such a belief. No way of knowing if you're chasing a dream or if it is indeed real.
Not really in the slightest. When it happens it will be rather obvious (of course) and perhaps depending on what view you take it can be predicted somewhat but really, that is a belief taken pretty well on faith.
As it is going to happen in the future it is a tad hard to predict. You could be pretty confident of say the heat death of the universe but until you actually get there you can't be absolutely certain.
What does certainty have to do with it though? Perhaps that's where I lose the ability to understand, I just don't get how people can be certain that such an event is going to happen. What's the foundation for that certainty?
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