Poll for Christians: Are the End Times imminent?

[Godscreated]

Since I'm guilty of the OP, I should make my views known on the subject at some point.

I did not want to say anything when I posted the topic because I hoped to get people's opinions rather than a reaction to anything which I wrote.

The response from Christians has been underwhelming. There was one post which cited the rebirth of Israel after 2000 years supposedly fulfilling biblical prophecy as a reason for believing that the end times would occur at least within the poster's lifetime.

When I asked for a specific reference to the bible passage there was no response. I don't think there is any such prophecy, and I'm not being fussy about mentioning 2000 years. Israel was repeatedly conquered in ancient times, by the Assyrians, by the Egyptians, by the Babylonians and by the Macedonian Greek successors to Alexander. There are some texts in Isaiah (which was written by at least 3 different authors) suggesting a resurgence of Israel after a defeat, but nothing that would tie the words to the modern re-emergence of Israel as a nation.

As a skeptic my own views are that there are no end times in the sense of a final judgment of God, though it is just possible that we will destroy our own world by causing further climate change.

The question I am going to look at is how Christians came to believe in a final judgment.

The short answer is that they inherited the idea from the Jews in that era. Judaism in the 1st century BCE was rife with apocalyptic speculations about the end of the world, a time when God would finally punish the evildoers and reward the good people.

John the Baptist was an apocalyptic prophet foretelling the imminent end of the world: "Repent ... the axe is laid at the root of the tree."

So was Jesus. Quite simply he believed that the world would end within that generation. This was first realized by Albert Schweitzer way back in 1906. Today it is not the only view but it is certainly the dominant one among NT scholars who are not tied to a belief in biblical inerrancy.

It's right there in black and white in the bible for anyone to read.

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matt 16:28, repeated in Mark 9 and Luke 9)

It is plainly about the final judgment, and Jesus asserts that it will happen while some of his audience are still living. C.S. Lewis called it the most embarrassing verse in the bible with good reason.

Another verse comes in as a close second, although Christians try to wiggle out of the obvious meaning. In Matthew 24 Jesus gives an apocalyptic discourse. He mentions the destruction of the Temple, but it is impossible to claim that the prophecy was fulfilled in 70 CE when the Romans destroyed the Temple, for he goes on to give signs of the end which have never happened "‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky." He rushes on to what is clearly supposed to be the end of the world.

Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

And when is this supposed to happen? Jesus plainly says:

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (Matt 24:30, repeated in Mark 13 & Luke 21))

Of course the traditional wiggle is to claim that here generation does not mean generation but race or nation, so it supposedly means that Israel will not disappear until all these things have happened.

It's a very feeble argument born of desperation. For one thing there is a different Greek word genos which is commonly used to mean race or nation. The Greek word genea used by Jesus means "generation" in the vast number of instances, that is, "the sum total of those born at the same time, expanded to include all those living at a given time" or "the time of a generation." These definitions are taken from Arndt-Gingrich, the definitive lexicon of NT Greek. Genea is used once, not in the NT but in Josephus, to mean the descendants of a common ancestor, a clan. However, Arndt-Gingrich definitely assigns the use in Matt 24 to the meaning generation, the people living at one time.

It makes no sense to say that genea means the nation of Israel. What is plainly demanded by the context is an indication of the time when this will happen, not to the day or hour, but approximately when. Saying that Israel will still exist as a nation says exactly nothing about when the end will come.

Other passages also indicate an end within Jesus' own generation.

The next one is a real shocker. Jesus sends out the 12 disciples to preach and heal and he tells them "Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes." (Matt 10:23) The coming of the Son of Man is the Last Judgment. NB I do not think the whole passage in Matthew 10 authentically reflects what Jesus said. Much of it seems to reflect a later time in the life of the church when "you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles." However, either way this is a problem for biblical inerrantists.

Finally, at the trial before the Sanhedrin Jesus tells the High Priest "you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right side of the Almighty and coming on the clouds of heaven!" (Matt 26:64) This is a prophecy of the end, and he says the High Priest standing before him will live to see it.

Jesus thought the end would come in his time. Paul thought the end would come in his time. Of course he is temporally close enough to Jesus that it would count as the same generation. In his earliest writing Paul assumes that he will be alive "on the day the Lord comes." (1 Thess 4:15)

So where do all these post-biblical prophecies of the end times come from. We could probably find one for virtually every decade of Christian history. Some notable ones are Tertullian and the Montanists ca 180 CE, the German Anabaptists at the time of the Reformation, William Miller and the Great Disappointment in the 1840s, the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1914, Hal Lindsay's apocalypse industry starting in the 1970s with ever-changing dates, Harold Camping in 2011, and so on.

I believe most of these people were sincere. They responded to the urgency of Jesus' preaching, and since they could not imagine that their divine savior had made such a colossal mistake, they transferred the urgency to their own times, and began to look for cock-eyed signs of the end. In this case, he who seeks will definitely find—every time.

Your funny, you know nothing about scriptures, no wonder you're an xpastor I bet your church tossed you. I haven't the time to answer these absurd statements at this time I will after Christmas if I remember, time for God and family.