How long will Christians wait for Jesus?

[brewer]

jesus ruins everything.

[The Grand Nudger]

Lets be fair to "jesus"...it's his followers that seem to be able to ruin anything.

For example, it was the failure of the prophecies contained in Matthew and other NT books, the nagging reality of the world not having come to an end, that touched off the passive aggressive early stages of an eschatological (and sometimes actual) war between preterism and futurism..which persists today between mainstream christians and "left behind" nutters, though it;s decidedly the left behind nutters clinging to fundamental beliefs as best they can, while their preterist brethren have found a way to square the failure of prophecy in the real world with the promise of glory in the hereafter.

Notable casualties of that internecine struggle include pauls heavenly christ and the idealist eschatology it represented, and the eventual victors were the historicists who pick and choose which prophecies have been fulfilled and which haven't yet been fulfilled. It's these folks, knowing nothing about how they came to believe what they believe, who imagine...generation after generation...that theirs is the last. That prophecy is finally, and perpetually, about to be fulfilled.

All of them, though, think that their belief is "in the bible", which, ofc, it isn't. All of the different takes came from power struggles among groups of decidedly less-than-divine individuals.

[Lek]

-and even though that never panned out, here people are, centuries later, hanging on the words as though they were credible.  / shrugs

What I'm saying is that the generation that witnesses these events will be the generation that will not pass away before his second coming.

[Nihilist Virus]

Matthew 24:30-34 says,

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.


So I'd say Jesus is about 2000 years late.

So you're saying that the writer of Matthew, who was writing this gospel after the passing of the apostles generation, is saying that the world should have already ended?  I really think that he would have to be smarter than that and make up something different.  In Matthew 24 Jesus describes events that the people of that time will witness and his coming will occur before the end of that generation.

Good point, but when can we get a Bible that says what it means? Why does it say this generation instead of that generation?

[Lek]

Good point, but when can we get a Bible that says what it means?  Why does it say this generation instead of that generation?

I know I'm probably giving you guys ammunition, but actually to get the best understanding you would need to learn ancient Greek and then interpret it directly from the language in which it was written.

[vorlon13]

Jesus's prediction failing to come to pass just takes a little retconning.

No big deal. If this was a fatal flaw for a religion, we wouldn't have Mormons.

[Godscreated]

When is not the question you should be asking. The question is will I be ready when He does. When Christ returns and if you're still alive it will be the worst day of your life. You will find you can't escape not even if you try and take your life. This is when you will see the power of the God you've tried to mock and I can promise you for those who are not ready it will be a very bad day.

GC

[Athene]

When is not the question you should be asking. The question is will I be ready when He does. When Christ returns and if you're still alive it will be the worst day of your life. You will find you can't escape not even if you try and take your life. This is when you will see the power of the God you've tried to mock and I can promise you for those who are not ready it will be a very bad day.

GC

C'mon, GC....I've got REAL LIFE problems! Do you really think I've got time to worry about made-up shit?
I'm totally confident that there are no invisible folks floating around sky with magical superpowers. And, that dead people don't come back to life after a few millennia. 

hehe... I'll take my chances.

[Edwardo Piet]

They won't give up until Christianity dies. And it will.

[Nay_Sayer]

One really wonders how long this can go on. Will there come a day when Christianity revises this claim, or will it simply let it go? Will they be eagerly awaiting him in the year 3000? If so, what about five thousand years from now? Ten thousand years?

I'm waiting as long as it takes.

So basically never then.