Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 18)
Part Two – The Timing of the Second Coming
Chapter 2 – What the Gospels Say
The Consequences of Rejecting Jesus’ Timetable
If someone does not accept the timetable for the Second Coming Jesus gave, then elaborate schemes of dates and events have to be established and verses have to be quoted out of context and given new meaning they never originally held in order to produce a teaching on the subject. For example, some have taken the verse “of that day or hour no one knows” out of
context and presented it as if Jesus was saying no one could have any idea when the Second Coming would occur, when all He meant was that the exact day or moment could not be pinpointed. To say that no one could know when, is to contradict the clear and comprehensive answer Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 24-25.
If you understand what the Second Coming was about, you realize that a pinpoint date was not necessary. I cannot give you a pinpoint date for when He came (though, of course, there is one) and I am not the least bit interested in determining it. The important thing is to know the sun has risen, not to be able to quote the exact moment it broke the horizon (though, of course,
there was such a precise moment).
“Prophecy experts” also do mental gymnastics with the word “generation” saying that it means something other than its plain sense. For instance, they say it means “race” and therefore Jesus was saying the Jewish race would not pass away until all these things took place, which would render all that he said prior to this as utter nonsense. For if it could occur anytime the Jewish race was in existence, why did He give them all these signs to watch for? Why didn’t He just say, “You can’t really know when – it could be over 2,000 years from now”? But everything in His answer indicates that the events under consideration would take no longer than a lifetime. There is no “and to your seed after you” language like the Bible uses when God’s instructions extend beyond a generation, as they do in the Law of Moses. In this context, to say the word “generation” means “race” would also make the statement itself say almost the exact opposite of itself. Think about it. “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place,” would then become to their ears, “This generation may very well pass away before all these things take place.” Ridiculous.
Other teachers, recognizing these absurdities, seize on the word “this” for
reinterpretation. They say that there is a generation in which all these things would come to pass but Jesus was not promising it would be the generation of His listeners. Therefore, each generation should look for the signs because it might be the one generation in which Jesus would come. Apart from the violence this does to the obvious sense of Jesus’ words, the approach falls
flat on its face because the disciples’ generation was the only one which did see all the signs fulfilled, for theirs is the only generation in which the temple to which Jesus pointed was destroyed. No other generation can see that sign fulfilled. The temple was standing as He spoke. It fell just as He said it would. All historians, religious and secular, confirm it happened in 70 A.D. How then can anyone stand up today and say, “We may very well be the generation of which Jesus spoke”?
I certainly mean no disrespect to those who promote these tortured interpretations and unjustified timelines for the Second Coming. I simply say that there is no reason to take Jesus’ straightforward answer to His disciples’ straightforward questions in some non-straightforward way. Our choice is simple: believe Jesus’ straightforward timetable or believe someone else’s
convoluted timetable.
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