"When Will Jesus Return?" has two million views
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Q: When will Jesus return?
A: Jesus is not coming back.
Here’s why…
The bible makes it very clear, repeatedly, that Jesus vowed to return to earth, descending from the clouds with a host of angels, while his disciples, accusers and executioners were still living.
We find this promise in the gospels, the epistles of the apostle Paul, and the book of Revelation.
I will quote book, chapter and verse below.
Amusingly, by the time the last-written gospel, John, was published as we have it, the author knew these “prophecies” were utter nonsense, so he deleted them from his SILVER SURFER JESUS fan fiction. Suddenly, Jesus was the Greek LOGOS (the “Word”) and the preexistent Creator of the Universe, but he wasn’t going to return from the clouds as the other gospel writers had so earnestly and repeatedly promised.
However the authors of the other three gospels, and of Revelation and the Pauline epistles, made it very clear that Jesus was going to return before everyone died…
THE EVIDENCE
Jesus vowed that he would return during the lifetimes of his disciples. When this didn’t happen and Christians started dying, the apostle Paul had to “talk down” his followers, as he did in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.
This was disputed in previous comments, so I will give Jesus’s prophecy:
“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” (Matthew 24:34)
As I will demonstrate shortly, the gospels make it perfectly clear that “this generation” means the disciples standing before Jesus as he spoke.
Here is Matthew 24:34 in context, explaining what was to be fulfilled while the generation listening to Jesus was still alive:
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 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. (Matthew 24:29-34)
Matthew makes it clear that “this generation” means the disciples standing before Jesus:
“27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. 28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:27-28)
(I suspect “some” was an interpolation added after early christians began dying and Jesus had not returned as promised.)
Luke agrees:
“But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:27)
“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:32)
Mark agrees:
“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark 9:1)
“Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” (Mark 13:30)
According to the bible, Jesus told his accusers — the high priest Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin — that they would see his return:
“And ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14:62)
Revelation’s author agreed because he said “the time is at hand“ and that the horrors he predicted would “shortly come to pass” and that “every eye” of all people alive on earth at the time — including the Roman executioners who pierced and murdered Jesus — would see Jesus descend from the clouds. (Revelation 1:1-7, 22:10)
Nothing could be clearer, and it’s obvious the earliest Christians were expecting Jesus to return during their lifetimes, which is why Paul had to talk them down. And Paul himself echoed the claim that some Christians living at that time (i.e., “we”) would still be alive when Jesus returned. (1 Thessalonians 4:15, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52)
“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep [die] but we will all be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)
But of course they all did die without Jesus returning in power from the clouds with a host of angels, and every human eye seeing his return (which amusingly could only occur on a flat earth!).
To recap, the things to be fulfilled while the people of that generation were still alive included:The sun darkened.
The moon no longer shining.
Stars falling from the sky and the heavens shaken.
Jesus appearing in the clouds with power and great glory, to be seen by all the people of the (flat) earth.
The angels appearing with the great sound of a trumpet to gather the elect from every part of the earth.
Quite obviously, none of these things happened during the first century AD, when that generation was alive.
C. S. Lewis, arguably the greatest modern christian apologist, understood this very serious problem and called this false prophecy the most embarrassing thing in the bible. And that’s saying a mouthful because the bible is chock-full of embarrassing things, including talking donkeys, talking snakes, multi-headed sea dragons, Jesus murdering 2,000 innocent pigs to accommodate demons, a ludicrous ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, and (worst of all) a monstrous genocidal baby-killing god who condemns billions of human beings to a purposeless, infinitely cruel eternal hell, for guessing wrong about which religion to believe.
Amusingly, Jesus prophesied that Judas Iscariot would sit on a throne, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. (Luke 22:30, Matthew 19:28)
And while christian apologists frequently claim the loopy “transfiguration” fulfilled these prophecies, that is obviously not the case, for the following reasons:
Every eye did not see the transfiguration, only three disciples’ eyes.
Jesus did not descend from the clouds during the transfiguration.
There was not a single angel at the transfiguration, much less a host.
Jesus did not fulfill any of the major prophecies about the Messiah at the transfiguration. For instance, he did not rule Israel, or rule the world, or create world peace, or bring all the Jewish exiles back to Israel, or create universal worship of the “true god.”
The loopy transfiguration was not a real-world event, but a theological premise and zany allegory that Jesus was greater than the law (represented by Moses) and the prophets (represented by Elijah).
And while christian apologists often claim the “fig tree” was the creation of Israel as a state in 1948, that is incorrect for the following reasons:
The temple was the fruitless fig tree that Jesus referred to.
When the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, that was the sign that the temple could not bear fruit and had thus been cursed and rejected, and that the end times had arrived.
The destruction of the temple was the “sign” that the end times had arrived, for apocalyptic Jews.
A biblical generation was 40 years, so Jesus should have returned by 1988 if “this generation” began in 1948.
But of course the whole shebang is utter nonsense.
Another huge problem for christian apologetics is that we have a new testament full of blatant contradictions, obvious lies and outright forgeries. Wouldn’t the real god, if such a being exists, want us to have his own words from his own pen? Why don’t we have a single word written by Jesus himself?
Was the alleged Creator of the Universe all-knowing but illiterate? That seems very unlikely to me (not to mention very embarrassing).
Or was an all-powerful god unable to preserve any of the writings of Jesus? Also very unlikely (and very embarrassing).
We are left to conclude that either the all-knowing Creator of the Universe was not all-knowing because he didn’t know how to write, or that an all-powerful god was unable to preserve his own writings, leaving us with only the writings of human klutzes who couldn’t keep their stories straight, or con men who were making things up to suit their various agendas.
In conclusion, the bible is full of false prophecies and the authors of the new testament made Jesus a false prophet when they put such ludicrous predictions on his lips, turning a later-alleged “god” into their mouth puppet.
by Michael R. Burch
If god
is good
half the bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch
CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
Step one: Ignore that the bible repeatedly confesses that its “god” was a racist, sexist, homophobic serial mass-murderer of animals, children, toddlers, infants, babies, unborns and their mothers.
Step two: Accuse Jesus of being “one” with this hideously evil god.
Step three: Repeat this blasphemy constantly by saying “Jesus is god.”
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE COMMENTS
In the comments J.G. made an astute observation about christian apologetics. In my experience, christian apologetics consists of claiming everything christians consider “good” in the bible to be literal, but everything they consider embarrassing to be “metaphorical.” Thus the hogwash about Jesus being “born of a virgin” is literally true, but people being tortured with fire and brimstone in Revelation is metaphorical. Those christians who don’t deny evolution will claim the bible’s two contradictory creation accounts are metaphorical, while either denying or not understanding that trillions of animals suffering and dying before human beings existed does three devastating things to christian theology:
Multitudes of animals suffering and dying before human beings existed means Adam and Eve cannot be blamed for the “fall,” which in turn means the only possible “original sinner” would be the Creator, if such a being exists.
Paul’s “gospel” is completely undermined, because Paul said Jesus was a “second” or “last” Adam who came to “atone” for the “sin” of the first Adam.
Paul was lying about the source of his “gospel” because he claimed he received it from Jesus (i.e., from god), but of course the real god would have known that Adam and Eve were not real people, but myths.
I am always surprised by how little most christians understand about the bible and their religion.
#BIBLE #MRBBIBLE #MRBFALSE #MRBRETURN (IB)
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Congratulations Michael
HOLY MOLY, MIKE!