Has every generation of Christians been wrong about the Second Coming being 'soon' — and what does that say about the prophecies themselves?

• O

  Omar1mo ago

  I was a devout end-times obsessive for about fifteen years. Read every book, watched every documentary, had a whiteboard in my living room with a timeline on it. One day my daughter asked me why I never talked about what she'd be like when she grew up. That question wrecked me. I've been in recovery from apocalyptic thinking ever since.

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• R

  Ravi1mo ago

  Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour. INCLUDING HIM, apparently (Mark 13:32). So why do we have an entire Christian industrial complex built around pinpointing the timeline He said was unknowable? I genuinely want someone to explain this to me.

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• R_

  Riley _x1mo ago

  My grandmother was absolutely certain the Rapture was happening before she died. She died at 91. Her grandmother was certain too. Her grandmother before that was certain during the Civil War. At some point this is just a family tradition of being wrong.

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• S

  Sam1mo ago

  I grew up in a church where we genuinely weren't encouraged to save for retirement because the end was so close. My parents are in their 60s with almost nothing set aside. The theology of imminence has real, material, devastating consequences for real families. This isn't just abstract debate.

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• T_

  Taylor _x1mo ago

  Can we talk about how the obsession with end times has made huge swaths of the church completely passive about environmental care, poverty, systemic injustice? Why fix the world if it's burning down in ten years? The eschatology shapes the ethics. And right now the eschatology is producing people who just don't care.

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• T2

  Theo 211mo ago

  The fact that Jesus said even HE didn't know the hour but the Father alone does... and then Christians built an entire cottage industry around calculating it... is genuinely one of the most audacious theological moves in church history. We looked the Son of God in the face and said 'we've got this one.'

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• DS

  Drew S.1mo ago

  My entire denomination treats the Scofield Reference Bible like it's basically a 67th book of the Bible. When I started asking questions about where these ideas came from historically, I was told I was 'being deceived.' That tells you everything.

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• M

  Marco1mo ago

  Two thousand years of 'any day now' and counting. At what point does the church just admit that maybe we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to timing?

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• M

  Morgan1mo ago

  What gets me is that Jesus' own answer to the disciples asking about timing in Acts 1 was essentially 'not your business, go do the work.' And we have spent 2,000 years doing exactly the thing He redirected us away from. Imagine what we could have done with all that energy.

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• NT

  Nina T.1mo ago

  Every time a deadline passes, the goalposts move. Every. Single. Time. That's not prophecy being fulfilled. That's motivated reasoning with infinite flexibility.

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• Q

  Quinn1mo ago

  ^ This right here. I know people who didn't pursue careers, didn't go to college, didn't make long-term plans because 'what's the point, Jesus is coming back.' That's not faith. That's a failure of pastoral responsibility.

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• R_

  Ravi _x1mo ago

  I think we need to separate three questions that always get collapsed: 1) Is Jesus returning? (Yes, Scripture is clear.) 2) Is it soon? (Unknown, unknowable.) 3) Has the church handled prophetic teaching responsibly? (Largely, no.) We can be biblically confident about 1, honest about 2, and repentant about 3.

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  Honestly, the repeated failed predictions should embarrass us into epistemic humility if nothing else. Harold Camping, the Left Behind crowd, every newspaper-Bible prophecy guy on YouTube. Maybe the lesson is: stop making the predictions.

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• YM

  Yuki M.1mo ago

  I'll say it. No, it doesn't change how I live. Love God, love neighbor, make disciples. That assignment doesn't have an expiration date tied to a geopolitical trigger. If it does for you, your obedience was contingent on a timeline and that's worth examining.

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• P

  Priya1mo ago

  Because Christians love a system. Give us a prophecy chart and we will fill every box, connect every dot, and sell a four-part sermon series.

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• Z

  Zara1mo ago

  This is the one for me. I've watched churches vote against every environmental and long-term community initiative because 'we're almost out of here.' It's theological escapism with a prophecy chart stapled to it.

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• I_

  Iris _x1mo ago

  Dispensationalism was invented in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby. The rapture doctrine? 1830s. The modern American obsession with Israel as prophetic clock? 1830s. We took a 150-year-old novel theological framework and decided it was the plain reading of Scripture. It isn't.

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• M_

  Morgan _x1mo ago

  Peter literally addresses this in 2 Peter 3:8. 'With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day.' God's timeline is not our timeline. The apparent delay is not evidence of error — it's evidence of His patience. People really do skip this verse every single time.

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• D_

  Drew _x1mo ago

  Legitimately asked: if Jesus doesn't return for another thousand years, does that change how you live? Should it? Because 'no' to both seems like the actually faithful answer and yet almost no one in evangelical spaces is willing to say it.

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• F

  Feli1mo ago

  ^ People have been saying 'this generation' since 1948 for 77 years now. The generation that saw 1948 is almost entirely dead. Do we reset the clock? Pick a new generation? This is exactly the problem the thread is about.

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• P

  Priya1mo ago

  If you genuinely believe the Second Coming is imminent and you're not sharing the gospel with literally everyone you meet, you don't actually believe what you say you believe. The imminence teaching without the evangelistic urgency is just an aesthetic. Change my mind.

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• N

  Noah1mo ago

  The problem is that 'any unfalsifiable claim is automatically true' is not theology. That's just refusing to engage with the question.

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• DS

  Drew S.1mo ago

  Christianity went from a dozen frightened people in an upper room to 2.4 billion adherents worldwide, the most persecuted faith that has also produced more hospitals, universities, and abolition movements than any other. 'Does this look like winning' is a wildly ahistorical take.

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• P

  Priya1mo ago

  Massive implications that still need to be engaged with honestly rather than cordoned off with 'that has implications.' Having implications doesn't make a reading false.

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• L

  Liam1mo ago

  I'll die on this hill: 'this generation shall not pass away' in Matthew 24 was about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Full stop. Jesus was not setting a failed prophetic clock — He was giving a historical prediction that was fulfilled perfectly within forty years. We manufactured the problem by refusing to do basic hermeneutics.

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• D

  Drew1mo ago

  This is the framework I needed. Saving this whole comment.

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• H

  Hana1mo ago

  The difference is that atonement theology has deep roots across the whole history of the church. Pre-trib rapture has... Darby and Scofield and a reference Bible. That's not equivalent.

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• D

  Drew1mo ago

  ok but Peter wrote that specifically because people in HIS day were already mocking the delay. which means the problem is baked into the earliest church. it's not a new objection. they knew it looked bad then too.

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• OR

  Omar R.1mo ago

  Nobody's saying the promise is invalidated. The question is whether our handling of it — the charts, the timelines, the Left Behind industry, the failed specific predictions — has been faithful or embarrassing. I think embarrassing is the honest answer.

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• Y

  Yuki1mo ago

  the early church also thought they'd all be alive to see it. Paul says as much in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, using 'we who are alive and remain.' that's not a stylistic choice. he expected to be in that group. and he was wrong.

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  I think we've confused 'living with eschatological hope' with 'obsessively tracking signs.' The resurrection gives Christians a confident future orientation. That's beautiful. The newspaper-Bible prophecy stuff is something else entirely. They're not the same thing.

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• M2

  Marco 211mo ago

  NT Wright's framework is genuinely helpful but it requires people to actually read 500 pages of historical context before they'll consider revising their Left Behind eschatology. That's a steep ask for most pews.

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• A2

  Alex 211mo ago

  Honestly? Fair challenge. That one stings.

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• J

  Jamie1mo ago

  I used to dismiss amillennialism as defeatist until I actually read Augustine and then Beale's commentary on Revelation. Now I think it's probably the most historically defensible position. But try convincing anyone in a Baptist church in Tennessee.

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• Y

  Yuki1mo ago

  Sure, but the sensationalist wing is what's selling millions of books and filling stadiums. Humble eschatology doesn't sell. That's part of the problem.

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• Q

  Quinn1mo ago

  I don't think it's snark if it's accurate. Look at the track record. Every generation has had serious, credentialed, sincere scholars who were certain they had the timeline figured out. Every single one of them has been wrong. The pattern is the point.

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• M

  Marco1mo ago

  That comment hit me harder than I expected. Saving it.

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• Z

  Zara1mo ago

  Saying Paul was 'wrong' about something is a very significant theological claim that you're just casually dropping like it's settled. That has massive implications for inspiration and authority of Scripture that you're not engaging with.

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• N

  Nina1mo ago

  The something that happened was the destruction of the Temple and the vindication of Jesus as Lord over the old covenant order. NT Wright makes this case compellingly. It doesn't mean history is over — it means the 'last days' began at the resurrection and the new age has been breaking in ever since.

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• M

  Marco1mo ago

  lol 'we've got this one.' someone put this on a shirt

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• O

  Omar1mo ago

  Amillennialism doesn't get enough airtime in these conversations. The Kingdom is already breaking in. Christ is already reigning at the right hand of the Father. The 'millennium' is now. The Second Coming is a real, future, bodily event — but we're not waiting for a specific geopolitical checklist. Most of the West's arguments collapse under amil scrutiny.

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• NT

  Noah T.1mo ago

  The preterist answer is neat but it requires you to believe the 'coming on the clouds' and the 'every eye seeing Him' stuff was just... metaphor? And the physical resurrection and new creation is still future? Feels like you're picking and choosing what gets fulfilled and what doesn't.

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• Q

  Quinn1mo ago

  Or, alternatively, the urgency of the Second Coming should INCREASE our evangelistic zeal and our care for souls. The early church didn't go dormant waiting for Jesus. They turned the world upside down. Imminence doesn't have to produce passivity.

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• AR

  Avery R.1mo ago

  Nope. Hard disagree that wrong predictions invalidate the promise. Every skeptic in every era has made the same argument and Jesus still hasn't come back to prove them right. Two thousand years is nothing to an eternal God. I'll wait.

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• Z9

  Zara 921mo ago

  Postmillennialism mentioned nowhere in this thread and I think that's telling. The idea that the church wins and advances the Kingdom before the return is deeply unfashionable right now because decline narratives sell better than victory narratives.

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• P

  Priya1mo ago

  Here's a thought no one wants to engage with: what if 'soon' in Revelation 22 ('I am coming soon') meant something genuinely imminent to the first-century audience — and then something happened, cosmically, spiritually, that most of us just can't perceive? Not full preterism, but something between?

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• A

  Avery1mo ago

  Dispensationalism being 'recent' doesn't make it wrong. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement was systematized over time too. Age isn't an argument.

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• D_

  Drew _x1mo ago

  Not every teacher has been like that. Some have been genuinely humble about uncertainty while still teaching expectant hope. We shouldn't let the sensationalist wing define the whole conversation.

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• MB

  Maya B.1mo ago

  Y'all are treating this like it's a falsifiability test. The prophecy isn't falsified by delay — it's only falsified if He never comes. He hasn't come yet. So... what exactly is the problem?

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• D

  Drew1mo ago

  Post-mil sounds nice but look around. Does this look like a world the church is winning?

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• TK

  Taylor K.1mo ago

  That's unfair and dismissive. Serious biblical scholars have studied eschatology for centuries. Dismissing the whole project as 'Christians love a system' is just snark.

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• N

  Nina1mo ago

  Ok I'll be the guy. ISRAEL BECOMING A NATION IN 1948. We were told 'this generation' and here we are 70+ years later still waiting. The signs ARE happening. You're all too spiritually blind to see it.

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