In a study of the scriptures concerning the topic of the "coming (return) of Christ", questions and considerations arise about certain time related terms, such as "soon", "at hand", "near", "quickly", etc. In general, Christian circles do acknowledge that the early church in the first century AD had an imminent expectation of the coming of Christ, and their hope and expectation is iften used as an example for how believers today should have hope and an expectation for the return of Christ. However, preachers usually quickly add that the imminent expectation of the first Christians was unfortunately not fulfilled, and yet with the next breath it is urged that believers today should have the same fervent hope for an imminent coming of Christ and that they should believe and hope that Christ could come at any day and any moment, that it might even be today. Why do people not realize that such teaching is in itself contradictory and that they make no real sense when viewed in light of biblical prophecy and what the Bible as the God inspired Word of God actually teaches?
As I have mentioned in some other studies on this topic, the early church did have such a hope and expectation of an imminent coming of the Lord based on what they had been taught be the Lord Jesus himself and by his apostles. When you read the studies What did Jesus say when he would come?, NT scriptures about when Jesus would come and What Revelation says about when Jesus would come, you will notice that these statements contain time elements which are easy to understand and which are unmistable and clear in teaching that the coming of the Lord, the coming of the Son of man, etc. would be "soon", "at hand" and within "this generation".
The reaction often seen today to these time element statements in the NT scriptures is that people acknowledge that the early church understood these terms as if the coming of the Lord would happen still in their time, but then it is claimed that we must remember that time with God is different than with man, as also the Bible supposedly says, that with God a thousand years are like one day and a day like a thousand years. "God does view time differently than we as humans do ..."
However, the question is: Are such considerations and ideas true and do they make sense? If God is not able to make clear statements about time, then such objections are correct. But if God is able to provide clear time statements, if God is able to communicate clearly to man and make known time so that man can understand what He meant, then such objections are unreasonable. The idea, that with God there is no time (or that there is a different time reckoning with God) actually claim that terms like "soon", "at hand", etc. are absolutely irrelevant and have no real meaning! But, is that really the case? Is God unable to communicate time related information to man in a way that man can understand?
This study will show, that the problem is certainly not with God but with those men who have a pre-conceived idea about the coming of Christ and who therefore push the biblical time related information to the side and then basically accuse God that He did not communicate clearly when it comes to time! Some readers may feel personally attacked ... perhaps you will not be as angry when I tell you that I have held such a belief over more than 30 years of my life as a Christian and that I did exactly what I now would consider to be an error. I know from my own personal experience how difficult it can be to change one's opinion when many or the majority of people think the same way and when such things have been taught for a long time and nobody even gave it some further thought. Nobody likes to question what he or she has believed for many years. Nobody likes it to perhaps have believed and even taught a false doctrine. I understand very well what may be going through the mind of a reader who is confronted with these things for the first time and recognizes that a long held belief and doctrine may perhaps not be in harmony with what the Bible actually teaches.
An elementary point for our study is the truth that the Bible is in its original form inspired by God. The writers of the biblical scriptures wrote as they were inspired by God to write, as God gave them via the spirit to write (cp. for example 2Ti 3:16). "Inspired by God" is literally from the Greek "God-breathed". God is the one real author of the Scriptures in the Bible.
Since God is infallible, it follows logically that the Scriptures as they were inspired by God, that the Bible originally as the God-breathed Word, also was perfect and without error. Therefore, if something is foretold in a prophecy in the Scriptures which is not linked to a certain condition and which is supposed to happen within a certain period of time, it must also happen as foretold. If it does not happen as prophesied, then the claim that it was a true prophecy and the record was God inspired Scripture is false and unreasonable.
Yes, there are prophecies in Scripture which were linked to certain conditions, where something was to happen if such and such condition was met (for example, God promised Israel certain blessings if they acted a certain way). When man did not keep his part, the prophesied events and promises were no longer binding for God either. God's faithfulness was expressed in that He remains true to what He has promised and announced via His prophets.
The prophecies concerning the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God are not linked to certain conditions. If they were not fulfilled as prophesied, the prophecy is false and God did not keep what He had declared by the prophet. Deu 5:18ff tells us how a true prophet can be distinguished from a false prophet. God Himself sets the standard by which to measure a prophet: If what the prophet has proclaimed does not happen, we are dealing with a false prophet and his "prophecy" were only his own imaginations.
God's Word and man's word
The Bible was written in words and with the vocabulary which was familiar to the respective writers. What has been revealed in the Bible, we read in normal words, that are understandable for man and which are in a language that man speaks and understands. The Scriptures were not inspired and then written in some kind of "mystical type" of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, but in the very regular and normally spoken and undestood "type" of those languages. The Word of God is communicated in a language which mankind is supposed to understand and which man can understand.
The language does include the use of words in their regular and normal literal sense, as well as the use of figures of speech and imagery drawn from customs of the lands and times of the biblical writers. The Israelites were familiar with these, for example, with certain expressions we might call "apocalyptic langugae", that is, the use of certain imagery terms, because they knew these from the readings of the OT which was done every sabbath in the synagogue. It is remarkable that terms relating to time are basically always with words in their literal meaning. This is true of OT passages as well as NT passages. We must understand the terms and expressions just as the author and writer understood them, and we must keep in mind that some may be used in a figurative way. The language of the OT as well as the language of the NT is basically the language of the common people and it is understandable for most people.
It follows therefore, that the meaning of words in the Bible cannot contradict what these same words normally mean in other contexts. If "soon" normally and generally indicates a relatively "short period of time", then "soon" does not mean a long period of time of thousands of years when the word is used in the Bible. When God's Word speaks of something that is "at hand", then it is at hand; when He speaks of something being "yet a long time" then it was yet a long time! We should be cautious and not make wrong claims that God is either unable or unwilling to communicate clearly when something is supposed to happen, and we should recognize that God does want man to understand and know what He makes known.
God, as the creator of heaven and earth, stands above time and God is not as man bound by time and is not limited within time. Perhaps one could say that God's years and time is "endless" or as we read in Psalm 90:2, "... even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." Yet, this truth regarding God does not change anything in this study which is concerned with something different.
We are concerned here with what God has told man about certain time elements or periods of time. If God had been communicating to God and used "soon", then perhaps one could claim that man could not know what exactly was meant with "soon" or "at hand". But, God does speak TO MAN in the Bible! The statements concerning the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God were made to inform man. The time related terms in them are to give man certain information and are part of warnings or encouragement to man. God obviously meant a certain "time" when He made time related statements ... what else is He supposed to have meant? God surely wanted to inform man in terms which man can understand whether something was still in a far distant future or else was near and at hand and would happen in a certain amount of days, months, years! It would be rather misleading if God was talking about "soon" and the matter was not until a long time later, or the other way around, if man was led to believe that something was yet far away and in reality the time for its fulfillment was "soon".
The main and important point with these things is that we are reading about God's communication to man! Is God able and does God want to inform man clearly and in ways which man can understand? Or does God on purpose communicate with man in an ambiguous manner with man? Does God speak of something coming "soon" even though He knows that He is not planning to bring to pass these things until many centuries or milleniums later? Is God not clear in His communication with man when it concerns time, just because He is God from everlasting to everlasting?
If there is no difference to God between "soon", "at hand", and at some undetermined time in the far distant future, why are there no time related statements made in those prophecies in the Old Testament where the coming of the kingdom of God is in view? Why do we not read about an "at hand" in this matter until we come to the preaching of John the baptist who was teaching that the kingdom was at hand? We can see in Daniel's prophecies that he saw the coming kingdom as following on the Roman empire, which was not until several hundred years after Daniel's time. From God's perspective that was surely just a moment, but from Daniel's perspective it was a few hundred years. God showed Daniel what was to happen and what was to take place among man on earth, and therefore Daniel is NOT told that this kingdome was "at hand". The same is seen with other Old Testament prophecies by Isaiah, Moses, Jeremiah, and others who prophesied concerning the coming Messiah, but never spoke of his coming being "nigh", "at hand", etc. Only after the many centuries had passed do we hear for the first time from John the baptist and from Jesus himself that the kingdom of God was "at hand" and would come "soon". Why? Because now the "last days" mentioned by Daniel had arrived. We can see how God instructed His prophets to correctly communicate in regards to the timing of prophesied events, and there was no "soon", "at hand", "nigh" until the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the Messiah was indeed "at hand"!
We must distinguish in our study between prophecies which are not linked to any particular time and those prophecies which do have a clear time statement. It is one thing when God announces something and it is supposed to come to pass in a not further defined time in the future, and quite another thing when God announces something which is to happen within a certain period or at a certain point of time. In the first case, man has no reason to expect the fulfillment at a particular point in time; in the second case however, what has been prophesied must come to pass within that timeframe or else God becomes a liar and man becomes discouraged (cp. Prov 13:12: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ...").
As we can read in Num 23:19, God is not a man that He should lie or that He should not fulfil something which He has promised. Paul writes in 1Co 1:9 that God is faithful! Should there be an exception to this when it comes to what God has promised about the coming of the kingdom or the coming of Christ? God forbid!
An often quoted section of scripture from 2 Peter 3 is remarkable in this context.
2 Peter 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
We should note immediately, that Peter does NOT (!) say that with the Lord one day *is* (equals) a thousand years! In addition, we should not disregard the words which immediately follow this verse.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is
longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should
come to repentance.
What is the point in Peter's statements in this section? Does he want to show that God has a different "system of reckoning time" or does he want to tell us that God does in fact keep the timetable He has established for the fulfillment of what He has promised and made known? Peter says, "The Lord is NOT slack concerning his promise"! Obviously, the Lord can make time related statements and then also be on time for their fulfillment! The words in verse 9 assure us that God will fulfill that which He has promised with certainty and on time.
This verse however does contradict what almost all Christian churches and groups teach today. Almost all of them teach that God had promised that the kingdom would come soon and was at hand, but then the whole thing got delayed and has not been fulfilled as of yet. Now, either God's announced "soon" and "at hand" are correct or else God has been, contrary to what the Bible teaches about God, very slack concerning His promises not He did not remain faithful.
Some interpreters of the Bible do recognize this problem, but they still want to insist on a yet future coming of the Lord but without trying to say that God was slack concerning his promises. They declare that time references in prophetic are "relative" or somewhat "elastic". Such an idea already sounds suspicious because with such an idea a rather decisive element of a prophecy, the timing of its fulfillment, would be taken away and the prophecy in a sense would be not much more than a "guess" or "conjecture".
Also, we can gather from some other passages in the Bible that God does make time statements about events in prophecies with certainty and not "elastic" or "relative". In Num 24:17 we read of a prophecy by Bileam about the coming of the Messiah and he does not say anything about "is nigh", "at hand" or "soon", but does say "not now" and also "not nigh". Why is there a mention here about "not now" and "not nigh"? Because these are time references which correctly describe the situation, for the coming of the Messiah was approx. 1400 years in the future. In Daniel 10 - 12 we read of a vision in which Daniel was shown events and things which were to happen over a period of time from about 500 BC to 70 AD. In two places we are told which time was in view in the vision ... in Dan 10:4 we read about the vision dealing with Daniel's people "in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days." Daniel lived more than 500 years before the coming of Christ, and here such a period of about 500 years is called "many days". It should be clear to us that God knows time very well and also communicates time related aspects accurately and distinctly. He makes a difference between "nigh" and "not nigh", or between "at hand" and "for many days". There is another interesting example in Daniel 8: Daniel has a vision about events which happened in 165-164 BC in connection with the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, a time that was about 360-370 years in the future from the time Daniel saw this. In Dan 8:26, this period of time is called "many days".
These passages make it clear that God does regard time as important and that any timing elements in prophecies are no "relative" but are precise and can be understood clearly by man. Since God is making known information to man, He also uses terminology and vocabulary that man can and should understand.
Daniel 8 contains another remarkable detail in this context, for Daniel is commanded to keep the vision secret, "to seal" the prophecy, because it concerned things that were not near but not for many days. In Revelation 22:10 however, John is commanded to not seal the words of his prophecy because the time for its fulfillment was imminent, short. Now, it should be indisputable that God does use time references in a manner and in ways which man can easily understand and which use our regular normal vocabulary such as "near", "at hand", "soon", "quickly", etc. In other passages, even more precise information is given, such as to the prophet Jeremiah who announced that Israel would be in captivity in Babylon for 70 years (Jer 29:10). Were these 70 years now 70 years in the normal sense of the words as man would understand them? Most certainly! God does understand very well, to communicate to man with precision and clarity regarding the time involved in prophecy.
There is actually an example in Ezekiel where people "changed" the time of a prophetic announcement and made it "relative", which God did not approve of at all! In Ezekiel 7, the prophet proclaims that the day of judgment concerning Israel will be "soon" (cp. for example Eze 7:7,10). The concern is directly about how Babylon will be used as God's instrument to judge Israel for their wickedness. In Ezekiel 11 we read how Israel reacted and changed the "soon" and "at hand" in the prophecy and simply ignored the imminent warnings. In Ezekiel 12:21ff God finishes all talk about "near" not really being near, and Israel experienced rather quickly what God had meant with "soon" and "at hand", when He spoke of "soon". That generation experienced first hand that God had meant "soon", when He had the prophet announce the imminent judgment.
When we check the mentioned passages from the Scriptures, we can recognize that the words used by God regarding the timing in prophetic announcements concerning the coming of the kingdom of God are used in their normal sense just as man would use them. However, this produces big problems for the traditional interpretation of eschatological topics and basically there are no real answers. In other words, if "many days" really means "many days" and points to a distant future, and on the other hand "soon" means "soon" and concerns a time in the near future, then the traditional ideas and teachings about the yet future coming of the Lord and yet future coming of the kingdom of God cannot be correct.
Almost all Christians agree that the Christians in the early church had an expectation and hope of an imminent return and coming of the Lord and the kingdom of God, and all are of the opinion that this belief and hope was correct and they rightly believed that way. Why did the early Christians believe that way and have such a hope? The answer is very simple: That is what they were taught! Thus basically all Christians do believe that the early Christians rightfully believed that the Lord would return even during their lifetime. And yet, almost all Christians then take a 180° turn and insist that the words "soon" and "at hand" could not really have meant "soon" and "at hand" as we understand the terms normally. Now, just a moment ... if that were the case, one should not say that the early Christians were correctly taught or correctly believed what they were taught!
Such apparent contradictions are caused by the assumption that the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God are still, even today, almost 2000 years after the NT scriptures were written, still future events. This assumption is basically accepted as if it were fact without being checked or examined and then used as basis for evaluating all other statements and expressions in scripture about the topic. In reality, just the opposite should happen. The many scriptures which speak of a "soon" and "at hand" coming of Christ and coming of the kingdom of God should be the basis for our study and all other items should be evaluated and examined in that light to see what happened and how things fit. It does not matter which theologians and well known groups promote which ideas, for all ideas and opinions must be evaluated with Scripture as the measure of truth and faith. There is a real problem involved here, and the questions in connection with this have motivated Bible students for a long time to search for answers. The problems remain and no real answers develop until one realizes that God does indeed use time statements in their normal sense and as man would normally understand those terms. When those terms are accepted as such, and the many clear passages about the "at hand" and "soon" coming of the Lord are accepted for what they say, the rest begins to eventually fall in place.
To encourage readers to take a closer look at some of those clear passages with time related statements and expressions about the coming of Christ, I would like to again briefly point to the following studies where I have listed and briefly discussed some of them:
T>he problem really is simple: The pre-conceived ideas and opinions are hindering the careful reading and correct understanding of the Scriptures. Pre-conceived ideas determine the reading and then lead to an interpretation of different passages which disregards simple meanings of words and which does not distinguish those things which are meant literally and those that are figures of speech. This then leads to the impression as if some things have not happened as of yet, and then of course there remains only one seemingly possible solution: All those things have to be placed in the yet future.
However, there is another solution: One should examine if one understands the terms and words correctly and then see if and how perhaps the events could have taken place, perhaps in a different way as one has always thought until now. If there is another way in which they could have happened which would harmopnize with the clear scriptures about the timing, then such an understanding is surely closer to the truth than the "futurist view" which causes problems with all the verses that have a reference to "soon" or "at hand".
We just cannot do away with the statements of our Lord Jesus Christ. He prophesied and promised that he would come still in "this generation" (the generation of his disciples and apostles). The words he chose and used could not be any clearer and more precise. Now there are a few possibilities: (a) Jesus was lying, (b) Jesus failed to do what he said, (c) Jesus made a mistake in his prophecy, or (d) Jesus actually did already come! Either the Bible is inspired by God and tells us the truth, or else it is the record of ideas of some human writers.
I believe that the Bible is the God inspired Word of God and truth. I believe that Jesus spoke the truth and that he neither made a mistake nor did he fail to carry out what he said he would do. I think therefore that the time statements in the different prophecies concerning the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God are accurate and true. I have therefore taken my previous ideas and understanding of a yet future coming of Christ, etc and put it under investigation and it appears more and more that the traditional teaching that the fulfillment of these prophecies is yet in our future cannot quite be correct.
May these studies be a help to all readers for seeing for themselves and evaluating for themselves what the passages do say. I am not offering "final answers" or a "finished interpretation", seeing that I myself am still evaluating a number of matters relating to this topic where I have yet unanswered questions. I do invite the readers to take part in my search and I welcome any comments and insights concerning the material covered in this study ... simply write an e-mail to the BibelCenter editor.