Second Thoughts About the Second Coming

By Joe Reeves

In the book, Second Thoughts About The Second Coming, teacher, author, and systems engineer, Joe Reeves deals with many aspects of the idea of Jesus second coming that are seldom considered by modern Christians; but, he does so from the standpoint of asking several critical questions. The basic questions he asks, and answers, in this book are, can a book of scripture, at some later date, come to mean what it never meant? Can a scriptural text, at a later date, come to mean what the author obviously did not intend it to mean to those of his original envisioned recipients to whom he wrote, and a meaning that the first recipients simply would not have understood? Then based on those answers, he asks and answers several questions about Jesus resurrection, His resurrected nature, and His ascension. Then based on the biblical answers to those questions asks and answers the question about whether or not Jesus and the biblical writers predicted a second coming.

Using those questions, and the question of specifically what would those first-century Christians have understood about what modern interpreters call Jesus second coming, as the basis for study, Joe uses his training and experience in systems thinking, Bible, history, cultural anthropology, and logic and philosophical realism to formulate a system of thinking that challenges many of the modern assumptions upon which the four most common doctrines about Jesus second coming are based.

For the person who wishes to learn more about how the first Christians would have used, and understood, the writings they received about Jesus and His life after His resurrection, this book is a must read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463441845

Book preview

© 2011 by Joe Reeves. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse    04/09/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4634-4183-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-4182-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-4184-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913156

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Issue

Chapter 2

Philosophy’s Question, Why

Chapter 3

New Testament Document Structure

Chapter 4

How It Happened

Chapter 5

Words

Chapter 6

Jesus’ Erchomai

Chapter 7

Jesus’ Parousia

Chapter 8

Something Greater Than The Temple

Chapter 9

Paul And The Parousia

Chapter 10

Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension

Chapter 11

Summary

Glossary

Preface

S omeone else should have written this book. Given the subject matter of the material contained in this discussion, this book should have been written by an expert; but not just any expert, it should have been written by one person, expert in theology, philosophy, science, history, biblical hermeneutics, education, anthropology, Greek and Hebrew language, English grammar, and much more. But an expert did not write it—at least not an expert on any of those things, and certainly not by a professional in any of those areas. Instead, this book was written by a systems analyst, who some would say, keeps asking too many who, what, when, why, and how questions.

For many years, I have been a student of the human thinking process and of the human condition. Throughout my study of the human condition, my aim has been to understand as much as I can about life, human beliefs, and particularly beliefs about anything related in any way to biblical topics. With regard to thinking about religious beliefs, I have found that the best way to learn is by asking who believed what, when did they believe it, why should they have believed that, and how those who’s, what’s, when’s, how’s, and why’s of those in Bible times matter to me.

But I also believe that there are two questions that we all should be asking if we are truly interested in getting to the bottom of those things. Those two things pertain to the ideas of so what and please specify? If we faithfully apply the so what, and specify, criteria to our thinking, we can catch most fallacious thinking, regardless of subject. And unless one is a total subjectivist in biblical interpretation, there are many beliefs about numerous topics where fallacious thinking seems evident.

In this book, I examine one of the most strongly held, but yet controversial, beliefs of the Christian religion, namely Jesus’ return or what is most often termed, His second coming. The common beliefs concerning the idea of Jesus’ second coming are largely based on the most common biblical translation of the Koine Greek term "parousia." Although, my main intent is to examine the ideas, modern and ancient, concerning Jesus’ parousia, this is not a religious book per se. Nor is it a book about education, and how people are educated, or indoctrinated. It focuses more on what people who lived at different times and in different circumstances believed, and why people, then and now, believe the things they do. My study is not primarily a religious study; rather, it is more an exercise in the philosophy of inquiry. Therefore, before I begin the specific inquiry into the use of the Greek word parousia, I will need to spend a little time discussing inquiry and how good, or bad, inquiry bears on biblical interpretation.

Now before one turns me off and throws this book into the trash, let me explain what I mean when I say this is a book of philosophy. The word philosophy comes from two ancient Greek words philia, meaning love, and sophia, meaning wisdom. Philosophy is, therefore, the love of, or the search for, wisdom. Philosophy is a study of the ultimate issues of life. Whether one is religious or anti-religious, there is no greater ultimate issue than the issue of theology. For many people, either religious or non-religious, however, their beliefs are not based on good inquiry but rather on blind faith.

Philosophy is a study of, reasons, causes, and principles of things: a study of human reasoning based solely on observations. But all human beliefs come through human reasoning alone. So philosophy is the attempt to understand the most basic facts about the world in which we live and to attempt to explain these facts. In that regard, Philosophy precedes both science and religion since philosophy is the rational part of human understanding. Philosophy is not the exclusive concern of certain specialists; instead, it is a practice of every human being whether they are aware of it or not. In our society, before one even begins to understand something like the Bible he or she will already have acquired a ideology, about the Bible, about God, and about our universe. Everyone derives his or her beliefs about these things, actually ideology about them, from his or her culture long before one has attained enough knowledge and understanding to begin his or her own personal inquiry. In general, one’s ideology is based on assumptions, which may be factual or fallacious; but either way, a person’s biblical beliefs, or even scientific beliefs, are nothing more, or less, than good, or bad, applied philosophy.

The reason I refer to most beliefs as ideology rather than philosophy is that while philosophy, the search for wisdom, should always consist a structured and reasoned analysis, ideology is almost always based on learned assumptions which have not been analyzed for factual truth or validity.

Unfortunately, philosophy is not well understood by most modern people, and, therefore, gets a bad press from people involved in most modern disciplines.

Everything we do in life, and everything we believe, is based upon a way of looking at life. Every modern religious belief-system, or for that matter scientific belief, is based on a way of looking at life. Every belief, religious or otherwise, is either logical, or it is psychological. But in this book, I will also be using philosophy in a formal sense as a highly structured way of thinking about reality and ideology to reference belief based on un-validated assumptions.

As such, this book is about ideas—ideas about language, culture, Bible, spiritual and physical things such as beings, and about understanding a few things about some of the many abstract biblical and cultural ideas. Ultimately then, it is about thinking. As a matter of thinking, I will delve heavily into the meaning and use of the Greek word parousia as Jesus and the New Testament document writers intended that word to be understood by their listeners and/or envisioned-readers.

In this book, I use the terms envisioned-readers and envisioned-audience numerous times. The reason for my use of those terms is that I strongly believe that each writer of biblical material, or any other written document for that matter, had specific people in mind that he expected, or at least hoped, would read his writing. I also believe that if we, as later readers of those biblical writings, hope to understand those writings in the same way that those first recipients did, that we must understand many things about those first envisioned-readers and the cultural and historic times in which they lived.

If a twenty-first-century person wishes to understand how the people contemporary with Jesus, Matthew, or Paul thought, and, therefore, how they would have understood the Greek term parousia within the specific context of the discourses in which the New Testament writers used that Greek word, there are many modern cultural, linguistic, and religious things that the twenty-first-century person must unlearn, and many ancient cultural, linguistic, and religious things he or she must learn.

In that respect, this book is about how people, either do, or do not, educate themselves to better understand how to interpret the biblical writings as the writers of those books or letters intended their first recipients to understand them.

The reason I say people have to educate themselves is because we cannot educate others about these, or any other, issues. Most of what passes for education in modern society is nothing more than an impartation of facts and opinions by certain controllers, and indoctrination about how those in control wish the younger generation to interpret that indoctrination. How people educate themselves is not taught in churches, schools, or colleges. We only learn how to educate ourselves through our own research.

But I will state in the beginning, this book is about how people use, or misuse, applied philosophy to wrestle with questions in which everyone already knows the answers, or at least thinks they do. But herein is the problem. Although, at the deeper level, everyone knows many of the answers to the questions that I will ask in this book, most have not truly wrestled with many of these questions in the way that I will do.

So my first questions are those I mentioned above; the ultimate questions philosophy should attempt to answer concerning who throughout history has believed what, when they believed it, why they believed it, and how it matters to you and me.

Many years ago, I borrowed a theme from a book written by Economist and author Dr. Thomas Sowell. In his book, The Vision of the Anointed, Dr. Sowell made the statement, For every ‘expert’ there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact, there is not an equal and opposite fact. I have found few, if any, things in the modern world truer than Dr. Sowell’s statement. Nowhere are there more disagreeing experts than in modern religion.

Why are there so many experts who are so certain that they have the correct answers to questions about Jesus’ second coming, but whose answers are so diametrically opposed to the answers given by other experts who hold similar credentials, have similar education, who are similarly qualified, and who are just as sincere?

The primary difference in the experts is their underlying assumptions and how they assert those assumptions as explanations of the observations, and/or experiments, they make.

How many of those modern experts do you know who have ever read books written by other writers of the same New Testament time period—writers such as Josephus, Philo, Plutarch, or Epictetus? Those were all writers who were contemporary with the writers who wrote the documents that make up the New Testament. Their writings are available to anyone who wishes to examine them. Since these writers were contemporary with the New Testament writers, modern readers should understand that those writings should have a far greater impact on understanding of the biblical writings, as those biblical documents were intended to the first recipients, than do medieval and modern books; yet, those more ancient books are seldom mentioned in modern teachings about Jesus second coming. I rely heavily upon Josephus.

Or how many of those modern experts understand the history, philosophy, and culture of the first-century Greeks? How many of those modern experts are even slightly familiar with the writings of people, such as Plato and Aristotle? There are things in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, for example, that might be better understood by modern interpreters if they were familiar with Aristotle’s writings on happiness and ethics. Aristotle’s view of happiness was far different from the modern thinking that happiness is the same as elation or gratification, and so, I believe, was Jesus’.

Why do I believe that things like the popular doctrines about Jesus’ second coming need a second look? The answer, in a few words, is that modern people have very different ideological beliefs about culture, language, religion, and science from those to whom the biblical writings were first delivered. As such, all modern people arrive at their beliefs through very different assumptions and presuppositions from the presuppositions of the ancients. Simply, it seems to me that those to whom the New Testament documents were written could never have made interpretations similar to many of those of modern interpreters. I’ll explain why as I proceed.

Some would find it strange that I did not include religious faith, or the Bible, in my answer as to why I think the doctrines about Jesus’ second coming need a second look. Religious faith, however, is not really the concern of this discussion other than to realize that it exists. In my philosophical inquiry, I will refer heavily to certain specific texts of the Bible, but still, my inquiry is primarily philosophical, and not biblical.

This book is really about how and why our modern culture, like every past culture, dictates the way our religious and educational systems teach people to think. A person’s thinking affects how that person determines what he or she believes is, and why.

In educating people to think, the main tools all educational systems use are good or bad language, good or bad communication, and good or bad philosophy. Facts seldom enter into the picture.

And yes, I am a fledgling student of the Bible for something now over fifty years, and in that time, I have attempted to wrestle with lots of theological questions. I was raised in a very traditional, probably very legalistic church. I have taught Bible in various settings for over fifty years. As a Bible teacher, I felt it necessary to do a lot of study in preparation for those classes. I have been a part time preacher. I have been a church official; some would call each of these pastors. I have a Master’s Degree in Education. I have taught numerous courses in management, computers, psychology, philosophy, and critical thinking in a major university.

By both profession and nature, I am a systems analyst. I have worked in every level of computer software and hardware management in both the military and as a civilian. I was the department manager for the development of software that runs the computer systems used in the Government’s missile warning and air defense systems. As such, I had to understand a lot about a lot of things, and how they all fit together. And when things did not fit, it was my job to figure out why they did not fit and how to make them work together. In my work and in my philosophical study, I have learned to dig by asking follow-up questions that drive thinking to the core levels of the self-evident truths. Most of all, I have had to challenge many, certainly not all, of my earlier assumptions—a challenge which was devastating to many of my prior dogmatically held beliefs.

As an analyst, what I intend to do in this book is to imitate a medical doctor in analyzing a patient’s illness. What I mean by that is that my intent is to analyze aspects of the idea of Jesus’ second coming. I am not interested in proving my life-long beliefs. From the study for this book, many of the conclusions I present here are different from all those long held beliefs I learned in childhood. Through my study, I have reexamined many of my early religious beliefs, and found that several of them were based on assumptions that were not consistent with the history and cultures of the biblical writers and their likely envisioned-audiences. Therefore, through my studies, my intent is to reestablish my own personal beliefs that are consistent with the facts.

For the last 20 years or so, I have spent many hours reading and studying Cultural Anthropology, and many more reading and studying Philosophy. Simply, there are no other areas of learning that affect the study of the biblical books, or the understanding of the overall human condition, as much as those two. In my study of Philosophy, I have further learned to ask myself some very hard questions—questions that seemingly don’t get asked very often. In fact, even asking the questions that I ask is often politically incorrect in a culture where the experts and professionals owe their livelihood to providing other people with answers, and a culture where status is highly regarded.

In those years of studying Philosophy and Logic, coupled with my professional training and my nature as an analyst, I have concluded that the systematic philosophical thinking based on Classical Realism, is the most vital study one can undertake toward understanding. This is true whether one wishes to understand computers, education, economics, politics, science, or biblical writings.

If one is serious about understanding what the biblical writers intended their envisioned-readers to glean from their writing, more than a cursory understanding of Cultural Anthropology is a must. What I find in studying cultures, past and present, is that most modern interpreters do not have a very good understanding of how radically different our modern culture is from the various subcultures of biblical times, and how greatly that matters to realistic comprehension of how these writers intended their writings to be used.

Through my inquiry, I have also found that the writers of the various biblical books and letters followed a structure in their writings that seemingly is seldom considered by modern interpreters. As I proceed, I will include a chapter on how I believe the biblical writings are structured and how that matters to accurate understanding. I believe my study will show a more common-sense approach to biblical interpretation than the approach that is usually found in most modern interpretative systems. I will always try to focus on two central questions, How did the writer intend his envisioned-audience, an audience contemporary with himself, to understand the information he was providing? And secondly, What cultural underpinnings are implied by the writer in his writing to people in a particular first-century location, and circumstance?

I am not an expert. I claim no status to preserve. I do not write or lecture as a means of livelihood. My only claim is that for years, I have attempted to base my beliefs on understanding and dealing with the facts, which necessitates a reevaluation of most of the asserted assumptions prevalent in modern religion, actually the modern culture. In the following pages, it is my aim to attempt to show a system of biblical interpretation that will more accurately reflect the biblical writers’ intent to their envisioned-audiences concerning what has become known as Jesus’ second coming, and to evaluate assumptions, both mine and others.

Introduction

I , like every other child reared in twentieth-century America, acquired my belief system from my American culture. Like many other children reared in the mid-twentieth-century, my parents took me to church and Sunday School. In those settings, we were taught some quite basic stories from the Bible. We were taught, the Bible is the word of God, that it is infallible and inerrant. We were taught that Jesus came into the world as a baby and grew to be a sort of super-spiritual man because of being God’s son. We were taught that because of their unwillingness to believe the things Jesus taught, that Jewish elites, with the help of the Romans, crucified Him. We were taught that three days after His death, Jesus was raised, physically, from the dead, and that He then lived upon the earth for about 40 days. We were taught that during that time on earth after His resurrection He again became the same type physical being very similar to what He had been prior to death. And we were taught that after those 40 days, Jesus ascended to a physical place called heaven where He had lived in a pre-existence with His father, God, prior to His birth.

We were taught that heaven is a splendid physical city somewhere above the earth, with pearly gates, golden streets, and mansions, and that after His ascension back to heaven, Jesus is now preparing places for those of us who believe in Him. We were taught that He is coming back to earth sometime but that no one knows when.

Now here is where things begin to be a little more subjective. Depending on who was doing the teaching, we might have been told that Jesus is coming back at the end of the age to take all the faithful to heaven and send all the unfaithful to hell. Or we might have been taught that He would come back and rapture the faithful, defeat Satan and the forces of evil, and then set up an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem where He, and those faithful, would reign for 1,000 years before He takes them all to heaven.

During these early years, I heard many preachers and teachers say that the Bible writers were quite clear in their writing that Jesus would return during the writer’s lifetime. We might have been taught that since almost all biblical writers believed that He would return during the time those writers lived—but did not do so—that the writers were mistaken. Or, we might have been taught that since all those inspired writers predicted that He would return in the first century, that He had to have done so. Many people do believe that Jesus did return to the earth during the first century, actually during the Roman siege that destroyed Jerusalem.

Again, depending on who was doing the teaching, those who believe that Jesus’ second coming did occur in 70 A.D. showed us a verse or two that they found somewhere, which they told us proved that He has already returned. Other teachers, those who believed that those writers did believe in Jesus return during the first century, but who believed that He did not do so, were able to find a verse or two that they believed proved that those verses about His early return really did not mean what they seemed to state. And they said that there were other verses that showed that no one, even Jesus, knew the time of His return. And those who taught that the Bible was clear that His second coming was still future, were able to show us a verse or two that they said confirmed that conclusion.

Some teachers taught that all the teaching about Jesus’ return had to be taken literally, while others told us that many of those references should be understood figuratively. But whatever their conclusions, many of those teachers told us that those people who taught opposing doctrine about Jesus’ second coming simply do not understand the clear teachings of scripture.

Of course, those of us who were taught that Jesus and His disciples were mistaken about when He would return, were never told how there could be a mistake made in an infallible Bible, or why. Nor, were we ever told that if there was one mistake why we should believe the rest of the Bible was infallible.

From what we, as children, were being taught in church, one would have thought that Jesus was a blond-haired, blue-eyed, Bible-belt American who lived in a culture exactly like ours. We certainly were not taught anything of relevance about the first-century cultures or historical settings within Galilee, Judea, Greece, or Rome.

But such is the nature of what we, as young people, were taught.

What we were not taught, however, either in Sunday School, church, elementary school, or even in college, was that the basis of the things we were taught was primarily a set of assumptions and presuppositions of the teachers—assumptions and presuppositions that they learned in the same way that they were teaching them to us. As far as I can remember, no teacher that I had, even in my Master’s Degree program, ever admitted that the things he or she was teaching were his or her opinion based largely on assumptions. And certainly, no one ever taught us how to identify the difference in facts and assumptions or how to evaluate our assumptions for validity. Instead, in our cultural education process we were taught, and are still being taught, to believe that the teachers were teaching us factual knowledge, and that the things that we were being taught were really what happened historically.

More than 70 years later, children, and adults are still being taught those same things.

However, I have taken the time, and expended the effort, to restudy some of those conflicting assumptions. So I wrote this book to readdress some of the teaching that we were taught about Jesus’ second coming. It is primarily about why and how we old folks can, and should, critically reevaluate many of those hand-me-down assumptions that are the basis for modern thinking.

For centuries, most people have been taught the assumption that Jesus’ second coming is still future and many have been expecting Jesus to physically return to earth in their near future. In actuality, there are mainly four different and competing doctrines concerning Jesus’ return. At this point in this book, I am not going to dwell to a great extent on the differences in the understandings of Amillennialists, Postmillennialists, Premillennialists, and Preterists. In the pages that follow, I will make a few comments about some biblical texts and write a little about how one or the other of those groups interpret those passages to clarify my position, but how others may, or may not, interpret these passages is not really the point I want to make. Anyone not familiar with the teachings of these groups can find many good books and web sites (both pro and con) that will provide sufficient information for helping to understand those beliefs. Nearly everyone in those four groups do, however, base their beliefs on the assumption that the translators of the most popular Bibles were correct in translating the Greek word "parousia into the English word coming." Although the four groups’ doctrines differ significantly they are all based on the premise that the word parousia in the Koine Greek language meant the same thing that coming means in English. The idea is that the coming was future at the time of the writing.

In this book, I will attempt to answer several questions, like this one, Based on things that Jesus and His disciples taught to their original audiences, what ought I to believe about Jesus’ return, and specifically, why should I believe it?

A second question is, specifically to whom did the first-century writers, of the different New Testament books and letters, intend as their envisioned-audience?

And then a third question I will attempt to answer is, how does who they intended their writing to apply matter to me?

What did Jesus and the biblical writers intend their audiences to understand with respect to His return? If they predicted a return, when did they predict it to occur? Has Jesus already returned, or is the event of His return still in the future? If they predicted a return, did they give any information about the duration of His presence on earth after that return? Specifically, what did they say/write about His nature (physical or spiritual) during the period of His presence, either after His death but before His ascension, during His earthly absence, and after that earthy return? Did they give any indication of events leading up to that return? And did they give descriptions concerning any actions that He would perform while present on earth after His return? Did any of those writers provide any information about a period of His absence or where He would be present, and in what form, during any absence from earth? If it was their intent that their readers understood that Jesus was to return, why did those writers instead use a Greek word that cannot be legitimately rendered as return?

Other than attempting to deal with these simple questions, and a few others, and to discuss how I have reevaluated most of the assumptions, which I was taught, a study of the Bible references generally believed to apply to Jesus’ return should be easy. Many people think the subject is so well understood that there are few, if any, questions still in need of answers. Maybe so, let’s see.

In the first chapter of this book, I will deal with the what. What has been taught in the modern churches that should be reevaluated? And what are many of the suppositions, which have led to those beliefs. In later chapters, I will deal with the why, to include different ways of thinking and how those ways of thinking affect what we think we know. After that, I will deal with some concepts that affected what those first-century recipients believed and how their cultural beliefs would have had a bearing on the writers’ intended message to those to whom the biblical books were addressed. Then still later I will address how all that matters.

Chapter 1

The Issue

I n any discourse of this kind, the first thing needed is to establish specifically what we are interested in discussing. Is there a problem or an issue that needs addressing, and, if so, what is that problem or issue, and how does that affect you, the reader?

The fact that there are four differing major doctrines about Jesus’ second coming, and numerous different subsets in some of those doctrines which I believe radically affect modern Christendom, suggests that perhaps there are still some questions that need to be addressed. But mostly, many of the things that I cover in this book have not, as far as I know, been addressed in any other writing.

Is this the major issue of modern Christianity that in the minds of most professed Christians needs readdressing? Probably not, seemingly, most modern Christians are satisfied with their beliefs concerning Jesus’ second coming. But from the fact that there are numerous beliefs, which are not being critically reexamined by many of those adhering to those doctrines, I believe is reason to reevaluate the issue.

But there are also several other reasons I believe this overall doctrine should be reexamined. First, the doctrine of the second coming ripples through all aspects and teachings of modern Christianity, thereby, the things that the modern Christians believe about Jesus’ second coming affect most other aspects of their belief systems.

When discussing the belief in Jesus’ second coming, and those other doctrines, such as what it means to be resurrected, what is meant by the term immortality, and beliefs about the process of conversion into Christianity, which are intricately entwined with that second-coming belief, it is difficult to separate which are causes for the second-coming belief and which are effects of that belief.

Secondly, given the amount of money that modern people expend on attempted persuasion for the current modern doctrines, and the amount of time spent in writing about this issue and discussing it within modern religious circles, it seems to be a subject that needs addressing.

And thirdly, I believe that the modern interpretation, regardless of which major belief system is addressed, causes interpreters to miss richness and comfort in their Christian walk. Most Christians believe that Jesus is absent from the earth, and therefore, absent in their daily lives. Because of that belief, they long for a future utopian existence, in which modern teachers promise they will attain joy and happiness. I, however, believe that when we read Jesus’ teaching, and understand the teaching of Matthew, John, and Paul as those writers would have been understood by the first recipients of their writing we must understand that Jesus became an omnipresent spirit being at the point of His resurrection. I also believe the assurance that He was currently present in the first Christians’ real world gave those people a whole new attitude in their daily relationship with Him. I believe that because of modern teaching this attitude of personal fellowship in the presence of Jesus is not being realized in the lives of most modern Christians.

Many Christians just want to know how it all will turn out. I believe that the concept of how it will all turn out presented by the different New Testament documents is quite different from what is normally being taught. But I believe that how it will all turn out is far less important than is the idea of how we should live based on the assurance that Jesus walks beside us every day.

In addressing these issues, however, most of the things that I will cover also have a similar bearing on dozens of other biblical subjects as those subjects are understood in the twenty-first century, even belief or disbelief in God.

Like all written discourses, no one wrote, or writes, for no reason. This is true whether that writing is a discussion of a particular biblical writing, or any other document. All written discourses are written with the view that the writer has some specific issues or problems in mind about which they desire to communicate information to some particular envisioned-audience. I am no different. But, in this book, my primary emphasis is to understand what those first-century New Testament document writers intended to communicate, and to whom.

My intent is for this book to be equally applicable to the four major second coming doctrinal positions.

In studying any subject, one of the tasks, and maybe the most important task, that I believe any twenty-first-century biblical interpreter can undertake is to determine to whom those New Testament writers intended their messages. Failure to make an accurate assessment of those writers’ intended audience drastically affects how people understand those writings.

The Tale Of Three Friends

I have three close friends, each of whom is a very strong believing Christian—believers who think the subject of Jesus’ second coming is of extreme importance to the overall message of Christianity. They each spend a great deal of time studying and discussing their doctrinal beliefs. Each friend firmly believes the overall Bible context supports his doctrinal position concerning Jesus’ second coming, and each believes that many events in history either have been or will be affected by Jesus’ second coming.

To a great extent, they each derive their belief based on prior teaching from certain past and present elite teachers. Their beliefs are largely determined by current and past culture and upon what they believe the Bible is, and how they believe it should be used. In this regard, they use the Bible very similarly. They all believe that Jesus and the biblical writers did discuss a period of Jesus’ absence from this earth after His resurrection and a return (second coming) of the dead, buried, resurrected, and ascended Jesus.

But… . But they do not agree on very much about what that second coming entails (or entailed) nor do they agree on when that coming was (or will be). They also disagree on what activities the returned Messiah will (or did) perform shortly before and after His return. But on most points, there is more similarity in what they believe about the second coming than there are differences. Their differences in beliefs about Jesus’ second coming are mostly about time and activities prior to, during, and after His return, and specifically which biblical verses predict what. Oh, I might add, that at this point, none of my three friends agree with me, or at least did not before they read this book.

In this book, I will attempt to answer the questions I addressed in the introduction, but before I began that task, I believe that it would be helpful to provide a little more introductory information on several related topics. It seems to me that many writers begin their books in the wrong place. Many writers do not provide sufficient background information to support their presuppositions and instead jump right into their attempted persuasive arguments without even defining terms or supplying information about the assumptions and presuppositions upon which their arguments are based. Most even seem to believe, and proceed as if, their assumptions are facts.

Based on the amount of background information I will provide in this book, it is likely that before I get to the actual discussion of Jesus’ parousia, many readers will think I have done far too much in introduction.

One of the three friends that I referenced previously is what is normally defined as a Premillennialist, one would normally be identified as an Amillennialist, and the other describes himself as a Preterits. There is, or was, another major belief system concerning Jesus’ parousia that had a profound influence on the system of American Government established during and after the revolution. That system of belief is known as Postmillennialism, but based on the numerous military conflicts beginning with the American War Between the States, there are few Postmillennialists in modern times. And, just in case you were wondering, no, I cannot be labeled as an Amillennialist or a Postmillennialist, or a Premillennialist, or a Preterit. As far as I know, there are no labels with which to identify me.

Over the past months and years, these three friends and I have carried on a series of very interesting correspondences about this subject. A few weeks ago, the Preterit friend sent me an e-mail in which he asked me the question: "When was Jesus’ parousia?" My other friends and I have discussed a similar question except with them the question is, "When will Jesus’ parousia be."

Now for anyone who is not familiar with the term parousia, that is one of about ten different Greek words that the translators of the most popular English Bibles, such as the King James Version (KJV), translate into words in ways such that those translators associated those words with some aspect of what is usually believed to be Jesus’ second coming. But, as I will clarify later, I said some popular English Bibles translate parousia as coming, others do not. About half of the English translations, since the 1611 King James publication, translated parousia as presence rather than coming. I believe that the difference in how the translators rendered that word into English is significant to our understanding of the intent of writers such as Matthew and Paul.

In the pages that follow, I will show that one or the other of these modern English renderings of this Greek word clearly leads to an inaccurate understanding of these original writers’ intended message to their original envisioned-recipients. The questions are, which rendering is accurate, and which leads to misinformation? Although my three friends, mentioned above, do not agree on when Jesus’ parousia was, or will be, none of them see the translation of the Greek word parousia to be a significant problem to their beliefs. In fact, they each base their second coming belief on the translators’ rendering parousia as coming. As I will show in this document, I see the rendering of the term parousia as an extreme problem to the doctrine of all four of the modern belief systems. The fact that the word is translated as coming in many of the most popular translations, I believe, is significant to almost all modern beliefs and belief systems. Some will even find it unacceptable that I question the translation of that word in their favorite translation.

Here is one of the places I differ with these three friends. My answer to both questions about the parousia is that Jesus’ parousia cannot be discussed in terms of when. Instead, I argue that, based on proper definition of the original Greek word and how it is used in the context of all writings where it is found, Jesus’ parousia is not a when question but rather it is a what question, at least initially, in which the point of beginning of the time of that event was not a consideration by any of the original writers who used that term. I believe that I can show that the actual event when Jesus’ presence, wherein He came to have the same nature He now possesses, began years before the event in which the writers discussed the event in their use of the term parousia. I will show that none of those writers intended their original readers to understand that Jesus’ presence after His resurrection would be either physical, or delayed. And I will also show that those to whom the New Testament documents were originally addressed would not have been interested in events 37 years or 2,000 years later in time and 1,000, or more, miles away.

For medieval and modern readers, the Bible has been subject to endless anachronistic (the representation of an event, person, or thing in a historical context in which it could not have occurred or existed) and ethnocentric (tendency to view alien groups or cultures from the perspective of one’s own) interpretations. People of each succeeding generation have generally interpreted the Bible as if it had little meaning to those to whom it was first addressed, or to anyone in the past, and instead they have applied these writings almost exclusively to their own time frame. As such, modern people dismiss the original recipients of these books as insignificant to the writers’ intent, and presume that the book in question speaks directly to later readers in their later circumstance.

This is really stunning, because, in reality, it seems that these later generation readers interpret those original writings as if those original writers were not inspired. Instead, many modern readers interpret the Bible as if it is the modern translators, and, even more so, they, the modern readers, who are inspired. Almost all modern interpretations, thus allow the modern interpreter to interpret what the original writer intended as if it applied only to the modern audience. Whatever meaning the modern interpreter reaches, they are certain that interpretation is the meaning God, who inspired them in their reading, intended to be His only intent. That is the anachronism and ethnocentrism that I discussed above.

The only other alternative for most modern interpretation is that God’s inspiration was extremely subjective and that He inspired those original writers to write culturally relevant information; thus, causing texts to have at least two different meanings, one meaning which only applied to the circumstances of later generation audiences and one which applied to the original recipients. However, when we question these modern interpreters as to what those specific texts likely meant to the original recipients, in many cases, such as the premillennial doctrine, we are told that those texts could not have had any meaning to the original recipients. Or we are told that the two meanings were vastly different. The fact of the matter is that in doctrines concerning Jesus’ second coming, most modern readers have little interest in the original audiences’ cultural interpretation of those texts.

In fact, when I have shared my beliefs with others, I often encounter those who attempt to defend their futuristic beliefs by stating the idea that numerous biblical texts often have two different and unrelated fulfillments. However, as I will show in later discussions, that argument is inconsistent with the principles of human reasoning.

The idea of Jesus’ second coming usually is viewed as eschatology (the study of end-times) by most modern interpreters. But the ideas expressed in modern teachings concerning eschatology came through an evolutionary process that began with German scholars near the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even that terminology cannot be traced earlier than that time. Cultural anthropologists almost unanimously believe that people who lived in the first-century peasant-cultures, those to whom the New Testament letters were written, were not at all concerned with eschatology. At least, those first-century people were not interested in eschatology as modern second-coming doctrines are defined and understood by modern Christians. We would better define those first-century people as interested only in what I call nextology. I use that term to explain that those in that first-century peasant-culture would only have been interested in their own present events or events immediately forthcoming in their day and time.

Many modern Bible interpreters have little understanding of how different the first-century cultures were from our modern world. Those first-century readers of all biblical writing were part of an agrarian peasant society interested only in present or near time. Their concern was for existence and the challenges of day-to-day life. They were concerned only with what caused, or is causing, their present condition and how that happening would impact their immediate future. They were concerned with outcomes that were immediately forthcoming because of their, then present, state of affairs. And since people in their situations believed that there were causes for the present conditions, even God’s immediate intervention, they wanted to know what they could do to prevent that outcome, or to prepare for it if it could not to be prevented.

Other than reading back into scripture, all sorts of modern doctrines, we have no reasons to believe, that those people who originally received the biblical documents were even slightly interested in the remote and distant future. But we have many reasons to believe they were interested only in the here and now, or actually, the there and then.

When a person thinks about it, this view is entirely consistent with Jesus’ teaching, especially His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, since Jesus and His disciples focused on the situation which was of concern to those to whom they wrote, their teaching focused on the ideas of the then present and near term, and not on what has later come to be defined as end-times.

To illustrate this point more, modern Premillennialists are extremely interested in what they believe to be end-times prophesy, but why? They are interested in that end-times application to biblical prophesy simply because they are being taught that it is immediately forthcoming in our day and time. But if you could convince Premillennialists that whatever prophecy they currently hold in high interest will not be fulfilled until 2,000, or more, years future, they will immediately lose interest in end-times prophesy. Modern interpreters are no different from all ancient and medieval interpreters who envisioned all biblical writing to apply only to themselves. So in reality, modern futurists are no more interested in even an intermediately distant future than the first recipients of any of the New Testament documents would have been.

In my belief, however, I assume that any biblical text can only mean what it meant to the original recipients, in their particular circumstance. Actually, I believe it can only mean what the writer intended it to mean to his envisioned-audience. Therefore, I believe that close examination of the parousia passages will reveal that in all those passages the writer intended his readers to understand that he was discussing the here and now of their circumstance in which those first recipients lived, rather than some events that would happen in the distant future.

This point will become much clearer when I discuss the first-century cultural beliefs of the Greeks to whom Paul wrote concerning the resurrection.

In fact, I argue that a very close study of the texts in which the writers originally used that word parousia will reveal that if one studies the entire context of those references, it is not possible for modern interpreters to determine anything about the time of the event of Jesus’ actual arrival, or for that matter, from those texts, it is not possible to even determine that a future arrival was predicted. I will show that the term parousia only refers to Jesus’ (or anyone else’s) presence without regard to the time of beginning of that presence. Therefore, the question that I will attempt to answer is, Is Jesus currently present in the world? A second question that is part of the first is, Was He present in the world between 33 and 70 A.D.? Then obviously a third question is, Is the beginning of His coming presence still future? From these questions, one can see that I am going to deal with Jesus’ presence in a way that is different from other writers who phrase the question in regard to His future coming.

Years ago, I heard a preacher tell his congregation that the Bible is so clear, and easy to understand, that any nine-year old can easily understand it. Well, if you are like that preacher, and if you think the Bible is so clear about Jesus’ second coming that any nine-year old can easily understand that a future second coming is discussed, then why do so many intelligent interpreters have so many differing beliefs when they each truly believe that they are following the Bible? Perhaps, if we ask some hard questions, and chase our presuppositions to their root ideas, we can have a more accurate understanding of what the New Testament writers intended their envisioned-audiences to understand.

So, in a nutshell, this book is about the different understandings of the meaning of the Greek word parousia and what the authors of the various New Testament books intended their original envisioned-audiences to understand through their use of that word.

To delve into the idea of what the authors intended their original audiences to understand, however, opens up the need for discussions about the cultural and historic context of those writings.

But more than anything, this book is about how we either reexamine, or do not reexamine, the presuppositions that we were all taught in our youth.

As I study and research biblical information in general, and information specifically concerning whether or not we should expect that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the future, I have found that there are many associated subjects that bear heavily upon this question—subjects that I believe also require clarification. Two such subjects, truth and accurate communication, are so intricately intertwined that they cannot really be separated.

Truth

All discourse and dialogue (attempted communication) concerning any biblical subject, scientific subject, educational subject, or other subject of interest, depends heavily upon the concept of truth. Even a discourse in which someone is attempting to prove the modern ideology of total subjectivism, the writer, or speaker is, of necessity, stating that his or her beliefs are true and that any opposing beliefs are false.

Some of the people I know who are the most dogmatic advocates and defenders of their assumptions are subjectivists. Not long ago, in a breakfast meeting and discussion with another friend who is the most outspoken subjectivist that I know, my friend told me that I should stop reading the things from the writers that I read because those writers were all wrong in their beliefs. Simply, in our modern society, there is a major battle for our minds concerning which is true, the subjective, or the objective, and I might add, the material or the immaterial.

The other thing upon which all discourses and dialogues depend is accurate communication. Accurate communication is further dependent on precision of language and a common understanding of reality. But part of understanding reality is to understand when communication, such as biblical writing, was meant to be private rather than public, and how those different communication intentions matter to later interpretation of the public or private dialogue. I’ll discuss communication in the next section.

I fully understand that, based on their anti-realistic modern ideologies, some experts attempt to define truth out of existence.

Those experts tell us that there are no absolute truths. In order to foster the idea that truth does not exist, proponents of that ideology have formed two other theories of truth, which they propose are just as valid as the idea that truth corresponds with factual reality. Thus, they advocate that the correspondence of truth and reality is only a theory, and, therefore, only equal in validity to their other theories. The others they propose are The Coherence Theory, (which states that anything is only true for certain pre-stated positions) and The Pragmatic Theory (which states that truth is whatever was determined through someone’s inquiry). I, however, deny that anything other than correspondence, which states that truth is equal to reality, adequately defines truth. The other two theories are subjectivist jargon, used by people hoping to justify their anti-realistic ideologies. Therefore, I argue that truth should be defined as propositional statements specifying that personal beliefs correspond with reality.

To make my position a little plainer, I would ask us to look at truth through the TV game, Jeopardy. In that game, I supply the definition and ask the contestant to supply the single word that corresponds to that definition in the form of a question. In this case, I give the answer as, That set of facts, and/or statements, that equate to reality. The only possible question that corresponds to my answer is, What is truth?

Thus, to be understood, anyone who wishes to communicate a belief or concept with others should state that belief, or concept, in the form of a proposition, in which the proposition is constructed as a statement in terms that show a real distinction between the true and the false. A propositional statement of belief, a thought, or a sentence is true if, but only if, it corresponds with factual reality. Although many modern Bible teachers have adopted the popular twin pillars of Metaphysical Idealism, namely personal subjectivism and cultural relativism, which corresponds to the Coherence Theory, particularly with respect to how they interpret the Bible, the idea of truth is just as absolute when one is discussing a biblical writing as it is for any other idea or belief.

When biblical writers expressed propositional statements, those statements either corresponded with reality, or they did not. In Bible times, there was no middle ground, and there is none now. Either Jesus was the promised Messiah, or He was not. He either taught things concerning real salvation available to all humans or He did not. He either taught that, after His death, He would be absent from the earth for an extended period, or He did not. And if He was the promised Messiah, His teachings were true, and anyone believing something else is just as good, or better, is in error.

Assertions are useless, as far as providing real value to a discourse, unless they are presented in the form of a propositional statement to be examined, and also correspond to factual reality. But many times people use asserted conclusions as an attempt to close out any further discussion or examination of an issue.

Although people sometimes make assertions that they intend to be conclusions designed only as an appeal to emotions and not as factual truth, I believe that most people are interested in truth. All people strongly believe that what they believe is true. It does not matter whether people use terms, believe, know, think, perceive, suppose, assume, or any other term for what they believe, their intent is the same; they believe something or other to be the case as opposed to all else. If they did not believe their beliefs, knowledge, thinking, assumptions, or perceptions to be true, they would believe something different. So, it really does not matter which of those terms someone uses, except that, by definition, there are degrees of difference in one’s assumed certainty depending on which term he or she uses. Furthermore, by definition, knowledge cannot be false.

To believe anything (regardless of the term we use) is to contend that it is true. To agree with another’s position on anything is to accept the things that the other person says as being true. If I, or anyone else, disagree with what another person says, then I am, in effect, making the statement that I regard what that person is saying as either false or in error depending on my view of that person’s intent. But to clarify, I need to ask, Is he in error because he is uninformed, or is he in error because he is misinformed?

Certainly, neither Jesus nor the biblical writers used His teachings in isolation from their real-world historic and cultural circumstance. Therefore, if our intent is to accurately understand the truth pertaining to how the word parousia was used by Jesus and the biblical writers, we must also understand how that intended communication related to several other interests of their first-century circumstance. Therefore, I will delve into these related topics in some detail before I continue with my word study of the parousia.

At least, at the deepest level, we all understand that even the things that we most firmly believe, may not, in fact, be true. Some things we think are certain. Other things we only believe beyond a reasonable doubt, and still other things we hold as true but only to the degree of what we call an opinion or what some might call a perception. But even the things of which we think are certain may turn out to be wrong.

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we are uninformed. Sometimes we are misinformed. Sometimes we tell lies. And sometimes these lies are little white lies or half-truths. But without the concept of truth, and the way we hold truth as being sovereign, there could be no lies. Without a concept of truth, there could not even be communication from one person to another. In fact, if there were no such thing as truth, which is the claim proposed by numerous authority figures such as Nietzsche, there would not even be any mistakes.

If Nietzsche, and other modern iconoclastic thinkers were, and are, correct, then whatever you believe about anything, including Jesus’ coming is just as accurate and true as my beliefs. Those subjectivists tell us that what you believe is true for you, and what I believe is true for me. They tell us that there are no facts, that facts are only what a person believes. And they tell us that there is no such thing as truth. What they do not tell us, however, is how their assertions can be absolutely true, when they tell us that there are no absolute truths.

When we talk about something such as Jesus’ coming, those subjective ideas seem rather ridiculous. We all know that He either departed the earth in what is known as His ascension or He did not. And we all understand that, if Jesus did ascend with the intent of returning at some later time, He either has already returned, or He hasn’t. But in many other things, such as word definitions and numerous biblical, cultural, and even historic assumptions that affect many other doctrinal teachings, many modern religious people have accepted that same kind of subjectivity that Nietzsche and modern subjectivists espouse.

If the beliefs of many people in the modern world are correct, then it does not matter if one believes Jesus has already returned, if His return is still future, or even whether or not there was a Messiah Jesus. But unfortunately, given the understanding and practices of many church-going believers, they seem to be not too different from that modern worldview.

But I believe that truth (reality) is sovereign to any dialogue or rational argument. Here I am using