The End times and the New Testament

[PeteSinCA]

Ultimate, you should look into a Amillennial eschatology.

Why not recommend the Watchtower Society while you're at it?

FL

The WTBTS has a very impressive record, of being 100% wrong.

BTW, unless the WT changed their teaching, again, they could be celebrating the 100th anniversary of Jesus' invisible return to Earth. Old school Russellites had that celebration in 1974, but the WT received "new light" about the timing of Jesus' invisible return in the '20s or '30s. No, I am not joking.

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Ultimate, you should look into a Amillennial eschatology.

Why not recommend the Watchtower Society while you're at it?

FL

I think the ice has frozen your brain FL.

I don't understand what those Dale Tooley quotes were about...sorry.

FL

[ultimate777]

Lately I have been getting the impression that the New Testament authors believed that The End was coming before everybody then alive died, and in any case the Romans believed they did believe that, thought it extremely dangerous even though not believing it themselves, and acted accordingly.

Could I be right?

FWIW, I recently wrote something about this:

Did Paul Believe Jesus Would Return Within His Lifetime?

In reading 1 and 2 Timothy recently, I noticed something interesting. Both books include some teaching that I believe looks toward the "End Times". These passages have gotten their share of attention in the last several decades' books about eschatology. It is commonly believed that these teachings indicated that Paul believed that Jesus might return any time, possibly within Paul's lifetime.

What caught my attention was 2 Timothy 2:2: And entrust what you heard me say in the presence of many others as witnesses to faithful people who will be competent to teach others as well. Follow the train of Paul's thought: he was a first-generation Christian leader; he had taught, mentored and apprenticed Timothy to be a second-generation leader; in this passage he urges Timothy to teach the next, third, generation of Christian leaders; so that they could then teach a succeeding, fourth, generation of Christian leaders.

While I'm sure Paul would not have minded had Jesus returned in his lifetime (and believed it possible), he anticipated the need for at least three generations of Christian leadership beyond himself (he probably meant for Christian leaders always to be preparing the next generation of leaders). Paul probably knew that he was unlikely to be alive when those third and fourth generation Christian leaders actual became leaders. In other words, Paul was very aware that Jesus might not return within his lifetime, and set things in motion toward the possibility that Jesus might not return for decades, centuries, or even millennia.

As for what the pagan Romans believed Christians believed, I suppose what you said is possible. The Romans didn't hold Christians in very high regard, so they didn't really bother to try to understand them.

What really got me onto this , especially the Roman thing, was the first episode of http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... opsis.html