Steven Carr

From the Octavius of Felix

'"Further, in respect of the burning up of the world, it is a vulgar error not to believe either that fire will fall upon it in an unforeseen way, or that the world will be destroyed by it. For who of wise men doubts, who is ignorant, that all things which have had a beginning perish, all things which are made come to an end?'

From the Writings of NT Wright

'"If Jesus and the early church used the relevant language in the same way as their contemporiries, it is highly unlikely that they would have been referring to the actual end of the world, and highly likely that they would have been referring to events within space-time history which they interpreted as the coming of the kingdom. It will not do to dismiss this reading of 'apocalyptic' language as 'merely metaphorical'. Metaphors have teeth; the complex metaphors available to first-century Jews had particularly sharp ones." (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 321)'

It is suprising that Christian scholars fall into the same vulgar errors already denounced by the early church - that when Jesus said the world would end soon, he meant just that.