Julio

These three verses broadly represent the inconsistency of Jesus’ teaching concerning the coming of what he labelled “The Kingdom of Heaven/God”:

1. “The kingdom is at hand”, implying that Jesus and cousin John Baptist knew exactly about it; [“From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Mathew 4:17]

2. “The day or hour nobody knows”, implying that the first statement was a strategic error [“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” Mark 13:32]

3. “Not for you to know”, implying that the original message had been a flop [“And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” Acts 1:7]

Put into perspective, Jesus and John were hastening their followers to expect the Kingdom of God to come SOON. A year or two later, it was apparent that the original urgency had been exaggerated. By Pentecost, Jesus had lost the earliest fervour and was now succumbing under pressure, excusing his original misdemeanour, and postponing the arrival for a time the disciples had no right to know!
And we do now know that the whole message had been a bad dream!
No Kingdom of Heaven or of God came for the next TWO THOUSAND years.
Some say the kingdom came and continues to come, hence the logic to pray "Thy kingdom come", but the concept is too childish for adult minds; besides, Jesus explained nothing under that premise.

bacht

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, `Lo, here it is!' or `There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you."

And he said to the disciples, "The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and you will not see it.
And they will say to you, `Lo, there!' or `Lo, here!' Do not go, do not follow them.
For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day.

Luke 17.20-24

The bolded part suggests that the presence of Jesus is the key. Or there's an existential reading, that the kingdom is always here if we're open to it.

Julio

Well, the mysterious conundrum had to be resolved one way or another to perpetuate the religious metaphors.
The prayer “Thy kingdom come!” [now in the number of some 100 trillion in 20 centuries] is the monkey wrench in the works to upset definitions.
You see, such a "vital" teaching had to be decoded by superior intellects, for the original proposition had been muddled by poor grammar.

andrewcriddle

I don't thimk it is inconsistent to claim that:
a/ the Kingdom is coming soon
b/ no one knows exactly when.



Andrew Criddle

aa5874

In retrospect "the kingdom is coming soon" and "no one knows exactly when" is inconsistent since it actually turns out that the "kingdom" has not yet come after 2000 years.

It now appears that the author did not really know anything about any "kingdom", he really did not know how "kingdoms" could come and the author's guessing or lying has now been documented for eternity or until "his kingdom come" whichever is sooner.

Julio

Brilliant point. If Jesus had come from heaven with a definite programme designed by his Father, how could it be that he was denied to know EXACTLY when the supposed kingdom would come?!... Jesus' inconsistency makes him a fraud. You pray, "Thy kingdom come" 100 trillion times in 20 centuries and in the mean time the kingdom has already come and gone and nobody worried to change the plea?!!.. But since we are no longer interested in kingdom, the prayer is a fraudulent teaching, too.

RogueBibleScholar

I think I might have a pretty good answer for this. Joseph Atwill, in his book Caesar's Messiah, presents us with an intriguing possibility: that the Second Coming of the Son of God in the Gospels was the attack of Titus, son of the deified Vespasian, on Jerusalem. He cites a number of Patristic authors who actually say that the destruction of Jerusalem which Jesus predicts was indeed that of Titus:

"(6) And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (7) For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." (Mt. 24:6-7)	Josephus records earthquakes just before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus: "But the shame that would attend them in case they returned without doing any thing at all, so far overcame that their repentance, that they lay all night before the wall, though in a very bad encampment; for there broke out a prodigious storm in the night, with the utmost violence, and very strong winds, with the largest showers of rain, with continued lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions and bellowings of the earth, that was in an earthquake. These things were a manifest indication that some destruction was coming upon men, when the system of the world was put into this disorder; and any one would guess that these wonders foreshowed some grand calamities that were coming." (Wars 4.4.5) Josephus also mentions famines and pestilence: "Thus did the miseries of Jerusalem grow worse and worse every day, and the seditious were still more irritated by the calamities they were under, even while the famine preyed upon themselves, after it had preyed upon the people. And indeed the multitude of carcasses that lay in heaps one upon another was a horrible sight, and produced a pestilential stench, ..." (Wars 6.1.1) Josephus also tells of the wars and rumors of wars before Titus' conquest of Jerusalem.
"(30) And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (31) And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Mt. 24:30-31)	" ... a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Artemisius, [Iyar,] a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities. (Wars 6.5.3)
"(15) When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) (16) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:" (Mt. 24:15-16)	"And now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the holy house itself, and of all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns to the temple and set them over against its eastern gate; and there did they offer sacrifices to them, and there did they make Titus imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy." (Wars 6.6.1)

There are a number of other similar parallels like that, as well. I actually learned something from watching Hagee one day, when he identified the phrase in Lk. 21:24, "... until the times of the gentiles be fulfilled." as the change of context between the attack on Jerusalem and the future Second Coming, in the eyes of fundamentalists. However, there is no solid reason to believe that vss. 25-28 which follow are talking about a time separate from the other preceding passages. Said another way, while the author in Lk. has obviously telescoped to a future time, it is not clear that he has remained there. If vss. 25-28 are about a Second Coming future to us, the Gospels do not give us much information about this second return, only four vss. in Mt. and Lk., other than passing references; and without making it clear that they are in a separate context from the vss. preceding v. 24. The signs of the Second Coming would also be rather general. On the contrary, the statement in v. 27 "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." sounds a lot like its synoptic parallel in Mt. 24:30-31: "(30) And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (31) And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." If the synoptic parallel holds, they are supposedly talking about the same event. Yet, this is the very context in which Hagee says anticipates the fall of Jerusalem. In agreement with expectation, after each passage, the parable of the fig tree follows. Thus, the synoptic parallel about a supposed but unclear future second coming is a coming of the Son of Man in heaven just before the attack on Jerusalem!

Now that we have lain the groundwork, to answer your questions:

1. Why is Jesus made to say, “The kingdom is at hand”? Because the attack on Jerusalem was only 40 or so years away, and the Kingdom of God was the Roman-controlled Israel, in which Titus had brought peace to a land wracked by conflicting revolutionary movements - at least as Josephus tells it.
2. Why is Jesus made to say, “The day or hour nobody knows”? Because the war between Rome and Jerusalem had come up rather unexpectedly; except that there had been a long series of failed revolutionary leaders which preceded it.
3. Why in the Acts, do they say, the time of the arrival of power is “Not for you to know”? The attack on Jerusalem had not come yet, they could not have Jesus announce precisely what the Romans were going to do before they did it.

Not that I believe a writer writing before the attack could have known when the attack was coming; but to prophesy when the attack was coming would have been something like betraying a military plan before it happened to the reader who believes in prophesy. I believe the Gospels were composed after the writing of the Antiquities, and utilized the Wars and the Antiquities heavily; re-utilizing their mostly historical incidents as events which happened in the lives of Christian figures. Thus, they would be made to prophesy events which had already happened, even though no such prophesies would have been around when the events of the war with Jerusalem had already happened. Other parables say that the Kingdom is already among them. That would be true for people who accepted Christianity, and adopted a Roman surrogate version of Judaism. The Revelation, on the other hand, would then be a book written from a Jewish perspective prophesying about the fall of Rome as the "whore of Babylon"; and thus from a very different intellectual school, but somehow which got tacked on anyway. Whether Christianity existed as a movement before the War is as yet unclear. Following the reasoning of Atwill, Jesus' Second Coming was Titus' return to conquer Jerusalem, when Simon the revolutionary was to decline to join Titus, the son of the deified Vespasian, for a third time; just as Simon Peter had denied Jesus, the Son of God, three times at His trial.

punk77

Whilst I do not know of Joseph Atwill's book Caesar's Messiah (see above), I believe that a more straightforward reading of the bible would agree with Julio's interpretation.

In 1Peter 4:7 the author writes:
But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. (emphasis mine)

which ties in with the belief of a quick Jesus return.

But in 2Peter 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. (emphasis mine)

(what is meant to be) the same author is trying to explain to his audience why the no-show by Jesus by making out that Jesus is outside the bounds of time. The author tries to explain the no-show by blaming people people who had misunderstood the message of the '...holy phrophets/apostles...'(v2)
3: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4: And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

but that just brings up the question of the ability of the '...holy phrophets/apostles...' to convey their message in an understandable fashion.

It could also be read as the author of 2Peter saying that the author of 1Peter did not know what he was talking about -
But the end of all things is at hand: vs
...one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

RogueBibleScholar

In reply to Punk77: What is the most straightforward way of dealing with the fact that virtually every prophesy of Jesus' about the supposed Second Coming in the Gospels seems to have been fulfilled in Josephus' Wars and Antiquities? Sometimes a way might seem more straightforward, because it does not account for all the evidence. Is it straightforward to associate "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." (Lk. 21:20) with the attack by Rome? Those conditions had already been triggered by the time of its writing. The verse in the Gospels that has the most difficulty with this that I have seen is: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:" (Mt. 24:29) However, there were reports of volcanoes upon the attack on Jerusalem, which is not surprising, since Vesuvius was about to destroy Pompeii in 74 CE and may have had an early eruption; and there may have been others at the basis of this claim.

Atwill has found dozens of these parallels between Titus Caesar in Josephus and Jesus. I have found about three dozen - in many cases with parallels too close to be explained by chance. I strongly encourage you to read his book, as I have been following NT scholarship disappointedly for some time, until I became of aware of his and about two others that I considered to be significant breakthroughs. Until you have evaluated these parallels, it may not be obvious just how probable this all is.

Atwill is having some difficulty fitting other epistles into this scheme. I think he is off-base about Paul, for example; having him as fictional, whereas I side with Eisenman, in that he was probably related to the Herods and was probably a Roman agent. The passages you cite above, I believe, would have been written after the Gospels were written; either by the original authors or church adjustments. The Gospels would then be Roman propaganda, to make Jesus prophesy that Israel was now to be the Roman-controlled Kingdom of God (i.e. Jupiter); and the people writing the epistles had failed to understand this, but instead interpreted, as most people do today, those same prophesies as being about some event after Jerusalem's destruction, which we are still waiting on. Then, by the time of the Revelation, people would be using Rome's own fictional prophesies about the destruction of Jerusalem against Rome; using them to refer to Rome's destruction instead.

The Rogue Scholar

punk77

Thanks for the reply and the recommendations RougeBibleScholar.

I did a quick google of Joseph Atwill and I will try this one http://www.caesarsmessiah.com/main.html first.

I have tried to play the video interview on the site but the playback is very jumpy and, as it is down at lasting for nearly an hour, I will just have to leave it for now and hope that it will play more smoothly at a later time. I will also have a look at the messageboard when I can though I will have to register first.

The people that I interact with are believers of a literal bible so if I tried to use any of the arguements that Joseph Atwill uses (going by the information you provided and some of the book reviews) they would just laugh at me. But if I point out things like Julio uses in the OP or the 1Peter/2Peter incongruity they cannot dismiss them so easily.