Saturday, December 21, 2013

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.

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