We are at chapter two. Things get a little wierd now. The author tells the Thessalonians not to pay any attention to prophecies, reports, or letters, saying "The day of the lord has already come." In other words, people might try to get them to believe Jesus came and they missed it. Did this actually happen? Were people saying those kinds of things? Isn't that kind of what the gospels were saying? The christ already came and he was not recognized for who he was. After all Paul is not using the word return. In fact, I just looked up the words "return" and "returned" in Strong's concordance. It doesn't occur in reference to Jesus in any of the New Testament epistles.
" The New Testament talks of Jesus, the lord, or the christ, coming out of heaven at the end of times. Nowhere in any of the non gospel books can I find the words return or returning when referring to "the day of the lord." There is also no phrase "second coming" referring to Jesus, as is often used in Christianity. It seems strange to me. If he was coming back to the earth he left, wouldn't the language reflect that?
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says the Son of Man is going to come In his kingdom, but he doesn't say that is himself. He also says that will happen before some of the people he is talking to die.
The book of John, the latest gospel, written later than most of the rest of the NT, is the only one that specifically has Jesus saying he will come back, to the apostles. That is in chapter 14, where he also says, "Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.....On that day you will realize I am in my father and you are in me, and I am in you....He who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will love him and show myself to him...If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. my father will love him and come to him and make our home with him...the holy spirit, whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said."
This doesn't sound anything like a literal return to me. By the time this was written, the christian community had to have given up hope in any kind of "day of the lord" coming soon and created an alternate scenario of Jesus privately revealing himself to believers." (I also posted the portion in quotes in the Roll to Disbelieve comments.)
Anyway, the Thessalonians are told the lord hasn't come yet. "That day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. (Who is that man?) He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called god or worshipped, so that he sets himself up in god's temple, proclaiming himself to be god." The emperor Caligula tried to do exactly that, about the year 40CE, according to Philo of Alexandria. Read what Philo wrote here: (XLIII).
Caligula's statue appears to have never made it into the temple, and Caligula was killed. This letter to the Thessalonians was written at least a decade after Caligula died. If it is referring to him, it is a retroactive prophecy. If this author is not actually Paul, and he wrote much later, he appears to have his timeline messed up. I can't find any other indication that a statue of a "god" was ever set up in the Jewish temple. That doesn't mean there wasn't plans by some other emperor to do that. However, the temple is gone. If this man of lawlessness was supposed to set himself up as a god in the temple, it would have happened almost two thousand years ago. What does could this possibly have to do with us today?
No comments:
Post a Comment