common objections

1. “No one knows the day or the hour” means that the date cannot be known precisely. However, that does not stop Jesus from repeatedly giving a general timeframe of several decades within which to expect his second coming.

2. It can't be interpreted to mean you and I as metaphorical apostles because he specifically says "some of you standing here", as in the people he was talking to at that time. The full context reinforces that, he was speaking to disciples who accompanied him to Caesar Phillipi who wanted to know how they would recognize the second coming.

3. It can't be interpreted as referring to the transfiguration because the events described in verse 27 don't happen at the transfiguration (Jesus, God and angels coming from the clouds, judging mankind according to their deeds).

4. Daniel's visions don't satisfy the claim either because while they depict seven apocalyptic creatures (representing kingdoms that ruled over the Jews up to that point) nowhere does Daniel's vision describe Christ's return.

5. The 666/616 gematria code known as the number of the Beast must mean Nero/Neron, because only that name fits both 666 (Nero) and 616 (Neron). Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/mp666.html.  This is because the book of Revelations was intended to metaphorically describe the fall of Rome, in a time when Christians could not openly predict it.

6. It's true that some of the events Christ said must occur before his second coming have not yet occurred. However, submitting this as proof that Christ must have meant something else in the verses supplied above presupposes that he actually was clairvoyant, instead of simply being wrong about those predictions too, because he was a regular human being without the ability to see the future.

7. For those who say that no Christian tastes death but lives on forever, it is clear Christ meant bodily death by other verses wherein he tells his traveling companions which signs they may personally expect to witness as his second coming approaches. They, according to Christ, should anticipate those signs within their lifetimes and would know by those signs that his second coming was imminent.

8. Jesus’ resurrection does not fit the criteria supplied by the verse because he did not, on that occasion, “come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and reward each person according to what they have done.” By that description it’s clear he is referring to his second coming, as explored more thoroughly in Revelations.

The entirety of Matthew through John, wherever Christ speaks of his return he does it in language that makes it clear he expects it to be IMMINENT. (A good example of this is in 1 John 2:18, where Christ urges the followers he is writing to: “18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”) Over and over he stresses to them that they should not to make long term plans (like marriage: 1 Cor. 7:29-31), not to go on living in the world as if it will still be here for the rest of their lives, and to look for specific signs that they specifically can expect to see shortly after his crucifixion.

This was committed to writing a few decades after Christ's death by people who still believed they were living in a window of time that was consistent with what Christ predicted for his return. Then it just never got changed, because of the freezing effect of orthodoxy on preserving the contents of a holy text. It was just continually reinterpreted in a way to make it seem like Jesus wasn't wrong.