The Second Coming of Christ is an erroneous idea that developed among Christians in the last third of the first century AD. It weakened the assurance that the first Christians had that the kingdom of God had come.

Jesus took on the role of the Suffering Servant as described in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and in some of the Psalms, and as the Messiah giving his life in accordance with that role, he expected the kingdom of God to come. In Mark 9:1, he says that some standing with him will not die before they see the kingdom of God come in power, and he was not referring to the Transfiguration.

In some of his parables, he describes what the kingdom is like, but they are rather vague and only give hints as to what to expect. Probably, Jesus himself had no clear idea of what would happen, but he was confident that people and God would be brought together and he (the Son of Man) would be sitting at the right hand of God, which was what he told the high priest in Mark 14:62.

In Mark 16:19, Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God, and the kingdom of God has come for those who believe. During his lifetime, the good news was that the kingdom of God was near, but with his ‘sacrifice of love’, it had come.

The first followers of Jesus realized that they were in the kingdom. As Paul or whoever wrote the letter to the Colossians said, “[God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” (Col 1:14) In the kingdom, God rules with Christ at his right hand, and a way to understand this is to think of human existence as being in both the objective and the subjective. Jesus, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is prompting our thoughts in the subjective.

The Lord’s Supper is the central sacrament in Christianity, and those who believe in Jesus Christ take him into themselves: the Holy Spirit enters their minds, and they are in the kingdom of God. The sacrament is repeated to remind Christians of who Jesus was and what he did. To say that the kingdom has not yet come and to hope for a miraculous event in the sky, as described in 1 Thess 4:13-18, is to deny what Jesus did on the cross.

Some scholars think that 1 Thessalonians was the first letter that Paul wrote, but although some parts might be from his hand, the rest was written much later, probably during or soon after the First Jewish War (66-70 AD). In 2 Cor 3:17b, Paul writes that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” but in 1 Thess 5:12, it is written that Christians have people over them in the Lord to admonish them. In 1 Thess 2:16, the author says that the wrath of God has come upon the Jews. Surely, this is a reference to their defeat in the Jewish War.

In 1 Cor 15:24-26, Paul talks about the end of time when Christ’s reign has been successful, and he hands over the kingdom to God the Father. This is a different situation from the Second Coming, as described in 1 Thess 4:13-18, which was perceived as imminent.

To understand how the idea of an imminent Second Coming arose in the early Church, one needs to consider the historical circumstances. When Mark wrote his gospel, which concluded with Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, conditions were stable, and Christianity was spreading in the Roman Empire. He was writing before the fire in Rome, which occurred in 64 AD. Nero blamed the Christians, and they were horribly persecuted. Then, in 66 AD, the Jewish War began. It was a terrible time for everyone involved, and it is understandable that some Christians would look to Jesus to come again and save them.

But being in the kingdom of God means responsibility. It means living as Jesus exemplified and commanded us to do, in order to consolidate his reign and change the world. It means living in the present, facing the current circumstances, and doing something about them if they are in the dominion of darkness. Burying our heads in the sand, saying that the kingdom has not come, and hoping for a Second Coming is the opposite of what Jesus was about.

In Galatians 2:20, Paul said, “Christ lives in me.” Actually, he lives in everyone who believes. With Christ in their hearts, Christians are in the kingdom of God, and their task is to increase the kingdom. When times are bad, and wars are raging, their response should not be to pray for a Second Coming but to be Christ in the world.

~ Peter E. Lewis