Does the Bible Teach that Jesus’ Second Com­ing is Now at Hand?

Why is this ques­tion important?
Many people who study the Bible believe that the Second Com­ing of Jesus is immin­ent. They believe that the signs of the Last Days can be clearly seen in our times. For this reas­on, on the fol­low­ing pages we would like to take a closer look at some Bible pas­sages which we con­sider cru­cial in this con­text. We want to show why it is not in keep­ing with the Chris­ti­an spir­it to spec­u­late about the time of Jesus’ second com­ing. Jesus calls us to fol­low Him, to serve Him faith­fully in humil­ity and obed­i­ence. We know that he is coming—but for Chris­ti­ans it is not import­ant when.

1 Can We Know Approx­im­ately When Jesus Will Return?

After the Lord’s resur­rec­tion, when the dis­ciples were once again look­ing for­ward full of hope to the begin­ning of the king­dom of God, they asked him:

So when they had come togeth­er, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the king­dom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or sea­sons that the Fath­er has fixed by his own author­ity. But you will receive power when the Holy Spir­it has come upon you, and you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:6–8)

With his answer, Jesus turns their atten­tion on the one hand to the task they should ful­fil. On the oth­er hand, he clearly states that any pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the time of his return is not their busi­ness. Times and points in time (Greek “chro­nos” and “kairos”) include both time peri­ods and con­crete points in time. So who­ever spec­u­lates about the time or even the point in time of the Second Com­ing of Christ must ulti­mately con­sider him­self to be great­er than the apostles, oth­er­wise he would adhere to Jesus’ word, just as they did.

Jesus had told his dis­ciples about his return earlier:

But con­cern­ing that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heav­en, nor the Son, but the Fath­er only. (Mat­thew 24:36)

Even the Son does­n’t know! How arrog­ant must someone be who believes they can know or guess the time of the return? Some of these inter­pret­ers refer to Jesus’ words and say that although no-one knows the day and hour, the approx­im­ate time is dis­cern­ible. Jesus did not mean, how­ever, that he or the angels did not know exactly (so to say: no one knows the hour and day, but the week or year we can know) but not at all. He also makes this clear by his words about the thief in the night:

There­fore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is com­ing. But know this, that if the mas­ter of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was com­ing, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. There­fore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is com­ing at an hour you do not expect. (Mat­thew 24:42–44)

Peter (2 Peter 3:10) and Paul also use the par­able of the thief in the night to show that it is impossible to fore­see the time of Jesus’ coming:

Now con­cern­ing the times and the sea­sons, broth­ers, you have no need to have any­thing writ­ten to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are say­ing, “There is peace and secur­ity”, then sud­den destruc­tion will come upon them as labour pains come upon a preg­nant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in dark­ness, broth­ers, for that day to sur­prise you like a thief. For you are all chil­dren of light, chil­dren of the day. We are not of the night or of the dark­ness. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:1–5)

This pas­sage proves that “day and hour” means noth­ing more than “times and points in time”. We do not know when the Lord will come, nor can we know it! The Sons of Light are not con­cerned about the par­tic­u­lar time of His com­ing, but they can look for­ward every day to the Day of the Lord, because they live every day for His good pleasure.

2 Why Does the Lord Nev­er­the­less Speak of Dis­cern­ible Signs?

Much of what Jesus said to his con­tem­por­ar­ies is also of con­tinu­ing rel­ev­ance for all future gen­er­a­tions. His announce­ment of the destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem, how­ever, was first and fore­most aimed at his listen­ers, the apostles. These men and the Chris­ti­ans of Judea should recog­nize the signs that pre­cede the dis­aster and act accord­ingly. An import­ant approach to the Bible which also saves us from jump­ing to con­clu­sions is to first con­sider what the dir­ect address­ees were sup­posed to under­stand. This applies above all to the so-called apo­ca­lyptic dis­courses in Mat­thew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21.

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the dis­ciples came to him privately, say­ing, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your com­ing and of the close of the age?” (Mat­thew 24:3)

Did the dis­ciples really want to know when their Lord was com­ing back? Would­n’t that pre­sup­pose that they had at that time^[1] already under­stood and accep­ted that Jesus would be rejec­ted, abused and executed, and would then rise, go to the Fath­er and only then come back? Though the Greek word “par­ousia”, which is rendered here with “com­ing”, can also mean “return”, but the Gos­pels clearly show that the dis­ciples did not even com­pre­hend when Jesus made dir­ect announce­ments of his suf­fer­ing (Luke 18:31–34). Con­sequently, even here, when they asked Jesus for the signs of his com­ing, they did not think of a pos­sible second com­ing. How­ever, with his com­ing they con­nec­ted the vis­ible begin­ning of his power as Mes­si­ah, as the undis­puted King of Israel. The ques­tion of the close of the age here is not linked to the end of the world, but rather with the concept that when the prom­ised king takes over his reign, it marks the begin­ning of the new, mes­si­an­ic age.

In his answer, Jesus first of all responds to the signs before the com­ing destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem, in which the Chris­ti­ans of Judaea should recog­nize when his day would come, so that they must leave the city in time. He describes this judg­ment as his com­ing, that is, his com­ing as a judge of the dis­obedi­ent nation. Start­ing from this event, he then refers back to his return, in which he will also come as a judge, but for which there will be no sign what­so­ever. In Appendix 1 of Mat­thew 24 we will dis­cuss this in more detail.

At first glance, it may seem hard to under­stand why Jesus describes the destruc­tion of the city as his com­ing or his day, but in the Old Test­a­ment the proph­ets some­times pro­claimed the judg­ment of the dis­obedi­ent people in this way:

Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruc­tion from the Almighty it comes. (Joel 1:15)

Thus says the Lord God: Dis­aster after dis­aster! Behold, it comes. An end has come; the end has come; it has awakened against you. Behold, it comes. Your doom has come to you, O inhab­it­ant of the land. The time has come; the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joy­ful shout­ing on the moun­tains. (Ezekiel 7:5–7)

The end that Ezekiel pro­claims is that of the city and the temple. His words were ful­filled with­in a few years of his proph­ecy: Jer­u­s­alem was des­troyed by the Baby­lo­ni­ans in 586 BC.

Start­ing from his announce­ment of the destruc­tion of the temple, Jesus also speaks to his dis­ciples of the end, mean­ing the end of the city:

And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be ter­ri­fied, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once. (Luke 21:9)

But when you see Jer­u­s­alem sur­roun­ded by armies, then know that its des­ol­a­tion has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the moun­tains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the coun­try enter it, for these are days of ven­geance, to ful­fil all that is writ­ten. (Luke 21:20–22)

In oth­er places he calls the same event the Day of the Son of Man, for here too he urges his listen­ers to flee:

… so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the house­top, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and like­wise let the one who is in the field not turn back. (Luke 17:30–31)

Because of their great rebel­lion against the com­mand­ments, the Israel­ites often lost God’s pro­tec­tion. But when was Israel’s res­ist­ance to God great­er than at the time when he sent his only beloved Son to them? And who could there­fore fore­see the com­ing judg­ment bet­ter than the Son of Man himself?

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, say­ing, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hid­den from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a bar­ri­cade round you and sur­round you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your chil­dren with­in you. And they will not leave one stone upon anoth­er in you, because you did not know the time of your vis­it­a­tion.” (Luke 19:41–44)

Jesus also referred to this event on oth­er occa­sions. This is what he says to his disciples:

When they per­se­cute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. (Mat­thew 10:23)

In the pre­ced­ing verses 16–22, Jesus pre­dicts severe per­se­cu­tions, espe­cially by their fel­low coun­try­men. He com­forts them with the fact that they will always find refuge until his com­ing, namely, when God will judge the people for the rejec­tion of the Mes­si­ah. If he had meant here his return in the life­time of his dis­ciples, we would have to reject him and ulti­mately his entire mes­sage, for then he would have been mis­taken^[2]. But it is not a mis­take, but by this say­ing Jesus emphas­izes the mean­ing of the destruc­tion of the temple, which some of the dis­ciples were still to exper­i­ence. This com­ing as judge over Israel is a pre­curs­or of the Last Judge­ment, which will ulti­mately over­throw all those who des­pise God and are reli­gious hypo­crites. The spir­itu­al con­nec­tion between these two “Judge­ment Days” becomes clear in the fol­low­ing state­ment, for example:

For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Fath­er, and then he will repay each per­son accord­ing to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some stand­ing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man com­ing in his king­dom. (Mat­thew 16:27–28)

Without a doubt Jesus speaks in verse 27 of the judg­ment at his return. It is there­fore obvi­ous that verse 28 is also about Jesus’ judg­ment, which some of the dis­ciples will even exper­i­ence. Jer­u­s­alem was des­troyed about 40 years after Jesus spoke these words. At that time some of the dis­ciples were no longer alive, but some had not yet tasted death.

3 The Ful­fil­ment of Time, the Last Days, the Last Hour—What Is It All About?

From the very begin­ning of his min­istry, Jesus spoke of the ful­fil­ment of time and urged his listen­ers to repent:

Now after John was arres­ted, Jesus came into Galilee, pro­claim­ing the gos­pel of God, and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gos­pel.” (Mark 1:14–15)

The time was ful­filled, not because the end of the world was near, but because God’s grace stood before them in per­son. It was high time for the Jews to give up their mis­con­cep­tions about the Mes­si­ah^[3] and their spe­cial pos­i­tion before God^[4]. Rather, they should learn to serve the Lord in faith, that is, in deep trust.

The New Test­a­ment shows us that the last days began with Jesus’ first coming.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fath­ers by the proph­ets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appoin­ted the heir of all things, through whom also he cre­ated the world. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

The Let­ter to the Hebrews^[5] begins with these words. We can see that not only the people of the 20th or 21st cen­tury lived in the end times, but also the first Chris­ti­ans. Jesus’ life in per­fect obed­i­ence shows us the way to the Fath­er, much more power­fully than the proph­ets did before. In addi­tion, as a son he is the very image of God’s nature. He is the strongest and thus the last rev­el­a­tion of God in his­tory. The next event in the his­tory of sal­va­tion will be his second com­ing. The expres­sion “in these last days” does not say any­thing about the dur­a­tion of this period.

Paul writes to Timothy about the last days:

But under­stand this, that in the last days there will come times of dif­fi­culty. For people will be lov­ers of self, lov­ers of money, proud, arrog­ant, abus­ive, dis­obedi­ent to their par­ents, ungrate­ful, unholy, heart­less, unap­peas­able, slan­der­ous, without self-control, bru­tal, not lov­ing good, treach­er­ous, reck­less, swollen with con­ceit, lov­ers of pleas­ure rather than lov­ers of God, hav­ing the appear­ance of god­li­ness, but deny­ing its power. Avoid such people. (2 Timothy 3:1–5)

Unfor­tu­nately, through­out all eras, most people were selfish, money-loving, boast­ful, as the story of the Flood teaches us. Paul does not want to say here that people in gen­er­al were bet­ter earli­er than in the last times. Nor does he talk about an era that would only begin much later. It would make no sense to inform Timothy about the cor­rup­tion of the people of the 21st cen­tury. As verse 5 shows, they both already live in the last days, because Timothy should keep away from such people. In the time after Jesus there will be many people who feel close to God and “… who have the appear­ance of god­li­ness, but deny its power”. Paul thus pre­dicts, on the basis of the devel­op­ment in his own time, the appear­ance of pseudo-Christianity, whose roots actu­ally reach back to the first cen­tury. This is also explained in chapter 4:1–5. He warns that many believ­ers or those inter­ested in faith will turn away from the truth and turn to fables, and there­fore urges Timothy to hold fast to the right doc­trine. The fact that this situ­ation does not only occur in later times, but that it was already a real­ity in the time of Paul is also evid­ent from 1 Timothy 4:1–11, 6:20–21, Acts 20:29–30.

The dis­tor­tion of Chris­ti­an doc­trine is the back­ground of the Apostle John’s state­ments about the com­ing of the antichrist:

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. (1 John 2:18)

John did not want to arouse in the read­ers of his let­ter an expect­a­tion of the immin­ent Second Com­ing of Jesus^[6]—there is not even the slight­est ref­er­ence to this in the rest of the let­ter. But the appear­ance of the first false teach­ers in the New Test­a­ment churches reveals the truth of the words of Jesus:

And he said to his dis­ciples, “Tempta­tions to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.” (Luke 17:1–2)

So tempta­tions will come. The early churches were threatened mainly by the work of Juda­izers^[7] and the influ­ence of Gnos­is^[8]. Self-conceived teach­ings already exis­ted before Jesus, but the clar­ity of his words and his abso­lute claim to truth made the decep­tions even more subtle. Satan, the fath­er of lies, wants to dis­tract people away from the truth with state­ments that appear to be scrip­tur­al. In his let­ter, the apostle shows us that apart from the dif­fer­ences in the con­tent of the doc­trine, above all, the lack of broth­erly love is a sure testi­mony to the deceit­ful­ness of the false teach­ers. This is also true today, so that for an hon­est per­son, des­pite many her­es­ies, it is pos­sible to judge wheth­er a fel­low­ship fol­lows the com­mand­ments of Jesus faith­fully or not.

4 What Is Jesus Talk­ing About When He Speaks of His Return?

Jesus con­stantly emphas­izes the import­ance of sin­cer­ity and vigil­ance. All the words we find in the Gos­pels con­cern­ing his return nev­er talk about recog­niz­able signs, but about a life of integ­rity and truthfulness:

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burn­ing, and be like men who are wait­ing for their mas­ter to come home from the wed­ding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those ser­vants whom the mas­ter finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress him­self for ser­vice and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those ser­vants!” (Luke 12:35–38)

Only sin­cere love for the Lord saves us from hav­ing a hypo­crit­ic­al atti­tude. This is con­firmed by Jesus with the fol­low­ing par­ables of the thief in the night^[9] and the faith­ful and unfaith­ful servant:

Blessed is that ser­vant whom his mas­ter will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his pos­ses­sions. But if that ser­vant says to him­self, ‘My mas­ter is delayed in com­ing’, and begins to beat the male and female ser­vants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the mas­ter of that ser­vant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaith­ful. (Luke 12:43–46)

Jesus teaches with down­right urgency that it is always import­ant to serve him obed­i­ently and with an undi­vided heart and not to be occu­pied with oth­er things let alone fol­low one’s own desires. The fact that no one knows when he is com­ing should also make us aware that there is no oth­er way to God.

Fur­ther­more, we must bear in mind that most people exper­i­ence the day of the Second Com­ing when they die. The unfaith­ful ser­vant does not rep­res­ent the last gen­er­a­tion of man­kind. Striv­ing for self-denial and obed­i­ence is always neces­sary, because res­ist­ance to the com­mand­ments of God will soon lead to harden­ing. We should not be “mer­ci­ful” with ourselves and think that we can still repent later on. We don’t have that under our con­trol! That is why Jesus warns his Churches and speaks of his com­ing without mean­ing that his return on earth is imminent:

Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works com­plete in the sight of my God. Remem­ber, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. (Rev­el­a­tion 3:2)

Jesus uses the image of the thief here to warn the self-confident believ­ers of the church of Sard­is so that they do not fall away. It is impossible to per­sist in dis­obedi­ence des­pite warn­ings and yet to par­ti­cip­ate in the heav­enly ban­quet with Jesus.

The abso­lute urgency of sin­cer­ity and obed­i­ence, even in severe per­se­cu­tions, is the focus of John’s Rev­el­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, this book has been the focus of spec­u­la­tion about the time of the Second Com­ing for many cen­tur­ies. It is no coin­cid­ence that many earli­er and cur­rent com­ment­at­ors read a pre­cise course of his­tory into the numer­ous pic­tures. Being able to pre­dict the future or even the Second Com­ing can be a very appeal­ing pro­spect. At the same time, the expo­nents of these pre­dic­tions usu­ally belong to reli­gious organ­iz­a­tions in which the call of Jesus to deny one­self and actu­ally fol­low him, to love the broth­ers and sis­ters, and to live with them in the unity of the Spir­it is prac­tic­ally bypassed by a series of false teachings.

But Christ did not give us Rev­el­a­tion as a source of spec­u­la­tion, but so that we might not be deceived by the world.

Because you have kept my word about patient endur­ance, I will keep you from the hour of tri­al that is com­ing on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. I am com­ing soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. The one who con­quers, I will make him a pil­lar in the temple of my God. Nev­er shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jer­u­s­alem, which comes down from my God out of heav­en, and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spir­it says to the churches. (Rev­el­a­tion 3:10–13)

Jesus praises the church of Phil­adelphia for its obed­i­ence and prom­ises her pro­tec­tion in times of tri­al. The phrase “I am com­ing soon” is to be under­stood here and gen­er­ally in Rev­el­a­tion rather as an encour­age­ment for the faith­ful to hold fast to obed­i­ence under all cir­cum­stances, because redemp­tion is near.

There are many oth­er pas­sages where Jesus and the apostles call us to keep to the pure teach­ings of Christ and to walk in them. We hope that, des­pite the brev­ity and imper­fec­tion of the thoughts out­lined here, we have been able to help the read­er gain more clar­ity about the mean­ing of the state­ments on the last days. We are grate­ful for every let­ter and look for­ward to get­ting in touch with inter­ested read­ers to exchange more about this and oth­er mat­ters of faith.

Appendix 1: Mat­thew 24

In the fol­low­ing sec­tion, we will roughly retrace the train of thought of this chapter in order to deep­en the argu­ments already lis­ted in the main text. The signs men­tioned by Jesus can only be signs for the destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem. His com­ing as a judge of all people is cer­tain, but when he comes can­not be predicted.

The dis­ciples marveled at the mag­ni­fi­cent build­ings of the temple, which seemed to sym­bol­ize the great­ness and invin­cib­il­ity of God. It must have moved them very much, there­fore, that instead of being impressed, Jesus pre­dicts the destruc­tion of this build­ing. They not only wanted to know when this would hap­pen, but they ima­gined such an event only in con­nec­tion with the com­ple­tion of the age, with the begin­ning of the Mes­si­an­ic time.

In verses 4–28 and 32–34 Jesus answers the ques­tion of when it hap­pens and what signs there are for it, and the deceiv­ers in verse 5, who come in his name^[10], are the false Christs also men­tioned in verse 24. Indeed, dur­ing the war with the Romans, some rebel lead­ers claimed the title of Mes­si­ah for themselves.

In the fol­low­ing verses 6–13, Jesus makes clear the deteri­or­a­tion of the gen­er­al cir­cum­stances and also fore­tells per­se­cu­tion and decep­tion. It is vital to hold fast to the his­tor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance of these proph­et­ic words of Jesus! Jesus later emphas­izes clearly that there is no sign at all for his return. Unfor­tu­nately, there are many people who refer the signs men­tioned in Mat­thew 24:3–28^[11] to the signs of wars and earth­quakes just before Jesus’ return. They see the Last Days as her­al­ded by such events in their own time. As a res­ult, they claim that Jesus will soon come. Unfor­tu­nately, at all times many people were deceived by such spec­tac­u­lar inter­pret­a­tions. The false­ness of earli­er pre­dic­tions of this kind has become evid­ent on the one hand through the pro­gress of his­tory. But on the oth­er hand, one has to ask one­self the fun­da­ment­al ques­tion: Was there ever a time in this world without wars and earth­quakes? Cer­tainly, a lim­ited ter­rit­ory can remain untouched by nat­ur­al dis­asters for many dec­ades and exper­i­ence longer peri­ods of peace. For the people of such an area, a threat of war will be the first sign of a marked deteri­or­a­tion in the situ­ation. But from a glob­al per­spect­ive, how­ever, there have nev­er been longer peri­ods of peace, which is why rumours of war would be com­pletely unsuit­able as a sign for the Last Judge­ment, if there were any at all. In addi­tion, tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­gress has made weapons much more power­ful, so that the num­ber of deaths in armed con­flicts has increased tre­mend­ously since the 19th cen­tury. In addi­tion, the world’s pop­u­la­tion has increased many times over since the time of Jesus, which is why wars and nat­ur­al dis­asters often cause many more cas­u­al­ties than in earli­er times. And above all, we are exposed to a flood of bad news every day through the devel­op­ment of the mass media, so it may seem that the fre­quency of such events has increased rap­idly. But Jesus did not want to encour­age his dis­ciples or us to gath­er stat­ist­ics on the num­ber of cur­rent wars and nat­ur­al dis­asters, on the basis of which we could then derive an import­ant spir­itu­al insight. His words are addressed to his dis­ciples who should draw the right con­clu­sion from the signs in their own time.

Verse 14 is also under­stand­able in the con­tem­por­ary his­tor­ic­al con­text of the gen­er­a­tion of the first Chris­ti­ans. In the first cen­tury, many Jews did not live in Judea and Galilee, but scattered all over the world^[12], i. e. in the Roman Empire and bey­ond. Nev­er­the­less, most of them were prob­ably strongly con­nec­ted to the land of their fath­ers, not least because of the import­ant feasts in Jer­u­s­alem which they often vis­ited as pil­grims^[13]. Although these dia­spora Jews were influ­enced by Greek cul­ture and there­fore per­haps felt a little less com­mit­ted to the Law than those in Palestine, they too were filled with Mes­si­an­ic expect­a­tions. It is very likely that many of them sym­path­ized with their broth­ers fight­ing against the Romans at the time of the Jew­ish War (66 – 70 AD). The end that Jesus talks about, the ter­rible end of the temple, the city and all the fight­ers who were fight­ing for (the false under­stand­ing of) God’s king­dom would have been an inev­it­able cause of com­plete des­pair for all those people, if they had not already exper­i­enced the mes­sage of the gos­pel of Jesus through the mis­sion­ary activ­ity of the apostles. And it was also good for all the oth­er inhab­it­ants of the world to be able to under­stand the deep­er mean­ing of this defeat.

Verses 15–28 now deal dir­ectly with the com­ing tribu­la­tion. It is also not an exact descrip­tion of events, but by remind­ing us of an earli­er time of dis­tress, Jesus emphas­izes that the saints must by all means flee. At that time, dur­ing the reign of the Seleu­cid king Anti­o­chus Epi­phanes, who, in addi­tion to many oth­er evils, desec­rated the temple, the Jews who remained faith­ful to the Law had to flee to the moun­tains. The abom­in­a­tion of des­ol­a­tion must still have been a sym­bol for every Jew of a time of great tribu­la­tion. Judae­a’s Chris­ti­ans are to pray that the escape would not take place in winter or on a Sab­bath. Moreover, no one should be deceived by the mar­velous suc­cesses of the rebels in the fight against the Romans. All hopes of a rebel vic­tory are unreal­ist­ic. The eagles (the sym­bol of the Roman legions) come and will con­sume the car­ri­on, the doomed fight­ers trapped in the city. This is the unmis­tak­able con­dem­na­tion and judg­ment of God on his people who rejec­ted his Son and his mes­sage of peace^[14].

In verses 29–31, Jesus draws the con­nec­tion from the tribu­la­tion of the Jew­ish war to his vis­ible return^[15]. The ancient nation of God loses its pos­i­tion (v.29), while the church of the Lord is the sign of the Saviour, through which Israel­ites will still mourn, that is to say, find repent­ance (v.30). Finally, all Chris­ti­ans are gathered togeth­er with the Lord (v.31).

In verses 34–36 Jesus emphas­izes that his proph­ecy will be ful­filled with cer­tainty, for his words are God’s words. In verse 34, he states a clear time frame for the arrival of the Judge­ment on the Jews: This will hap­pen in the gen­er­a­tion of his listen­ers. In con­trast, it is impossible to know when “that” day will come, namely the final judg­ment already men­tioned in verse 31, so that Jesus — as a human being — includes even him­self among those who have no know­ledge of it.

All the state­ments fol­low­ing verse 36 have this com­mon denom­in­at­or: there is no sign at all for this day! Chris­ti­ans will not con­cern them­selves with the “signs” because they know from the words of Jesus that such signs do not exist. The example of Noah shows that the life of the people car­ried on in the usu­al way, so the judg­ment hit them while they were com­pletely unpre­pared^[16]. Peter (2 Peter 3:10) and Paul (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:2) also apply the pic­ture of the thief in the night to encour­age the faith­ful to walk care­fully and eagerly in the com­mand­ments of the Lord and to remove all grounds for spec­u­la­tion. Only per­sever­ance, self­less love and humble ser­vice in accord­ance with the words of Jesus will make this day a joy­ful day for us, no mat­ter when he comes. Those who do not per­severe in fol­low­ing Jesus and being anxious to please the Lord and to do good can­not take part in the feast in etern­ity, regard­less of wheth­er they expec­ted him not to come very soon (see the par­able of the unfaith­ful ser­vant Mat­thew 24:45–51), or wheth­er they expec­ted him much earli­er (like the ten vir­gins, Mat­thew 25:1–13), or wheth­er in their lazi­ness, they even wanted to secure a place for them­selves meth­od­ic­ally (like in the par­able of the tal­ents, Mat­thew 25:14–30).

Appendix 2: Is There a Rap­ture of the Faith­ful Before the Last Judgement?

Jesus and the New Test­a­ment speak only about a single return of Jesus on the last day. On this day the ungodly are judged and the faith­ful are raised up, as Jesus explains to his dis­ciples, for example, in the par­able of the weeds of the field:

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his dis­ciples came to him, say­ing, “Explain to us the par­able of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the king­dom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the dev­il. The har­vest is the close of the age, and the reap­ers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gath­er out of his king­dom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery fur­nace. In that place there will be weep­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. Then the right­eous will shine like the sun in the king­dom of their Fath­er. He who has ears, let him hear.” (Mat­thew 13:36–43)

He also speaks of the resur­rec­tion of the faith­ful in the fol­low­ing passage:

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose noth­ing of all that he has giv­en me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Fath­er, that every­one who looks on the Son and believes in him should have etern­al life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:39–40)

Accord­ing to many free churches, how­ever, before the begin­ning of an allegedly immin­ent Mil­len­ni­al King­dom of Peace on earth, even before the Last Day, Chris­ti­ans liv­ing at that time and all those who have already died are rap­tured up to heav­en. How­ever, only Rev­el­a­tion 20 speaks of a mil­len­ni­al reign of Christ. Since the mes­sage of this book, in con­trast to all oth­er New Test­a­ment writ­ings, is almost entirely encoded with images and sym­bols, and num­bers are usu­ally not to be under­stood lit­er­ally, it is dan­ger­ous to derive con­crete les­sons about future events from it. There­fore, the rep­res­ent­at­ives of this teach­ing endeav­our to find ref­er­ences in oth­er writ­ings. Some see it in Mat­thew 24:40–41:

Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grind­ing at the mill; one will be taken and one left.

In the con­text of this verse, Jesus urges the believ­ers to remain faith­ful and vigil­ant because of the unfore­see­able time of judg­ment. This is also shown in the com­par­is­on with the Flood (vs. 38–39). It can­not there­fore be a descrip­tion of a rap­ture that sup­posedly takes place before the judg­ment. Some advoc­ates of this teach­ing also admit that.

They also often refer John 14:2–3 to the Rapture:

In my Father­’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to pre­pare a place for you? And if I go and pre­pare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Jesus speaks here of his return to take the dis­ciples back to be with him, but there is no reas­on to believe that this will not hap­pen on Judg­ment Day, but before­hand. Rather, one can see from the entirety of Jesus’ words con­cern­ing the Second Com­ing that every­one will then be rewar­ded accord­ing to his actions (e. g. Mat­thew 7:21–22, 16:27, 24:45–25:46, 26:64, John 5:28–29). The par­able of the wheat and the weeds men­tioned above and that of the drag­net (Mat­thew 13:24–43 and 13:47–50) also show that there is a day of judg­ment and retri­bu­tion: the faith­ful fol­low­ers of the Lord and all the right­eous go to etern­al life, while the evil­do­ers, all the arrog­ant and unmer­ci­ful will nev­er be able to par­ti­cip­ate in it. We must there­fore note that there is no evid­ence what­so­ever in the Gos­pels of a sud­den depar­ture of Chris­ti­ans from their daily lives.

There­fore, one of the main argu­ments is taken from first Thessalonians:

But we do not want you to be unin­formed, broth­ers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as oth­ers do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the com­ing of the Lord, will not pre­cede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord him­self will des­cend from heav­en with a cry of com­mand, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trum­pet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up togeth­er with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. There­fore encour­age one anoth­er with these words. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4:13–18)

Rep­res­ent­at­ives of the rap­ture doc­trine argue that accord­ing to these words Chris­ti­ans are caught up in the clouds with the Lord, which means that Christ does not come here to the earth. The believ­ers meet the Lord in the upper lay­ers of the atmo­sphere. That is why, they say, we can only talk about the Rap­ture and not about the judg­ment on the last day. Although they believe that this is the best way to do justice to the word­ing of the text, we think it is very ques­tion­able to draw such a con­clu­sion from this detail. As we shall see, both the text itself and the fol­low­ing chapter of the let­ter speak against this interpretation.

We can only guess what the exact reas­on for the sad­ness of some of the still very young Chris­ti­ans in this city was. It is import­ant that Paul, in his declar­a­tion that both the liv­ing Chris­ti­ans and those who have already fallen asleep go to the Lord at the same time, cites a word of the Lord. As we saw before, the doc­trine of the rap­ture can­not be derived from any word of Jesus, which is why its pro­ponents refer to 1 Cor­inthi­ans 15:51, where Paul obvi­ously speaks of the same event, but calls it a mystery:

Behold! I tell you a mys­tery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twink­ling of an eye, at the last trum­pet. For the trum­pet will sound, and the dead will be raised imper­ish­able, and we shall be changed. For this per­ish­able body must put on the imper­ish­able, and this mor­tal body must put on immor­tal­ity. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 15:51–53)

The fact that Paul speaks of a “mys­tery” assumes that Jesus did not talk about the Rap­ture dur­ing his min­istry, but revealed it through the Apostle’s word. How­ever, Paul does not speak here at all of a rap­ture in the course of his­tory, but of the trans­form­a­tion of the dead and the liv­ing — namely at the last trum­pet, that is to say, the Last Day. The fact that he only addresses the resur­rec­tion and trans­form­a­tion of believ­ers is not an argu­ment against it. Begin­ning with the example of Jesus, Paul teaches fun­da­ment­al things about the ulti­mate des­tiny of life—the resurrection—because some of the Cor­inthi­ans held an opin­ion that ran counter to the Chris­ti­an doc­trine. It is a sad real­ity that many people now come under etern­al judg­ment because of their decisions against God. But Paul did not want to refer to the etern­al exist­ence of these people in spir­itu­al death as immor­tal­ity in a pos­it­ive sense.

Paul thus does not reveal the mys­tery of the rap­ture here or in the Let­ter to the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans. The mys­tery, a real­ity that had not been so clearly expressed before, is rather that some Chris­ti­ans are trans­formed without exper­i­en­cing death. If Paul was refer­ring to a word of Jesus that had been giv­en only to him, he would have quoted it. How­ever, the con­tent of what is said can be deduced from the famil­i­ar words of Jesus, even if we do not know a pre­cise quo­ta­tion. Paul wants to put an end the ignor­ance of some Chris­ti­ans in Thes­salon­ica with a clear ref­er­ence to Jesus’ teach­ing. We find such a word about the resur­rec­tion in the Gos­pel of John:

For as the Fath­er has life in him­self, so he has gran­ted the Son also to have life in him­self. And he has giv­en him author­ity to execute judge­ment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not mar­vel at this, for an hour is com­ing when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resur­rec­tion of life, and those who have done evil to the resur­rec­tion of judge­ment. (John 5:26–29)

In that hour all the dead will be resur­rec­ted and will stand before the judg­ment seat of the Mes­si­ah, and since Jesus is the judge of all men, this also includes those liv­ing on earth at that time. As men­tioned above, the sub­sequent thoughts of Paul in the Let­ter to the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans do not per­mit any oth­er conclusion:

Now con­cern­ing the times and the sea­sons, broth­ers, you have no need to have any­thing writ­ten to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are say­ing, “There is peace and secur­ity”, then sud­den destruc­tion will come upon them as labour pains come upon a preg­nant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in dark­ness, broth­ers, for that day to sur­prise you like a thief. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:1–4)

Here Paul writes plainly about the Last Day and there is no reas­on to believe that he might have meant anoth­er event in chapter 4. This is shown, among oth­er things, by the fact that Chris­ti­ans are not sur­prised by this day because they are sons of the Light and of the Day. If Paul had believed in the rap­ture of Chris­ti­ans before the judg­ment, these words would have no meaning.

Now that we have estab­lished that there is no pas­sage in the New Test­a­ment except in Rev­el­a­tion which talks of a rap­ture of Chris­ti­ans, a first resur­rec­tion before the judg­ment, the ques­tion of remains, what it was that John is talk­ing about:

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the author­ity to judge was com­mit­ted. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testi­mony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not wor­shipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their fore­heads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thou­sand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thou­sand years were ended. This is the first resur­rec­tion. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resur­rec­tion! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thou­sand years. (Rev­el­a­tion 20:4–6)

As men­tioned above, the inter­pret­a­tion of Rev­el­a­tion is dif­fi­cult due to the abund­ant use of sym­bol­ic expres­sions. Nev­er­the­less, it is still advis­able to under­stand first of all what mes­sage this scrip­ture con­tains for its ini­tial recip­i­ents, that is, Chris­ti­ans in the second half of the first cen­tury. Thus we learn that the Apostle John received the con­tents dur­ing his cap­tiv­ity on the island of Pat­mos. The epistles to sev­en small Asi­an churches in chapters 2 and 3 give us insight into their spir­itu­al situ­ation. These mes­sages alone, which are clearly anchored in the his­tor­ic­al con­text of this time, have been the object of spec­u­la­tion for many cen­tur­ies. It is claimed to be about the sev­en eras of church his­tory, whereby people usu­ally think that they them­selves live in the second-last or last of these eras. The text does not sup­port these thoughts. The ques­tion is also jus­ti­fied as to wheth­er the “church his­tory” we have access to is indeed the his­tory of the Church^[17].

Moreover, what goal could God have pur­sued with such a pre­view of his­tory? What sense would it make if the read­er found him­self in any of these eras? Should he real­ize that it will be a long time before Jesus returns? No, that’s not what God is con­cerned with. The warn­ings and encour­age­ment con­tained therein to love, to assess the false teach­ers, to per­severe in per­se­cu­tion, apply to the dir­ect address­ees. Like all the oth­er let­ters of the NT, the epistles to the churches are of great value to all Chris­ti­ans, because they encour­age self-examination, per­sever­ance, faith­ful­ness and the right doctrine.

If even these chapters are mis­in­ter­preted in this way, the danger is even great­er for the rest of the book. We think that the con­tent of the book is primar­ily inten­ded to encour­age and com­fort the Chris­ti­ans per­se­cuted in the first cen­tury, and that this is why it reflects also upon what has already happened. How­ever, some com­ment­at­ors exclude ref­er­ences to situ­ations before and dur­ing the peri­od of writ­ing. Of course, we too think that all believ­ers who live later will be encour­aged by it to endure per­se­cu­tion. How­ever, this should nev­er cre­ate room for spuri­ous speculation.

This also holds true for Rev­el­a­tion 20: Those Chris­ti­ans who remained stead­fast in per­se­cu­tion and many of whom were killed, will reign with Christ. Who­ever takes the thou­sand years lit­er­ally does not appre­ci­ate the sym­bol­ic use of num­bers, espe­cially in Rev­el­a­tion. There is no peri­od of time in all bib­lic­al writ­ings that exceeds a thou­sand years. Only about God it is said that a thou­sand years are like a day. This should not lead us to think that two thou­sand years would be like two days. Rather, this num­ber sym­bol­izes an incon­ceiv­able great­ness, befit­ting God, who also cre­ated time. It not only expresses his superi­or­ity over time, but also his great power. Thus, the great power of God and those who belong to him are faced with the power­less rebel­lion of Satan for a short time. There is also anoth­er reas­on why it is advis­able not to view this chapter as a suc­ces­sion of events, but rather to see them as the power rela­tions expressed in chro­no­lo­gic­al form. For if God had already com­pletely elim­in­ated Satan, the ques­tion would arise as to why he should then let go of Satan again in order to allow the evil one to seduce people again. In this way, God would be more than just the one who allows the evil activ­ity to take place, he would also be the one who gives the evil one space to act.

The idea of those who fol­low the doc­trine of the Rap­ture, that sud­denly many people dis­ap­pear without a trace, may provide mater­i­al for enter­tain­ing films; but such thoughts have noth­ing to do with the doc­trine of the Bible. Nor would it be in keep­ing with the nature of God to exert pres­sure through such massive super­nat­ur­al and unnat­ur­al events. He wants us to trust him because of the truth in Jesus, to repent of our old sin­ful life and to become fol­low­ers of his Son out of love for him.

Appendix 3: Arbit­rary Cal­cu­la­tions of the So-called Last Days from the Book of Daniel

Although the book Daniel con­tains proph­et­ic texts, it dif­fers strongly from the proph­et­ic books of the Bible in its over­all form. This is not the place to start explain­ing why this is the case, but in our opin­ion the lit­er­ary char­ac­ter of the depic­ted stor­ies can­not be over­looked. Moreover, Daniel is not found among the proph­ets in the can­on of the Hebrew Bible, but among the Writ­ings^[18], which may be due to its late completion.

For us as Chris­ti­ans, it con­tains very import­ant proph­et­ic state­ments. Jesus makes ref­er­ence to Daniel 12:2 in a speech about his min­istry in con­nec­tion with the resur­rec­tion, the clearest pas­sage about this real­ity. His self-designation “Son of Man” is taken from the Mes­si­an­ic proph­ecy in chapter 7. And even the death of the Mes­si­ah and the renewed destruc­tion of the Jer­u­s­alem Temple are pre­dicted in 9:24–26.

No oth­er Old Test­a­ment book deals so intens­ively with dreams and vis­ions and their inter­pret­a­tions. This makes it espe­cially inter­est­ing for people who want to pre­dict the future. Reli­gious groups such as Jehovah’s Wit­nesses and the Advent­ists owe their exist­ence largely to spec­u­lat­ive inter­pret­a­tions of some of the texts in this book. That is why we want to look at such texts in order to show the arbit­rar­i­ness and irra­tion­al­ity of these interpretations.

Sev­en Times = 2520 Years?

In chapter 4, King Nebuchad­nez­zar exper­i­ences a dream that wor­ries him. He sees a tree reach­ing to the sky, which is cut down and its stump put in chains for sev­en times. Only Daniel is cap­able of inter­pret­ing the dream. It is a warn­ing from God to the king to break with his sins and to live in right­eous­ness and mercy. How­ever, since he does not change but remains proud, the evil pre­dicted by Daniel hap­pens one year later. Nebuchad­nez­zar is removed from throne and soci­ety and ekes out a miser­able exist­ence like a wild anim­al. But at the end of sev­en years his san­ity returns to him, he looks to heav­en, praises God and confesses:

At the end of the days I, Nebuchad­nez­zar, lif­ted my eyes to heav­en, and my reas­on returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and hon­oured him who lives for ever, for his domin­ion is an ever­last­ing domin­ion, and his king­dom endures from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. (Daniel 4:34)

In doing so, he expresses the most import­ant les­son, the decis­ive con­clu­sion of this story.

If one remained true to the prin­ciple of “not going bey­ond what is writ­ten” (1 Cor­inthi­ans 4:6), the danger of rein­ter­pret­a­tion and over-interpretation would be aver­ted. But since the book of Daniel talks about the time of the end in oth­er places, it was seen as jus­ti­fied to gain a hid­den, deep­er “inter­pret­a­tion” of this story.

“Sev­en times” in chapter 4 means sev­en years. This short peri­od of time is not suited at all for pre­dic­tions that sup­posedly reach into our mod­ern epoch. Sev­er­al pas­sages in the OT express that one day sym­bol­ic­ally stands for one year.

The proph­et Ezekiel is told to lie 390 days on his one side and 40 days on his oth­er side, in order to bear the guilt of Israel (the north­ern king­dom) and Judah (the south­ern king­dom) (Ezekiel 4:4–7).

In Chapter 9 of the book of Daniel an angel rein­ter­prets the 70-year proph­ecy of Jeremi­ah. He is talk­ing about 70 “sev­ens”. If this meant 70 weeks, it would only res­ult in a peri­od of less than 2 years. How­ever, it can be con­cluded from the text that the time frame has to be exten­ded. There­fore, one must under­stand the “sev­ens” here as year-weeks, res­ult­ing in a peri­od of 70 x 7 years = 490 years.

Encour­aged by such examples, the “Bible Stu­dents” sup­posed that they could also apply the rule “one day for one year” to Daniel 4. 7 x 360 days res­ult in 2520 days, which should now be the equi­val­ent of 2520 years. In order to be able to use it for a state­ment of the Last Days, how­ever, it was also neces­sary to rein­ter­pret the con­tent of the chapter. It was decided to under­stand the dis­em­power­ment of Nebuchad­nez­zar as the end of Jer­u­s­alem and the king­ship of Dav­id. This is a very strange inter­pret­a­tion, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that it was Nebuchad­nez­zar who des­troyed the city. From one word of Jesus it was con­cluded that the destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem by the Baby­lo­ni­ans rep­res­en­ted the begin­ning of the times of the Gen­tiles^[19].

His­tor­i­ans unan­im­ously agree that the Baby­lo­ni­ans des­troyed Jer­u­s­alem in 587/586 BC. The Jehovah’s Wit­nesses claim to this day, that this happened in 607 BC. This date, how­ever, does not stem from his­tor­ic­al research, but from a fun­da­ment­al­ist under­stand­ing of the Bible coupled with wil­ful interpretations.

607 B. C. + 2520 res­ults in 1914. Accord­ing to the pre­dic­tion C. T. Rus­sell made in the 19th cen­tury, this would be the year of the begin­ning of Christ’s King­dom of Peace on earth. He had formerly pre­dicted the invis­ible return of Jesus for the year 1874. Rus­sell’s suc­cessor, J. F. Ruther­ford, declared 1914 as the year of the invis­ible return. In his book of 1920 “Mil­lions now liv­ing will nev­er die,” he pre­dicted the resur­rec­tion of the bib­lic­al pat­ri­archs in 1925. Due to the mis­in­ter­pret­a­tion of Mat­thew 24:35, it was claimed that the gen­er­a­tion of 1914 would not pass away until the end of the sys­tem of things. For a long time it was pre­dicted with great cer­tainty that 1975 would be the year of the end.

Without going into more detail, we hope that with these few thoughts we have shown the utter unten­ab­il­ity of the whole approach.

2300 Even­ings and Morn­ings = 2300 Years?

The Seventh-day Advent­ist Com­munity also takes an import­ant date from the book of Daniel. Daniel chapter 8 says that Daniel sees a vis­ion of a ram and a goat. The empire of the Medes and Per­sians (ram) is conquered by a great king from Greece (goat = Alex­an­der the Great). But its realm is fall­ing apart. In one of the par­tial king­doms a wicked man will take over the reign, who will then for­bid the Jews even to prac­tise their reli­gion. He takes the reg­u­lar sac­ri­fice away from them and desec­rates the temple in the worst pos­sible way. Still with­in the frame­work of the vis­ion, a saint asks how long this situ­ation will last and he gets an answer:

Then I heard a holy one speak­ing, and anoth­er holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vis­ion con­cern­ing the reg­u­lar burnt offer­ing, the trans­gres­sion that makes des­ol­ate, and the giv­ing over of the sanc­tu­ary and host to be trampled under­foot?” And he said to me, “For 2,300 even­ings and morn­ings. Then the sanc­tu­ary shall be restored to its right­ful state.” (Daniel 8:13–14)

In these words, there is noth­ing to indic­ate that the his­tor­ic­al frame­work of the vis­ion is being aban­doned. The only ques­tion is wheth­er it is 2,300 days or just 1,150 days. The reg­u­lar sac­ri­fice that the enquirer is con­cerned with was offered every even­ing and every morn­ing. There­fore, it is obvi­ous that the dur­a­tion of the desec­ra­tion of the temple is 1,150 days, which quite accur­ately cor­res­ponds to the actu­al event under the Seleu­cid King Anti­o­chus IV Epi­phanes^[20].

In the sub­sequent inter­pret­a­tion of the vis­ion, the time of the end is spoken of twice (vs. 17+19). How­ever, this end does not have to be the end of the world, but can refer to the time of ful­fil­ment of the events that have just been observed. How­ever, 19th-century Amer­ic­an Baptist preach­er Wil­li­am Miller wanted to inter­pret the vis­ion as refer­ring to the alleged immin­ent end of the world. First, he over­looked the fact that it was only 1,150 days. Then he inter­preted the now 2,300 days as just as many years. In his opin­ion, the com­mand of the Per­sian king Artax­er­xes I to rebuild Jer­u­s­alem was a suit­able start­ing point for the 2,300 years. Allegedly Ezra had writ­ten this down in the 7th year of the king, which accord­ing to our cal­en­dar is then the year 457 BC. On this basis he pro­claimed 1843 as the year of Christ’s return. When this failed to mater­i­al­ize, he post­poned the date sev­er­al times by a few months, and finally even set the exact date—October 22nd, 1844.

The move­ment he ini­ti­ated soon dis­in­teg­rated, but some held on to the cal­cu­lated date, giv­ing it a new con­tent. It is sup­posed that Jesus entered the heav­enly sanc­tu­ary in 1844 and began the ser­vice in the heav­enly sanc­tu­ary. This doc­trine is mainly upheld by the Seventh-day Advent­ists and con­tin­ues to form the basis for their expect­a­tion of the immin­ent return, without dar­ing any­more to set a date for it.

It would be too much to describe and eval­u­ate all of Miller­’s argu­ments and those of the Advent­ists for 1844. By ran­domly com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent texts and rein­ter­pret­ing them you can eas­ily read many things into the Holy Scrip­tures. Those who employ such futile meth­ods and thus seduce oth­er, gull­ible people will have to answer for it on the last day.

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not proph­esy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I nev­er knew you; depart from me, you work­ers of law­less­ness.’ (Matt 7:22–23)