Jesus Was Mistaken ?

Jesus Was Mistaken ?
Proposition: “Jesus’ prophecies went unfulfilled, therefore He was wrong”

If we do attribute such an error to Jesus in a matter that was related to the major theme of His ministry (the kingdom of God), how can we then listen to Him with confidence when He tells us of His unique divine Sonship
Holman

See Also : Regressive Preterism : “If Preterism is not true, then Jesus is a Liar.”

The position is commonly stated as follows, “Christ was not God’s Son, because He publicly declared, ‘You shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come’, and then He did not return, before they did.” Others seize upon the numerous other eschatological passages of Christ, to support this assertion.

Following are examples of this and related raillery, and the particular reason being given for this rejection of Christ and Christianity.

Jews for Judaism says Jesus and Apostles are False Propehts:

“Jesus did not come back “quickly,” as promised, to judge mankind. The time has long past that one can claim Jesus will come back “quickly.” Thus, what we have in Revelation 22:20 is a false prophecy.”
“The expectation of Paul and the other New Testament authors was for the speedy arrival of the second coming in their generation. The use of “for yet a little while,” “shortly,” “the time is near,” and “I am coming quickly” point to the utter failure of the predictions that Jesus was coming a second time to do what he did not accomplish the first time.”
“There was to be fulfillment within the lifetimes of certain individuals alive at the time Jesus made the promise and following upon certain cataclysmic events which were to be witnessed by that generation. These events never occurred and the time for their occurrence has long since passed.”
“The second epistle of Peter is a late attempt to explain away the obvious fact that the second coming did not arrive at its appointed time.”
Jesus’ own statement shows that the culmination of the “tribulation period” was to see the parousia, the second coming of Jesus (Mark 13:26; Matthew 24:3, 30), which certainly did not occur during the (Roman-Jewish) war nor subsequently.”

Max I. Dimont (1971)
“Like the Christians, who continually had to postpone Judgment Day because Jesus failed to keep his appointment for a second coming, so the Jews, from century to century, had to postpone the arrival date of their messiah by new calculation.” (The Indestructible Jews, p. 174)

Pinches Stolper (1973)
“Since Jesus did not fulfill the most important Messianic prophecies, they expected him to return to complete this task in a “second coming.” At first, Christians expected that this “second coming” would come very shortly.. in their lifetime. When their prayer was not answered, they began to hope that it would come a thousand years after Jesus’ death. This was the millennium or “thousand year kingdom.” Finally, after a thousand years passed and Jesus still had not returned, they postponed his “second coming” to an indefinite time. We therefore see that the early Christians were forced to radically alter the Jewish concept of the Messiah in order to explain Jesus’ failure. This, compounded with the pagan influence in the early church, gave birth to a Messianic concept totally alien to Judaism.” (Pinches Stolper, ed. The Real Messiah. Reprinted from Jewish Youth, June 1973. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. New York: 1973. p.15)

Samuel Levine (1980)
“You will discover that whenever any really strong question [such as why Jesus hasn’t fulfilled all Messianic prophecies].. is asked [of the Christians], the standard answer is that is refers to the second coming. It therefore becomes extremely important to ascertain the validity of this claim. The success of the Christian claim or its failure rests to a very large extent on the theory of the second coming. ..It is clearly an answer born of desperation.” (Samuel Levine. You Take Jesus, I’ll Take God. 1980, p.15)

“..most of the early Christians thought.. that Jesus would return within their own lifetime. ..However, after many went by, and the generation that lived in Jesus’ generation had all died, it became rather apparent that Jesus would not reappear in the near future. The doctrine was therefore changed so that his reappearing was not necessarily going to be in the near future.” (Levine, p. 16)

Rachel Zurer (1985)
“to spend almost two millennia trying to justify a pagan mythology, a mistaken messiah belief, and a mistaken eschatology stupefies the rational mind.” (Rachel Zurer, A Jew Examines Christianity. 1985, p.162)

AGNOSTIC / HUMANIST SOURCES

“Jesus failed at prophecy when he told his disciples that some would not taste death until they saw the Son of man coming in his kingdom Mt 16:27-28. If Jesus prophesied truthfully, some of Jesus’ disciples would still be alive today since we’re still waiting for his return. ” The Fundamentalist Christian mindset and the problem it presents for America)

W. R. Greg (1876)
“If, therefore, Jesus did not say these things, the gospels must be strangely inaccurate. If He did, His prophetic faculty cannot have been what Mr. Hutton conceives it to have been. That His disciples all confidently entertained this erroneous expectation, and entertained it on the supposed authority of their Master, there can he no doubt whatever. (See 1 Cor. x. 11, xv. 51 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; I Thess. iv. 15 ; James v. 8 ; I Peter iv. 7; 1 John ii. 18 ; Rev. i. 13, xxii. 7, 10, 12.) Indeed, Mr. Hutton recognises this at least as frankly and fully as we have stated it.”- (Contemporary Review, Nov. 1876.)

Bertrand Russell (1927)
“I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, He certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come.” Then He says, “There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom”; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching.. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise.” (Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, 1927, p.3)

CHRISTIAN SOURCES

George Eldon Ladd (1972)
“These events are “soon” to “take place.” ..These words have troubled the commentators. The simplest solution is to take the preterist view and to say that John, like the entire Christian community, thought that the coming of the Lord was near, when in fact they were wrong. Our Lord himself seems to share this error in perspective in the saying: “This generation will not pass away before all these things take place (Mark 13:30).” (A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; p. 22)

R.C.Sproul (1998)
“To be candid, I find this treatment of the question somewhat disturbing. Ladd grants that “the simplest solution” is the preterist view, but he believes this drives us to the conclusion that the entire early Christian community, including the Apostle John and our Lord Himself was wrong. Of course this is not the preterist view. The preterist argues, not only that the entire early church believed the Lord’s coming was near (at least with respect to his coming in judgment to Israel), but also that this belief proved to be true.” (The Last Days According to Jesus, p. 134)

Rudolph Bultmann (1961)
“Jesus’ expectation of the near end of the world turned out to be an illusion.” (Theology in the New Testament, Vol. 1. p. 22)

C.S. Lewis (1960)
“Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”

It is certainly the most embarassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side….

The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that he is God, makes it hard to understand how he could be ignorant; but also makes it certain that, if he said he could be ignorant, then ignorant he could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance. The answer of theologians is that the God-Man was omniscient as God, and ignorant as Man. This, no doubt, is true, though it cannot be imagined.” (Essay “The World’s Last Night” (1960), found in The Essential C.S. Lewis, p. 385)

W. G. Kummel (1957)
“Jesus does not only proclaim in quite general terms the future coming of the Kingdom of God, but also its imminence. What is more: on the one hand he emphasized this so concretely that he limited it to the lifetime of his hearers’ generation; yet on the other hand he only expected a part of them to live to experience this eschatological event; so he did not wish to limit its proximity too closely. It is perfectly clear that this prediction of Jesus was not realized and it is therefore impossible to assert that Jesus was not mistaken about this.” (Promise and Fulfillment, p. 148, 149)

On the Positive Side:

Marcellus Kik (1971)
“Sufficient has been quoted to evidence an utter confusion among scholars as to the interpretation of the teachings of the New Testament. There seems to be a unanimity that Christ was mistaken as were the apostles; no thought is allowed that the exegesis of the scholars may be at fault.” (p. 55)

Holman
“Perhaps there is a fine line between saying, on the one hand, that Jesus expected the parousia to occur shortly, without necessarily teaching that it definately would occur in finality within His generation, and on the other hand, saying that Jesus in fact taught that the parousia would occur in His generation, and in so doing was mistaken, since it did not occur. However, if we do attribute such an error to Jesus in a matter that was related to the major theme of His ministry (the kingdom of God), how can we then listen to Him with confidence when He tells us of His unique divine Sonship (e.g. Mt. 11:27)?” (pp. 30-31).

Robert Lightener (1971)
“According to his view, all eschatology – the doctrine of future things – was fulfilled at the Incarnation of Christ. Dodd arrives at this view by a process of wholesale discrediting of Scripture. With apparent ease he calls much of the Bible fraudulent. What is not fraudulent, he either explains away or distorts to fit his presuppositions and even goes so far as to say that Christ was simply mistaken in some of His prophecies. In other words the Lord Jesus Christ was wrong. (The Last Days Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding the Different views of Prophecy, p. 55)

R.E. Nixon (1970)
“Many scholars refer it to the parousia, and state that Jesus was mistaken about its date,” (“Matthew” in the New Bible Commentary, rev. ed.; D. Guthrie & J.A. Moyter; Eerdmans, p. 838.)

James Stuart Russell
“To those who maintain that our Lord predicted the end of the world before the passing away of that generation, the objections of the sceptic present a formidable difficulty –insurmountable, indeed, without resorting to forced and unnatural evasions, or admissions fatal to the authority and inspiration of the evangelical narratives. We, on the contrary, fully recognise the common-sense construction put upon the Language of Jesus, and the no less obvious acceptance of that meaning by the apostles. But we draw a conclusion directly contrary to that of the critic, and appeal to the prophecy on the Mount of Olives as a signal example and demonstration of our Lord’s supernatural foresight.” (The Parousia)

What do YOU think ?

Christ’s soul has always been here. In different men and times. Adolf Hitler followed Christ’s orders while he was on the cross. Hitler was abraham Lincoln’s soul in another body, Lincoln was George Washinton’s soul in another body. Can I document this. Yes Adolf Hitler commited suicide on the date of George Washinton’s innauguration. I could tell you more if interested you call me and I’ll tell you the truth about Christ on the cross.
I’m dumb and a disgrace to our Lord. I am the King of Scotland where the Stone of Scone is. Any question?
Roll Tide

Date: 21 May 2006
Time: 12:17:38

Comments:

I beleive in every word and dot of the Holy Bible. It is the Word of the true and only God.
I pray for all of you lost souls who dare question my God’s Handbook for life. May He have mercy on all Jew and gentile alike who do not believe in Him. You have failed to see the light and you live in complete darkness, the liar of satan, the devil. As it is written in John 5:41 “Your approval or disapproval means nothing to me becasue I know you don’t have God’s love within you.”

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