Was Jesus mistaken about the time of his Second Coming (Matthew 24)?

The reader asks:

The Church and devout people have been waiting for 2,000 years for the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ; to affirm this idea, a few phrases are singled out in which Jesus warns of his coming so that we may all be prepared. However, in biblical texts words of Jesus are proclaimed from which anyone would say that Jesus (that is, God incarnate) was mistaken. Surely this must be “blamed” on the apocalyptic urgency of Matthew the evangelist, who put mistaken words in, misinterpreted them, or perhaps that is exactly what he heard Jesus say with his own mouth.

Look then at this little apocalyptic discourse “of” Jesus, taken integrally without violating its context: (MATTHEW 24:1-34): “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them:… Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (I transcribe only vv. 1-4 and 34).

One clearly sees that supposed? “little error” of the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity (considering all the attributes God possesses, among them omniscience). Surely the people present there (among them the evangelists) were completely convinced that the generation listening to him would witness the “end of the world.” Because of the error?, many generations waited in vain for the coming of the Savior, because the “prophecy of Jesus” was not fulfilled. DID JESUS PERHAPS MAKE A MISTAKE? DID THE EVANGELIST MAKE A MISTAKE? or DID NO ONE MAKE A MISTAKE?

Thank you very much for answering my questions; I will eagerly await your response.

Warm greetings.

Ariel Bangher

Fr. Miguel Ángel Fuentes, V.E., replies

Dear Sir:

The objection you raise had already been presented in the nineteenth century by the so-called school of the “eschatological theory,” or “thesis of consistent eschatology,” of liberal Protestant origin. Among its mentors one must mention the rationalists W. Baldensperger, J. Weiss, W. Wrede, A. Schweitzer and A. Loisy. If you are interested, you may read its argumentation and refutation in the classic book by Albert Lang, “Fundamental Theology,” Rialp, Madrid 1975, volume I, p. 70 and following.

An excellent analysis of these texts, from the scriptural and apologetic point of view, may be found in L. de Grandmaison, Jesucristo, Editorial Litúrgica Española, Barcelona 1941, pp. 430-461 (this is one of the most important books that have been written on the person and thought of Jesus Christ; it has been published again in this year 2000).

If you read the texts carefully, Jesus Christ answers two questions: when the destruction of the Temple will occur (which he prophesies in Mt 24:2) and his Second Coming. The two things do not take place at the same moment, but according to prophetic knowledge one is the “type” (typós, figure) of the other (antitype). Jesus Christ, therefore, answers by interweaving, as all the prophets do, both answers. Thus, just as he refers to two distinct events, there are also two distinct answers, though united.

1) This generation shall not pass: the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple took place during the lifetime of the generation to which Jesus was speaking. In fact, according to Eusebius of Caesarea, recalling these words of Christ, the Christians of Jerusalem, when they heard of the Roman advance around the year 70, fled to the mountains and were saved (and spread the Christian faith); by contrast, the Jews trusted that they could resist and succumbed in the monstrous siege of Jerusalem or were enslaved after it.

2) Part of the words of this discourse refers to the end of the world. Of this Jesus clearly says that no one knows either the day or the hour when it will occur, not even the angels, not even “the Son” (an expression meaning that the Son cannot take the initiative of manifesting it, as indicated by the term “to know,” which has a practical sense). For more details you may see the detailed commentary of Manuel de Tuya, “Biblia Comentada,” B.A.C., Madrid, 1974; volume II, pp. 514-536.

I transcribe for you part of the commentary by the theologian who in Argentina studied the eschatological question most: “Christ joined the First with the Second Prophecy — and this is a very serious difficulty of this Gospel passage — or better said, he made the First the typo, the emblem, of the Second. The Apostles asked him everything together; and He answered everything together. ‘Tell us when all these things will be, and what signs there will be of your Coming and of the consummation of the age…’. ‘All these things’ were for them the destruction of Jerusalem — to which Christ had alluded while looking at the Temple — and the end of the world; for they erroneously believed that the Temple was to last until the end of the world. It would have been very convenient for us if Christ had answered: ‘You are mistaken; first the destruction of Jerusalem will happen and after a long interval the end of the world; now I shall give you the signs of the end of Jerusalem and then those of the end of the world.’ But Christ did not do so; he began a long discourse in which he jointly gave the precursor signs of the two great Events, one of which is a figure of the other; and he ended his discourse with these most difficult words:

‘On my word of honor I tell you that this generation shall not pass

Until all these things are fulfilled…

But of that day and that hour no one knows.

Not even the Angels of Heaven. But only the Father.’

Contemporary impiety — following the so-called eschatological school, founded by Johann Weiss in 1900 — draws from these words an objection against Christ, denying on their strength that Christ was God or even a middling Prophet: because ‘he was mistaken’: he believed that the end of the world was near, within the span of his generation, ‘some 40 years away.’ According to Johann Weiss and his disciples, the basis and marrow of all Christ’s preaching was that idea that the world was close to the Final Catastrophe, predicted by the Prophet Daniel; after which there would come a kind of divine restoration, called the Kingdom of God; and that Christ was an interesting Jewish visionary; but as much God, as much Messiah, and as much Prophet as you and I.

The only argument they have for sweeping away all the rest of the Gospel — where with complete evidence Christ presupposes the interval between his death and the end of the world, both in the foundation of his Church and in several parables — are those words: ‘this generation shall not pass until all this is fulfilled,’ which were indeed fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem.

—But the end of the world did not come.

—Concerning the end of the world, Christ added that we do not know and shall never know the day or the hour.

—But why did Christ not separate the two events, if he knew the future, as God and as Prophet?

—For some reason He had, and it is a very good one even though neither you nor I know it. And perhaps precisely for that very reason that he was a prophet: for such is the prophetic style.

—Which one? To create confusion?

—No; to see in a near event, called a typo, another more remote and hidden event called an antitypo; and thus Christ saw transparently in the ruin of Jerusalem the end of the ‘age’; and if he did not reveal more than what is here, it is because it cannot be revealed, or it is not good for us.

The other serious difficulty in this discourse is that, on the one hand, we are told that we shall never know ‘the day or the hour’ of the Great Collapse, which will be sudden ‘like lightning’; and, on the other hand, Christ is very solicitous in giving signs and indications to mark it, charging his own to keep their eyes open and to know how to recognize the ‘signs of the times,’ as they know that summer is coming when the fig tree turns green. Which is it, then? If it cannot be known, why give signs?

We shall never be able to know the date of the Parousia with exactness, but we shall be able to know its imminence and its nearness. And thus the first Christians, living in Jerusalem around the year 70, knew that Christ’s signs were being fulfilled and, following his word: ‘Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; and that without stopping for a moment,’ they took refuge in the mountain village of Pella and saved, from the horrifying massacre that the troops of Vespasian and Titus made of Zion, the nucleus of the first Church…” (Leonardo Castellani, “El Evangelio de Jesucristo”).

Source: El Teólogo responde