Is Jesus' second coming possible and why?

Answer 1

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The second coming of Jesus is only possible if:

• God is real
• Jesus is truly the Son of God
• and the gospels contain a true record of Jesus' promise to return

On the last point, there is ambiguity. Mark chapter 13 says that Jesus told his listeners that the world will end during the lifetimes of those then still living, with Jesus prophesying the end of the world and his own return on clouds of glory. Jesus told them that they would see the great buildings destroyed, and the abomination of desolation, followed by the Son of man coming in clouds of glory, and that this would take place during their own generation. Mark 9:1 foreshadows the fuller account in chapter 13, saying that some of those who stand here will not taste death until they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. Of course, this prophecy did not come to pass, but at the time of writing (about 70 CE), it certainly seemed as if the end was nigh.

By the 80s of the first century, when Matthew's Gospel was written, the return predicted in Mark's Gospel was becoming unlikely - the generation had already passed - and the author of Matthew had to change the emphasis away from an impending end of the world. While copying as faithfully as possible from Mark, he changed the position of the sentence about "this generation", relative to the destruction of the great buildings, so that it referred to something else altogether. He added, and emphasised, material where Jesus told the disciples that the end is not yet, and that no man knows when the end of the world will occur.

The passages in Matthew and Luke are clearly corrected copies of the passage in Mark; and the return of Jesus as prophesied in Mark failed to occur. There is no good reason to believe in a second coming of Jesus.