The Deity of Christ
Their Proposition: "Jesus Christ was not God, because His prophecies didn't come true"
For centuries, Christians have been taunted by the supposed
failure of Christ's prophecies. Jews and Gentiles cite this reason to explain
why they believe that Jesus Christ is not God. Many such challenges have been
faced and answered by Christians yet this dispute, in particular, seems to have
left most Christians speechless. Consequently, it has become the focal point
for most groups' rejection of the Deity of Christ (including liberal
Christianity).
The position is commonly stated as follows, "Christ was
not God, because He publicly declared, 'You shall not have gone over the cities
of
Only through the Preterist view can the proper answer be
given to this legitimate question. Preterism teaches that Christ, indeed, did
return in the first century, and did fulfill the Messianic
prophecies!
We fully agree with the following statement of 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 skeptic 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 recognize 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
Following are examples of this and
related raillery, and the particular reason being given for this rejection of
Christ and Christianity.
JEWISH SOURCES
Book Review "Future Hope:
A Jewish look at the end of the world" - "The Parousia, the “second
coming” of Jesus, provided an explanation for the failure of an individual that
some people professed to be the “messiah.”
It allowed his followers to continue to believe in his mission and of
the mission of others after him.
Predictions and descriptions of doomsday abound, as do the revisions of
timetables once the predicted date has passed."
Jewish view of failure of
Christ's return - "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." Jews for Judaism
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.
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
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
Corinthians.
x. 11, xv. 51 ; Phil. iv. 5 ; I Thessalonians. iv. 15 ; James v. 8 ; I Peter iv. 7; 1
John ii. 18 ; Rev. i. 13, xxii. 7, 10, 12.) Indeed, Mr. Hutton recognizes 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
CHRISTIAN SOURCES
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 embarrassing. 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 embarrassing 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
W. G. Kummel (1957)
"Jesus
does not only proclaim in quite general terms the future coming of the