Loading ...Tens of millions of Americans say Jesus’ return is imminent
flockwoodA new poll finds that 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus Christ probably or definitely will return to earth by the year 2050. Another 46 percent say he probably or definitely won’t return by then. Thirteen percent said they don’t know either way.
For more on the poll, which was done in conjunction with Smithsonian Magazine, click here.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:36 pm
This is the chunk I find interesting:
“As expected, predictions about whether Jesus Christ will return to earth in the next 40 years divide along religious lines. Fully 58% of white evangelical Christians say Jesus Christ will definitely or probably return to earth in this period, by far the highest percentage in any religious group. Only about a third of Catholics (32%), and even fewer white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (20%) predict Jesus Christ’s return to earth.
In addition, those with no college experience (59%) are much more likely than those with some college experience (35%) and college graduates (19%) to expect Jesus Christ’s return. By region, those in the South (52%) are the most likely to predict a Second Coming by 2050.”
so, uneducated while Southern evangelicals think so. The rest of us–not so much.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Me, I’ve got a Master’s and I hope He returns tomorrow. If you don’t hope for that most glorious of days, why bother even being a Christian?
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:06 pm
If people have been saying for hundreds of years that Jesus would return within a lifetime, then it must be true!
June 22nd, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Truly mind-boggling! When do you think Christians will realize that dead people, even those who have been posthumously deified by popular vote, do not come back to life? Come on, people, it is a myth!
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:32 am
cheese: the heart of Christianity is the belief in the after life. If you truly believe it a myth, then why are you posting here? Sir Isaac Newton predicted the end of the world around 2060 by “doing the math”.
When the Bible says that no man knows not the hour or day, it said nothing about the years.
All Bible prophecy is coming true-all must be full filled before his return. When you see the whole world rejoicing over the 2 witness death–it will be to late to worry about your afterlife.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:05 am
Cheese, you can’t actually believe we could be here by chance or by our hand.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:42 am
Ms. Katt: just because most “Evangelical Southerners” believe in Christ’s eminent return does not mean that we are ignorant. While most of us do not have a college education, it has more to do with finances than it does with intelligence. Would you be ‘knowledgeable’ if you were place in a jungle-or would the monkey have more knowledge about survival?
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Peach, first and foremost, welcome back!!! We haven’t had a good pentecostal point of view on here in awhile. Having said that, though, I’ve got to quibble with your reading of scriptures. Surely if scripture says that we don’t know the hour or day of the return, we surely can’t know the year, can we? If so, why make such a point of the mystery? Do you really think it means to say, oh, human beings, if you’re smart enough to figure out the year by doing calculations, okay, but you sure won’t know when within that year it will happen . . . Isn’t that a bit silly?
As far as Isaac Newton goes, I can’t imagine what numbers he did to come up with 2060, but bear in mind that most of Newtonian physics has been supplanted by more modern theories, Einstein and all that. I suspect these calculations were as suspect.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:57 pm
One other thing.
I have a natural antipathy toward people who try to defraud the ignorant, and no one is more guilty of that than those who would take advantage of people’s honest religious beliefs to further their own interests. I have a very simple test for those who claim to be able to predict the future: Tell me who the winning horse will be in the fifth race at Belmont tomorrow. (I usually say Aqueduct, but Aqueduct is not running tomorrow.) Period. If they can’t pick a horse race, it’s unlikely that they can pick the day and time an event will occur which, if it occurs, will be the most important event in history.
Let’s start with more simple things: Anyone know anyone who can pick the fifth race at Belmont tomorrow?
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:28 pm
God. (If s/he is a Presbyterian.)
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Perplexed says “Cheese, you can’t actually believe we could be here by chance or by our hand.” I can, and I do. There is no need for natural processes to be guided by a divine hand. Order can sprout from chaos, and just because the god hypothesis might make us feel warm and fuzzy inside does not make it true.
June 24th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
The day of my mom’s memorial service, a very sweet Christian couple came up to me and tried to console me. “You’ll see your mom again some day,” the man said. “And who knows?” his wife said emphatically. “It may be sooner than you think!!”
That really baffled me. “I sure hope not,” I replied.
And then everybody got embarrassed.
“I mean,” she said, “the Second Coming. Jesus could come back before we know it and then we’ll all be together again.”
My focus was on the graveyard. Their focus was on the resurrection, the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Lord. They’re among the 41 percent that expect the second advent to occur before 2050.
June 25th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Caleb: we cannot predict the date or the hour–for he comes as a thief in the night –however, we can discern the times. WE can look to the sky at night and ‘discern’ that it will rain tomorrow,yet we do not want to look at the ability to sit at a computer, do a global earth, and visibly watch what is happening in Israel or any other place–at any given moment(fulfillment of Revelation 11. he only thing we can be sure of is that his return will not be until all scripture and Bible prophecies have been fulfilled.
How Newton came up with a year, was based (from my understanding) using the math from various pieces of scripture, which i would loved to find out witch pieces he used. We do know that he is the only one to date that so far has been more accurate as we have gone past the years that all others have predicted.
BTW, i am not pentecostal–rather a protestant who is not completely converted to Nazarene
but am glad you missed my wisdom.