If the Bible is to be taken literally...
Offline I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. -Matthew 16:28(NIV)
And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power." -Mark 9:1(NIV)
Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book. -Revelation 22:7(NIV)
...how does one deal with the fact that these verses deal with an immenant return of Jesus Christ to Earth, yet after around two millenia of waiting, he has still not returned? Sure, you could explain it away by saying he wasn't talking about the immediate future, he was being metaphorical, etc. but if you are wanting to take the Bible literally(YEC's, I'm talking to you), doesn't this demonstrate that your faith is at least inconsistant?
I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.
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This confounds me too about Christians. There are several other verses that say things similar to this:
Matthew 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
Mark 13:30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
Luke 21:32 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.
In each of these three passages, Jesus is talking about the end times (i.e. the tribulation). Unfortunately, Jesus never came, and the people he was talking to have been dead for 2000 years. So either god is more than a little late getting to us and is telling a lie here, which would mean he is not perfect, or he doesn't exist, and Jesus failed to fulfill these prophecies that he made. Either way, Christianity is over.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Or the Bible is not to be taken literally.
BTW, Sith do not deal in absolutes - Jedi fool...
Well, there are a few possibilites you haven't considered:
1. There are some really old people walikng around. (at least 2,ooo years old)
2. Jesus did come back, but no one noticed.
3. Its a fairy tale.
According to Occum's Razor, the most likely answer is #3.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca
Holy shiite, it's just a joke against Christians who say that life is a bunch of absolutes. WTF?
Number 2 couldn't be a possibility...Jesus says in Mark 9:1 that those he is speaking to will not die before they see the kingdom of god come with power...I don't recall that happening in history.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Sorry. Got into my Sith mode there. I was just playin with you... jeez.
I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.
The official, orthodox rationalization for these verses is that "the kingdom of God/heaven" refers to the group of people who are saved under the new covenant. So the existing/past generations of born-again Christians are the "Kingdom of God on Earth" which came to pass before the apostles all died.
The actual reason is that Jesus--or whoever decided that was what he said and wrote it down--belonged to any of dozens of sects of radical Jews who honestly believed that the end of the world was immanent. Even Paul suggests in Romans that there's no point in getting married or trying to improve your life because the world is about to end anyway.
It wasn't until about two generations after Jesus died that the early church apologists had to make up an excuse for why the world was still around, so the authors of the pastoral epistles (some of which are now in the Bible) and other non-canonical texts written in the second and third centuries started giving other explanations for Jesus's prophesies about the end of the world.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert