Second coming

The Second Coming is the time in which Christians say that Jesus will fulfill Messianic prophecy by returning to earth to reward believers, punish nonbelievers, and destroy Satan.

Problems with the Second Coming
Numerous passages in the Bible portray Jesus clearly stating that the Second Coming would occur within the lifetime of his disciples.

"This generation" refers to a span of 30-40 years, thus placing the date of the second coming before the deaths of the disciples. C.S. Lewis called this "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible" in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays.

Three more verses explicitly state that some of the people listening to Jesus as he preached would not die before he returned.

Jesus also told people that "the time is short and they should not get married, not mourn, not be happy, not buy things, and not live "in the world". This again indicates that Jesus himself believed his return to be extremely imminent.

The term "Second Coming" never appears in the New Testament. Furthermore, in none of the Epistles which were written prior to the Gospels is Jesus ever referred to as "coming again" or "coming back" or "returning." The only terms used are "coming" or "will come." If the Jesus of the Gospels is legendary fiction, then this is exactly what would be expected if early Christians were looking forward to the First Coming of Jesus, much as practitioners of Judaism are still looking forward to the First Coming of the Messiah, not the Second Coming.

Christian beliefs about the Second Coming
Obviously Jesus did not return within the lifetime of his disciples. Many Christians today still believe that the Second Coming is imminent, and talk about the impending rapture. As we can see elsewhere in the Bible, this is nothing new. Later in the story, the disciples begin complaining to Peter. As a result, Peter invents an ad hoc answer.

Thus an ad hoc case is made that when Jesus said that his return was "imminent" and "at hand" he really meant "thousands of years from now".