Many Christian denominations strongly believe Jesus will return to Earth some day as a physical being.
How will they recognize him? As far as I can tell, anyone who has claimed to be the reincarnated Jesus in the past has been considered a crackpot. If in the future an adult male started claiming to be Jesus, he would be treated as yet another crackpot. If a modern-day virgin claimed to have been visited by the Holy Spirit, she too would surely be thought mistaken, if not outright crazy. If some Christian community claimed to have witnessed the spectacular birth of a special child who must surely be Jesus, they would be considered to be another extremist wacko sect. I just can’t imagine any circumstance where the entire Christian community would come to recognize someone as Jesus.
So how can Jesus return and be recognized?
I humbly request that those who believe that it can’t happen refrain from responding; I think I understand that position. I’m interested in how those who do believe that it can happen think they will be able to tell, and then how he and they will be able to convince the rest of the world – or at least the rest of the Christian community - that it’s really him.
Many believe that Revelations is supposed to detail the second coming of Christ. However, as has been pointed out on this board before, there is a lot of evidence pointing to Revelations as a symbolic representation of the time when Christianity was first developing and the persecution that was happening to Christians. It was supposed to be a sort of “buck up, kiddo,” to the early Christians. Having said that, who knows? Jesus himself says in the Bible that he will come like a thief in the night, and that only God knows when that will be. If you do follow Revelations, then I suppose you’d have to be on the lookout for the Antichrist (how you spot him/her/it, I don’t know either), and any of the other signs listed (mark of the Beast and others).
I dunno. They took Jesus seriously enough the first time around to trump up some sedition charges and execute him.
The only thing you can do is be on guard, for you know not the day or the hour.
I’m not a biblical literalist; I don’t believe in coming plagues or tribulations. I don’t believe in the destruction of the earth or the assumption of the one hundred forty-four thousand or any literal occurrences such as those.
I also subscribe to the notion of the “kingdom of God” as a philosophical state of oneness with God, or a state of inclusion in God’s grace, not an actual physical kingdom. As I understand my faith, I will be judged on how well I have represented Christ, through example, to my fellow man. Jesus’s return, if it happens in my lifetime (which I doubt), will offer me a more direct opportunity to live in Christian harmony, because I’ll have my example walking beside me.
Personally, I’d prefer that Christ hold off on coming the second time. Jesus, if you’re reading this, I’m not as good at being like You as I could be, and I would like some more time to work on that, if You don’t mind.
But there is nothing to even say that Christ’s second coming will be in the popularly-accepted sense. He may not appear on a streetcorner or in Israel or anywhere.
I guess the best advice I can give is to follow His example, and then, no matter how He arrives, you’ll know.
There will be no doubt about who HE is and why He has returned!
1 Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Revelation 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. 8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
The bit about Jesus in the clouds can’t be literally true. A moment’s thought will tell you that there is no place in the sky which is visible from all parts of the Earth.
I guess it’s best just to say that Christians think it will occur in some spectacular way which will leave no doubt.
Some of the limitations of physics aren’t going to apply in this case, I think an omnipresent God could manifest Himself in many places at once. The coming would be unmistakable. For me, the first sign would be smiting Jerry Falwell.
The problem with any being presumtively more powerful than mankind to the degree that it can appear to manipulate both physical and organic matter is the MULE problem. That is, a being doesn’t have to be the one true all powerful god in order to convince people beyond any doubt that it IS the one true all powerful god. All it has to be is powerful enough to manipulate human belief: something that, heck even many humans can do to each other to a limited degree!
This is similar to the Satan problem: to human beings, there can be no assurance that anything they believe to be from God could instead just be a machination of Satan’s. We can give all sorts of excuses: for instance that we just “feel” it’s not… but then perhaps making us feel that way is child’s play to Satan. Everything we know of God could be utterly wrong, all a devious plan by an evil entity who is beneath a God that doesn’t much care about stopping Satan’s activity (we might object that the God we know would never tolerate that level of machination by Satan, but then, the God think we know might well be Satan’s fake version!).
And indeed that is related to the untrustworthy problem. That is, if you posit a being who’s purposes are beyond human understanding and scope, then the idea of trusting the motives or goodness of such a being becomes absurd. Human trust is based on human-scale interaction: familiarity and experience with someone, the impluaisbility of people carrying on long-reaching subterfuge, the ability to test the truth of what people say, and so on. With an all-powerful unknowable god, none of these things apply. Such a being can give any appearance, make any test appear to come out as it wishes. And thus knowing its true motives and plans, let alone judging them to be good and just, is impossible in every sense of the word.
Just one more bunch of reasons that trying to speak of “truth” once you’ve invoked the supernatural is just plain pointless.
The fundies would just nail Him to the cross again for preaching love and compassion for the weak and the lost. From The Brothers Karamazov, Ch. 5:
The pastors and teachers would have to give up their authority, and they’d likely be upset that the poor and the humble would be higher in the Kingdom than they.
The Feds took David Koresh seriously enough to trump up some charges and execute him over his religious teachings and alternative lifestyle, too. I don’t think we can take governmental persecution as our watchtower.
No, I’m not saying Koresh was Jesus or that he didn’t need to be handled. I’m just saying it looks an awful lot like Jesus’ political story. I’m with the “I dunno how we’d know” crowd.
David Koresh killed himself, he wasn’t “executed.” He was also guilty of what the feds were trying to arrest him for. The charges weren’t “trumped up.”
That’s not to say the feds didn’t screw things up, they did. They were too aggressive and they ignored the warnings from cult experts that the BD’s were about to go Jonestown. They handled evetrything exactly wrong but ultimately, the BD’s set those fires and they were responsible for their own deaths.
God only knows. Are you kidding? With all these people seeing images in food, everyone would believe its Him. Maybe He will be interviewed by O’Reilly.
