This is an impressive list. Not only is it clear that believers at this period expected to

be alive at the Lord's Coming, but that Coming was looked upon as imminent, and yet

nearly 2,000 years have passed and still this great event has not taken place. This is

surely one of the major problems of the N.T. and it is not resolved by assuming that the

early Christians were mistaken in their beliefs.  This would raise the problem of

inspiration, enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, and the very basis of the Christian faith. If

they were mistaken here, they could be mistaken anywhere in their doctrine and all

assurance would vanish. Nor can we accept the explanation that `a thousand years is as a

day with the Lord'. God has written His word to instruct us who are creatures of time

and when He deals with time, it is time as we know it, that is of ordinary days, months

and years. When He says `quickly' He means quickly. It would be mockery to ask

believers to hold fast under fierce persecution with a view to the Coming of Christ, if that

Coming was not possible for another two millenniums.

Speaking generally, evangelical Christendom has ignored or bypassed this great

problem, and its great Scriptural importance has been missed. The Divine promise to

Israel, given through Peter's lips in Acts 3: 19-26, that, if the nation of Israel repented

and turned to God, their sins would be forgiven and blotted out, the Lord Jesus would be

sent back to them and the times of restoration and setting up of the earthly kingdom as

revealed through the O.T. prophets would come to pass, is the key to this difficulty. In

view of this, no wonder believers looked on the Lord's Second Coming as being a

possibility in their lives and all the passages we have quoted reinforce this fact.  The

so-called orthodox position, having set Israel aside as being cast off by God at the

crucifixion, throws away the key to the understanding of the Acts of the Apostles and

then wonders why it has no Scriptural answer to such far reaching statements as that of

Peter, `the end of all things has drawn near', or John ". . . we know it is the last hour . . ."

(I John 2: 18), or Paul "the ends of the ages are come" (I Cor. 10: 11 R.V.).

All these statements were completely true at the time they were written (i.e. during the

Acts period), and clearly indicate that the end of the age was near and the return of the

Lord Jesus was imminent, all, humanly speaking, depended upon the repentance of Israel.

The fact that they were not going to be `converted' or `turned' to God at this time, was

known to Him only, and no believer could have had any idea what God would do in such

a circumstance. The temptation is great to read into these portions of Scripture future

events and the condition of things after the Acts. If we do this, we nullify truth, blind our

own minds and lose a correct understanding of the purpose of God. Always we must

seek to put ourselves in the place of those to whom the portion of Scripture we are

studying was given, and to go as far as the truth was explicitly revealed to them and no

If only believers could see that the near Coming of Christ was a possibility during the

Acts period and will be truth again when God's prophetic clock starts once more and He

resumes His dealings with Israel and Daniel's 70th week of years runs its course, they

would then be in a position to consider and understand the Scriptures that deal with the

interval between these events and reveal what God has been doing during this time. In

other words the truth that covers this age would then stand out sharply in all its clearness