Expectation

Another professor teaches that the apostles were mistaken in thinking that the second coming of Jesus would take place in their own generation. This is a very common assertion of those who deny miraculous inspiration, and there are some remarks of the apostles which would furnish plausible support to it if there were not others which contradict it. For example, whatever Paul may have said that is ambiguous on the subject, when he took it up for formal discussion, as he does in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, he repudiates that idea. He says: "Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him; to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, as that the day of the Lord is now present; let no man deceive you in any wise: for it will not be, except the falling away [apostasy] come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." Read all the paragraph. If this man of sin is not popery, then he has not made his appearance to the present day; but he must appear and be made to disappear before the coming of the Lord, as Paul understood the matter. Peter in a different way speaks to the same effect, when he says: "In the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Pet:3:3Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
See All..., 4). If the mockers were to say this after the fathers fell asleep, then the apostles were dead and gone before they said it.

I must not omit to say that the "critics" have an easy way of getting rid of these testimonies. Baur denies that Paul wrote the Epistles to the Thessalonians, and the whole rationalistic crowd unite in denying that Peter wrote the second Epistle ascribed to him; but this is only an example of their way of denying the genuineness or the authenticity of Scriptures, which stand in the way of [335] their theories. If they could not do this, they would have to relinquish their calling (J. W. McGarvey, "Short Essays in Biblical Criticism," 1910, pp. 333-336).