Such announcements will become more strident in the year 2,000 and probably till the year 2,030 (the anniversary of Jesus' crucifixion), and on to AD 2,070 (two millennia since the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70). How do we evaluate these predictions of an imminent second coming? This book will offer another model to understand what the Bible actually says. It will show how the eternal Son of God made many interventions or comings in the Old Testament period and how the prophets described these interventions as "days of the Lord."
The coming that the New Testament writers referred to occurred in AD 70 when the temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was devastated, and the religious establishment of the city was decimated. The signs of that day of the Lord, and the metaphorical portents Jesus used to describe it, all happened in that generation exactly as Jesus had prophesied.
Jesus himself spoke of birth-pangs before the destruction of the temple and fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 (Mark 13:8; Matthew 24:8). And he said that the events of "those days" would occur in the generation of his hearers (Mark 13:17, 19, 20, 24, 30; Matthew 23:36; 24:34; Luke 21:32).
Preachers who announce the imminent second coming of the Lord assume that we are still in the generation spoken of by Jesus. They also tend to say that the Son of God will not begin his reign until he returns. And it is from signs of what they see happening in our world that they deduce the return of the Lord is near.
Evidently we have two very different models of what we should expect by the year 2,000 and the world events of our generation. Which model we adopt will make a huge difference to the way we live our lives as servants of the King of kings and Lord of lords.
In the final chapter we look at some of the catastrophic events in world history which the Old Testament prophets would have called days of the Lord. There will be a final coming to terminate our space-time world, but only when the Son of God has "put all enemies under his feet." And Paul adds that "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15:25-26). That does not seem to be imminent in the year 2,000.