Trouble interpreting the second coming of Christ

[questioneverything]

I'm comfortable with my rough interpretations of the rest of the Bible, but I'm having trouble reconciling what I read about the second coming of Christ. Yes, at this moment in time, I do think we are headed for an apocalypse. However, the idea of a massive Jesus sitting in clouds, with the earth on fire and dead people running around doesn't sit well with my understanding of metaphysics. Just wondering how other progressive Christians understand the second coming of Christ?  

[Burl]

10 hours ago, questioneverything said:

I'm comfortable with my rough interpretations of the rest of the Bible, but I'm having trouble reconciling what I read about the second coming of Christ. Yes, at this moment in time, I do think we are headed for an apocalypse. However, the idea of a massive Jesus sitting in clouds, with the earth on fire and dead people running around doesn't sit well with my understanding of metaphysics. Just wondering how other progressive Christians understand the second coming of Christ?  

This is a peculiar idea. What exactly did you read?  Hal Lindsey?

[thormas]

13 hours ago, questioneverything said:

I'm comfortable with my rough interpretations of the rest of the Bible, but I'm having trouble reconciling what I read about the second coming of Christ. Yes, at this moment in time, I do think we are headed for an apocalypse. However, the idea of a massive Jesus sitting in clouds, with the earth on fire and dead people running around doesn't sit well with my understanding of metaphysics. Just wondering how other progressive Christians understand the second coming of Christ?  

As a 'Progressive Christian' I don't take the idea of a 2nd coming literally, in part, because it suggests a world of God and a world of man and it is necessary for God to intervene or come (back) again in order to finish things. For me this signals that God is missing from this world; he is viewing things from his world until all hell breaks loose and then he returns.

'Jesus revealed where God always was:"  here, now in the everyday, ordinary events of human existence (thus there is no need to return). Plus, in my understanding, Jesus doesn't come again because, it is now our turn: we come to Jesus (and God) when God is All is all - when we have opened ourselves to Him. We are called to be Christ, when we become Love then Christ will have 'come again.'

[questioneverything]

12 hours ago, Burl said:

This is a peculiar idea. What exactly did you read?  Hal Lindsey?

I can't remember exactly, but I was trying to search for interpretations of the second coming and stumbled across a lot of stuff in that vein. I'm guessing I came across a lot of evangelical websites. 

[JosephM]

Question everything,

Personally i view the second coming not as a one event in time for all but rather a revealing or uncovering of Christ within us. For many i

  believe that has happened already each in their own order. I see it as a spiritual coming not physical.

Joseph

[Skye]

Would a progressive Christian view the first coming as an event in time and the machinations of a distinct 'God'?  I would think not.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by Skye

[PaulS]

On 10/2/2018 at 6:25 AM, questioneverything said:

I'm comfortable with my rough interpretations of the rest of the Bible, but I'm having trouble reconciling what I read about the second coming of Christ. Yes, at this moment in time, I do think we are headed for an apocalypse. However, the idea of a massive Jesus sitting in clouds, with the earth on fire and dead people running around doesn't sit well with my understanding of metaphysics. Just wondering how other progressive Christians understand the second coming of Christ?  

The way I understand it is that most likely the followers of Jesus expected big things from Jesus in his day (i.e. the coming of the Kingdom of God).  When Jesus was abruptly executed it left them wondering what the heck it all meant and what was Jesus about.  I think that is when the speculation started to enter a newly forming religion and people started to come up with ways to explain why the Kingdom of God that Jesus was heavily expecting didn't come to pass.  And eventually it developed into believing that Jesus was actually the messiah foretold in the Hebrew bible and as he didn't fill the requirements of that prophecy his first time around, then he must be coming again at some point to do so.

My take on things like the book of Revelation, that many Christians use today to point toward the end of the world as we know it and some sort of guide as to how God and Jesus will behave in the end days, is that it was written for a specific audience nearly 2000 years ago and has absolutely no application to modern events or society.