Christianity is a Failure & Jesus Ain't Coming Back--Period

The last time anyone saw Jesus alive.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18 it is obvious that Paul felt he himself would be alive when Jesus returned to establish God's kingdom on Earth. Needless to say, this didn't happen. 

In Corinthians 15:20 Paul calls Jesus the "first fruits of the resurrection." This agricultural metaphor is an illusion to the reaping of the harvest--typically done they day after the burgeoning of a crop. A farmer doesn't wait twenty or two-thousand years to take in the harvest, after all. The language employed by Paul makes it abundantly clear, that in his mind, the resurrection was imminent. Soon the dead would be raised for Judgement day.

Needless to say, this didn't happen either.

The very formation of the Christian Church, in retrospect, can be seen as the great failure of Christianity.

If Jesus and Paul had been right about the apocalypse--i.e., the end times--then the judgement would have already come to pass. This is the reason neither Jesus nor Paul spoke about *organizing a socialized institutions such as a church. If everything was going to end the very next day, or next week, there was no need for it. 

This was Jesus's reasoning for calling all of his followers to give up their possessions and follow him (Matt. 19:21). The same for Paul, who preached that marriage was pretty much a futile endeavor and that  

28 ...[T]hose who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. 29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:28-31; emphasis mine)

After all, if everything was coming fast to an end what would the purpose of marriage be? For Paul the there was no purpose--his advice, simply put, don't bother with marriage. Best get busy preparing one's spiritual self for the day of judgement.

Later Christians apparently realized that the failure of God's kingdom to be actualized, along with the failed prophecies about the end times, and the failure of judgement day to happen at all became a huge theological pain in the neck for early Christians.

Thus we see attempts to recify the situation. In 2 Peter 3:8 the author writes, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."

Phew! That solves things.

Except for one small problem, modern Biblical scholars have found that 2 Peter is a pseudepigraphical work. That is, it is a book written by someone pretending to be Peter--who actually lived in a much later time. Nobody knows when exactly. But what scholars do know is that the time is late enough that the anticipated return of Christ, along with the day of judgement, still hadn't come to pass and was a horrible embarrassment for the growing number of Christians who were keen to defend the validity of their faith. 

Predictably, the anxiety of early Christians needed to be appeased and the author of 2 Peter (whoever he was) was doing his best to sooth their fears and concerns by inventing the erroneous claim that for God 1 day is like a 1,000 years, therefore, it makes sense that even if the second coming hasn't yet occurred--not to fret--it is only a matter of time before it does.


But the author of 2 Peter's message directly conflicts with what Paul and even Jesus Christ taught (*gasp! Yet another Bible contradiction). A thousand years later is clearly not within the lifetime of Christ or his Apostles. 

"I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." (Matt. 24:34)

FAIL. 

Well, Christianity has had 2,000 years of the utmost excellent sort of failure one could possibly imagine. Both Jesus and Paul were wrong and failed to be correct in their beliefs. What they claimed would happen in their very own lifetimes--never happened. Latter day Christians who attempted to correct for these failures ended up not doing much better, since as we 21st century denizens well know, their reformulated predictions and theories also failed. 

But the Christian church remains--hanging on throughout time--like a pesky thorn painfully reminding us that everything Christianity has promised, or will ever promise, never ever has come true--and probably never will.