Some critics of the Church believe that Joseph Smith prophesied falsely that Jesus would return in 1890/91. However, this is based on a misreading of the relevant sources. On this, see my article Did Joseph Smith Predict that the Second Coming would happen in 1890/91? (cf. Malin L. Jacobs, The Alleged Fifty-Six-Year Second-Coming Prophecy of Joseph Smith: An Analysis).
Interestingly, the apostle Paul has also
been accused of prophesying falsely about the Parousia (coming in glory)
of Christ, with many scholars arguing he believed that the coming of Jesus was
imminent and would take place in his lifetime based on a few passages on his
epistles. While popular, I reject the thesis on exegetical grounds (as I
believe there is a lot of eisegesis and special pleading in such
claims). In his discussion of 1 Thess 4:15, one such “proof-text,” Ben
Witherington discusses some of the problems of this approach:
[L]et us
consider 1 Thessalonians 4:15—“For this we declare to you,…that we who are
alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede
those who have died.” This is followed immediately by a description of the
return of Christ. Surely here, it has been argued, it is clear that Paul
expected that he would live to see the return of Christ. But there are at least
three major problems with this conclusion.
1. Paul immediately
goes on to stress that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night
(5:2), which is to say it will come at an unexpected time. This sense is
conveyed both by the term thief and by the term night. Paul’s
point is that Christians should be prepared whenever the Lord comes. Though they
may be surprised by the event’s timing, they should not be surprised by the
fact that it happens. They are people of the day and of the light, and so they
are not in the dark like others about the reality that this event will happen.
2. Paul
continues, “… so that whether we are awake or asleep [when he comes] we may
live with him” (5:10). Clearly, then, he entertains either possibility for
himself and his converts. They may live to see the day, or they may die before the
Lord returns.
3. When Paul
wanted to speak of those Christians who would be alive when the Lord returns,
precisely because he did not know the timing of either his own death or the return
of Christ, he had no choice but to place himself in the category of the living
in 1 Thessalonians 4:15. He would not say “we who will have died before the
Lord returns,” unless he knew for sure that his death would precede Christ’s
coming. In fact, Paul had no revelation or certain conviction about the timing
of either event.
Thus
while 1 Thessalonians 4:15 and other such text suggests that Paul reckoned with
the live possibility that the Lord might return in his lifetime, they certainly
do not warrant the conclusion of Schweitzer. We have no clear evidence to support
the conclusion that Paul was a mistaken prophet whose teaching on eschatology
may be considered generally suspect because he was wrong on the time. Possible
and necessary imminence are two different things. We would do well to remember
this fact. (Ben Witherington III, The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for The
Jew of Tarsus [Leicester: Apollos, 1998], 141-2)
