Show up around here and your ass gets deported.

self destructing and taking down everything else with it.

after Jesus' death; "quickly "; "at hand; the "time is near"; within a "generation."

It promised this 2,000 years ago.

noticed.

Actually, The Church DID modestly seem to claim to be the promised new heavenly kingdom on earth. And popes let followers kiss their ring (!), as if popes were the promised second coming of Jesus.

But gradually history showed that the Church just never was as good as the promised kingdom.

Protestants also flirted with similar ideas. The notion that a "spiritual" man, is a "new creation," living in a new churchly kingdom, in Union with Jesus. But Protestants also run into similar objections.

Is interesting. It's out of character and style in the New Testament. It has caused a good deal of confusion, too. It's a puzzle.

A fever dream of rivers of blood and eternal hellfire. It forces the Old Testament God of Wrath back to the fore.
It certainly makes it harder for the God of Love-ites to spread their message of eternal love in my book.

And once I invoke metaphorical Jesus, I can dismiss any bit of the bible I don't like, so there.

More exactly, we might call him "spiritual metaphor Jesus."

The idea was that once we have followed the allegedly wonderful spirit of Jesus, we have entered into the promised new, second kingdom. Metaphorically. In which Jesus appears again, a second time, in us.

But again the problem was that all these spiritual jerks kept doing bad things all too often. Even James, in James 2.14-26, noted that spiritual people give us nice words, sentiments, spirits. But not the literal food we need to physically live. In this way they often, say, leave the poor to starve to death.

So even the "second" metaphorical or "spiritual" Jesus is not so good.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218315713

Is there something the all-powerful son of god couldn't accomplish the first two times he dropped by?