Always on Time
by William Yuille Generations of Christians from the first century onwards have lived in the expectation that the Lord was coming soon. But here we are in the year 2012* [*date of this article] and He hasn’t come yet. Why not? Peter speaks to this in 2 Peter 3. God doesn’t estimate time the way we do. “Do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (v. 8). Some Christians, all the way back to post apostolic times, have interpreted this as a sort of formula and have applied it to human history over a period of one week or 7,000 years. According to Archbishop Ussher’s calculations, Adam was created around 4,000 BC, so there were four days before the coming of Christ; another two days take us to 2,000 AD, at which time the seventh day, the millennial age, should arrive. Now that we are in the year 2012*, that theory doesn’t look too likely. In any case, if Peter ...