I'm a biblical scholar, and I've studied the 'imminent expectation' problem - how early Christians thought Jesus was coming back imminently, and they were wrong.
But what if 'near' doesn't mean chronological proximity? What if it means relational proximity? Jesus is near. The kingdom is near. Not in distant time, but in available reality.
I'm teaching my students to read this not as failed prophecy, but as present promise. The ending is not distant. It's closer than you think. It's here, breaking in, already happening.
That creates a completely different urgency than apocalyptic end-times theology. Not 'prepare for the rapture' but 'wake up to what's already here.'
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