Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

I concluded last time by saying that despite the initial attractiveness of a preterist view of Christ's second coming, I cannot at the end of the day accept it

because it forces upon us an implausible division of Christ's return spoken of by Paul

and of the coming of the son of man spoken of by Jesus.

How might this be seen?

Well, let me make three points.

First, it seems to me that according to Jesus and according to Paul as well,

the coming of the Son of man predicted by Jesus is a visible coming to earth.

Notice that the verb to come is a perspectival word.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that when somebody comes, that represents the situation of the speaker. Somebody

comes to you. If you want to describe how you go to them, you use the verb go. Instead,

you don't say, I come to them. You say, I go to them, and they come to me. Come and go are

perspectival words, rather like here and there. Here is where somebody comes. There is where somebody goes. To see how such words are used in the

New Testament, look at Acts chapter 1 and verse 11. This is a nice illustration, I think, of the

perspectival nature of coming and going. Here, the angels say to the disciples who are standing

about, having just witnessed Jesus' ascension, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

So when Jesus in Mark 13 talks to the disciples about the coming of the son of man, this is a description of his coming to earth. It is where they

will see him and experience him. The language of the coming of the Son of Man indicates that he is

coming to the place where the observer is.

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