Defenders Podcast

Did Jesus predict he would return within the lifetime of his hearers? Dr. Craig takes a closer look at two of the most contested sayings in the Gospels, Mark 9:1 and Mark 13:30, and asks what "the kingdom of God come with power" and "all these things" may have referred to in their original contexts. The answer may not be the Second Coming at all.

Did Jesus predict he would return within the lifetime of his first hearers? Some of his sayings seem to say exactly that. Dr. Craig weighs two common answers to this "delay of the parousia" problem, explains why neither satisfies him, and offers his own solution, drawn from a surprising detail in Matthew's account of Jesus sending out the Twelve.

Did Jesus expect to return within the lifetime of his first hearers? Dr. Craig takes up one of the most debated questions in the doctrine of the last things: the timing of the Second Coming. In the Olivet Discourse of Mark 13, Jesus predicts false messiahs, wars, earthquakes, famines, persecution, cosmic signs, and the preaching of the gospel to all nations before the end. Paul adds more in 2 Thessalonians 2, where the rebellion and the man of lawlessness must come first, and in Romans 11, where the full number of the Gentiles comes in before all Israel is saved. Taken together, these texts suggest Christ's return lies far in the future. Yet Jesus also says "this generation will not pass away before all these things take place" (Mark 13:30), and that some standing before him would not taste death before seeing the kingdom come with power (Mark 8:38–9:1), a saying Matthew 16:28 makes sharper still. Dr. Craig sets these two lines of evidence side by side and frames the puzzle he resolves in the next lesson.

Why does Christ need to come back at all? Dr. William Lane Craig lays out four purposes Scripture assigns to the Second Coming: it completes the work of redemption begun at the cross, triggers the resurrection of the dead, brings about the judgment of all people, and gathers the elect into the Kingdom of God. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 15, John 5, Matthew 16 and 24, and Jude, Dr. Craig shows that the Second Coming is not a single event with one purpose but a multifaceted culmination of God's redemptive plan.

Having rejected both the Rapture view and the Preterist view in prior lessons, Dr. William Lane Craig lays out the classical Christian position: Christ's return will be a single, visible event. In this lecture he examines four characteristics of that return. It will be personal, a literal coming of Christ himself, not a symbolic or figurative event. It will be glorious, a public display of power in contrast to the humility of his first coming. It will be decisive, bringing human history to its close. And it will be sudden and unexpected, which is why Scripture calls believers to readiness rather than speculation about timing. Dr. Craig supports each point from Scripture, including 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, Acts 1, Matthew 24, Mark 14, 1 Corinthians 15, and Revelation 1.

Dr. William Lane Craig continues his critique of the preterist view that Christ's "coming" as the Son of Man was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. He argues, first, that the New Testament consistently describes this coming as visible and public: witnessed by everyone, not a secret event hidden from history. Second, he contends that Christ was already reigning as the risen and ascended King well before AD 70, so the Olivet Discourse can't be describing his enthronement in that year; it's better read as his future return as conquering King. Third, and most decisively, Paul ties Christ's coming to the bodily resurrection of the dead, which plainly did not happen in AD 70, a problem so sharp that even interpreters sympathetic to a preterist reading, as N.T. Wright's own remarks show, end up treating Paul's resurrection hope as a separate, still-future event. Dr. Craig explains why, despite its appeal, he can't accept Preterism as the solution to the New Testament's expectation of Christ's return.

Continuing the series on the Second Coming, Dr. William Lane Craig examines the Preterist view, the position, defended by scholars including G. B. Caird, R. T. France, and N. T. Wright, that the coming of the Son of Man predicted in Jesus' Olivet Discourse already happened in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem. On this reading, the Great Tribulation was the horror of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, and the apocalyptic imagery of Mark 13 (e.g., darkened sun, falling stars) is symbolic language paralleled in Isaiah 13, Ezekiel 32, and Peter's Pentecost sermon in Acts 2, not a literal description of the end. Dr. Craig walks through the Preterist case, including its appeal to Daniel 7 for the Son of Man's heavenly enthronement rather than an earthly return, and explains why Mark 13:30, "this generation will not pass away," is really what drives the view. He finds it initially attractive for solving that verse, but ultimately unpersuasive: like the Rapture view, Preterism ends up requiring an invisible coming of Christ before his final return.

Does the New Testament actually teach a secret "rapture" before Jesus' final return — or is that idea being read into the text rather than out of it? In this episode, Dr. William Lane Craig wraps up his case against the Rapture view by turning to the passage its defenders lean on most: 2 Thessalonians 2, where Paul tells the Thessalonians not to be shaken by claims that "the day of the Lord" has already come.

Dr. Craig walks through Jesus' Olivet Discourse, Paul's letters to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, and a strange episode in 2 Timothy where two men taught that the resurrection had already happened — testing each passage to see whether it points to a two-stage return of Christ or a single, unmistakable Second Coming.

Dr. William Lane Craig continues his examination of the "secret rapture" view, tracing Paul's language about the Lord's coming through 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians 15, and Jesus' own words in John 5 and Mark 13. He argues that the "coming of the Lord" in 1 Thessalonians 4 and the resurrection described in 1 Corinthians 15 are one and the same event as Christ's visible, glorious Second Coming and not a separate, secret snatching away of believers beforehand. Comparing the Greek vocabulary Paul uses (parousia, episynagoge) with Jesus' Olivet Discourse, Dr. Craig concludes that Scripture gives no basis for a pre-tribulation rapture distinct from Christ's final return.

Continuing the study of the Second Coming, Dr. William Lane Craig examines the popular "rapture" view — the idea that Christ will secretly return to snatch believers away before a visible Second Coming and the Great Tribulation. Tracing the doctrine's origins to 19th-century dispensationalist John Darby and its spread through the Scofield Reference Bible, Dallas Theological Seminary, and pop-culture works like Left Behind, the lecture tests the rapture view against key biblical texts, including Jesus's Olivet Discourse and 1 Thessalonians 4, to ask whether Scripture actually supports a two-stage return of Christ.