I think I figured out that there was no Jesus before I thought about the fact that he wasn't coming again. I didn't think he'd ever actually come into existence in the first place.
Greyfort Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think I figured out that there was no Jesus > before I thought about the fact that he wasn't > coming again. I didn't think he'd ever actually > come into existence in the first place.
Ditto. Despite being raised with the mormon "Jesus is coming back any day now, store food and get ready to walk to Missouri!" thing, the "second coming" wasn't really a concern for me. Once I began to objectively and honestly assess the claimed evidence that "Jesus" had actually lived, and found it all worthless, even less so.
my wife at the time actually believed that Jesus was coming back with the Y2k thing.
I know, that sounds really funny, being around some one who really really actually does that Jesus is coming back and that He is going to show up at a set time.
I know, from first hand experience that it is not funny at all. Living through that kind of thing is a life changing in its own right. If nothing else, it dramatically points how most "believers" really do not believe very much at all in contrast, and that they are just passing the time of their mortal sojourn by indulging myth until their life is over.
I can't say that as a child that I had people around me emphasizing that Jesus was going to come again at some point. But when I began to read New Testament books in their entirety, I of course encountered quite a few statements indicating that Jesus would return. But I also noticed that the context of most of these statements was that the writers of the New Testament largely believed that the second coming of Jesus was going to happen in their lifetimes. That obviously didn't happen. So I felt no pressure to seriously entertain the idea that he might come back, say, two or three thousand years later. If I had been raised Mormon and been taught that he was coming back, perhaps soon, maybe I would have had to learn to cope with the realization that it probably wasn't going to happen. But in my case, there was really nothing to have to learn to cope with.
When I was born the Church president wore a beard. I remember my father, who was our Aaronic Priesthood teacher, telling us that he probably wouldn't live to see Jesus's second coming but that us kids would for sure.
Now I just tell people, "Jesus will not return during your lifetime . . . or anyone else's."