Jesus Christ

In Christian tradition, Jesus is said to have been foreshadowed by passages in the Old Testament that have a prophetic meaning beyond what their original readers would have perceived. He is even said to have personally expounded these passages, or some of them (Luke 24:27, 44–47). To ask whether he made any prophecies himself is to invite the skeptical retort that the question cannot be answered because the facts are undiscoverable. It is proper, however, to ask whether the Gospels at least represent him as uttering prophecies and, if so, with what implications.
He speaks of himself in the third person as the Son of Man. This phrase could carry a future reference. Jewish speculation, originating in Daniel (7:13–14), included a “Son of Man” as a kind of heavenly viceroy who would appear on Earth. Speaking of oneself in the third person can suggest status, authority, royalty. When questioned by Pilate, Jesus acknowledges that he is royal in some sense, but his kingdom is not of this world, it is “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven.” He is portrayed as talking of apocalyptic events to come, when he will return as a king in truth. There will be a resurrection of the dead and a Last Judgment, over which he, the Son of Man, will preside; the world as we know it—the present age—will end, and a new world will come into being with eternal life for the blessed.
These colossal claims cannot be discussed as predictions when there is no telling what literal events they predict. Modern readers may accept them and make sense of them in whatever way they judge fitting; or reinterpret them as symbol or allegory; or dismiss them as fantasies, woven into the story by apocalypse-minded mythmakers. Gospel passages where Jesus foretells his own death and resurrection, in the near future, are clearer. Yet an ambiguity remains, and these sayings cannot really be debated either. For the traditional believer, they are authentic and were fulfilled. For

been invented or “remembered” later, to prove that his death was part of a divine plan, and that this included his rising from the dead afterward.
It is chiefly with reference to the “kingdom” that the nature of his prophetic sayings can be examined. There is apt to be an impression that the kingdom means the messianic regime that will appear at his Second Coming and will be sudden and tremendous and different. Actually, he is not often quoted as speaking of it thus. But he does make a prediction that some early Christians probably took in that sense and judged important, because it is recorded three times, with slight variations.
Addressing a group of hearers, he says, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God has come with power”(Mark 9:1). Does this mean that the kingdom is going to appear visibly and vividly, making a sweeping difference in the world, and that it is going to appear soon or fairly soon, within the lifetime of some of the listeners? Albert Schweitzer, who could see no fulfillment in the lifetime of anyone who was present, came to the momentous conclusion that Jesus could be wrong. Some early Christians seem to have avoided that conclusion by postulating a miracle. At least one of Christ’s disciples, one of those spoken of as “standing here,” was going to live on until the Second Coming, whenever that might be. John 21:20–23 mentions a rumor that the “beloved disciple,” the putative author of the gospel, was the disciple in question, though the rumor is not endorsed. It certainly looks like an attempt to cope with the fact that the prophecy had not been fulfilled in the way some Christians assumed that it must be.
Something that can be read in a similar sense is embedded in a confusing passage where Jesus foretells the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, which happened in a.d. 70 when the Jews rebelled. Very likely he did, and he would not have been alone in foreseeing that militant nationalism would lead to disaster. The trouble

is that in this passage (three Gospels have versions of it) he speaks of upheavals prior to the End of the World, of the End itself, and of his Second Coming, and he is quoted as saying, “This generation will not pass away till all these things take place.” It looks like another form of the “some standing here” prophecy. Almost certainly, those words were meant to apply only to Jerusalem’s ordeal, when many of his contemporaries would still be alive. But the writers have interwoven them so closely with the rest that they seem to apply to everything and to predict the End only a few decades away, coincident with the Temple’s fall or soon after it. The confusion doubtless occurs because the writers are still clinging to the hope of an early Second Coming and failing to make the distinctions that they should make.
The question of prophecy by Jesus must turn finally on what he meant by the kingdom and its manifestation. If the manifestation was to happen only at the End of the World, the “some standing here” prophecy is quite simply wrong. But a careful reading of the Gospels indicates that he meant something else. Early in his ministry, he speaks of the kingdom as imminent, “at hand,” and to judge from some of the parables, it is already in active preparation. As it exists on Earth, it is the community of believers who confess Jesus as Lord. When he says the kingdom is at hand, it is not because the world is about to end but because the community is about to start taking shape, in however humble and embryonic a form; the way to salvation is opening.
After this he allows, perhaps even implies, a development of unspecified length. In a parable about wheat and weeds in the same field (Matthew 13:24–30, 37–43), an unknown time elapses between the sowing of the wheat, which means the founding of the kingdom, and the removal of the weeds alongside, which means its purification at “the close of the age.” The parable shows Jesus’ awareness that the Christian community in the world will not be an assemblage of saints. It will exist for an unspecified time and be contaminated by evil, with the bad elements beside the good, although it will finally be perfected. In another parable, the kingdom is a fishing net gathering good and bad fish. The fishermen catch the fish while on the water, then come ashore to sort them out. The earthly kingdom will endure for an unknown stretch of time, drawing in members of very various quality, and will be purified only at the last, by divine action.
How far away is that “last”? Jesus warns against speculation—a warning that many misguided interpreters of prophecy should have taken to heart: “Of that day and hour no one knows”—except his heavenly Father. But there is one clue, and it could hint at whole millennia: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.”
The “some standing here” prophecy need not refer to that end. It is given privately to a group of disciples. The promised advent “with power” means a public manifestation that will begin to happen within a finite space of time, perhaps soon, and will continue. This prophecy is placed in the Gospels shortly after Peter has acknowledged Jesus as the Christ; he assents but tells his disciples not to make it known. The first intimations of his death follow closely, and the kingdom’s predicted visibility can be understood as the sequel, when the Church, inspired by his resurrection, will be publicly in existence, will proclaim him to all as the risen Lord, and will spread with its Good News.
The Christians’ tradition of that dawn is embodied in the early chapters of Acts. The risen Christ, before his final departure, tells the apostles that they will receive power—here is the “power” of Mark—when the Holy Spirit descends upon them, and the word power is significantly repeated later. Peter addresses a crowd in Jerusalem, and many are baptized; the apostles begin to

work miracles of healing. This is quite sufficient. The manifested kingdom does not have to be spectacular from the start. Jesus forestalls such a misconception when he compares the kingdom to a grain of mustard seed, a small thing, yet one that will grow into a tree. In the later chapters of Acts, the Church is spreading its branches beyond its mustard-seed origin, with Christ ever present, as shown in the conversion of Paul.
Consideration of Jesus as a prophet in a verifiable, predictive sense can be confined to three topics. His forecast of the destruction of the Temple is correct. However, it need not imply anything more than the perceptiveness of an opponent of Jewish militancy, convinced of the disaster to come. In the parables of the wheat and the fishes, he foretells that the Christian community will be a mixed body with evil in it alongside good and with so much evil that it will need a divine cleansing. Here, he is not only correct, but more realistic in his anticipation than optimists who have fancied that a holy Utopia can exist here and now.
His “some standing here” prophecy remains. A traditional Christian can say that he speaks in the knowledge that he will die and rise again, his disciples will be galvanized by the miracle, and the Church’s public manifestation and growth will follow. Is there an alternative? What did he have in mind if not that? Without his death and resurrection, or at least the disciples’ belief in it, the manifestation would not have happened… and yet, even if the author of Acts is overly enthusiastic, it did happen.
Discussion of this prophecy and its fulfillment is hard to carry further. It must end, after all, in plain assertion, on the positive side (“I accept the Christian story, he did die and rise again, and on that miracle the Church was founded”) or on the negative side (“I don’t know what the truth may be, but the Christian story is incredible”). The prophecy is not a mistake; it works, if properly understood, but it seems impossible to reduce to purely “rational” terms. A mystery remains.