This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Just some ongoing debate that I thought I would ask of you. Did the Apostles expect the return of christ in thier lifetime? We have been having a literal/figurative discussion all week. I appreciate your opinion so I thought I would ask?
best regards

Uh, Glen, did you like the ad? Just asking. I think it should run at halftime during the Super Bowl, myself...just before the Playmate of the Year introduces the Stones.

Glen,

I'm sure Cliff is compiling a seventy page post in response to your question, but I believe a fair answer to your question is: They probably hoped for it, but clearly they prepared for it not happening.

Textually, it's difficult not to read St. Paul as believing he was living literally at "the end of history", though it seems unclear how close to that "end" he himself would have believed. There has been an old dusty thesis floating around for awhile now that asserts the Book of Revelation is a response to the failed hopes of the Apostle's generation for Christ's return. It instead sets the end times off in a distant future to respond to the fact Christ obviously hadn't come back in the first generation. That thesis is marred considerably by the most recent efforts to date the book which would place it being written in the 70's (as opposed to the tradition dating in the 90's around the time St. John wrote his Gospel).

It goes without saying that the Church continued on after the Apostles and that what they had instituted was clearly meant to grow and last. Otherwise, Christianity would have been abandoned rather quickly as are most millennial movements whose predictions of "the end" doesn't manifest itself. It's important to note that in none of the Epistles is a date set for the return of Christ. There is, to be sure, a constant call for people to be aware of His return, but I am unconvinced why we should read this as not being a Heavenly call meant to transcend the ages of the world.

It seems reasonable that in the midst of persecution and other roadblocks the Apostles faced (as detailed in the Book of Acts and elsewhere), they no doubt longed for the return of Christ, but it did not stop them in their mission. That all but John saw a martyr's death persuades me that up until the end--whether Christ had returned or not--they were wholly dedicated to His Message and their work at "making disciples of all nations."