"Jesus, in Mark, says some standing here won’t taste death before they see the kingdom come with power."
Jesus also said "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (Mark 1:15, Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17) and "the Kingdom is within you"(Luke 17:21). He was misunderstood, but that wasn't unusual. Remember the Messiah was supposed to deliver Israel from the Romans (according to the Israelites), but that was also a misunderstanding. People turn matters if the spirit into matters of the physical realm and wonder why things don't go to plan. I've seen miracles with my own eyes. I've had them happen to me. That is the kingdom coming in power, not Jesus busting open the sky. If the kingdom was a physical kingdom, how could it possibly be in anyone? And the kingdom of Heaven was at hand when Jesus was working the miracles; that wasn't a "just wait until I come back" thing.
That being said, I don't disagree that 2 Peter was a forgery with Pete's name slapped on it. No one was exempt from that treatment (Paul), so we shouldn't act surprised when it happens. Anyone who studies the history understands that was a common practice, not limited to just the authors of the Bible. The people who refuse to accept that reality think they're somehow protecting God, as though He needs protection. They're buying a lie. Ironically, these are the same people who reject everything written in the last two hundred years as lies. Go figure.
You’re right that Jesus spoke in ways people kept flattening into something physical. When he talked about the kingdom coming with power, it fits with everything you pointed out — the kingdom at hand, the kingdom within, the kingdom revealed in moments that break through ordinary life. That’s a kind of power people miss when they’re waiting for sky‑splitting events.
And yes, none of that changes the historical reality that 2 Peter wasn’t written by Peter. Ancient writers used names the way people use brands now -- to give weight to an argument. It was common, and acknowledging it doesn’t threaten faith; it just tells the truth about how texts were made.
I’m not particularly interested in defending Petrine authorship here. There is a genuine scholarly debate over whether Peter wrote 2 Peter, and the majority critical position is that he did not.
But that isn't really the larger claim being made in this article. The claim is that 2 Peter was written "because Jesus made a prediction that failed", and that someone later wrote in Peter’s name to explain or cover that failure.
Before that conclusion can follow, several prior questions have to be answered.
1. What exactly was the prediction that failed?
Which saying of Yeshua demonstrably promises His final bodily return within that generation?
2. Why should “the kingdom of God having come in power” in Mark 9:1 automatically mean the final coming? Especially when Mark follows that statement six days later with the Transfiguration, witnessed by some of those who were standing there.
3. Why should Danielic “coming with the clouds” automatically mean descent from heaven to earth? In Daniel 7, the Son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days, not earth, is presented before Him, and receives dominion, glory, and kingdom.
4. Why separate Mark 13 from its Temple and Hebraic context? The passage begins with Yeshua predicting the Temple’s destruction, followed by the disciples asking when “these things” will happen.
5. Why read Mark 13’s cosmic language as literal astronomical collapse when Yeshua is drawing from prophets who used the same imagery for historical judgment? Isaiah 13 uses darkened sun, moon, and stars for Babylon. Isaiah 34 uses collapsing heavens for Edom. Isaiah 19 portrays YHWH “riding on a swift cloud” to judge Egypt. Did YHWH actually come on a cloud?
6. Why ignore the older ANE and Jewish symbolic vocabulary behind that language? Cloud-riding already functioned as divine and royal sovereignty imagery centuries before the New Testament. Ugaritic texts call Baal the “Rider of the Clouds,” while Israel applies cloud-and-storm sovereignty to YHWH. That doesn't prove what Mark 13 means, but it does mean “coming on clouds” can't simply be treated as a technical synonym for a later Christian concept of the Second Coming without argument.
7. What do we do with Mark 14? Jesus combines Daniel 7 with Psalm 110: the Son of Man is “seated at the right hand of Power” and “coming with the clouds.” Psalm 110 is enthronement language. Acts 2 then uses that same psalm to proclaim Jesus as already exalted, while 1 Corinthians 15 distinguishes His reign from the final defeat of all enemies.
8. Why identify Paul’s “we who are alive” in 1 Thessalonians as a prediction that Paul personally could not die first? Paul elsewhere openly contemplates his own death and even speaks of God raising “us.” Expectation that an event may occur within one’s lifetime isn't the same thing as a guaranteed prophetic deadline. This has happened several times in history, and the same concept applies.
9. Who are “the fathers” in 2 Peter 3:4? This one is huge. Why must they be the first Christian generation rather than Israel’s ancestral fathers, especially when the scoffers’ statement continues, “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation”? There are other areas in Scripture where "the fathers" are referred to in the same way or similar and they mean the patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
10. Where does 2 Peter actually say an announced deadline expired? The scoffers ask where the promised coming is because everything appears to continue unchanged. That isn't the same statement as, “Jesus promised this would happen before these people died, and now they are dead.” There have always been scoffers.
And then there is what I think is the most important question:
If 2 Peter’s explanation was invented to rescue Christianity from an unprecedented failed prophecy, why does its reasoning already exist in Israel’s Scriptures?
Ezekiel 12: the people complain that the days pass and the visions come to nothing.
Habakkuk 2: the vision has an appointed time; though it appears delayed, wait for it.
Psalm 90: a thousand years before God are like yesterday when it has passed, the very text behind 2 Peter’s “one day is as a thousand years.”
Jonah and the prophetic tradition: delayed judgment can reflect mercy, repentance, and divine patience.
The Day of YHWH: Israel’s prophets already possessed a framework in which promised divine judgment could be awaited without interpreting apparent delay as divine absence.
So 2 Peter may be late. It may be pseudonymous. Those questions can be debated independently, but neither fact establishes motive.
There are really two different theses here:
Thesis A: Peter probably did not write 2 Peter.
That has substantial scholarly support.
Thesis B: Therefore someone wrote it specifically to explain why Jesus failed to return when He promised.
Thesis B does not follow from Thesis A.
There is an entire substantial missing argument between them.
Before we can say a later writer was “covering for Jesus,” several things first have to be established:
That Jesus unmistakably promised His final physically seen bodily return within that generation;
That kingdom-coming, Danielic cloud-coming, enthronement, judgment, and final consummation all refer to that one identical event;
That the deadline for that said event actually expired;
That early believers understood this as a failed prophecy;
That the author of 2 Peter wrote specifically to repair that failure.
Those are not minor details, and are the premises required for the conclusion.
So before asking whether somebody forged 2 Peter to cover for Jesus, I think the more foundational question is:
What, precisely, did Jesus predict that is understood within the Jewish Scriptures and ancient symbolic world He and His hearers actually inhabited... and can we first establish that the prediction failed?
Until that is demonstrated, there is nothing yet established for a later writer to be “covering up.”
There is one final methodological concern for me.
One can always isolate a disputed book, a difficult line, or even a single word and argue for a particular lens. But once that text is separated from the larger scriptural conversation, from the literary world it is drawing upon, and from the worldview of the people who wrote and first heard it, almost any argument can be made to sound persuasive.
That is why the question can't be settled by taking 2 Peter 3, Mark 9, or Mark 13 in isolation and then reading later assumptions back into them.
Whether a book is disputed or undisputed, the better methodological question is still: Does this interpretation make sense within the wider framework of Scripture and within the ancient world in which its language functioned?
A reading may be possible at the level of one verse, even a few individual verses or phrases, but if it requires us to detach that verse, even passage, ignoring the author's or speaker's worldview, and from Daniel, Isaiah, the Psalms, the prophetic vocabulary of judgment, ancient royal imagery, and the larger scriptural understanding of kingdom and divine action, basically the preponderance of Scripture and the worldview within it, then its explanatory weight becomes much weaker.
Context does not make every interpretation certain, but it does place limits on what a text can reasonably be made to say, and it is a stronger method to make a reasonable conclusion.
To say you would have more time to repent makes absolutely no sense.
Including the unborn.
Including those not yet born.
Re "Yet, the church eventually canonized it, ..."
Yes they did, because good propaganda is hard to find?
"Jesus, in Mark, says some standing here won’t taste death before they see the kingdom come with power."
Jesus also said "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (Mark 1:15, Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17) and "the Kingdom is within you"(Luke 17:21). He was misunderstood, but that wasn't unusual. Remember the Messiah was supposed to deliver Israel from the Romans (according to the Israelites), but that was also a misunderstanding. People turn matters if the spirit into matters of the physical realm and wonder why things don't go to plan. I've seen miracles with my own eyes. I've had them happen to me. That is the kingdom coming in power, not Jesus busting open the sky. If the kingdom was a physical kingdom, how could it possibly be in anyone? And the kingdom of Heaven was at hand when Jesus was working the miracles; that wasn't a "just wait until I come back" thing.
That being said, I don't disagree that 2 Peter was a forgery with Pete's name slapped on it. No one was exempt from that treatment (Paul), so we shouldn't act surprised when it happens. Anyone who studies the history understands that was a common practice, not limited to just the authors of the Bible. The people who refuse to accept that reality think they're somehow protecting God, as though He needs protection. They're buying a lie. Ironically, these are the same people who reject everything written in the last two hundred years as lies. Go figure.
You’re right that Jesus spoke in ways people kept flattening into something physical. When he talked about the kingdom coming with power, it fits with everything you pointed out — the kingdom at hand, the kingdom within, the kingdom revealed in moments that break through ordinary life. That’s a kind of power people miss when they’re waiting for sky‑splitting events.
And yes, none of that changes the historical reality that 2 Peter wasn’t written by Peter. Ancient writers used names the way people use brands now -- to give weight to an argument. It was common, and acknowledging it doesn’t threaten faith; it just tells the truth about how texts were made.
I’m not particularly interested in defending Petrine authorship here. There is a genuine scholarly debate over whether Peter wrote 2 Peter, and the majority critical position is that he did not.
But that isn't really the larger claim being made in this article. The claim is that 2 Peter was written "because Jesus made a prediction that failed", and that someone later wrote in Peter’s name to explain or cover that failure.
Before that conclusion can follow, several prior questions have to be answered.
1. What exactly was the prediction that failed?
Which saying of Yeshua demonstrably promises His final bodily return within that generation?
2. Why should “the kingdom of God having come in power” in Mark 9:1 automatically mean the final coming? Especially when Mark follows that statement six days later with the Transfiguration, witnessed by some of those who were standing there.
3. Why should Danielic “coming with the clouds” automatically mean descent from heaven to earth? In Daniel 7, the Son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days, not earth, is presented before Him, and receives dominion, glory, and kingdom.
4. Why separate Mark 13 from its Temple and Hebraic context? The passage begins with Yeshua predicting the Temple’s destruction, followed by the disciples asking when “these things” will happen.
5. Why read Mark 13’s cosmic language as literal astronomical collapse when Yeshua is drawing from prophets who used the same imagery for historical judgment? Isaiah 13 uses darkened sun, moon, and stars for Babylon. Isaiah 34 uses collapsing heavens for Edom. Isaiah 19 portrays YHWH “riding on a swift cloud” to judge Egypt. Did YHWH actually come on a cloud?
6. Why ignore the older ANE and Jewish symbolic vocabulary behind that language? Cloud-riding already functioned as divine and royal sovereignty imagery centuries before the New Testament. Ugaritic texts call Baal the “Rider of the Clouds,” while Israel applies cloud-and-storm sovereignty to YHWH. That doesn't prove what Mark 13 means, but it does mean “coming on clouds” can't simply be treated as a technical synonym for a later Christian concept of the Second Coming without argument.
7. What do we do with Mark 14? Jesus combines Daniel 7 with Psalm 110: the Son of Man is “seated at the right hand of Power” and “coming with the clouds.” Psalm 110 is enthronement language. Acts 2 then uses that same psalm to proclaim Jesus as already exalted, while 1 Corinthians 15 distinguishes His reign from the final defeat of all enemies.
8. Why identify Paul’s “we who are alive” in 1 Thessalonians as a prediction that Paul personally could not die first? Paul elsewhere openly contemplates his own death and even speaks of God raising “us.” Expectation that an event may occur within one’s lifetime isn't the same thing as a guaranteed prophetic deadline. This has happened several times in history, and the same concept applies.
9. Who are “the fathers” in 2 Peter 3:4? This one is huge. Why must they be the first Christian generation rather than Israel’s ancestral fathers, especially when the scoffers’ statement continues, “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation”? There are other areas in Scripture where "the fathers" are referred to in the same way or similar and they mean the patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
10. Where does 2 Peter actually say an announced deadline expired? The scoffers ask where the promised coming is because everything appears to continue unchanged. That isn't the same statement as, “Jesus promised this would happen before these people died, and now they are dead.” There have always been scoffers.
And then there is what I think is the most important question:
If 2 Peter’s explanation was invented to rescue Christianity from an unprecedented failed prophecy, why does its reasoning already exist in Israel’s Scriptures?
Ezekiel 12: the people complain that the days pass and the visions come to nothing.
Habakkuk 2: the vision has an appointed time; though it appears delayed, wait for it.
Psalm 90: a thousand years before God are like yesterday when it has passed, the very text behind 2 Peter’s “one day is as a thousand years.”
Jonah and the prophetic tradition: delayed judgment can reflect mercy, repentance, and divine patience.
The Day of YHWH: Israel’s prophets already possessed a framework in which promised divine judgment could be awaited without interpreting apparent delay as divine absence.
So 2 Peter may be late. It may be pseudonymous. Those questions can be debated independently, but neither fact establishes motive.
There are really two different theses here:
Thesis A: Peter probably did not write 2 Peter.
That has substantial scholarly support.
Thesis B: Therefore someone wrote it specifically to explain why Jesus failed to return when He promised.
Thesis B does not follow from Thesis A.
There is an entire substantial missing argument between them.
Before we can say a later writer was “covering for Jesus,” several things first have to be established:
That Jesus unmistakably promised His final physically seen bodily return within that generation;
That kingdom-coming, Danielic cloud-coming, enthronement, judgment, and final consummation all refer to that one identical event;
That the deadline for that said event actually expired;
That early believers understood this as a failed prophecy;
That the author of 2 Peter wrote specifically to repair that failure.
Those are not minor details, and are the premises required for the conclusion.
So before asking whether somebody forged 2 Peter to cover for Jesus, I think the more foundational question is:
What, precisely, did Jesus predict that is understood within the Jewish Scriptures and ancient symbolic world He and His hearers actually inhabited... and can we first establish that the prediction failed?
Until that is demonstrated, there is nothing yet established for a later writer to be “covering up.”
There is one final methodological concern for me.
One can always isolate a disputed book, a difficult line, or even a single word and argue for a particular lens. But once that text is separated from the larger scriptural conversation, from the literary world it is drawing upon, and from the worldview of the people who wrote and first heard it, almost any argument can be made to sound persuasive.
That is why the question can't be settled by taking 2 Peter 3, Mark 9, or Mark 13 in isolation and then reading later assumptions back into them.
Whether a book is disputed or undisputed, the better methodological question is still: Does this interpretation make sense within the wider framework of Scripture and within the ancient world in which its language functioned?
A reading may be possible at the level of one verse, even a few individual verses or phrases, but if it requires us to detach that verse, even passage, ignoring the author's or speaker's worldview, and from Daniel, Isaiah, the Psalms, the prophetic vocabulary of judgment, ancient royal imagery, and the larger scriptural understanding of kingdom and divine action, basically the preponderance of Scripture and the worldview within it, then its explanatory weight becomes much weaker.
Context does not make every interpretation certain, but it does place limits on what a text can reasonably be made to say, and it is a stronger method to make a reasonable conclusion.
Let's just say the belief system Paul was working and the religion of Peter were not friendly or compatible in may areas.
Yes. Yes they did