Eons ago I recall getting from a "turn or burn" relative one of those neat brochures that outlined an interpretation of the book of Revelation with pictures of people being "raptured" and trucks and cars and planes crashing as souls flew out of the driver's/pilot's places. I have of course read my Hal Lindsey, but since taking a more scholarly bent to my studies, haven't thought much about it. I have said to others, if the parousia comes in my lifetime, it shall find me either asleep or in a library somewhere. The subject was of that little concern to me.

But it has become clear that certain questions dealing with eschatology, in particular the questions, "Did Jesus predict a soon return? Did the Apostles expect a soon return?", have become grist for the skeptical and critical mill. Of course we know well that skeptics of the caliber of say, Farrell Till, are about as likely to understand what they are reading as they are to understand quantum physics. But I have corresponded with at least one person who has said that they were "losing their faith" over this very question, and I am sure others exist as well.