That's not the second coming

Response on Why don't atheists find Biblical prophecy convincing? In the comment Time unbounded.28 "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Where does it state in this scripture the second coming of Jesus? No where! It is referring to Jesus going to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. This happened before the eyes of some of the diciples

    Response

    This is in response to the article, "Why don't atheists find Biblical prophecy convincing?"

    In particular, in response to the verse[1]

    27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. 
    28 "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

    ... and my comment that "So apparently, the 2nd coming already came and went."

    To be somewhat glib, it's not the first and it's not the third, being described here. I'll concede that this is not a strong example, as - like most statements in the Bible - is wildly open to interpretation. I don't agree with your interpretation, as it seems fairly plain what it's talking about here.

    That starts to get into the "Fitting the facts to fit the prediction" section somewhat - the Bible can never be wrong because it'll just be re-interpreted to always be correct, regardless of the circumstances. It becomes unfalsifiable. At least, that's the frustrations atheists have about the stances of apologists.

    Your point is taken, however, I feel that your're missing the forest for the trees. We're talking about why non-believers don't buy into the prophecies. The point is that the Bible is cherry picked to only present examples of where it happened to get predictions correct (a "sharp shooter" fallacy). Unless you're suggesting that the Bible is inerrant (which would not be shocking), it gets some things wrong.

    The fact that the Bible never seems to mean what it says, loses our confidence even more. 

    I'll clarify the example above, and add a better example.

    • [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16:27-28