For follow-up discussion and general commentary on the topic. Comments are sorted chronologically.
Julie Nwaodu
I agree perfectly with Pastor Ezekiel Kimosop. Our Lord Jesus knows the exact time of His return as the omniscient God. For purposes of His personal safety and strategic shielding of His divinity from the Sanhedrin & even His disciples, Jesus chose, most times, to feign ignorance of certain phenomena. The things He pretended limited knowledge of are those that are clearly beyond the ordinary human faculties to discern. By so doing, Jesus placed Himself at the same level as all of us.
Man is therefore, required to be content with what God has desired to reveal to him and remain there. This may be what Deut. 29:29 means when it emphatically declares that "The secret things belong to the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us & to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law". Accordingly, it is wrong to say that Jesus did not actually know the real hour of His second advent. As God, He knows; as a human being, He would not know.
Pastor Chigozirim C. Nwaodu
Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Shirley H
Absolutely, AMEN!!!
Danny Hickman
"If Jesus WAS God..."
There is no "WAS" in who Jesus IS!! God says, "I Am that I Am."
Jesus is not the Father God. He is the Son of God. He has all power in heaven and in earth. He was sent to us by God the Father. He will return to us when the Father sends him.
We know that Jesus, the Son of God, and Jehovah God the Father, are two distinct Persons. There is no doctrinal difference in them, however.
Of his Father Jesus said the following: "I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent me" (John 7:29).
"Though you don't believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in Him" (John 10:38).
"He who believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me" (John 12:44).
Jesus was surely sent by His Father to redeem the lost. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life (John 3:16).
Why didn't Jesus know AT THAT TIME when he would be SENT BACK to earth in continuance of his ministry to the lost world?
I'll theorize.. I believe it's because he had not been told by the Father AT THAT TIME when he was living here in human form. At that time, he could only be in one place at a given time; not like now where he is in every place, due to the third Person of the Trinitarian God, the Holy Spirit, who was sent by the Father in the name (authority) of the Son (Jesus).
I believe he now knows the time of his return. He spoke of THEN, NOT NOW.