Originally Posted by
Pixel42
I do sometimes wonder what the early Christians would have thought if they had known that, 2000 years later, we would still be waiting for the events that "must shortly come to pass". Paul (the NT one, not the OP) was clearly an intelligent man, I like to think it would have made him reconsider.
This was discussed, in the greatest possible detail, by Jeremy Bentham, in his hostile study of Paul:
Not Paul But Jesus, in which Bentham proposed that the concept of the Antichrist was invented by Paul as a way of postponing the Parousia, as expectation of the imminence of this event was causing disorder among Paul's followers. This work may be downloaded from the Gutenberg site, and the relevant material is in
CHAPTER XII. More Falsehoods.—Resurrection Witnesses multiplied.—World's End predicted.—To save credit, Antichrist invented.
This biography of Paul is of course very much dated - It was published in 1825 - but it is great fun, and still worth a read.