What does “near” mean?
By Richard P. Joseph
5/24/2026
I have a dear friend who is completely indoctrinated into the Schofield/Darby end times beliefs. I talked, in a previous article, about how she once called her friend over, who holds several post graduate degrees in theology, to straighten me out on my preterist beliefs. They then called me over and I showed him Revelation 1:1-3 and asked him a simple question; What does “soon” and “near” mean?
1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and [a]communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, 2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, everything that he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy and [b]keep the things which are written in it; for the time is near.
He then asked me if I had any formal theological training and I answered “no”. He then told me that he couldn’t answer my question because it would be so complicated that I would not understand it because of my lack of scholarship. So that was the end of that. However, I recently visited my neighbor and she again brought up that subject.
This time she said that she was worried about my spiritual state of being because I didn’t believe the whole bible. I then said “I never said that, I actually believe every word of the bible”. She said “You told me that you didn’t believe the end times stuff”. I corrected her and said, “I never ever said that, you just assumed it because you are puzzled about my beliefs”. I then showed her the same verses in Revelation and asked her plain blank if she could tell me what “near” and “soon” mean. She got very upset and would not answer me. So I pressed her. I asked what you would think it meant if you were an Ephesian 2,000 years ago and just received this letter from John and read it? She then went into the common answer and said “It could mean anything, you know, time isn’t the same for God as it is for us, bla bla bla”. I then told her that “it sounds like you don’t actually believe the bible, not me. Why do you have to go through all of that linguistic gymnastics to answer a simple question?” She was so upset that she almost didn’t want to talk to me any more even though she was the one who brought up the conversation.
This is a common scenario these days for me. The point really is, if it could mean anything then it could mean anything! This type of hippie biblical theology is causing many to go astray and is setting them up to fall for a false messiah in the near future which I predict will truly happen and cause worldwide catastrophic damage. If words can mean anything then they really mean nothing. Those people do that with all scripture. For example, I dare challenge you to ask someone what “generation” means. They will give you all sorts of weird answers that don’t make any sense whatsoever. To anyone with any common sense and intelligence, it means a group of people that are living at a certain defined period of time. It doesn’t mean a “race of people” or it doesn’t mean “a group of people living later when a certain event is going to happen” or anything else. In context, when Jesus told the apostles that his return would be in their generation, it meant “in their generation of time”. Not thousands of years later. What’s so hard about that? And the funny thing is, the historical record bore that out. That makes it even easier to believe the bible. Jesus wasn’t here to trick you. He did use parables so that only the spiritually awake can understand him but it wasn’t to trick you, it was to invite you to open up to the Holy Spirit to give you understanding. This separated the true believers from the faithless. Keep it simple. Believe what the scripture says without doubt. Challenge the status quo if necessary. Trust the scripture as they are. In the end, my friend thought that I didn't believe the bible because I didn't believe the popular re-interpretation of scripture. If me and her were shown a passage of scripture I would believe it purely on what it said and in context. She would have to check her Schofield NIV bible commentaries in order to find the re-interpreted hogwash before she believed it. That is a problem.
Occam's razor is a problem-solving and philosophical principle stating that when presented with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, you should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions and requires the least complexity. It acts as a logical "razor," shaving away unnecessary variables. google
