path: root/reading/When Jesus failed to return within the lifetime of those who had been his closest associates, the re.txt

"When Jesus failed to return within the lifetime of those who had been his closest associates, the relIgiOn should have tolded. But as the original group grew smaller and the religion spread to Asia Minor, the initial prediction was continually modified so that while the basic idea had been an immediate conclusion to history through divine intervention, its immediacy gradually became symbolic, not historic." (Vine Deloria Jr., Leslie Marmon Silko, George E. Tinker – God Is Red A Native View of Religion Fulcrum Publishing (2003))