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On his blog, Alexander Pruss used this argument to respond to YEC:

The New Testament says, in multiple places, that the end of the world will come soon.

It’s been about two thousand years and the end of the world has not come.

If the world is only about 10,000 years old, then 2,000 years is about 20% of the age of the world. And that’s not soon. So, if the New Testament is right, the world must be rather more than 10,000 years old.

Indeed, we have this: the older we think the world to be, the easier it is to accept the New Testament teaching that the end of the world would come soon after apostolic times.

How do YEC respond to this argument?

Luke Hill
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    What are these "multiple places"? Are they for certain referring to the final Judgment? Or are they possibly referring to the fall of Jerusalem (which did occur in ~40 years)? Moreover, how do we know God has not relented from such prophesies, as in the case of Nineveh? Probably the very first reply is "see 2 Peter 3:9". – Matthew Nov 02 '21 at 15:58
  • Final Judgement. – Luke Hill Nov 02 '21 at 18:47
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    Well my response is : what an awfully weak argument. We all know that to the Lord a thousand years is but a day, So it's less than half a week ago that He departed, in His cognisance. It isn't even clear to me what point the blogger is trying to make. – Nigel J Nov 02 '21 at 19:02
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    While I subscribe to YEC, the conundrum pointed to by this question is one that I wrestled with years ago - it is a good question. The proportion of the amount of time before the apostles lived (Creation to First Coming) to that after they lived and when Christ returns seems lop-sided if the apostles lived in the "end times". There are good answers, but necessarily obvious ones. So ask away. – Paul Chernoch Nov 03 '21 at 15:04
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    Counter-argument of sorts... Humans have existed "from the beginning of Creation" (Mark 10:6). If Creation is >4 billion years ago, and humans have only existed for ~0.001% of that time, how is that "from the beginning"? Assuming we accept the NT, it's much easier to believe that ~20% of the age of Creation is still "soon" than to believe that "from the beginning" ignores 99.999% of time. – Matthew Nov 03 '21 at 15:49
  • It is believed by some Christian scientists that the world is about 6000 years old and the earth as old as much of the rest of the universe. – Constantthin Nov 04 '21 at 00:40

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At some point, Christ will return. That may be the "end time", but it is not the beginning of the "end times". The end times refers to a series of cataclysmic events prophesied in Scripture whose duration is unknown. When they begin, what they are, how they proceed, and how long they will last is the subject of the study of eschatology.

The Alexander Pruss argument is a piece of evidence arguing against some of these eschatological theories, but others are consistent with the idea that the "end times" began shortly after Jesus rose from the dead.

Full or partial Preterists would hold that the end times includes the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD, therefore the period between Jesus' resurrection and the start of the end times was forty years.

Some Premillennial theories view the "end times" as still ahead of us. Those theories may not have a good answer to the challenge.

Amillennial theories in which the church is symbolically walking through the end times but there is no literal millennium may or may not have trouble with challenge, because they may or may not teach that the end times have already begun.

Historicist theories (one of which I subscribe to) believe that the events in Revelation stretch out over thousands of years and many have already occurred. Thus for a historicist, the end times began with the Roman persecutions of Christians. Many of the Reformation thinkers subscribed to variations of historicism. (Their timelines have since been invalidated, but newer historicist theories can accommodate the more recent history. 20/20 hinsight, you know.)

There are other theories. You would need to tackle each, one by one, to see how each addresses this problem.

Paul Chernoch
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  • Another one is that if the Earth was created in ~4000BC and the end times begin in ~AD 2000 (followed by the millennium) that's a pleasing symmetry with "1000 years is like a day" and "on the 7th day, God rested". Not sure if any theologians hold it, but it's one I've heard. – Spitemaster Nov 03 '21 at 22:43
  • @Spitemaster - Many early Christian theologians held to that view, as do I. – Paul Chernoch Nov 04 '21 at 13:11