The Pew Research Center, located in Washington D.C., is a leading “fact tank” that analyzes social trends mostly in the U.S. and largely by means of polling. A poll that Pew conducted in 2006 revealed that 79% of Christians in the U.S. believed Jesus would return to earth someday and that 20% believed it would happen in their lifetime.[1] Among Christian groups, Evangelicals believe most strongly in this second coming of Christ. In a poll that Pew conducted in 2010 in the U.S., 58% of white Evangelical Christians said they believed Jesus would return to earth within forty years, thus by the year 2050.[2] About half of U.S. Christians believe Jesus will return in their lifetime.
Surprisingly, Muslims believe in the literal second coming of Jesus Christ even more than Christians do. Muslims believe Jesus will return with a figure called “the Mahdi” to destroy the Antichrist, raise the dead, and conduct the judgment. From a poll that Pew conducted in 2012 in the Middle East it said, “Belief in the imminent return of Jesus is also common in some countries; half or more Muslims in seven nations say they expect to be alive to see this event.”[3]
Christianity Today said this 2012 Pew poll “found that more than half of Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia—and just under 50 percent in Morocco and the Palestinian territories—believe in the ‘imminent return’ of Jesus. Outside the Arab world, more than half of Muslims in Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Thailand say Jesus will return to Earth in their lifetime.”[4]
(I am writing a book, which will be part of my STILL HERE series on eschatology, that shows belief in the imminent return of Jesus, meaning that he can return at “any moment,” is not biblically based. Thus, biblical scholars have erred in claiming that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament believed that Jesus–after his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven–literally would return to earth within the first century. See my following posts on this subject: “The Church’s Embarrassment about the Second Coming;” “More on Why Jesus Cannot Return Yet;” “Why Jesus Can’t Return ‘Soon’ and Wasn’t Wrong About It;” “Predictions of the End of the World, Yet We’re STILL HERE;” “Do Evangelicals Know that C. S. Lewis Said “Jesus Was Wrong” about his Return?” Also, see my book on the return of Jesus entitled Warrior from Heaven.)
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/the-second-coming-of-jesus/. Accessed 2/11/17.
[2] http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/jesus-christs-return-to-earth/. Accessed 2/11/17.
[3] http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-3-articles-of-faith/. Accessed 2/11/17.
[4] See Christianity Today’s article published December, 2016, entitled “Who Awaits the Messiah Most? Muslims.”
