Claim. The period of the Second Advent is parallel to Jesus’s day, so today’s Christianity stands in the same providential position as the Judaism that rejected Jesus — captive to ritualism and institutional authority while spiritually dim, likely to first persecute Christ at his return for adding new truth, while God reveals the SA-news first to lay believers, marginal spiritual groups, and conscientious non-believers; many devout Christians may find themselves in hell rather than heaven precisely because they took the wrong step at this transition.
Elaboration. Per dp-4-parallels-between-jesus-day-and-today: four operative parallels.
Parallel 1 — ritualism. At Jesus’s time, priests and scribes were enslaved to ritualism and legalism while spiritually corrupt; sincere Jews flocked to the “accused heretic” Jesus. Likewise today, leading clergy “are captive to their authorities and enamored of their rituals while their spirits grow dimmer,” and devout Christians wander seeking the inner light.
Parallel 2 — new truth and persecution. Jesus gave new words of truth, not merely repeating the OT; priests and scribes criticized him from narrow OT-letter understanding and delivered him to the cross. Christ at the Second Advent likewise “will surely add new words of truth necessary for the founding of a new heaven and a new earth.” Christians narrowly attached to the NT letter “will brand the Lord a heretic and persecute him” — fulfilling Jesus’s foretelling that the Lord “must suffer many things and be rejected by his generation.”
Parallel 3 — God reveals to the marginal first. God did not reveal Jesus’s birth to priests but to “gentile astrologers and pure-hearted shepherds.” Likewise God may reveal SA news first to lay people, marginal groups, and conscientious non-believers; only later to mainstream clergy. The Matt 22 marriage-feast parable — invited leading-men declining, streets filled “both bad and good” — illustrates this.
Parallel 4 — devout believers in hell. The priests who persecuted Jesus continued reciting Scripture and offering Temple sacrifices confidently heaven-bound — only to find themselves “most unexpectedly in hell.” Matt 7:23 — “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers” — applies to today’s devout if they turn against the returning Christ. No lifelong faith saves the believer who takes the wrong step at this transition. Daniel: “those who are wise shall understand.”
See also. dp-new-age-saints-persecuted-by-old-age-pattern · dp-prophecy-christianity-divides-into-dying-and-rising · dp-luke-17-prophecies-of-suffering-and-faithlessness-require-physical-second-advent