section_path: Views/World to come
section_name: World to come
paragraph_text: World to come
  
  According to Bart Ehrman, Paul believed that Jesus would return within his lifetime. N.T. Wright argues that Paul's eschatology did not remain static however, developing in his later epistles the idea that he would probably not see the Second Coming in his lifetime. Wright also argues that this shift was due to perspective and not belief. Paul expected that Christians who had died in the meantime would be resurrected to share in God's kingdom, and he believed that the saved would be transformed, assuming heavenly, imperishable bodies.
  
  Paul's teaching about the end of the world is expressed most clearly in his first and second letters to the Christian community of Thessalonica. He assures them that the dead will rise first and be followed by those left alive. This suggests an imminent end but he is unspecific about times and seasons and encourages his hearers to expect a delay. The form of the end will be a battle between Jesus and the man of lawlessness whose conclusion is the triumph of Christ.
  
  Before his conversion he believed God's messiah would put an end to the old age of evil, and initiate a new age of righteousness; after his conversion, he believed this would happen in stages that had begun with the resurrection of Jesus, but the old age would continue until Jesus returns.