In his column of Dec. 27, Cal Thomas pleaded with his readers to ignore those who pervert the meaning of Christmas, exhorting them to embrace its true meaning instead — namely, that God became man to pay for our sins by dying for us, so that those who receive him may be forgiven and gain paradise.

But I for one reject the “true” meaning as fiction.

If Jesus Christ was God incarnate, then he was truth incarnate, as the fourth Gospel reports him to have said of himself. But the undeniable fact is, he was mistaken in prophesying that his second coming was imminent—an error that is forever inseparable from the Gospel message.

Thomas himself refers to this “prophecy,” which is connected to certain dire signs (such as “wars and rumors of war”) that Christ preached would precede his return in glory. To Thomas, those signs seem to be present now.

It appears we’re in the end times, in other words, though Thomas knows better than to speculate as to the exact date of Christ’s return, since the New Testament itself says it’s unknowable.

But what it does say, plainly and mistakenly, is that it was contemporary Christians who were living in the last days and that Christ was soon to return in power. “The end of the ages has come,” the Apostle Paul declared (1 Corinthians 10:11); and according to the Epistle of James (5:8), “the coming of the Lord is near.”

Near means near—not 2,000 years away.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston