This doesn’t sound like just some man walking onto the scene or being interviewed on the nightly news...
For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day.
Luke 17:24
What makes you think that was Jesus referring to Himself as the Son of Man?
Who is the Son of man who will come in the clouds of heaven?
In some instances Jesus was referring to himself as the Son of Man and we know that because of the
context of those verses where the title is connected with the earthly life of Jesus we know about from cross verification (reading other verses). For example, we know from other verses that Jesus did the following when he came to earth:
But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins - he said to the paralytic (Mark 2:10).
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28).
And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20)
For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10).
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8:31).
It is not a reasonable conclusion to assume that Jesus was referring to Himself as the Son of Man who would come in the clouds with great power and glory because:
(a) Great power and glory is not consistent with the personality of Jesus. Jesus was meek and lowly.
(b) Son of man is not a title that belongs exclusively to Jesus, so there is no reason to believe that Jesus was the only Son of Man:
37 Bible verses about Son Of Man
"
Son of man", "
son of Adam", or "
like a man", are phrases used in the
Hebrew Bible, various
apocalyptic works of the
intertestamental period, and in the
Greek New Testament. In the indefinite form ("son of Adam", "son of man", "like a man") used in the Hebrew Bible it is a form of address, or it contrasts
human beings against
God and the
angels, or contrasts foreign nations (like Persia and Babylon), which are often represented as animals in apocalyptic writings (bear, goat, or ram), with Israel which is represented as human (a "son of man"), or it signifies an
eschatological human figure.
In its indefinite form it is used in the
Greek Old Testament,
Biblical apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha. The Greek New Testament uses the earlier indefinite form while introducing a novel definite form, "the son of man."
Son of man - Wikipedia
(c) Jesus could not come back to earth in the same body because His body died on the cross. Jesus did not come back to life walk around and then ascend into the clouds to heaven and live there for 2000 years planning to return at some future date. This is all a belief that came into being from a misinterpretation and thus a misunderstanding of Bible verses, a grave misunderstanding.
And most importantly,
(d) There are no verses wherein Jesus says He is coming back to earth and many verses where Jesus says He is not coming back to earth because His work is finished here: (
John 14:19,
John 17:11,
John 17:4,
John 19:30)
The logical conclusion we can draw is that the second coming was slated to be another man. Since truth from God is revealed progressively, Jesus promised to send the Comforter and the Spirit of truth to reveal more truth in the future, but Christians did not understand what Jesus was referring to and believed that was a reference to the Holy Spirit that was sent to the disciples at Pentecost when on fact those were titles for the man who would be the second coming of Christ who was the return of the Spirit of Christ.
)
