The Parousia (Presence of Christ) and 1914

(Mt 24:27) For just as the lightning comes out of eastern parts and shines over to western parts, so the presence of the Son of man will be.

What parousia means

The disciples asked Jesus for the sign of his presence and of the conclusion of the system of things (Matthew 24:3). Parousia is the word for presence, the arrival of a king or dignitary and his staying on afterward. Jesus began with a warning about being misled rather than with a sign: "if anyone says to you, 'Look! Here is the Christ,' or, 'There!' do not believe it" (Matthew 24:23). His presence wouldn't need anyone to announce it or argue for it. It would be as plain as lightning across the whole sky.

The 1914 teaching

The doctrine that Christ's presence began invisibly in 1914 comes out of a chronology, not out of Matthew 24, and once you hold that date, every prophecy after it has to bend to fit. The studies on this site show what that does to Revelation: the pangs of distress get declared begun, the two witnesses get killed in 1918, and the beast is made to climb out of the abyss in 1918, again in 1920 and again in 1945, while the seventh head is wounded before Britain and America had even formed it. None of that survives a plain reading of Revelation 17:10, 11.

Why it works as a sedative

(Lu 21:8) Look out that you are not misled; for many will come on the basis of my name, saying, "I am he," and, "The due time has approached." Do not go after them.

A false parousia does something particular to the people who accept it: it pushes the main event into the past. If the King has already arrived and the judgment of his house is already finished, then the warnings Jesus gave to keep his people awake have been answered, and nothing happening now can be the thing to watch for. That's an eschatological sedative. It never denies the end. It just tells you that you've already passed the point where you needed to be ready. Paul's first warning in 2 Thessalonians 2 is against being told "the day of Jehovah is here" (2 Thessalonians 2:2).

What the text actually says

Jesus said no one knows the day or the hour (Matthew 24:36), and that he comes "at an hour that you do not think to be it" (Matthew 24:44). His presence belongs to the sequence that runs through the great tribulation, when "those who belong to the Christ" are gathered "during his presence" (1 Corinthians 15:23) just before the seventh trumpet. That is still ahead. And when it comes, nobody will need a publishing house to prove it happened.