Old Dispensationalists Never Die . . . And They Never Seem to Fade Away . . .

Christ’s chiding the Pharisees . . .
who could discern the weather but not the prophetic times and seasons.

you mean this?:

" 54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? "

It's about Jesus' first coming.

The Pharasees saw this guy preaching the Kingdom of God and/or Heaven, saw him healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, etc. It went [whoosh!] right over their heads. They watched for a herald with the face, name and fingerprints of Elijah (the letteralist interpretation of Malachi 4), and missed the herald with spirit and power of Elijah (the true (Jesus said so) interpretation of that prophecy).

Read that passage again from the modern prophetic perspective

I'm guessing by "the modern prophetic perspective" you mean dispensationalism? To run it through that filter would be to presuppose what's in question.

Interesting translation you chose.

I think you know that’s not the only plausible one.

I certainly don’t think it’s the most likely one.

Actually, I don’t quibble about the “preesent time” translation.

But I do quibble that we can quite reasonably and logically use the analogy Christ was making then about the pharisees failing to discern the times of His coming the first time

to be just as applicable about the current era’s pharisees failing to discern the era of His 2nd Coming.

OK, but it's just an analogy. People from many generations between then and now have thought they knew, for absolutely sure, they they had discerned the season of His coming, Real Soon Now. "The Turks are on the move. Sure sign."

The ESV inherits that particular rendering from the RSV. KJV and ASV (and 1599 Geneva) have "this time". Maybe if I can get motivated I'll go find my Greek NT and see if my rusty Koine skills are up to puzzling out why the RSV and ESV translators made that a little more definite. (NIV also renders "this present time.")

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