There are 108 verses in the New Testament use some form of “μellw” out of a total of 111 occurrences, including 3 verses which use the word twice, and 3 textual variants (Acts 23:30; Heb 9:11; 2 Pet. 1:12). Take a careful look at these texts. In most translations, “μellw” is incorrectly rendered “shall” or “should” or “would” most of the time, especially in prophetic texts, with no indication that the time is near. The use of μellw indicates something is “About to be” or “About to happen”, so it is a time word, and the English words “shall, should, would” simply implies a future action with No indication of time and is not adequate to express the inherent imminency of the word “μellw” This becomes very important when we study Prophetic texts which use this word μellw in reference to The return of Christ and other events in the New Testament, which are called “the last days”. μellw implies that those events were “soon” occur. Translating μellw ‘SOON’ or ‘ABOUT TO HAPPEN’ or ‘BEFORE LONG’ in certain places, would have caused the translators great problems of interpretation, implying that the Second Coming was to come in the lifetime of the disciples which the translators found un-acceptable due to the fact they had the wrong understanding of what to expect at the Second Advent. This is the same, as one of the reasons why the Pharisees rejected Jesus as the Messiah because the Pharisees had the wrong expectation of what would happen when the Messiah appeared. The Pharisees expected the expulsion of the Romans from Judea which did NOT happen. Since almost all translators believe the events are still future, they STEER AWAY from translating it with a ‘soon’ sense, especially in prophetic texts. There is a complete list of all occurrences of μellw on page 43, classified where the Second Advent is NOT the subject of the context and these present no problem for the translators and therefore they use the word ’soon’, or ’about to happen’ willingly with no problems. Scriptures are from the King James Version but any version will show exactly the same things. An interlinear Bible would be most informative to use for the verification of the translation of this word μellw. The First Section shows the meaning of μellw in the context of those verses in which the translators had no difficulty in translating it as “Soon” because the context of the Scripture is NOT about when the Second Advent was to occur.
