1 Peter 4:7 ('the end of all things is near') and 1 John 2:18 ('it is the last hour') show imminent-Parousia expectation was the consensus view across multiple independent NT authors, not one writer's idiosyncrasy. Separately, John 21:22-23 records a rumor that the 'beloved disciple' would not die before Jesus's return -- direct evidence that ordinary believers took 'coming' language in a crude, literal, soon sense.

Grant the premise: 'near/last hour' language is real and appears independently in 1 Peter and 1 John, not just Paul. Two things follow from a closer look, not a dismissal. First, John 21:22-23 is not evidence of NT-wide naivety about timing -- it is the opposite. The text narrates the rumor ('the rumor spread among the brothers and sisters that this disciple would not die') and then explicitly flags it as a misreading of Jesus's actual, conditional statement: 'Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"' This is a documented case, inside the canon itself and within a generation of the events, of the believing community distinguishing Jesus's actual words from a popular over-literal reading and explicitly correcting it in writing. That is direct evidence against the premise that the whole early Christian community was simply credulous about timing and incapable of self-correction -- the text preserves the correction rather than quietly dropping the awkward rumor. Second, 2 Peter 3:8-9 addresses the 'why hasn't it happened yet' objection directly and theologically, and it is canonical material, not a later apologetic invention: 'with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day... The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish.' This passage explicitly follows an acknowledgment that scoffers were already asking 'Where is the promise of his coming?' (2 Pet 3:3-4). That means the 'delay' objection being raised on this sheet is not a modern discovery -- the NT itself contains the objection and a theological response to it, from within decades of the relevant events, reframing 'near' as governed by a stated principle of divine patience rather than a chronometric guarantee. On 1 John 2:18 specifically: 'last hour' there is tied explicitly to the diagnostic sign of 'antichrists' already present in John's own community (false teachers who had left the fellowship, 1 John 2:19), which marks this as a claim about the present era being the decisive final chapter inaugurated by Christ's first coming (inaugurated eschatology) -- the pivotal event has already happened; what remains is the outworking, however long it runs -- rather than a chronometric 'any day now' calculation.

The presence of 2 Peter 3:8-9 and John 21:22-23 inside the canon shows the earliest Christian movement had the theological and literary resources to name, process, and correct delay-and-imminence tension from within its own generation, rather than needing centuries to develop an apologetic response. A movement freely inventing its own narrative to smooth over embarrassment had every redactional opportunity, writing decades later, to simply delete the awkward rumor in John 21 or the scoffers' objection in 2 Peter 3 -- the fact that both were preserved rather than edited out is evidence of a tradition constrained by received material and honest about a live tension, not free invention covering for a failed prediction.