Why shouldn’t Jesus or Paul in principle have imagined a future event or period when the community, after years or decades or even centuries of persecution, would finally be delivered from its enemies and vindicated or justified for having believed in the good news? There is no question that historically both the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of pagan Rome were events of massive significance for the early church. They constituted in their different ways historical validation of the belief of the early church that hope for the people of God lay not in Jerusalem and the temple but in the way of Jesus, and that Christ and not Caesar was King of kings and Lord of lords. So why should not Jesus and Paul, using language and imagery familiar to them from the Old Testament prophets, have spoken of these events as decisive moments in the foreseeable future of God’s people?

There is no eschaton as such in the New Testament. There is, as you say, a clear sense of the imminence of the ‘last days’ - indeed in Hebrews 1:2 the ‘last days’ have already come. Why not put two and two together and conclude that these ‘last days’, as in the Old Testament (eg. Hosea 3:5), define a coming period of decisive judgment, transition, deliverance, transformation for the people of God? There is every reason biblically for thinking that the eschaton may be the end of an age in the midst of history - and no reason, therefore, to think that Jesus and Paul were mistaken in their belief that these things would happen soon.

The resurrection can’t be construed as the second coming of Jesus the Christ because the crucified Christ had never before been prior to the crucifixion.

Shiert, I don’t follow this. The motif of the coming of the Son of man on the clouds of heaven, I maintain, is used to affirm the eventual vindication of the suffering community - that is how it is used in Daniel, that is how it is used in the New Testament. There is also good reason for thinking that the New Testament associates with this a resurrection of the martyrs, of those who suffered and died as Christ suffered, so that they would also share in the vindication of the church; they are not excluded (cf. 1 Thess. 4:13-17).

Finally, in faith, without a time when injustice and suffering is rectified, I see little reason to continue to suffer now, or in the alternative, to walk the narrow path when the broader path is so much more fun.

The resurrection of the martyrs is a first resurrection clearly associated with the victory over Rome (Revelation 20:5). There will still be a resurrection of all the dead and a final renewal of heaven and earth when ‘injustice and suffering’ will be rectified. That hope is not removed. In the meantime, the calling of the church is not simply to suffer faithfully, though that may be necessary at times; it is to live as God intended his creation to be.