Posted on 03/14/2011 2:35:03 PM PDT by STD
Dear FReepers,
Most of you know from experience that re-reading God's Word frequently causes us to reevaluate our lives out of a new, or fresh revelation we get from the scriptures. We are tempted to look for prophetic interpretations that don't become relevent until such a time as God decides that they should become known to us. Earlier today, I was reading an FR post about Matthew 24. It's the great warning chapter, which outlines what we are to watch out for at the beginning of the Last Days. It talks about wars, earthquakes and false messians; nothing new here folks. Of course, we have just finished the 20th Centuary the most war plagued time in man's history, so rumors of wars is nothing new. However, what really stimulates the thinking mind these days is the recent disasterous earthquakes in Japan, Indonesia, Haiti and Chile.
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
Weren’t you babbling some wierd nonsense about the verse referring to nuclear contaminants?
It's the "...never to be equaled again" part that makes the argument that he was referring to what was to come in 70 AD illogical. "Never" is pretty exclusive and implies for all time to follow. To make your argument you have to somehow assert that the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD was the worst event ever to befall humanity, and the worst that it would ever experience forever after that. I don't think that makes much sense.
What... the baby? or those things?
There is not enough radiation loose in Japan to cause ANY radiation sickness, at this point. Even though the media is all atwitter about the sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan being ‘exposed to radiation’, it turns out, the levels were just barely above typical ‘background’ radiation, and were not dangerous, at all.
Freepmail coming.
Freepmail coming.
The idea that Matthew 24 (and in some cases the rest of biblical prophecy) was fulfilled in AD 70 is called Preterism. It is a false doctrine that was put forth by the Society of Jesus to combat the protestant reformation. The early church fathers (both those who predated the founding of the Catholic church and those who were part of it) looked forward to fulfillment of prophecy. This is abundantly clear in all their writings.
While there is room for a good amount of disagreement in the spirit on the details of eschatology, these are all disagreements that focus on the future fulfillment of prophecy. For instance, I don’t believe in a pre-tribulation rapture but certainly won’t fault anyone who does (and probably hope that they are right and I’m wrong to boot!).
Preterism, on the other hand, is outright heresy.
“Oh, really dagus? With a name like dangus, you surely know much about babbling. You goofus dangus”
Something’s definitely happened with/to FR these days. Seems like many posters itch now to denigrate others. I can believe some of them are recently activated mole trolls to save Hussein’s sorry hide, but can we please be reasonable and respectful so the real trolls are still as easy to spot?
Doesn’t sound like nuclear fallout.
I did find this verse interesting
20. Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.
The Sabbath. Saturday. Commandment commanded by YHWH as the day of rest for Jews, of which Jesus was a practicing Jew his entire life. Looks like confirmation that he never intended for the Saturday Sabbath to be changed, altered or replaced.
See, I have told you ahead of time.
I've noticed the same thing lately, particularly with the use of profanity (though I can certainly understand the capacity of a certain community organizer to provoke it). We don't want to start looking like DU, whose posts appear to be composed of random sentence fragments from various Richard Pryor routines.
That's gonna be a very big blast! lol
Bingo. Hard to explain verse 34 otherwise:
34. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
Really, I think he knows I’m playing around?
You must have heard "B-7" when "I-24" was called, because there is no Bingo here. Jesus was referring to the generation that would be alive at the time that the event that his fig tree parable refers to would occur. It is widely believed that this parable refers to the rebirth of the nation of Israel (which occurred in 1948).
That point is about to be moved east a bit.
Well, that’s good because I’m not a preterist.
Prophecies in the bible were written about signs that the prophet saw happening, and which the prophet realized revealed indicated something about a future event. Therefore, the writings of Revelation were inspired by the fall of Jerusalem, but are relevant today (and were considered relevant when they were included in the biblical canon) because they DO tell us something about the future.
Therefore, learning what the prophet was writing about is helpful to understanding what the prophet means will happen in the future, understanding that names, places, etc., will take on a symbolic meaning.
Protestant leaders at the time were using present-day events to assert that they were living on the cusp of the end-times, twisting the prophecies to demonize their opponents. Catholic apologists, therefore, pointed out that these interpretations were inconsistent with the source of these prophecies. That doesn’t necessarily consist preterism, although I’d never make such a sweeping statement as to deny any reformation-era Catholic apologists were truly Preterist in the heretical sense of the term.
generation from the greek
genea 1074
1) fathered, birth, nativity
2) that which has been begotten, men of the same stock, a family
a) the several ranks of natural descent, the successive members of a genealogy
b) metaph. a group of men very like each other in endowments, pursuits, character
1) esp. in a bad sense, a perverse nation
3) the whole multitude of men living at the same time
4) an age (i.e. the time ordinarily occupied be each successive generation), a space of 30 - 33 years
33 years would be 1978.
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