Posted on 12/01/2006 12:53:15 PM PST by Alex Murphy
Ah! Well, if you're just going to get snarky...
I assume this is where you see support for the Rapture.
1 Thessalonians 4:
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not preceed them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Looks like you'd be heading up in your rapture with others who are asleep, as the Lord arrives down here on Earth (in the air).
Cloud
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?strongs=3507
Air
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?strongs=109
Wasn't getting snarky (is that a word?)...Millions of people see the Rapture in the bible...Millions of others don't...And how do I explain that??? My explanation is that many people don't believe what they read...
And then there's the issue of 'rightly dividing the word of truth'...
I attended a Pentecostal church years ago for a number of months...Good people...Good preachin'...Good worship...
The preacher would talk about the covenant of God with Moses...And of course the folks in the pews would be praisin' God...There'd be many a-mens...A lot of 'preach it, brothers'...And a few folks would shout about the covenant message, "That's me, that's me...That's my covenant"...
In the same message, the preacher would move to the covenant with Abraham...And folks would hollar, 'That's me...That's me...
And then the preacher would move on to the Apostle Paul's message to the church and how we're saved thru faith without works; lest any man should boast and the croud would respond with 'that's me, that's me...
By this time the preacher is stomping his feet on the stage and he runs to the book written to the twelve tribes of Israel, James, and says 'but look here, you gotta do good works and work out your own salvation like Paul says and be good to the end like Peter says...And the crowd yells, thats me, that's me'...
And then the preacher quotes from the book written to the Hebrews, and says 'if you stumble and fall, you'll lose your salvation...So make sure you're back here Wednesday night so you can get saved again'...And the people shouted, that's me, that's me...We'll be here...
At the end of the service, some would go forward to get demons cast out, ailments healed and businesses blessed...
The point I am making is obvious...You have to believe what you read but you have to decipher who it was written to...
You indicated it would take a new revelation from God to convince you that there is a Rapture of the church...Maybe He will reveal it to you...Mabye He has and you didn't believe it...I don't know what else to say about it...Is that 'snarky'??? I don't know...
Watch for those offering charms to show the reaper those who are looking to fly away in the Rapture, so you'll know whether or not there is truth in what you're being told about the Rapture here.
H3704
ëÌñú
keseth
keh'-seth
From H3680; a cushion or pillow (as covering a seat or bed): - pillow.
If keseth means 'protective charms', why do the bibles say 'pillows' instead of 'protective charms'???
The Greek and Hebrew have been translated into English printed bibles over 200 times...Maybe next time they will get it right???
:)
Well, I don't know if "snarky" is a word but it is a word that one needs no dictionary to immediately know what it means.
Look, I was raised to believe in the Rapture. I DID believe it with my whole heart. But then I became a Christian and carefully read the Bible again. Revelation leaves no room for a Rapture...even you see that. You have to sub-divide one of the Resurrections to accommodate it. But John speaks of one return of Jesus and one Resurrection at that time. Unless there are two times where Satan is bound and thrown into the bottomless pit, then there are not more Resurrections.
That is the insurmountable wall I've been talking about.
You said: "My position regarding the Rapture is agnostic, not, however re the Second Coming"
Actually I think that is probably a good philosophy. I have trouble with the rapture theory. It seems IMHO that the whole pupose of the tribulation is to make Christians take a stand. Some of the "fence stradling" Christians (those who are pro-abortion, pro-gay etc,) will have to choose whether they support their secular beliefs or their Christian beliefs. To show this support they will have to recieve the "mark of the beast."
Will there be a "rapture?" Yes, it was promised that Jesus would return to collect his bride, that all the dead in Christ shall rise, and that after the resurrection of the dead then those living Christians shall be changed and go with Christ. That is clearly taught buy Jesus himself.
Will it happen before the great tribulation? I don't know. But my opinion is no.
Let me rephrase that, to show their support for their secular beliefs they will have to recieve the "mark of the Beast," otherwise they will endure the hardships and torture of Christians.
My belief in the Second Coming is absolute. On that we agree.
The point on which we may differ is "the Tribulation", in the sense that it is an element of Dispensationalism. Here, again, I am agnostic regarding the whole concept of Dispensationalism (the Rapture and Dispensationalism go hand in hand).
Both Dispensationalism and the Rapture are relatively new teachings, not taught in the Christian church until popularized in the mid-1800's.
I got side-tracked from the original intent of the post.
I think that some of the critics may be right about support for Israel having a lot to do with apocalyptic end times. But I doubt that Fundamentalists are as crass in their thinking as some of these critics would make them appear.
As for me, I support Israel because I believe they have a special place in God's heart, and that they are a special people.
Curiously, this article brought to mind 2 Timothy 3:13:
But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
The writer of this article is merely a cog in he wheel of the fulfillment of the prophecies he holds in such contempt. I pity the poor fellow.
Nope...What I was agreeing to was that Revelation mentioned two resurrections...And like I said, the first one has 3 parts to it...
I am just curious, not trying to be combative. Are you suggesting that the end times as laid out by Tim LaHaye and other Dispensationalists is fact? (I ask this question only because a Fundamentalist in my family brought out LaHaye's timeline of the end times to rebut my anti-Rapture questions.)
Or would you agree that Christians can have differing views on end times?
I happen to believe the "prophecies" of God. But so did the Pharisees, the religious Fundamentalists of the day, believe the prophesies of God. They were wrong.
Jesus does not 'return' for the Rapture...It's the saved who do the travelling...
18 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe to the [women] that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive [that come] unto you?
19 And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear [your] lies?
So, let's go with kacah {kaw-saw'}. 1) to cover, conceal, hide
Would you be covering some kind of bed with those pillows in the armholes in your garments? To what purpose?
The Greek and Hebrew have been translated into English printed bibles over 200 times...Maybe next time they will get it right???
Don't completely rely on any of the translators or blame them. They offer you a guide, but it's up to you to use the tools available to you to seek beyond the words they selected, words which made sense to *them*.
13:18, with it's coverings & scarves looks like talk about practices of another religion. I do not know what they teach about the end times, other than victory for them. At least some of their sects teach that Ishmael was the eldest, thus the rightful heir to the Prophesies, making Israel & his children usurpers.
Many have been deceived by the teachings of the false prophet, but I don't think many Christians are or will be. Yet, we are taught that many of our own *will* be deceived, because the Anti-Christ will look victorious for awhile AND he won't be using their book to deceive us, but our own.
Lay it all out, chapter & verse.
Which brings us back to the issue of the First Resurrection. John is explicit in chapter 20 that Jesus returns, binds Satan, and then occurs the First Resurrection.
I do not believe that Christians, the Christians who have become Christians based not on their own system of picking and choosing which Scripture to believe and which not to believe, and based not on which of God's principles and commandments they like and which they don't and which they will follow and which they won't, but based on what God Himself told us it takes to have our sin debt settled with Him, will be removed from the scene before God brings judgement on the earth. I believe God when He says:
Revelation 3:10:
Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
At no time in the history of the world did God ever leave His own people to suffer the judgement that He brought on people who rejected him. God got Noah out of the flood, God took Lot out of his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah- the Scriptures are full of examples of God's judgement being reserved for those who have chosen to reject Him, not for His own people.
I therefore believe in a literal rapture, and I believe in a seven-year period of wrath upon the earth and on those who do not know God. I know that the people of Noah's day laughed at him when he was building the ark and laughed at the idea of a "flood" because up until that time, it had never rained. And as God says, there is nothing new under the sun, and so there are those today who laugh at the idea of a rapture because in their limited, finite, fallen human minds, they cannot imagine such a thing. And, it is also not politically correct to suggest that there is a penalty for sin; that there is a day of accounting to God.
And I do believe that Christians can have differing views on the end times, but when I see what is happening in the world today matching up exactly with Scripture, I have to believe what Scripture states about the last months and days before Christ returns.
C'mon now...You've read the bible...You know where the verses are at...
You've shown us that you like to 'change' the bible...Either you don't believe it, or you don't like what it says...
And the ones you posted are a good place to start...
1 Thessalonians 4:
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not preceed them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Looks like you'd be heading up in your rapture with others who are asleep, as the Lord arrives down here on Earth (in the air).
So let me ask, did you see anything in any one of those verses that said Jesus would land on the ground??? I didn't...You added to the scripture to make it fit your theology...
I'm just going to hit on a couple of verses due to a lack of time...Look at this one...Here's the 2nd coming...
1Th 3:13 To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
Did you get that??? When Jesus shows up at the 2nd coming, his saints, the church, will be coming with him...They have gone up...Now, they/we will come back down...Why, to do battle at the end of the tribulation...Just prior to Jesus setting up His Kingdom on the Earth for a thousand years...That's right, WE are going to fight and kill...
Joh 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
Although most (or all) of the Catholic translations didn't use the word 'now', it's in the Majority Text...But as you can see, the statement is that if Jesus' Kingdom were in place now (then), his servants would slaughter those who oppose Him...
These are just a couple of the verses...And there's a bundle of 'em...You've read 'em...You don't believe 'em...
Christians are going up...They're getting married...They're coming back with Jesus at the end of the Tribulation...And they're/we're going to slaughter a couple hundred million people...
It's in there...Believe it, or don't...
I think that if you look again, you'll see the first resurrection doesn't take place til after the millenial reign of Jesus...
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