Posted on 04/26/2007 8:07:01 AM PDT by topcat54
I just received a book notice from Moody Press for a new commentary on Revelation by John MacArthur with the title Because the Time is Near. At this time I will forego a critique of MacArthur’s use of “near” to describe an event he believes is “near” while the use of “near” by New Testament writers (e.g., James 5:8; Rev. 1:3) did not mean “near” when they used the same word.
For years, I have been dealing with issues related to the last days. I got involved in this topic because Christians were using last-days theology as a way to explain the state of the world and why Christians can’t do anything to reverse present trends. MacArthur is representative of this view when he writes, “‘Reclaiming’ the culture is a pointless, futile exercise. I am convinced,” he writes, “we are living in a post-Christian society—a civilization that exists under God’s judgment.”1 A good case could be made that the people in Europe in the fifteenth century were living under a similar “post-Christian society.” Here’s how Samuel Eliot Morison opens his 1942 biography on Christopher Columbus:
At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune [immature] and lifeless. Institution s were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past.
Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom. . . . The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna.2
Sound familiar? Change 1492 to any modern date, and the above description of the world of Columbus would fit just as well today. All the major characters and signs are once again in place, or so it seems.
Prophecy pundits in the fifteenth century were sure that the end was near, just as those five hundred years before them knew it was near, and five hundred years before them.
The end of the world: the idea was taken quite seriously by Europe of the late fifteenth century—not as a mere conceit, not as a metaphor or theological trope, but as a somber, ter rifying prediction based solidly on the divine wisdom of biblical prophecy and the felt experience of daily life. . . .[I]n the words of Joseph Grünpeck, the official historian to the Hapsburg emperor Frederick III, “When you perceive the miserable corrupt ion of the whole of Christendom, of all praiseworthy customs, rules and laws, the wretchedness of all classes, the many pestilences, the changes in this epoch and all the strange happenings, you know that the End of the World is near. And the waters of aff liction will flow over the whole of Christendom.”3
As history attests, it was the end of the world, the end of a stagnant worldview that left people without any future hope. But a mere 25 years later, history took a dramatic change in direction. Through a single act, Martin Luther reclaimed the Bible, the gospel, and culture when he confronted a corrupt church. The rest, as they say, is history.
What makes today’s speculations about the end any more reliable? Why are today’s prophecy writers any more trustworthy? They aren’t. Prophetic texts that applied to the generation of Jesus’ day (Matt. 24:34) are being misapplied to our generation. This is a huge mistake that has significant implications theologically and culturally. Prophecy books like those of Mac Arthur are only adding to the confusion.
1. John F. MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience: Drawing the Line in a No-Fault, Guilt-Free World (Dallas, TX: Word, 1994), 12.
2. Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942), 3.
3. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred F. Knopf, 1990), 29–30.
The land is literal. Christ will come down literally and plant his foot on the Mount of Olives. To say that the land is spiritual is to gnosticize the whole bible. If the land is spiritual and not literal, then Christ was spiritual and not literal and the resurrection was spiritual and not literal.
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16 KJV)
Literal.
= = =
INDEED! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
It’s a trend in China, South America and Africa and Eastern Europe.
I do not believe it’s postmillenial, at all.
STAY TUNED.
God is the best General there is.
Yup.
Only fractionally fulfilled and that since 1948.
The believing and obedient remnant was brought back to Israel from Babylon, and they built the second temple. A believing remnant were baptized by John, preparing the way for the Messiah. A believing remnant believed in Christ and thus the church was born. All good and positive things. Doubtless there is a remnant to be saved out of secular Israel, but the nation is just a poor copy of the original. In fact, as your post points out, they probably should be very very worried.
Even the disobedient God called "My People".
YUP!
What an absurd, baiting comment.
In the last century, have any come to Christ from the effort of non-dispensationalists? I think not.
Conversely, would you say civilization has improved or degraded in the last century?
This was quoted by James in Acts 15:14-17 as something to be fulfilled in the future, “Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.”
It's amazing to me how Sola Scripturists can read these words from the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem and allegorize [spiritualize] them away. The words speak for themselves and need no deep theological interpretation. The Church was built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets and here are the words of the apostles and prophets together regarding the actual and physical restoration of the kingdom to Israel --- but covenant theologians just don't believe it. They refuse to believe that He is coming in the flesh to this actual earth to perform that which He promised through His prophets and apostles.
“It’s amazing to me how Sola Scripturists can read these words from the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem and allegorize [spiritualize] them away.”
Not to be argumentative on this beautiful day here in Connecticut, but I am one of them “Sola Scripturists”, as are most pre-tribs..
But many "sola scripturists" simply don't believe the scripture.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Cor. 15:50-56 . You must be twice-born, regenerated. When did this happen to the current land of Israel? Is or is this not, one of the conditions in order for the prophecy re "the land" be fulfilled?
Show me where God called the Philistines or the Amalekites "My People".
The book of Amos was written about 700 years BC.It proclaims a time of restoration and blessing after
judgment under a revitalized Davidic dynasty. The only restoration of the Davidic dynasty that should concern Christian believers is the time after Christ’s resurrection and the worldwide spread of the Gospel.
Unless of course, you don’t believe that Christ sits on David’s throne.
Now you can do better than that.
I'm certainly no better a bible student than John MacArthur. Neither are you.
Never said I was. I said I don’t agree with him 100 per cent. Is that a thought crime now?
Have you read Mary K Baster’s
A DIVINE REVELATION OF HELL
and her
A DIVINE REVELATION OF HEAVEN?
Both indicate a Pre-Trib Rapture, FWIW. The latter includes a narrative from The Lord to her on one of her Heavenly visits about same.
My housemate was impacted quite intensely and productively by the visions of hell during a period of spiritual warfare.
OOOPS
Mary K Baster’s = Mary K Baxter’s
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