he just believes that it refers to the resurrection of the dead....
Which it does..but it also speaks of those who are still alive. Leaving that part out puts a whole different spin on it, don’t you agree? I am not a Bible scholar...just someone who has read the Bible and taken it at face value. I believe it is truthful , as God is a truthful being. I know nothing about the 1850’s scheme gobbledegook...
I believe that when I ask the Holy Spirit, my teacher, to help me understand what I am reading, that He doesn’t lead me down a path of deception...for the Word says He will lead me into all truth.
I have a problem with relying my biblical understanding on the understanding of other men...when the word tells me I have no need of other teachers. The Holy Spirit’s job is to teach me...and I believe He does.
It may be simplistic...but the Bible really is simplicity...God didn’t make it so it would be difficult to understand. I rely on the Holy Spirit to lead me and to help me discern the truth.
If the Bible says that there will be people still alive who will be caught up in the air with Christ...then I believe live people will be caught up in the air with Him. If it says that Jesus will reign in the New Jerusalem.....then He will reign there.
The only thing superimposed on me is what the Lord himself has revealed to me through his Word.
IMHO:
1. The Rapture is yet to come.
2. We are to be ready by following God’s will and living each day as if it were our last.
“The only thing superimposed on me is what the Lord himself has revealed to me through his Word.” ~ leenie312
How convenient that it just happens to dovetail with things taught by famous heretics of the distant past. Cerinthus made the same claim as you are making:
Cerinthus embraced chiliasm, a form of apocalyptic vision that depicted the millennium as a physical and material period.
In North Africa there arose the Donatists, led by Tyconius, who predicted that the world would end in 380 C.E. Augustine, then Bishop of Hippo, took aim at the sect in an effort to disprove what he termed “out-dated and inappropriate dreams of an earthly paradise.” After his death in 430 C.E., a council of church leaders meeting at Ephesus condemned the literalist vision of a physical, worldly millennialist utopia.
Eusebius is one of the early church fathers who most clearly denounces “chiliasm,” as premillennialism was then called. In the same work he writes, “About the same time … appeared Cerinthus, the leader of another Heresy. Caius, in The Disputation attributed to him, writes respection him: ‘But Cerinthus, by means of revelations which he pretended as if they were showed him by angels, asserting, that after the resurrection there would be an earthly kingdom of Christ, and that flesh, i.e. men, again inhabiting Jerusalem, would be subject to desires and pleasures. Being also an enemy to the divine scriptures, with a view to deceive men, he said that there would be a space of a thousand years for celebrating nuptial festivals.’” Eusebius also writes of a tradition passed down by Polycarp regarding an encounter between the Apostle John and Cerinthus in a public bath, “He [Polycarp] says that John the Apostle once entered a bath to wash; but ascertaining that Cerinthus was within, he leaped out of the place and fled from the door, not enduring to enter under the same roof with him, and exhorting those with him to do the same, saying, ‘Let us flee, lest the bath fall in, as long as Cerinthus, that enemy of the truth is within.’” Tertullianus is another early church father who attributes chiliasm’s birth to Cerinthus. He writes: “They are not to be heard who assure themselves that there is to be an earthly reign of a thousand years, who think with the heretic Cerinthus. For the Kingdom of Christ is now eternal in the saints, although the glory of the saints shall be manifested after the resurrection.”
http://members.aol.com/twarren19/athacreed.html
Justin Martyr (A.D.150)
CHAP. XI.—WHAT KINGDOM CHRISTIANS LOOK FOR.
“And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses. For if we looked for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ, that we might not be slain; and we should strive to escape detection, that we might obtain what we expect. But since our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men cut us off; since also death is a debt which must at all events be paid.” (First Apology of Justin Martyr, ch. 11)
“Chiliasm found no favor with the best of the Apostolic Fathers... “ (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, v. 25 - 36 ).
Eusebius (A.D.325)
“This same historian (Papias) also gives other accounts, which he says he adds as received by him from unwritten tradition, likewise certain strange parables of our Lord, and of His doctrine and some other matters rather too fabulous. In these he says there would be a certain millennium after the resurrection, and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very earth; which things he appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they propounded mystically in their representations. For he was very limited in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; yet he was the cause why most of the ecclesiastical writers, urging the antiquity of man, were carried away by a similar opinion; as, for instance, Irenaeus, or any other that adopted such sentiments. (Book III, Ch. 39)
Epiphanes (315-403)
“There is indeed a millennium mentioned by St.John; but the most, and those pious men, look upon those words as true indeed, but to be taken in a spiritual sense.” (Heresies, 77:26.)
The belief in the millennium was condemned as superstitious at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
“This obscure doctrine [Chiliasm] was probabally known to but very few except the fathers of the church, and is very sparingly mentioned by them during the first centuries; and there is reason to believe that it scarcely attained much notoriety, even among the learned Christians, until it was made a matter of controversy by Origen, and then rejected by the greater majority. In fact, we find Origen himself saying that it was confined to those of the simpler sort. “ (Waddington’s History, pg. 56)
A field guide to Heresies: http://kevin.davnet.org/articles/heresy.html
Ebionism
Ebionites considered Christianity as a sect of Judaism. The believed the Jesus was a mere man of exceptional righteousness and a superior endowment of the Spirit which came upon him at his baptism. Some Ebionites accepted, and some rejected, the supernatural conception of Christ. Ebionites were among the Judaizers who attempted to impose the Law of Moses upon Christians. Ebionites were millenialists—those who believe in a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on Earth.
The System of Cerinthus
Cerinthus (contemporary of the Apostle John) combined Gnostic views (separating the earthly Jesus who was the son of Joseph and Mary from the heavenly Christ) with the views of the Judaizers. Cerinthus was also a millinealist (also known as chiliasm).
The Great Premillennial HOAX by Don Matzat
http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/journals/v1.htm
Well look man, I’m sure you are being sincere in what you are saying, and I’m sure you pray to the Holy Spirit for your guidance. Thats grand. But lots of people pray for guidance before they read scripture and equally obviously they dont all come to believe exactly the same thing! We are all of us influenced by sin, and by our environment and by peer pressure and all these other things, and it does make an impact on your thinking. More than we realise.
This is not an unexpected thing. Our spiritual lives increase and improve as we study. I am constantly amazed by the Bible, and I expect I always will be. It’s not even neccesarily a bad thing. Scripture is, after all, the LIVING word. Let me put it like this. I read a passage from Ecclesiastes last week. I’ve read Ecclesiastes many times, done several bible studies on it, and read many many commentaries on it. And yet, I learned new things from that reading last week. Things I had never thought of before! Now, how is that possible? God hasn’t changed. The words on the page haven’t changed. The answer is that I have changed.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t lead you down a path of deception, but the Holy Spirit may withold things from you because you are not ready for them yet. And you, of course, because you are not perfect, may lead yourself astray.
Your relationship with God is your very own. It’s not for anyone else to tell you what to believe, but it IS their right, and indeed their responsibility, to advise, to question, to encourage, even to chastise perhaps. After all, the Holy Spirit does frequently work through other Christians.
There’s a lot to be said for a simplicity of faith. And certainly there are plenty of folk who go way too far in analysing and reanalysing scripture until it almost seems to mean the very opposite of what a “face-value” reading says. At the same time, with more knowledge comes more understanding.