Posted on 05/07/2011 9:27:55 PM PDT by tlb
May 21, "starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake,". The true Christian believers will be "raptured": They'll fly upward to heaven.
"and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed."
"I no longer think about 401(k)s and retirement," he says. "I'm just a lot less stressed, and in a way I'm more carefree."
Brown is married with several young children, and none of them shares his beliefs. It's caused a rift with his wife — but he says that, too, was predicted in the Bible.
But it appears that many became believers in 2009 after turning on Family Radio, a Christian network. Camping's predictions have inspired other groups to rally behind the May 21 date. People have quit their jobs and left their families to get the message out.
"Knowing the date of the end of the world changes all your future plans," says Adrienne Martinez.
She thought she'd go to medical school, until she began tuning in to Family Radio. She and her husband decided they wanted to spend their remaining time with their infant daughter.
"Why are we going to work for more money? "
"We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won't have anything left," Adrienne adds.
I've asked a dozen of Camping's followers the same question. Everyone said even entertaining the possibility that May 21 would come and go without event is an offense to God. They all hope they'll be raptured.
"If I'm here on May 22, and I wake up, I'm going to be in hell," says Brown
On the other hand, he will presumably have lots of company.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
You responded: "I do no know, I do not judge who will be left behind. I think Our Lord Jesus Christ can handle it. His ways are beyond our ways."
Are you aware that the vast number of people who read the books of the type written by Dispensationalists you like to listen to are being taught that Cathothlics aren't Christians?
Left Behind creator LaHaye’s many works on “Bible prophecy” are filled with attacks on Catholicism, and often rely on sensationalism, shaky scholarship, and subjective interpretations of Scripture.
[Interjection: BTW -is “Babylon” still a code word for the Catholic Church or a worldwide system of apostasy (The Great whore) as most dispensationalists have historically called her?
Have you considered that you may have been unwittengly influenced by that lie? I just wondered, because in post number 176, you wrote this: "I believe idol worship is all around us. As You know, an idol is what we put our faith and trust in instead of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many protestants that worship the Bible or Church building or what ever as idols. Money is the idol for the materialistic. Do you concede it is possible for someone in a Roman Catholic church to worship Mary as an idol? ] [End interjection]
In his 1970s commentary on the Book of Revelation, There’s a New World Coming, Lindsey explained that ...not just anyone can understand the Apocalypse, but only those embracing the dispensationalist system as taught by Lindsey, LaHaye, and a select group of other enlightened Bible prophecy experts. The key is the dispensational system–without it one simply cannot “rightly divide the Word of God.”
Thus dispensational eschatology becomes a litmus test for orthodoxy. Rejecting the system raises questions about one’s commitment to biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation of Scripture, and the belief in the pretribulation Rapture. In addition, those less than enthusiastic about dispensationalism are suspected of antagonism towards Israel. Lindsey has made it clear that those who do not embrace dispensationalism are especially vulnerable to anti-Semitism.
The “allegorical” method of interpreting Sýripture badly misrepresented and maligned by most dispensationalistsis is roundly condemned for draining all meaning from the Bible. Amillennialism, generally embraced by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestants, is denounced as heretical, even demonic.
[Interjection: So anyone who isn't a Dispensationalist just cannot be a "true" Christian, according to these [fill-in-the-blank][End interjection] John Nelson Darby, the ex-Anglican priest who constructed the premillennial dispensational system in the 1830s, based it on three premises:
Jesus Christ failed in his initial mission, the Church has become apostate and is in ruins, and the Old Testament promises to the Israelites have yet to be fulfilled.
Inevitably and logically this meant that the Church is not connected to Old Testament Israel, nor is she even as important, at least in earthly terms.
The Church is, Darby taught, a “heavenly people” meant for a Christ who was relegated to a heavenly status once he was rejected by the Jews, God’s “earthly” people.
Fast forward to the future millennial reign, complete with a new Temple and reinstituted animal sacrifices. During this “Davidic reign” the Church will exercise authority from heaven -possibly in a huge, cubed New Jerusalem hovering over the earth.
Meanwhile, the earth will be occupied by those non-Raptured and non-glorified believers, mostly Jewish, who accepted Jesus as Savior during the Tribulation. After all, that horrific time will be for punishing an evil humanity and will be a means of bringing the Jews back to God in an ultimate display of tough love.
How odd to think that Christians who believe that the Church is composed of “Jew and Greek” alike (Romans 10:12) are sometimes suspected of anti-Semitism by those who believe that in the future, earthly millennium the Jews will be rewarded with earth while pre-Rapture Christians will achieve heaven, the grand prize.
Instead of being incarnational, history becomes fatalistic; instead of being sacramental, the material realm is cursed, even evil.
This dualism is both startling and familiar, neo-Gnostic and Manichaean.
While fighting against the “New Age” movement and its dualistic errors, dispensationalists unwittingly embrace a similar error, pitting the spiritual against the physical and the heavenly against the earthly, as though they were never reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ.
<>//<>
<You wrote: “The belief in a Messianic Kingdom does not rest on this [Rev.20] passage, but is based on the numerous prophecies of the Old Testament prophets.”
I know. Like Cerinthus, only Darby and his “spiritual” descendents (La Haye, et.al.) have the “key” to Revelation which unlocks “the secret”. How “special” they are and how non-Christian everyone else is who doesn’t agree with their tortured “construct” .
Read again what I posted above here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2716739/posts?page=226#226
[snip]
“...The thousand year reign of Christ is another image for the kingdom of Christ. After all, it is the KINGDOM that is prophesied by the Old Testament prophets; it is the kingdom that is declared by Christ and the Apostles. Neither the Old Testament prophets nor the New Testament apostles speak of a “millennium” (except in the single, debated, figurative passage in Revelation). AND the thousand year reign of Christ is most definitely a “kingdom,” in that Christ “rules and reigns” in it.
Why is the millennium not the kingdom prophesied in the OT and declared in the NT? Why not the very kingdom that Christ himself established in the first century?”
No, I don’t know him.
Wow, a lot of anger there. I do agree that the Church and Israel have different roles in God’s plan for the kingdom. The Church is the Bride of Christ. I do believe that God will keep his promises to Israel. The eternal state, after at least 1007 years, IMHO is a mystery. I do agree that amill is predominant in mainline protestant and Roman Catholic thought. I do not consider myself a gnostic. I consider replacement theology is an error. But again, This is all just my opinion. I see through a glass dimly. There are many things I do not know. I do know that God knows. In the end the only thing that is important is Faith in My Lord Jesus Christ.
My current thinking IMHO is that the Whore is religious institutions. I know many people think it is only the Roman Catholic Church I tend to spread it around more.
Oh yes, this was from a discussion I was having with a wonderful Catholic Christian who will probably be raptured though he doesn't know it. lol
I believe he agreed with me and made a neat point that ideas can even become idols.
The keys for me are Israel and the Bible.
Once you are born again you enter the kingdom. I am already in the Kingdom.
I disagree, everything is about My Lord Jesus Christ.
That's a very good question, because it calls up a frank discussion of what is called the doctrine of "Imminent Return." Simply put, that is the view that Jesus could make His Second Advent at literally any moment. In order for this to be possible, however, several scriptural pre-requisites must have happened already, and therein lies the rub.
Among these pre-requisites is the fulfillment of Jesus' own self-constraining, prophetic declaration, "And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached through the whole world as a witness to all nations, and then the end shall come."
-- Matthew 24:14
Jesus himself declares that he's not coming back until after the task of evangelizing the nations — commonly known as 'The Great Commission' — is completed. In order for Imminent Return doctrine to be true, that task must have been done already.
Of course, every missions organization can tell you at great length just how incomplete that task is, and they can tell you about how long they think it will remain incomplete.
Still, there are some who, by clever interpretations of what is meant by "the whole world," and who is included in "all nations" claim that this task was actually completed in the first few centuries of Christianity. Generally, this means "the whole world" is roughly equal to "the Roman empire" and only the nations under the empire are part of "all nations."
The Reformers of the 16th century, however, understood "the whole world" to mean "that part which is dwelt in"; every inhabited place, which is the plain-sense reading of the text, and therefore most credible.
So, there is a disparity, and how one resolves the disparity influences whether or not one may subscribe to the doctrine of Imminent Return. I happen to agree with the Reformed view, and am not, therefore, an adherent to Imminent Return doctrine.
For my part, I see a coming coincidence of several pre-requisites happening over the next 10 to 20 years; more or less. You note that Jesus only says the one task will be completed and then the end will come; he doesn't say how much time will elapse between the completion of the Great Commission, and the end.
So, I see the completion of The Great Commission, bringing in the last of the Gentiles, and that triggering the Restoration of Israel with a revelation of Jesus as Messiah that finally evokes the long-awaited cry, "Blessed is He that cometh in The NAME of the LORD!" which I expect will erupt simultaneously with Jesus' glorious appearing in the sky.
You may recall that Jesus made the prophetic declaration over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:39, "For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth until that ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the LORD." So I think when that cry rings out, Jesus will be seen again in Jerusalem.
Exactly how long that all takes to work out; I do not pretend to know, but I am convinced that it will be a matter of some years or a few decades, not centuries more.
Ah, but here I've been going on all this time. What do you think? I look forward to your post.
The true Christian believers will be "raptured": They'll fly upward to heaven. "and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed." ... "Knowing the date of the end of the world changes all your future plans," says Adrienne Martinez... "We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won't have anything left," Adrienne adds. I've asked a dozen of Camping's followers the same question. Everyone said even entertaining the possibility that May 21 would come and go without event is an offense to God. They all hope they'll be raptured.
>> World to end May 21
Now I know why my customers are promising to pay me the week of the 23rd.
OK So I’m looking for a Harold Camping True Believer in the SF Bay area who has a decent car. Since you won’t be needing it come May 22nd, I’m prepared to give you $250 for it, cash on the barrel head. Take the wife to a fabulous dinner just before you make your grand exit.
I’d really like a newer Honda or Acura sedan. Gotta have the V6, though, and I’d prefer stick over automatic.
FReepmail me & we’ll discuss. Thx in advance.
Women and Minorities hardest hit.
I’ve been wondering lately if God does know everything. If He does, why did he bother to create people, knowing they would rebel? If everything is already settled, what good is praying? Can prayer change God’s mind? If God knows how everything will happen, what is the point? If you already knew the ending to a book, would you still read it? Maybe not a good theological analogy, but I’m just asking.
It is like the ole saying it is easy to show good character when everything is good. How you act/and treat/respond to people when things are bad is who you really are.
It would be too easy if we didn’t have free will. Life is a constant decision of good vs. evil. The times we are living in are horrid.No matter what your religion or belief you can feel the evil desperation...the devil knows his time is short.
Read the NYTimes bestseller paperback titled HEAVEN IS FOR REAL.
And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached through the whole world as a witness to all nations, and then the end shall come." -- Matthew 24:14
To me, IMHO, this occurs during the 7 year tribulation period. A lot of the work is done by the 144000 Jewish evangelists.The end spoken in this verse would be Our Lord Jesus Christ's Second Coming return at Armageddon and the Kingdom would be the millennial one.
I personally do follow the imminent return idea fairly literally. I do try to live in the now. It is kind of easy one day at a time. You get up and say This is the day the Lord has made Let us rejoice and be glad in it! If the rapture happens today that would be cool!
I Agree a GREAT BOOK!
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