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Would someone go out into the frigid cold and walk my dog for me?
Why do you want to know?
I agree. We have a person in our Bible Study who learned the “current fad” teachings of Revelation, but his own study showed it to be false (as well as relatively recent). Read Revelation as one of those it was written to and it will take on a more meaningful purpose.
Well said, brother!
His Heavens declares His Glory.
And the Heavens say we are currently in the age of th Fishers of men and the Bride/Church..
A couple thousand years ago, His Creation declared the age of the Passover Lamb and Atonement..
Those signs keep moving above our heads, in His Sky, and we are nearing the age of when His Spirit is being poured out over all flesh and the coming of the Lion from the tribe of Judah..
Those signs can be seen when Israel was to observe His Feasts.
Spring - His 1st month.
Fall- His 7th month.
Those signs are the old testament and the new testament.. Up there. And we await His coming.
Just need to know when and where to look..
People have lots of questions. His Creation tells us where we are..
Just need to know where and when to look.
And that direction is up, where our Redemption draws near..
Good grief! More sophomoric assumptions about the Harpazo that Preterists refuse to believe in? LOL!
This whole thread deserves the Jesus face-palm picture.
Tell me:
When did THE ENTIRE WORLD look upon the TWO WITNESSES as mentioned in Revelation 11 and celebrate their deaths for 3 and a half days?
Did they have cameras back in 70 AD? And worldwide satellite connections to beam across the ponds?
When did Nero make everybody take the mark WORLDWIDE and HOW? Where were the worldwide beheadings?
How many of you have seen Angels flying (Revelation 14:6) around proclaming the gospel that will finally fulfill Mark 16:15? Did Tacitus write about that? He must have missed that too!
Learn the parable of the Fig Tree (Israel). Mock all you want, but the Rapture will happen (John 14:3; Matthew 24:40-44) and when it does I surmise that about half the Christians taken will be kicking and screaming because they love this world more than Christ.
Modern dispensationalism takes a Biblical concept too far and twists it due to an erroneous understanding of the relationship between Israel and the Church.
The church began entirely Jewish. Later Samaritans and Gentiles of every nationality were added. An early debate was whether Gentile converts had to convert to Judaism as well. The unanimous agreement was that Gentiles could become Christian without becoming Jews.
Today, most Gentile Christians think Judaism was abolished by Christianity. Not so. It was very well established that Jews kept their Jewishness. They were not to abandon Moses and their following of the Law. If anyone disagrees with this, they need to re-read their Bible.
The invisible rapture idea springs from this wrong understanding of the relationship between Jew and Gentile, Law and Grace. No one has ever been saved by Law. Salvation has always been by grace. Today’s dispensation is one of super-abounding grace which extends to the whole world.
There will be a seven-year period in which God completes all of His promises to Israel as a nation, and the entire nation will be saved. At the beginning of this period, Israel will have a temple and offer sacrifices. That does not mean that Israel has been restored to God or is saved. They will put their trust in a false Messiah who will betray them in the middle of this seven-year period. This marks the beginning of the Great Tribulation.
As you pointed out, there is a localization of events in Israel and Jerusalem. After all, the temple must be in Jerusalem. Anti-christ will rule the world from that temple. The Great Tribulation will indeed come upon the whole world though. (See Revelation 3:10.)
You are correct that Christ prayed to “keep them from evil” rather than being removed from the world. God will preserve the elect through the Great Tribulation. The Great Tribulation WILL NOT last for the entire second half of the seven-year period. It will be “cut short” to save the elect. Immediately after the Great Tribulation ends, Christ will VISIBLY return and take out the elect, and God’s wrath will be poured out on those who remain on the earth. After these judgments have been completed, He will return, utterly defeat anti-Christ, bind Satan in the bottomless pit, and establish an earthly kingdom that will initially last a thousand years. Heaven will be on earth.
Entire books have been written on any number of questions you posed. It is not possible to address every one of them simply and succinctly, but I hope this addresses the core issues.
Just reading through these quickly, I can think of answers to everything I have read so far. However, it is a question of casting pearls before swine. Would you actually consider a response to all of these or would you prefer to have it come on you like a thief in the night?
Wow, I have never found so many “straw man” arguments in one place at one time.
(I wrote this in 2010, in response to many many posts by a preterist Freeper.)
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 2010
“Preterism doesn’t hold W.A.T.E.R.”
A short while ago, I realized that many people I know are holding to the ideas of preterism.
I wanted to re-read the gospel accounts of the Olivet discourse, since a frequent preterist poster on Freerepublic.com uses a verse to support his claims: “because these are the days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled” Luke 21:22.
I noticed that for preterism to be true, the following five events must have been fulfilled by now. Since they are NOT fulfilled, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept preterism.
I propose an acrostic to illustrate these events: W.A.T.E.R.
W = “worldwide total evangelism”, from Matt 24:14
A = “all tribes mourning the Son of Man”, from Matt 24:30
T = “times of the Gentiles fulfilled”, Luke 21:24
E = “elect gathered from the four winds”, Matt 24:31
R = “return of Jesus” - (how could this possibly have happened in 70 AD, as some preterists claim???) - from Matt 24:27.
This post is a brief introduction to this acrostic, as a reminder that “Preterism doesn’t hold W.A.T.E.R.”.
___
P.S. Noted on 1-4-16. If you want to be a preterist and an anti-dispensationalist, and if you want to persist in a Roman Catholic eschatology, then you do it at your peril.
Mark
More and more Christians are beginning to ask questions like this in their dispensational churches. The torrent of popular books and claims about biblical prophecy in recent decades, aside from taking up lots of shelf space in Christian book stores, seems to have a peculiar appeal to lay believers who, curiously enough, find hope in an expected destruction of the planet and its replacement with a utopia in which even carnivorous animals will take up vegetarianism. It is simply taken for granted that the Bible predicts and explains an end of time, and that there is no number of elapsed centuries spent waiting for it that cannot be called the end times.
The bible lays out the plan of the Author. It does explain and predict not “an end of time”, but the end of our earth as we know it and the establishment of the new heaven and earth. Your use of the words “peculiar appeal” and “hope in destruction” is, .....(unloving?).
With the many questions you offered, I’ll summarize that God has one plan, revealed to Adam, revealed to Abrahm, (which incorporated in its blessing others, non-future Jews(( meaning you Grumpa[if you are gentile], which I pray is a lighthearted sobriquet), and myself).
In Romans 11:11 the text says (NASB)”I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.
In Romans 11:18 the Lord says,”do not be arrogant toward the branches ...”
In Romans 11:25, my synopsis, I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will be not wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
verse 26v “and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written”
I trust my Lord to know what He is about.
What is most disturbing is that preterists (and all covenant theologians) ignore the most personal aspect of the Abrahamic covenant ... and they have no answer for it.
Go back into Genesis ... and see that the land was promised to Abraham HIMSELF ... Abraham never entered the promised land ... he died 400+ years before Joshua began the conquest. So it does not matter in any respect how much land the Jews ever possessed in history ... Abraham himself never possessed any part of it ... and thus the complete fulfillment is still future.
This is perfectly consistent with the covenant stipulations and with a future fulfillment in the Messianic kingdom (Dan 7, 9, Rev. 20 ...)
Preterists rarely have a cogent OT biblical theology ... because they are forced to read back the NT into the Old and supplant what is plainly taught there. If God is not trustworthy to keep His promise to Abraham then He is not trustworthy to keep His promise to us. That is what is at stake here ... the trustworthiness of Almighty God.