Posted on 05/21/2016 8:38:01 AM PDT by Salvation
You're wandering in "if a tree falls in a forest . ." territory here.
I believe that there are things concealed in scripture yet to be discovered. It is the nature of God' s word. (Proverbs 25:2).
When Proverbs was written, the fullness of God's revelation through Jesus Christ had not yet occurred. You're using that verse almost to deny Scripture as a matter of General Revelation (i.e., Truth revealed to all).
When something new causes us to examine our doctrine, we cannot measure how much departure it causes to determine if it is OK.
This sentence is a bit opaque.
Pre-Darby American rapture belief is found in the thought of Morgan Edwards (1722-1795), a Welsh-born Baptist pastor and educator who emigrated to America, and in May 1761, became pastor of the Baptist Church in Philadelphia.9 After the Revolutionary War, Edwards became an educator and the premier Baptist historian of his day. His major work Materials Toward A History of the Baptists (1770) is an important work outlining early American Baptist history. Edwards along with other Rhode Island clerics such as Ezra Stiles (1727-1795) was one of the original trustees in the founding of what would become known today as Brown University.In an essay written by Edwards between 1742-1744, before he emigrated, there is clear belief in a rapture event. In the essay, published in Philadelphia in 1788 entitled Two Academical Exercises on Subjects Bearing the following Titles; Millennium, Last Novelties Edwards argues for a rapture event that he identifies with 1 Thessalonians 4:17 followed by a 3 ½ year tribulation.10 The only distinction between Edwards and later pretribulationists is the duration of the tribulation that he sets at 3 ½ years rather than 7.
Part of the historical significance of Edwards is that it diminishes the charge of novelty in the thought of Darby with respect to his eschatology.
Let’s not also forget most people did not believe the prophecies of Israel coming back to the land again. That though changed in May 1948.
The sermon in English (also available in Latin): http://www.pre-trib.org/data/pdf/Ephraem-OntheLastTimestheAnt.pdf
Main thing is to be ready in either case!
here's another very useful essay, from a Messianic Jew: http://www.pre-trib.org/data/pdf/Fruchtenbaum-Premillennialisminthe.pdf
No, it is not rooted principally in the faith and practice of the early church, that of the NT church, in which, as with the entire OT, praying to anyone else but God is utterly absent, with the Holy Spirit inspiring appox. 200 prayers to Heaven, but absolutely none by believers to anyone else but God. Only pagans are described as praying to created beings.
It finds inferential support in the Scriptures.
Wrong, as praying to anyone else in Heaven finds none, despite this being a most basic practice, that Catholicism says it depends on so much, "on whose constant intercession we rely for help." (Eucharistic Prayer) In the light of which such a profound absence of even one example is inexplicable, unless one marginalizes the only substantive body of Truth that is 100% inspired of God as not providing for such a fundamental practice. Not even the book of Hebrews with its details of the better covenant, and priestly functions, nor any other book, teaches prayer to created beings in Heaven.
Which leaves Caths attempting to extrapolate support for it out of the false analogy of correspondence to earthly relations, and mere communication btwn creation beings from the respective realms (but requiring both to be in the same realm), such as are refuted here and here, by the grace of God.
. Though it's not like someone was reading the scriptures and then around the 1800's decided there was this other new facet as to how one might pray. That would be suspect.
If you require an 1800 year gap in order to reject a teaching, then the Arians would be glad, but the fact is that even a dozen years or less is enough, and it remains that prayer to created beings in Heaven is conspicuously absent from the entire Bible, except by pagans, and was a post-apostolic development as were other traditions of men.
Doctrine can develop, but it has to develop consistently within the context of what's already known and accepted as true. The PTR with its dispensationalist foundation is too much of a departure from historic, confessing Christianity for it to be a legitimately developed doctrine.
I think a lot of people will be disillusioned by the reality to God, and judgment first begins at the house of God.
The first to teach ‘PTR’ was Paul. The passage 1 Thess 1:9&10 leaves no doubt that Paul taught deliverance from wrath. But the notion was introduced by God with us, as recorded for us in John 13-17, especially 14:1-8. The ekklesia Jesus is building is not appointed to wrath but to obtain salvation, or as Paul put it in 1 Thess 1 already delivered from the wrath to come.
Um, 14:1-8 should read John 14:1-28
Pronouncing the good fortune of the deceased Who had avoided the calamity: 'Blessed are you for you were borne away (to the grave) And hence you escaped from the afflictions!
Appears to me that Ephraim recognized there are two events with two different groups of people being able to avoid the Tribulation...The first being those Christians who went into the Rapture and and completely avoided the Tribulation and the second group who were experiencing the Tribulation and trying to hide from it...
Those in the graves at the time are those who missed the Rapture but died of old age, injury, sickness and murder...There is no time period given in the scriptures between the Rapture and the Tribulation...
But how can this be if the PTR is set forth in Scripture? We Catholics are told the Scriptures are "perspicacious;" that anyone coming to them in the spirit of truth will understand. How can it be that pretty much the entire professing christian world managed to look past 1 Thessalonians 4:17 and not understand its proper significance for 1800 years? And that epistle is likely the very first book written of what we now call the NT.
That's not a fair assessment since there were likely millions of Christian who refused to bow to the Catholic religion and who were as a result pretty much wiped off the face of the earth while their scriptures were confiscated and burned...The world was left with mostly Catholic teaching while for Centuries scriptures were kept from the lay Catholic...
While it's true that God reveals his truth in the scriptures to those who truly seek the truth by studying and searching the scriptures there are things in the scriptures that no man can understand, yet...Things that God has not revealed to anyone and will not reveal until the time is right...
God did not reveal to the Jews that they would reject the Messiah and he would ultimately create a Gentile church...That mystery wasn't revealed until it was revealed to Paul...At the same time, there was no real reason to reveal the Rapture until the end times came around to where it would apply...
The last time God told his people to get up out of Egypt and go back to the promised land was in 2nd Chronicles which is the last book in the Jewish Old Testament...It took over a couple of thousands of years for God to work on the Gentile church to fulfill that command and prophecy...
Well researched post. Thanks.
But as pointed out, futurist does not necessarily meant PTR.
Just out of curiosity, who would you say is the restrainer written of in 2 Thess 2:6-8?
You will find the following series of interest as a futurist: http://www.pre-trib.org/articles/view/consistent-biblical-futurism-part-1
A debatable entity, as far as who/what it precisely is, but basically it means God's restraining hand, as has been manifest in past times, in which God both kept back judgment as well as placed bounds on how far it could go. But it seems that seeing as "the day of Christ"/"our gathering together unto him" cannot come "except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition...so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God," then the church would be here when the abomination that makes desolation sits in the temple. Which points at least to a midtrib deliverance, as God will somehow keep the faithful from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world; to try them that dwell upon the earth." (Rv. 3:10) church.
But Mt. 24 foretells that "Immediately after the tribulation of those days...shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven...coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matthew 24:29-31)
Thus i favor the faithful being kept from the hour of trib by some sort of preservation.
Interestingly, in Luke the phrasing is 'before these things, and in Matthew the phrasing is 'after these things' and both passages (Luke 21 and Matthew 24) point to the wars, famine, et5c. as the before these things and after these things.
‘The Day of The Lord’ is that great and terrible day, not a day of deliverance for those Jesus is delivering/has delivered from the coming wrath. The key would appear to be to see what is in fact the Day of The Lord, because it deals with the lawless one who sets himself up as god int he rebuilt temple.
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