This is a start of Eschatology Revisited

This page will be a ongoing work, this part is the start of laying the ground work.

ESCHATOLOGY REVISITED
About a year after I became a Christian in 1981 the church I was attending began to study the book of Revelation and with most studies they started with the book of Daniel and the vision of the image. (Daniel Chapter 2). The image describes the kingdoms that would come and go.
1.) Babylonians (Head of Gold),
2.)Medes and Persian (Chest and arms of silver),
3.)Kingdom of Alexander the great. The thighs are included because Alexander wanted his kingdom divided into 4 sections and given to his four generals. Eventually the four became two the Ptolemies and the Seleucid.
4.)Legs of iron and clay with feet and ten toes the Roman empire. I was originally taught that the ten toes were ten more nations that were to come out of the Roman empire.
This posed the biggest problem for me. If the Roman empire fell and the stone that was made out of hands is the church (Daniel 2: 44-45) then what were the ten kingdoms that were suppose to come out of the Roman empire prior to the church age.(I have now seen that the ten toes are ten rulers of the Roman empire.) It didn’t make sense I couldn’t get a straight answer that satisfied or that had logic to it I read several book that added to my confusion, then came the T.V. Personalities with headline news and fitting the same into prophecy. The more I listened and read the more confused I got so I just gave up on trying to understand. So over the years I became hardened to the study of end times prophecy called eschatology.
About six months ago or so the house church of which I am called the leader, I call myself more of a facilitator, wanted to study eschatology and I at first said no way, nope, nada, nothing doing ain’t gunna, and got my arm twisted into one lesson. I spent more time studying, by this time I had been learning about hermeneutics or studying the word of God for everything its worth and went to work and boy did I discover some very interesting facts and details, but what I found was way different than the modern prophecy teachers. I found that the whole notion of a pre-tribulation rapture was a theory of on John Nelson Darby around 1848. Modern prophecy teachers such as Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye use Darby’s work in various forms to create their works. Really, what did the early church fathers believe then. In studying them for 19 centuries prior, they certainly did not believe the way Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye do. I have a tendency to trust ideas that are consistent over a long period of time and have been tested, rather than a new theory that has proven to be wrong a number of times in a number of books.

So take a look at the scriptures using hermeneutics. What is hermeneutics? It is the art and science of Biblical interpretation. It is a science because rules apply.
Scientific: Following the laws and exact principals of science.
Science: Systematized knowledge of any one department of study.
Hermeneutics as an art simply means the more you apply these rules the better you get.
Lets use hermeneutics to properly interpret scripture and in this study prophecy instead of uncritically accepting end time models. Some of the principals are to read the scriptures literally, this principal is used to interpret the Word of God as we do any other form of communication. When scripture uses a metaphor interpret the metaphor the same way.
For example today we use the metaphor, “Its raining cats and dogs.” This doesn’t mean that cats and dogs are falling from the sky. It means that it is raining very hard.
Lets look a Revelation 14:20 from the NKJV “
“And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to a horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.”
(some text have stadia instead of furlongs). The best estimate is that the distance is about 180 miles.

Well now that does pose a problem, John doesn’t give us width so we can figure volume, So I will do some calculations based on 3 feet wide.
180 miles is equal to 950,400 feet. At 3 feet wide and 5 feet deep gives a volume of 14,256,000 which would hold 106,492,320 liquid gallons. So how many dead bodies would it take to make that much blood. The typical adult holds about 10 pints of blood, well do easy calculations and say 1 gallon per person. It would take 106,492,320 instant dead, and have their blood somehow squeezed from them to accomplish this task.
Think about that for a moment. Is it impossible, no, (all things are possible with God). However isn’t it more likely that John is saying that there will be massive wartime death.

1 Corinthians 2:12: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely give to us by God”

Have you ever been reading the scriptures and a portion of the text seems highlighted or almost jumps off the page. Thats the Holy Spirit illuminating the text for you. However the Holy Spirit illumines what is in the text, but does not go beyond it.
This is indeed illumination part of hermeneutics.
Another part of hermeneutics is to look at grammatical usage. (I’ll soon add on to this page my eyes hurt)
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Continuation (03/28/10)
Matthew 23 and 24. Let’s look at the word “you”. In Matthew 23 Jesus is pronouncing judgment on Jewish leaders.
Verse 13 the word “you” means you.
Verse 14 the word “you” means you.
Verse 15 and 16 the word “you” means you. Jesus meant you – present tense. When Jesus addresses the Scribes and Pharisees and used the word “you” He meant them.
Chapter 24 verse 2 “you” meant His disciples. Verse 4 “you” meant you, His disciples. Verse 15 this still means you. It wasn’t with a wink and a nod really meaning 21 centuries from now.
Matthew 24:34 “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.” Who is the “you” in that verse? Since for over one chapter Jesus has been saying you meaning you is there a change in grammar that “you” is future tense?
Many scholars such as D.A. Carson are convinced that “this generation” can with only great difficulty mean anything else but the generation that Jesus spoke.
1.) D.A. Carson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._A._Carson#Selected_publications

Carson continues, “Even if ‘generation’ by itself can have a slightly larger semantic range, to make ‘this generation’ refer to all believers in every age, or the generation of believers alive when eschatological events start to happen, is highly artificial”.

http://www.americanvision.org/article/letting-the-bible-speak-for-itselfthe-literal-meaning-of-this-generation-part-6/

by Gary DeMar, Jun 17, 2005
Ed Hindson, writing in the May 2005 issue of the National Liberty Journal on the topic of “The New Last Days Scoffers, states that “The basic assumptions of preterism rest on passages that refer to Christ coming “quickly” (Revelation 1:1), or ‘this generation will not pass’ (Matthew 24:34).  [Preterists] insist these must be related to and limited to the first century. By contrast, premillennialists believe that Christ’s coming is imminent and; therefore, could occur at any moment. Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary counters the preterist view, observing: ‘What Jesus is saying is that the generation that sees the beginning of the end, also sees its end. When the signs come, they will proceed quickly; they will not drag on for many generations. It will happen within a generation.’”[1] But Bock recognizes that there is a problem with this interpretation—one of six he discusses—a point not noted by Hindson: “The main objection to this view is that genea [generation] usually refers to the present generation, rather than to a deferred generation.”[2] Bock concludes his nearly four-page discussion of Matthew 24:34 by stating, “It is hard to be dogmatic about the meaning of this difficult text.”[3] It’s not hard to be dogmatic if the text is read without additional words being added (see below) or theological systems imposed upon it (Hindson’s form of premillennialism). If “this generation” is interpreted literally, it refers to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking.
In 1980, Hal Lindsey wrote, “We are the generation that will see the end times . . . and the return of Christ.” With the publication of Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, Lindsey made a cautioned prediction that a pre-tribulational rapture would take place in the early part of the 1980s, seven years before Israel’s fortieth anniversary as a reestablished nation. He wrote: “A generation in the Bible is something like forty years. If this is a correct deduction, then within forty years or so of 1948, all these things could take place. Many scholars who have studied Bible prophecy all their lives believe that this is so.”[4] If these many “scholars” have studied Bible prophecy “all their lives” and have come to this same conclusion, then what does this say about their study of the Bible? They, along with Hal Lindsey, were obviously wrong. Keep in mind that the methods used by Lindsey and his many unnamed scholars are the same methods being used today by those making similar claims about the nearness of Jesus’ return to “rapture” His church.
Dave Hunt, who also believes that Israel’s national reestablishment is the time indicator for future prophetic events,[5] laments that Lindsey’s prophetic recklessness had a negative effect on many Christians: “Needless to say, January 1, 1982, saw the defection of large numbers from the pretrib position. . . . Many who were once excited about the prospects of being caught up to heaven at any moment have become confused and disillusioned by the apparent failure of a generally accepted biblical interpretation they once relied upon.”[6] The confusion and disillusionment has led many of these prophetic believers to study the Bible for themselves, and when they did, they found that Lindsey’s understanding of “this generation” was all wrong. Little has changed in the ranks of those who continue to insist that “this generation” of Matthew 24:34 should not be interpreted literally.
When Jesus answered His disciples’ questions about “when these things” related to the temple’s destruction would be and what signs would indicate His coming, He said, “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32). “This generation,” therefore, is the timing key. If we can know what the Bible means by “this generation,” we can determine the timing of the events Jesus describes. Every time “this generation” is used in the Gospels, it always refers to the generation of people who were alive when Jesus spoke. “This generation” never means a future generation.[7] Thomas Ice, an associate professor of Religion at Liberty University and the Liberty Theological Seminary, in a radio debate, admitted that each use of “this generation” in the Gospels, except the one used in Matthew 24:34, refers to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking. In his written debate with Kenneth L. Gentry, Ice writes: “It is true that every other use of ‘this generation’ in Matthew (11:16; 12:41–42, 45; 23:36) refers to Christ’s contemporaries, but that is determined by observation from each of their contexts, not from the phrase itself.”[8] This means that seventeen times it means Jesus’ contemporaries, and one time it means a future generation. William Lane disagrees:
“[T]his generation” clearly designates the contemporaries of Jesus (see on Chs. 8:12, 38; 9:19) and there is no consideration from the context which lends support to any other proposal. Jesus solemnly affirms that the generation contemporary with his disciples will witness the fulfillment of his prophetic word, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dismantling of the Temple.[9]
Like he does with Acts 2:16, Ice must add words to Matthew 24:34 to get it to say what he needs it to say. For example, in Charting the End Times, Ice and LaHaye reconstruct Matthew 24:34 to read this way: “The generation that ‘sees’ these things will not pass away till all is fulfilled.”[10] In the LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible, of which Ed Hindson is one of the editors, the verse is given this treatment: “[T]he futuregeneration that will live to see all the signs listed in the pervious verses fulfilled in their lifetime”[11] will not pass away until all is fulfilled. The near demonstrative “this” is removed, and from 5 to 19 words are added to make the verse refer to a future generation. And this is interpreting the Bible literally? Hindson writes the following in the Liberty Bible Commentary:
[T]he previously listed signs will continue to multiply throughout the Church Age and reach their ultimate climax at the end of the age in the generation of those who will live to see the entire matter fulfilled in their lifetime.[12]
There is nothing in the entire context of the Olivet Discourse that says anything like this. Dr. Hindson is reading his dispensationalism into the chapter. William Sanford LaSor writes, “If ‘this generation’ is taken literally, all of the predictions were to take place within the life-span of those living at that time.”[13] D.A. Carson takes a similar position: “[This generation] can only with the greatest difficulty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke. . . . [T]o make ‘this generation’ refer to . . . the generation of believers alive when eschatological events start to happen, is highly artificial.”[14] There you have it. If Matthew 24:34 is interpreted literally, it refers to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking.
Matthew 24:33 tells us as much: “even so you too, when you see all these things,[15] recognize that He is near, right at the door” (Matt. 24:33). The first use of “you” certainly refers to Jesus’ first-century audience. So why wouldn’t the second use of “you” refer to the same audience? Hindson comments that this verse “has caused some to speculate that these predicted events only relate to the coming destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, within the disciples’ lifetime.”[16] He doesn’t explain why this is not what it means except to reference commentaries by John Walvoord and R.C.H. Lenski  whose explanations are convoluted and do not deal with the way “this generation” is used elsewhere in the Gospels.
You will notice that Matthew 24:34 expressly states that it’s “this generation” that will not pass away until all the things listed in the previous verses take place. How significant is the use of “this” rather than the non-specific definite article “the” that is substituted by Hindson, LaHaye, and Ice? The use of “this” in the NT tells us that what’s being identified is near either in time or distance. By changing “this” to “the,” the entire meaning of the verse changes. Instead of a specific generation, it now reads as if it could be any generation. “This” is a near demonstrative, and as the name suggests points “to someone or something ‘near,’ in close proximity.”[17] Near demonstratives “appear as the singular word ‘this’ and its plural ‘these.’ The distant demonstratives, as their name suggests, appear as ‘that’ (singular), or ‘those’ (plural).”[18] The near demonstrative “this” is used nearly 950 times in the NT, and it always refers “to something comparatively near at hand, just as ekeinos [that] refers to something comparatively farther away.”[19]
Later in his article, Dr. Hindson raises the issue of “the literal meaning of the Bible.” He writes: “Once you start arguing that the language of prophecy cannot be taken literally, you are not that far removed from not taking the rest of the Bible literally either.” So here’s my question to Dr. Hindson: Why don’t you take Matthew 24:33–34 literally?
Endnotes:

[1] Hindson quotes Bock in his two-volume commentary on Luke: Luke 9:51—24:53: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), 1691–1692.
[2] Bock, Luke 9:51—24:53, 1692.
[3] Bock, Luke 9:51—24:53, 1692.
[4] Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970, 53–54).
[5] Dave Hunt, Whatever Happened to Heaven? (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1988), 64.
[6] Hunt, Whatever Happened to Heaven?, 68.
[7] Matthew 11:16; 12:41–42, 45; 23:36; 24:34; Mark 8:12, 38; 13:30; Luke 7:31; 11:29–32, 50–51; 17:25; 21:32.
[8] Thomas Ice, “The Great Tribulation is Past: Rebuttal,” The Great Tribulation: Past or Future? (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1999), 125.
[9] William L. Lane, Commentary on the Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 480.
[10] Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, Charting the End Times: A Visual Guide to Understanding Bible Prophecy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2001), 36
[11] Tim LaHaye, gen. ed., LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Press, 2000), 1040, note on Matthew 24:34.
[12] Edward E. Hindson, “Matthew,” Liberty Bible Commentary: New Testament (Lynchburg, Virginia: The Old-Time Gospel Hour, 1982), 83.
[13] William Sanford LaSor, The Truth About Armageddon: What the Bible Says About the End Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), 122.
[14] D. A. Carson, “Matthew” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, gen. ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985), 8:507. “This is a full and clear proof, that not any thing that is said before [v. 34], relates to the second coming of Christ, the day of judgment, and the end of the world; but that all belongs to the coming of the son of man in the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the end of the Jewish state” (John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 3 vols. [London: Mathews and Leigh, 1809], 1:296).
[15] In the LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible, the note on Matthew 24:15 reads this way: “The word ‘ye’ [you] must be taken generically as ‘you of the Jewish nation.’” This is an arbitrary reading of the text. There is nothing in the entire structure of the Olivet Discourse that would lead the interpreter to come to this conclusion. The second person plural is used throughout to identify Jesus’ present audience.
[16] Hindson, “Matthew,” 82–83.
[17] Cullen I K Story and J. Lyle Story, Greek to Me: Learning New Testament Greek Through Memory Visualization (New York: Harper, 1979), 74.
[18] Story and Story, Greek to Me, 74.
[19] William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 4th ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952), 600.
Historical:
When was Revelation written? Was it written in the mid 60′s during the reign of Nero or was it written in AD 95 during the reign of Domitian?
Well, in Revelation 11:1 John was told to measure the temple. Well, now there has to be a temple to measure. The temple was destroyed in AD 70. Silly me—doesn’t that make it hard to measure if you are writing in AD 95 as some prophetic teachers teach.

Also John never writes about the temple’s destruction. Wouldn’t you actually mention its destruction, at least once? The temple was the center of Judaism. That would be like writing American History and leaving off the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
Typology:
Persons, places, events, or things in redemptive history serve as types of Christ.
One of the first things that come to mind is Joshua as a type of Christ leading the Israelites into the Promised land-as Jesus will lead his people into Paradise.
Scriptural Synergy:
Synergetic: working together as a set of muscles in the performance of some action. Or the co-ordinated energy of muscle and nerve.
In this case scriptural co-ordination the whole of scripture is greater than the sum of its individual passages. You cannot comprehend the whole of scriptures without understanding each individual part. Scriptural Synergy demands that individual Bible passages never be interpreted in such a way as to conflict with the whole.

Revelation 3:12 “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar; in the temple of My God and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.”

This doesn’t include the use of a magic marker, or that the mark of the beast was or is a 21st Century Bio-Chip implant.
This is the foundation I’ll use in the study of Eschatology so that the scriptures will stay in tact and not mean something they weren’t.
Everything will be looked at through the lens off grammatical and historical context, typologies, literal, scriptural synergy. I believe that with these hermeneutical safe guards in place, we can safely look at eschatology in the light it was meant.
I’ll be back soon and start into the study now that the foundation is laid.
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05/11/10

The Rapture

I was going to start somewhere else and on something a little easier (like the two witnesses :->). Since I was severely misunderstood last time I covered this idea I thought I should expand on it to make myself clear. Lets look at what must take place for Darby-isms supported by modern day prophetic teachers, such as Tim LaHaye,  Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, and the like, to work.

The idea is that there will be a silent rapture of the Church most believe that it will take place just prior to the Great Tribulation. Some believe the rapture will take place in the middle of the tribulation and some believe that it will take place at the end, regardless there are certain things that must be in place for this event to take place.

God must have 2 distinct people, the Church, and his chosen people Israel. They must remain separate.  The Church gets raptured while his own chosen gets to face unimaginable horrors of the Great Tribulation, your worst nightmare would even compare to these.

This is more than a speed bump in the light of the text using hermeneutics, it is the Great wall of China. For example Romans 11:11-24 speaks of the grafting in of the wild olive tree into the cultivated one. The fact that there isn’t a difference between Jew and Gentile in the Church presents itself as part of the wall I referred to in Darby-ism. See also Revelation 5:9, Ephesians 3:6, 1st Peter 2:9 & 10.

It is not our relationship to Abraham that brings us into the fold but rather our relationship to the Living Stone. 1st Peter 2:4. the true Church is true Israel, the true Israel is truly the Church. God made a promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 and Genesis 13:16 about the number of his descendants, this promise is fulfilled in Christ. In Galatians 3:16 the distinction there is this “one Seed,” not seeds. If you are Christs then you are of Abraham’s seed. Galatians 3:28-29.

So then explain how God is going to separate true Israel from true Israel some will be raptured and some will stay? Isn’t this an affront to the scriptures one seed.

God has always had one plan Ephesians 2:15 just as there is one distinct people. The progress God makes is for Paradise lost to Paradise restored. Using Israel to the Church. Romans 4:13, Hebrews 12:18, 22. Hebrews 11:16 points to the fact that Old Testament saints desired a better place a Heavenly country. The icon we are given is Moses leading the people to the promised land.

Again, for Darby-ism to work God must separate his people into two, put parenthesis around one group and have another plan for the other, this is how the modern prophets get it to work, LaHaye uses Daniels 69th and 70th week, he puts a 2000 year gap in-between them, called the Church age. He then reconciles this by using “mysteries” of Romans 16:25-26; Ephesians 3:2-10; Colossians  1:25-27, that Israel, not the Church will fulfill her national destiny as an separate entity after the rapture, tribulation and during the millennium.

Note:( Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Are we living in the end times? (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1999), 114).

Wow! what an imagination, I think out of the box, but this is way beyond the box, hermeneutics does in no way allow for this. It is inconsistent with the text in every way imaginable. To further the fallacy of the two phases, two plans, two people idea, one would have to believe that the Old Testament prophets didn’t foresee the church, but they did, Acts 3:24, Daniel explains it in chapter 2:44 & 45, see also 1st Corinthians 15: 24, Isaiah 60:12, these prophets did not foretell the end of the Church age but its continuance. Darby-ism would have the Church end with the rapture.

Clarity Please!

1st Thessalonians  4: 13 – 5:2 I firmly believe that Christ will come back once, the resurrection from the dead and the second coming of Jesus as the same event at the same time. Take a look at the term “Day of the Lord” there and search it out among the scriptures, it is definitely a significant event. Also what did the Church fathers such as Ephraim, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Knox, Zwingli, and Wesley believe? Just what I said above. I look back to what I call the “Gnarly Old Dudes,” and what stood the test of time for 19 centuries.

A Puritan named Samuel Prideaux Tregelles writes thus after hearing a message on “The Rapture:”

Excerpt from The Hope of Christ’s Second Coming – Chapter 9 – The ‘Secret Rapture’: Its Origins – Samuel Prideaux Tregelles – First Published in 1864

When a new doctrine is taught as if it were a revealed truth, it behooves every Christian to inquire on what Scripture testimony it rests; and unless this is satisfactorily set forth, what is taught ought not to be accepted. This will apply very definitely to the system of the secret rapture and secret coming. When the hope of our Lord’s second advent was revived as a point of definite teaching, when it was seen that until that day the ancient promises of blessing would not be fulfilled, there were those who thought of this one point of prophecy almost exclusively: if they turned at all to prophetic detail, it was with a kind of supposition that everything had been accomplished that was needful to introduce that day. They knew that the apostles had taught intervening events, the corruption that should take place in the Church from false teachers, etc.; they knew that the knowledge of such truths had once been a right thing, and that it had not been inconsistent with the hope of the coming of Christ; but now there was a kind of supposition that such prophecies had been exhausted, and that there might be a kind of momentary expectation of the Lord’s appearing. This supposition was, apparently, not then connected with the belief in a secret coming or a secret rapture.

But when a closer study of prophecy had led to the conviction that many things remained unaccomplished, such as must precede the reign of Christ, there was an unwillingness to give up the opinions previously conceived – there was an endeavour to hold the prophetic detail without giving up the thought of the coming of Christ, apart from the possibility that any intervening events could be part of our expectation. This led to the adoption of theories by which definite points of revelation were explained away; and for the support of which it became needful to maintain that the moral power of the hope of the Lord’s coming is lost, if any intervening event, any sign, is supposed to be a portion of truth. This, if deliberately held, would show that the apostles, and the Apostolic Church, who, as a fact, knew of certain intervening events, did not so hold the hope as to apprehend it in its moral power.

The tone of thought thus arrived at was quite different from that which recognized that intervening events had once been known, but in which it was assumed that they were now exhausted.

But still it seems as if it were some time before a secret advent of the Lord and a secret rapture of the Church had a definite and systematic place. It was rather as if the coming of Christ had been divided into two parts: indeed, there were those then who said that He would appear in glory, and when He had taken the Church He would cease to be seen until He came to crush the powers of evil, and then reign. This would, however, be virtually a second and third coming; it would err in the fact of addition to Holy Scripture, as well as in that of contradiction to its testimony.

But when the theory of a secret coming of Christ was first brought forward (about the year 1832) [1], it was adopted with eagerness: it suited certain preconceived opinions, and it was accepted by some as that which harmonized contradictory thoughts. There should, however, have been a previous point determined, whether such contradictory thoughts, or any of them, rested on the sure warrant of God’s written Word.

Thus the doctrine held and taught by many is, that believers are concerned not with a public and manifested coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory not with His appearing when every eye shall see Him, and when He shall sever the wicked from among the just, but with a secret or private coming, when the dead saints shall be secretly raised, the living changed, and both caught up to meet the Lord in the air – that the shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, do not indicate anything of publicity, for the ear of faith alone shall hear them – that the Church shall meet the Lord, not at His visible coming, but in order to remain with Him, at least for years, before His manifested advent – that after this secret coming there shall be in the earth a full power of evil put forth amongst both Jews and Gentiles that there shall be a time of unequalled tribulation and great spiritual perils (with which the Church has nothing to do)and that this condition of things shall end by the manifest coming of the Lord [2].

Footnotes

1. I am not aware that there was any definite teaching that there would be a secret rapture of the Church at a secret coming, until this was given forth as an “utterance” in Mr. Irving’s Church, from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether anyone ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from Holy Scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God, while not owning the true doctrine of our Lord’s incarnation in the same flesh and blood as His brethren, but without taint of sin.

After the opinion of a secret advent had been adopted, many expressions in older writers were regarded as supporting it; in which, however, the word “secret” does not mean unperceived or unknown, but simply secret in point of time. Thus in a passage of Milinan -

“Even thus amidst thy pride and luxury,

O! Earth, shall this last coming burst on thee,

That secret coming of the Son of man;

When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine,

Irradiate with His bright advancing sign,

When the great Husbandman shall wave His fan,” etc.

The third ling was taken up as if it taught the new doctrine of this secret coming; whereas the whole passage (even if it had any theological value) teaches a coming in power, glory, and publicity, in contrast to that which is private: so, too, as to other writers, whose words were sometimes used.

Sometimes from a hymn being altered, writers appear to set forth a secret rapture of which they had never heard, or against which they have protested.

2. In 1863, I heard it publicly and definitely maintained, that the secret coming is the second coming promised in Scripture, and that the manifest appearing of our Lord is His third coming. Many seem to think this who do not say so in definite words. But a third coming is something very different from His coming again.

http://www.archive.org/details/ThesecretRaptureorPre-tribRapture-ItsOriginsBySamuelP

So take it for what you may, search the text to see if is so, until next time:

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The scorpion beasts of Revelation 9
I remember being in Arizona, in the early 80′s when I got out of the military, the church I attended would show what was called the trilogy movies. The were called Thief in the night, A distant thunder and The image of the beast. Made in the late 60′s or early 70′ one could tell by the clothes and cars, they were supposed to be accurate pictorials of the book of Revelation and the had portrayed that the beasts that came out of the bottomless pit of Revelation 9 were real physical entities, at the time I took it as face value. Well (ahem) excuse me while I clear my throat. I don’t take it as they are real physical entities. First off they come out of the bottomless pit, which would indicate that they aren’t corporal. So that leaves them to be spirits, or better yet evil spirits. Another indication that they are evil spirits their king that is over them is the Angel of the Abyss, his name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek, Apollyon.
So what is it we are dealing with, Pastor Ray Stedman who has passed on before us shared a story about a young woman who moved to California from Alaska. To pass the time away during the long winter nights in Alaska, she and her friends would use the Ouija board as “harmless entertainment” this led to horoscopes and astrology.
This woman woke one night by the voices in her head, insisting she get out of bed and write obscene words on a piece of paper. She resisted, but the voices told her she’d get no relief, no sleep until she did what she was told. She obeyed, but night after night she was instructed to write more and more of these obscenities, for longer and longer periods of time. She began to take dictation like a secretary to the demonic. According to Pastor Stedman her condition became worse even though she had moved. Through prayer and counseling and reading the Scriptures together especially the ones that dealt with demonic activities, she was eventually delivered by the power of God. Pastor Stedman goes on to state that the point of this story is that the evil forces aren’t to be trifled with but are real and deadly.
So then I believe this could be a precursor to the deadly scorpions sting John mentions, these evil spirits are more than the usual demons if that isn’t enough, these spirits have to be told not to kill, but torment. Perhaps this torment is in the form of propaganda or maybe its psyonic, or a combination of the two. I have a tendency to believe its a combination.
If we dissect the demons appearance then we can discern their specialty. They take the appearance of war horses wearing some sort of crowns of gold. So we now know they have authority. They have human-like faces which indicates intelligence. Whatever they flood the world with will appeal to the intellect. Hair like a woman’s hair, this may suggest that this propaganda is alluring and attractive. Perhaps the symbolic nature of the beasts having teeth like that of a lion is that the propaganda will bite hard and be cruel once the truth is reveled. Iron breastplates may symbolize hardness of heart, once the torment begins there is no relief and no escape.
Propaganda has been used throughout history to make people afraid and fearful, propaganda is a psy-op way to control the masses. Paul writes to his spiritual son Timothy, 1 Timothy 4:1 “Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrine of demons” I happen to believe the scorpion beasts will ramp up this attack upon the human population to the point of insanity. We have seen some movements in modern times such as self proclaimed messiah’s, guru’s, bizarre religious cults, UFO cults, drug cults, the resurgence of Witchcraft or Wicca as some prefer, channelers and psychics are on a upswing. I believe these type of activities are the result of satanic forces working on planet Earth howbeit restrained by God, but the day may very well come that they will be unleashed without restraint the horror of that day will exceed all human imagination.
The Sun, Moon, Stars
Ezekiel 32 is a prophetic prophecy against Pharaoh. The Ancient mind the ruler of a nation was metaphorically referred to as the Sun the Queen as the Moon and the Stars of heaven were the governors, or dependent states, as we would call them today. Ezekiel then is speaking about the overthrow of Egypt by the Babylonians. Ezekiel 32:7 And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.
I will cover the heaven- The Empire brought to destruction.
Make the stars thereof dark- There were dependent states who would be overwhelmed.
I will cover the sun – The king himself.
And the moon shall not give her light – The queen may be meant.
Obviously the Sun, Moon and stars were not literally destroyed, again we have the same type of reference in Isaiah 13:10 according to Barnes notes:
For the stars of heaven – This verse cannot be understood literally, but is a metaphorical representation of the calamities that were coming upon Babylon The meaning of the figure evidently is, that those calamities would be such as would be appropriately denoted by the sudden extinguishment of the stars, the sun, and the moon. As nothing would tend more to anarchy, distress, and ruin, than thus to have all the lights of heaven suddenly and forever quenched, this was an apt and forcible representation of the awful calamities that were coming upon the people. Darkness and night, in the Scriptures, are often the emblem of calamity and distress. The revolutions and destructions of kingdoms and nations are often represented in the Scriptures under this image.

So when we have this spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24:29 why then does the metaphor used in the Old Testament in which Jesus as Rabbi would have memorized be turned into a literal meaning by some prophetic teachers today? The Scriptural synergy isn’t in true relationship. Therefor to hold any other view should be suspect.
I’ve spoken of using hermeneutics to study the text, to conclude this thesis. The root of hermeneutics is the word Hermes of Greek mythology, one of the function that Hermes had was to interpret the will of the gods for mankind. One of the tools that work best for me is from Hank Hanegraaff he presents an acronym called LIGHTS.
L- Literal principal this is to say we interpret the text the same way we would any other writing. To quote from his book The Apocalypse Code: “ For example, the Bible says that at Armageddon the blood of Christ’s enemies will rise “as high as the horses’ bridle for a distance of 1600 stadia,” well I covered that already. How would you interpret this if someone said, “They must of taken a slow boat from China.”
I-Illumination principal, go back and see what I said about this when the text seems to be highlighted or as some has said, “It jumped off the page at me.”
G- Grammatical principal, there must be continuity between the relationship and the usage of words, for example in Matthew 23 Jesus pronounces judgment on the Jewish leaders when he says:
Woe to you……..(calling them snakes and brood of vipers) how will you escape being condemned to hell.
The word you meant you or them in context. Why do some take the same word you in Matthew 24 and make it to mean some 21 centuries later. Kick that around a little.
H- Historical principal, it is crucial to know what was the background, custom, culture etc. Think about the picture that is often seen as the “Last Supper” sorry boys and girls they didn’t have tables and chairs in 1st century Palestine like that. They sat on the floor and reclined on pillows to have a meal.
T- Typology principal, when Joshua led the people into the promised land so will Jesus lead his people into the promised land, paradise lost, paradise restored.
S- Scriptural synergy, Hank states it well, “the whole of Scriptures is greater than the sum of the individual passages.” and “Scriptural synergy demands that individual Bible passages may never be interpreted in such a way as to conflict with the whole of Scripture.”
Therefore I conclude that my deductions are correct and are not outside the confines of scripture. Eschatology therefore is something that should be debated but not separate.