Posted on 04/19/2017 4:45:22 PM PDT by grumpa
Of all the various views on eschatology, the one that is the most problematic is premillennialism—especially dispensational premillennialism. But specifically, I want to focus on certain aspects of the “millennium” and the “eternal state,” according to dispensational premillennialism. I am referencing the article below by John Walvoord, who was president of Dallas Theological Seminary from 1952 to 1986.
https://bible.org/seriespage/4-millennial-kingdom-and-eternal-state
As stated in this article, this view holds that there will be a literal 1,000-year period in which Christ reigns from Jerusalem. His world-wide rule will be so strong that this “millennium” period will be a utopia on earth. After the millennium will come the “eternal state,” which is said to be the “new heaven and new earth” of Isaiah 65-66; 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21-22.
Here is something Walvoord says in his article about the millennium: “Missionary effort will be unnecessary for the knowledge of the Lord will be universal as Isaiah says, ‘For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.’ (Isaiah 11:9). . . The millennial kingdom [is] the most ideal state imaginable for man apart from the eternal state.”
But let’s see what the Bible teaches. Even in the new heaven and new earth, we see in Isaiah 65-66 that there are still people who never even heard of God, and require evangelizing (Isaiah 66:12-17)! Indeed, human history continues after Armageddon as births and deaths, and planting and building continue (Isaiah 65:20-23). Further, there is still SIN in the new heaven and new earth per Isaiah 65:20 and Revelation 21:8; 22:15! (Zechariah 14 is a parallel passage to Isaiah 65-66 and teaches the same things.)
This reveals a contradiction with Scripture vs. premillennialism (as well as amillennialism). Christians are beginning to demand a better explanation.
https://prophecyquestions.com/2014/02/01/articles-by-charles-meek
Amen, and again I say, AMEN!!
Welcome back, Accuser of the Brethren!!
I have sat under pastors who preached both doctrines and I have seen churches destroyed because of the millennialist doctrine. I have come to believe that when Christ returns it’s over, end of story. That being said if a fellow Christian wants to believe in the various judgements and thousand year reign that’s fine with me. That being said the most important thing is not the second coming doctrine but spreading the good news and seeing people saved.
To believe this, you have to willfully deny the prophesy of the second hanging of the ten sons of Haman in the Book of Ester.
There is a prophecy for modern times in the Book of Esther that predicts the end of the 20th Century Holocaust. I decided not to extract it, because Haim Shore puts the case so perfectly. The Hebrew letters didn’t come over, but you can get the whole book on Amazon.
16.2 The Case of Haman’s Sons This section has been the most difficult, and at times distressful, to write. There are two interrelated reasons for this. First, this section is related to the Holocaust. Second, my families, both on my late father’s side (my father’s name was Daniel, deceased 1967) and on my late mother’s side (my mother’s name was Havah, deceased 2005), both families perished in the Holocaust. Therefore, writing about the Holocaust, and suggesting that somehow a most bizarre coincidence in the Bible insinuates a forthcoming Holocaust, looks like an outrageous— perhaps even offensive— assertion.
After much hesitation and deliberation, I have decided to proceed with detailing this coincidence. This was done for two reasons.
First, the coincidence to be expounded in this section is not new, and it is well-known, at least in Israel. It had previously been recounted in various publications (for example, Katz 1991, 1996), and is routinely taught in seminars for nonreligious Jewish Israelis, delivered by religious not-for-profit organizations, like Arachim. 13 In discussing this coincidence, therefore, I am not introducing controversy or an as-yet-unknown coincidence.
Second, the reader was assured in the introductory chapter that we would expose Bible-related and biblical-Hebrew-related coincidences of any sort known to us, leaving the reader to decide the nature of the coincidence, whether random or otherwise (as alluded therein, the results of the statistical analyses are exempt from this characterization). Faithful to this principle of censorship-free exposure to all known curious coincidences in the Bible, the coincidence regarding Haman’s sons is expounded in this section, notwithstanding the personal difficulty that I experience in detailing that coincidence.
Esther, Mordechai, and Haman are the three central figures and heroes of the book of Esther. However, there is one more hero— hidden, unspecified, not mentioned even once. But the whole book is focused about how He conducts his world, in hidden ways, as is revealed only in the name of the book. As related elsewhere in this book (chapter 20), according to Jewish tradition, the name Esther is related to the verse in Deuteronomy, where God conveys to the people of Israel that in the face of their moral transgressions, he would hide his face from them— furthermore, he would even hide the hiding. This is succinctly summarized in Hebrew in three words: “Haster astir panai” 14 (Deutronomy 31: 18), commonly inaccurately translated as “And I will surely hide my face” (“… on that day for all the evils which they have perpetrated”). The root of the haster astir is S.T.R, which means “to conceal.” This is also the root of the name Esther, and the whole book is an allegory to the Divine’s ways of conduct that look random to us. How the Bible refers to the concept of randomness has been alluded to at some length in section 3.3. The reader may wish to review this section, where verses in the Bible that relate to randomness are addressed.
The coincidence of Haman and his sons is now expounded (refer to subsection 20.2.1, where the details of the story, though not the coincidence, is introduced in more detail). Haman is first mentioned in the book of Esther thus: “After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and set his seat above all the princes that were with him. And all the king’s servants that were in the king’s gate bowed, and reverenced Haman; for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordechai bowed not, nor did him reverence” (Esther 3: 1— 2). So we know that Haman was of an Amalekite origin (Agag was king of Amalek— 1 Samuel 15: 8), and that he is in a supreme position in the king’s court. Then the book of Esther relates how Haman had initiated a plot to murder all Jews in the king’s kingdoms: “Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar . And the king and Haman sat down to drink” (Esther 3: 13, 15). How very familiar …
The extermination plot, however, failed, by coincidence (or was it?). In a bizarre twist of events, the king changes his taste (perhaps following the drink he had with Haman), and both Haman and his sons are hung by the king. As the latter chain of events is recounted in Esther, “So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Modechai. Then the king’s wrath was pacified” (Esther 7: 10). And later, Haman’s sons were also killed: “The ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedata, the enemy of the Jews, they slew; but they did not lay their hands on the plunder” (Esther 9: 10). The king then reassures Esther, the queen: “And the king said to Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the capital, and also the ten sons of Haman … now what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee …” (Esther 9: 12).
Esther’s answer starts the bizarre coincidence. What does she ask the king to do? The answer is given in the next verse: “Then Esther said, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do tomorrow also according to this day’s decree, and let Haman’s ten sons be hanged upon the gallows. And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they hanged Haman’s ten sons” (Esther 9: 13-14).
The biblical narrator was very explicit to notify us that Esther knows that Haman’s sons were already dead. So what is the sense in asking the king, in reply, to hang them on a tree?
Rashi (1040-1105), the most prominent Jewish interpreter of the Bible, is aware of the difficulty, and he is very succinct in explaining the hanging of Haman’s sons: “those that were killed.” Other interpreters are mute about it, though the Malbim (1809-79) explains that the objective of “hanging the dead” was to intimidate the enemies of the Jews who had thought that the “Jews Annihilation Decree” was still valid.
We may consider another perspective, also based upon well-established Jewish tradition. We have alluded elsewhere (chapter 20) to the fact that in the book of Esther, the name of the Divine is not mentioned. It is therefore traditionally assumed that when the king’s name is explicitly mentioned— namely the king “which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces” (Esther 1: 1), this implies that Ahasuerus is intended. Elsewhere, when only the word “king” appears, reference is to the King of Kings (for example, consider Esther Rabbah 3: 10). Thus, the king’s decree to hang Haman’s sons (giving an impression of a second execution) is in fact a decree from the Divine. Furthermore, Jewish scholars lay a rule regarding the appearance in biblical text of the word “tomorrow” (a rule not relating explicitly to Esther): “There is tomorrow now and there is tomorrow after some time” (Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat BA, 13). Thus, when Esther requests of the Divine to hang Haman’s sons “tomorrow” (Esther 9: 13), this can be in the future and not necessarily the next day.
Hanging of Haman’s sons may be interpreted, in the framework of the coincidence that we expound here, as a decree from God (Esther 9: 14, where only “king” is referenced), and it may be sometime in the future, consistent with how tomorrow is sometimes used in the Bible.
Who might these ten men, to be hanged on the tree some time in the future, be— and why is this important?
We have earlier referred to the position of the Talmud that special letters in the Bible were given to Moses from Sinai. Such special letters appear in relative abundance next to the listing of the names of Haman’s sons (Esther 9: 7— 9).
There are four such letters.
The letter vav, enlarged, appears in the name of Vajezatha (Vayzata15 in the Hebrew text). The letter tav appears small in the name Parshandatha. 16 The letter shin appears small in the name Parmashta. 17 Finally, the letter zayin appears small in the name Vajezatha (Vayzata15 in Hebrew).
Four letters: one large (vav, which has a value of 6) and the other three small letters (tav, shin, and zayin, in that particular order).
Rewritten together, we have (read from right to left): [picture here]
This looks amazingly similar to how a Hebrew calendar date is read. (Refer for an explanation of the Hebrew calendar to subsection 2.1.2.) For example, the Jewish year starting October 4, 2005, is which in Hebrew-calendar count is 5766 (the 766th year of the sixth thousand).
Similarly, the above first letter may be perceived as implying the sixth thousand, and the other three letters give the year 707 (of the sixth thousand)— in other words, a Hebrew calendar year of 5707.
Employing the Hebrew Date Converter (http:// www.hebcal.com/ converter), one finds this year to correspond to the year 1946.
On October 16, 1946, newspapers world over notified their readers that ten Nazi criminals were hanged after being indicted in the famous Nuremberg trials.
Were only ten charged?
Not at all. In the Nuremberg trials, twenty-three Nazi war criminals were charged. Whose verdict was it to go to the gallows? The New York Times headline, in a late city edition from that day, tells it all:
“Goering Ends Life By Poison, 10 Others Hanged In Nuremberg Prison For Nazi War Crimes; Doomed Men On Gallows Pray For Germany.”
Out of twenty-three charged, eleven had a verdict to be executed on the gallows. However, two hours prior to execution time, Nazi criminal Goering succeeded in committing suicide. This brought down the number of men hanged to exactly ten, in the year 1946, Hebrew date [picture here]
Haim Shore (2012-12-11). Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew (Kindle Locations 6313-6273). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.
Logically the Preterist view is that this is the Kingdom of God on Earth right now. You’ve got to be kidding.
To believe this, you have to deny that the Revelation 12:1-2 sign in the heavens is yet to appear.
Revelation Chapter 12:
1 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.
2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
Nelson, Thomas (2009-02-18). Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 1193). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Previous Bible commentators have taken this as a symbolic vision about Israel (Mary) giving birth to Jesus, and marking the start of the 3 1/2 year Great Tribulation.
However, since “knowledge had increased”, we can use star charting programs such as Stellarium to see that this could be a literal “great sign” in heaven.
The constellation “Virgo”, the Virgin, has always been identified with Mary the Mother of Jesus. The nine stars of Leo, the Lion (of Judah), form a “garland” above her head.
Jupiter has always been identified as the “King” star. It is striped (by His stripes we are healed) and has a large, red spot (they pierced His side).
Here is the sequence of events regarding the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Virgo, Leo, Mercury, Mars and Venus
Mon, 21 November 2016 = 20th of Cheshvan, 5777
Jupiter enters Virgo crossing line from Spica to Porrima
Sat, 28 January 2017 = 1st of Sh’vat, 5777
Jupiter retrograde motion begins inside Virgo. “Gestation” begins??
-—— YOU ARE HERE!! -——
Sat, 10 June 2017 = 16th of Sivan, 5777
Jupiter prograde motion resumes inside Virgo
Thu, 17 August 2017 = 25th of Av, 5777
Total Solar eclipse across America (from Portland to Charleston)
Sun, 10 September 2017 = 19th of Elul, 5777
Jupiter crosses Heze — Spica line. Virgin gives birth? Conjunction Regulus and Mercury
Wed, 20 September 2017 = 29th of Elul, 5777
New Moon, Venus — Regulus conjunction - Aligns with Great Pyramid at Giza
Sun, 24 September 2017 = 4th of Tishrei, 5778
Sun at Virgo’s shoulders (clothed), the Moon is at her feet, Mercury, Mars, Venus are added to Leo’s nine stars as Virgo’s 12-star ‘garland’
The great sign in the heaven is complete. This formation last happened in the about 5932 years ago, with Saturn in place of Mercury, and won’t happen again for at least another 2000 years.
Luke 21
25 “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;
26 “men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
27 “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
28 “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”
Nelson, Thomas (2009-02-18). Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 1023). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
See the image at: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_1y_hLqVXf4/maxresdefault.jpg
Graphic says 23 September 2017, as it depends on where you say Virgo’s feet are. Besides, no one knows the day or the hour.
- - - - - - -
Revelation 12
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.
4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth,
to devour her Child as soon as it was born.
5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne.
6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
Nelson, Thomas. Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 1193). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
1. Go to Google Sky: https://www.google.com/sky/
2. Click on Constellations in the bottom button bar.
3. Click on Virgo (last button) in the bottom button bar.
4. Click on “Infrared” button at top right of the main window.
5. Click on the “+” button two times.
6. Observe the rectangular black space with the Green “star” with a kind of red “diadems” under it.
Note: Apparently the thing that Goggle is trying to block has gotten closer and they have not yet change the censoring pixels. Is this “another sign”?
Steve Sewell has located the original image before it was censored on Google Sky:
Thank you for posting your article. After years of study on this subject, I have come to very similar conclusions as you.
Preterism is crap, and warned against by the apostles. By saying that the thousand year reign will be perfect yet no evangelistic effort is neexed for all will know while ignoring the need for faith sets up a straw man argument.
When Satan is freed to anti evangelize at the end, those who refuse Christ’s rule will rebel, proving that there is no room for sin in the name of freedom. No matter how good things are, sin always spoils what it touches and leads to death.
God’s will MUST be obeyed, let God be God and trust him, not our desires.
I love these churches of “what’s happening now”...make up your own rules as you go along and see who yells halleluia when you proclaim your newfound discoveries.....PATHETIC.
Cue the “not this $hit again” guy.
Make up your own rules? That’s what Darby and Scofield did to come up with the modern Eschatology popularized by LaHaye and Jenkins and others. It was new when they developed it 150 years ago.
It’s obvious from a study of the NT that Paul and the other writers believed in a return of Jesus in their lifetime, or at least contemporary to them. To say that they were wrong casts doubt on their other writings.
quote-It’s obvious from a study of the NT that Paul and the other writers believed in a return of Jesus in their lifetime, or at least contemporary to them. To say that they were wrong casts doubt on their other writings.
If Jesus comes back tomorrow, that’s still only ‘2 days’ from when He left.
If we believe a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day.
That is ‘soon’. If He comes back in 1,000 years, that’s only another ‘day’ added. That too, is soon. As He counts.
We’ve had about ‘2,000’ swine years since the resurrection.
I’ve Wondered if the apostles/disciples knew that number or is that for us to know, 2000 years later?
It’s interesting because that ‘about 2,000’ is used in the Old Testament too. The distance between The ark of the covenant and the people of Israel when they crossed the Jordan river into the Promised Land.
They had to keep a distance of ‘about 2,000 cubits’.
It could be argued, Spiritual Israel has been in the wilderness for about 2,000 measures of time- 40 ‘years’ (40x 50 jubilees=2,000 years) since the Passover Lamb of God delivered them from the bondage of sin by His Blood. A period of wilderness testing and teaching. His people awaiting crossing the Jordan, into the Promised Land.
Doesn’t cast doubt on their writings. But scripture did say they weren’t going to know the exact times or seasons either.
But again, if Christ comes back in 1,000 years, that is still 3 days from when He Ascended. That, in His timekeeping, is ‘soon’.
Frankly, the oldest man in the bible was I think 969 years old- He didn’t make it a day old either- He died the same day He was born.
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