Posted on 08/20/2009 12:30:40 PM PDT by IbJensen
Thank you so much, editor-surveyor! Oh, your help in this is so much appreciated.
Maybe I see it as too complex at the moment for glib labels and descriptions.
Christ won at Calvary and the empty tomb.
And in some essential true sense(s) it was FINISHED.
However, having the title deed doesn’t mean one has moved in, necessarily.
Christ will take possession OVERTLY AND COMPREHENSIVELY at Armageddon.
Until then, satan has a hayday destroying as much as he can on the leash he’s on.
Not sure what almanac you're using but mine tells me there are more Christians now than ever before.
Perhaps we like to consider ourselves the Christian West, but there is growing evidence that indicates Western Christians are not the whole show. In fact, Mr. Jenkins says that in just 20 years, two-thirds of all Christians will live elsewhere - in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Places considered unreachable several decades ago have now become hot spots for Christian growth, and hundreds of new churches are being planted each month in those places. Take the small country of Nepal, for example; the church there is growing faster than in any other nation. In 1960, the number of Christians totaled only twenty-five. Today, the number has risen to almost 1 million. Despite the abuse and isolation many Nepali Christians have faced in recent years, churches are springing up all over the country. And though Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims, still constitute the majority of the population, Christianity is growing twice as fast as the other faiths. China is another example of the incredible growth of Christianity. From 1.5 million Christians in 1970, the church has grown to an estimated 64 million in 1990, then to approximately 90 million today. Estimates predict that the number will top 120 million in 25 years. The small country of Benin in Africa is yet another case of spreading Christianity. Although Benin suffers from poor health care, lack of clean water, poor education, and a high rate of HIV/AIDS, its church growth is still explosive. Nearly 120,000 new members are joining churches each year, and by 2025, it is probable that Christianity in Benin will reach 40 percent of the total population. Think for a moment and try to imagine Nepalis witnessing to Muslims, China sending missionaries to the Indians, and Africans evangelizing North America and Europe. It may seem impossible, but it is actually quite likely. "As the media have striven in recent years to present Islam in a more sympathetic light, they have tended to suggest that Islam, not Christianity, is the rising faith of Africa and Asia, the authentic or default religion of the world's huddled masses. But Christianity is not only surviving in the global South, it is enjoying a radical revival, a return to scriptural roots. We are living in revolutionary times," Mr. Jenkins said. No matter how bad things may seem here at home, God is at work, and in the end, it is God to whom every knee will bow, and every tongue confess. "While secular movements like communism, feminism, and environmentalism have gotten the lion's share of our attention, the explosive southward expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has barely registered on Western consciousness," said Philip Jenkins, distinguished professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
Amen. It can be argued that as a negative, defeatist premillenial POV has taken over this country the affects of a vibrant Christianity have diminished. It wasn't always that way when most of this country believed in the old hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers."
Don't buy the negative press. Increase your depth of field. Life is long and there's a lot left. And all of it brings glory to the Triune God. 8~)
I just don’t understand so much in these threads.
The encyclical is full of flowery politico-bureaucratic-theological gobbledy-gook and double speak—it seems to me—to put it politely.
But the key paragraph is rather starkly clear.
Yet, the key paragraph gets dismissed as though it’s totally inconsequential.
And that by some of the finest minds on FR.
Shocking, to me.
Further, when we talk about the very clear and explicit statements in the startling paragraph, we are thought to be wholesale and blindly biased against the Pope’s person. In at least a good number of our cases—that’s simply NOT TRUE.
He writes or signed off on VERY STARTLING GLOBALIST STATEMENTS. There’s no other way to put it. The statements affirm key aspects of globalism in the more or less worst terms applicable.
Yet we are to treat such startling statements as meaningless drivel?
Sorry but that won’t wash. If it was such meaningless drivel why were these statements so clearly put, compared to so much of the bureaucratic, double-speak, politico gobbledy-gook in the rest of it?
If his assertions in that paragraph were so wimpish, useless, chaff, compared to the rest of the encyclical, why not just leave it out? What was the point?
Given that the wording makes the points in behalf of globalism starkly clear—why is it so many bright folks who are normally more faire-minded and normally demonstrate much higher integrity to a fair-minded comprehensive discussion of a topic—seem to play fast and loose and slippery with this one?
Mystifying.
Yet, the key paragraph gets dismissed as though it’s totally inconsequential.
Yep. Obviously no coincidence.
"Look over here, and never mind over here."
I think what you've misunderstood is that postmillennialism does not posit an increase of kingdom Christianity over time in a straight line. Future generations can disobey. Kingdom progess can, for a time, be reversed. The postmillennialist does not mark progress in terms of decades, maybe not even in terms of centuries. Unlike the pretribber who sees history changing in a single generation, the postmiller sees things occuring over thousands of years. And inbetween, there's nothing that says things can't look a whole lot like a dress rehearsal for the Tribulation.
Perhaps you mean professing?
Certainly the percentage of real Christians is lower than it has been in 300 years.
he's bound by the HS, for "greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." Christ came and dispossessd Satan of his possessions, namely us.
Matthew 12:29
Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.
Satan has no more power over us once we are indwelt by the HS. The war is fought from person to person, and every Christian is a triumph over Satan
I always hesitate to use the label, “real Christians.”
None of us knows the heart of another and none of us knows where God will bring each of us tomorrow.
The Gospel does not fail. That is what I know.
Post millenialism would appear to be mostly Kabbalah dressed up in Christian terminology.
Men, rather than Christ, ushering in the kingdom.
AMEN!
Men indwelt with the Holy Spirit. You disagree with that?
No argument, but that ignores the rest of the world, where Satan's grip is visibly increasing. The falling away is near.
Do you ever use the word “tares?”
Exactly. And through it all what are Christians to do? "Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing."
All the time, but Arminians kept telling me there weren’t any. 8~)
And remember - there is more wheat than tares. If not, it would be the wheat among the tares instead of the tares among the wheat.
The people that ‘lose’ their salvation?
Sorry DrE, but that simply is counter to scripture.
Mercy and not debt. Gratitude and not recompense. Grace.
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