New book series challenges 'Left Behind'

The publishers of "Left Behind" are launching a new series that challenges the end-times theology of the phenomenally popular books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Illinois-based Tyndale House Publishers says the first book in the new series, "The Last Disciple," by "Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff and award-winning fiction author Sigmund Brouwer, asks the question, "What if the prophecies of Revelation have already been fulfilled?"

The opposing interpretation of the Bible is presented in a historical novel centered in first-century Rome and Jerusalem, the publishers say, as "these historical sites begin to experience the turbulence Christ prophesied as the beginning of the 'last days.'"

"Tension mounts as a villainous adversary seeks to find the disciple John's letter (the book of Revelation) and destroy it," a promo reads. "As a result, the early Christians must decipher a mysterious code in order to survive."

Hanegraaff, president and chairman of the board of the evangelical-based cult watchdog Christian Research Institute International, hosts a daily radio program, "Bible Answer Man," that boasts more than 6 million listeners a week.

"This series of novels constitutes one of the most significant projects I have ever been privileged to be involved in," Hanegraaff said in a statement. "Indeed, this initial novel is intended to be the first 'shot' in a debate that I believe will produce a paradigm shift -- a change in the way many in the church look at the end times."

He hopes the book will help people "read the book of Revelation, as well as the rest of Scripture, through the eyes of the early believers to whom it was originally written."

Hanegraaff also wrote best-sellers "The Prayer of Jesus," "Resurrection," "Christianity in Crisis," and "Counterfeit Revival."

Hanegraaff succeeded Christian Research Institute founder Walter Martin after Martin's death in 1989. Some Christians have criticized Hanegraaff for moving beyond Martin's critique of groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses and charging prominent evangelists with false teaching.

Hanegraaff contrasts the "Exegetical Eschatology" in his book with "Left Behind's" Dispensational theology, which grew in popularity in the 19th century and is embraced by many evangelical Christians today.

Dispensationalists believe in a future "rapture" of the church in which Christians will be suddenly taken to be with Jesus Christ before a seven-year period called the Tribulation. Jesus then will establish a 1,000-year reign on earth before Satan is released again on earth and then thrown in the lake of fire. They believe God will then establish a new heave and earth.

Hanegraaff believes most of the prophecies of Jesus and the book of Revelation were fulfilled with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The tribulation, he contends, was the persecution of believers during the reign of Emperor Nero in Rome. When Jesus returns again, Hanegraaff says, he will immediately judge all peoples and establish a new heaven and earth.

Meanwhile, Tyndale has signed with LaHaye and Jenkins to extend the 12-book "Left Behind" series, creating two additional books.

The plot of one takes place before the first book, "Left Behind," and the other is set after the 12th book, "Glorious Appearing."

But if your covenant with Jesus Christ, given by His grace and accepted in faith, is assured, then so is Israel's covenant as entered into by Abraham's faith.

What ever do you mean by "my covenant"? Do Peter and Paul and James fit in with "my covenant" or with Israel's covenant? Do you really not see the absurdity of this comment?

There is no distinction. Paul makes this perfectly clear.

just as Abraham "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed." So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. ... Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ. And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. ... What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; (Gal. 3)

Paul says several important things to help us understand and appreciate the relationship between the church of the Old Testament and the church of the New Testament.

1) All the children of faith, and only those, are the sons of Abraham. (v. 7)
2) All the promises were made to Abraham and His Seed, that is Jesus Christ. (v. 16)
3) The promise is tho those who believe without ethnic distinction. (v. 22)
4) We are all sons of God through faith in Christ. (v. 26)
5) There is neither Jew nor Greek under the terms of Abraham's covenant. (v. 28)
6) The reason being that we are in Christ and therefore, Abraham's seed. (v. 29)

The New Testament has much to say about how God in Christ brought together two people into one new body. It is absolutely silent on any future separation of people based in ethnic background.

The only reason people arrive at that erroneous conclusions is by failing to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, and by failing to see that all the promises made in the Old Covenant were made in Christ and for the benefit of His people, the Church.

Matthew 24: 36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

This is one of my favorite verses, it separates the men from the boys, the Talmidim from Jezebel’s left behind crowd.

Rabbi Sha’ul wrote to the Thessalonians…

1 Thessalonians 5 1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. 3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. 4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. 5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

Who’s right? Both are.

Most Christians don’t realize that Yeshua actually narrowed it down when He said that.

You see, Rosh HaShanah is celebrated over two days, so, ‘day or hour’ fits perfectly into Rosh HaShanah. But then again, so do certain New moon celebrations.

Check out this very interesting section of scripture that is read on Shabbat Erev Rosh Chodesh.

When the new moon (day) falls out on Sunday, the Haftarah portion is…

Haftarah for Shabbat Erev Rosh Chodesh: (Torah section for the Shabbat)

I Shmuel (Samuel) 20:18-42 Then Jonathan said to David: "Tomorrow is the New Moon festival. You will be missed, because your seat will be empty. The day after tomorrow, toward evening, go to the place where you hid when this trouble began, and wait by the stone Ezel. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as though I were shooting at a target. Then I will send a boy and say, 'Go, find the arrows.' If I say to him, 'Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here,' then come, because, as surely as HaShem lives, you are safe; there is no danger. But if I say to the boy, 'Look, the arrows are beyond you,' then you must go, because HaShem has sent you away. And about the matter you and I discussed--remember, HaShem is witness between you and me forever." So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon festival came, the king sat down to eat. He sat in his customary place by the wall, opposite Jonathan, and Abner sat next to Saul, but David's place was empty. Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, "Something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean--surely he is unclean." But the next day, the second day of the month, David's place was empty again. Then Saul said to his son Jonathan, "Why hasn't the son of Jesse come to the meal, either yesterday or today?"…

It is apparent from the above passage that, even in the days of Samuel and Saul, already Israel was celebrating Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, for two days. We celebrate for two days when the preceding month is twenty-nine days.

http://www.tckillian.com/greg/chodesh.html

And, for a real kick look up the word ‘Ezel.’

So the phrase ”No man knows the day or hour” fits perfectly into Rosh Chodesh.

For more, check out Proverbs 7

6 For at the window of my house I looked through my casement,

7 And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, 8 Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house,

9 In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: 10 And, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart.

11 (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: 12 Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.)

13 So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, 14 I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows.

15 Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. 16 I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt.

17 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. 18 Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves.

19 For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: 20 He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed.

Day appointed is Chodesh. Some translations say ‘new moon’ and some ‘full moon.’ Looks new, to me! (Ben Yehuda’s Hebrew English Dictionary)

And the woman in Proverbs 7 is Jezebel.

And BTW, the people who use that section of scripture ’no one knows the day or hour’ aren’t using it to edify, they use it to beat on those who are trying to discover answers to questions. And that just about sums up that group.

It is apparent from the above passage that, even in the days of Samuel and Saul, already Israel was celebrating Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, for two days.

Since I'm kinda stupid at times, can you draw me a picture where a celebration over two days is indicated in that passage? I only see a reference to one day, the festival, and "the day after". Nothing special, religiously speaking, happens on "the day after".

And I must be missing how all this related to "day and hour".

However, if we rely on Jesus words and leave the rabbis out, we can understand.

Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. "Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods. But if that evil servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,' and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 24:44-51)

If this is referring to the "new moon" festival, would the master be traveling? Why didn't Jesus just use the example of the "new moon" festival is the solution is wrapped up in that concept?

No, I think the solution is much simplier, as it is outlined by Jesus in this parable.

We celebrate for two days when the preceding month is twenty-nine days.

Who's "we", Kemo Sabe?

Been reading all the posts with much interest, and have a these comments. I hope you find them worth reading. . .
1. Aside from being uncharitable in nature, the attacks on the character of Hank Hanegraaff are classical examples of the fallacy known as ad hominem, in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
2. Hank’s most profound argument against the Left Behind interpretation – regardless of your opinion about Hank – is the danger in interpreting Revelation in a wooden literal sense. In the afterward of The Last Disciple, Hank writes that in The Indwelling, book 7 of the LB series, the authors demonstrate their theology of Revelation 13 by raising the fictional character Nicolae Carpathia from the dead. Hank points out that this negates the uniqueness of the resurrection of Christ, in so doing opens the door to the possibility that the foundation of our faith -- Christ’s resurrection as proof He was the Son of God -- could be something that the devil mimicked to fool us, and lastly gives Satan equal creative powers with God, thus promoting the heresy of a dualistic world view. I don’t think his short and simple argument on this point can be disputed.
3. Some of the posts have arguments that show little effort in interpreting Revelation against the entire context of the Bible. John, like his friend Jesus, and like all the rabbis of his time, used phrases borrowed from Old Testament prophets. Not from laziness, but because he knew his first century audience would immediately understand that the richness of the reference, and that the shared symbolism says much more than flat, literal prose. ‘Blood of the lamb’, for example. No one in John’s generation assumed this mean literal blood (nor do we) but all hearing that phrase immediately understood the emotional and spiritual implications, for all had offered a lamb in atonement to God, had held the tiny lamb as it shivered in fear, and had watched blood pour from its slit neck over the soft fleece. Over half of Revelation is based on this sort of language. Reading Revelation like it is a 21-century newspaper article makes it difficult to discern John’s meaning.
4. In fairness, I think it’s necessary to read Hank’s book first before challenging the ideas in it. After reading it myself, I find it startling that so much is assumed about him and the book by those who have prejudged him and the contents simply because someone in an earlier post painted him as partial preterist. For example, if you have or had no awareness of the concept of gematria, reading The Last Disciple will make you as familiar with this concept as if you were a first-century Jew. Then you will understand letters of the alphabet also served as numbers (0-9 would not be invented for hundreds of years!) and that adding the letters of Nero’s name resulted in six-hundred-and-sixty-six. (Not ‘666’ which is a very common mistake, and a subtle but profound difference in reading the text of Revelation.)
4. The most crucial decision, I believe, that must be first made about Revelation is the dating of it. If it was written in 95 A.D., then John’s vision would certainly not apply to Nero or the tribulation on the Christians, or apply to understanding that the fall of the Temple was God’s judgment rendered on those who rejected Jesus. In other words, a late dating of Revelation eliminates Nero as the beast and opens the door to the Left Behind interpretation or other similar futurist views.
Please consider this, however. From a practical point of view, following the resurrection of Jesus, and the tremendous loss this meant for Satan, the next best chance for Satan to defeat God’s plan was to destroy any chance of future generations finding faith in Christ. Plant a seedling tree. If you want to stop it from becoming a forest, yank it out by hand in the first year. Each succeeding year, however, the tree grows larger and larger and is more difficult to remove, and when it bears seed and other trees grow around it, the forest will thrive. In the same way, had Satan been able to destroy the first generation of Christians, he would have had final victory. My argument, then, is that the story of the Lamb against the Beast is very relevant to the first generation of Christians; it was absolutely crucial to God’s plan that those Christians survive so that succeeding generations can pass on the faith.
With that in mind, I think it if it’s fair to argue that a late-dating makes the futuristic interpretation relevant, it’s also fair to argue that if Revelation was written in 64-66 A.D., then futurists should consider the validity of Hank’s position.

5.Was Revelation written pre-fall of the temple? What follows next is a historical argument, not a theological argument, and any disagreement with it should be countered not with theology, but with historical points:

In historical terms, late-date proponents can only appeal to a single – and markedly ambiguous – source, found in the writings of church father Irenaeus. All other sources, going back hundreds of years all the way to the fourth century, are based on the opinion Irenaeus.

First, modern scholars raise many and varied credibility issues about the opinions of Irenaeus. Where the reports of Josephus can often be cross-referenced with other historians of his age, Irenaeus was not a historian, nor did he apply common practices that any historian would/should use in his writings, nor did Irenaeus write as a historian.

How solid is the foundation of that single man’s opinion, written more than a century after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem?

Irenaeus only devotes a single sentence to the dating of Revelation. Yet because of the complex grammatical construction of the Greek text, this sentence can be translated as saying that either: ‘John was seen . . . toward the end of Domitian’s reign ‘, or that the ‘apocalyptic vision. . . was seen. . . toward the end of Domitian’s reign’. (Italic emphasis mine.)

Late-date proponents must choose the latter translation, asking us to believe not that John was seen in 95.A.D., but that the vision was seen in 95 A.D. In short, from a historical perspective, late-date proponents only have that single ‘either-or’ statement as evidence to back their argument.

Yet have us chose that the ‘vision’ was seen in 95 A.D., late-date proponent must have us ignore the internal evidence given by the letter itself.

For example, in Revelation 11:1, John is told to measure the temple. As all historians agree it was destroyed in A.D. 70, there simply was no temple for John to measure in 95 A.D. Why would he be commanded in a vision to measure something that didn’t exist? Further, no references in Revelation or in the prophecies of Jesus or in any of the writings of the entire New Testament allude to the reconstruction of the temple that must occur for it to exist again in such a way that futuristic interpretations can be accurate.

Perhaps the strongest internal argument is one of silence. Late-date proponents cannot explain why, if written in 95 A.D., John makes no reference to the fall of the temple in Jerusalem. Surely, in all Jewish history, this ranks as the most devastating holocaust the Jews have faced. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus tells us that millions of Jews perished during its siege and fall, starving to death, burning to death, being ripped apart while still alive. Furthermore, with the destruction of the temple mount, for all practical purposes the organized Jewish religion lost its house of God and the place He had sanctioned as an altar for sacrifices to Him. In fact, the practice of the Jewish religion was altered forever. Why would John be silent about this astounding horror if writing an apocalyptic letter after this event? It would be like a Jew today writing about Nazi Germany but failing to mention the holocaust, or someone writing about Muslim terrorism 20 years from now and ignoring the events of 9/11.

On the other hand, if Revelation was written before the fall of the temple, it is easy to understand that the vision of John was a divine prophecy, written to comfort and inspire the seven churches and all the other believers during the upcoming tribulations of Nero’s persecution and the siege and fall of the Temple. In that historical light, it is much easier to interpret Revelation, and thus see how the predictions revealed are amazing in their accuracy.

6. If you’ve read this far in the post, I appreciate your patience!

Oh I agree that Revelations shouldn't be taken in a wooden sense. The problem with Hanaagraf and persons like him is that in interpreting all prophecies and visions as though they were influenced by contemporary events leaves open the next step in denying that the faith has any real power.

Another words John was artistically expressing his fanciful view of contemporary times in the guise of made up imaginary images ect. Jesus didn't really appear before John in all of his transfigured splendor, John was just writing imaginary imagery in a type of code that really described contemporary Rome. Many see folks like Hanegraaf as denying that the Bible has any real power and as obliquely questioning the "promise of Christ's coming" as many in the "latter days would scoff, questioning his coming"

As for measuring the temple...that comes from Revelations chapter 11 and it speaks not just of a temple but of the an un measured court yard"and the Holy City for it is given unto the Gentiles and they shall tread under it for forty and two months"

Some have argued that this described the three year seige(42 months =3.5 years) of Jerusalem by the Roman until its destruction in 70 AD. A seige of a city doesn't mean a continuous trampling for 42 months! Yet the context of this passage includes the rise of the two supernatural Godly witnesses that have the powers of Moses and Elijah(some have argued that is the actual pair though the Bible doesn't say that...the assumption is just made because they both appeared with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration).

These two witnesses exhibit enormous powers in their fight and contention against the "Beast that comes out of the bottomless pit". The measuring of the temple in this context tells tells of a new temple that shall be in existence at the reign of this "Beast". In historical context, there never has been a pair of men who could shut the windows of heaven and cause fire to consume those who tried to attack them. The measuring of the temple could actually be considered an oblique reference to John's contemporaries of the temple that had been destroyed in Jerusalem years before as a chronological metaphor suggesting climactic future events occuring around the time when the third temple would be rebuilt!

So point to me in history when two guy's were blasting their detractors with fire and giving the "Beast" a miserable time of it until he killed them, and point to me in recordeed history that a voice cried to them 3 days later "Come up hither" and I'll consider that Hanegraaf may have had some points. You see prophecy is testable.

Israel lives despite all the religious teachers who said over the hundreds of years that scriptures never really said that she would rise again. But you see Literalist evangelical types have always existed who say annoying things like "Oh Israel will become a nation and the Jews will return to it and Jerusalem will then become a "cup of trembling" to the world". And guess what...it has!

God hides in plain sight...things are occuring now that Daniel spoke of..."In the latter days knowledge shall increase and the people run to and fro! Until then the book is sealed to the end"

>The problem with Hanegraaff and persons like him is that in interpreting all prophecies and visions as though they were influenced by contemporary events leaves open the next step in denying that the faith has any real power.<
From an argumentative point of view, this statement is known in classical terms as “The Slippery Slope fallacy”. This occurs with an assertion that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim.

Yes, “interpreting all prophecies and visions as though they were influenced by contemporary events leaves open the next step in denying that the faith has any real power.” But the implication that this step will be taken is simply a fallacy and it presumes that the person making this assertion can know the motives of ‘Hanegraff and others like him’. There is another classical fallacy here, for it is once again an ad homimen attack that does not address the original argument.

Nor do posts 132 & 133 address Hank's assertion about an interpretation method that, followed to its extreme as was done in the Left Behind series, gives Satan the power to raise someone from the dead. To me, in seeking a truthful interpretation of Revelation, that issue needs to be addressed long before deciding, for example, whether the 144,000 to be sealed are actually 144,000 more or less, or if John is using a number of completeness that all Jews would recognize.

Having said that, the points raised in posts 132 & 133, certainly show it how enjoyable it would be to spend a lot of time in dialogue about what phrases John meant literally in Revelation, and what phrases he did not.

Perhaps Nero's world didn't include flattened mountains, but at the same time – regardless of our fundamental position on interpreting Revelation -- I think both sides would agree that sometimes symbolic language is used. The Son of Man did not actually hold seven stars as John describes in 1:16. (BTW, for John to assert this at the beginning of his letter was a direct challenge to Nero’s claim of divinity, for Nero was represented on Roman coins as a god holding stars.) I don’t expect anyone to argue that Jesus had a two-edged sword for a tongue (1:16); that when the fourth angel sounded (8:12) a third of the sun and a third of the moon was destroyed, and that a third of all the stars of the universe were snuffed out.

Lastly, neither post132 or 133 address what I would argue is the most fundamental issue in trying to understand Revelation. Was it written in 95 A.D.? Or before the fall of the Temple? Once we agree on a date, we can discuss meaning. Or, if we recognize we disagree on a date, we can recognize it will be much more difficult to discuss meaning without being at a cross purpose.

I would argue furthermore that without historical or cultural knowledge of the life of a first century Jew, discussions about the meanings of phrases in Revelation become much more speculative. For example: the example used about 666 in post 133. I must repeat that this was not how John presented the number of the beast to his audience, nor how they would have read it. It was written as six-hundred-and-sixty-six; not 666. From a historical perspective, without the arabic numberal system it was impossible for John to use it as 666, and with that in mind, many arguments for the number of the beast are meaningless outside of that context.

So: When did John write Revelation? I believe without the answer to this question, it’s difficult to proceed.

"From an argumentative point of view, this statement is known in classical terms as “The Slippery Slope fallacy”. This occurs with an assertion that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim."

But we are also arguing in the realm of the Tautologous in which viewpoints shape the arguements. If you want to bring pure logic into this discussion, from a strictly purely LOGICAL point of view...all arguements regarding religion and the Bible are considered FALLACIOUS. In the realm of the Tautologuous, faith and conviction can be friends as Reason must remain unsullied with the conclusiveness of certainty. Reason says this or that , butwhat ever is decided, be truthful and consistent...reason itself can never decide a thing. In logic, an arguement can never be based on the tautologous. However in the world of the tautology...the world opens up and faith can be your companion again.

Those statements being as they are, I argue that you cannot cannot lift out and separate points out the Bible from their contextual bearings. It could be considered equally fallacious in attempting to compare purely prophetic events in the light of temporal events of the era. The Antichrist is said to have dark powers, Nero didn't. Hanegraaf is resisted because his arguements CAN lead to the slippery slope of the denial of scriptural veracity. Hanegraaf doesn't quite go there but many have already gone there and have slidden down that slope. I have talked to quite a few "higher" protestants that hold the view that prophecy in the Bible was a mere retelling of historical events done up in fancy apocryphal language and that you have to take the Bible with a grain of salt..wink wink nod nod!

As for the claims of the LB series, I have come to feel that such elaborate story spinning from scriptural sources treads on dangerous ground. My view is that there are quite a few surprises in store even for Christians as Christ's kingdom approaches this world. The Bible says this kingdom is already established but obviously we are talking about its temporal imposition into our material world by the father above, which is still to take place. There is yet a time coming in which "the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord will cover the Earth as waters cover the sea"

When Christ came to this world, he came differently then what was socially and politically expected. Even his displayed power wasn't enough to convince the priests as to his true identity, yet Daniel himself states that at the "end of the 62 weeks" the "prince would be cut off but not for himself". Jesus was who he truely was...and he fullfilled the OT testament to the letter...but because he didn't fit into "our" plans he was rejected. This rejection was indeed fortold to brutal effect in Isaiah... but it was fashionable to ignore all the icky parts of the known scriptures at the time of Christ to favor a more military and wrathful Messiah(which was also in the OT but which denoted a far more future era). Yet here came Christ riding on the young Ass's colt into Jerusalem as the OT had prophesied...why this wasn't the Military conqueror we expected!

Christ's coming and the latterday circumstances will be such that the unexpected will happen, even Christians will be dismayed that some of what they believed will be found to be false. Yet...it will all still square with the BIBLE!!!!
Israel exists when all Hanegraaf types were declaring that it never would rise again...that the Church was the new Israel ect ect! The seven stars in Revelations was already explained as being the seven churches that existed at the time, a case of scripture explaining its own symbolism. The date for Revelations derives from that knowledge of the existence of those churches at that time.
I don't think the date of Revelations is all that important to this arguement.

What is more important is the question of historical contextuality, is scriptural prophecy merely reflective of that or does prophecy use current events as a way of explaining future horrors to come?. Nero demanded that he be worshipped as God,,,so did Antiachus Epiphanes(Antiachus..."God on Earth"). Epiphanes slaughtered a pig in the second temple and set an image to himself...he tortured many jews...he committed the abomination of desolation.....yet Christ spoke of a coming Desolation. Christ spoke of John the Baptist as though he were Elijah who was expected to come before the true Messiah...yet Christ said Elijah would come again. He even claimed that John was Elijah, "if ye can receive it!".

Our human history is replete with repeated patterns of evil, of despots whose personalities and behaviors are similar to those of despots past. Epiphanes was a type of Antichrist and so was Nero, and so was Hitler "if ye can receive it". Yet these "archtypes" of history act as foreshadowings of worse evil to come. The abomination of desolation had occurred as the OT had said, yet Christ seemed to be indicating that a much more "evil" abomination was yet to occur!

Finally, the jewish word for "life" calculates out to 666...as for carbon the base chemical of all life...it's atomic number is 6. Do I think that these examples are somehow related to the 666 of the Bible,? Not necessarily, but in the world of the tautologous one needs to be cautious in just automatically not considering it either. You cannot ignore the icky parts of the Bible that "nasty old literalists anti Hanegraaf types" keep bringing up in counter to those who emphasize the more desirable"heroic notions" of the Bible!

If this is referring to the "new moon" festival, would the master be traveling?

19 For my husband is not at home; He has gone on a long journey; 20 He has taken a bag of money with him, And will come home on the appointed day." Proverbs 7

Appointed day is Chodesh. http://www.blueletterbible.org/search.html

Read the entire chapter btw.

7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth--men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. 2 Timothy 3

Always learning but never able… Always learning but never able… Always learning but never able…

Not everything was written down, look…

And see to it that you make them according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain. Exodus 25:40

And you shall raise up the tabernacle according to its pattern which you were shown on the mountain. Exodus 26:30

…who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, "See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain." Hebrews 8:5

We can do this too!

Isaiah 2

1 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

2 In the last days

the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
3 Many peoples will come and say,

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD ,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths."
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

5 Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.

Mt. Zion

Where did Stephen get this information?

22 And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds. 23 And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. Acts 7

It’s not in the O.T. And neither is Jannes and Jambres.

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