Christ left special instructions to distribute these to everyone in Hell, as they will miss seeing the event live.
Posted on 07/24/2006 8:28:49 AM PDT by topcat54
Events in Israel are viewed by millions of evangelicals as a sure sign that the rapture is near. Again! Jerry Falwell, who stated on a December 27, 1992, television broadcast, that he did “not believe there will be another millennium . . . or another century,” has written on July 23, 2006:
It is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the state of Israel, that the present-day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.1Something similar happened in 1990. John F. Walvoord recycled and revised his Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis to fit with what was then considered to be the latest in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy in our day. The 1974 edition opened with this declaration: “Each day’s headlines raise new questions concerning what the future holds.”2 As we now know, Walvoord’s book was guided by current events and not sound methods of biblical interpretation. Described as “the world’s foremost interpreter of biblical prophecy,” in 1991 he expected “‘the Rapture to occur in his own lifetime.’”3 While Walvoord didn’t invent the prophetic speculation game, as Frank Gumerlock points out it his The Day and the Hour, he did make a ton of money playing it.
Walvoord’s book was reprinted in 1976 and then sank without a trace until a revised edition appeared in late 1990. By August 1991, it had sold 1,676,886 copies.4 It was decisively predictive based on the events transpiring in the Gulf War:
The world today is like a stage being set for a great drama. The major actors are already in the wings waiting for their moment in history. The main stage props are already in place. The prophetic play is about to begin. . . . Our present world is well prepared for the beginning of the prophetic drama that will lead to Armageddon. Since the stage is set for this dramatic climax of the age, it must mean that Christ’s coming for his own is very near.5
Not many people realized that the basic content of the revised edition was nearly sixteen years old when it was reissued in 1990. When the Gulf War ended abruptly, the book was being remaindered for twenty-five cents a copy, if you bought it by the case!
Walvoord’s failed predictions have not deterred other prophecy writers from taking up the mantle of prophetic dogmatism by proclaiming that prophecy is being fulfilled today. And what about their past failed predictions that seemed so sure at the time? They simply moved on “without ever acknowledging their mistake.”6 This is because current events, not Scripture, serve as their interpretive grid.
In 1974, Thomas S. McCall and the late Zola Levitt wrote The Coming Russian Invasion in which they stated that “the Armageddon conflict grows out of the Russian invasion of Israel.” Now that the former Soviet Union no longer has super power status, a new prophetic theory had to be invented to fit current events. Since necessity is the mother of invention in the end-time speculation business, prophecy speculator Mark Hitchcock wrote The Coming Islamic Invasion of Israel. But that was in 2002 and it’s old news. Now that Iran is threatening Israel again, prophetic publishers are looking for the next prophetic blockbuster to take advantage of the always gullible Christian market. Similar in title to Walvoord’s book that was first published in 1974, Hitchcock has written Iran—The Coming Crisis: Radical Islam, Oil, and the Nuclear Threat. How many unsuspecting readers will know that Hitchcock has traveled this prophetic road before in The Silver Kingdom: Iran in History and Prophecy published in 1994?
The only winners in the Armageddon game are the authors who tell us it’s near and the publishers who print their books by the truck load. The losers are the integrity of God’s Word and the poor souls who pin their hopes on prophetic speculations passed off as certainties that are always said to be near.
Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.
Reprinted with permission: American Vision P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460.
Notes:
1. Jerry Falwell, “On the threshold of Armageddon?” (July 23, 2006): www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51180
2. John F. Walvoord and John E. Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), 7.
3. Quoted in Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Final Days are Here Again,” Newsweek (March 18, 1991), 55.
4. Press Release, “Kudos,” Zondervan Publishing House (August 1991).
5. John W. Walvoord, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 228.
6. Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 191.
I think you are reading much more into the verse than is actually there. You are certainly not taking it "literally".
If you are free to interpret based on your preconceptions, then certainly you cannot fault others for interpreting the Scripture based on comparing carefully with other Scripture.
BTW, you have a problem. According to the popular dispensational theory, the unrighteous dead are not raised until after the millennium at the "great white throne judgment". Given that fact what passage of Scripture do you have that would support the idea that the unrighteous dead (like the high priest) would "see Christ" with their own eyes at His allegedly premil coming?
While I appreciate his writings, my problem with him is that he equates amillennialism with "reformed eschatology". That may be due to his continental Dutch Reformed roots. The Puritans were decidedly not amil. Perhaps it doesn't matter since they don't speak Dutch. :-)
Christ left special instructions to distribute these to everyone in Hell, as they will miss seeing the event live.
I never do. I merely defend my position when it is attacked. Like this article. Like many of your posts. I respect the post mill, pre-mill and preterists positions. All of them can be scripturally defended.
Given that fact what passage of Scripture do you have that would support the idea that the unrighteous dead (like the high priest) would "see Christ" with their own eyes at His allegedly premil coming?
I suspect that maybe they have something like television where they await his judgment. It has never concerned me how every eye will see him. The fact is that it is clearly stated that every eye shall see him. So knowing that with God nothing is impossible, it is not merely possible that every eye will see him, it is a certainty. God will make that scene available to every eye. We have his word on it.
And so far not every eye has seen him coming with clouds. I haven 't. You haven't. Ponitus Pilate hasn't. Why? Because it hasn't happened yet. When it happens we won't be sitting around debating whether or not it occurred in 70 AD or 1914 or 1987. His coming will end the debate.
Even so, come LORD Jesus.
Do you have any proof that the high priest wasn't dead by 70AD? The high priest was most likely an elderly man. The position of high priest is not one given to youngsters, but was reserved for patriarchs. And given that the average lifespan back then was close to 50 years of age, the odds of the high priest living to AD 70 was slim and none.
You are grasping at straws to assume that the high priest was there to witness the return of Jesus dressed up as the Roman Army. While God may have executed judgment upon the Nation of Israel in 70AD, this was not the return of Christ. The High priest will someday see Jesus on the right hand of the Father and will someday see him coming with clouds. Every knee shall bow. Not now, but then.
You're joking, right?
And so far not every eye has seen him coming with clouds. I haven 't. You haven't. Ponitus Pilate hasn't.
Read carefully. I said the Second Coming has not yet happened. I also said not every occurrence of "coming" in Scripture refers to the Second Coming.
But it's pretty clear from the context of Rev. 1:7, that the folks who are in view are the 1st century Jews who put Christ to death. Phrases such as "tribes of the land" and "look on Him whom they have pierced" are a dead give away. No other generation or people fits that description.
Amen!
And those who pierced him will someday LITERALLY look upon him. Those who have put their faith in Christ have already looked upon him. Those who have not put their faith in Christ will someday look upon him. All men will someday look upon him.
BTW it was not the Pharisees who pierced him. It was the Roman soldiers.
Indeed. I've never understood how this is seen as a major point for preterism--is mere death supposed to keep someone from seeing the Coming of the Lord?
But the Pharisees had him pierced. It was all of us. Given the context of the Zechariah verses, I would assume it is the remnant of Jews that come and mourn.
So Zechariah and John got it wrong?
"And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn." (Zech. 12:10)
"And again another Scripture says, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'" (John 19:37)
More evidence that you're wrapped up in your literalism rather than allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture.
Indeed. Actually, preterism has a bit of a consistancy problem here. On the one hand, it presupposes that Abraham received the Land that YHVH had promised him (directly) only through his children (indirectly, by "the immortality of procreation"), but seems to find it impossible that the Bible would let the Israel who put the Messiah to death via the Romans should likewise witness His Parousia through their children.
Futurism, on the other hand, can understand it either way: Either Abraham receives the Land through his children and Israel likewise "looks on Me whom they have pierced" through their children, or both see the promise fulfilled directly, via Resurrection.
It's been too long since you read the OT passage most frequently quoted in the NT, Psalm 110. See in particular the reference in I Cor. 15 -- "For He must reign until He has placed all enemies under His feet." Hey, it's kinda neat to have a reigning Lord present and active in your life! It gives you something to do with your life, battles to fight, foes to subdue, a God to glorify through significant activity.
People have reasons for what they believe, people have reasons for reading corporate defeat into the Biblical account of God's covenantal faithfulness to His people. It's not my job to try to read minds and assign motives -- but I keep thinking of the dwarves in C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle. So cynical, so hateful, that they sat in the middle of paradise and saw only a dank, filthy stable. The ten faithless spies looked at Canaan and saw certain defeat. Caleb and Joshua saw opportunities to experience more miracles from God's hand.
They looked at the same data set, and came to opposite conclusions. This, I believe, says less about the data than it does about the lookers.
I believe, though, that the "majority report" of American fundamentalists is as wrong now as the evil report of the faithless spies was then. We are at the beginning of the story of Christianity, and have yet to see the breadth, depth, and wonders of God's plans for us. Yes, we have a ways to go. Yes, the enemies are still out there. But yes, thank God, that means we (and our children) still have something to do!
Those muslims, those statists, those Goliaths, are bread for us.
Share blessings, and be a blessing, beloved elect of God!
Hey Bugg. How's the book coming?
The bible warns us against any teaching that he has returned unseen. We are not to believe it.
Are you arguing that the Roman soldiers did not drive the nails and thrust the spear?
Temporarily stalled, unfortunately. Beth HaMashiach has found itself thrust out into the world (new owners of the church building we've been renting decided they didn't want us around) and pretty much everything is on hold until we're settled in a place of our own.
In my mind the mere fact that no one can say for certain that they have seen Jesus coming in the clouds means that he hasn't. It will not be an obscure event. EVERY EYE shall see him.
What irritates me about the preterists is not the fact that they hold to a preterist position, but that they riducule those who do not hold to that position. They don't merely argue against it, they gleefully point and laugh and put those who disagree with them on the defensive. They use Hal Lindsey as a hammer to knock everyone who has ever held a dispensationalist position as if every dispensationalist is a Hal Lindsey disciple.
I have studied the scriptures and the premillenial position is clearly the one that makes the most sense to me. I have several strong reasons for believing in a pre-tribulation rapture, but I am certainly not married to the position. There are good arguments for a mid tribulation rapture and a post tribulation rapture.
I think I can say with absolute assurance that it is no coincidence that there is a Nation called Israel located in the land once occupied by those to whom God promised an eternal posession. It is no coincidence that it is the descendants of that promise who now occupy that land and it is no coincidence that all the nations of the earth are joined against it. The existence of Israel appears to be the work of God's hand. What that means at this time is unclear and subject to speculation. But God is not doen with the Nation of Israel. That is clear. To me it means that the times of the Gentiles is coming to an end. I'm not going to pick a date nor am I even going to speculate that it will occur in my lifetime or anyone else's lifetime. Undoubtedly we will all see Jesus within a twinkling of an eye when we pass from death to life. That has been going on for 20 centuries. But someday Jesus will literally come with clouds to rule and reign on earth for a thousand years. We have his word on that. We have his word that when it happens, there will be no debating about whether or not it occurred. Everyone will know for certain. Every eye shall see.
Sounds like God is working. God rarely closes a door without opening another.
BTW what chapter were you working on when you got stalled?
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