Posted on 08/10/2006 12:22:56 PM PDT by OrthodoxPresbyterian
A Young Fool encounters Foolishness
Once upon a time, I was but a wee child in Reformed Theology, taking my first baby-steps into the beautiful Cathedral of Calvinism as a young Debater for Jerry Falwell's world-beating Liberty Debate Team (Our Creed: "Defeat Harvard. Defeat Navy. Defeat American Catholic. Defeat everyone. Crush them all, every time, no exceptions. Win every single National Championship, every year.... because as long as we Calvinists keep winning, Jerry won't excommunicate us for being Calvinists!!".)
Since a Debater is always expected to be able to immediately argue either side of any given question, I spent a lot of time in the local used book-store picking up various books on philosophy and theology and politics and economics... anything I could get my dirt-poor hands on for $2 or $3 dollars a copy. Anything to familiarize myself with multiple intellectual perspectives and multiple modes of argumentation.
Now, in the course of my researches, I happened across a little book entitled War Cycles, Peace Cycles by Richard Kelly Hoskins of Lynchburg, Virginia, regarding the short and long-term economic effects of Monetary Expansions and Contractions in the context of fractional-reserve lending. Hoskins was by no means an uneducated fellow (a capable Financial Advisor and Econometricist, some of his works are still occasionally cited today), but I was singularly disturbed by several passages in which he seemed to suggest a Racial component to Fractional-Reserve Lending (which he called "the Babylon System") versus his contrary suggestions for Joint-Venture Lending.
One passage which stood out in my mind read as follows:
The further I read, the more it was apparent to me that Hoskins regarded "Israel" as The White Race, the Adamic Race descended through Abraham, and that all Non-Whites were considered to him to be zuwr "strangers": Pagans at worst, "Samaritan" Christians at best... but never "Israel".
And so, being the young fool that I was, I did what any young fool would do... I looked Dick Hoskins up in the Lynchburg, Virginia phone book, and called him at his house.
I asked him what he would make of my spiritual position -- a Confessing Christian by Faith, mostly Prussian German by Ethnicity, but with a little 1/16 smidgen of Sioux Nation mixed in 3 or 4 generations back on my mother's side.
Hoskins informed me, quite cordially and without any rancor whatsoever, that God considered me to be a mixed-breed Bastard and that "A Bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 23:2) He advised me to marry "one of my own kind".
Well, I decided at that point (even before I knew him to be the godfather of the "Phinehas Priesthood", the most violent expression of the Christian Identity movement) that even if he was a good money-runner, Dick Hoskins' theology was a barrel full of wet, smelly, foolish Scheißdreck, with which I would have no truck whatsoever. The Christian Creed is this: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28, KJV).
Unfortunately, however, "Christian Identity" (derived not from pagan Nazism but rather from its bastard godfather, British Israelism) is not the only theology which Racially divides the Body of Christ into Jew and Gentile, "Israel" and "Not-Israel", Blood and Blood-lines.
Dispensational Zionist Foolishness
The future dispensational kingdom involves a racial prejudice favoring the Jews above even saved Gentiles during the millennium. As such it re-introduces the distinction between Jew and Gentile and replaces Faith with Race as a basis for divine favor. Consider the following citations from leading dispensationalists: (DISPENSATIONAL DISTORTIONS PART TWO, Redemptive History Distortions ~~ Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Th.D.)
However, with the establishment of the New Testament phase of the Church, the distinction between Jew and Gentile has been abolished. This was the whole point of Peter's vision of the sheet filled with unclean animals in Acts 10: "What God has called clean, let no man call unclean." Thus, there is no separate Jewish program exalting them over saved Gentiles. THE CHURCH, which includes Jew and Gentile in one body, is the fruition and culmination of God's promises to the Jews. In evidence of this, we should note that Christians are called by distinctively Jewish names in the New Testament. "He is a Jew, which is one inwardly" (Rom. 2:29). Christians are called "the circumcision" (Phil. 3:3), "the children" and "the seed of Abraham" (Gal. 3:7, 29), the "Jerusalem which is above" and the "children of the promise" (Gal. 4:24-29). In fact, Christians compose "the Israel of God" for we are a "new creature" regarding which "circumcision availeth nothing" (Gal. 6:16).
Comparing Foolishness with Foolishness
In closing, I ask only (according to the Hebrew logical-interpretive method of "how much the more?")... if the heretical British-Israel/Christian-Identity Racialists pervert True Christianity by dividing the People of God along Racial lines, then how much the more do Dispensationalists also pervert the Word of God and divide the People of God along equally Racialist lines?
Consider the following:
Those aren't Quotations from Richard Kelly Hoskins... granted, they may sound like Christian Identity quotations, but they aren't.
These are nothing less than direct quotations from the leading lights of Dispensationalism in America -- Ryrie, Pentecost, Walvoord, Hoyt, Hunt, Thomas Ice. (I could've quoted Hagee, I suppose, but the man is absolutely freakin' nutbar).
All that I did was to replace "Israel" with "The White Race", and replace "Gentiles" with "Non-Whites".
Does Dispensationalist "theology" destroy the Racial equality of the Body of Christ? What you see is what you get.
God Damn all Racial Theology.
Thanks so much for the reply, and thanks to God for the Wisdom in you, and that I get to be your sister (:
Observe: the Greeks and their many gods. The Greeks imbued their gods with traits all too human, and it was even indeed the less admirable traits which seemed to dominate their conversations. Jealous, vain, eratic, venal in the extreme; these were Gods which may have aroused a great deal of pasion and drama, but they inspired little adoration and provoked considerable fear and dread, and fully as much among the innocent as among the guilty.
When we venture to speak of our Creator, or to speak to those matters of His realm, we can do so only in the awareness of how inadequate are our human expressions in the description of such matters. Therefore, when we read, or hear, of the 'wrath of God' it cannot be taken to mean very much the same as though we are reading of the wrath of Kublai Khan. How can we admire, much less worship, a diety of such mundane propensities? Even quantitatively elevating the idea to Olympian heights brings no relief.
Who are these Greek gods and why would the Greeks have wanted to create gods so like themselves and, at that, often reflecting the worst behavior of these self-same Greeks rather than when they were at their best? I'm no student of Greek philosophy, so I can only speculate when suggesting that perhaps the answer lies in the question. Did the Greeks create gods much like themselves to aid them (the Greeks) in wraping their arms around the so very large abstract questions and issues with which they were consumed? We can't verbalize what we can't adequately conceptualize, and likewise the contrary, so we oft find neither adequate expression nor satisfactory understanding when dealing with the idea of the Judeo-Christian God (as so commonly said, we see 'through a glass darkly') for He is not like us, though it is said that we are created in His image. The salient point is that it can not be said that we have sought, as did the Greeks and so many others, to create a God of our own likeness, but that we are blessed by our Creator with the will and with the means to transcend our own lowly status and to achieve that state intended for us by He who is our creator.
So . . . if what you observe is correct, friend boop, then I must conclude that what is written in Holy Scripture, and therefore that of which we also write and speak, is not concerned with the mundane propensities of venal deities, Greek or otherwise, and cannot be understood in any such fashion.
Sorry. Will likely be a couple of days yet before I can get to the task for you.
There are lots of OT prophecies yet to be fulfilled.
I assume you've read EZEK; DANIEL; ISAIAH . . .
I have come to believe that even Psalm 23 has yet to be fulfilled in terms of it's liberal application. It's been a sweet comfort for centuries. But I think it will be literally fulfilled in these END TIMES AS NEVER BEFORE IN ALL HISTORY.
Funny you should mention that. It is exactly what I did, and I found that many things my teachers had taught me were not true at all. I am so thankful that I realized that. I do see a huge falling away from the faith already.
Amen language, any language is so crude when expressing these matters.. A God/Being/Entity that can morph matter/energy (the earth/universe/us/"walking on unfrozen water") would not be like "us"... Could be even "SHAPE(Geometry/even known Physics)" is a primitive concept.. to this being.. And may become primitive to "us" too in the future... The parable of the "talents" comes to mind(and a few others as well)..
[A]nd, confessedly, great is the secret of piety --Link to Greek: Blue Letter Bible Concordance
God was manifested in flesh,
declared righteous in spirit,
seen by messengers,
preached among nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory!
So, it is quite possible that those who have carefully studied the subject and come to the conclusion that the two terms are identical in their usage are correct.
Yes.
If you will allow me to jump in, it is facinating to compare the OT prophecies with the NT fulfillment. In fact that is the only way you can discover their true meaning. We know the OT all pointed to Christ and His work, so their must be a tie in somewhere. But too many folks try to rip the prophecies out of their content and assign fantiastic futuristic meansings that have no basis in Scripture.
In the case of this verse in Daniel, this was a prophecy given in the context of the "time of the end". Unfortunately, many folks today wish to interpret the phrase "end time" from our perspective on this side of the cross. But in fact most of the OT prophies having to do with "end times" are really about the first coming of Christ. (I think you have figured this out already.)
So, when Daniel is told to seal up prophecy until the "time of the end", that is only until the time of Messiah when all these things would suddently be revealed. "And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. " (Luke 24:27)
We can see the truth of this by examining other places in Daniel with the phrase "time of the end" is used:
"Understand, son of man, that the vision refers to the time of the end" (Dan. 8:17). In this case Daniel is seeing the vision of the progression of kingdoms from the kingdom of the Medes and Persians to the kingdom of Greece (vv. 20,21). The "great horn" in this case was Alexander.
So many folks make an obvious mistake by reading "end times" and thinking the Second Coming and judgment of the world.
It's also interesting to compare Daniel's words with the book of Revelation, where we find this statement, "And [the angel] said to me, 'Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.' " (Rev. 22:10)
Unlike the case of Daniel, where the prophecies would not be fulfilled for several hundred years until the birth of Jesus and world events leading up to it, John the Seer is told to not seal up the prophecy given in Revelation because the time of fulfillment was very much at hand, even in the 1st century.
"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work." (Rev. 22:12)
Jesus did come swiftly in judgment against apostate Israel of that day. He judged "the great city", the harlot who made herself drunk with the blood of the prophets and saints. (Cf. Rev. 18:34 and Matt. 23:35)
Yes I would Davey, yes I would. Let's do it together sometime. All of us. (I know where they keep the cake)
That is so great, lady. If you ever have a teacher who won't try and give you an honest answer, go find another one who will.
I've never considered
a shoehorn
to be a quality aid to Bible Study.
I agree with all that you said re Daniel, still there is something about the "end of the age". Here we have a direct promise to Daniel.
"Standing in your lot" of course, refers to priestly duties, and Daniel is told to wait patiently. But "rising again"? And we have the vision of the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel.
I have been re-reading Ezekiel to try and understand the temple at the end. It is like no other anywhere and certainly isn't built with human hands. It seems to have much in common with Revelation's New Jerusalem.
The sacrifices seem to be some kind of memorial for the Jews, nothing to do with the Lord. The Levites can only be gatekeepers and butchers, David's priest will be in charge.
I have always been taught that we will have new, incorruptible bodies, like Christ was seen in on earth after the resurrection.
So something is going on, kind of a combination of the material and spiritual.
Then of course you have the two sticks, Jews and Christians united as one faith.
This is definitely not a rebuilt third Jewish temple.
There are several possibilities here. The term "kingdom of heaven," occurs 32 times in scripture, all of them in Matthew. It could be a coincidence, perhaps an issue with the translation. Was it put there by God or by men?
A careful study of the terms in question here, will not be sufficient to make a conclusion. I submit that my conclusion and your conclusion will in part, be based on what we expect to find.
I believe that there are no idol words in scripture. Whatever we find in scripture was put there by God and is profitable doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. God does not deal in coincidence. God requires that we labor for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life and God increases our understanding according to our diligence. God requires that we prove all things and he has given us the means to do so.
Something like the term "kingdom of heaven" used 32 times in Matthew and nowhere else in scripture, is a characteristic found in all scripture.
It's interesting that if one takes the Ezekiel vision "lterally" it is quite clear that gentile believers are truly second class citizens in this scenario.
"Thus says the Lord God: 'No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart or uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter My sanctuary, including any foreigner who is among the children of Israel.' " (Ezek. 44:9)
This obviously creates a problem if taken "literally" since it means that gentile believers will have no way to come near to the throne of Christ during the period of time. Right now, in heaven, all the saints without racial distinction have complete access to the Davidic throne on which Christ is seated and reigning from the heavenly temple (Acts 2:30; Heb. 8:5; Rev. 5:13).
But, apparently, when Paul said "to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" and "thus we shall always be with the Lord", he really meant to add, except when Jesus is sitting on a literal throne in a literal temple in literal earthly Jeruslem observing literal animal sacrifices when no uncircumcised gentile will be allowed to approach.
This outlines the folly of putting a racial spin on Christ's kingdom.
"and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all." (Col. 3:10,11)
Spiritual advancement not carnal retreat!!
A careful study of the terms in question here, will not be sufficient to make a conclusion.
Why not? Unless you are discounting the work of studying the phrases in their context and carefully comparing Scripture with Scritpure.
I submit that my conclusion and your conclusion will in part, be based on what we expect to find.
Trying to put our biases aside is part of the process for a good interpreter of the Word. We can minimize bad interpretations by investigating as many data points as possible. E.g., simply counting the number of time a phrase occurs in this or that gospel is not conclusive in and of itself.
"From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' " (Matt. 4:17)
"Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.' " (Mark 1:14,15)
"He said to them, 'I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.' " (Luke 4:43)
Jesus was preaching the kingdom of heaven/God from the earliest time in His earthly ministry. Some people suppose that the kingdom of heaven was directed to earthly Israel, but the kingdom of God, offered later on, was to the church. But Jesus' plain words in Luke 4 deny that fact. Jesus very one-and-only purpose was to preach the kingdom of God to the Jews. According to the alternate theory Jesus should have used the phrase "kingdom of heaven" here in Luke 4.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:3)
"Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20)
"He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given." (Matt. 13:11)
"And He said, 'To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that 'Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.' ' " (Luke 8:10)
One could go on and on demonstrating how the two verses are used in parallel in the various gospels to describe exactly the same things.
I have yet to find some biblical (not artificial ala dispensationalism) distrinction between the two terms.
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