Posted on 03/11/2008 8:32:50 AM PDT by Dada Orwell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MrVup9Dl4U
For over twenty years, "Patriot Pastor" Garrett Lear has strode the halls of New Hampshire's legislature...serving as a voice for his faith and his Revolutionary War ancestors. Today he talks with us about Real ID, the liberty deficit among Christians and his colorful outfit. Pastor Lear's church is in Wakefield, New Hampshire.
What do *you* think? Is Real ID the Mark of the Beast? A precursor to it? A bad thing? A good thing?
Whether we are or not, we need to know the signs of the times and be prepared. How we do that, I don’t know, except to keep close to God and learn more and more of Him. I feel He’ll protect us but even if we die, what’s the difference? We’ll be with Him no matter what.
Your source?
Thank you for posting those verses. I agree. I have to give the fear and anxiety over to God, and pray for those Christians around the world who are being persecuted today in hostile territory, plus the people in North Korea because who knows how much access they have to the Word of Truth?!
Wanted to thank everyone for the great responses...and say you’ve restored my faith in the ability of Christians to at least debate the issue! When I called some churches at the beginning of the Concord-Washington standoff, around 2006...none even returned my calls.
My heart really goes out to the gentleman with the oxygen tank who quit going to church :(
I quit too and it makes me sad that I haven’t done as good a job as he suggested we should do...of visiting shut-ins like my grandad used to...
Sounds like a 7th century backwards religeous figure, all right. Peep this out and see if you concur:
http://yourarmstoisrael.org/Articles_new/articles/PDFs/The%20Final%20End%20Time%20Beast%20-BYSW%20Conference%202006.pdf
Communications techs in my highly classified Navy Crypto Communications job.
Alamo-Girl; provided this wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
There have been abundant souces in the years since—confirming what I was told in my work.
Reportedly, there’s even a machine which can read snail mail without opening it. Plausible. Get the carbon ink atoms to give off a certain wave detectable and unfoldable by computer . . . voila.
And still folks stick their heads in the sand and disbelieve any such. Cosnervative folks who ought to be in the vanguard of preparing, at least. Sigh.
If the mark is coming, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that it will be an American thing.
Trouble with most end-times jibberish is that most of it is America-centric, as is much of modern day fundamentalism.
RealID is for the US...if it’s the Mark of the Beast then the Chinese won’t have it, Europeans won’t have it, nor any other countries.
I’m glad the information was helpful to you, dear brother in Christ!
Have you lived overseas AT ALL?
Your assertions are . . . thoroughly unaware . . . at best . . . putting it exceedingly charitably.
1. Mexico’s chief bureaucrats have been chipped.
2. More than a decade ago Taiwan’s Nobel Laureate nixed combining all their aministrivia info into one National ID card—a precurssor to the chipped version.
3. China may well lag behind in getting all the street vendors online . . . but they are proudly implementing all the debit/credit card and other INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM setups and systems that EVERY INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY has already implemented.
Which part of GLOBAL WORLD GOVERNMENT in the works for AT LEAST the last 50+ years is hard to understand?
Basically, your assertions are 100%
WRONG.
Then again there is that little issue of the Israelite nation, that just doesn't seem to fit so quaintly into this naive notion that the Great Tribulation and Millennium have already commenced or transpired.Until one grasps the significance of pretrib, premil, eschatology in the History of mankind and the dispensations, one doesn't fully fathom or appreciate human and Divine history. One reason it is so attacked in public is that such attacks discourage those in faith with Him to persevere to be in the right place at the right time to fulfill His Plan in even the smallest of aspects.
Concerning Psalm 50:10, you have to remember that it IS a song. Songs can reveal great insights, but often use poetical and figurative language.
Psa 50:10 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
Now in English, that's not very poetical. But in Hebrew, it talks about cattle upon "aleph" hills, or mountains. Now aleph can mean a thousand, but it can also mean:
From H502; a family; also (from the sense of yoking or taming) an ox or cow: - family, kine, oxen.
So it's a clever little word play, a poem, that conveys God's power and dominion.
But Revelation 20 is something different indeed:
Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
Revelation is SPECIFICALLY written to show us, his servants, what must come to pass. It's meant to reveal things. It's not meant to generalize. In the case of Revelation 20, Christ was VERY specific LOTS OF TIMES in a short space:
Rev 20:2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
Rev 20:3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
Why not just say an "Age" or "a space of time"? Continuing:
Rev 20:4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
Rev 20:5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
Rev 20:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
Rev 20:7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
Christ uses the specific number "a thousand" 6 times in 6 consecutive verses. It's as if he wanted us to REALLY understand something here. I don't think it's wise to take a Revelation from the Lord that is very specific and meant to reveal information and decide based on a poem that it's a general statement of an unspecified time.
So does apocalyptic and prophetic passages. It's the nature of the genre. Just look at all the other dozens of images in Revelation and the OT prophets.
But Revelation 20 is something different indeed:
No, not really. There are images like chains and thrones. They are not real, literal items. (Can Satan, a spirit being, really be held with a literal chain?) And so the phrase "a thousand years" is a also an image speaking of a perfect length of time which is known only to the Father.
Christ uses the specific number "a thousand" 6 times in 6 consecutive verses. It's as if he wanted us to REALLY understand something here.
Indeed, but that does not mean we have to assign an literal understanding to the text. That assumption that it must be a literal number is not supported from the rest of Revelation or the NT.
I appreciate your zeal for the truth, I just think your conclusions are wrong.
1. It is prophesied, therefore there is no stopping it.
2. To fight against it is to fight against the revealed Word of God.
3. To assist it, of course, is to assist evil. OTOH, assisting precursor elements is neither evil nor “imminentizing the eschaton”, which is an impossibility; we cannot either accelerate nor delay the outworking of the Divine Plan.
4. In my Pre-Trib eschatology, which I believe to be clearly stated in scripture, Church Age Christians will not be present when the actual Mark is made policy.
5. To be aware is wise; to be worried is to lack faith; to try to stop it is arrogance.
“..Until one grasps the significance of pretrib, premil, eschatology in the History of mankind and the dispensations, one doesn’t fully fathom or appreciate human and Divine history. One reason it is so attacked in public is that such attacks discourage those in faith with Him to persevere to be in the right place at the right time to fulfill His Plan in even the smallest of aspects.” ~ Cvengr
The better reason to “attack” it, as you put it, is because it’s a HOAX.
But I get it. You embrace a particular “end-times GRID” you were taught, can “prove it from the Bible” the way you were taught to “prove it”, and aren’t about to give it up.
How could you? You have it all figured out, wrapped it in a nice neat package, and tied it up with a neat bow, never to be re-opened and inspected again.
I understand.
It’s waaaaaaaaaaay too scary to you to have to re-think all that stuff. The ramifications of admitting (to family, friends, preacher, church, etc.) that you made a mistake and had bought into a HOAX are endless.
But you did.
It originated with the bizarre voices Cerinthus heard in his head, and various versions of it have had several short-lived revivals down through history. The latest version of it was Darby’s - which he brought to the USA in the 1800’s -where it wound up being indoctrinated mainly into the students who attended Dallas Seminary.
Cerinthus (contemporary of the Apostle John) combined Gnostic views (separating the earthly Jesus who was the son of Joseph and Mary from the heavenly Christ) with the views of the Judaizers. Cerinthus was also a millennealist (also known as chiliasm).
Caius, in The Disputation attributed to him, writes respecting him: ‘But Cerinthus, by means of revelations which he pretended as if they were showed him by angels, asserting, that after the resurrection there would be an earthly kingdom of Christ, and that flesh, i.e. men, again inhabiting Jerusalem, would be subject to desires and pleasures. Being also an enemy to the divine scriptures, with a view to deceive men, he said that there would be a space of a thousand years for celebrating nuptial festivals.’”
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The Great Premillennial HOAX http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/journals/v1.htm
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These ideas are nothing new. The early Christians called them “Chiliasm”. They have been dealt with and dispatched for what they are every time they have reared their heads (in different variations) since the beginning of Church history. In fact, we find Origen himself saying that it was confined to those of the simpler sort. “ (Waddington’s History, pg. 56)
Cerinthus [the heretic] embraced chiliasm, a form of apocalyptic vision that depicted the millennium as a physical and material period.
In North Africa there arose the Donatists, led by Tyconius, who predicted that the world would end in 380 C.E. Augustine, then Bishop of Hippo, took aim at the sect in an effort to disprove what he termed “out-dated and inappropriate dreams of an earthly paradise.” After his death in 430 C.E., a council of church leaders meeting at Ephesus condemned the literalist vision of a physical, worldly millennialist utopia.
Eusebius is one of the early church fathers who most clearly denounces “chiliasm,” as premillennialism was then called. In the same work he writes, “About the same time … appeared Cerinthus, the leader of another Heresy.
Eusebius also writes of a tradition passed down by Polycarp regarding an encounter between the Apostle John and Cerinthus in a public bath, “He [Polycarp] says that John the Apostle once entered a bath to wash; but ascertaining that Cerinthus was within, he leaped out of the place and fled from the door, not enduring to enter under the same roof with him, and exhorting those with him to do the same, saying, ‘Let us flee, lest the bath fall in, as long as Cerinthus, that enemy of the truth is within.’”
Tertullianus is another early church father who attributes chiliasm’s birth to Cerinthus. He writes: “They are not to be heard who assure themselves that there is to be an earthly reign of a thousand years, who think with the heretic Cerinthus. For the Kingdom of Christ is now eternal in the saints, although the glory of the saints shall be manifested after the resurrection.”
http://members.aol.com/twarren19/athacreed.html
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Justin Martyr (A.D.150)
CHAP. XI.WHAT KINGDOM CHRISTIANS LOOK FOR.
“And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses. For if we looked for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ, that we might not be slain; and we should strive to escape detection, that we might obtain what we expect. But since our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men cut us off; since also death is a debt which must at all events be paid.” (First Apology of Justin Martyr, ch. 11)
“Chiliasm found no favor with the best of the Apostolic Fathers... “ (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, v. 25 - 36 ).
Eusebius (A.D.325)
“This same historian (Papias) also gives other accounts, which he says he adds as received by him from unwritten tradition, likewise certain strange parables of our Lord, and of His doctrine and some other matters rather too fabulous. In these he says there would be a certain millennium after the resurrection, and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very earth; which things he appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they propounded mystically in their representations. For he was very limited in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; yet he was the cause why most of the ecclesiastical writers, urging the antiquity of man, were carried away by a similar opinion; as, for instance, Irenaeus, or any other that adopted such sentiments. (Book III, Ch. 39)
Epiphanes (315-403)
“There is indeed a millennium mentioned by St.John; but the most, and those pious men, look upon those words as true indeed, but to be taken in a spiritual sense.” (Heresies, 77:26.)
The belief in the millennium was condemned as superstitious at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Epiphanes (315-403)
“There is indeed a millennium mentioned by St.John; but the most, and those pious men, look upon those words as true indeed, but to be taken in a spiritual sense.” (Heresies, 77:26.)
The belief in the millennium was condemned as superstitious at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
“This obscure doctrine [Chiliasm] was probabally known to but very few except the fathers of the church, and is very sparingly mentioned by them during the first centuries; and there is reason to believe that it scarcely attained much notoriety, even among the learned Christians, until it was made a matter of controversy by Origen, and then rejected by the greater majority. In fact, we find Origen himself saying that it was confined to those of the simpler sort. “ (Waddington’s History, pg. 56)
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A field guide to Heresies: http://kevin.davnet.org/articles/heresy.html
Ebionism
Ebionites considered Christianity as a sect of Judaism. The believed the Jesus was a mere man of exceptional righteousness and a superior endowment of the Spirit which came upon him at his baptism. Some Ebionites accepted, and some rejected, the supernatural conception of Christ. Ebionites were among the Judaizers who attempted to impose the Law of Moses upon Christians. Ebionites were millenialiststhose who believe in a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on Earth.
The System of Cerinthus
Cerinthus (contemporary of the Apostle John) combined Gnostic views (separating the earthly Jesus who was the son of Joseph and Mary from the heavenly Christ) with the views of the Judaizers. Cerinthus was also a millennealist (also known as chiliasm).
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The Location of Christ’s Reign (D D Warren)
http://www.tektonics.org/esch/ddwplace.html
I am a fully recovered former premillennial, pretribulational, futurist. It is now amazing to me how easily I see the wealth of passages that utterly defeat those earlier much-cherished eschatological doctrines. That being said, I do not believe for a second that other people hold them because they are unintelligent and do not love the Word of God because I once zealously held them myself….. but I do remember that once I started taking a look at certain passages without the grid I was so carefully taught, the scaffolding just fell away. Now while I didn’t receive the particular insight that I am now going to share in those earlier days, I am hoping that this may be used to open the eyes of others to consider the possibility that the idea that Jesus is going to return to set up a thousand year Kingdom and rule from a physical throne in physical Jerusalem is simply not Biblical.
[snip]
Eschatology Series: http://www.tektonics.org/esch/eschatology.html
Today we live in the Church Age, but that age does not continue forever. His Prophecy, when fulfilled, is fulfilled quite literally.
Nobody loses anything by our Lord sitting on the throne for the Millennium, but many who reject the literal interpretation succumb to an inadequate eschatology regarding the angelic conflict and human history.
That's a different issue. Look at all the OT and NT passages that refer to a number of years. There are very very few passages in which they are referring to anything BUT a specific number of years.
But Revelation 20 is something different indeed: No, not really. There are images like chains and thrones. They are not real, literal items. (Can Satan, a spirit being, really be held with a literal chain?) And so the phrase "a thousand years" is a also an image speaking of a perfect length of time which is known only to the Father.
I realize that's your supposition, but absent any evidence to the contrary and considering the specificity and repetition of "a thousand years" and that Revelation is meant to reveal information, again I think it wise to consider it really means a thousand years.
"..St. Augustine ..... explained the millennium allegorically and applied it to the Church of Christ on earth. With the foundation of the Church the millennium began. The first resurrection is the spiritual resurrection of the soul from sin (De Civ. Dei Lib. XX). Thus the number 1,000 is to be taken indefinitely. ..."
Actually, it is not. The book of Revelation is self-described as "signifying" the testimony of Jesus Christ as to things which must "shortly come to pass". (cf. 1:1,3; 21:6,10).
There are all kinds of images that represent "real" things, whether physical or spiritual. E.g., the beast from the sea or the great harlot or the chain that is used to bind Satan. These are all pictures meant to represent something using suitable prophetic/apocalyptic language suited to John’s experience.
The question we must answer satisfactorily; when we see nice large, round numbers in such a setting, are we to take them "literally" or are they best interpreted as representative images just like the other images in Revelation?
that Revelation is meant to reveal information
In my estimation the most consistent interpretation is the one that sees the phrase "a thousand years" as a representative symbol for the entire time period between "the first resurrection" and the final release of Satan and great apostasy just before Jesus’ second coming. There is no denying that this understanding reveals a great deal of information, especially to the readers in the 1st century to whom it was addressed.
Glad you bring up this fascinating subject!
I have researched the Bible much, used to teach Amazing prophecies of the Bible & world events. One time I had in my audience Congressman, politicians, leaders, and by the end of my presentation, they were awestruck at the accuracy of the Bible on world events.
which could be an 18 digit code, enough to go around so every one in the world will have a unique ID number.
6 is number of man, 3 is number of God. A super man who wants to & claim to be God! He will betray Israel, and Obama will betray Israel.
It will be invisibly or laser tattooed on the forehead or hand of every one, to show allegiance to the leader of the New World Order, One World government!
I understand there is a company in Mountain View, Ca. which already has this working technology. You could go to Lucky or any store & the beam will shine on the area with number, immediately money will be transacted for whatever you just purchased! People will love it!
The rationale of having a number:
Imagine no need to carry credit cared, cash, behold a cashless society! No more credit card fraud. No worry in case your child is missing. Claim that you can track down terrorists, etc.
The rational will be accepted & welcomed by the SHEEPLE!
I have some reservation that Obama is the AntiChrist, like some people claim. I could be wrong. They both are great orators, and deceivers. They both WOW the world is frightening! I got to admit Obama is the CLOSEST world figure which resembles the description of the biblical Anti-Christ. He is a CLEAR, great example or a type of the future Anti-Christ (false Christ), the way he could sway & mesmerizes the masses, conditioning them to accept change.
Study Revelation chapter 13, near the end.
I believe the Anti-Christ is already in the world, someday this true Anti-Christ will sway masses to take the number 666, I have a ton to tell you!
Then he will have the support of a one World Church. I used to lecture much in this, all moving along rapidly.
Here we have the rise and return of J. C. the second! not Jesus Christ, but Jimmy Carter! LOL
My best research is done on the identity of political Babylon in Revelation chapter 18. Read it & guess which major city in the world fit best this description of a prosperous and city, with a sea port, center of commerce, etc.
I could only think of one city. Babylon will be kind of the center of the seat of power of the Anti-Christ domain.
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