The Not So Secret Rapture

reformed.org ^ | W. Fred Rice

[topcat54]

Evangelical book catalogs promote books such as Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, The Great Escape, and the Left Behind series. Bumper stickers warn us that the vehicle’s occupants may disappear at any moment. It is clear that there is a preoccupation with the idea of a secret rapture. Perhaps this has become more pronounced recently due to the expectation of a new millennium and the fears regarding potential Y2K problems. Perhaps psychologically people are especially receptive to the idea of an imminent, secret rapture at the present time. Additionally, many Christians are not aware that any other position relative to the second coming of Jesus Christ exists. Even in Reformed circles there are numerous people reading these books. Many of these people are unaware that this viewpoint conflicts with Scripture and Reformed Theology.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Can a blind man see? Can a fallen sinner choose to be righteous?

I don't think he can unless the Holy Spirit first regenerates his heart and mind and spirit to know the things of God, to repent, obey and believe.

"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) ...

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Not of works, lest any man should boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." -- Ephesians 2:8-10

Paul says Christ saved us not after we had the good sense to choose wisely, but "while we were dead in sins."

The fact that free grace saved us without our contribution is so important to Paul he states it twice within a span of two verses.

I've enjoyed our conversation. I'll have to continue it tomorrow because I'm sleepy and it's past my bedtime. Good night, caww. God bless.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Thanks.

http://www.opc.org

[Dr. Eckleburg]

For those who can read for themselves...

DOUBLE OR NOTHING: MARTIN LUTHER'S DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION

And, for your further reading pleasure (assuming, you know, that you read...)

"I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want 'free-will' to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my 'free-will' (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms no man could be saved) ; but because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God, Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt' as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more. The experience of all who seek righteousness by works proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfort¬able certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. `No one,´ He says, `shall pluck them out of my hand, because my Father which gave them me is greater than all´ (John 10.28-29). Thus it is that, if not all, yet some, indeed many, are saved; whereas, by the power of ´free-will´ none at all could be saved, but every one of us would perish.

"Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God." -- Martin Luther, "Bondage of the Will" -- (xviii) Of the comfort of knowing that salvation does not depend on free-will' (783)

[Cronos]

Ok, I’m tired of your lying about “lifting lines” again. Prove it, or stop lying. I’m copying the RM on this — Dr. E’s post is a second deliberate personal attack on this thread.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Anyone can put in whole paragraphs you post and they come up on Roman Catholic websites and sometimes even Protestant sites.

It’s even possible to see where you sometimes moves a word around here and there, to thwart google’s detection.

We all can see this is a habit of yours. We’re not blind. If you don’t want to be known as someone who lifts other people’s work without attribution, don’t keep doing it.

As an added bonus, we won’t have a repeat of all those many posts of yours that were pulled which copied other people’s work.

[Cvengr]

I forgot about Tony. Great quote.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Try attributing authorship to the writer of a work you’re lifting sentences and paragraphs from, like this one...

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm

(”The idea that a person can be predestined to come to God yet not be predestined to stay the course may be new to Calvinists and may sound strange to them, but it did not sound strange to Augustine, Aquinas, or even Luther. Calvinists frequently cite these men as “Calvinists before Calvin.” While they did hold high views of predestination, they did not draw Calvin’s inference that all who are ever saved are predestined to remain in grace.”)

Which is quite similar to your post 2700...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2657209/posts?page=2700#2700

(”The idea that a person can be predestined to come to God yet not be predestined to stay the course may be new to Calvinists and may sound strange to them, but it did not sound strange to Augustine, he did not draw Calvin’s inference that all who are ever saved are predestined to remain in grace.”)

As we all can see, all you did was delete a line in the middle of the paragraph.

Follow the rules. They benefit all of us.

[Cronos]

And yet, 0 does represent, basically, nothing! That's the Hindu concept of destruction of maya and a return to Ishwara.

Ok, let me try and explain what Hindu thought is -- badly, as I can't remember all the terminologies used.

Do note one thing -- Hinduism is not some primitive belief with no philosophy or just worshipping stones. They have a rich mythology and they have literally multiple philosophies -- some like the Tantrics believe in 'black magic', while some like the Arya Samaj reject all depictions of god and only worship "Ishwara" -- their temples are basically meeting halls. Some Hindus worship certain gods for their aspects, some hindus like Vaishnavites worship only Vishnu or his avatars, others, the Shaivites worship only Shiva, the god of destruction. Some Hindus believe there is only one god, Ishwara or Vishnu or Shiva etc., others believe in a pantheon, others are practically atheistic, others are animists. In short, this is a deep and varied META-religion or umbrella term for multiple religions and my explanation will NOT do justice to it.

In some Hindu thoughts -- especially the Brahminical Vaishnavite, the entire universe is believed to have been created by a High God, Ishwara, who created Brahma and Vishnu, while Shiva was an emanation of Ishwara.

Brahma woke up and created the universe (and then basically he leaves it -- so the idea of the impersonal creator deity).

The universe goes through 4 yugas (or ages). In the first yuga, Satya (or truth) all beings are good. in the second most are good. in the third, the bad predominate. in the fourth (Kali-yuga -- I don't know what Kali means) most are evil.

Each yuga lasts millions of years (the Hindu counting of ages is literally mind-boggling. Satya yuga is 1,728,000 years and the others I can't remember (1728 is close to the square of 42 which is interesting to a Douglas Adam's fan)

Now note this -- at the end of Kali yuga, the universe is completely destroyed and re-absorbed into Brahma. BUT THEN HE goes to sleep and when he wakes up the next Brahma-day, He RE-CREATES the universe and the cycle starts again.

Brahma lives for 100 of his years, re-creating and absorbing the universe over and over again and at the end of this time, he himself is absorbed into Ishwara and the multiverse comes to an end.

Now, I've never been able to understand one thing, why Hindus don't worship Brahma except to invoke him at the start of a yagna.

Vishnu gets more "respect", but then only as one of his 10 avatars -- Ram and Krishna being the most famous, but also others like Narasimha. This story (of Narasimha) is interesting. It seems there was once a rakshasa (Asura or demon or evil figure) who meditated for centuries to Brahma. And Brahma was pleased and came to meet the Rakshasa and said "what boon can I give you" (on an aside, Brahma always seems to be giving stupid boons like this, giving powers to demons!).

And the demon says "ok, make me immortal". Brahma may be stupid, but he ain't dumb, so he says "nope". But then the demon says "ok, then let me live forever and let no one be able to kill me neither man nor beast, no one can kill me at day or night or inside or outside and let no weapon be able to kill me." and Brahma being the idiot grants this and leaves the mess for others to clear up.

So, the rakshasa goes about doing his bad things, invades the world of the gods, terrorises them and so the gods pray to Vishnu who incarnates as Narasimha, half-man, half-lion. This Narasimha then takes the demon at twilight (not day nor night) and puts him across his knees over the threshold (neither inside nor outside) and then carves him open with his claws (no weapon)!

Anyway, I digress -- 0 does mean nothing. it is not a place marker. The place marker is the decimal point (another invention by Indians)

[kosta50]

If a man commits murder and never repents, he wasn't saved in the first place

So, then, his salvation depends on works (repentance)?

[Cronos]

Actually, I’m not lifting sentences — so stop lying.

[Cronos]

you're welcome

OrthodoPresbyterianC doctrine

Catholic doctrine

It will be noted that the Confession sharply contradicts the view popularized today by the neo-Pentecostal movement. In essence this view would have us believe that we can have the same charismatic gifts that we read about in the age of the Apostles - such as prophecy, speaking in tongues, and healing - today. This is a very serious error. In essence it is a result of a failure to grasp the Biblical teaching concerning the history of salvation. Never again will there be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such as took place on the day of Pentecost. The sending of the Holy Spirit is just as much an unrepeatable event as the birth of Christ was.

Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53    Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church

[Cronos]

how about some more OPC beliefs like this is from the OPC Q&A site

Never again will there be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such as took place on the day of Pentecost.

The sending of the Holy Spirit is just as much an unrepeatable event as the birth of Christ was.

[Cronos]

I got this from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

The word "zero" came via French zéro from Venetian zero, which (together with cipher) came via Italian zefiro from Arabic صفر, ṣafira = "it was empty", ṣifr = "zero", "nothing"

I didn't know this route! The Indic word for this is shunya meaning nothingNESS.

In fact, here are the numeric systems that I know of (if you know Greek or Arabic, you can fill in the gaps!). Pardon the spellings as I can't remember my german spellings very well and the hindi ones are transliterated from Devanagari to Latin script

Hindi	Polish	French	German	English
Ek	Jeden	Un	Eins	One
Don	Dwa	Deux	Zwei	Two
Teen	Trzy	Trios	Drei	Three
Char	Cztery	Quatre	Vier	Four
Panch	Pięć	Cinq	Funf	Five
Che	Sześć	Six	Secz	Six
Saat	Siedem	Sept	Sieben	Seven
Aat	Osiem	Huit	Acht	Eight
Nau	Dziewięć	Neuf	Neun	Nine
Dus	Dziesięć	dix	zehng	Ten

Now Hindi is of course from the Indic family tree with some mixture of Iranic (Farsi), Polish is a slavic tongue (and closer to Indo-Irani than to Germanic/Celtic/Latin), French is a Romance tongue, GErman and ENglish are both Germanic languages.

Ok, English is actually the b****** child of Germanic and French and that's apparent even in the number systems -- Un, One and Zehn, Ten.

On a side-note, the English language's mixture of Anglo-SAxon and French is apparent in food too -- the rich ate beef, i.e. boeuf (French for cow) and the poor ate cow! Ditto for Mutton (Mouton) and the poor ate sheep

[Cronos]

ok, that's jumping from numerics to linguistics. Yet, I see this all being connected: numerics, linguistics, ethnic, cultures, religion, environment. Because the Hindus had a religion that dealt with trying to figure out how things got created and how the created got created, they had to have numbers, high numbers, numbers that described shunya (nothing). Because their maths was so advanced, they had to have a language that was mathematically precise, so they refined Sanskrit from prakrit. Because their language was so mathematically precise, their religion had to have numeric details, and so on and so forth in a big circle.

The Hindu meta-religion arises from the richness of the Indian gangetic valley -- lots of vegetarian food, so increasing the push towards vegetarianism, then merging this with all of the various local gods etc.

[HossB86]

“Yup. Just like a bug hitting the windshield.”

Well, some days RCs are the bugs, and some days they’re not the windshield.

Them’s the breaks (as they say).....

Hoss

[HossB86]

“Well, if you jettison your Bible completely, since it is a Catholic document, I’ll agree that it would make life easier for those of us who try to counter heresies.”

Oh. You mean like the heretical statement that Scripture is a “Catholic document”?

Clue for you: it’s God’s word.

Bug, meet windshield. Again.

Hoss

[Cronos]

And yet Aristotle argued for a first uncaused cause as the "prime mover" of the universe. Because this cause is "uncaused" in principle, it cannot arise from a purely natural source; i.e., a spatio-temporal one rising from "inside" the system of nature -- I'm a bit confused about the Jain concept -- I know it has no creator deity, but I think they believe that the universe just always WAS and was not created. Aristotle's rules hold true to Newton's first law (we all build on the shoulders of giants before us).

I agree with you -- that the structure of the universe to me too appears as to not be a natural development. If I put my engineering hat on, I don't see why Aristotle came up with the idea of a purpose for causation.

You are correct that natural, systematic, experimental, inductive sciences are purely Western in origin -- one of the advantages of the Western school is that it separated math and science from religion. The problem with cosmologists is that they try to bring religion into science -- to arrive at some conclusion about the birth of the universe is not experimental or inductive and though systematic, moves increasingly to conjecture, which is NOT science.

I think it was Aryabhatta who invented the zero

So Geldart's conclusion is Heraclitus not only knew of Advaita-Vedanta thought, but that it was seminal in his own thinking --> I've never read that before, but that opens up a new line of thought. I tend not to dip into the murky waters of philosophy too much, so all I know of Heraclitus' thoughts is through the prism of other writers, so in short, I only know he was a Greek philosopher and founder of Stoicism, the rest is someone else telling me what Heraclitus taught or thought.

Perhaps the key point for differentiating East from West is precisely the separation of math/science from religion. But then Pythagorus was of the eastern school as his religious group was formed to have the perfection of geometry :). Was Heraclitus able to separate religion from science? If I understand the details of Stoicism, which I don't :-P, then no.

But Newton definitely had that separation and also the medieval monk-scientists (mostly herbologists)IMHO

[Cronos]

One thing that puzzles me is the Jewish concept of Hell, demons, angels isn't really well defined until after the Exile, i.e. after the exposure to Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism has this clarification that it has TWO prime movers -- a good and a bad god so to speak.

[Cronos]

being a bit contrary — is it fair to call Marx in that lot. At the end he was a philosopher and a lot of what we consider communism isn’t pure communism (which is probably best described in the Kibbutz system in Israel) — yes, Marx’s followers were undoubtedly evil, but on reading Das Kapital, it came across as an economic treatise, with flaws, but not a madman’s work like Mein Kampf.

[Cvengr]

What do you think is God’s concept of Hell?