Posted on 07/22/2017 8:03:00 AM PDT by EliRoom8
This is a well prepared and thoughtful YouTube analysis of the Rev.12 "heavenly sign" connected with 12:4(b) "and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered . . ."
The beginning two verses of this chapter have been covered quite extensively for the last six years. Scottie Clarke using Stellarium in 2011 discovered the constellation alignment. Since then a small portion of the pre-trib rapturists accept it and a larger portion of the dispensationalists don't (reject the interpretation as "date setting.")The Presbyterians and Lutherans (Reformed Theology) pretty much eschew most end-time teaching.
What can explain the peculiar obscuring of this part of the night sky by NASA and Stellarium?
The definite article with apostasia is what clues me in ... the meaning of words change historically. In Paul’s day the word could also mean a departure like a boat going over the horizon when a definite article was used.
>>I wasn’t trying to have a “rap” session on the rapture.<<
A careful analysis involves an exegesis looking into the Koine Greek verb used by Luke at the time. Not many expositors call it “rap” but — obviously — you can call it what you wish.
. . . We then compare Luke’s verb in Acts 1 to John’s verb in Rev 12 and note that the man-cild in the Apocalypse is snatched/rescued while in Luke Christ is leaving on his own timing after his patient exhortation to the disciples.
To further confuse the issue, later in Paul’s ministry, Jews accused him of ‘departing from the faith of Moses’ ... and a form of apostasia is there used.
I don’t care....the KJV said “caught up” other versions used different terms...same thing...The Dragon was gonna eat the kid and God didn’t let him by taking the child...how’s that for vernacular understanding...!
Jesus is God as well who are both one with the Spirit...it wasn’t a matter of Jesus Just deciding to go when he wanted to....he had to Go he said “so the Spirit could come” !
One other thing, if the resurrected Jesus had stayed on the Earth to minister for awhile longer....Satan would have taken another run at him again “in attempt to consume him” perhaps with much more dire consequences...not for the Christ but for the Earth and its peoples. The Spirit had to come, Christ had to go back,,,the Father snatched him, caught him up...how ever you wish to frame it via your own favored bible versions. Indeed, it makes for a much stronger argument that it is the Holy Spirit that acts as “the Restrainer” that keeps the “son of perdition” and his “beast system” from coming into full operation until such time God is ready to do a “red sea” type destruction of evil off the face of the Earth!
The Body pf Christ is the restrainer due to the Holy Spirit in each believer.
Well that is true in the corporate sense of the church...but the Holy Spirit is his own person and “goes where he wills” “like the wind blows” as Jesus said. What was it that kept Satan restrained, thus keeping the son of Perdition in check before there even was a “church” or believers in Christ? That’s why this notion of a “restrainer” I think is a bit more historically complicated than believing it was simply is the influence of Spirit filled believers that keeps the Son of Perdition in check. Something was keeping him in check before Jesus came onto the scene and even when he was, Christ himself said that the spirit of antichrist was already extant in the world. Satan himself made a play for Jesus, tempting him with all the Kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would fall down and worship him.
The Restrainer could be removed yet the Spirit of God could still reside with believers, even if we are not taken off the Earth for a length of time, perhaps even in prep for our rapture, a time of final testing and faith building, a time to become as the church of Philadelphia noted in Revelation.(Our own corporate Gethsamanee, only as the Bible says, we who are alive are raptured to meet him ‘in the middle of the air” to escape those tribulational horrors as Christ promised his elect that they should escape( in Matthew).
Things to ponder, for sure.
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