Posted on 07/14/2021 5:25:10 AM PDT by Cronos
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No sale, Jesuit. Your evasion tactics will not work.
"We cannot allow that every private Priest or member of the Church of Rome should give his own opinions merely as the standard of doctrine. We will have recourse to the oracular response of the Church, and insist that they be represented by themselves—not, however, by private individuals, but by their legal representatives. But, then, there is nothing which they dread so much as the testimony of their own Church. It is like the conscience of the wicked, which is their own worst enemy."
"2. It is a principle aim of all their [Roman Catholic] controvertists to employ every mode of evasion in order to disconcert their opposers. There is even a marked difference between the tone of these Romish Divines who speak dogmatically for the instruction of their own members and that of those who attempt to answer the objections of their antagonists. With the former, all is matter of downright certainty; with the latter, all is doubt, difficulty, subterfuge, and evasion. When the faithful are to be instructed, every Priest becomes the sure depositary of the infallible decisions of an infallible Church; but when Protestants are to be confuted, the declarations of their most illustrious men are of no authority. Councils are discovered to have been but partly approved; Popes did not speak ex cathedra; Cardinals and Bishops are but private Doc- [pg. 38] tors; and who cares for the opinion of an obscure Priest or Friar? Thus nothing is so difficult as to know what the belief of Roman Catholics really is; and when a Protestant adduces their own writers as witnesses, he is frequently told that he is a misrepresenter of their church."
"Source: Rev. Charles Elliott, D. D., Delineation of Roman Catholicism, Volume I, published in New York by G. Lane and P.P. Sandford, 1842, pp. 37-38."
This is true, but the issue is that of being "shaken in mind, or be troubled" by great persecutions because they were told that they would escape this, as if the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, by our gathering together unto him = the day of Christ (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:2) would occur before the manifest revelation of the Man of Sin "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." (2 Thessalonians 2:4)
Sincere believers in the word of God who were wrong about the Rapture can be shaken in mind, and feel that they were lied to and be more easily seduced to fall away. Though there is no real excuse for this, Hymenaeus and Philetus erred in "saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some" (2 Timothy 2:18) which was not good.
I remember reading that before the Boxer rebellion in China many Christians were told that there would be no great persecution until the Lord came, and when the vicious Boxer rebellion came the faith of many simple Christians (who likely had little knowledge of Scripture and depended upon oral teaching) fell away. In contrast, if the pre-Trib rapture does occur then those of faith who were prepared to endure much persecution will be graciously delivered from it in faith.
Think about it, the removal from the hour coming IS The Blessed Hope.
Jesus never taught we wouldn’t be persecuted.
Pre-trib rapture does not preclude persecution which beleivers of all ages face.
I believe that God is going to physically remove His true church before the Great Tribulation just as He’s delivered other believers from widespread judgment of unbelievers in the past, like Noah and the Flood, Israel and the Egyptians, and Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah.
However, He NEVER said that we wouldn’t face persecution nor did He give us any indication of how bad things would get before the rapture and Great Tribulation.
So the problem people had with falling away wasn’t because the rapture was taught but because of conflating the Tribulation with general persecution.
A key to understanding the timing is related to what Paul wrote in 2 Thess 2 regarding the Restrainer. When the Restrainer is taken out of the way the man of sin bursts upon the scene.
And that’s EXACTLY what happened after Western Rome fell.
http://aloha.net/~mikesch/fathers-on-antichrist.htm
No, it was because he rapture was taught as precluding such Great focused intense persecution. Which the Boxer rebellion certainly was.
No, that conclusion does not follow from its premise, for first, the promise "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from [G1537] the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Revelation 3:10) can also be understood as "through" or "in" like as G1537 is used in 2 Corinthians 13:4: "For though he was crucified through [G1537] weakness,"
and "foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through [ [G1537] faith," (Galatians 3:8)
and "the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through [G1537] the abundance of her delicacies." (Revelation 18:3)
"For a friend of mine in [G1537] his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?" (Luke 11:6)
"Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in [G1537] particular." (1 Corinthians 12:27) "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in [G1537] the fire," (Revelation 3:18)
Secondly, since the 14,000 Jewish believers do experience the wrath of the devil (though he is always limited by God) then this shows that believers can experience this. Who "shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." (Daniel 7:25) Rev_18:3
Who are ‘the redeemed in Rev 5?
Is someone else posting threads under your screen name, Cronos? Did you read the article? I'll refresh your memory...the first sentence states:
That's what I'm talking about.
Have you even read the book of Revelation??? There are world-wide calamities that happen during the REAL Tribulation. Just wait, you may even be around to see them for yourself!
I won’t need to splain it to ya on the way up ... so I won’t try again to splain it to ya now. There is a huge diff between the persecution from men and satan’s minions, and the wrath of the Lamb starting with the first seal broken of the seven sealed scroll. There is a ‘trial of belief’ coming upon the whole Earth which God has told us through His word that we are not appointed to endure. Paul affirms it almost as an aside in 1 Thess 1:10, and in Jude that escape is called our blessed hope. Even Peter assumed the blessed hope. These are reasons the doctrine of imminence is supported by scripture.
Really? Why then did he write Gal 3:10:
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”
You know who The Redeemed are, even if you don’t admit it. We are redeemed by the blood of The Christ. WE are the ones John heard singing the new song. Admit that and I will write of the four and twenty elders.
Actually, I have already written a shortr essay on the four and twenty elders. It is one of the essay in my Canvas Buckets manuscript. If you want I can post the essay here. It is just two pages.
Heh, if the Great Tribulation was Nero’s reign, I’m wondering when Christ’s millennial reign was.
Seems we missed it somewhere between then and now.
Besides, I also don’t recall history recording when the mark of the beast on the hand or forehead for buying or selling was implemented.
Or when people were beheaded for not having it.
I guess someone scrubbed the history books, eh?
fb - what is in post #102 is not from any catechism.
The signs are what is in the book of the Apocalypse of John and corroborated by the writings of Josephus, a Jewish writer who fought IN the first Jewish-Roman war.
The signs in the Olivet discourse (Matthew) were fulfilled during the siege of Jerusalem in 67 to 70 AD.
If you read through the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the book of Revelation you will see this clearly that the Olivet discourse talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus was clearly saying “THIS generation will see it” - meaning the generation of 30 AD to 70 AD. And they did see it
English, despite being in origins a Germanic language, took about 60% of its vocabulary from Latin or “modern north-western Latin” i.e. French.
Note that the fact that English borrowed this word has no relevance on the historicity of the 19th century philosophy of the pre-trib rapture.
The word was used in English and Latin long prior. However, it was understood differently, so we need to examine what the church fathers wrote regarding this rapio or raptus: a) what is it, b) when does it occur and c) is it secret or visible.
Church fathers routinely associated the rapture with the physical resurrection of believers following the tribulation, and many see a close connection between the rapture and other eschatological events, such as the final judgment.
Do not impose your modern understanding of rapture on the church fathers: they believed that 1 Thessalonians 4 refers to a rapture in which living Christians will meet Christ in the sky and be transformed. They saw this visible event as closely associated with at least the end of the tribulation and the defeat of the Antichrist, and often the final judgment itself.
Dispensational ideas like a “secret” rapture and significant gap in time between the rapture and final judgment are not expressed by the church fathers. If we wish to say that the church fathers “believed in the rapture,” we must be very careful to specify that we are using rapture in the traditional sense—a taking up, a carrying off—not the dispensational sense.
I would also advise against looking at parallels in words especially in Modern English.
English borrowed and borrows heavily from other languages, but at specific stages in those languages’ evolution. So many times when English uses a “French” word for instance, it uses the Middle French term while French itself evolved to modern French.
French itself is a mix of Latin + Gaulish + Frankenisch (the Germanic language the Franks spoke) -> so you have anomalies in French where it took one word from Latin and uses that as a word while the other Romance languages (Castilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian etc.) took the standard Latin word.
English is like a bastard child of Gallo-French and Saxon merged with Norse, Classical Latin and others. And it’s “mother” - French - itself is a bastard child of Latin + Gaulish + Frankenisch. :)
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