Eschatology

[Anonymous]

Hi PolyDoc,

I've studied the nature of time for the past 30-odd years. Part of that study was determining what time seems to be according to physics. For that reason, I have corresponded with one of the foremost modern physicists who deal with the issue of "time" itself.

I've also considered how Scripture presents time.

The typical belief is that time is something roughly like a 4D "film" which God can "see" from the outside. Thus, the past and future are complete in God's "metatime". This is the old deterministic Universe belief.

Last century physicists determined that the Universe was anything but deterministic. Instead, the Universe appears to be indeterminate. The future is determined at every quantum point. Nevertheless, many physicists still believed in the possibility of traveling in time to the past.

I believe that the reality is that time is an illusion. Rather than the passage of time, all we are seeing is change. The past exists only as a memory and the future hasn't occurred yet, because the future changes have not taken place. Time travel to the past is impossible.

This is a logical conclusion based upon modern physics AND Scripture, I believe. A prominent physicist has confirmed the physics of this time theory, and I'm convinced it is the best fit of all the various theories of time. Frankly, it's the only time theory that does not call for conclusions based on empty assumptions about the nature of time.

So, to me, time is nothing but a persistent illusion. All we are seeing is change, and we've conflated it into a fourth dimension to try to explain phenomena that require no fourth dimension, but can be measured simply as "change" or "entropy".

"Time" as a thing doesn't really exist in any meaningful way. What exists is change.

We could discuss this in more depth in another topic, particularly the idea that God "sees" both the beginning and the end.


John for Christ

John_for_Christ said:

I'll just give a hint of my viewpoint...does time really exist in any meaningful way?

Time, just like matter and energy (which Einstein showed to be the same) and space, are all part of God's creation. That is why God can see both the beginning and the end.

An analogy might be an ant walking on a picnic table. We can see where that ant is headed - towards danger, or towards food - but the ant can see only some fraction of an inch around itself. We could pick up the ant and deposit it in a jar of honey or a jar of acid, depending on which direction the ant was headed when we decided that it's "picnic table life" was over. (Very crude analogy, to be sure...)

Scientists talk about the universe being made up of "space-time-matter." This temple of clay that houses my soul and spirit is part of this universe. When a person dies, he leaves this "space-time-matter" that we call the universe. So time exists only for those of us presently confined to "space-time-matter."

And one more point...unless we can find something in the Bible which, using proper hermeneutics and exegesis, would prove all this, it should not be made into a doctrine. It's what John Whitten might call "recess for theologians."

My salvation is by grace through faith, and as you pointed out, does not depend on any doctrine of any church. It also for sure does not depend on this "recess for theologians" stuff!

Maybe there should be a separate thread for this one?

 

[Dr. K.R. Allen]

Futurists see "coming quickly" and "the time is at hand" as something other than their normal and common meaning.....so many futurist interpretations....

Ok I'll call you bluff on this one :lol:

Quote for me any recognized or credible scholar who is a dispensational premillennial futurist who rejects the idea of imminence? Please, do point this out to me....book, article, name, etc. I'm curious as to what futurist in that persuasion would alter the meanings of that. To date I can't think of any futurists from that camp who interprets "coming quickly" and "the time is at hand" to mean anything other than Christ's return will be instantaneous and that the kingdom was indeed at hand when Christ was present here on earth offering the kingdom.

So please do show me any of the futurists there who would reject that.

Also, the idea of there being many futurists opinions is really a dishonest or inaccurate or misleading statement that does not see the holistic picture, however you want to take that. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as I believe you are indeed honest and thus consider it just an exaggeration or unsubstantiated statement.

All of the futurists have tons more in common than the preterists. Even preterists I have studied under in seminaries admit this. For example, all futurists agree that the last half of Ezekiel's vision and prophecy of a literal temple being in Jerusalem will be there. They commonly agree the temple will exist on the earthly land. All futurists agree that the Daniel seventy sevens has one heptad/seven still to go. They believe the first 69 sevens were fulfilled literally and that the last seven will be as well. All futurists believe in the literal, physical, return of Christ to rule and reign as King over the earth. All futurists believe there will be severe, intense, and physical judgments poured out on the earth in the future as Revelation 6-19 spells out. All futurists believe in some type of ethnic restoration for Israel, even many of the covenant non-dispensational premill's, and especially for the dispensational premills. All futurists agree in a literal new heaven and new earth to come after the earthly kingdom of Christ.All futurists believe that there is a literal, actual, physical place called hell and heaven. All futurists believe there will be a future Great white throne judgment. All futurists believe that there will come a time when Satan is bound and is not free to roam the earth. All futurists believe we should interpret the Bible with the same hermeneutic from Genesis to Revelation. I could go on and list many more areas where there is much more agreement than disagreement.

But when I examine the commentaries of the amills and the preterists they all have different ways of handling the last half of Ezekiel's prophecy. All of the texts that speak of the temple with it specific size and measurements have no unified standard by either the amills or the preterists. What is even worse than them differing among themselves and even with each other (amills vs the preterists) is that most of them accept the first half of Ezekiel's in its literal, normal, and plain meaning. Yet when it comes to the future predictions there interpretations vary from scholar to scholar. To me Pastor's John's point is on target when I examine the various writers on this. They differ on how to define the new heaven and new earth. They differ on how to interpret and apply the sevent sevens of Daniel 9. They differ on how to define the present kingdom. They differ on how to interpret the passages that speak of people still dying in the kingdom. They differ on how to interpret the statements about Christ's feet actually standing on the mount of olives when he returns. They differ on how to define Israel and how she fits into the overall plan. They often do come together long enough to deny the standard futurists views but then after that there is not much unity beyond that.

About all I can find with uniformity among preterists is the simple denial of anything future and especially in regard to Israel and her promises as specified in the Biblical promise portions to them. But the specifics as to where, when, and how the prophecies were fulfilled range from one interpreter to the next with no clear standard as to how they arrive to their positions. Sproul differs from Gentry, and Hanegraff differs from Sproul and on and on and on we go with various variations among themselves.

Thus it seems to me that though there is some variation to minor specifics among the futurists, the vast majority of them agree on the major texts and the major points that arise from their independent interpretations of the text. For example, Walvoord and Ryrie differed on how long is the great tribulation. One said 3.5 years the other said 7 years. But they both agreed there was a clear teaching of a future tribulation to come. Some futurists differ over what or how we should view the sacrifices in the Kingdom to come but they still agree those will be there as spelledout by Ezekiel's prophecies because they apply a the same rule of interpretation to those words in the text and thus arrive at very similar conclusions but differ on what the physical reality of that will mean. Thus they have much more unity than what you seem to be willing to admit. Many examples like this abound among the futurists. They differ in minor scale whereas among the preterists I find a major difference in major and long passages of Scripture (for example again with Ezekiel's last half of the book).

Preterists from my reading in their commentaries cannot line up with each other very well in many of the major areas. Even one of my preterist profs in seminary even taught me and he said that the wide diversity of preterism and their views make it hard for people to figure out how each person could come to such widely differently conclusions. He realized this was a clear problem among his own theological persuasion. In turn he further even admitted that there was a clear uniformity among the futurists that was lacking in his own persuasion of thought. I offered to him a solution to that, which was to reject Augustine's and Origen's new hermeneutic which said we can change rules for prophetic interpretation over that of other portions of texts. Prime case in point was when he and I discussed Ezekiel. He used a historical grammatical hermeneutic for the first half of Ezekiel's book but then adopted a different hermeneutic for the last half of the book. I shared with him if he would go back to the Antiochean school of interpretation instead of the allegorical standard of interpretation popularized by Origen and Augustine for prophecy texts that he would wind up with a uniform view. He admitted this would indeed lead to a futurist viewpoint.

Even the old time scholar Dr. Oswald T. Allis admitted such as well. He openly said, if you interpret the Bible literally with a historical grammatical hermeneutic then you wind up with a future, literal, physical, earthly kingdom where Christ physically and literally returns to this earth to set up a throne in Jerusalem where he rules as king of the nations.

So why did Dr. Allis not believe that? Because he adopted a different set of rules for some portions of the Bible such as prophecy.

But oddly enough, the predictions of Christ's first coming were not treated that way by him. Thank God they were not!

And there is again another flaw to preterism as I see it. If we applied their rules of interpretation to the OT prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah we would not have to believe a literal first coming of Christ either. We could write off the first coming as a metaphor as well. But, thank God, at least for today, most preterists, all of the ones I know, do indeed believe the first prophecies for Christ's coming to earth the first time were and are to be interpreted by the standard rules of historical grammatical interpretation so they arrive at Evangelical conclusions that Christ did literally arrive as precisely predicted. But the standard used by preterists today, if applied back to the first coming texts, would destroy the very essence of Christ's literal first coming as the God-Man. Just as the new earth and new heavens and his physical earthly descent to rule and reign can be seen as metaphorical so could have been his first coming as well.

Thus, I wish preterists would use that same standard to Christ's first coming prophecy passages as they do with his second coming prophecy passages. I cannot find any reason that justifies such a change in their hermeneutic. What authorizes one to interpret the first coming texts one way and then change gears to interpret second coming texts in another way?

As I noted in an earlier post, the standard was uniform from the time of the apostles up until Origen and Augustine that there was to be a future restoration of ethnic Israel, a future earthly kingdom, and Christ would literally and physically return to rule over it. That was the consensus until the time of the 400's and then when Rome came to power.

Again, I agree church history cannot be used as the authoritative guide, but I still have not seen an answer as to why it was the norm until the period of the the dark ages and then when people began to reject the methods of Rome the futurist doctrine began to surface again. To me if we examine history that at the least should give us a clue as to directional orientation. It was the metaphorical and allegorical hermeneutic of Origen that paved the way for Rome. Then that hermeneutic locked up all interpretation of the bible to just the priests, cardinals, and popes. Then many doctrines were lost such as salvation by grace through faith, the distinction between the spiritual kingdom rule of the churches and the physical rule of the government with the sword, and many other doctrines.

Could it not be that the allegorical, metaphorical, and non-literal hermeneutic used by Origen and Rome was also the reason to the downfall of the futurist doctrine of a future earthly millennial kingdom where a physical king returned from heaven to physically rule over the earth? if tons of others doctrines which existed in the early 200 or so years of the early churches were lost then why not this one as well?

______

Now, on a separate note, speaking as a staff member, I want to comment everyone thus far for not being mean, ugly, or rude to one another in the comments here in this section. So far the dialog has been respectful as far as I can see.

I hardly ever post on such issues as this and had not planned on saying much of anything here on this one because so often threads like this get ugly with people lashing out at one another and then the threads need to be locked or archived or whatever. So far so good so please if this thread continues let's keep it that way.

Of course I do stand by my assertion that, at least to me, at least in regard to one matter of specifics to time in regard to Christ's coming is not essential. But for me on the other end the hermeneutical methodological shifts do seem to be a bigger issue because according to my studies the metaphorical hermeneutic is what actually led to the demise of the biblical doctrine of what constitutes a biblical union in the early parts of church history.

To me the same methodology of approaching the bible without a historical grammatical hermeneutic led to the demise of the proper understanding of a biblical union as well as the doctrine of salvation as well as the doctrine of the future kingdom to come. To me that is really a more important issue than the debate over the exact time of Christ's descent.

 

[VictorLepanto]

Poeple w/ no concept of salvation history can not hope to interpret the Bible properly.

This is especially true of prophecy.

The prophecies of the Bible are not about sooth saying about the future. They are about holding His people accountable for their failures to live by the Covenant. One need only to now the numerous parallels between the Revelations & the OT prophecies. The prophets were warning the people about how their apostasy would lead them into bondage in Babylon.

The Book of Revelations is about the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem under the Romans.

The Anti-christ is the Emperor Nero. The number 666 is a code for his name. It is based on the tribute Solomon received when his head was turned from God by money, sex & power. God gives Solomon wisdom initially. His great wisdom leads the world to clamor after him. This culminates in the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Then we learn about Solomon receiving the tribute of the of the nations worth 666 talents of gold. The we learn about how the numerous wives of Solomon lead him into idolatry. This is especially true of Pharoah's daughter.

We have this dramatic contrast. The righteous Queen of Sheba is lead to God by Solomon. Solomon is seduced by worldly gain. He then falls into idolatry & he falls from grace.

This is connected to Nero b/c Nero was a fatuous teenage when he became emperor. He didn't care about boring politics, he just wanted to carouse w/ his friends. he allowed his wise tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca to rule in his stead. Gradually Nero pushed Seneca aside when he realized he could use his power for his own indulgence. Thus, 666 symbolizes the passage for just rule to tyranny in both the time of Solomon & Nero.

Nero set in motion the war against the Jews which lead to the destruction of Jerusalem in the time of Nero's successor, Titus.

Nero was the Anti-christ.

 

[Anonymous]

Futurists see "coming quickly" and "the time is at hand" as something other than their normal and common meaning.....so many futurist interpretations....

Ok I'll call you bluff on this one :lol:

Quote for me any recognized or credible scholar who is a dispensational premillennial futurist who rejects the idea of imminence? Please, do point this out to me....book, article, name, etc. I'm curious as to what futurist in that persuasion would alter the meanings of that. To date I can't think of any futurists from that camp who interprets "coming quickly" and "the time is at hand" to mean anything other than Christ's return will be instantaneous and that the kingdom was indeed at hand when Christ was present here on earth offering the kingdom.

So please do show me any of the futurists there who would reject that.

You have misunderstood me. "Coming quickly" and "the time is at hand" have nothing to do with Christ returning instantaneously. I pointed that out in the original message.

The meaning of those phrases are such that they are saying that Jesus is coming shortly after the Revelation was written. That's the common meaning of that phrase in Greek (and English as well), not only in the Bible, but in secular uses of the phrase.

What those phrases do NOT mean is that, when He comes, He will come quickly. That's a terrible perversion of the Greek grammar of those phrases, and a very unnatural interpretation. That interpretation of the futurists came out of an attempt to avoid the plain language of those passages.

Without the phrase "when I come" before "I am coming quickly", it cannot be used in that manner in Greek or English.

Let me give you an example in English. If we were neighbors and you called me up and said "Help! There's a fire at my house," and I said, "I am coming quickly!," you would NOT expect me to wait a week or so, then show up.

On the other hand, given the same scenario, if I instead said, "When I come over, I am coming quickly," you not only wouldn't know when to expect me, but you'd probably think I was a little nuts as well. Yet that is the basic manner in which that phrase would have to be used in Scripture to convey the meaning that when Jesus returns, He will come quickly, in Greek grammar.

That was my only point. The grammar of those phrases DEMAND that they occur back in the 1st century A.D., not in modern times, else those phrases are completely incorrect. Either He returned back in the 1st century, or Scripture is simply wrong on that point. We cannot finagle grammar to make it say what we want it to say.

Here's a challenge: Find one of those phrases "I [or we or whatever fits] am coming quickly" or "it is at hand" used within the Bible OR ancient Greek writings, in which those phrases mean that whenever that person or group comes, they will be coming fast. I'm willing to bet you cannot do so, because the grammar cannot be used that way.

But you also answered my point quite well, by noting that all the futurists (of that particular "camp") do hold to that incorrect grammatical position. That is one of the biggest flaws of futurism. Futurists must twist normal Greek and English grammar to mean something it doesn't, to get away from the very obvious teaching of Scripture that the events of those eschatological passages would occur in a short time from when those texts were written.

In fact, numerous statements in the New Testament tell us that the return of Jesus would occur during the lifetimes of Jesus' disciples and some others alive at that time. There are many time indicators in the New Testament that offer strong evidence that Jesus' return occurred in the 1st century, not in our future.

Also, the idea of there being many futurists opinions is really a dishonest or inaccurate or misleading statement that does not see the holistic picture, however you want to take that. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as I believe you are indeed honest and thus consider it just an exaggeration or unsubstantiated statement.

I was a futurist for the first 30 years of my life. I think I know what I'm saying when I say that no two futurists seem to have the same view of what they believe to be future events. Not only was I a futurist, but I listened daily to many thousands of futurist broadcasts by Hal Lindsay and others, and worked in one of the largest international futurist ministries. I'm very familiar with the number of futurist positions, and I'll stand by my statement that there are many of them.

All of the futurists have tons more in common than the preterists.

I don't know where you get that from. Preterists fall into one of three main "camps": Partial Preterists, Near-Full-Preterists, and Full Preterists. Yes, there are some differences in the details, but the overall belief system is very consistent among Preterists.

(Partial Preterists are not technically preterists at all, but rather a type of futurist that believes that SOME of the prophecies occurred in the past, but the most important ones--like Christ's return--happen in our future.)

Even preterists I have studied under in seminaries admit this. For example, all futurists agree that the last half of Ezekiel's vision and prophecy of a literal temple being in Jerusalem will be there. They commonly agree the temple will exist on the earthly land. All futurists agree that the Daniel seventy sevens has one heptad/seven still to go. They believe the first 69 sevens were fulfilled literally and that the last seven will be as well. All futurists believe in the literal, physical, return of Christ to rule and reign as King over the earth. All futurists believe there will be severe, intense, and physical judgments poured out on the earth in the future as Revelation 6-19 spells out. All futurists believe in some type of ethnic restoration for Israel, even many of the covenant non-dispensational premill's, and especially for the dispensational premills. All futurists agree in a literal new heaven and new earth to come after the earthly kingdom of Christ.All futurists believe that there is a literal, actual, physical place called hell and heaven. All futurists believe there will be a future Great white throne judgment. All futurists believe that there will come a time when Satan is bound and is not free to roam the earth. All futurists believe we should interpret the Bible with the same hermeneutic from Genesis to Revelation. I could go on and list many more areas where there is much more agreement than disagreement.

Not all futurists believe the things you've stated. I've known some that don't believe in a literal Ezekiel's Temple, and other divergences from the examples you've provided.

However, let me offer you a few others...the length of the Tribulation...pre-, post-, or mid-tribbers...the identity of the Antichrist...whether the Antichrist is a group or individual...whether the earth will be destroyed, or remade, or it means something else...whether those eschatological passages will be fulfilled to the Jews, the Christians, or both...whether the locusts from the bottomless pit are helicopters or demons or something else...whether we'll be getting a spiritual or physical "mark of the Beast"...pre-millennialists, post-millennialists, or amillennialists...and so forth. I could go on probably for hours pointing out the incredible number of conflicting beliefs among the futurist camps. The number of possible combinations of just those few various issues staggers the imagination!

If you feel that futurists generally agree, then I think you may not have widened your circle of futurist friends enough.

From what I've seen, Preterists agree on most of the issues, except where there are few records left behind to provide the historical evidence of the fulfillment--yet, that is, since we continually uncover more information from the first century. Also, from the Preterists I've met versus the Futurists I've met, Preterists are far more willing to listen and learn, or agree to disagree, than Futurists are.

But when I examine the commentaries of the amills and the preterists they all have different ways of handling the last half of Ezekiel's prophecy. All of the texts that speak of the temple with it specific size and measurements have no unified standard by either the amills or the preterists. What is even worse than them differing among themselves and even with each other (amills vs the preterists) is that most of them accept the first half of Ezekiel's in its literal, normal, and plain meaning. Yet when it comes to the future predictions there interpretations vary from scholar to scholar. To me Pastor's John's point is on target when I examine the various writers on this. They differ on how to define the new heaven and new earth. They differ on how to interpret and apply the sevent sevens of Daniel 9. They differ on how to define the present kingdom. They differ on how to interpret the passages that speak of people still dying in the kingdom. They differ on how to interpret the statements about Christ's feet actually standing on the mount of olives when he returns. They differ on how to define Israel and how she fits into the overall plan. They often do come together long enough to deny the standard futurists views but then after that there is not much unity beyond that.

From the points you've mentioned, you still indicate way fewer issues between preterists than among futurists. (Incidentally, there are futurist amillennialists and preterist amillennialists. You can't just chuck them in our camp.)

I will agree that there are a small number of people in futurism and preterism that have wildly divergent viewpoints. I'm not talking about those at all. I'm talking about the various major groups of both eschatological positions.

About all I can find with uniformity among preterists is the simple denial of anything future and especially in regard to Israel and her promises as specified in the Biblical promise portions to them. But the specifics as to where, when, and how the prophecies were fulfilled range from one interpreter to the next with no clear standard as to how they arrive to their positions. Sproul differs from Gentry, and Hanegraff differs from Sproul and on and on and on we go with various variations among themselves.

I never denied that they differ. I just pointed out that futurists have a much larger number of "camps" than preterists. Incidentally, the preterists you mentioned differ primarily because Sproul and Hanegraff are futurists that believe in a partial fulfillment of eschatological passages. Of those three, only Gentry is an actual preterist.

The major dividing line between preterism and futurism is when Christ will return. If you see His return in the past, then you are probably a preterist. If in our future, then a futurist.

Thus it seems to me that though there is some variation to minor specifics among the futurists, the vast majority of them agree on the major texts and the major points that arise from their independent interpretations of the text. For example, Walvoord and Ryrie differed on how long is the great tribulation. One said 3.5 years the other said 7 years. But they both agreed there was a clear teaching of a future tribulation to come. Some futurists differ over what or how we should view the sacrifices in the Kingdom to come but they still agree those will be there as spelledout by Ezekiel's prophecies because they apply a the same rule of interpretation to those words in the text and thus arrive at very similar conclusions but differ on what the physical reality of that will mean. Thus they have much more unity than what you seem to be willing to admit. Many examples like this abound among the futurists. They differ in minor scale whereas among the preterists I find a major difference in major and long passages of Scripture (for example again with Ezekiel's last half of the book).

You keep mentioning a passage in Ezekiel. Are you speaking of Ezekiel's vision of a Temple? I wasn't even aware that was viewed as eschatological. Maybe I just ignored it, because it seems I've heard about it, but not too many people make a big deal about it, unless they are futurists.

To be frank, I don't think that Ezekiel's Temple is a real place. It was a metaphorical "perfect" Temple, and God was giving Israel lessons about obedience to Him, not instructions for building another Temple.

Even so, the true Temple is already here--in the Person of Christ and His followers. The Temple is our hearts, and God will never again dwell in a building. That would be completely contrary to all the New Testament has to say.

Preterists from my reading in their commentaries cannot line up with each other very well in many of the major areas. Even one of my preterist profs in seminary even taught me and he said that the wide diversity of preterism and their views make it hard for people to figure out how each person could come to such widely differently conclusions. He realized this was a clear problem among his own theological persuasion. In turn he further even admitted that there was a clear uniformity among the futurists that was lacking in his own persuasion of thought. I offered to him a solution to that, which was to reject Augustine's and Origen's new hermeneutic which said we can change rules for prophetic interpretation over that of other portions of texts. Prime case in point was when he and I discussed Ezekiel. He used a historical grammatical hermeneutic for the first half of Ezekiel's book but then adopted a different hermeneutic for the last half of the book. I shared with him if he would go back to the Antiochean school of interpretation instead of the allegorical standard of interpretation popularized by Origen and Augustine for prophecy texts that he would wind up with a uniform view. He admitted this would indeed lead to a futurist viewpoint.

The proper viewpoint is to view visions and dreams symbolically. They do not contain much if any "reality", but must be interpreted. That was the case throughout the Bible, and consistency would suggest that we follow that when interpreting eschatological passages.

Even the old time scholar Dr. Oswald T. Allis admitted such as well. He openly said, if you interpret the Bible literally with a historical grammatical hermeneutic then you wind up with a future, literal, physical, earthly kingdom where Christ physically and literally returns to this earth to set up a throne in Jerusalem where he rules as king of the nations.

So why did Dr. Allis not believe that? Because he adopted a different set of rules for some portions of the Bible such as prophecy.

But oddly enough, the predictions of Christ's first coming were not treated that way by him. Thank God they were not!

I find all that amusing, because the historical grammatical hermeneutic leads directly to a Preterist conclusion. When we read the immanency passages in the New Testament, it is clear that the writers intended to convey the understanding that Jesus' return would be within that generation--some that were there at that time would see those things come to pass. Matthew 24 is a great example, where the disciples wanted to know when those things would happen, and He answered them in terms that made it clear that they themselves would be involved.

A historical grammatical hermeneutic simply means understanding the Scriptures at the original authors intended them. We can do more debate on this later, because from the historical grammatical point-of-view, futurists slaughter the Biblical texts, and I have plenty of evidence of that.

And there is again another flaw to preterism as I see it. If we applied their rules of interpretation to the OT prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah we would not have to believe a literal first coming of Christ either. We could write off the first coming as a metaphor as well. But, thank God, at least for today, most preterists, all of the ones I know, do indeed believe the first prophecies for Christ's coming to earth the first time were and are to be interpreted by the standard rules of historical grammatical interpretation so they arrive at Evangelical conclusions that Christ did literally arrive as precisely predicted. But the standard used by preterists today, if applied back to the first coming texts, would destroy the very essence of Christ's literal first coming as the God-Man. Just as the new earth and new heavens and his physical earthly descent to rule and reign can be seen as metaphorical so could have been his first coming as well.

I'd love to see some concrete examples of this. I completely disagree with you on this, because I've seen the differences between the practices of futurists and preterists, and futurists rarely interpret the eschatological texts consistently using a historical grammatical method.

Thus, I wish preterists would use that same standard to Christ's first coming prophecy passages as they do with his second coming prophecy passages. I cannot find any reason that justifies such a change in their hermeneutic. What authorizes one to interpret the first coming texts one way and then change gears to interpret second coming texts in another way?

Provide some examples of this. Offer some passages to compare the first and second coming texts, and we'll see if this is so.

As I noted in an earlier post, the standard was uniform from the time of the apostles up until Origen and Augustine that there was to be a future restoration of ethnic Israel, a future earthly kingdom, and Christ would literally and physically return to rule over it. That was the consensus until the time of the 400's and then when Rome came to power.

I disagree. There was a wider difference of opinion than you present. I don't have any particular evidence at the moment, but I can spend some time looking it up.

Again, I agree church history cannot be used as the authoritative guide, but I still have not seen an answer as to why it was the norm until the period of the the dark ages and then when people began to reject the methods of Rome the futurist doctrine began to surface again. To me if we examine history that at the least should give us a clue as to directional orientation. It was the metaphorical and allegorical hermeneutic of Origen that paved the way for Rome. Then that hermeneutic locked up all interpretation of the bible to just the priests, cardinals, and popes. Then many doctrines were lost such as salvation by grace through faith, the distinction between the spiritual kingdom rule of the churches and the physical rule of the government with the sword, and many other doctrines.

I would suggest that it had nothing to do with the church of Rome, as the Roman church has been consistently futurist, not preterist, though some within that "church" have argued for preterism.

If you want to know a possible reason that the early church historians may have looked for a future coming, you need look no further than misinterpretation and a lack of detailed knowledge of the events of 70 A.D. Those events primarily affected the Jewish nation, not the gentiles. As those that would have seen the fulfillment of the signs were either slaughtered or taken away, there was little history to work from until Josephus and some other writers penned it all down.

But that's not a full answer either, as some of the early church fathers believed in a type of partial preterism, and DID recognize the fulfillment of Scripture in the events of 70 A.D.

Could it not be that the allegorical, metaphorical, and non-literal hermeneutic used by Origen and Rome was also the reason to the downfall of the futurist doctrine of a future earthly millennial kingdom where a physical king returned from heaven to physically rule over the earth? if tons of others doctrines which existed in the early 200 or so years of the early churches were lost then why not this one as well?

Allegorical interpretations are part of the historical grammatical method--in their proper place. If the author intended a passage to be allegorical, then that is what the historical grammatical method should discover. The problem is that most futurists apply a literalist method, not a historical grammatical method. They waver back-and-forth in the Revelation, between reality and vision, for no apparent reason, other than it doesn't always fit their viewpoint.

The entire book of Revelation was a vision. However, the first three chapters were a message given in plain speech to be given to the churches. Therefore, that portion is not symbolic, but realistic. Starting at chapter four, EVERYTHING is symbolic but God, Jesus, His messengers, and John himself. We cannot rationally switch tracks in the middle of a vision and go from symbolic to actual and back and forth. Consistency calls for a strictly symbolic interpretation--which favors the Preterist.

Of course I do stand by my assertion that, at least to me, at least in regard to one matter of specifics to time in regard to Christ's coming is not essential. But for me on the other end the hermeneutical methodological shifts do seem to be a bigger issue because according to my studies the metaphorical hermeneutic is what actually led to the demise of the biblical doctrine of what constitutes a biblical union in the early parts of church history.

How so? I'd like to know more about your view on the demise of the Biblical doctrine of what constitutes a Biblical union.

I may be a die-hard Preterist, but I'm always open to learning new things (including about futurism, because if nothing else, it helps me improve my ability to refute it! ;-> ).

To me the same methodology of approaching the bible without a historical grammatical hermeneutic led to the demise of the proper understanding of a biblical union as well as the doctrine of salvation as well as the doctrine of the future kingdom to come. To me that is really a more important issue than the debate over the exact time of Christ's descent.

[/quote]

I'd like to know more about your view on the doctrine of salvation and upon the doctrine of the future kingdom to come (whether that one has to do with futurism or not).

Along those lines, I have a question for you: Do you believe that Christ was speaking of two different kingdoms, an earthly or a heavenly, or a single kingdom that changes aspect from spiritual to physical to spiritual again?

My answer to your last statement is that I believe that there are differences of importance among Biblical doctrines, but that eschatology--if it is indeed Preterist in nature--is very important to an understanding of Scripture and God's nature. Futurist eschatology is also important to a more limited extent in the way it presents God, I suppose. I have no problem agreeing that the doctrine of salvation is more important, and may be close to the most important doctrine for us.


John for Christ

 

[Anonymous]

Poeple w/ no concept of salvation history can not hope to interpret the Bible properly.

This is especially true of prophecy.

The prophecies of the Bible are not about sooth saying about the future. They are about holding His people accountable for their failures to live by the Covenant. One need only to now the numerous parallels between the Revelations & the OT prophecies. The prophets were warning the people about how their apostasy would lead them into bondage in Babylon.

It seems to me though, based upon the fulfilled prophecies, that many prophecies do function to reveal what will happen. Not all prophecies are about the future, of course. Many are not predictive, but are the word of the Lord for that immediate time and situation. However, a lot of those prophecies have a conclusion which is predictive in nature--perhaps to prove that God was the one that gave the prophecy to the prophet.

The Book of Revelations is about the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem under the Romans.

Interesting viewpoint. Does this mean that you are of a Preterist persuasion?

The Anti-christ is the Emperor Nero. The number 666 is a code for his name. It is based on the tribute Solomon received when his head was turned from God by money, sex & power. God gives Solomon wisdom initially. His great wisdom leads the world to clamor after him. This culminates in the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Then we learn about Solomon receiving the tribute of the of the nations worth 666 talents of gold. The we learn about how the numerous wives of Solomon lead him into idolatry. This is especially true of Pharoah's daughter.

I feel doubtful that there's any true connection to the 666 talents of gold which Solomon received, but the 666 is certainly based upon the view that a 6 is somehow a less than perfect number. By the time of Christ, just about any Jew such as John the Apostle would have been familiar with the numbers-for-letters system of the Jews.

You might be interested to know that in certain Greek manuscripts of the Revelation, the number of the Beast is 616, instead of 666. Those manuscripts were discovered among Gentile Christians who weren't familiar with the Hebrew language. In the Hebrew language, the letters of the name "Caesar Nero" adds up to 666. However, in Greek, the letters of Nero's name add up to 616. That is a very rare combination between the two languages.

Many futurists have taken the names of modern persons whom they believe may be the Beast, adding them up to get 666. It would be interesting if they could find a person whose name added up to both 666 and 616.

So it seems that there is at least some evidence that Nero was viewed as the Beast as far back as the earliest manuscripts of the book of Revelation. The Roman symbolism throughout the book of Revelation tends to support that viewpoint as well.

We have this dramatic contrast. The righteous Queen of Sheba is lead to God by Solomon. Solomon is seduced by worldly gain. He then falls into idolatry & he falls from grace.

This is connected to Nero b/c Nero was a fatuous teenage when he became emperor. He didn't care about boring politics, he just wanted to carouse w/ his friends. he allowed his wise tutor, the Stoic philosopher Seneca to rule in his stead. Gradually Nero pushed Seneca aside when he realized he could use his power for his own indulgence. Thus, 666 symbolizes the passage for just rule to tyranny in both the time of Solomon & Nero.

Well, I can't quite agree with the connection you've drawn between the 666 talents of gold and all the rest. That gold was sent yearly for a long time before Solomon turned away from God. I don't see any direct connection, and Scripture explains the reason that Solomon turned away from God was because of his wives, not wealth or fame or anything else (1 Kings 11:4).

Nero set in motion the war against the Jews which lead to the destruction of Jerusalem in the time of Nero's successor, Titus.

Nero was the Anti-christ.

I definitely agree that Nero was the Beast, but not THE Antichrist (as if there is only one Antichrist). Scripture really has nearly nothing to say about the Antichrist, except that one is coming and many antichrists existed at that time. I believe "antichrist" to be a description, not a title or name. Nero was certainly against Christ, and so was antichrist, but he was not the only one or even the worst one. Christians were persecuted by many antichrists both before and after the time of Christ and the Fall of Jerusalem. In fact, it seems that a lot of them were former believers (1 John 2:19).

But I find your views interesting on this point. I never thought you would express a Preterist-type viewpoint.


John for Christ

 

[MarvelousMarvin]

I'm not an expert on eschatology, having spent my life studying origins instead. But there are a few questions about the viewpoints of both Preterists and Futurists that make me wonder. Are both wrong? Are both partly right?

I do know this:

1 Corinthians 14:33 NKJV (33) For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

And this:

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NKJV (6) So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. (7) For we walk by faith, not by sight. (8) We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

So I know that when I leave this life, whether by way of the grave or by way of the rapture, I will be with my Lord and Savior.

A couple of my questions:

Acts 1:10-11 NKJV And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, (11) who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven."

Preterists: When did this (His return "in like manner") take place? There is no way to allegorize this prophetic statement by the two men in white apparel (obviously angels) about His return without also allegorizing His ascent. And His ascending into heaven is recorded as historical fact (v. 9), just as His death, burial, and resurrection is recorded in the Gospels as historical fact, and which took place a few weeks earlier.

There's a lot of "digital ink" in this thread about the meaning of phrases like "come quickly," which the Preterists say means within the lifetime of the 1st-generation of believers, unless I misunderstand what you are saying.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 NKJV (16) For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Futurists: If all the living saints are raptured, and all who refuse to take the mark of the beast during the Great Tribulation are killed (as is taught by most futurists I have heard, both pre- and post-trib), who will populate the Millennial Kingdom?

BTW, these are honest questions on my part, not sarcasm or satire. But I may have a misunderstanding of what is taught by both camps... :? ...and most of that little bit of eschatology I have studied has been that which is taught by the Futurist camp, not the Preterist.

 

[Anonymous]

PolyDoc wrote, Futurists: If all the living saints are raptured, and all who refuse to take the mark of the beast during the Great Tribulation are killed (as is taught by most futurists I have heard, both pre- and post-trib), who will populate the Millennial Kingdom?

An interesting question that reflects on the diversity of eschatological views. I had never heard of preterism until a couple of years ago. I have always heard taught and came to see it clearly, as I did my first straight through reading in one sitting, of the Revelation in the J.B. Phillips translation that all the living saints were caught up at once in the twinkling of an eye and that event ushered in the seven years of (great) tribulation. Those who became believers (as a result of the ministry of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists) during that time period were mostly slain for their testimony and for refusing the mark of the beast. People who were unbelievers that survived the judgement of God (great tribulation) upon the world were those who repopulated the earth and were the subjects of the reign of Christ with His saints for the millenium. They and their progeny were (respectively) the subjects of the next resurrection and the object of Satan's attempt to deceive the nations upon his release from the abyss at the end of the millenium.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm not an expert on eschatology, having spent my life studying origins instead. But there are a few questions about the viewpoints of both Preterists and Futurists that make me wonder. Are both wrong? Are both partly right?

I do know this:

1 Corinthians 14:33 NKJV (33) For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

And this:

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NKJV (6) So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. (7) For we walk by faith, not by sight. (8) We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

So I know that when I leave this life, whether by way of the grave or by way of the rapture, I will be with my Lord and Savior.

Hi PolyDoc,

First, I'd love to hear what you have learned about origins, and what exactly you mean by the term. Origins suggest a few things to me: (1) Creation, (2) Origins of Scripture, (3) Origins of mankind (i.e., genealogy). I've spent time studying all three and have some definite ideas about the first two, but only a tenuous grasp of where and how people spread across the globe.

But getting to the two passages you offered above, those are both very apropos to any question we deal with in Scripture.

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Nevertheless, throughout history believers have disagreed and been confused about many portions and doctrines of Scripture. How do we reconcile these two things?

I always like to look at the Greek of the passage to see if there is a difference between the common rendering and what the Greek conveys:

"For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints." (1 Corinthians 14:33)

So it doesn't really say He isn't the CAUSE (i.e. author) of confusion, so much as He is neither confused nor is He the cause of our confusion. The subtle difference is between whether God doesn't let confusion happen versus whether the things He originates should not be confusing.

Essentially, what Paul is telling us is that we ought to be like God and not be a cause of confusion, and that this is for all the churches.

That doesn't mean that WE won't be confused, but rather that we shouldn't cause confusion. We should take the time to learn and understand, rather than pressing our own views to the exclusion of all others on difficult issues and doctrines.

I've long believed that Scripture MUST be easy enough to understand that the average simple person can fully understand it, if he applies himself. It shouldn't be so complex that only scholars and experts can comprehend it. Therefore, what we read should be fairly easy to comprehend in the common grammar at the time of Christ, as the listeners would have understood it. (And where they wouldn't, God revealed that in the Scriptures so that we would understand it.)

Like I said, I think the confusion is that we have many more talkers than we have listeners, and too many people that want to push their beliefs and demand an "absolute" belief in their doctrines, rather than recognizing that in non-essential doctrines, differences may abound and we all need to be willing to learn and discover.

I also like the second passage you quoted. The truth is as you noted: Whether the eschatological truth is Preterist or Futurist or something else, when we pass from this life, we'll be with the Lord if we are believers.

My primary interest in eschatology isn't so that I can understand what will or won't happen here on Earth, but rather the importance of the better understanding of Scripture that a proper understanding of eschatology offers us. Through Preterism, Scripture has been opened up to my wife and I in a way we never understood before. It has been useful to us in discovering the meaning of a number of obscure passages of Scripture, particularly when the common interpretation didn't feel quite right.

A couple of my questions:

Acts 1:10-11 NKJV And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, (11) who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven."

Preterists: When did this (His return "in like manner") take place? There is no way to allegorize this prophetic statement by the two men in white apparel (obviously angels) about His return without also allegorizing His ascent. And His ascending into heaven is recorded as historical fact (v. 9), just as His death, burial, and resurrection is recorded in the Gospels as historical fact, and which took place a few weeks earlier.

There's a lot of "digital ink" in this thread about the meaning of phrases like "come quickly," which the Preterists say means within the lifetime of the 1st-generation of believers, unless I misunderstand what you are saying.

Well, there is a way to allegorize that statement, but I don't think we need to allegorize it to see what it means.

Here' s how many Preterists, including myself, understand this particular passage:

"And these things having said--they beholding--He was taken up, and a cloud did receive Him up from their sight; and as they were looking steadfastly to the heaven in His going on, then, lo, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, `Men, Galileans, why do ye stand gazing into the heaven? This Jesus who was received up from you into the heaven, shall so come in what manner ye saw him going on to the heaven.'" (Acts 1:9-11, YLT)

Jesus was received into the clouds. In the Scriptures, God comes on the clouds--mainly in judgment. The two men were telling the people standing there that Jesus would return ON THE CLOUDS. You see, there are a number of prophecies that tell of Judah's destruction for her sins against God. The Father and Jesus both foretold of the coming destruction in Judah and Jerusalem, and Jesus was Who brought that destruction. In the book of Revelation, Jesus destroys them with the sword of His mouth.

That is the word of God that prophesied the Destruction of Jerusalem which was shortly to come. The Romans were a tool of God, just as He had used other nations in the past to judge Israel. (Yet even as they were used to judge Israel, judgment came upon them for what they did to Israel. God was judging those nations and Israel both.)

So, the manner in which Jesus returned was on the clouds of heaven, to render judgment on Judah for her "adultery" against God. This wasn't a case where the return would be completely identical to His going. Jesus was with 500 people, rose into the air, giving those people a show of Who He was, because they didn't understand the nature of God.

Jesus wasn't going to come back exactly in reverse of how He left. To do so, He'd appear in the clouds, come down through the air to land exactly where He left from, meeting a crowd of about 500 people. Even futurists don't believe it will happen exactly like that. The question is how much of that Leaving would factor into the Coming. My understanding, like I said, is that His coming would be in the clouds, and that's all of that particular event that corresponds.

Jesus had no need to go up into the air to reach heaven. Heaven is not a physical place. Going into the air was a demonstration of God's power, not Jesus taking a trip to the planet Heaven as Mormons and some Christians believe. If Heaven is a physical place, then Paul (and Isaiah) was incorrect when He said, "But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."" (1 Corinthians 2:9)

If Heaven is a place, then it has entered into the heart of man what it is. That is contrary to Scripture. Heaven is incomprehensible to mankind. So Jesus wasn't going to a place, but demonstrating a truth of the manner of His return in judgment against Judah.

I hope that was clear enough. Please let me know any comment or question you might have on this.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 NKJV (16) For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (17) Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Futurists: If all the living saints are raptured, and all who refuse to take the mark of the beast during the Great Tribulation are killed (as is taught by most futurists I have heard, both pre- and post-trib), who will populate the Millennial Kingdom?

Not speaking for futurists here, but this adds to the question you asked Preterists. What is going to happen? Those who are alive and remain shall meet the Lord in the clouds--just like He left. (Incidentally, it doesn't say that Jesus will touch back down, which is why I say that part is not included with what the two men said.)

Now I'm going to present something to you that might surprise you a bit, as it has been commonly associated with Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists, but I believe they accidentally stumbled upon it and don't really know the significance of it. This may require a bit of a paradigm adjustment, but it is fully compatible with orthodox Christianity, and it makes rational sense.

Please look at the following passages:

"God has gone up with a shout, JEHOVAH WITH THE SOUND OF A TRUMPET." (Psalm 47:5)

"But the ruler of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days. BUT LO, MICHAEL, ONE OF THE CHIEF RULERS, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia." (Daniel 10:13)

"But I will show you that which is written in the Scripture of Truth. And there is none who holds strongly with me in these things, but MICHAEL YOUR RULER." (Daniel 10:21)

"And at that time MICHAEL shall stand up, THE GREAT RULER WHO STANDS FOR THE SONS OF YOUR PEOPLE..." (Daniel 12:1)

"I came to be in the Spirit in the Lord's day AND HEARD BEHIND ME A GREAT VOICE, AS OF A TRUMPET, SAYING, I AM THE ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE FIRST AND THE LAST." (Revelation 1:10-11)

"After these things I looked, and behold, a door was opened in Heaven. AND THE FIRST VOICE WHICH I HEARD WAS AS IT WERE OF A TRUMPET TALKING WITH ME, saying, Come up here, and I will show you what must occur after these things." (Revelation 4:1)

God's voice is like a trumpet and He goes out with a shout (Psalm 47:5). Jesus speaks with a voice like a trumpet (Revelation 1:10-11). Jesus speaks with the voice of archangel (it doesn't actually have the article "an" before archangel) (1 Thessalonians 4:16) and the name Michael means "Who is like (unto) God?"

"Archangel" occurs few times in Scripture, but comes from "arch-" meaning "chief, head, most important" and "angelos" meaning "messenger". One quick note is that "angel" doesn't necessarily mean "spiritual being". There are a number of messengers in Scripture that were just people. The choice to see other messengers of God as a class of spiritual beings solely lies in the hand of the translators. Nothing in Scripture itself teaches us this directly.

The current version of what an "archangel" is came from the Jewish teachings on angelology. Those teachings did not exist until AFTER the time where the Jews were in Babylon. The Babylonians had a complex system of angelology and demonology, which the Jews incorporated into Judaism via the Talmud and other Jewish holy books. (The Babylonian Talmud teaches more of this than the Jerusalem Talmud, and indicates the source of those beliefs.) The actual meaning of "archangel" is "the chief or head messenger". It does not imply that this is other than a human in any way. That can only be determined from context.

"Michael" is the great ruler/chief/head of Judah.

Now I'll put all these things together...

One of Jesus' names is "Michael"--Who is like unto God?!?--just like He has other names like "Emmanuel", "Almighty God", and so forth. Jesus came to Earth and brought the Gospel with Himself. He was the Chief Messenger (translated "archangel) of God by giving us the Ultimate Message of God in the Gospel. He is also one of the Chief Rulers--being one of the three parts of God. God is the Chief Ruler, both as One God and as Three Parts/Persons of God.

The reason Jesus spoke with the voice of a Chief Messenger is that IT WAS HIS OWN VOICE. It would be strange to expect God's voice to be compared to a lesser being! Jesus voice WAS the voice of "archangel"!

God/Jesus has always been the ruler of Israel, as we see in Daniel, and He stands up for His people! He comes on the clouds with the voice of Jehovah, and is the Head Messenger of God, as God's Son teaching the Gospel. He also came in judgment on His people as their Head Ruler and rendered justice on them through the Roman armies.

This indicates how Jesus has been actively ruling Israel since it was a nation, and that He has continually had His hand on His people, both the children of Israel, and the true spiritual "Israel" which is Christianity, and that He is the One Who renders judgment on the children of Israel, just as He did in the Old Testament Scriptures by the means of other nations like Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and others.

Hope I have given you some interesting things to think about!

BTW, these are honest questions on my part, not sarcasm or satire. But I may have a misunderstanding of what is taught by both camps... :? ...and most of that little bit of eschatology I have studied has been that which is taught by the Futurist camp, not the Preterist.

When you say that you are asking honest questions, I believe you. It's my policy to be magnanimous and trust that people are telling the truth, unless there is a clear reason to think differently. I believe that is what God expects of us, to be noble and treat others as we would want to be treated. So, you don't ever need to be concerned that I will think that you are anything less than doing your best to be 100% honest--that is, unless you give me a reason to think differently. And I hope that you and the others will extend the same treatment to me.

I've also experienced eschatology from the Futurist perspective for most of my life--about 30 years. I had not even heard of the word Preterism until about 12 years ago, and it was a shock and a difficulty for me at first, because of my former training for so long. But for me, it is a matter of examining things honestly and comparing all sides of the issue, playing the "devil's advocate" for both sides to see which has the best position.

The end result for me (which may not be the end result for others) was that I discovered that Preterism was the correct interpretation of the eschatological passages of Scripture. It was a pretty difficult blow, as I had put a lot of my personal time into studying Futurism and was something of an expert at the time. However, the case was so strong for Preterism that I could not deny it either. So I spent time studying it, and the initial shock wore off, and I'm happier now than ever before, understanding many things about Scripture and the Lord that I never would have otherwise known. I felt then as now that I was being directly led into understanding that truth by the Spirit of God.

Believe me, I didn't come to the belief in Preterism easily. I fought it, and ranted and raved to my wife for several days as I looked at it in-depth. But through prayer and study, and trusting the Lord to guide me to the truth, I came out of it believing absolutely in a Preterist position.

Whether or not you come to the same realization, it's always worth looking at these things to either learn the truth or learn why they are not the truth.

Oh, and I do NOT claim to know everything about what happened according to Preterism. I've mostly studied this myself, rather than relying upon other people's opinions, so my understanding differs a bit from many Preterists, but it's pretty much compatible. If you ask me a question I do not know, I'll admit I don't know it, but I'll try to do my best to find an answer if I can. There is no profit in claiming knowledge one does not have.


John for Christ

 

[Dr. K.R. Allen]

Jesus was received into the clouds. In the Scriptures, God comes on the clouds--mainly in judgment.

This is a key reason why we literalists believe such interpretations as this are off base. Are we to believe that when the disciples saw the literal, physical, bodily ascension of Christ that the disciples would think that he would not come back to earth just as literally as he left and departed? Preterism as I said has to make all kinds of allegorical, mystical, fanciful, exegetical leaps to pull into the text that his second coming was really him coming in judgment.

He left in a literal body but returns in a non-tangible, non-physical way? He leaves in a body but does not return in a body? Notwithstanding the exaggerated wooden literalism used to try and discredit the position, as 500 people would have to be standing there, the simple and straight forward point of the text is that the same physical Jesus who physically arose and left in a real literal body shall one day in that same body literally physically return to this physical literal earth as he returns to the same place he left. Just as he left the Mt. of Olives in a literal body he shall one day physically return in his real literal body to the Mt. of Olives which is what Zech 14 and Matt 25, both told us in their writings.

It was in portion that type of reasoning that caused me to depart from this type of ideology because it conflicted with the plain historical grammatical method of interpretation. When I finally embraced that manner of biblical interpretation it was these types of positions that led me away from preteristic ideas towards a strong futuristic stance that affirms just as Christ left in a real physical body he shall one day return in a physical body to this very earth he left. He will one day, as Zech. 14. Matt. 25, and Rev. 19 state, come back to this very earth and he shall literally in his physical body stand on the Mt of Olives as King of the world. As the Bible says:

"On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from the east to the west by a very wide valley, so that half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. . . . And the Lord will be King over all the earth." (Zech. 14:4,9).

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" (Matt. 25:31-31-32).

And even if one accepts an amill position he or she can still with ease hold to a future return of Christ where he returns to that spot and then sets up the New Heavens and New Earth.

Just as Christ left in a literal body and ascended he will descended from the clouds and as Zechariah said throughout chapter 14 his feet will stand on the ground at the Mt of Olives. The great covenant theologian Dr. Walter Kaiser, who is not a dispensationalist, has given one of the best discussions of this text in the history of the church. But even without his comments the texts of Zech. 14, Matt. 25, Acts 1, and Revelation 19 all point to one key truth. Where he physically left he shall physically return.

Furthermore, the idea that heaven is not a physical place has been carefully documented as something called Christoplatonism by the good scholar Dr. Randy Alcorn in his most excellent book on Heaven. To date there has not been another book in the history of Christianity that has has this level of research poured into the subject of heaven.

As he properly noted in the book, heaven is really a real place where real people go in new bodies to dwell with other real physical beings in physical bodies. As he points out this idea of a platonic dualism, that is within preterist dislike of the earthly or physical literal elements of prophetic portions of Scripture arises because of the dualism mentality that has come over to us from the Greek philosophers that thought the physical material world is not as holy as the spiritual or mystical or non-material ideology. It is the ole the soul is spiritual but the body is not as spiritual kind of thinking and arose from Origen who followed the Jewish mystic Philo who sought to synthesize his biblical views with Greek mythology. They built their approach to prophecy from a Greek mentality. Many of the standard hermeneutic texts point this out from history as to where the Greek philosophical ideas penetrated the early church history and took deep roots in the 400's. Supposedly the non-material world is better or more holy than the physical and thus such biases as that clouds the minds of some readers which aids to govern their presuppositions as they read second coming texts as this.

This is why there was not any Bible teacher that we know of in the early churches up until the 400's or 500's that ever said anything other that Christ physically and literally would return to this earth in the future. The preterist view is indeed a novel idea. The amills, premills, and even the post mills all join hands and sing in one accord together here in that the Bible teaches a future physical return of Christ to this earth. Despite their other differences, the early church was uniform on that much about Christ's future return.

Additionally, just as a side note, if one holds to the Apostle's Creed, as we do here (http://www.biblicalfamilies.org/about_us ), that Creed too affirms that he shall return in the future, not that he has already returned.

 

[MarvelousMarvin]

John_for_Christ said:

First, I'd love to hear what you have learned about origins, and what exactly you mean by the term. Origins suggest a few things to me: (1) Creation, (2) Origins of Scripture, (3) Origins of mankind (i.e., genealogy). I've spent time studying all three and have some definite ideas about the first two, but only a tenuous grasp of where and how people spread across the globe.

A study of Creation and the Deluge (mainly, the first 11 chapters of Genesis) is what I meant by the term, but like you, I have studied Origins of Scripture to a limited extent. Origins of mankind is wrapped up in the study of Creation, of course. As a side issue concerning geneology, I have pursued my own ancestry some, but ran into a "brick wall" with my father's father's parent's history – they were born in Norka, Russia, a Jewish refugee settlement, so I am probably of Jewish descent, not German as I have been told all of my life!

So it doesn't really say He isn't the CAUSE (i.e. author) of confusion, so much as He is neither confused nor is He the cause of our confusion. The subtle difference is between whether God doesn't let confusion happen versus whether the things He originates should not be confusing.

Of course He is never confused! He allows confusion because He allows us the freedom to reject His truth, or to twist it to something He did not intend – just as He allows us to choose to commit any other sin, or to obey Him. But He is not the cause of any confusion that we, His children, might have. But He did cause confusion a few times – Gideon's 300-man army was greatly aided by the confusion God caused among the Philistines!

In a way, it goes back to something you mentioned in another post, quantum mechanics – a topic which should be in a different thread, perhaps. Briefly, here are my thoughts...

...and maybe this is getting into metaphysics. Here's a quote from that secondary source of all secondary sources, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle:

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured.

Science can not examine spiritual phenomenon like it can examine physical things. Maybe the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a manifestation of the spiritual dimension of Creation? Just a thought which I have not yet pursued to any conclusion.

I have long had a mental tug-of-war between determinism on one side and free will on the other. Is free will an illusion? (I think I am choosing xyz rather than abc, but in reality, that choice was predetermined in some way...) That would make God a liar. (Choose this day who you will serve...is that choice predetermined?) Maybe the uncertainty principle holds the key to resolving that problem.

The current version of what an "archangel" is came from the Jewish teachings on angelology. Those teachings did not exist until AFTER the time where the Jews were in Babylon. The Babylonians had a complex system of angelology and demonology, which the Jews incorporated into Judaism via the Talmud and other Jewish holy books. (The Babylonian Talmud teaches more of this than the Jerusalem Talmud, and indicates the source of those beliefs.) The actual meaning of "archangel" is "the chief or head messenger". It does not imply that this is other than a human in any way. That can only be determined from context.

Are you saying that angels as created spiritual beings don't exist? Because angels as heavenly beings are mentioned before the Babylonian captivity. One that comes to mind is the three angels who visited Abraham on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. One was obviously the preincarnate Christ (the Angel of the Lord, as it is rendered in KJV and others). But who/what were the other two? Dead saints? Purely spiritual beings? Or what?

And a related question – what are demons? My understanding has always been that they are the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. Some say that they are the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamic race. (Not possible according to what I have learned about Creation and the Fall. There was no pre-Adamic race.)

Also, Jesus talked about angels and demons. He even cast out demons, and empowered His followers (including us) to do the same.

And, of course, the letters to the seven churches are addressed to "the Angel of the Church of --------," obviously meaning the Pastor. But is that an example of a double meaning? Both the human Pastor of the church and a spirit being assigned to that same church?

Then there is this by the Apostle John...

Revelation 22:8-9 NKJV Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. (9) Then he said to me, "See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God."

Was that angel a dead saint? ("of your brethren the prophets") Or did he simply mean that he, like John and the prophets, served God? ("I am your fellow servant")

I agree with Dr. Allen that Jesus Christ will return in a physical body at some time in our future. But I often wonder how much prophecy that the futurists say will be fulfilled during the end times has already been fulfilled in centuries past and we don't recognize it, or how much had two applications – one immediate or very near future (from the point-of-view of the prophet), the other far-future. Obviously, much prophecy is being fulfilled before our eyes – the miraculous return of ethnic Israel to the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for instance. The fact that they were preserved as a distinct ethnic group, scattered among the nations, without a homeland, and usually under severe persecution, for nearly 2,000 years, is, in itself, miraculous.

Jesus had no need to go up into the air to reach heaven. Heaven is not a physical place.

Actually, in Scripture, there are three heavens. The first is what we modern, "scientifically enlightened" people call the Earth's atmosphere, the realm of birds and other flying animals. (And men in airplanes.) The second is what we call "outer space," the realm of astronauts, sputnik, Luna, stars, etc. The third is the abode of God, and is outside the created universe that we now inhabit. It is a physical place, because Jesus of Nazareth is there in a physical body. Granted, He had no need to go up into the air to get there, but He did it that way to show how He will return. Dr. Allen is, I believe, right about that. "In like manner" means in a physical body, standing with His pierced feet on the Mount of Olives. It does not mean that 500 witnesses will see Him descend; the number of witnesses is immaterial.

 

[Tlaloc]

Hi again all, I'm happy to see this thread has grown quite a bit while I've been busy. (Not as much as the Gematira one, but hey)

Donna,
If its your inclination I hope you do make it to more services. Thanks for the interesting information. I've enjoyed it very much and hope you find more. If you have more information to share please feel free to give us you're view without getting into the nitty gritty of the discussion. I understand it is not everyone role to be a debater.

John for Christ,

My preterist freind calls you're view 'orthodox preterism' and is pretty well the same, I think its even the same verse division, but like I've said many times I forget exactly what it was He's in a futurist-centric seminary but studies a lot on his own. He gets in trouble for his views on occasion, but that kind of trouble suits him well

I don't quite understand the 'nothing to anticipate' comment, Heaven is common to all Christians no matter how they think we're getting there. That always was what you where supposed to be anticipating

Interestingly enough my preterist freind would disagree with

Here's the main thing with eschatology: There's a pattern we are seeking. When we FIRST find that pattern, THAT is the answer. If it happens another time, it's not the fulfillment of prophecy, because it already happened.

as he allows for multiple fulfillment. I also am not mainstream futurist and find many more prophecies to be fulfilled than most give credit for. I would submit that many of the prophecies relating to Christ where fulfilled in a more direct way not too long after they where made (well, often over 100 years, but thats not too long is it) and are still valid applying to Christ.

Ylop

Horray! Every major eschatology is now represented here, even ones I didn't expect.

Post-millenial futurism is similar in results to the amillenialism you adhere too, its always about building the kingdom in the here and now. Rapture and Second coming are an objective to be actively pursued rather than something to sit on the sidelines watching for.

John,
I really do want to know what the people here think of the endtimes to know more about the diversity of the group, I've been pleasantly surprised twice and learned something about Eastern orthodoxy as well. Anyway, It seems so far, as of you're post, things are going well. I understand your sentiments though. I've only got one bone to pick.

"A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still"

Is only true if you change man to fool. Reason is a kind of force not to be manipulated by will, if you are convinced of something you are unwilling to believe and change you're views accordingly you are wise and willing to learn. If you are convinced of something but reject it because you don't like it you're a fool. The unnamed famous person you speak of is very cynical.

Dispensations are a terrible mess,

Agreed

Polydoc

Hebrews could not have been written by Paul. Paul signed all his works for authentication

2Th 3:17 The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.

He didn't sign Hebrews. Luke is a viable option though.


All,

I don't have time to read the last page, sorry if I missed anything that pretains to what I said here.

 

[Anonymous]

John_for_Christ said:

First, I'd love to hear what you have learned about origins, and what exactly you mean by the term. Origins suggest a few things to me: (1) Creation, (2) Origins of Scripture, (3) Origins of mankind (i.e., genealogy). I've spent time studying all three and have some definite ideas about the first two, but only a tenuous grasp of where and how people spread across the globe.

A study of Creation and the Deluge (mainly, the first 11 chapters of Genesis) is what I meant by the term, but like you, I have studied Origins of Scripture to a limited extent. Origins of mankind is wrapped up in the study of Creation, of course. As a side issue concerning geneology, I have pursued my own ancestry some, but ran into a "brick wall" with my father's father's parent's history – they were born in Norka, Russia, a Jewish refugee settlement, so I am probably of Jewish descent, not German as I have been told all of my life!

Well, there's nothing particularly special about being a Jew...but it's great that you discovered some of your ancestry. I find genealogy fascinating.

Anyway, I have also studied origins, and would be interested in what you discovered. As for the origins of Scripture, I've spent thousands of hours studying those, after being challenged by a KJV-only enthusiast. It has turned out to be one of the most interesting studies I've ever undertaken.

As for genealogy, I'm less concerned with my own genealogy than spread of humanity across the globe, so that historical people and events can be identified with more certainty. The sciences of genetics and medicine have given us the tools to fill in the blanks of history around the world. Today is an amazing time to live in...

So it doesn't really say He isn't the CAUSE (i.e. author) of confusion, so much as He is neither confused nor is He the cause of our confusion. The subtle difference is between whether God doesn't let confusion happen versus whether the things He originates should not be confusing.

Of course He is never confused! He allows confusion because He allows us the freedom to reject His truth, or to twist it to something He did not intend – just as He allows us to choose to commit any other sin, or to obey Him. But He is not the cause of any confusion that we, His children, might have. But He did cause confusion a few times – Gideon's 300-man army was greatly aided by the confusion God caused among the Philistines!

Well, of course. I wasn't suggesting that He was confused. It's just a rhetorical device, you know.

I'm not arguing that He didn't SEND confusion at times, in order to further His plan. The point is that He doesn't cause confusion in those that are earnestly seeking after Him--as you certainly know. "Ask, and you shall receive. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you..."

The only reason I commented upon that point at all, is that I felt there was a subtle difference between God being the "author of confusion", versus "a God of confusion", which do mean different things. It was more or less only meant to be an explanation of why Christians are confused on many doctrines. That's all.

In a way, it goes back to something you mentioned in another post, quantum mechanics – a topic which should be in a different thread, perhaps. Briefly, here are my thoughts...

...and maybe this is getting into metaphysics. Here's a quote from that secondary source of all secondary sources, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle:

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured.

Science can not examine spiritual phenomenon like it can examine physical things. Maybe the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a manifestation of the spiritual dimension of Creation? Just a thought which I have not yet pursued to any conclusion.

Quantum physics is one of my favorite subjects. All my life I've studied theology, philosophy, and physics (as the mother of all sciences). You'd be surprised how much more sense the world makes when you've examined it from the most detailed viewpoints, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Anyway, within this Universe, matter has a rather unusual property--it changes based upon OUR observance of it. That has been established beyond question experimentally.

For most of history, humans have believed in a deterministic Universe--for absolutely no good reason. At first it seemed that determinism was the truth--all science up to the 20th century was based upon determinism. (Determinism, if you aren't certain of the meaning, essentially means that all matter moves and reacts in such a manner that a sufficiently powerful mind could calculate the pathways of every particle and force in the Universe, and know exactly what would happen and when--basically Fate.)

In the early parts of the 20th century, it was discovered that determinism didn't work when it came to the ultra-small, and in fact, it could manifest itself in the macro-world as well. Since then, quantum physics has become the primary physical theory. Nevertheless, it is known that quantum physics is not the final theory--called the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) by physicists--because many things, including the connection between the micro-world of quantum physics and the macro-world governed by relativity, have not yet been discovered.

While you believe that "science" cannot examine spiritual phenomenon, I'd have to disagree a bit. It really depends upon your definition of science. "Science" is just a word from Latin, meaning "knowledge". As you know, we certainly CAN gain knowledge of the spiritual realm, which is what the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit of God are all about. Spiritual things are experiential, just as physical things are. They are far more difficult to present to others, being primarily subjective phenomena, but they can be considered "scientific" nonetheless. Of course atheists and others may disagree with that assessment, but technically there is no one definition of science that all agree on. Since it means "knowledge" and represents the accumulation of knowledge, I believe that ALL research that can be followed rationally and results in the accumulation of knowledge is called "science".

I have long had a mental tug-of-war between determinism on one side and free will on the other. Is free will an illusion? (I think I am choosing xyz rather than abc, but in reality, that choice was predetermined in some way...) That would make God a liar. (Choose this day who you will serve...is that choice predetermined?) Maybe the uncertainty principle holds the key to resolving that problem.

Well...I'm cautious about this issue, because many Christians would consider me a heretic for simply expressing my viewpoint. However, I strongly believe it to be true, based upon Scripture.

There are about 11,000 verses in Scripture which indicate that God did not have knowledge about some things. For instance, when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, and the messenger stopped him, then God said, "Now I know that you fear God..." That statement makes no rational sense if God already knew that Abraham feared God. Either its a lie, and God did know...or...?

Along with that is prophecy, dreams, and visions. Now, if God knew everything, and it would happen exactly as He knew it would happen, then humanity could not change that fact for anything, period, because God has all power. So there would be no reason to obscure prophecies, dreams, and visions in symbolism, rather than just telling us what would happen. People hearing it would see God's power in a much greater way, than in symbols which are a bit tenuous even when their fulfillment is known. (We know the fulfillment of many prophecies in Scripture because they were written down, but the prophecy versus the fulfillment is not as absolute as telling someone, "On October 15th, at 10:32am and 12 seconds, Bill Doe will be walking down First Street and will be hit by a car for disobeying me." Yet God never does that. Why not? It cannot be that it won't come to pass, because if God decrees it, no man could change it.

I believe that God created this Universe in a particular way, where the future is unknowable, because it is based upon a multitude of choices of God and mankind, which God designed that particular way so that we could have TRUE free will, not just an illusion of free will. While God has the power to make every event happen as He wills it to happen, He takes pleasure in seeing what choices we will make, like Adam naming the animals, and God watching to see what he would call them (Genesis 2:19). He has made us heirs WITH Jesus. We are not simply animals. We are eternal beings with a beginning, unlike God Who has no beginning nor end. We are not gods, but we are God's adopted children. As such, He has given us the power to make choices apart from Him.

So, to summarize, God has given us true free will for His own pleasure, to make us a bit like Him--though He is infinitely greater than all of us put together--and He enjoys seeing what we will do with that ability that He has given us. We are His heirs--which doesn't mean we take over, but that we become in some ways like Him.

God doesn't "know" the future, because it makes no sense to say the future can be known. It doesn't exist, and it isn't predictable, except in a very basic way. But God enforces His decrees upon the Universe and chooses who He wills to accomplish His plan. It is His power that makes His plan happen, not just looking at the Universe and seeing what will happen--which would make the Universe GREATER than God!

This is the only position that I believe fits with Scripture. It is very difficult to rationalize God saying He doesn't know something as some kind of "anthropomorphism", as it would simply be a lie as an anthropomorphism.

Some may ask then why God says He knows the beginning from the end. Easy. He dictated it. He has made a plan and decided what will happen throughout history. His plan is for the macro-events that affect mankind, rather than the micro-events which allows us to control by our choices. Yet when He has need of us to do something, He exerts His power to make it happen.

For instance, Jonah refused to make the choice God wanted. So God sent him where He wanted him to go, despite Jonah's 100% free will. Jonah STILL was willing against it, even after having delivered the ultimatum to Ninevah.

Then there is Pharaoh, who hardened his own heart several times before God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh had the opportunity to repent and turn to God, but he hardened his own heart so much that God finally rendered justice upon Egypt for their wickedness toward the Israelites and because of Egypt's false gods. (It is interesting that it seems that his son, the next Pharaoh, became a believer and turned Egypt towards monotheism. That Pharaoh's son was King Tut, whose named was changed from "Tutankhaten" (meaning "the image of Aten", the one God, who I believe to have been the true God) to "Tutankhamun" (meaning "meaning the image of Amun", who was one of a number of Egyptian gods).

No problem if you cannot accept this doctrine. I'm just putting it out there for you to think about. I have infinite love and respect for God and would never see Him as less than Awesome, Glorious, and the Ultimate God. It's just that I see Him telling us quite clearly that He likes to let us make our own choices of our own true free will. If you think about it, God HUMBLED Himself and served all of mankind, He even washed the feet of the disciples! If He can do that, then how can we deny that He couldn't ALLOW us to think for ourselves?

The current version of what an "archangel" is came from the Jewish teachings on angelology. Those teachings did not exist until AFTER the time where the Jews were in Babylon. The Babylonians had a complex system of angelology and demonology, which the Jews incorporated into Judaism via the Talmud and other Jewish holy books. (The Babylonian Talmud teaches more of this than the Jerusalem Talmud, and indicates the source of those beliefs.) The actual meaning of "archangel" is "the chief or head messenger". It does not imply that this is other than a human in any way. That can only be determined from context.

Are you saying that angels as created spiritual beings don't exist? Because angels as heavenly beings are mentioned before the Babylonian captivity. One that comes to mind is the three angels who visited Abraham on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. One was obviously the preincarnate Christ (the Angel of the Lord, as it is rendered in KJV and others). But who/what were the other two? Dead saints? Purely spiritual beings? Or what?

I didn't say that "angels" as created spiritual beings do not exist. If you look back to what I said, such a determination can only be decided from the context of the passage. When a translator translates a passage, they have two choices: (1) Follow traditional doctrines, or (2) Examine the passage itself and translate it as it is actually written.

In Scripture the word "angel" is never used, at least not in the sense that our English word "angel" implies a spiritual being. The Hebrew word "malak" and the Greek word "angelos" do NOT imply that a "messenger" (the actual meaning of those words translated as "angel") is a spiritual being. That has to be determined from the context of the passage, or I suppose if you trust man's tradition, from tradition.

So, if you go through Scripture and exchange "messenger" everywhere you see "angel", you'll get a truer sense of the Scriptures. You MAY find that many so-called angels were nothing but human beings. Or maybe you'll see evidence that in this or that case that they were spiritual beings. On the other hand, there's nothing to suggest that those spiritual messengers weren't spiritual human beings either, such as prophets or unnamed persons working miracles or delivering messages as God sent them to do.

What I was saying about the Babylonian captivity was that the Jews incorporated a system of angelology that had not existed before in their religion. They had names for the head angels (and demons, in their demonology) which are never found or hinted at in Scripture. They had certain ranks of angels and descriptions of their powers and so forth. Those things derive directly from the Babylonian religions.

Prior to that time, MESSENGERS were mentioned, but no details were given that one could conclude that they weren't human, in my opinion. Afterward, in few cases could we insist that these could not be human messengers sent with power, like many of the apostles. The prophets of the Old Testament often worked miracles. So why do we conclude that if a messenger does something amazing that he is a spiritual being?

People make a lot of assumptions about these messengers as well. For instance, Joseph sees a messenger in a dream, who warns him to take Jesus to Egypt. Why exactly do people think that the dream messenger was anything other than a person that gave Joseph a message? It doesn't have to be a REAL person in a dream, anyway. I've had animals give me messages in dreams!

That's enough of this subject for now, for me...

And a related question – what are demons? My understanding has always been that they are the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. Some say that they are the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamic race. (Not possible according to what I have learned about Creation and the Fall. There was no pre-Adamic race.)

I don't know what demons are. They may be representative of mental illness and disease, or they may be some kind of real beings. I just don't know. When the demoniac spoke, and said "We are Legion", it doesn't necessarily mean that an actual demon spoke. It could have been a major mental disease that Jesus healed. It's nearly identical to multiple-personality disorder and schizophrenia, and many of those people have superhuman strength when they go crazy, so they could break chains (which the text doesn't describe, so we don't know their strength).

As far as "Satan's" rebellion against God, that doesn't happen until the book of Revelation. It's set in the future of when that book was written, so I don't really see how it could describe what happened 4000 years earlier. Revelation 12 appears to put this in chronological order after Israel "births" Christianity. Then after 1260 days, "Michael" and His messengers, and the dragon and his messengers warred. Note what Revelation 12:10 says, "...Now has come the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night." The "now" comes immediately after satan and his followers are cast down. So this happens at least 4000 years from the Creation, and if you are a futurist, more than 6000 years. I don't think it has a thing to do with where the demons came from.

I can offer you an alternative explanation for that war as well, which makes more sense, in my opinion.

Israel "births" Christianity. Christianity came directly from the Israelite religion as a direct descendant. For about 3-1/2 years (1260 days) after Jesus went into Heaven, the disciples preached to Israel to believe on Jesus the Messiah. Michael is Jesus, and Jesus and His disciples spiritually warred against the Jewish authorities that severely persecuted Christianity after those first 3-1/2 years. Paul at that point, you remember, said that he was going to the gentiles because of the obstinacy of the Jews. The disciples turned to preaching the Gospel to the gentiles then. "Satan" is not a name, like it is often translated, but a word meaning "accuser". God was a "satan" once in the Old Testament (Numbers 22:22, 32), so we can see that it's not a name but a description. Who was the accuser in this case? Well, we could either say that Judaism was the accuser against Christianity, or we could be more specific and point to the High Priest who was the leader of those persecuting Christianity. Either way, we don't have to resort to a spiritual person named Satan to explain this particular passage. The accuser and his messengers were cast down--an apt description of the fall of Judaism before Christianity, and Christianity's rise to "Heaven" which is the kingdom of God.

Either way you look at it, it seems clearly to be a prophecy that would be fulfilled after the Revelation was written, not sometime during the Creation.

Also, Jesus talked about angels and demons. He even cast out demons, and empowered His followers (including us) to do the same.

And, of course, the letters to the seven churches are addressed to "the Angel of the Church of --------," obviously meaning the Pastor. But is that an example of a double meaning? Both the human Pastor of the church and a spirit being assigned to that same church?

Read it as the "Messenger" to the Church of... and it makes more sense anyway. Personally, I think that in that particular case the messenger was a human messenger of or to each particular church.

Then there is this by the Apostle John...

Revelation 22:8-9 NKJV Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. (9) Then he said to me, "See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God."

Was that angel a dead saint? ("of your brethren the prophets") Or did he simply mean that he, like John and the prophets, served God? ("I am your fellow servant")

Well, the messenger in that case said that he was "of your brethren, the prophets", which in Greek is identifying the relation of the the messenger as the object of the sentence, not that he was, like John and the prophets, serving God. I'd say this was a "saint", passed away yet living, in the spiritual world, delivering the message of God to John.

I agree with Dr. Allen that Jesus Christ will return in a physical body at some time in our future. But I often wonder how much prophecy that the futurists say will be fulfilled during the end times has already been fulfilled in centuries past and we don't recognize it, or how much had two applications – one immediate or very near future (from the point-of-view of the prophet), the other far-future. Obviously, much prophecy is being fulfilled before our eyes – the miraculous return of ethnic Israel to the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for instance. The fact that they were preserved as a distinct ethnic group, scattered among the nations, without a homeland, and usually under severe persecution, for nearly 2,000 years, is, in itself, miraculous.

The idea that some of the prophecies have been fulfilled is generally called Partial Preterism. There are a lot of believers that feel that is the truth of eschatology, and it is fully compatible with futurism.

Commenting upon the last thing you said there, if you recall towards the top of this message I discussed genetics and genealogies, I'd have to strenuously disagree with your statement that the Jews remained a distinct ethnic group. Genetics shows that very few of modern Jews have any particular ties to the ancient Jews (far less than 10%, by Y-chromosome studies of the Kohanim), and no direct connection other than their claims indicate that they are related to the Jews.

The records of Jewish genealogies that proved their ancestry were destroyed in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. After that, they intermarried into many other nations, despite the claims that they remained relatively distinct. Genetics proves that they did not.

Finally, Scripture indicates that an Israelite that was not 50% of Israelite blood AND remain in the Israelite religion AND obeyed the Law of Moses, was to be "cut off" from the congregation of Israel. No modern Jew can claim to have followed these requirements of Scripture--therefore there is no such thing as a true Israelite today.

Modern Jews are just another group of gentiles, no better or worse than you and I. God broke down the middle wall of partition between us. Now all are gentiles. The only distinction in God's eyes are between believers and unbelievers.

I am NOT anti-Semitic. I love Jewish people, and have nothing whatsoever against them as a group or personally. I do not accuse any modern Jew of being a killer of Christ, because that is simply a lie. (And only that one group was responsible for Jesus' death--though in a sense we all are.) We are each responsible for our own sins, according to God. But I do not buy into the common belief that Jews are still a holy people. Science and Scripture indicates that they are no different in God's eyes than you and I, and there are not two end-times scenarios, one for the Jews, the other for Christians.

I'm just throwing out different doctrines tonight left and right, aren't I!

Jesus had no need to go up into the air to reach heaven. Heaven is not a physical place.

Actually, in Scripture, there are three heavens. The first is what we modern, "scientifically enlightened" people call the Earth's atmosphere, the realm of birds and other flying animals. (And men in airplanes.) The second is what we call "outer space," the realm of astronauts, sputnik, Luna, stars, etc. The third is the abode of God, and is outside the created universe that we now inhabit. It is a physical place, because Jesus of Nazareth is there in a physical body. Granted, He had no need to go up into the air to get there, but He did it that way to show how He will return. Dr. Allen is, I believe, right about that. "In like manner" means in a physical body, standing with His pierced feet on the Mount of Olives. It does not mean that 500 witnesses will see Him descend; the number of witnesses is immaterial.

Yes, of course there are three "heavens". But the Heaven I was speaking of, in context was clearly the abode of God, not the Earth's atmosphere or the place of the stars.

How do you figure that it is a physical place? As you pointed out, there are two lesser heavens than God's abode, correct? Well, you mentioned the Earth's atmosphere, and outer space. Physically that's all there is. If God's abode is IN the Universe, then it isn't a third heaven, but is located spatially within the second heaven.

People put too much emphasis on the physical. The physical is bounded by entropy. The physical is bounded by finite limits. Picture this: You are in a physical Heaven. You've been there for umpteen zillion years. During that time, you've decided to do everything that can be done, so you do it. After going through every possible combination of regular things, you start moving every particle of this physical realm to interact with every other in every possible combination. After doing all this, you STILL have a boring eternity of doing the same thing, over and over and over and over and over and...

In Revelation, Heaven is described as having pearly gates, streets of gold, and so forth. Now think of the sheer uselessness of gold roads where money has no value. Why would be be so shallow as to imagine that having a gold road meant anything at all to us? That's an old Earthly value, of greed and desire for wealth. Where everything is ubiquitously available, a street of gold wouldn't be any more valuable than a street of peppermint candy.

But the Revelation is a vision, and this too is symbolic. A street represents one of the basest things in life. The point of that symbol is to tell us that Heaven is so great that even the least thing is better than Earth's best thing. It's a symbol, not a petty description of a Islamic-type afterlife full of riches and things that would only matter to people that thought that wealth and physical things were something to be desired.

As far as Jesus' body is concerned, NOWHERE does it say that His body is physical. Nowhere does it indicate in any way that it is. In fact, resurrected bodies are called SPIRITUAL bodies, and Jesus was raised a life-giving SPIRIT. Now I have no problem with agreeing that He went and will return in a body, but what in Scripture indicates it was PHYSICAL???

Looking forward to your comments, questions, and refutations! I hope you are also enjoying yourself, discussing many interesting things!


John for Christ

 

[MarvelousMarvin]

John for Christ said:

Anyway, within this Universe, matter has a rather unusual property--it changes based upon OUR observance of it. That has been established beyond question experimentally.

I agree completely. Check out http://charlescapps.com/index.shtml and look for a booklet entitled "Quantum Faith," as well as many other resources.

Our words are powerful. After all, we are created in the image of the God Who spoke our universe into existence!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

If God created this universe, He is not bound by any physical limits He placed within it and is certainly not confined to whatever the physical boundaries of it might be. He does bind Himself to certain limits, of course, such as not lying and being consistent, but those are not part of this creation, they are part of His eternal nature. ("Nature" might be an anthropomorphic term here, but I think you get the idea anyway.)

People put too much emphasis on the physical. The physical is bounded by entropy. The physical is bounded by finite limits. Picture this: You are in a physical Heaven. You've been there for umpteen zillion years. During that time, you've decided to do everything that can be done, so you do it. After going through every possible combination of regular things, you start moving every particle of this physical realm to interact with every other in every possible combination. After doing all this, you STILL have a boring eternity of doing the same thing, over and over and over and over and over and...

Your analogy reminds me one argument of the late Isaac Asimov against the existence of God – the essence of this particular one of Asimov's many arguments was that He would be bored out of His mind and still have eternity to get further bored, therefore, an eternally self-existent Infinite Being could not exist!

Entropy (at least as we know it) in the present physical universe is the result of the curse in Genesis chapter 3, and was not part of the original physical creation.

As far as Jesus' body is concerned, NOWHERE does it say that His body is physical. Nowhere does it indicate in any way that it is. In fact, resurrected bodies are called SPIRITUAL bodies, and Jesus was raised a life-giving SPIRIT. Now I have no problem with agreeing that He went and will return in a body, but what in Scripture indicates it was PHYSICAL???

John 1:14 NKJV And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 John 4:2-3 NKJV By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, (3) and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

John 20:27 NKJV Then He said to Thomas, "Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing."

There must be some type of continuity from the pre-death body of flesh to the spiritual ("glorified") body, because His dead body disappeared, leaving the graveclothes as a testimony to the fact that His body was once there, but is no longer.

1 Corinthians 15:50-51 NKJV (50) Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. (51) Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--

Thayer's definition of the word translated as "changed":

• G236
  ἀλλάσσω
  allassō
  Thayer Definition:
  1) to change, to exchange one thing for another, to transform

We will not lose this body, but it will be changed (transformed) into one like Adam had before the fall – or maybe something even better. The effects of the curse in Genesis 3 will be reversed. If it were simply exchanged for a spiritual body, the old body of flesh would still be in the grave after the resurrection.

A physical body that is no longer subject to the curse of sin (including entropy) is still physical, but would not have the limits we now observe. That is a spiritual body – a physical body that has the curse of sin removed from it.

We have no real concept of what it was like before the Fall and the resultant curse. All we can do is examine the physical universe as it presently exists in a sinful, fallen, cursed state and get a very slight glimpse of how it must have been then, and how it will again be someday, from the pages of Scripture.

John, I'm not ignoring some of your arguments, but just don't have time to answer them all at once! (And some, I might even agree with, and so may not answer those at all...)

 

[Anonymous]

Jesus was received into the clouds. In the Scriptures, God comes on the clouds--mainly in judgment.

This is a key reason why we literalists believe such interpretations as this are off base. Are we to believe that when the disciples saw the literal, physical, bodily ascension of Christ that the disciples would think that he would not come back to earth just as literally as he left and departed? Preterism as I said has to make all kinds of allegorical, mystical, fanciful, exegetical leaps to pull into the text that his second coming was really him coming in judgment.

I find this amusing, as Preterists feel that Futurists don't pursue a historical grammatical method when coming up with their Futurist scenarios in eschatological passages. We see Futurists taking a lot of obviously symbolic Scripture--from visions, dreams, and prophecies--as literal scenes from the future. Futurists pick and choose throughout the book of Revelation, using their own particular "guessing" method to determine what is a symbol and what is reality. Or, even worse, they take symbols like the beast from the sea, or the star Wormwood, or the four horsemen and their horses, or the locusts from the bottomless pit, and turn them into literal things!

There is a reason that Preterists believe that they are more consistent than Futurists, because Preterists take the eschatological passages in the literary genre in which they were written, in the sense that the author intended them, while Futurists seem to us to depart from any standard whenever it suits their theories.

He left in a literal body but returns in a non-tangible, non-physical way? He leaves in a body but does not return in a body? Notwithstanding the exaggerated wooden literalism used to try and discredit the position, as 500 people would have to be standing there, the simple and straight forward point of the text is that the same physical Jesus who physically arose and left in a real literal body shall one day in that same body literally physically return to this physical literal earth as he returns to the same place he left. Just as he left the Mt. of Olives in a literal body he shall one day physically return in his real literal body to the Mt. of Olives which is what Zech 14 and Matt 25, both told us in their writings.

I find it amusing that when literalism is used to show evidence that your position is wrong, that you'd call it an "exaggerated wooden literalism". The point I made was that there is no justification for choosing a portion of Acts 1:9-11 as occurring and rejecting the rest, nor objecting to Preterists taking only the intended portion as evidenced by the speech of the two men as the meaning of that statement. "...This same Jesus who is taken up from you into Heaven, WILL COME IN THE WAY YOU HAVE SEEN HIM GOING into Heaven." (Acts 1:11) It's in the same manner or way, that's all. Nothing is said in what kind of presence or body He would return, just the manner.

Here's a passage that proves my point:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to her, how often would I have gathered your children together, in the same manner as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!" (Matthew 23:37)

The same word translated "way" or "manner" is used here. Here we see that the only thing that corresponds between what a hen does and what Jesus would do, is the action. Not His body with wings. Just the manner. That's all that word implies, yet Futurists like to imbue it with extra meaning and include the type of body they feel Jesus has, within "manner". But let's say we allow for that interpretation, that He returns in a body. As I have pointed out, Scripture says He has a spiritual body, and so far no Futurist has denied the reports of Josephus of a Person within the clouds over Jerusalem. I can't see where a Futurist has any good argument against a Preterist's LITERAL interpretation on this issue.

Futurists also don't understand the meaning of a spiritual body such as Christ's either. A spiritual body is no less "literal" than a physical body--but it isn't physical! "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." The only way that I've heard Futurists attempt to explain this away is with the completely ludicrous idea that Jesus' body didn't count as "flesh and blood", but "flesh and bone", so His glorified body was able to pass to Heaven! Either His body was spiritual as Scripture says, or we have a contradiction of Scripture. What exactly persuades you to think that it was a "literal body", which to me means "physical body"? If you don't feel it was a "physical body" by being a "literal body", then what kind of body do you feel He had?

It was in portion that type of reasoning that caused me to depart from this type of ideology because it conflicted with the plain historical grammatical method of interpretation. When I finally embraced that manner of biblical interpretation it was these types of positions that led me away from preteristic ideas towards a strong futuristic stance that affirms just as Christ left in a real physical body he shall one day return in a physical body to this very earth he left. He will one day, as Zech. 14. Matt. 25, and Rev. 19 state, come back to this very earth and he shall literally in his physical body stand on the Mt of Olives as King of the world. As the Bible says:

"On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from the east to the west by a very wide valley, so that half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. . . . And the Lord will be King over all the earth." (Zech. 14:4,9).

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" (Matt. 25:31-31-32).

It was the literal, or historical grammatical, manner in which Preterists took Scripture--for exactly what it said in the way that the author intended it, which convinced me that Preterism was true.

For instance, Matthew 24 was SPOKEN by Jesus to the disciples standing there. He said, "when YOU see these things...", not "when some future generation sees these things..." Yet Futurists deny the intended audience, and shift things 2000 years or more WITH NO JUSTIFICATION WHATSOEVER! The fact remains that when Jesus said those words, if they were true then, then they cannot apply to a Futurist scenario, and if they are true in our future, then Jesus lied to those people that were standing there listening to Him, because those things did NOT happen to them. That's the historical grammatical method in action. You cannot find any legitimate justification for denying the grammar of the passage to extend this to future believers. It just won't work, any more than it works in English, UNLESS there is a direct statement that it is intended for another group other than the ones listening. No such statement is found there.

Then there are the many dozens of imminence statements that tell us us literally that Jesus will return soon in time. To apply that old red herring that "to God a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day" is not rational in those cases, because, (1) God is presenting it to humans so that they can understand, not in His own terms of time, but in ours, and (2) That has nothing to do with how God presents time to us anyway. It's just His point-of-view of time, not how He conveys periods of times to humans in their own languages. So Futurists deny the grammatical sense of the imminence statements because it doesn't fit in with their eschatology.

Then we have the gap between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel. WHERE is this gap mentioned? Where does it suggest that a gap even exist??? Nowhere! The common or literal assumption that the readers of Daniel would understand is that one week followed another, not that there would be any gaps in the 70-week period. Such a treatment of the text is unjustified.

Addressing your examples, Zechariah is a prophecy, and is full of symbolism. Now there are "prophecies" where God relates exactly what will happen, but I think you'll find that God consistently uses symbolism in prophecies when it comes to distant future events. Jesus touching down on the Mount of Olives is symbolic, not literal. That fits within the historical grammatical sense of the text, not the literal interpretation.

As for Matthew 25, I have no problem admitting that I don't have an answer for you at the moment, save that I know that my understanding is correct. The thing that Futurists fail to understand is that the literal framework of imminence statements and fulfilled prophecies such as when armies surrounded Jerusalem as recorded in Luke restrict when those things can occur, and indicate that, whether symbolic or literal, all the other events of eschatology must start within that framework, 2000 years ago. The stronger literal statements take precedence over the interpretive statements. That is the historical grammatical method in action again.

And even if one accepts an amill position he or she can still with ease hold to a future return of Christ where he returns to that spot and then sets up the New Heavens and New Earth.

Partial Preterism (which is actually a Futurist position) is at least obviously closer to the truth than outright Futurism. However, after examining eschatology "in toto", I see no reason to believe that anything is left yet to occur other than those things beyond the middle of Revelation 20:8, after that satan is released to deceive the nations. I've spent about 30 years studying eschatology, both Futurism and Preterism, collecting data from every viewpoint (including historicism, the spiritual interpretation, and others). The only rational "historical grammatical" conclusion I can come to is that a Preterist position is the most accurate and truthful eschatological doctrine.

Just as Christ left in a literal body and ascended he will descended from the clouds and as Zechariah said throughout chapter 14 his feet will stand on the ground at the Mt of Olives. The great covenant theologian Dr. Walter Kaiser, who is not a dispensationalist, has given one of the best discussions of this text in the history of the church. But even without his comments the texts of Zech. 14, Matt. 25, Acts 1, and Revelation 19 all point to one key truth. Where he physically left he shall physically return.

I have never denied that He has a body, nor that He'll return with it. I've just questioned your understanding of what type of body Jesus has. Scripture calls it spiritual and not "flesh and blood", so I don't know what your difficulty is with my understanding of those passages. I'd be interested in finding out what you feel a "spiritual body" is.

But your last statement I deny. He didn't physically leave. He spiritually left in a spiritual body, not in a physical body. I'm not saying He was a ghost or anything like that, but that there is such a thing as a spiritual body that differs distinctly from a physical body.

Furthermore, the idea that heaven is not a physical place has been carefully documented as something called Christoplatonism by the good scholar Dr. Randy Alcorn in his most excellent book on Heaven. To date there has not been another book in the history of Christianity that has has this level of research poured into the subject of heaven.

Giving it a name doesn't make it any the less true. Heaven is not a physical place for many, many rational reasons, not the least of which is that it is spiritual in nature, and the only descriptions we have of it are symbolic, not literal.

As he properly noted in the book, heaven is really a real place where real people go in new bodies to dwell with other real physical beings in physical bodies. As he points out this idea of a platonic dualism, that is within preterist dislike of the earthly or physical literal elements of prophetic portions of Scripture arises because of the dualism mentality that has come over to us from the Greek philosophers that thought the physical material world is not as holy as the spiritual or mystical or non-material ideology. It is the ole the soul is spiritual but the body is not as spiritual kind of thinking and arose from Origen who followed the Jewish mystic Philo who sought to synthesize his biblical views with Greek mythology. They built their approach to prophecy from a Greek mentality. Many of the standard hermeneutic texts point this out from history as to where the Greek philosophical ideas penetrated the early church history and took deep roots in the 400's. Supposedly the non-material world is better or more holy than the physical and thus such biases as that clouds the minds of some readers which aids to govern their presuppositions as they read second coming texts as this.

I guess we're just going to have to disagree on this point, that an infinite God who is a spirit sits on a physical throne in a physical place that has streets of gold and pearly gates, despite the symbolic nature of those descriptions.

Honestly, no offense intended, but I find that viewpoint to be a pathetic view of a little god, not the One True God of the Universe. It goes along with the idea that we'll have wings and sit on clouds for eternity strumming harps. It's not so much that it is not intellectual (which I couldn't care less about), but that it is a very limited, small view of God and His nature, and doesn't seem to me to correspond to Scripture in any way. (It would, however, be very popular with Mormons, who would agree with you and Mr. Alcorn.)

You bound God by the physical. You bind us by the physical, which is limited and entropic, and denies eternity and immortality. Such a view fails to explain the natures of God and man, which are soulish, spiritual, and physical, and the Scriptural statements that there are physical, fleshly bodies and spiritual bodies.

This is why there was not any Bible teacher that we know of in the early churches up until the 400's or 500's that ever said anything other that Christ physically and literally would return to this earth in the future. The preterist view is indeed a novel idea. The amills, premills, and even the post mills all join hands and sing in one accord together here in that the Bible teaches a future physical return of Christ to this earth. Despite their other differences, the early church was uniform on that much about Christ's future return.

Well, I don't know that to be true. I haven't read all of the early church fathers--nor do I care what their opinions were. Scripture is our guide, not the opinions of the early church fathers, which frequently were very messed up and incorrect, and completely devoid of logic.

What matters is that Preterism is the view of Scripture from the very grammar and presentation throughout the eschatological passages. Taken side-by-side, Preterism is the only belief that fits the history, grammar, literary genres, and fulfilled symbols of eschatology.

But we can just go back-and-forth making claims that our view is best. What I would prefer to do, rather than just running down Futurism, is to address actual eschatological passages. I think that would be more productive in the long run.

Additionally, just as a side note, if one holds to the Apostle's Creed, as we do here (http://www.biblicalfamilies.org/about_us ), that Creed too affirms that he shall return in the future, not that he has already returned.

The Apostle's Creed is neither Scripture, nor did it originate with the apostles. I don't hold to it for those reasons. Besides, it contradicts Scripture on the timing of Jesus' return, and contains error. The Apostle's Creed doesn't offer any convincing argument, as it has no authority.

If you feel any of the foregoing is harsh or angry, I assure you that it isn't. I like to answer very directly, without beating around the bush. I'm enjoying the discussion, and mean no offense to anyone.


John for Christ

 

[Anonymous]

Hi again all, I'm happy to see this thread has grown quite a bit while I've been busy. (Not as much as the Gematira one, but hey)

John for Christ,

My preterist freind calls you're view 'orthodox preterism' and is pretty well the same, I think its even the same verse division, but like I've said many times I forget exactly what it was He's in a futurist-centric seminary but studies a lot on his own. He gets in trouble for his views on occasion, but that kind of trouble suits him well

I don't quite understand the 'nothing to anticipate' comment, Heaven is common to all Christians no matter how they think we're getting there. That always was what you where supposed to be anticipating

Well, I don't actually believe the orthodox or "full" Preterist view. We stop at about Revelation 20:8's midpoint, whereas orthodox Preterists believe everything after that is also fulfilled. Also, most Preterists tend to take the Millennium as a symbolic period of time of about 40 years, while we believe it is a non-specific time period of around 1000 or more years, as such numbers were used in Greek. In this case, I believe it to be a period of approximately 1888 years, give or take a few.

As far as my view that there was nothing to anticipate, that was based upon the transition between my Futurist views and my discovery of Preterism. I don't feel that way at this point, but it came directly out of the anticipation implicit in Futurism.

Like you said, we always have Heaven and the presence of God to look forward to. That realization cleared things up for me.

Interestingly enough my preterist freind would disagree with

Here's the main thing with eschatology: There's a pattern we are seeking. When we FIRST find that pattern, THAT is the answer. If it happens another time, it's not the fulfillment of prophecy, because it already happened.

as he allows for multiple fulfillment. I also am not mainstream futurist and find many more prophecies to be fulfilled than most give credit for. I would submit that many of the prophecies relating to Christ where fulfilled in a more direct way not too long after they where made (well, often over 100 years, but thats not too long is it) and are still valid applying to Christ.

Lots of people want to believe in double-fulfillment, but I believe it is without justification. By nature, a prophecy would only have value if it identified ONE specific fulfillment. If it fulfilled two or three or many, then it wouldn't really be a prophetic prediction of future events, but just pattern identification, which is in no way miraculous or amazing. It's just observation.

I have yet to see any double-fulfillment within Scripture as well. The common "proof" of double-fulfillment is found in Isaiah 7:14 and following, where the Lord said He would give a sign that a virgin would conceive and bring forth a Son, and they should call His name Immanuel. However, a careful reading of the text shows that there are two threads of prophecy, one then and one to come. This was not double-fulfillment at all. That's the only example anyone gives too, which is odd if prophecies can have double-fulfillment.

On the other hand, I agree that many prophecies have a continuing fulfillment. When Jesus ruled and reigned, it didn't stop at the end of the Millennium, for instance. Continuing fulfillment is different than double-fulfillment, but I'd like to know an example or two of what you mean that you might be able to provide me.

Ylop

Horray! Every major eschatology is now represented here, even ones I didn't expect.

Actually, the spiritual and historicist viewpoints aren't really represented, and I've even heard of a Pan-Eschatological viewpoint which I really haven't learned much about yet, as only one author that I know of presents it and you have to buy his book to learn more.

Post-millenial futurism is similar in results to the amillenialism you adhere too, its always about building the kingdom in the here and now. Rapture and Second coming are an objective to be actively pursued rather than something to sit on the sidelines watching for.

Hold it! I am not an amillenialist! I believe in a literal Millennial period of time, however I understand the "thousand years" to be an indeterminate time period of around 1000 years or more. In Greek, 1000 and 10,000 are used like we use "a million" in a non-specific manner to indicate uncountable or indeterminate large numbers. We'd say, "not in a million years". The Greeks would say, "not in a thousand years".

"A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still"

Is only true if you change man to fool. Reason is a kind of force not to be manipulated by will, if you are convinced of something you are unwilling to believe and change you're views accordingly you are wise and willing to learn. If you are convinced of something but reject it because you don't like it you're a fool. The unnamed famous person you speak of is very cynical.

I absolutely agree. If we aren't persuaded by reason and evidence, then upon what basis do we rationally believe in anything?

Dispensations are a terrible mess,

Agreed

That's particularly true when we see that God has had only one way to salvation from beginning to end--believe on the Lord and you shall be saved (Jesus being God). Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. had the same method of salvation as we do today. God never changed on that. What He did do was impose a set of rules on Israel in order to demonstrate His righteousness above the righteousness of man. Nobody ever was saved by the Law. The Law was to separate the children of Israel as a special people, as the vessel through whom the Messiah would come for all mankind. God never dispensed His righteousness and justice differently to different people throughout history. He doesn't change His judgments.

Polydoc

Hebrews could not have been written by Paul. Paul signed all his works for authentication

2Th 3:17 The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.

He didn't sign Hebrews. Luke is a viable option though.

Another popular suggestion for the author of Hebrews has been Apollos. I'm not certain exactly why though. There were those in the early church that assigned authorship to Paul though.

But it is also possible that Paul changed his methods after Hebrews was written. But against that is the style of writing of Hebrews, which differs significantly from Paul's epistles.

I think it's safest to say that Hebrews had an unknown author.


John for Christ

 

[Anonymous]

Our words are powerful. After all, we are created in the image of the God Who spoke our universe into existence!

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

If God created this universe, He is not bound by any physical limits He placed within it and is certainly not confined to whatever the physical boundaries of it might be. He does bind Himself to certain limits, of course, such as not lying and being consistent, but those are not part of this creation, they are part of His eternal nature. ("Nature" might be an anthropomorphic term here, but I think you get the idea anyway.)

God would only be bound by those limits which He imposed upon Himself, of course. However, unlike you, I don't believe that not lying and such are "part of His eternal nature". Those things are created things, so they are things He imposed upon Himself--and defined Himself. My position is that if we can think of it in any way, then it's not innate to God's nature. He created all those things, including the very ideas of thoughts! Anything that defines God (other than His own imposition upon Himself) would be, by definition, greater than God.

Your analogy reminds me one argument of the late Isaac Asimov against the existence of God – the essence of this particular one of Asimov's many arguments was that He would be bored out of His mind and still have eternity to get further bored, therefore, an eternally self-existent Infinite Being could not exist!

Entropy (at least as we know it) in the present physical universe is the result of the curse in Genesis chapter 3, and was not part of the original physical creation.

Well, Isaac Asimov and most other atheists have a very limited and biased view of reality. Isaac's argument only made sense to him because he couldn't think out of the box to an eternal God. His argument is silly. If God is infinite, then there'd always be something else for Him to do--He'd never be bored!

I disagree that entropy is a result of the curse. Entropy existed prior to the curse, which is evidenced by Adam tending the Garden, and Adam and Eve eating of the produce of the Garden, and there may be other examples I didn't present because it was easy to find those examples with just a cursory glance. Both tending and eating involve changes toward a state of greater entropy. A negative entropic example would be like UN-chewing your fruit, which would then form into an apple. Zero entropy would mean zero change. If positive entropy did not exist, there would be severe issues with energy and matter that would make life impossible.

That idea comes from Romans 8:21, which I believe is misunderstood to apply to all of Creation, rather than mankind as it indicates in context. "...to the liberty of the glory of the children of God..." The word "creation" used here can also be interpreted as "creature", referring to mankind. "All creation" would simply mean "all mankind". Even if this does apply to all creation, it only applies to corruption in the sense of sin, because it cannot apply to entropy itself. People usually believe this because of a misunderstanding of what entropy actually is.

As far as Jesus' body is concerned, NOWHERE does it say that His body is physical. Nowhere does it indicate in any way that it is. In fact, resurrected bodies are called SPIRITUAL bodies, and Jesus was raised a life-giving SPIRIT. Now I have no problem with agreeing that He went and will return in a body, but what in Scripture indicates it was PHYSICAL???

John 1:14 NKJV And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 John 4:2-3 NKJV By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, (3) and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

Okay, I concede that I didn't make that 100% clear, but in context my point about His physical body was meant to be limited to AFTER the Resurrection. So I'll restate it. Nowhere AFTER His resurrection does Scripture say that His body was physical.

John 20:27 NKJV Then He said to Thomas, "Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing."

There must be some type of continuity from the pre-death body of flesh to the spiritual ("glorified") body, because His dead body disappeared, leaving the graveclothes as a testimony to the fact that His body was once there, but is no longer.

Well, certainly, but what is a body? Bodies change daily. The body you had as a child isn't the one that you have as an adult, and every month you lose the vast majority of the cells of your body. A body is not just a physical object, but a concept. The continuity is in the shape, appearance, and other defining characteristics of bodies. Jesus' body after resurrection differed from His pre-resurrection body in several ways. He changed His appearance at will and apparently walked through walls (though I suppose He could have done those things before the resurrection as well). In any case, we are clearly told that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" and that resurrection is in a spiritual body, so I stand upon those two things (and others I haven't presented) in believing that the continuity between Jesus' body before and after resurrection was the "self" that inhabited it.

It's the same body, but it is changed or transformed. I don't believe for an instant that the body in the grave is the one that comes out of the grave. If it is, then a lot of people are going to be robbed of their bodies, which have been burnt, eaten, dissolved, and even made into diamonds! If we are basing it upon the atoms that made up the bodies, then we all share atoms of each other, as we go through life passing food through our persons, absorbing it, turning it into cellular material, then as those cells die and are replenished, depositing that portion of ourselves back into our environment. If you were to take every atom that was part of your body throughout your lifetime, you'd find that you and others would be sharing some humongous bodies!

By sameness, I believe it is the format of the body, not the content of the body. Whether your body is gone or was buried whole, God certainly doesn't use the exact same atoms to create a glorified body for us...

1 Corinthians 15:50-51 NKJV (50) Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. (51) Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--

Thayer's definition of the word translated as "changed":

• G236
  ἀλλάσσω
  allassō
  Thayer Definition:
  1) to change, to exchange one thing for another, to transform

We will not lose this body, but it will be changed (transformed) into one like Adam had before the fall – or maybe something even better. The effects of the curse in Genesis 3 will be reversed. If it were simply exchanged for a spiritual body, the old body of flesh would still be in the grave after the resurrection.

Well...okay...how do I explain what I see here. Lazarus was resurrected in his body. However, there's no reason not to think it was a purely physical body and that Lazarus died again. It seems to me that there are different forms of resurrection: physical and spiritual. Those resurrected physically died again...nothing is said that Lazarus, Tabitha, and the others who were resurrected didn't pass away, or went straight to Heaven. We'd have no justification for assuming that, without some reference to that happening.

You did sort of skip over one of the meanings of transform: "To exchange one thing for another". I'd say that was the appropriate definition of being changed from one body to another that was the same in format (however indefinite that might sound) from the physical to the spiritual.

Now I'm not saying that a spiritual body is a spirit. It is inhabited by each human spirit in the spirit world, perhaps. I really don't know. There is little description of the spiritual world in Scripture, probably because it is indescribable in human terms. Paul noted something of the sort when he knew a man that heard unspeakable words, not lawful for a man to utter.

A physical body that is no longer subject to the curse of sin (including entropy) is still physical, but would not have the limits we now observe. That is a spiritual body – a physical body that has the curse of sin removed from it.

We have no real concept of what it was like before the Fall and the resultant curse. All we can do is examine the physical universe as it presently exists in a sinful, fallen, cursed state and get a very slight glimpse of how it must have been then, and how it will again be someday, from the pages of Scripture.

Well, I don't even see that the curse was necessarily propagated upon all mankind. If God "cursed" or rendered judgment upon Adam, Eve, and the serpent, then based upon God's principle that He only judges the sinner, then the curse did not extend to us. Our sins are our own sins, theirs were their own.

But even if we believe that the curse was towards all mankind, because God cursed Adam and Eve's descendants for their sins (which I believe to be contrary to God's nature as described in Scripture), that doesn't mean that it extends to all Creation.

Please don't think I'm trying to shut down your viewpoint at all. I'm just expressing my own, and I'm more than willing to discuss it all, all over again, and hear your responses. It helps me to clarify my understanding of Scripture and learn many awesome things!

John, I'm not ignoring some of your arguments, but just don't have time to answer them all at once! (And some, I might even agree with, and so may not answer those at all...)

No problem. I've been taking too much time to answer these things and have been neglecting my own work. But I absolutely LOVE reasoning together with other believers, even if we disagree completely!

I'm also fairly prolific when typing, so I apologize if it is difficult to keep up with my long posts. It's a bad habit I've gotten into over the years on various groups, answering messages in infinite detail, probably beyond what I ought to do. But it's so difficult to skip things that I feel are pertinent!

Iron sharpens iron, you know.


John for Christ

 

[Tlaloc]

John for Christ,

I think you missed where I transitioned to replying to Ylop, I know you're not Amil, he is

It is true that the spiritual and historicist views are not represented well, I didn't think of the spiritual, and I guess I kind of think of historicists as not being very Bible oriented (probably a wrong impression in some cases).

That's particularly true when we see that God has had only one way to salvation from beginning to end--believe on the Lord and you shall be saved (Jesus being God). Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. had the same method of salvation as we do today. God never changed on that. What He did do was impose a set of rules on Israel in order to demonstrate His righteousness above the righteousness of man. Nobody ever was saved by the Law. The Law was to separate the children of Israel as a special people, as the vessel through whom the Messiah would come for all mankind. God never dispensed His righteousness and justice differently to different people throughout history. He doesn't change His judgments.

I quoted that for no other reason than that I like it a lot and wanted it repeated

My vice-pastor believes Hebrews was written by Appolos, and gave his reasons why. I don't exactly recall them now... I agree it is safest to think of the author as unknown.

Doing a root study of Daniel 9 really got me into the double fulfillment, it seems to me that all of the elements of that prophecy come to pass in the Ezra\Nehemiah era but its non-obvious because of the translation choices (its the only time 'anointed' is translated 'messiah', it's a valid choice, but dubious in this case). I'm not sure what the different threads are in Isaiah either, everything after 7:13 is an address to Ahaz, there isn't really room for multiple trains of thought. The definition of prophecy is just prediction, so that doesn't preclude multiple fulfillment, and even if that prophecy is a pattern in the long run it can't be natural because when the prophecies where made the pattern didn't exist yet. You can't naturally recognize something that has never yet happened right?


On you're other conversation,

I think you've misunderstood entropy, entropy is the loss of absolute energy or order, not the non-existence of change. Entropy is only related to change in that theoretically every change results in some entropy, some permanent (for lack of a better term) loss of active energy. Transferring energy from one place to another is not entropy, and saying 'before the fall there was no entropy' is saying' before the fall change was perfectly ordered and did not waste any energy', thats all. Entropy is disorder, consumption and transferring energy from a fruit to a body to dung to enzymes to plants to fruit is not disorder. When the amount of fruit that can be produced from this cycle is the same as the amount consumed there is zero entropy, when the amount of fruit produced is less than the amount consumed we have entropy.

 

[Anonymous]

John for Christ,

I think you missed where I transitioned to replying to Ylop, I know you're not Amil, he is

It is true that the spiritual and historicist views are not represented well, I didn't think of the spiritual, and I guess I kind of think of historicists as not being very Bible oriented (probably a wrong impression in some cases).

Hi Tlaloc,

If you ever get the opportunity, I've read a book about the four major eschatological positions in relation to the book of Revelation by Steve Gregg. It's called "Revelation: Four Views" and is a parallel commentary from the Futurist, Preterist, Historicist, and spiritual eschatological viewpoints. It's very interesting. I'd recommend it to anyone studying eschatology.

That's particularly true when we see that God has had only one way to salvation from beginning to end--believe on the Lord and you shall be saved (Jesus being God). Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. had the same method of salvation as we do today. God never changed on that. What He did do was impose a set of rules on Israel in order to demonstrate His righteousness above the righteousness of man. Nobody ever was saved by the Law. The Law was to separate the children of Israel as a special people, as the vessel through whom the Messiah would come for all mankind. God never dispensed His righteousness and justice differently to different people throughout history. He doesn't change His judgments.

I quoted that for no other reason than that I like it a lot and wanted it repeated

Years ago I was a dispensationalist who believed in the various dispensations, as if God treated people differently at different times in relation to our salvation and how He treated justice in different eras of time. It all sounded so reasonable...until I started digging into Scripture and realized that if God were the God He portrays Himself as, then He has never had different paths to salvation and righteousness. The New Testament indicates that we are saved by faith, just like Abraham was given a Covenant by God through his faith, not through his righteousness or following the Law or any other thing, but through our faith in Him and His love for us.

Just like Paul, I see the Mosaic Law as a special case for the Israelites for purity, not salvation. As both Jesus our Lord and Paul noted, all the commandments of the Law and all the words of the prophets were based upon the two greatest commandments that are mentioned in the Law: Love your Lord your God with all your heart, mind, will, and emotions, and love your neighbor as yourself.

My vice-pastor believes Hebrews was written by Appolos, and gave his reasons why. I don't exactly recall them now... I agree it is safest to think of the author as unknown.

I agree. Unless some manuscript or other is discovered which indicates authorship, I think it is safe to say that the author of Hebrews will remain unknown.

Doing a root study of Daniel 9 really got me into the double fulfillment, it seems to me that all of the elements of that prophecy come to pass in the Ezra\Nehemiah era but its non-obvious because of the translation choices (its the only time 'anointed' is translated 'messiah', it's a valid choice, but dubious in this case). I'm not sure what the different threads are in Isaiah either, everything after 7:13 is an address to Ahaz, there isn't really room for multiple trains of thought. The definition of prophecy is just prediction, so that doesn't preclude multiple fulfillment, and even if that prophecy is a pattern in the long run it can't be natural because when the prophecies where made the pattern didn't exist yet. You can't naturally recognize something that has never yet happened right?

It's difficult for me to fully explain what I mean when I say that a double fulfillment of prophecy couldn't be true. I'll do my best though to try and make it clear. (I'm just going to use the term prophecy for predictive prophecy from here on out.)

The point of a prophecy is to show the power and glory of God. Only God can tell us what will happen in the future.

Now a prophecy that has only one possible fulfillment glorifies God because it isn't predictable, but could only occur by the power of God. But a prophecy that has multiple fulfillments loses value, because a repetitive event doesn't appear to the human mind to be unique or special--it devalues the glory of God. If a double-fulfillment existed, then why not a triple- or quadruple- or so forth. It loses it's value of prophecy, and just becomes a common thing.

But here's the thing: If we look at eschatology, the prophecies point to some very specific times and events. The only way that there could be double-fulfillment is if EVERY SINGLE SIGN AND SYMBOL COMES TO PASS. With eschatology, there are many dozens of symbols. A partial fulfillment isn't any kind of fulfillment at all. To be the actual fulfillment, it has to be unique and every symbol connected with its prophecy must come to pass. If three out of four symbols in the prophecy come to pass, but not the fourth--then it isn't what the prophecy was talking about.

An example of the specificity of prophecy can be found in the prophecies in Matthew 24:15-16 and Luke 20-21 and the book of Daniel.

"Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand). Then let those in Judea flee into the mountains." (Matthew 24:15-16)

"And when you see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that its desolation has come. And let those in Judea flee to the mountains. And those in its midst, let them go out. And those in the open spaces, let them not go into her." (Luke 21:20-21)

Here we have two parallel passages that read a bit differently, giving us some very important information about the prophecy given by Jesus about the end-times.

These both appear in approximately the same spot in Jesus' end-times narrative, and they offer not only a connection to the prophecy in Daniel, but a very specific sign that will tell us when these things will come to pass!

Matthew tells us that the "abomination of desolation" will appear sometime between the false prophets and deceptions and the gospel being preached throughout the world (i.e. known world) and the people fleeing into the mountains. It also connects to the book of Daniel by the "abomination of desolation". Luke connects to these by being positioned in the same place between the false prophets and deceptions and the gospel being preached all over, and the people fleeing into the mountains. So this is very, very specific.

Now look at the connection and the specific sign to watch for: "...when you see Jerusalem compassed with armies..." This combination of specifics can only refer to one specific point in time, not two or three or more. It had to happen THE NEXT TIME THAT JERUSALEM WAS SURROUNDED BY ARMIES. It was a single fulfillment with very specific timing.

If every symbol and sign in any of those three prophecies in those three passages of Scripture weren't completely fulfilled, then they aren't the true fulfillment of those prophecies, because they are all connected together. All the symbols have to be fulfilled exactly right, or they aren't a true fulfillment to that prophecy.

If such a prophecy had double-fulfillment, then we would have to say that there are two fulfillments of Daniel's prophecy, the prophecy in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, and even two Jesuses popping up twice in history! How could we deny EVERY prophecy having two answers? Yet the specificity of these prophecies are such that they could only refer to a single event--in this case when those particular disciples were to see armies surrounding Jerusalem.

Honestly I don't know how to explain it much better at the moment. I just know that prophecies can only have one fulfillment. If someone believes they have more than one fulfillment, then they'd have to be able to prove their point to me, because it is irrational to believe in multiple fulfillments in my opinion. It would only confuse the purpose of prophecy, and confuse those that are expecting the fulfillment.

I see it more as an excuse to avoid the conclusion that Preterism represents the correct fulfillment of eschatological passages.

On you're other conversation,

I think you've misunderstood entropy, entropy is the loss of absolute energy or order, not the non-existence of change. Entropy is only related to change in that theoretically every change results in some entropy, some permanent (for lack of a better term) loss of active energy. Transferring energy from one place to another is not entropy, and saying 'before the fall there was no entropy' is saying' before the fall change was perfectly ordered and did not waste any energy', thats all. Entropy is disorder, consumption and transferring energy from a fruit to a body to dung to enzymes to plants to fruit is not disorder. When the amount of fruit that can be produced from this cycle is the same as the amount consumed there is zero entropy, when the amount of fruit produced is less than the amount consumed we have entropy.

Entropy is the EXISTENCE of change that results in more disorder and less order, not the non-existence of change. Change has to occur for entropy to make any sense at all. You aren't looking at the issue in completeness, but only quoting a definition here. Entropy doesn't happen if change doesn't happen. Entropy is intimately related to change.

You are mistaken that transferring energy from one place to another isn't entropy. Every change involves a loss of disorder in our Universe today. When you move energy, there are losses. There is no lossless energy transfer process known at this point.

Let me give you the example of entropy as it applies to ALL eating. In a fruit hanging on a tree, and in the human body, there is an amount of energy in the form of sugars and other cellular fuels, as well as potential energy. So, if you walk up to a tree and reach out your arm to pick a fruit, you expend energy to operate those cells. The cells burn up fuel and give off heat when the muscles move. So you grab the fruit and pull--there's more energy expended, both actual and potential. Then you place the fruit in your mouth and bite down. As you chew, you are creating disorder. The cells of the fruit were in a particular state of order, and you have disordered them. All this is entropy and it is increasing toward further disorder.

Let's imagine instead negative entropy, where things have more order with change rather than less, like we observe in our Universe. So you walk towards the tree--and accumulate energy. The very ground under your feet may have been plain old dirt which we'd leave footprints in. Not in a negative entropy world. Every step there would absorb energy and order, resulting in the reverse of a positive entropy world. It would be like going backward in time, a complete reversal of the entropic process. When you reached out and grabbed the fruit, the energy of your grab and the potential energy of the apple (which would fall in our universe) would cause it to gain energy and fall against gravity rather than with it, due to gravitational energy anti-entropy.

As you ate the apple it would reform in your mouth and the disorder of chewing would be reversed.

I can't even portray it well, because it would be so unusual to us now. It would be almost like watching a film run backwards. Negative entropy won't work to avoid corruption at all.

Zero entropy would be a problem of its own. Energy cannot flow where entropy doesn't exist. Matter cannot move where entropy doesn't exist. A world with zero entropy would be as if time stood still. Nothing would happen at all.

When you attempted to walk forward, your muscles couldn't burn energy, because that would be positive entropy. If you tried to reverse yourself in time towards negative entropy, you'd be likewise stuck, because you couldn't absorb energy or become more ordered.

I'm sorry for the terrible explanation, but you need to believe me when I tell you that any physicist will say basically the same thing that I have said. If there was no entropy before the Fall, then there was no Universe as we know it. Things didn't move, people couldn't eat, nothing could have happened.

Entropy has nothing to do with the AMOUNT of fruit that Adam and Eve consumed, but whether they consumed it or not. It is the fact that they bite the fruit and digest it, and all the consequent loss of energy and order that come from that which prove that eating is entropic.

Here's a super-simple example: Take three marbles. One is used as a shooter, the other two are placed next to each other as a target. Positive entropy would involve the transfer of a certain amount of energy from the shooter to the other two marbles. When the impact happened, mechanical force would transfer to the other two marbles and they would go flying. But at that impact, a certain amount of energy would be converted into heat. That energy goes into the environment and is lost. When we total up all the energy in the system, and the disorder, if we try to reverse the process, and cause the two marbles to return exactly to their original positions and meet at the same time and transfer their energy BACK to the shooter, the shooter will return towards the starting point and starting energy. However, it will NEVER get there. The loss of energy and order prohibit it from having the same amount of energy and order, from all the losses in the system.

Same marbles, positive entropy. First of all, flicking the shooter with your finger would only absorb energy and both your finger and the marble would go backwards. The only way to get forward motion from the shooter would be to absorb the energy--the shooter would have to hit your finger first, give off energy, then head back where it came from--the two marbles it hit earlier. From those two it would GAIN energy and order. The end result would be that anything that would be done, would result in an accumlation of energy and order until absolute order and energy was obtained. It would be devastating and we could live in such a universe.

Same marbles, zero entropy. Nothing happens. Energy cannot transfer. Order and disorder cannot change.

Another example. Drop a glass and it shatters. Energy is absorbed into the ground and dissipated. Energy goes into causing the pieces to fly about. It is near impossible to return the glass to it's original state. You just sweep it up and throw it away.

Negative entropy, the pieces of glass shoot towards where the glass hit, energy sucks out of the ground and into the glass, the pieces all come together until they form the glass, then it shoots back up into the air, gaining energy.

Zero entropy, the glass never falls, because it can neither absorb or exert energy. Nothing happens.

That's entropy. It had to exist before the Fall, because things happened in a forward time direction. Adam and Eve couldn't have eaten if entropy didn't exist. They couldn't do anything without positive entropy, other than stand still or do everything in exact reverse absorbing energy and order.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. If you don't believe me, check with any competent physics teacher.

But let's say that you just restrict "corruption" before the Fall to things like rotting. Well, again, nothing would work right. Rotting is what causes the change in foods that allow us to consume them for energy. Bacteria and our body take foods apart. Without rotting, you have whole foods passing right through your system almost undigested. (An amount of sugars and vitamins and substances would leach out of the food, but not enough to feed us.)

I see no rational way that corruption applies to all creation, despite that translation. I say it is sin in mankind, not sin affecting everything.


John for Christ

 

[MarvelousMarvin]

John for Christ said,

But I absolutely LOVE reasoning together with other believers, even if we disagree completely!

Me, too!

Well, I don't even see that the curse was necessarily propagated upon all mankind.

According to the writer of Hebrews, Levi was in the loins of his father, Abraham, when Abraham paid tithe to Melchizedek. So Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek. In like manner, we were in the loins of our father, Adam, when he sinned – so we were sinful from birth. (Actually, from conception.)

Hebrews 7:9-10 NKJV Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, (10) for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.

There was no death in the world before Adam sinned. Plants are not living creatures of flesh as are animals and humans.

Romans 5:12 NKJV Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned--

Before I was born again, I was not a sinner because I sinned. I sinned because I was a sinner, and it is the nature of sinners to sin. Now, I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, and it is my nature to bring glory to God. (I don't always succeed at doing that...)

But even if we believe that the curse was towards all mankind, because God cursed Adam and Eve's descendants for their sins (which I believe to be contrary to God's nature as described in Scripture), that doesn't mean that it extends to all Creation.

I know of a little girl who is going blind because of the sins of her mother. Her mother, who was living the life of a harlot, tried to abort the child but was unsuccessful, and the child is suffering the consequences of her mother's sins. Doesn't that sound like it is contrary to God's nature as described in Scripture? That little girl did not choose to be conceived as the result of her mother's harlotry, nor did she choose for her mother to attempt an abortion. Yet she is the one who is suffering from the effects of those sins.

The curse extended beyond just Adam, Eve, and the serpent:

Genesis 3:17-18 NKJV Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': "Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. (18) Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field.

Cain, Abel, and Seth were forbidden entry to the Garden of Eden because Adam sinned.

About entropy – I qualified my statement with "as we know it," not claiming that it did not exist in some form. The description of the curse in Genesis chapter 3 (part of which is quoted above) sounds like entropy as it existed when God said of His creation, "It is very good," was changed to entropy as we know it now.

IMHO, the universe was governed by one set of "natural laws" before the curse of Genesis chapter 3, and by a different set after. In other words, the curse was brought about by God causing a change in what we think of as the fundamental "laws of nature." (Or at least, some of those fundamental laws, not necessarily all of them.) All that science can examine are those now in effect.

That change in the "laws of nature" will be reversed someday. I think Paul is hinting at that in 1 Corinthians 15:39-58.

About the authorship of Hebrews – it probably was not Luke, because the letter was written to Hebrew believers by one who was intimately familiar with Hebrew thought. Luke was a Gentile. And it is written in a different style than the Pauline epistles, the authorship of which are pretty well certain. I had not thought of Apollos, and would like to see the reasoning for that possible authorship. The best we can do is to agree that the authorship is unknown and make guesses, some educated, but others.... :roll:

 

[Tlaloc]

Now a prophecy that has only one possible fulfillment glorifies God because it isn't predictable, but could only occur by the power of God. But a prophecy that has multiple fulfillments loses value, because a repetitive event doesn't appear to the human mind to be unique or special--it devalues the glory of God. If a double-fulfillment existed, then why not a triple- or quadruple- or so forth. It loses it's value of prophecy, and just becomes a common thing.

I believe this is where we see things fundamentally differently:

“Could a man make a single rose, we should give him an empire; but these beautiful gifts of God come freely to us, and we think nothing of them. We admire what is worthless, if it be only rare. The most precious of things is nothing if it be common.”

“The smallest flowers show God’s wisdom and might. Painters cannot rival their color, nor perfumers their sweetness; green and yellow, crimson, blue, and purple, all growing out of the earth. And yet we trample on lilies as if we were so many cows.”

Luther

It would only devalue said glory to the reprobate mind. But as Screwtape said, God is vulgur he gives his very best gift to anyone who would receive them. To me multiple fulfillment would degrade the glory of prophecy much less than giving Salvation itself to every common man who would receive it. Being common does not devalue a thing.

But here's the thing: If we look at eschatology, the prophecies point to some very specific times and events. The only way that there could be double-fulfillment is if EVERY SINGLE SIGN AND SYMBOL COMES TO PASS.

Firstly, I don't say there must be double fulfillment, only that there may be, and secondly, I'm not anti-preterist unless you cross the Kingdom of God line (I think its 20:8 like you said). I don't have a problem with the Neroian rendering.

If three out of four symbols in the prophecy come to pass, but not the fourth--then it isn't what the prophecy was talking about.

I agree with this, and its why I give no heed to around 70% of the 'prophets' (in the forthtelling sense) I hear.

THE NEXT TIME THAT JERUSALEM WAS SURROUNDED BY ARMIES.

But then, wouldn't Daniels Abomination that causes desolation have come to pass THE NEXT TIME abominations where set up on the alter?

Dan 12:11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,

and the abomination that maketh desolate set up,

there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.

I.E. Under Antiochus Epiphinous? It couldn't be liked to what Christ foretold unless there was multiple fulfillment.

To be honest a lot of this section seems to be targeted at saying the prophecy Luke must have been fulfilled then, and I already agree with that, much of it seems inapplicable.

and even two Jesuses popping up twice in history!

This always rings hollow to me, in most cases I believe the prophecy was fulfilled before Jesus applying to a good but non-God human. Most of the Christ related prophecies call for someone who will save his people in one way or another. Jesus did that, but many non Jesus people also did that. Multiple fulfillment don't mean multiple Christs, just multiple people destined to do something for someone (depending on the exact prophecy)

I see it more as an excuse to avoid the conclusion that Preterism represents the correct fulfillment of eschatological passages.

More to the point, it is the ability to agree with the data from multiple camps. I wouldn't hedge my bets normally, but it appears to me that when God said days he fulfilled his prophecies in the literal day time spans, and yet still applied those fulfillment spiritually to Christ. Multiple fulfillment to me is a necessary part of my Chrisiology, that it can apply to eschatology is just a bonus.

it appears to me that when God said days he fulfilled his prophecies in the literal day time spans

I sound like a full blown preterits here

Change has to occur for entropy to make any sense at all.

Granted, but that does not mean

Entropy has to occur for change to make any sense at all

Every change involves a loss of disorder in our Universe today.

Right, but that does not mean it was always so or is necessarily so.

I cannot see a half-eaten fruit as something in a state of entropy or disorder; it is doing exactly what it was intended to do and fulfilling its purpose perfectly, and no energy is necessarily lost from the system. You are looking at something which is on the micro level apparently chaotic which is on the macro level perfectly orderly. Its like watching ants. If you where to watch a postman walking his streets and see that he puts different amounts and sizes and shapes of packages in different sized boxes in different places, he would appear to be a randomly wandering lunatic. Understanding the postal system at large explains what he is doing and why.

You've given a long list of cases that should be labeled 'transfer of energy' not 'entropy'. Transfer of energy on the micro level does not mean entropy exists on the macro level. Both thermodynamic entropy (what we're talking about) and Cosmological entropy (what polydoc and I mean) function on the macroscopic scale. Macroscopic is in the very definition of Thermodynamic Entropy. Micro energy transfer is not entropy, (and by micro, I mean anything comparatively small scale, not microscopic. All of earth is micro when talking about universal entropy)

You're physics professor is using the word wrong, if you have any doubts go ask any good philology professor

There was no death in the world before Adam sinned. Plants are not living creatures of flesh as are animals and humans.

I've pointed out at other times in other places that none of the plants that Adam and Eve where given to eat actually died in any sense of the word when eaten. Herbs all regenerate, and fruit is made to be eaten. Root vegetables and grains where not given to them at that time.

Luke was a Gentile.

Good point

I had not thought of Apollos, and would like to see the reasoning for that possible authorship.

I'll ask my vice pastor, sorry I don't remember it.