Content in category Prophecy

The Dangerous Presumption of ‘Exemption from Tribulation’

[…] The great tribulation is not called ‘unequaled’ simply because of some unprecedented degree of human suffering. Though the ‘scale’ of human suffering will indeed be without precedent during the last tribulation, what individuals might face personally cannot be worse than what others of our brethren have faced throughout history without a rapture. The the final tribulation is said to be without equal because it extends to all the natural order. So, of course, human suffering will be co-extensive with the upheaval of a creation that has come to its greatest time of travail.

Therefore, it is not the ‘degree’ of personal suffering that makes this tribulation exceptional from all others, but its ‘scale’ of impact on the world of nature. So I ask: Do we detect a certain selfishness, or subtle presumption of moral superiority in the modern church’s expectation of exemption from a last repeat of the same kind of persecution that their ‘fellow servants and their brethren’ have faced in every age (see Rev 6:11)? I must say that such a doctrine sounds suspiciously accommodating of a soft and untested church that has embraced the cross only in theory as a historical fact in Jesus’ experience, and not as the invariable pattern of the very ‘way’ of God in the experience of every believer before and after Christ (but see Act 14:22). […]

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Recommended Reading on the Prophet Daniel

S.P. Tregelles on Daniel[…] In an instant, I have exactly who to recommend on Daniel. First, and most accessible would be S.P. Tregelles’ “Remarks on the Prophetic Visions in the Book of Daniel,” available through Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony in Essex (on line at sgat.org).

Second, or perhaps even first in importance is a much more rare book entitled “Prophetic Interpretations” by P.S.G. Watson. It is available to view on line through the Dallas Theological Online Library, Antiquarian Books. Unfortunately, they have it where it can only be leafed through; it can’t be copied to be printed. If upon your preview of the book, interest should happen to soar, I would be happy to take my xerox copy to a printer here and have a copy made to be sent. I could let you know the cost. But look through it first, and see what you think. In my view, no one is so good as Watson on the case for ‘futurism’ and a literal hermeneutic, particularly in regards to the ‘abomination of desolation’ and the centrality of its place and role in the unfolding of last days events. […]

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One People. Two Entities?

[…] But though I agree with Kaiser that there is only one regenerate people of God, the elect of all ages, I also believe that it is not only permissible, but necessary to speak of Israel as the ‘people of God’, or ‘the chosen people’, even now in their present state of unbelief. Even the individual Jew in his unbelief and set to perish apart from gospel regeneration, is nonetheless part of a nation that is UNDER both judgment and promise of a sure and certain destiny. That’s unique to the Jew alone. Even in unbelief, he is part of a body, a nation, a distinct ‘entity’ if you will, that abides in a unique covenant relationship. Though Israel’s covenant does not guarantee the personal salvation of the individual, it does in fact guarantee covenant severity ‘UNTIL’ the end, and covenant mercy ‘AT’ the end. So in that sense, then yes, for the moment only, there are two peoples of God, but not in the dispensational sense. When ‘all Israel’ shall be saved, the two collapse into one forever.[…]

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The Mark of the Beast

But compliance with the mark is a statement of an already existing condition that is only being manifested, namely, total and irreversible spiritual reprobation. The outward mark becomes the sign and seal of an irreversible threshold that has already been crossed. The mark is irreversible only because those that take it show that they have already passed into an irreversible union with the spirit of Satan. The scriptures speaks of those that are ‘past feeling’, and that have grieved the Spirit to the point of no return. There’s a mysterious threshold here that we see again at the end of the millennium. I have reason to infer that the false church in its steadfast resistance to the last prophetic testimony will not be able to repent past a certain point (I think the middle of the week), so that while a multitude that no one can number is being saved all throughout “the tribulation, the great one” (Mt 24:21; Rev 7:14), the false professing church of apostate ‘Christendom’ will have passed into final reprobation and may become some of the most rabid persecutors and treacherous betrayers of the true church.

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Dispensationalism & More on “One or Two Peoples of God?”

… With the new revelation has come a new language. But this is where we need to exercise caution. We learn from the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence that for something to be newly revealed does not mean that it has come newly into existence.; This is an important distinction when we are speaking of Christ and the church. Much has come to light in the gospel that had real existence before the dispensation of the fuller revelation. This applies as much to the ‘body of Christ’ as to Christ Himself and the unity of persons in the Godhead. …

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The Importance of Chronology in Prophetic Fulfillment

[…] much is conditional and contingent on prayer and obedience of the faithful, but there is a view that so ‘conditionalizes’ the prophetic scripture that some have even proposed to remove the future necessity for Israel’s experience of ‘great tribulation’ through united corporate prayer. However, Jesus said that heaven and earth would sooner pass away before “all these things” should fail of certain fulfillment. And while the believing remnant in the Land are instructed to pray that their flight ‘be not in winter or on the Sabbath’, it would be futile to pray that their flight ‘be not’. So believing that not all prophecy is conditional (see Dan 11:36; “that which is determined shall be done”), I only meant to say that if this unequaled tribulation is indeed future and without precedent or equal (please review in context Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21), then it is inexorably sure, regardless of our ability to fathom it. […]

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The Time of Jacob’s (Unequaled) Trouble

[…] Note that the unequaled trouble lasts a brief 3 1/2 years and ends in nothing short of the resurrection of the righteous (Dan 12:1-2, 11-13). So Jeremiah’s reference to a coming ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’, also described as without equal (Jer 30:7) is shown in Daniel as concluding the last half of the final week of years. In language almost identical to Daniel and Jeremiah, Jesus refers explicitly to Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation as marking the start of the unequaled tribulation (Mt 24:15, 21), which ends with His return (Mt 24:29-31), as also Paul in 2Thes 2:1-8. Most of John’s revelation is primarily occupied with the same brief period of 3 1/2 years (Rev 6-19). […]

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The ‘Messianic Secret’ and Apostolic Sending

[…] In this sense, ‘apostolic sending’ is itself ‘an apocalyptic phenonmenon’, theologically speaking. Because the secret is more than new information. It is an event not only of divine disclosure but of spiritual quickening. It at once kills and makes alive. The revealed secret, as only apprehended by the Spirit, completely shatters the pride of self-reliance and gives an open heaven of revelation and power. A full and true apprehension of the mystery of God in Christ designs not a knowledge by which one may glory above another (1Cor 4:7), as in gnosticism. But rather a freedom in love that casts out fear and enables a selfless obedience unto death. “And they loved not their lives unto death” (Rev 12:10). The power that loves the enemy, and the freedom from the fear of death are the tests that prove the value of any knowledge or any mystery (1Cor 13:2).

Ever since Pentecost the secret has been the ‘open secret’, but whether it has been apprehended by the Spirit is shown by one thing only, namely, the presence and power of the life of the age to come, Christ revealed in the church (Jn 13:35; Eph 3:21), with the result that “now is come salvation, strength, the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ” (Rev 12:10). Thus the ACTS of the apostles (Dan 11:32-33). […]

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The Two Witnesses of Revelation 11

… Just as the anointed offices of priest and king meet perfectly in Christ in Zech 6:13, so here is the combined witness of Moses and the prophets all pointing to the perfection that is in Christ. This does not mean, however, that I expect the literal Moses and Elijah to show up in the streets of Jerusalem for the final witness, although certain of the same phenomena associated with their ministries are reproduced in the tribulation judgments. It is enough to see that whoever the witnesses are, they come, like the Lord’s reference to John Baptist, “in the spirit and power” of Elijah, not necessarily the literal individual (which creates more problems for interpretation than it solves). …

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Reflections on the Mystery of Israel and the Church... by Reggie Kelly

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