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.
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. …
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). […]
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). …
Which Generation Shall Not Pass Until All Be Fulfilled?
… Notice the the Lord’s unique use of ‘you’ in His indictment. It is the same in Stephen’s apologetic. It is the generic ‘you’ of corporate solidarity, hence an abiding generation. It is a generation that does not escape judgment, regardless of its particular location in chronological time, ‘UNTIL’ …. This is why Jesus could speak of a future day of public acknowledgment of His messianic dignity, and describes it in terms of the generational ‘until YOU will say.’ It is why He could indict His own contemporaries as present in the killing of the prophets in the very persons of their fathers (“whom you slew”). And it is why Zechariah can speak particularly of the last generation of Jewish survivors of the last tribulation as ‘looking on Him whom THEY have pierced,’ as though they were the actual historical murderers of the Messiah…
An Alternate View on the Nature and Origin of Anti-Christ
The question is who are “the people of the prince that shall come?” Are we to understand this of the Romans that destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD? Does this mean then that we are to trace the coming prince to Roman descent and ancestry? Or, could this refer more particularly to the ‘immediate’ people of a yet future Antichrist that will once more destroy the city and a yet future sanctuary? I take the latter view. Of course, the strength of the former view is that in Dan 2 & 7 the fourth kingdom is clearly Rome. For this cause, many expositors believe they must locate the rise of the Antichrist out of a ‘revived Roman empire’, and therefore expect the Antichrist and his ten nation confederacy to originate in Western Europe among the common market countries. I do not believe this view is necessary for the following reasons: …
The Mark of the Beast
… So I see the mark as the antithesis of the seal of God. It is the mark of final reprobation, and in the middle of the week when all restraint is removed, something appears to happen where those that are particularly set against God and His covenant will be utterly given over to the manifestation of sin in the flesh, so that what has happened with the Antichrist is also being released in those that share spiritual union with him. Impulses once only conceived and restrained by government or conscience will now have unhindered expression in the demonic rage against the people of the covenant, both church and Israel. It is part of God’s plan that evil be revealed in the flesh for its exposure that it might be condemned in the flesh. My wife, Connie, suggested to me, and I agree, that it has something to do with God’s intention to educate the universe of angels and humanity through the demonstration that is wrought out in history. …
The Woman’s Travail and the Rapture of the Manchild
… If we understand this birth and ascent to have a particular application to the events that begin the unequaled tribulation, then it follows that this intends a perfecting of the church’s faith in preparation for the final conflict. It is not a change of spatial location, but a deeper apprehension and appropriation of the gospel. It is a revelatory event that comes at the end of a travail that has broken the power of self-reliance in the church in analogy to the removal of Jacob’s strength at the end of his travail (Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). The ‘rapture’ of the man child signifies the church’s advance triumph over the veil that obscures the gospel from Israel and the nations (Isa 25:7; 2Cor 3:16). This is true of the church of all time, but it will be profoundly apprehended at the end of the travail that precipitates the final tribulation. …
Israel’s Salvation Will Not Come By “Natural” Sight
… But for ‘the escaped of Israel’, it is the ‘Spirit of grace and supplication’ unto repentance, because they see Him in the sense of 2Cor 3:16-18 unto transformation. It is like Paul when he said, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, …” ( Gal 1:15-16). It comes by a sudden divine arrest at a pre-set time. “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come (Ps 102:13). It’s on a fixed divine schedule (see Dan 8:19; 11:27, 29, 35-36). It is what the old English divines called “distinguishing grace.” Still, such a divine act is no less sovereign because it comes at the end of a divinely arranged process (compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). Significantly, it comes at the end of Jacob’s strength, just as it comes at the end of ours. Therefore, we see that Jewish hearts are prepared for this divinely pre-determined event, and the church has a crucial part and role in that preparation as witness (see Dan 11:33), just as I believe that Stephen’s testimony and martyrdom had a preparatory influence for the predestined event of Paul’s revelation of Christ on Damascus road. …
The Rapture: If and When?
… So we fully affirm that a rapture will occur, but not as it is being taught. Those that teach that the rapture is BEFORE the tribulation (called the “pre-tribulational view. ‘Pre’ means before) see it as escape and exemption from the last persecution, which they confuse with the wrath of God, and point out that believers are not ‘appointed to wrath’ (1Thes 5:9). There is, of course, a clear distinction between tribulation and divine wrath. There is a clear distinction throughout the book of Revelation between the saints endure the wrath of man and those that are called ‘earth dwellers’ that experience the wrath of God. Manifestly, there are many saints in the tribulation period that are not “appointed to wrath,” but this exemption does not require physical removal from the scene (Lk 21:18; Rev 7:3; 12:6). …
