Tag: dispensationalism

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 1

What do I think of Bart Ehrman’s newest book published by Simon and Schuster? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re going to take a break from KJV-onlyism to look at Ehrman’s newest book which came out yesterday. This is a book about end times, but it mainly focuses on the book of Revelation. A number of people will hear that and think “Obviously. Where else would you go?” There are a number of other places in Scripture to go and we will see if Ehrman deals with any of these.

As it stands, I am only on chapter 3 of this book right now, but I want to cover it in sections seeing as it could be too much to cover in just one big review. However, as I say that, part of the problem is as I went through these chapters, there were a few minor problems, but overall not much I disagreed with.

Let’s start at the beginning, a naturally good place to start. Ehrman talks about moving to North Carolina, the Bible belt, in 1988, and shortly after receiving a call from a reporter asking if it was true Jesus was going to return soon. This was based on a book by Edgar Whisenant offering 88 reasons why the rapture would take place in ’88. Of course, Ehrman isn’t a Christian so he said no, but at that time, many Christians would have said, “Yes.”

Ehrman is then critiquing a rapture idea, though at the same time, he doesn’t really say much about eschatological systems. A word search of the book, and only for this word, shows that Dispensationalism isn’t mentioned until page 65. I have not yet searched for Preterism though like his last book related to eschatology.

Unmentioned at the start is “If a Christian does not hold to this eschatology, what do they hold to?” Ehrman does talk about the rapture scares that took place in the time with young Christians being terrified of being left behind. Naturally, he talks also about the novels of the same name. The technique was effective. Many people did become Christians because of a fear of being left behind. (Which I have as much a problem with as people becoming Christians just because they want to go to Heaven.)

I did disagree with the statement he made about how Paul converted the people of Thessalonica and was convinced Jesus was returning soon. I contend that he was hoping Jesus would, but he had no sure knowledge. Then why does he say “We?” It’s an editorial we. If Paul says “They” then he is making a statement that it will definitely be after his time, which again, he didn’t know. If he says we, it can be used to refer to any in the body of Christ. If someone thinks there is a better way to phrase the text Paul wrote, they are free to suggest it.

However, I did agree that people in his generation were thinking they were the last one and reading the Bible this way since really, it’s all about us. Unfortunately, that continues even to this day. Many of us consider it unthinkable that we will face death someday. Forget that the first generations of Christians and many today face that constantly.

The second chapter is more an overview of the book of Revelation. Ehrman says he will go into more detail on certain aspects of that, like the Beast and the Great Harlot in later chapters. I will save my comments for when we get to those then.

Until then, at this point, the book appears rather tame. Will orthodox Preterism be mentioned and will Ehrman have anything to say about that? I’m not doing a word search for it yet as I don’t want spoilers, but we will see.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Journey to Preterism — Isaiah 13

When will judgment take place? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When talking with these Preterists, another passage that came to my mind was Isaiah 13. We’ll go through the latter part of it bit by bit, though not exhaustively, of course.

9 See, the day of the Lord is coming
    —a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—
to make the land desolate
    and destroy the sinners within it.
10 The stars of heaven and their constellations
    will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened
    and the moon will not give its light.
11 I will punish the world for its evil,
    the wicked for their sins.
I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty
    and will humble the pride of the ruthless.
12 I will make people scarcer than pure gold,
    more rare than the gold of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble;
    and the earth will shake from its place
at the wrath of the Lord Almighty,
    in the day of his burning anger.

Now if you read this normally, many of us will think that this is something far off in the future. The start of the chapter tells us that this is a prophecy against Babylon. Well, isn’t Babylon supposed to be brought back in the end? That’s it. This must be something in the future and it sounds really bad. The sun is dark, the moon doesn’t give light, and all the world is punished!

14 Like a hunted gazelle,
    like sheep without a shepherd,
they will all return to their own people,
    they will flee to their native land.
15 Whoever is captured will be thrust through;
    all who are caught will fall by the sword.
16 Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
    their houses will be looted and their wives violated.

Okay. This doesn’t seem to fit in. If all this destruction has taken place, how are people fleeing to their native land? How are people being captured? Kind of hard to do that if everything is dark. Oh! This is the future! Right! Electric lighting or something of that kind!

17 See, I will stir up against them the Medes,
    who do not care for silver
    and have no delight in gold.
18 Their bows will strike down the young men;
    they will have no mercy on infants,
    nor will they look with compassion on children.
19 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms,
    the pride and glory of the Babylonians,
will be overthrown by God
    like Sodom and Gomorrah.
20 She will never be inhabited
    or lived in through all generations;
there no nomads will pitch their tents,
    there no shepherds will rest their flocks.
21 But desert creatures will lie there,
    jackals will fill her houses;
there the owls will dwell,
    and there the wild goats will leap about.
22 Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds,
    jackals her luxurious palaces.
Her time is at hand,
    and her days will not be prolonged.

Okay. This will take a bit of time. The Medes? They’re not around anymore. Not only that, but these people don’t really seem to be bothered by universal destruction going on. Not only that, but the animals seem to get along just fine. This seems really difficult to put in the distant future.

But what if….

What if it was the future….

But not the distant future?

After all, all of this has happened before with Babylon being conquered and lo and behold, it was by the Medes. Okay. That did happen, but what about this language of great universal destruction? Oh wait. That’s the point of the 2 Samuel 22 post. That language there was not to be read in a literal sense either.

Now does that mean the text is false? No more than it means that a news report is false when it says a football game turned into a bloodbath for the loser team. No one hears that and expects that if they were to go to the stadium that they would see several dead bodies floating in blood. This is hyperbolic language, which Jews used a lot, to express a point of destruction. We could consider it in some ways to be akin to trash talking.

Isaiah was then giving a prophecy and it was of the future, but it was not of the far distant future. It was of the Babylon that existed in his own time. What does this mean for us?

It means we need to stop going to every prophecy in the Bible and thinking the only thing the prophets wanted to talk about was our own time in the future. They often spoke more of a fulfillment in their own time. However, there is still one possible objection remaining.

What about dual fulfillment? Could something like this happen in the future. That could be, but the problem is this is the burden of the futurist at this point. If I have a past fulfillment, why should I think there is another future one except to save the case for the futurist viewpoint? Even if this happened in the future for a specific prophecy, it does not follow that it will happen for all.

This opened up to me a new way of reading the texts. Preterism started to make a lot more sense and showed me ways I was misreading the texts. It is now also a point of mine to try to find out how the text was most likely immediately relevant to the audience of the time instead of reading our own questions into the text when the text could not even have our concerns in mind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Journey to Preterism — 2 Samuel 22

What does an Old Testament passage not about eschatology have to do with eschatology? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I had that talk with two Preterists, I remember distinctly hearing about 2 Samuel 22. This is not a prophecy or a passage about eschatology. This is about the life of David and what happened during his days. So what on Earth does this have to do with eschatology?

Let’s look at the passage. We’re not going to go through the whole thing. It’s just going to be the relevant parts.

David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. 2 He said:

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
3     my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
    my shield and the horn of my salvation.
He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—
    from violent people you save me.

4 “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and have been saved from my enemies.
5 The waves of death swirled about me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
6 The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.

Here, we can recognize a lot of poetic license going on. This is the ways of poetry and even the hardest internet atheist could understand that this is not to be taken literally. This is David talking about how he felt hopeless. Those Christians who say we should always take the Bible “literally” will recognize this as well.

But what happens when we get to the next part?

7 “In my distress I called to the Lord;
I called out to my God.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came to his ears.
8 The earth trembled and quaked,
the foundations of the heavens shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
9 Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
10 He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
11 He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
12 He made darkness his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
13 Out of the brightness of his presence
bolts of lightning blazed forth.
14 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
15 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
16 The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at the rebuke of the Lord,
at the blast of breath from his nostrils.

17 “He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
18 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
19 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support.
20 He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

Whoa. What happens with your interpretation here? This is quite an amazing  event in the life of David. David is surrounded by enemies and here comes YHWH flying out of Heaven on the backs of Gabriel and Michael. He is preceded by a massive earthquake and then YHWH starts shooting arrows at all of the bad guys.

This is a fascinating event and as we look back at the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, we find that this battle took place in…

Wait. I can’t find it….

It’s got to be here somewhere! An earthquake and then YHWH flying on angels shooting arrows at the enemies of David! Surely this would be worth mentioning! Where is it?!

Wait. Wait. You mean this whole chapter is poetic license? This is not a literal reading? This is David describing political events, such as ordinary battles and running from Saul, in cosmic language?

Who on Earth ever talks this way? Who uses over the top language to describe an event?

What? You mean a football team was described as destroying their opponents? That political announcement was said to be Earth-shattering? America’s story has a history of a shot heard around the world?

So you’re saying that if David is an Old Testament prophet, as is said in the New Testament such as in Acts 2, then maybe we should see this is how prophets spoke? Maybe prophets did use this kind of language regularly and it’s a mistake to take it “literally”?

It might be tempting to think this is an isolated incident, but it isn’t. There are several passages like this in the Old Testament. As we go through, we will find that this is the way that Jews spoke of events in their lives. Something literally happened, of course, but language used to describe it is often highly apocalyptic in nature. For us, a football team does get defeated, but the language we use is often very far from literal.

I had read this passage several times before and never considered it. This opened me up to a whole new way of reading the text. I had always understood it was poetic license, but I never had considered that this could be done in prophecy as well as the exact same language shows up there.

And as we’ll eventually see, the New Testament does the same, but that’s for the future.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Journey to Preterism — The Talk

What are the first steps in coming to Preterism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

On my journey in eschatology, I had heard about Preterism before. The sad reality is, I did not know what it was. I thought I knew, but I didn’t know. I remained convinced that Preterists believed that everything had happened in the first century and that there was no resurrection and no return of Jesus. I’d see Christians I know who would have defenses of Preterism and I would just wonder about it. “Why would they do that?”

It’s not uncommon. I had someone leave a comment here recently asking if I knew any Preterists who held to the creedal statements of the church, especially on doctrines like the future resurrection of Christians and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I replied with what I now know to be the truth. All orthodox Preterists hold to those doctrines. That doesn’t make us partial-futurists. That makes us Christians.

This is also why I don’t call myself a partial Preterist. The idea of so-called Full Preterism is that everything has happened and I consider that a heresy since it can lead logically to the denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I think it has to even. It doesn’t work to change the rule and say Jesus is the exception. If we are raised like He was raised, then we are either both spiritual or both physical.

I am not a partial heretic. It’s my stance that so-called Full Preterism is denying the physical resurrection of Jesus at least implicitly and thus puts us in the area of heresy. That is also a term I do not use lightly. Not once in all of this have I referred to dispensationalists who I disagree with incredibly as heretics. They are my fellow Christians, all things being equal.

I am an orthodox Preterist instead, and what really led to me embracing that? It happened back in 2006, a year I can easily find out since I am wearing a t-shirt now for TheologyWeb convention 2006. TheologyWeb is a site I help moderate on and have my own section on.

You can come here if you want to join. You can find sections for debating every area of theology, other religions, atheism and agnosticism, politics and history, as well as areas just to have fun. There’s also a Deeper Waters section where you can interact with other people on the material that I write here. People of all faiths and no faiths are welcome. Also, after you’re done signing up, your breath will feel minty fresh.

Anyway, at this convention, I did something unusual really. I joined in a talk where I sat down with two people who hold to Orthodox Preterism that they were giving and I listened and asked questions. What they said that I can remember, I will try to explain in future posts, but I want to get to this part first off.

If you want to know about a position, one of the best ways to do so is to just talk to someone who is informed on the position and holds it and ask honest questions. It’s easy to think the worst of your intellectual opponents at times. Generally, there’s a rule that if you can make a position look absolutely ridiculous, you probably haven’t understood it.

Years ago, TheologyWeb had a section for remedial Christian teachings where I would answer questions. Now what if someone wanted to hear an answer from the dispensational position? This was an easy chance for me if I wanted to take it to come up with an answer to make dispensationalism look really stupid and thus get more people to Preterism.

Never took it. Instead, I would find a well-informed dispensationalist that while I disagreed with, I knew had studied the issue, and asked them to give the best answer from their position. I want people to have informed opinions.

This works politically too. I remember reading a story and I think it was about Matt Damon about how he went and interacted with several Trump voters somewhere. He walked away saying “Those people really aren’t the way that I thought they were.” Now that doesn’t mean he went and put on a MAGA hat, but he did at least understand their reasoning.

The sad reality for me is I could have cut off years of time in my search if I had just done this. I just always assumed I knew what was meant by Preterism and what a shock to find out that I didn’t. That is why I say when I entered that talk, I was doubtful, but when I left, I had enough questions answered and no remaining doubts strong enough to overcome the conclusion that the Preterist position had the best arguments.

So over the next few posts, we’ll be talking about those arguments. For this one, I just want to encourage you to really listen to someone about a viewpoint. Ask questions, but try not to be antagonistic. Consider this a fact-finding mission, like being a detective. Maybe you’ll change your mind. Even if you don’t, you’ll at least have a better idea of what you disagree with and a better idea of why the other person holds what they hold.

Give it a try.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Journey to Preterism — Where is the Church Pushback

Is there a distinction between tribulation saints and the church? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A friend of Deeper Waters left a message on our Facebook page about my post on where is the church? In this, I argued that the word church not being in Revelation does not indicate the absence of the church. This commenter left a reason why he thinks the tribulation saints aren’t the church.

For me the strongest argument for the church being a different group than the saints in Trib, is that Rev states that when Satan is cast out of heaven and sent down to earth to possess that false prophet/antiChrist it says “And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
5 And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, 8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 13:4–8.
This seems to contradict Jesus’ statement that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church, that all authority has been given to the church and Satan has NO authority over the church.
It seems to me that Satan cannot be on earth at the same time as the church if Satan is given authority on earth. So this likely is a different group of saints.
This argument depends a lot on timing. For one thing, the objection here seems to assume that all of Revelation is future. I come from an opposite approach. Look at Revelation 12 where the dragon does appear. What do you see going on? A dragon about to devout a child that will rule the nations with a rod of iron. Biblically, the only conclusion I can reach is that this is the birth of Jesus.
I don’t see any reason to think that this event will happen again, so I take this to be a description of the birth of Christ. When that takes place, the dragon tries to devour the child, namely through the slaughter of the infants. What about Satan being on Earth though?
In Luke, Jesus says He saw Satan cast down from Heaven. (Luke 10:18) This was during His ministry. Is Satan however active while the Kingdom of God is active?
The answer from Scripture has to be yes. In Matthew 12, Jesus casts out a demon and the Pharisees tell the crowd that it is by Beelzebul that Jesus does that. Jesus says that if He casts out demons by the finger of God then the Kingdom of God is among you.
Did you catch it?
Jesus is on Earth and yet He is fighting against the devil. Jesus declares the Kingdom is right there, but so is the Kingdom of the devil. In Matthew 13 next, we are told that the Kingdom grows like a mustard seed or like yeast through dough. This means that the Kingdom of God will keep growing and if it is doing that, it has to be breaking into another kingdom pushing it out.
Any guesses which that is?
By the way, there’s no indication that the Kingdom of God will be removed from Earth and then started over during a tribulation period somehow. God is building up His army and there’s no reason to think that He’s going to remove it en masse at any time. Also, for those who say the Holy Spirit can’t be on Earth during the tribulation, kind of difficult for an omnipresent being to not be, you know, present.
I contend then that if the Kingdom of God is removed, that would be God giving authority again to the devil which would really be a case of a violation of Matthew 16 and the gates of Hell passage.
From my viewpoint, it’s straight through historical. The dragon falls and then not too much later, here comes Nero, who I think is the Beast, on the scene. When we get to the harlot later on in Revelation, who is that? Some of you might be surprised when I say that that harlot is Israel.
Does that sound anti-semitic?
If so, then the Old Testament must be a very anti-semitic book since it regularly depicts Israel as a harlot. This again makes the historical sense of what happened. For a time, the Jews could work with Rome to persecute the Christians, but then the Romans turned on the Jews as well and sought to kill them. That culminated in the fall of Jerusalem which is compared to Babylon in the book.
I wanted to answer this objection because I do try to take objections to my view seriously. I did give a little bit of commentary on Revelation as well. I won’t do this for every objection I get, but I wanted to address this one as it seemed more well thought-out.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Journey To Preterism — Where is the Church?

Why is the church not mentioned in the Great Tribulation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Another claim I would often see come up from pre-tribulationists back on my journey was that the church was not mentioned in Revelation after chapter 3. The obvious conclusion to them was that the church wasn’t there. The church had been raptured.

At best, this is an argument from silence. The church only shows up in the Gospels in Matthew. However, it also ignores that there are other ways to refer to the people of God. Saints is a very common one and Paul even uses that for the church at Corinth which was a highly messed up church.

If we consider also that most of the focus on Revelation is on God judging the wicked, it’s not a shock that God’s people are not described as the focus. Still, they are there, such as the dragon going off to wage war against those who hold to the testimony of Jesus.

The problem with arguments from silence is that where there is no reason to expect a mention, the argument is weak. Those who put forward the argument need to state why such an event in any case should be mentioned. This is a big problem Jesus mythicists have as they assume that since Jesus is the most awesome figure in culture today, that surely everyone would have been talking about Him. Especially since this was the supposed Son of God walking on Earth doing miracles.

Most people though would have treated the claims with skepticism and not wasted time and/or capital to investigate them. It’s not a shock that so few people outside of the Christian community mentioned Jesus. It’s a shock that really anyone did mention Him.

So right at the start, we have this as an argument from silence. Now pre-tribulationists will definitely admit that the text of Revelation 4-19 does include references to those who hold to the testimony of Jesus and other terms, but these are usually seen as tribulation saints. These are people who find Jesus after the rapture.

That does work, but the problem is that you have no reason to think that unless you assume the pre-trib idea to begin with. This is especially so since it’s assumed that when John gets called up to Heaven in Revelation 4:1, that the church would have been understood to go up with him, except John is shown on Earth in passages such as Revelation 10 and there’s no indication that the church is understood to return to Earth with him then. Again, when the rules change suddenly, then you can expect that there is something else going on here.

I really do want to stress that I am trying to be fair to the arguments that i came across, but I really do just find them extremely weak. Did I ever return and give them a fair shot later on? We’ll be getting to that in a later post, but for now, this is just another argument that I don’t find convincing a bit.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Hour of Temptation

Does Revelation 3:10 provide a good case for pre-tribulationism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I was on my journey of eschatology, one passage that came up often was Revelation 3:10. Let’s look at the passage as a whole. It’s the letter to the church in Philadelphia.

“To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:

These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. 9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. 10 Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.

11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 12 The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 13 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Well, this seems like a good argument doesn’t it? The hour of temptation is coming to the whole Earth. That would be the Great Tribulation wouldn’t it? It fits.

Unfortunately, you have a host of assumptions going into it. First off, this hour of temptation must fit the Great Tribulation. It could be, but that needs to be argued for. Second, you have to have it that keep means to be raptured out. The second one is the most problematic one.

Keep is better understood as guard. The church would be protected from the hour that was coming. That doesn’t mean delivered from it, but that they would be protected in it. This could be a parallel to what the Israelite experienced during the plagues of Egypt. They were there for all the plagues, but they were exempted from them.

Not only that, if you want to be a literalist, then you already have a problem because the church in Philadephia is likely no longer there, at least in the same way. The idea that that specific church would be kept fits better then with a Preterist interpretation.

In the end, while this could be possible, I don’t find it persuasive. I find a Preterist interpretation fits much better and is consistent with what we see on how God deals with His people. There are too many assumptions for the pre-trib view that just don’t work well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Journey To Preterism — Not Appointed to Wrath

What does it mean to say that we are not appointed unto wrath? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the most common verses I saw pre-tribbers use in my quest was 1 Thess. 5:9. We are not appointed unto wrath.

“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Well, that seems to settle it. After all, the letter has just talked about the rapture and what is the rapture doing? It’s delivering us from Earth before the Great Tribulation. We are obviously not meant to go through the Great Tribulation, which is the wrath of God, and therefore we will be raptured.

It does indeed fit, but it makes so many assumptions. For instance, why should I automatically equate wrath with the Great Tribulation? Tribulation is a general word that refers to suffering. It assumes that what is described in the Olivet Discourse must be a distant future event and then that that equates with the Great Tribulation In Revelation 7 and then Paul is referring to this as if everyone would know this.

However, God’s wrath is also spoken of as a present reality. In Romans 1:18, Paul speaks of wrath coming on the enemies of God. That wrath has now been revealed he argues. This isn’t the only place he treats it as a present reality. There’s also another letter he does this.

1 Thessalonians itself.

Let’s look at chapter 2.

14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

Here we have something that fits in very well with judgment on the Jews specifically of the time which would have a culminating effect in the War of the Jews and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. That doesn’t rule out a future event, but it does fit in well still with the traditional Preterist interpretation.

What does this mean then for 5:9? The contrast is made with that and salvation. This leads me to conclude that ultimately, it really means we don’t have to go through judgment. I can’t say Paul is arguing against a pre-trib interpretation here since I hold that it didn’t exist.

If a pre-tribber wants to treat this as a veres that seals the deal they need to establish all the links in the chain that has been set up. That will prove to be very difficult to do. With that not having happened, then there is no sure way to conclude that Paul has an interpretation in mind that fits in with the pre-trib position and as I go through this series, I hope to show more problems with that and why a Preterist interpretation of the New Testament is more likely.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Should Christians Support Israel?

Is Israel the nation to support? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Israel is facing trouble again and that means Christians in America have taken sides, as well as no doubt many other places in the world. However, America has a strong connection to futurism and dispensationalism especially. We often see ourselves as a chosen people and our ability to function is somehow tied to Israel. After all, aren’t the Jews the people of God?

Now in this, I am not going to even begin to recommend solutions regarding conflict between Christians and Palestinians. I know some Christians who do think Palestine has a case and they are not anti-Semitic. That’s something else that needs to be said. Just because someone thinks the Jews could be in the wrong does not mean you can go and kill all the Jews you want and treat them horribly.

A few weeks before this all broke out, I remember being on Facebook and seeing a post asking something along the lines of how Christians should see Jews today. I answered, “People who need Jesus just like everyone else does.” I stand by that 100%. Jews need their Messiah.

However, any support I would give to Israel is not for theological reasons. Again, it seems to need to be constantly said that just because you do not support for theological reasons does not mean that you cannot support for any other reasons. It also doesn’t mean that you immediately jump over to the other side and think they’re all just fine.

Modern end-times people have often tried to connect end-times prophecy with the formation of the state of Israel, but that has not been too successful. Some were speculating it would be within a generation, vis a vis the “this generation” prophecy of Jesus, of the founding of Israel that the “rapture” would take place. Well, that hasn’t happened. Then it was the Six-Day War which turned out to be a swing and a miss. So far, this hasn’t worked well.

But isn’t Israel in the land? That means God was behind it. Right?

I find it strange that the people in end-times circles who want to take the Bible so “literally” often ignore how the text makes repentance a constant requirement for returning to the land.

Deuteronomy 4

25 “When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27 And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. 31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

Deuteronomy 30

“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 2 and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. 5 And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. 7 And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. 8 And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord and keep all his commandments that I command you today. 9 The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, 10 when you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

1 Kings 8

46 “If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near, 47 yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ 48 if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, 49 then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause 50 and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them 51 (for they are your people, and your heritage, which you brought out of Egypt, from the midst of the iron furnace). 52 Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. 53 For you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be your heritage, as you declared through Moses your servant, when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.”

Has anybody seen the nation en masse turning to Jesus as Messiah? I know several Jews are, but for the most part, Israel is still a secular nation. Now if you want to take the text literally, then that would indicate God is not the one directly behind this. That does not mean that you cannot support Israel. You can do so for other reasons. For example, I think Israel is a helpful buffer to have against Islam in the Middle East. Before anyone asks, I have not looked at the conflict between Israel and Palestine so I have no opinion on that one.

We should also see if our interests are in line with Israel or not. Do we have the same goals? Are we truly friends or not? If Israel was doing something that was wrong, would we support them because they are Israel? Let’s suppose for some reason Israel had invaded Kuwait instead of Iraq around 30 years ago. Would we be supporting Israel then and attacking Kuwait? Would we ignore an SOS from Kuwait asking for help because Israel are our allies?

None of this is also to speak ill of my dispensationalist friends. Most know that I don’t consider the view to have any Biblical credibility, but I am thankful for my brothers and sisters who hold this position not because they hold it, but because we’re all one in Christ. I also recommend they go and look at the passages about returning to the land and see how often repentance is mentioned.

By all means also, pray for Israel if you desire, but I would also add to pray that everyone over there, Jew and Gentile both, come to Messiah Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Not Afraid of the Antichrist

What do I think of Craig Keener and Michael Brown’s book published by Chosen books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I used to be a futurist pre-trib dispensationalist. I’m not proud of it. I grew up in the Bible Belt and I heard Southern Gospel music and I never heard any other view. Christians believe in the rapture. It wasn’t until I got the internet that I heard a contrary view.

And I went kicking and screaming into that contrary view. Who would want to disbelieve in the rapture? Who would want to go through a great tribulation and face the antichrist?

However, there were still questions I had. Eventually, I found my eschatological home. Today, I am an orthodox preterist. I realize Keener and Brown don’t come from this position, but I wanted to go through their book to see what they had to say about the dispensationalist position which is still extremely prominent in the church.

I describe them as firm and gentle. They start out telling their stories on how they came to believe in the rapture and then in how they came to disbelieve in the rapture. They have nothing but respect for their friends who are still dispensationalist and pre-tribulationists. They are just writing this to answer questions that they have often received.

Let’s also go with a positive. The application aspects of this book are excellent. Keener and Brown write about how Christians all over the world are already going through suffering. It can be comforting if you think you could be excluded from such suffering by a rapture, but no one is guaranteed this. Keener and Brown stress that even if Christians have to face the antichrist, they have nothing to be afraid of because Jesus is greater. With these, all Christians be they pre-tribulationists or orthodox preterists should say amen. I think all of us need to read this section of the book because many of us in the West don’t have any real idea of what persecution is like from experience.

When the pair look at the arguments, they are again firm, but gentle. Michael Brown specializes in Old Testament arguments. No. I’m not going to give his answers here, but he looks at questions like “Doesn’t God regularly deliver his people from suffering in the Old Testament such as in the case of the flood or Sodom and Gomorrah?” Keener deals with New Testament passages like 1 Thess. 4 and others.

They also stress that the Second Coming is a one-stage event. The idea of the rapture breaks the second coming into two different stages. It also has a problem with the idea of the resurrection being on the last day and then a resurrection happening before the last day.

That being said, I do have some criticisms. For one, preterism is nowhere mentioned in the book. Neither is futurism. I would like to know what reasons Keener and Brown have for not accepting this viewpoint.

Next, I think as a Preterist that while Keener and Brown rightly reject pre-tribulationism, they still have many of the ideas in it. For example, what about the antichrist. The term antichrist only shows up in the epistles of John, and yet the Beast in Revelation is thought to be the antichrist as is the Man of Lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians. That could be right, but it needs to be argued for.

I also think 2 Thessalonians presents a problem with this since we are told about this man entering the temple. There is no reason to think Paul has in mind a third temple that will supposedly be built sometime in the future. If that is the case, then that would mean the Man of Lawlessness has already come and if he has, then if he is the antichrist, then antichrist has already come.

Let’s also remember the Olivet Discourse. This begins with the destruction of the temple. It concludes with Jesus saying “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass until some of these things have taken place.” Oh wait. That’s not what it says. He says “All of these things.” That means the generation that sees these things start will see them end and how did the questioning start? The destruction of the temple. The generation that sees that will see the coming of Jesus.

By the way, let’s note in the passage it is about the coming of Jesus, but not to Earth. Jesus refers to Daniel 7. That shows Jesus coming to His throne in Heaven. The disciples asked Him for the sign of His coming, not knowing He would die let alone die, rise again, and then ascend into Heaven and return in the future.

I also think the authors assume a great tribulation. This is still like taking part of the pre-tribulation paradigm and running with it. We have a great tribulation referred to in Rev.7 and in Matthew 24, but why not think that that is the destruction of Jerusalem. Why assume a future event?

The authors also state that satan always has his antichrist ready for each generation since he doesn’t know the hour. I found this a very weak point. For one, satan would always be thinking that he is going to overcome the plans of God, such as in the crucifixion. Here, he is acting like he has to play along. Next, how could you establish this? How can we go and look in each generation in history and find someone who would be the antichrist of that time? Keep in mind I think this is the weakest argument in the book and I even hate having to mention it because the rest is excellent.

Again, the best part of this book is the section on overcoming suffering and being willing to for Christ. Even if pre-tribulationists disagree up and down with the rest of the book, they need to read that part. Every Christian does. I would be thrilled if future editions of the book would include more about this.

Christians who are pre-tribulationists need to read this book to receive a kind criticism. People who are not can read this to realize why they abandoned it. Orthodox preterists like myself should read this to get the criticism and for the blessing at the end. In other words, read this book.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)