Tag: Revelation

Should Left Behind be left behind?

Is the modern series a good guide to Revelation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“I wonder what I will write about for the blog.”

Then my mother calls.

“I’m going to be attending a series at my church on the book of Revelation and the pastor wants us to discuss if the Left Behind novels are a good guide to the book. What do you think?”

I think I know what I’m writing about.

You know my eschatology here. I am an orthodox Preterist. (The link uses an older title as I call myself an orthodox Preterist, but the meaning still stands.) That being said, I would hope even most premillennials and dispensationalists in general would ditch Left Behind, and considering how many years it has been since I have heard about it, that could be happening.

You know how many video games, movies, and TV shows are being done now for “modern audiences”? (Yes. I watch the Critical Drinker. How could you tell?) They’re an imaginary group of people that don’t buy anything but all businesses are rushing to please. I am not at all saying Left Behind is woke as it clearly is not, but it does come with the idea that the book of Revelation was written for modern audiences.

This is something I find puzzling. If this crowd assumes we are not going to be here for the events of the book, why are they written? To satisfy curiosity? For those who are left behind? Do they have any relevance up until that time?

It is my contention that the book largely describes first-century events but does so in apocalyptic language. This language used cosmic imagery in order to depict political happenings in the world.  I will use a few examples to show how this works. Consider this from 2 Samuel 22 where David describes being caught in a situation where death was certain.

7 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I called.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry came to his ears.

8 Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations of the heavens trembled
and reeled because he was angry.
9 Smoke went up from his nostrils
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
10 He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
11 He rode on a cherub and flew;
he was seen upon the wings of the wind.
12 He made darkness around him a canopy,
thick clouds, a gathering of water.
13 Out of the brightness before him
coals of fire flamed forth.
14 The Lord thundered from heaven;
the Most High uttered his voice.
15 He sent out arrows and scattered them,
lightning and routed them.
16 Then the channels of the sea were seen;
the foundations of the world were laid bare
at the rebuke of the Lord,
at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

Wow! What an amazing event! David needed help and YHWH Himself came down from Heaven riding on the backs of Gabriel and Michael and began shooting arrows and the whole foundations of the world were laid bare when YHWH blew His nose.

Bet you don’t remember that incident in the life of David!

Of course you don’t, because it didn’t happen that way. David is using poetic license definitely. YHWH never literally did this nor does David think He did or expect you to think He did.

Or look at Luke 3 talking about the ministry of John the Baptist:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

Where my parents live in Tennessee, mountains are within range easily. You can see them. I guess this Scripture hasn’t been fulfilled. Even in Luke, we know about the Mount of Transfiguration and the Mount of Olives. Did this not happen?

Or is this apocalyptic imagery?

It certainly is, and this is the kind of language all throughout Revelation. If you read it in a literal sense, you miss what the author is truly trying to tell us. Let us consider a passage like Revelation 12 with a giant multi-headed dragon sweeping stars from the sky.

Now literally, if there was a dragon that big, considering stars are light-years away, this is going to be one mammoth dragon and if one of those hits us, game over. Or, you could consider it as a telling of the Christmas story. Jesus is born and the devil tries to kill Him immediately through the actions of Herod.

One fact about Revelation is that it assumes you have a  thorough knowledge of the Old Testament. Go look through and see how many times the Old Testament is quoted. Hardly ever. Go look and see how many allusions you find and they’re everywhere. From the description of Jesus in Revelation 1, to the temple and heavenly city at the end of the book. All of this assumes you will be familiar with the Old Testament. Too many modern readers are not.

Next, it makes the text be all about us. The Scriptures include plenty about us, to be sure, but the text is all about God revealed in Christ. Our tendency is to think that we are that generation, which has not been thought by any generation in history. Well, unless you count all of them.

We also spend way too much time speculating on who the “Antichrist” is. (By the way, the word antichrist doesn’t show up once in Revelation.) It would be far better for us if we spent more time focusing on who the Christ is. I actually encourage people to read Revelation whatever your perspective and ignore eschatology except for in one area and read the book to address this. “Who does this book say Jesus is?”

I am thankful that more and more, I encounter less and less of this kind of mindset. I tried going through the Left Behind books, but I just couldn’t. I was listening on audio and I stopped at the end of one book and never really cared to get into the rest of it. It’s not even because it was bad eschatology. I have enjoyed several books where I disagreed with the worldview behind them. The books are just boring as literature and not worth reading.

Leave behind Left Behind.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Armageddon Conclusion

How shall we wrap this up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The final chapter doesn’t really have much else to add. It’s more of Ehrman asking if the Jesus of history would agree with the Jesus of Revelation. I ultimately then want to conclude with some thoughts about the book and Ehrman’s books in general.

For one, Ehrman doesn’t like the God in Revelation, but this does not show this God does not exist. If anything, if there is a God who is like this, it is a wonder why Ehrman would want to go against Him. If there is a God out there who is capable of judging us, does Ehrman want to risk it? Perhaps he could say “I give to charity and I’m a good person.” That could be so, but he is willing to bet that if there is a god, that is enough to please him.

Better hope he’s right.

However, what is important about Ehrman is not what he does say. It is what he doesn’t say. As I had predicted at the stop, Preterism doesn’t get mentioned one time. I would like to think that as a New Testament scholar, Ehrman knows about it, but considering he never mentions it, I have to wonder. The resurrection in the main body is mentioned only three times, although it does show up in endnotes.

There is no in-depth focus on the destruction of Jerusalem. For people like myself, this is mainly what Revelation is about. Ehrman rejects a futurist reading of the text, at least one that’s dispensational, but he fills it up with nothing in its place. If this book isn’t about the future, then what does it refer to?

Ehrman is really good at giving you the sound of one-hand clapping. Unfortunately, he doesn’t interact with the best critics of his position. There are evangelical scholars who do not have a dispensationalist or even futurist view of the book of Revelation. I do not recall Ehrman interacting with them and unfortunately, there is no bibliography that I saw in the book.

If you read Ehrman, you will definitely get one side of an issue, but that’s sadly the only side of the issue you will get. Ehmran’s book will be quite good at taking down those who do not have any real study in the text, but give this book to someone who has actually familiarized themselves with the eschatological issues and they will not be persuaded by any arguments.

Ehrman is a fundamentalist. He has an all-or-nothing mentality with the text. His mindset has not once changed from the time that he was a Christian. His loyalty is different, but he still has the same thinking going on.

The answer to this is simply to better educate Christians on what they believe. I realize there are readers of mine who will disagree with my take on futurism and/or dispensationalism, but I hope they will agree on this point. Be educated. If you want to be a futurist and/or dispensationalist, fine, but at least be educated on what you disagree with in Preterism.

Probably a year or so from now we will have another Ehrman book and it will still be a one-sided affair entirely from a fundamentalist perspective. We will see what happens.

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

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 6

Is it all about who gets the money? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

How much power do some people want if they have it? More. How much more money does someone want who has it? Rockefeller is alleged to have said “Just one dollar more.” While that it said that could have been nonsense, we know some people who are like that.

How about Revelation? Is this a hunger of the church for power and wealth? Is the church wanting judgment so they can take money from all of their foes? Does the church look forward to judgment so they can stand over their enemies with a whip?

One passage Ehrman uses to try to show that the historical Jesus didn’t care about the material was the question of taxes. As he says

A passage that confirms this understanding that future heavenly wealth for the faithful is purely spiritual comes in the famous account of the Jewish leaders who ask Jesus whether it is right to pay taxes to the Roman Empire (Mark 12:13–17). This may sound like a relatively innocent question, but in fact Jesus’s opponents are laying a trap for him. If Jesus says, “No, don’t pay taxes to those filthy Romans who have taken over our Promised Land,” then his enemies can turn him over to the authorities for opposing the state. But if he says, “Yes, do what the ruling authorities ask and faithfully pay what they demand,” they can accuse him of being a collaborator and an enemy of the Jewish people. As happens elsewhere, though, Jesus’s opponents do not know whom they are up against. Jesus never, ever gets caught in these traps. On this occasion he asks for a Roman denarius and when it is produced he asks whose image is on it. He already knows the answer, of course: imperial coins were issued with a likeness of the emperor to emphasize his control over all things, even daily purchases. Jesus’s opponents tell him the coin bears the image and inscription of Caesar, and that allows him to demolish their trap: “Then give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and give to God the things that belong to God” (Mark 10:17). For Jesus, the things of this world belong to the mighty and powerful who rule it. God has nothing to do with such trivialities. He does not care about material goods. He wants your soul.

How does this follow? I have looked over this passage multiple times and I do not see it. Ehrman argues as if the body means nothing to Christians and being in the image of God has nothing to do with a body. This is the same God who says He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and that all creation belongs to Him. Why would He make a material world if the matter didn’t matter? Why would He make humans with bodies if bodies didn’t matter?

It could just as easily be said, “Yes, Caesar does have some dominion over these for now, but God ultimately has dominion over everything.” Everything Caesar once ruled has passed into other hands now. Everything God rules still belongs to God even if people get to personally lease it to some degree.

He also uses the verse of “If someone wants your coat, give your tunic as well.” This would result though in someone being totally destitute and even nude which would have two results. First, it would be giving a surety of their promise to fulfill an oath to repay in a court. Second, it would shame their opponent for making them look like someone who would make someone go nude. Neither of these is saying material wealth doesn’t matter.

When Ehrman talks about dominion, he doesn’t do any better.

John’s enthusiasm for widespread destruction, in the end, got the better of him. Already in chapter 6 of Revelation, the entire cosmos falls apart. But in chapter 7, the world and the people in it live on. The obvious explanation is that John is not literally describing the end of the sun, moon, stars, and sky. But that creates a problem. If John constantly engages in rhetorical excess, how can we imagine what he actually envisages?

But on page 121, Ehrman argues most people at the time would be able to understand including the Roman authorities, hence he says this was not written in some code. He also has repeatedly said this was not written for our time to us, but we have to understand the first-century setting. However, when he wants to argue against John and Revelation, he puts on his fundamentalist hat again and claims the text is too hard to understand and should be written for us.

For me, I would argue that this book is written in a cyclical form and tells the same story repeatedly. It also naturally uses Jewish hyperbole. This is also describing the destruction of Jerusalem. It’s not about global destruction.

Ehrman has the same reading problem at the end of the book.

So that is that. Except it’s not. As we have seen, after John describes the glorious new city of gold, we learn that “the nations will walk by its light” (21:24). But why are there nations? We also learn that “the kings of the earth will bring their glory into” the new Jerusalem (21:24). What kings? No one “who practices abomination or falsehood” will enter the city (21:27). Who is practicing abomination (idolatry) or falsehood (sin) if there is no one left? The answer seems obvious: for the saints to dominate, there need to be others left.

Let’s be clear on something. However we interpret this, John is not an idiot. He is not going to contradict himself in the span of a few verses. Our inability to understand does not equal a contradiction.

But to get to the questions, these are good questions and worth discussing, but questions are not arguments. I do not have a definitive answer on this point as this is still something I consider, but I do have a view that Heaven and Hell are the same place but differ in that people who love God glory in His presence and people who hate God suffer intensely in it.

However, none of this leads to “John writes this way so that the people of God can have someone to dominate over.” This is the same Ehrman who said people who read the Bible see what they want to see. Ehrman wants to see God the way he wants to and that is what he does.

Ehrman will go on to argue that those in the city do not share their wealth with those outside, but this is not only unsaid, it is even contradicted. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. Those nations would have to come into the city and can apparently enjoy the blessings of it and can be healed.

So tomorrow, we shall wrap things up, but I contend again that Ehrman is still a fundamentalist in his reading. He has an all-or-nothing mindset. He has not changed it. His loyalty is just different.

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

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 5

Why is the book of Revelation so violent? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re continuing our look at Ehrman’s latest book talking about the violence in the book. At the start, he does say a statement about the Old Testament that is worth repeating.

Many Christians admit they are just not that interested in the Old Testament because its teachings have been surpassed and even superseded by the coming of Jesus and because, well, they find it boring. I wonder what its author would say about that.

There is a lot of truth here. We need to remember the Old Testament is just as much Scripture as is the new. It was the Scripture of the original church and it’s still our Scripture today.

But to the Old Testament we go to talk about the violence. if you expect interaction with people like Flannagan and Copan, you will be disappointed. Walton is not mentioned either. If you want to see Ehrman interact with the other side, it’s not here.

Ehrman paints the picture as if the Israelites were going to these cities and they were just peacefully living out their lives and the Israelites show up and say “God wills it!” and destroy everyone involved. He uses the example of Jericho, which is fitting since this is the most graphic, but it is also not representative. It needs to be established what Jericho was.

For one thing, it could not be that big since Israel could walk around it seven times in one day. Most of these cities were not cities but forts. These would be where the military would be and not the places of women and children. Also, from Rahab, we see that the people knew what had happened and this wasn’t exactly a sneak attack. They encamped outside the city for a week. Anyone could leave if they wanted.

He also brings up the account of the Moabites and the Midianites. In this, the Moabite women come and seduce Israel into sexual immorality. Moses responds by having the leaders of the people killed. Ehrman depicts this as human sacrifice, but this is not what it is. Even if it is done to stop the wrath of God, it is done out of justice in that the people who did the wrongs are put to death for what they did in accordance with the Law.

We are told 24,000 Israelites die and not just those who did the wrong but the innocent. The problem is the text doesn’t say that. It just says 24,000 died. It doesn’t say who they were. Even if they did not participate, this is a collectivist society and each person was responsible not just for himself, but for his neighbor as well. The sin of one could be seen as the sin of all.

Ehrman also speaks with horror about the way that Phineas put a spear through Zimri and Kosbi. What is left out is that this is after judgment had started and the people were weeping. This wasn’t done in private, but was done publicly as the man brought her with him publicly and the text is unclear at least in English, but it looks like they went into the Tent of Meeting, which is a holy place. This is an act of open defiance. Phineas is praised for killing both of them with one thrust of a spear while they were having sex. Violent? Yes, but sin is violent and destructive.

Ehrman is one who complains about evil, but when God does something about evil, he complains about that as well.

Of course, this gets to Numbers 31. I have already written about that here and here.

He also talks about the wrath of God in Hosea and how infants will be dashed to pieces and pregnant women ripped open. Why is God doing this?

Answer: He isn’t. God has laid out the stipulations of the covenant with His people. If they do not obey His covenant, He removes His protection. What happens then? Their enemies have their way and this is what their enemies do. Is God supposed to overrule them somehow so they can do everything else but that? Should the children be made invincible and the pregnant women’s stomachs be indestructible? Ehrman doesn’t answer such questions. Outrage is enough.

Ehrman tells us that when people read the Bible, they tend to see what they want to see. This is true, but it includes Ehrman as well. He wants to depict God as violent. Easy to do. Just cherry-pick some passages and ignore everything to the contrary. It would be just as easy to do the opposite.

He says this is true of laypeople, but it is also true of Christian scholars who see nothing wrong with God destroying people forever in a lake of fire.

Well, it’s Ehrman’s responsibility to show this. Outrage is not enough. Now I don’t think the lake of fire is literal, but is it wrong for God to judge and take life? Why? On what basis? What is the moral code that God is obligated to follow? I can also assure Ehrman that Christian scholars have wrestled with these issues. Unfortunately, we can’t say if Ehrman is aware of these claims since he never cites them. Has he considered Jerry Walls’s dissertation on Hell, for instance?

God is above our understanding of ethics and right and wrong. Whatever he does is right by definition. It would certainly not be right for my next-door neighbor to inject scorpion venom into someone’s veins and allow them to suffer in anguish for five months, refusing to put them out of their misery when they begged to die. And no one could justify a tyrant who chose to torture his people and then throw them into a vat of burning sulfur. But God is not my next-door neighbor or an earthly tyrant, and so he cannot be judged by human standards. If God does such things in the book of Revelation, who are we, mere mortals, to object? We simply cannot judge the Almighty.

But this is an important distinction. We are moral agents put in a universe where we have rules of right and wrong to follow. God is not. There are things God can do that I cannot do. God owes no one life and has all right to take it if He wants to. I do not.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that Ehrman regularly says we shouldn’t read Revelation in a literalistic fashion, but when he wants to depict God as violent, that’s exactly what He does.

It is somewhat ironic that so many readers of Revelation think, as I did, that the God portrayed there is above all human sense of right and wrong. Most of these same readers also believe that our own sense of right and wrong has been given to us by God. This , as you probably know, is a commonly invoked “proof” that God exists. According to this argument, if there were no superior moral being who created us, we could not explain why we have such an innate knowledge of what is good and bad behavior. Our morality, it is argued, must be rooted in the character of God, given to us as creatures made in his image, whether we choose to follow our God-given sense of morality or not.

It is worth pointing out that first off, Ehrman speaks of this as a “proof” of God, but He never shows where it is wrong. He never shows where our ideas of good and evil come from. I also want to say that is not the way I make the argument. I do not say a superior moral being made us. I said a superior good being made us. God is good, but He is not moral. Morality is doing what you ought to do, but God has no ought. God just does what is good. If something is moral, it is good, but just because something is good, that does not mean you have an obligation to do it. It might be good to sell all you have and give it all to the poor (Or it might be foolish), but that doesn’t mean you are morally obligated to do it. It might be good to leave a generous tip that is double what the waitress served you, but you are not morally obligated to do it. It might be good to pay the widow’s electric bill, but you are not morally obligated to.

But if our own sense of right and wrong reveals the character of God, what if God’s moral code requires him to torture and destroy those he disapproves of, those who refuse to become his slaves? (“Torture” is not too strong a word here: Remember those locusts.) 7 If God is like that, and we are told to be “godly” people — told to imitate God in our lives — then surely it follows that we should imitate him in how we treat others. If God hates those who refuse to be his slaves and hurts and then destroys them, shouldn’t we do so as well? Are we to act “godly” or not? And what does it mean to be Christlike if Christ’s wrath leads to the destruction of nearly the entire human race? Are we really to be “imitators of Christ”? Should we, too, force our enemies to suffer excruciating pain and death?

It’s amazing how wrong someone can be in an argument. For one thing, God does not have a moral code. Ehrman will never define what is meant by good and evil. Good then simply becomes that which Ehrman likes and evil, that which Ehrman doesn’t like.

However, I also want to know what is the context in which we are told to be godly and Christlike. I can be told to be godly, but surely I am not supposed to be able to create a universe. I can be told to be Christlike, but that doesn’t mean that I can claim divine prerogatives for myself. I can say I have a mentor I want to be like, but I would not be justified in sleeping with his wife and raising his children.

He also says Jesus is seeking vengeance on those who had nothing to do with his death, but this is embracing the futurist paradigm that Ehrman said is NOT the way to read Revelation. In my Preterist understanding, this took place as judgment on the Roman Empire and especially Jerusalem in 70 AD, which were involved in the death of Jesus and had not repented. Of course, Ehrman has no inkling shown that he is aware of such a view.

In the end, I find this still confusing. Ehrman condemns a futuristic reading of the text and treating it literalistically, but when he wants to condemn the text, that is exactly what he goes to. Ehrman still gives us the sound of one hand clapping. He presents a strong case, but rather a largely emotional one, but shows no indication he has interacted with the best of his critics.

We will continue next time.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 4

How do you read Revelation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

At the start, this chapter looks promising. Ehrman does give an important consideration on context when reading. As he says:

When you change the context , you change the meaning . That is true of written words as well as spoken . If you read in a science fiction novel that a highly toxic virus has accidentally leaked from a top secret governmental lab and infected the entire water supply of New York City , you’d pretty much know where the story’s going . But if you read it on the front page of the New York Times , you might well get going yourself . The literary context of words is therefore just as important as their historical context . A science fiction novel is not a newspaper article ; a short story is not a haiku ; a limerick is not an epic . Every genre of literature involves an unexpressed contract between the author and her readers . Both writer and reader know the rules of this particular game , understanding what is to be expected and how expectations can be met . If the rules are bent or even virtually twisted out of shape , the reader can at least see what the author is doing and grants her the freedom to do so . Even so , there are limits . You will not find serious biographies of FDR that discuss his peace negotiations with the Martians and you will not find nineteenth – century novels comprised of highly compressed metaphors adjusted according to the requirements of rhyme and meter to fit within fourteen lines.

It’s really difficult to see something to disagree with here. Ehrman rightly says we need the literary and historical context of Revelation. Too many interpreters of the book today read it like it was written for modern times. God left a book and the main audience for the book was apparently not the people it was sent to, but a distant generation thousands of years later.

He does talk about Daniel and says there never was a Babylonian King named Belshazzar. However, he was a historical figure as we now know and could have more been described as a crown prince and perhaps a co-regent, but the best word Daniel could find was king. Now here’s something to consider. Why did Belshazzar offer Daniel the third highest position in the land? Why not #2?

Answer: It was not his to give, unless he wanted to abdicate his position. He was the son of Nabodinus, who was the king at the time and when he was away, Belshazzar would be in charge. Ironically, Belshazzar was such an unimportant figure that his name didn’t show up in later historical writings. After all, he never was the main guy sitting on the throne, and yet he shows up in Daniel. Both of these facts actually argue AGAINST a later date.

He also says it couldn’t have been written at the time of the Babylonian Exile because Aramaic wasn’t being used in Israel. However, Daniel is not writing from Israel. He is writing from Babylon and Aramaic certainly was used in Babylon at the time. Ehrman writes as if all scholarship agrees. By this, he could mean secular scholarship, and perhaps they do, but we should still look at the evidence. Furthermore, where did Daniel come from? Who was this figure that was so prominent that a later author chose to use that name instead of his own?

Ehrman, however, does get something else right in what he says about Revelation and its message:

In broad terms, the “transcendent truths” conveyed by Daniel and John are very similar. The world is a hostile place for the people of God, who are experiencing (at least in the author’s view) intense persecution. In light of their suffering, it may appear that God is not actually in control. But he is. There is evil on the earth now, but God has planned to destroy it and his plan will soon be carried out. In the near future he will obliterate those who are harming his people and exalt his chosen ones, giving them power and dominion over the other nations, forever and ever.

This is the point where a Baptist preacher would say “That’ll preach.”

He goes on to explain an example using the Whore of Babylon. He sees this as Rome, but I disagree. After all, the Beast in Revelation represents Rome in some sense, but the Beast hates the harlot. Why? The harlot has to be someone else that Rome would war against. However, she also has to represent a force that was opposed to Christianity. Now let’s see. Is there anyone in the Old Testament described as a harlot and yet also warred against Christianity in the New Testament times that the readers would know about?

Yep. Israel.

This is the only interpretive point I disagree with him on. I do agree with him that the first beast in Revelation 13 is Nero Caesar. I also agree that the second beast represents cult imperial worship of the emperor.

But as we go forward, there will be much more to disagree with.

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

 

 

Book Plunge: Armageddon Part 3

What are the effects of apocalyptic thinking? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ehrman beings this chapter talking about the Great Disappointment. This was when William Miller formed the Millerites because he was convinced that Jesus was going to return and he gave a date. Again, he was wrong, and yet from his movement came about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists.

From here, he talks about Leon Festinger and cognitive dissonance based on the book When Prophecy Fails. (The majority of internet atheists who treat cognitive dissonance like a magic word have no clue about Festinger or the book.) There is a footnote about cognitive dissonance and Christianity, but to his credit, Ehrman doesn’t make the argument himself. It’s as if there seems to be some personal tone in Ehrman’s most recent books.

In more recent times, the off-shoots eventually led to Waco. I can still remember being in middle school in a class and the teacher next door coming in and telling us to turn on the TV and watch the news. That was when the compound was burning. David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians was also someone who was caught up in apocalyptic thinking.

Fortunately, most cases don’t get that extreme, but they do happen and we need to take them into account. A far more recent case is that of Harold Camping and his predictions on a date. Real people sell all they have and stop going to college and don’t get married based on these claims.

Ehrman also talks about our policies on Israel. There are many people who are quick to defend Israel in any case because these are supposedly the people of God. There is an irony on how this is done. The following is from page 95:

This has long been the irony of Christian Zionism . Many evangelicals love Israel but believe most of its inhabitants will be sent to the fires of hell . That certainly is the view of the minister chosen to conclude the embassy dedication ceremony in prayer : televangelist and vocal Christian Zionist John Hagee , who has written books with such titles as The Beginning of the End : The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist , in which he argues that the assassination “ fits into events prophesied centuries ago that are recorded in the Bible . ” That is Hagee’s real concern : prophecy . Hagee has claimed that even the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to restore the Jewish people to Israel . Apparently not alert to the implications of the idea , he later apologized should anyone have found his comment offensive.

Hagee, of course, had his books about the blood moons and something is about to change. Nothing happened. Has Hagee got up and repented for what he did? Not at all. Churches rightly hold pastors to account for huge moral failures such as having an affair. When are they going to hold pastors to account for making public statements like this that shame Christianity and are proven as totally false?

A lot of evangelicals seem eager to get the Jews in Israel and the temple built, when this will really in their system result in a bloodbath where these Jews will be mercilessly killed. Could it be sometimes we care more about the prophecy than the salvation of the Jewish people? That’s just something to think about.

This doesn’t mean that one cannot support Israel, but when I do, it’s not because of something to do with prophecy. It’s because they’re on our side politically and because I think they are a buffer against Islam in the area. I also do not have a side on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

I was somewhat surprised when it came to talking about the rebuilding of the temple and how the Dome of the Rock would have to go for that (Good luck), that Ehrman never mentioned Julian the Apostate. He was an emperor who wanted to invalidate prophecy actually by rebuilding the temple. Strangely enough, he died before this ever came about.

Finally, we get to talk about environmentalism, mainly with Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior James Watt who said he wants to make sure we have enough resources to last until Jesus returns. This seemed like a shocking statement at the time to some. It was consistent for Watt as that was his faith tradition.

This leads to Ehrman’s talk about environmentalism and of course, climate change. I happen to be skeptical. I remember being in school and hearing the next great fear was the coming ice age. Every doomsday disaster about the environment has not come to pass. Unfortunately, Ehrman never references the evangelical Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

That being said, while I am skeptical of this and don’t care for the environmental movement, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take care of the Earth and our resources. We should. As Ehrman rightly indicates, while Genesis 1 has been used to say we can plunder the planet as we have dominion over it, it can just as easily mean the opposite. We should take care of the planet. I don’t buy into doom and gloom ideas,

Next time, we’ll start looking at least at how Ehrman tells us to read Revelation.

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

 

 

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 — 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)

Should Revelation Be Scary?

How do we approach this book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, I wrote about my mother’s concerns with weather all over the world. I asked her then if she was basing this on Revelation and she told me she had only read it once when she was a child and it scared her greatly. I can understand a child being scared by the book of Revelation, much like how on the other end the rabbis wanted a Jewish boy to wait until he was old enough before he read the Song of Songs.

Yet as adults, should we be scared of the book? In all fairness, there are some surprising aspects of this book. Years ago I read a book that asked at one point what would we know about Jesus if the only thing we had about Him was the book of Revelation? We certainly wouldn’t know about any “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.”

Years ago, Weird Al had a movie called UHF where he took over a TV station and brought it back from the brink with some awesome shows. One show that he had was Gandhi II. In this one, Gandhi came back and was not Mr. passive-resistance. He was a rough and tough fighter with beautiful ladies by his side toting a machine gun. Aside from the ladies, we can see Jesus being presented in such a different way in Revelation. He opens seals that bring about destruction on Earth and He comes back riding on a horse to judge and make war.

We all say to some extent we want justice. That even applies to today’s social justice warriors. What is in their name but justice? While I think it is a perverted sense of justice, they still want what they see as justice. Justice is good, but justice can also be scary. Something worth pointing out also is we constantly want mercy for ourselves and justice for our enemies. We very rarely reverse those. Perhaps we should.

Now some people reading this believe in a rapture and that Revelation describes what happens when the church is gone. That I find puzzling since why spend so much time talking about an event we won’t see? Still, if you believe that, this shouldn’t scare you because you’re not going to experience it.

I take the Orthodox Preterist approach and see the book as describing events largely happening in the first century, though some is future and one event, Revelation 12, is even a Cosmic Christmas story. These events do show justice. God takes sin seriously. The reason everything happens in Revelation in judgment is because people sin. There is a way in which justice is scary.

If we stay there, Revelation will not help us. It is not meant to just scare us. It is meant to give us hope. When Christians go through sufferings and trials, even the worst of all, God is still in charge. No matter what the Beast does in the book, it’s clear throughout who is in charge.

Often in the church today we make too big an emphasis on the devil. When it comes to what’s going on in our lives that is suffering, we blame it on the devil over and over. Whenever we are tempted to sin, it is because of the devil. After all, it can’t be that that’s our natural tendency. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the devil to tempt me into sin. I’m quite proficient at being tempted on my own.

This fear is understood since in Revelation sealing the devil takes an army of angels to…wait….what? What did you say? The text doesn’t say that? It says one angel does it?

Huh. Imagine that.

It takes one angel to deal with the devil. Don’t practically make him the counterpart of God.

Finally, I remember several years ago being on TheologyWeb when in our chat feature on the site called the Shoutbox, someone was posting “Saints Win! Saints Win! Saints Win!” I humorously remarked that he must have just finished reading the book of Revelation. It’s a joke, but we should all really shout with joy at times. After all, the saints really do win.

In the end then, Revelation should be a comfort. Whatever the judgment that comes, God does it for the people He loves and how does it end? It ends with a wedding. It is the ultimate marriage of Heaven and Earth. It is the consummation of what has been longed for. God is with His people as He intended and all those who want to sit at the table can do so.

Come.

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

Should God Reveal Himself To You?

Should you have to seek? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Suppose you met a young man who said he really wanted to get married. However, he also said he refused to go out and search for a wife. He refused to talk to any women he met. He even refused to go on any online dating sites. After all, if he is to be married, surely the right woman will just come along and choose him.

Or, suppose someone says they want to get a job. However, they refuse to go online to search for any jobs. They refuse to work on a resume. They refuse to go to any places of business and apply for a job. Do you really think they want a job?

Of course not. We would all question these claims. If you really want something, you are to go out and get it. Even in dating, while girls typically are the ones who are asked out, they at least do things to indicate that they are available and interested. (Granted though, many of us men are horrible at reading these signals.)

Yet so many internet skeptics approach this this same way. They ask if God has revealed Himself to them. I have encountered some like that this week, but it hasn’t been anything new. How many people have you heard say “God knows what it would take to convince me that He exists and He hasn’t done it. I guess He doesn’t exist.”

Some of you might think that sounds ridiculous. Some of you might even be skeptics of Christianity who agree that that’s ridiculous, which is commendable. However, some might be wondering “Why doesn’t God do that?”

I have written before that God is not a trivia question. The point assumes God just wants people to know that He exists. Why should anyone think that?

The analogy I often give is suppose you meet a husband who says he wants more sex. (Yeah. I know you all are really having to stretch your imagination.) His wife says, “Okay.” In the bedroom though, she shows no excitement or passion, doesn’t respond or get physically involved at all other than letting him do what he wants and then when he releases she says, “Okay. We’re done. I’m going to go watch TV now.”

Did the guy get what he wants? If you just go in a fully technical sense, yes, but no man would be satisfied. What he is really saying is he also wants his wife to want him. He doesn’t want to be a duty. He wants to be desired.

What a person who raises this claim about God is saying implicitly is “God is not worth seeking out. However, if He wants me, He needs to show me that He exists.” Such a person is automatically putting themselves above God as greater in importance. Why should God appear to such a person and enable them further in this way?”

The person who seeks though is the person who says, “This question is worth an answer.” They are saying “If God exists, He is worth knowing and I want to know that He is real.” I am convinced that if that person does seek, they will find. It’s a biblical promise. It is not a guarantee, but those who are diligent in their search will find.

Those who expect God to come to them can expect nothing and are really making a theological claim with no backing. God does not have any reason to show Himself to the proud. It’s the humble who receive grace, including Himself.

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