I truly hope that what is described in that book is wrong. Unfortunately, there’s too much science that agrees with this prophecy, that I cannot ignore what was said.Since the very beginning of the church, our faith has been under assault by those who twisted the words of God to fit what they wanted. Instead of letting God tell us what the truth was, we chose to redefine what God meant when He spoke to us through the Prophets and the Apostles.
Vast heresies have arisen that murdered millions of our brothers and sisters, and many of those heresies have some of their roots in a corrupt understanding of the Last Days (eschatology). The Roman Catholic Church would not be what it is today without the Amillennialism of Augustine. Nor would the Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc.
So, the most important reason to talk about Bad Eschatology, is to bring ourselves back to a proper obedience to the words of God. But, it’s not the only reason.
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Amillennialism – A Somewhat Older Insanity
Postmillennialism – Amillennialism On Steroids
Preterism – Taking a Knife to the Bible
Historic Premillennialism – The (Almost) Dead Eschatology
Conclusion – Bad Eschatologies Have One Thing In Common
I never cared very much about when the Antichrist would come, or when the Rapture would happen. I didn’t care if you thought that the Millennium was this way, or that. I didn’t care if Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or Alfred E. Newman were the Antichrist. I didn’t care if some magnificent commentator said such and so about the Great Tribulation. As maddening as any of that is, I literally didn’t care about any of that, because I knew something that none of them understood:
God was going to redeem the Children of Jacob.
And, I knew that it would happen long before the Antichrist or the Great Tribulation.
That left me with the ability to focus all of my attention on Israel, a tiny land the size of Taiwan.
I fell in love with the people.
I learned Hebrew.
I lived in Jerusalem, at the center of geopolitics.
What an amazing experience.
Unfortunately, I’m a little single-minded. When a little is good, a LOT is better. This habit of spending my life going full-throttle in one direction, meant that God has had to throw up a road-block to get my attention. I’m really that clueless at times – just ask Mrs. Little.
God showed me that there are more things to talk about than the Redemption of Israel, so God blew a whistle and threw me out of the pool. I had something important to do, like doing evangelism in Taipei and looking at some of the events that were bringing us towards rendesvous with a dark and even terrifying future.
I have formal training and experience in Geopolitics, Economics and Finance, and it was clear to me that our civilization was looking down the barrel of a gun. In fact, I could see the Ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in all of that. And, when I started talking about it, I ran straight into the brick wall of everyone’s view of eschatology.
Then, as I began to understand the cataclysmic events surrounding the Redemption of Israel, that brick wall became impossible to get around. It even led me to wonder if I was the one getting it all wrong, and that’s how this book got written:
When Gog Comes
https://whengogcomes.com
That was my attempt to prove my own theories wrong. I didn’t want to believe that this great disaster would turn every city around the world into rubble, destroy the power grid and kill billions. Unfortunately, I got more confirmation than I wanted, which made that book into the most painful document that I have ever written.
Prove me wrong, and you will receive my undying gratitude.
And yes, the coming of Gog and Magog is the focal point of Israel’s Redemption. When Gog and Magog are finally destroyed in Ezekiel 39, God says this:
So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward.
– Ezekiel 39:22 (NKJV)
And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God.”
– Ezekiel 39:29 (NKJV)
So, when Gog and Magog come, God will use that moment to turn Israel away from her sins and bring her to faith in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, there will be a terrible cost:
“And I will send fire on Magog and on those who live in security in the coastlands. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.
– Ezekiel 39:6 (NKJV)
When I went to look into what that ‘fire’ meant, I saw the cataclysm and catastrophe that would be worldwide. And what I found inspired me to write about it:
Ezekiel’s Fire
https://ezekielsfire.com
The irony is that I wrote the first edition of that book long before I wrote When Gog Comes. As my understanding of that event grew, I kept adding to it. And, it is now in its sixth edition.
Again, I kept hitting this brick wall of everyone’s eschatology. Everyone had their reasons for why this would never happen, that it wouldn’t happen until after we were all gone, or that it was just symbolic anyway.
I was dumbfounded.
How could everyone ignore what Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zephaniah and Zechariah said?
I even found serious scientific data backing up everything that I said. But, none of that mattered, and I didn’t know why. So, I went looking.
By the way, one of the reasons why I was so confused was due to being raised as a feral Christian.
But wait. What’s a feral Christian?
You’ve heard of feral cats. They’re the opposite of the domesticated bundles of fur and claw that roam our houses and demand that doors should be open. House cats have learned the rules and regulations of living with humans. Feral cats have not.
Feral Christians?
Well, we didn’t go to seminary, and we were taught by those who rejected the artificial structures that Theologians imposed upon them. And, feral Christians like myself didn’t learn the complicated vocabulary that ‘christian’ scholars like to throw around.
I still remember the moment when a friend said, “So, you’re a Dispensationalist.”
A WHAT?
Dispensationalist?
What was that?
Well, I had to do some research, and what I found seemed pretty good. But, my friend was a bit of a troublemaker, so I knew that there was a catch – which meant extra digging. That’s when I discovered a name for what I believed:
Historic Premillennialism – (The Spurgeon Kind)
The non-Spurgeon versions of that eschatology make the one mistake that all other bad eschatologies make:
They throw out the Redemption of Israel
And yes, every eschatology – every single one except for the one Spurgeon embraced – throws Israel onto the garbage heap of the Last Days. They either deny Israel’s Redemption outright, or claim that it happens within that tiny window of time called the Great Tribulation. And when I began this study a year ago, I was hoping to find someone, anyone who actually took the prophets seriously and knew God’s intention to bring the Children of Jacob back to Himself.
Yes, others claim to understand the prophets, and they make a lot of noise about how this prophet or that confirms their version of eschatology. But they are all, with almost no exception, parroting the words of someone like Augustine, Darby or Gill. The Feral Christian in me doesn’t want to understand why anyone would do that, but I’ve been domesticated enough at this point in my life to see why.
We love our teachers, and it’s really hard to go against what so many taught us.
I get it, but it took a very long time to get there. However, that doesn’t change an important fact:
Domesticated Christians aren’t ready for what’s coming.
Those who follow Amillennialism, Postmillennialism, Preterism, Dispensationalism, or even Historic Premillennialism are not ready for what is coming. They have literally no idea that the coming of Gog and Magog will crush what is left of our civilization when it arrives. And if I’m right about what occurs during Revelation 6, we are definitely not ready for the ride of the Red, Black and Pale horses.
Our ‘modern’ civilization is an exceptionally fragile thing. It will not survive what’s coming. And when God shakes the Earth in Seal Six, what’s left will be crushed. And, I’m truly hoping that Seal Six is the Redemption of Israel, because if it isn’t…
…it’s all very much worse.
Trust me. You do NOT want to see Ezekiel’s Fire occur BEFORE the Four Horsemen ride. You just don’t. But, I’m saying that as if we have a choice. We don’t, and that’s where we’ve gone off the rails.
We thought that we could vote on how the Last Days would play out, and that God would be moved by our opinion.
We’re sheep. God isn’t going to ask us for permission on how the Last Days play out. What He requires is our obedience and submission to His actual words, and we are refusing to do that.
What is it that Samuel said to Saul?
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”
– 1 Samuel 15:23 (NKJV)
Beware fellow Christian. If you rebel against God, do not expect Him to accept you and say “Well done.” We have been rebels for too long.
It’s time to end the rebellion.
Of course, it’s more than just ‘rebellion’. A lot of our eschatology comes from being afraid or unable to see.
We’re going to get into the scriptural errors of the main theories about the Last Days, but offering simple and direct proof will rarely be enough to persuade anyone to abandon a lie that they like. Doing that will lead to a personal attack, change of subject, false rationalization or deafening silence.
I confess to having done that in the past with my own errors – errors that I have long since repented of. So, I completely understand why someone would act with such lack of logic when faced with proof that they are deeply incorrect. In fact, if you live long enough, you will suffer such moments quite a few times, and we have a term for that.
Cognitive Dissonance – the stress or pain that you feel when what you see conflicts with what you believe. You can find a longer definition and description, here.
One aspect of this is called Cognitive Blindness. That’s the inability to perceive something because you lack the capacity to understand it, whether through ignorance, conflicting belief or insufficient intelligence.
I actually experienced a moment of cognitive blindness on a trip to Israel to visit friends and family in 2015. I had gone to a makolet (מכולת), one of the ubiquitous tiny grocery shops that are everywhere in Israel. I was buying a bottle of Coke, and when the clerk spoke to me in English, I could not understand him. It wasn’t because of his accent. No…
My mind was so caught in Hebrew that – for a moment – I couldn’t understand English.
This happens a lot in discussions over politics, religion, science, morality and whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. When you show proof that a certain thing cannot be true to an ardent follower of that ‘thing’, they often will be unable to see what you are saying. But, there’s something more insidious, something darker:
Willful Blindness
There are those among us who are deliberately closing their eyes to what is true because the consequences would be too severe. And, about 85% of any given group of people are engaged in willful blindness. Eighty. Five. Percent.
That figure comes from a number of studies of companies and institutions. And, I learned quite a bit about that from this TEDx talk by Margaret Heffernan:
Margaret Heffernan: The dangers of “willful blindness”
Eighty five percent of those who follow an error, know that there’s a problem with what they believe. They know that their beliefs just don’t ‘add up’. But, they refuse to acknowledge what they carefully refuse to see.
I once had a pastor tell me that he would lose half of his congregation if he preached what he believed about the Rapture. He was a secret post-tribber, who was too much of a coward to preach the truth.
Such cowardice by a pastor is a sin.
There are a number of other mental problems at work, and I’ve seen a lot of them over the years – especially on Facebook eschatology groups. I have personally seen the following:
Apophenia – the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.
Illusory Correlation – the phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists.
Selective perception – the tendency not to notice and more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict our prior beliefs.
Semmelweis reflex – a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms.
False Consensus Effect – the assumption that personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through a population.
Naive Realism – the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.
Effort Justification – tendency to attribute a value to an outcome, which they had to put effort into achieving, greater than the objective value of the outcome. (That Th.D., for instance…)
Confirmation Bias – the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. And, I’ve been seeing a lot of one element of ‘confirmation bias’ called the Backfire Effect – which happens when you give evidence contradicting a belief resulting in the rejection of the evidence and an even stronger belief in the error.
Frequency Illusion – after noticing something for the first time, there is a tendency to notice it more often, leading someone to believe that it has an increased frequency of occurrence. (You buy a Honda, and then start seeing Hondas everywhere.)
System Justification – the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo.
Subjective Validation – by which people will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them.
Dunning–Kruger Effect – people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.
And finally, one that probably affects me, and probably you:
Bias Blind Spot – recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment. (That plank in our own eye, as we seek the splinter in someone else.)
Those are just the cognitive biases that I’ve been able to identify in my interaction with people who believe in a number of different eschatologies. There are a lot more to look at, and I find all this to be absolutely fascinating. We humans are so irrational, that we literally cannot see our errors – even when someone shows us absolute proof.
I’ve come to realize that the best that we can do in such circumstances is acknowledge this weakness in ourselves and others. We are all so very fallible, and can only know the truth by the grace of God.
If we humble ourselves and submit to what the Bible says, we have a chance at learning the truth.
I particularly like Charles Spurgeon’s attitude towards eschatology. He only talked about what seemed obvious to him, and refrained from speculating on what could not be seen. He was very wise in this approach, and got criticized for it.
Remember these verses:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
– Daniel 12:4 (KJV)
The fierce anger of Jehovah shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it.
– Jeremiah 30:24 (ASV)
Translation Note: The ASV gets this verse right. The Hebrew word is תתבוננו (teet-bone-noo), and it means ‘you will understand’. It is understandable that other translations use ‘consider’, but it’s not correct. You’ll see this note again a little later, but it’s important.
And, as we look back over the last two thousand years, there’s literally no way that any theologian could have figured out what was happening until the last hundred-plus years. Muslim control of the Middle East seemed impenetrable. No one could understand how the Antichrist could limit the buying and selling of goods and services to only those with his mark. No one could understand how the children of Jacob could be brought back to their land, and then be redeemed.
Anyone who claims – or talks as if they claim – to completely understand the Last Days, is either lying or deceived. And, if you think that I’m claiming a complete understanding of eschatology, allow me to be extra clear that I’ve been wrong in the past and expect to be wrong in the future.
The best that ANYONE can do as they attempt to understand what’s coming, is say what can be seen, and refrain from claiming what cannot. We also need to point out those areas that we cannot know with certainty, and I hope to do that at some point in this series.
So, why do we keep getting eschatology wrong?
The most obvious reason is prideful men and women with access to a printing press. And, that’s what happened in the mid-1800s. The steam powered printing press made books easy to print and cheap to produce, along with fast ships and trains that allowed these books to be distributed quickly and cheaply around the world.
The first successful implementation of such a printing press happened in 1814, when it was bought by the Times of London. From that moment on, books and newspapers became cheaper and cheaper as new innovations in printing press technology allowed more and more people to get access to cheaper and cheaper books.
Edward Irving’s translation of Lacunza’s book might never have happened without the steam-powered printing press. News of Margaret MacDonald’s ‘visions’ might never have reached the headlines. John Darby’s Dispensationalism might never have gotten popular. And, Scofield’s Reference Bible could never have sold a million copies in 21 years, were it not for the electric printing press that replaced the steam-powered versions in 1900.
Like the Internet of today, steam and electric powered printing presses made it possible for knowledge to expand. It also made it possible for false teachers to get an even wider audience.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
And, there were a huge number of fables that exploded out of the 19th century. Unfortunately, such fables are hard to dislodge from the minds of those who believe them. Once they have taken up residence, it takes a lot of hard work to get rid of them.
This means that the Body of Christ suffered a deluge of bad ideas. We were crushed under the weight of literally tons of books claiming this or that about the Bible. And, the great heresies that afflict us even today, would not have had any success without the steam-powered printing press that was eventually replaced by the electric powered press in 1901.
The list of heresies coming out of the 1800s is long, but here are a few that come to mind:
Seventh Day Adventists
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Christian Science
Mormons
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Modern Atheism
Karl Marx – Socialism and Communism
Spiritualism and Spiritism
Millerism and the Great Disappointment
Liberal Christianity, Liberal Theology and Christian Modernism
The Ouija Board
Movements that are less heretical, and even positive, that came out in the 1800s:
Dispensationalism
Pentecostalism
Disciples of Christ (aka, Campbellites)
Landmarkism
Secular Zionism
The Abolitionist Movement Against Slavery
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I’m sure that you can probably think of a few of your own, and I hope that you do. But I want you see how the steam-powered printing press allowed really awful ideas – and a few good ones – spread quickly throughout the world.
To quote Spurgeon:
“A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.”
The only way to fight against the lies being forced upon us is to follow this rule:
“Whom will he teach knowledge?
And whom will he make to understand the message?
Those just weaned from milk?
Those just drawn from the breasts?
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,
Line upon line, line upon line,
Here a little, there a little.”
– Isaiah 28:9-10 (NKJV)
Since our churches and seminaries don’t do that anymore, we now have utter chaos. And, God has this to say to those who will not listen:
To whom He said, “This is the rest with which
You may cause the weary to rest,”
And, “This is the refreshing”;
Yet they would not hear.
But the word of the Lord was to them,
“Precept upon precept, precept upon precept,
Line upon line, line upon line,
Here a little, there a little,”
That they might go and fall backward, and be broken
And snared and caught.
– Isaiah 28:12-13 (NKJV)
Since we have refused to hear, we have fallen backward and have been broken, snared and caught. It will only get worse, as we move deeper and deeper into these Last Days.
Our Lord made the truth of the Last Days impossible to understand until we got there. Yes, we might have had some glimmers of understanding here or there, but God did NOT want us to ‘get it’ until we got there.
This means that all the commentaries about Revelation and Prophets are wrong. All of them. Not one of them is correct except for what Spurgeon said, who was criticized for speaking so little about the Last Days.
In fact, I hope that the two books that I’ve written are wrong, too. I am so horrified by what are in my own writings, that I earnestly desire for someone to prove what I said, to be completely incorrect. Until then, I suffer with the knowledge that billions will die in the worst way possible – long before the Antichrist even graduates from high school.
Unfortunately, we humans never consider bad outcomes, until AFTER we start to suffer from them. We are amazingly short-sighted. Our blindness is only exceeded by our mind-numbing foolishness. But, back to God’s obscuring of eschatology.
Here is what God had to say about Jeremiah on the subject:
20 The anger of Jehovah shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it perfectly.
– Jeremiah 23:20, ASV
24 The fierce anger of Jehovah shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall understand it.
– Jeremiah 30:24, ASV
TRANSLATION NOTE: the Hebrew word for ‘ye shall understand’ in both verses is תתבוננו (pronounced: teet-bohn-noo). It’s a more complex verb than you find in modern Hebrew, but the root of that word is בינה (bee-nah), which means understanding, wisdom and comprehension. And, this is why the ASV translates those two verses better than the KJV or other translations.
What is the context of Jeremiah 23 and 30?
The redemption of Israel, the Return of the Children of Jacob to God. But at the same time, God will unleash His fierce anger against the nations that were against the Jews and against God’s plan for them.
The irony is that our understanding of what God is doing won’t truly happen until AFTER it has been accomplished. And, there isn’t a single eschatology that understands that the Redemption of Israel happens long before the Great Tribulation. Long before the Antichrist. Years, even decades before any of that happens.
Brothers and sisters, the salvation of the Children of Jacob could happen centuries before Revelation 8 begins. My gut feeling is that it won’t take centuries, but you should not trust such notions. I’ve had ‘gut feelings’ about things that were awfully wrong.
The problem is this ‘anger of the Lord’. That’s coming at the time of Israel’s Redemption, and you need to be ready for that. I wrote about this in my book, Ezekiel’s Fire.
I truly hope that what is described in that book is wrong. Unfortunately, there’s too much science that agrees with this prophecy, that I cannot ignore what was said.
If nothing else, look at the warnings that Plasma Physicist Dr. Kazurai Shibata warned us about the inevitability of a superflare hitting earth. It’s happened before. They are happening on stars just like our own. It is as inevitable as tomorrow’s sunrise.
They just don’t know when.
However, you and I can read the Bible and see when such a Solar cataclysm will occur. When you see a vast, multinational army preparing to descend upon Israel, get out of tall buildings… get away from cities… have access to drinking water that doesn’t require an electric pump… be friends with people who know how to grow food. Our civilization will not survive what is described in that book. (Although, the Antichrist will bring it back.)
However, our ignorance over the Redemption of Israel is only one part of our problem. We are also clueless about the Antichrist and his five invasions of Israel. Yes, five – even though one or two of those might not be ‘invasions’.
Then after those invasions, and the final battle of Armageddon in the Hula Valley, God says that the Resurrection happens. And, Daniel is completely and utterly mystified by this, but God says:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
– Daniel 12:4, KJV
TRANSLATION NOTE: Notice what I said about understanding (teet-bohn-noo). The word for knowledge is completely different. It’s דעת (dah-aht). There’s a ‘the’ – ה (hay) – at the beginning of the word, which is a syntax issue. The word דעת (dah-aht) is about what we know. The information that we’ve acquired. It is distinctly different from wisdom or understanding, which is the application of what we know.
Later on, God – through His messenger to Daniel – responds to Daniel’s lack of understanding:
8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
– Daniel 12:8-10, KJV
In this passage God shows that we will go through the Great Tribulation, and that we will be purified and made white, and tried. I don’t think that ANY of us relish the thought of going through such purification, but we Christians have sinned before God. And, since God loves us and wants us with Him forever, He will purify and make us clean.
If you wish to avoid such painful purification process, it seems that you might be able to do so by choosing purity and spiritual cleanness. And yes, there will be places on earth that will escape the Antichrist. If God made such a place of safety in the wilderness for the Jews in Judea, He may do so for those of us who have remained true to His word, and kept our robes unspotted by the world.
As for the wicked, they were never going to be allowed to understand. And, I’m afraid that there is much wickedness among our pastors, holding back the truth from us. And, I see that wickedness and lack of understanding in the eschatology Facebook groups that I participate in – especially those that have thrown me out for speaking inconvenient truths. But, let’s keep going with one huge reason why eschatology was going to be impossible to understand until now.
One of the biggest challenges that we’ve had, has been our difficulty with the chronology of the Book of Revelation. And, I understand how difficult it has been.
Every time that I would read Revelation, I’d get through chapters one through five just fine. Then, I’d hit chapter 6 – the Seven Seals. The first eight verses would make a lot of sense (especially, if you understand geopolitics and commodities). Then, trouble would begin with verse nine – the fifth seal – which is still difficult to understand.
Does that describe and represent a time of persecution?
Then… Verse 12. Ouch.
When I would hit Seal Six, I’d get horribly confused. Chapter 6 is right at the beginning of the prophetic part of Revelation, and it describes some pretty mind-blowing events that would seem to occur in later chapters of Revelation:
Big earthquake?
The sun turns black?
The moon becomes red as blood?
The stars fall to the earth?
The sky rolls up like a scroll?
That sounded more like something in chapter 16, when the bowls are poured out before the Battle of Armageddon. But, there was a problem with that, since the Book of Revelation shows the order of events this way:
They happen in that order. There may (or may not) be flashbacks between them, but the Trumpets don’t sound until AFTER the Seven Seals have all been opened. The bowls/vials aren’t poured out until AFTER the last Trumpet has finished. The Battle of Armageddon does not happen until AFTER the Bowls/Vials are poured out. But, Seal Six sounded so fantastic that you naturally wanted to put it somewhere towards the end of Revelation.
Does the Book of Revelation jump back and forth between the Seals, the Trumpets and the Bowls?
No, it does not.
If you believe that it does, you will never understand the Last Days. Ever. If God meant for us to move the seals, trumpets and bowls around, He would have told us to do that. And, there are two very, Very, VERY important reasons why you should not.
If you play games with the Book of Revelation, God promised to bring terrible judgment upon you. You will suffer in this life, and in the Life-to-Come. If you value your place in eternity, never ever fiddle with the Book of Revelation. And, if you think that I’m joking read the curses that God will put upon you:
18 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book;
19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:18-19 (NKJV)
If you add to the Book of Revelation, you suffer in this life – terribly. But, if you TAKE AWAY anything from the Book of Revelation, you suffer for eternity.
That scares me, and it should scare you.
Playing around with the interpretation of Revelation is deadly. Don’t do it. Not even a little. And for years, that’s why I would put a question mark over Revelation 6 and 7, and moved on. And, since I read my Bible all the way through, every year, I would hit that question mark again and again and again – every December.
Please do the same, until you are able to see what God is doing in Revelation 6. But, there’s another reason why we should keep Seal Six right where it is.
Again, I was completely confused by Seal Six for decades. Ever since I started reading my Bible through as a teenager, I kept hitting that passage and being puzzled.
But then, in 2019, I started writing When Gog Comes.
As I worked my way through the evidence of the timing of Gog and Magog, I came to the realization that the aftermath of this great invasion of Israel sounds a lot like Revelation 6:12. Ezekiel’s Fire fit perfectly within Revelation 6:12-17. It couldn’t happen afterwards, and there doesn’t seem to me that there is much room for it to happen before. So, it must happen at verse 12 or before.
Why do I say ‘must’?
If God had left out chapter 7, from the Book of Revelation, I would not have been able to say ‘must’. But, since Revelation 7 is about 144,000 Israelis being sealed by God… It means that the Return of Jacob had happened before we get to chapter 7. These 12,000 from each tribe must be followers of Christ who have reached a level of spiritual maturity that would allow them to be sealed by God in their foreheads.
Yes, I know that we could imagine these Israeli Christians getting saved, baptized and then sealed immediately. Anything is possible, but is that how God works?
Is there any place in the Bible where someone is sent out by God, who is ignorant of the Bible?
Of course, God is God. He knows best, so if that’s what happens, I certainly won’t object. But, notice what an angel says in Chapter 7:
2 And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,
3 Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
– Revelation 7:2-3, KJV
That angel is commanding the other angels to stop the events of Revelation continuing until AFTER a fairly long process has completed. It takes time. It’s not instantaneous. There might even be years and decades of time involved. After all, the first four seals take quite a bit of time all by themselves.
Did you know that it is possible that the First Seal opened almost 2000 years ago?
I talk about that, and the rest of Revelation here:
A Biblical Overview Of Revelation
https://revelationsix.com/a-biblical-overview-of-revelation/
Also, God isn’t going to ‘seal’ those who are not saved. And, the question is…
…when does the salvation of these 12 tribes occur?
Revelation 7:1 begins with “After these things…”, so the salvation of Israel must happen somewhere in Revelation 6. But again, I couldn’t get past how the events of Seal Six were described. It was too confusing.
All of that changed when I realized what Isaiah 30:26 was describing:
Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
– Isaiah 30:26 (KJV)
At first, I thought that it was just a really big solar flare. Then, when I did more research, I started saying that it was a superflare – a word that few scientists talked about. But, when I realized that this had to be a small nova event, I finally was able to understand what happened when Seal Six was opened.
Once I realized that small nova events can occur on stars just like our own, I finally understood Seal Six. That understanding happened while I was writing When Gog Comes. It was so obvious to me that I immediately put it into chapter 16 of that book.
However bizarre this must sound…
…when you put the coming of Gog and Magog and Ezekiel’s Fire into Revelation 6:12-17…
…our understanding of the Book of Revelation increases dramatically.
It removes the question mark over Seal Six and confirms the chronological order of the Book of Revelation. It even helps us understand the Deadly Wound suffered by seventh head of The Beast.
Ezekiel’s Fire causes that ‘deadly wound’. Ezekiel’s Fire knocks out our civilization (The Seventh Head), and the Dragon will bring it back to life, turning it into the Eighth Head (Revelation 17:11).
People have forgotten what The Beast is, and what it represents. I can’t claim to understand the other six heads of that foul creature, but I understand the seventh one:
Our current civilization is the Seventh Head.
Of course, I’m assuming that we are close to the Last Days – or, already in it. If we aren’t, then forget I said anything. I mean, if we are head five or six, then our civilization will fall and be replaced with another one. It’s happened before. But, let’s assume that we are that seventh head.
What will Ezekiel’s Fire do to our civilization when it arrives?
Our way of life will be completely smashed to pieces. Every major city around the world – and most of the small ones – will be completely destroyed. There won’t be a building even two stories high that will survive. There will be no electricity, and no way to bring it back. Every government building will be thrown down. No cars or trucks will work. No planes will fly. There won’t be any fuel.
After Ezekiel’s Fire, there will be…
…no government anywhere in the world
…no police
…no military
…no trade
…no communication
…no nothing
Everything will be flattened. The only survivors will be those outside the cities in small buildings. Those few who survive the earthquake, will die of violence, starvation and thirst.
THAT is how the Seventh Head of the Beast suffers its deadly wound.
That happens in Seal Six, and the description of Seal Six is straight out of what we would expect to see from a large cloud of dust created by a small nova event – something that we have already seen from other stars.
When is the Seventh Head brought back to life?
When does civilization come back to life?
When the Antichrist turns the lights back on.
Anyone who could bring civilization back like that, would earn the undying devotion of the world. People would do anything, worship anyone, if it meant having enough food to eat, a cellphone and an Internet that works again, and most of all… prosperity. Latin Americans are pouring across the southern border of the United States for exactly this reason. Africans and Asians are flooding into Europe for this reason. People will do almost anything, take any risk, to be secure and to prosper. And, all that the Antichrist will require is that you worship him.
What a deal.
NOTE: Notice that after the Seven Seals are opened, the stars are back in the night sky in Chapter Eight. That’s additional proof that this is a nova event. The vast cloud of dust thrown out in the the Solar System from our sun dissipates, bringing the stars back to our night sky.
For those of you who are still unconvinced that our civilization is the Seventh Head, look around you. Look at the architecture. Look at our scientific and legal systems.
It’s all Roman.
All of it.
Science and Law uses Latin. All of our government buildings are Romanesque. The characters with which we write are roman. Our concept of a democratic republic is Roman.
And, did you notice how many of our rulers wear a tie?
That isn’t Roman, but it is a cultural symbol that connects to the system that is. And, you’ll notice that Xi Jinping stopped wearing a tie, when he decided to go to war against the West.
Now, I could be wrong about all of the above, but I doubt very much that I am. My point about the Steam-Powered Printing Press cannot be doubted. We have history to prove that one.
Unfortunately, I have little hope that you can prove me wrong about the rest. I enjoy the few comforts that I have, and do not look forward to having them taken away when Ezekiel’s Fire comes. Nor, do I want to see people that I care about suffering and dying because they weren’t ready for our sun to brighten by seven times or for a gigantic earthquake to knock down our cities.
Prove me wrong, and my joy will be boundless.
Just be careful about those curses in Revelation 22. I wouldn’t want you to suffer any those.
Unfortunately, our current set of theologians are so engrossed in commentaries from our past, that they are unable to see what’s wrong with their view of the Last Days. Our seminaries are churning out cookie-cutter theologians who can only think along the lines of Darby, Henry and Augustine. Furthermore, they have been warned to tow the line… or else!
This has got to stop. Bad times are coming, and our churches are not prepared to meet the great tragedies that lie before us. I can only hope that the difficulties that have already begun will lead to spiritual revival and an awakening to what the Bible actually says.
Think of what I’m doing here as an attempt to set the record straight – or, at least help point the way to how it can be. I certainly do not have all the answers, and would never claim that I do.
It is time to submit to what the Bible actually says, instead of forcing the Bible to submit to what we say.
Of course, submitting to the Bible isn’t very fun. It’s much more interesting to make stuff up and build castles in the air. And, I think Paul said it best:
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (KJV)
So, let’s look at the fables that we love to believe, and we’ll start with the oldest of them – Amillennialism.
Why would anyone claim to be a Christian, and then cut out parts of the Bible that they don’t like?
I am truly amazed that people would accept this kind of behavior from pastors and theologians. Yet they do, and that is deeply disturbing.
Paul said that savage wolves would enter the church after he died (Acts 20:29), and that is exactly what happened. And, because we honor the words of men over that of the Bible, our churches are cursed by God. And, Amillennialism is just one of many reasons why.
When the prophet Samuel said this to King Saul…
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”
– 1 Samuel 15:23 (NKJV)
…he was absolutely right in every way.
For almost two thousand years, we’ve had rebellious and stubborn pastors preach against the Bible and against God. Instead of taking the Bible as it is, they decided to change what it means – into an idolatrous reflection of what they want the Bible to say.
They take what is literal and turn it into something symbolic, and what is symbolic into something literal. They turn words around – changing meanings and intent – to give themselves permission to do and say what they want – instead of what God wants. And then, they have the temerity to claim that God approves of their wicked efforts.
Amillennialism is one of those wicked efforts. It was one of the key tools of the Roman Catholic Church to murder Christians who disagreed with them – because they claimed to rule and reign with Christ. And the rivers of innocent blood shed by the Great Whore of Rome had everything to do with their satanic view that they were in the Millennium.
After all, the Vicar of Christ was on the throne (in Rome), and if he wanted to kill you – that was okay.
So, what is this Amillennialism thing, anyway?
There are some nuances to their belief, but it basically says that Revelation 20 is completely symbolic and that we Christians are ruling and reigning with Christ – symbolically. It claims that there will be no 1000 year reign on earth by Christ, and it claims that the Millennium began 2000 years ago. It also claims that the First Resurrection has already happened. Also no bodies will be resurrected, just souls.
Now, there is a subset of Amillennialism that believes that the First Resurrection hasn’t happened yet, and that it will occur along with the Second Resurrection. They call that ‘Imperfect Amillennialism’. I guess that an ‘imperfect’ lie is better than a perfect one.
Like Preterism, the ONLY way that Amillennialism can work is if you throw out the Book of Revelation and all the Last Days prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. And, there’s literally no way that you can do that without being cursed by God. And yes, ‘cursed by God’ is a perfect epithet for Amillennialism.
If you are an Amillennialist, you have brought the curse of God upon you – according to Revelation 22:19.
So, where did Amillennialism come from?
The first time we see anything like Amillennialism, is from one of the worst heretics ever, Marcion of Sinope (AD 85-160). That guy was everything that Paul warned against. His attempt to corrupt the Bible was so bad that even the church at Rome threw him out.
The next guy was Origen of Alexandria (AD 185-253). He wrote something like 2000 books, of which the best that you can say is that they probably burned really well.
What was Origen’s biggest problem?
He didn’t believe that Jesus was God.
(Origen was pretty much one of the first JWs.)
This denial of the deity of Christ, pretty much put the kibosh on everything Origen. This is good, but Satan wasn’t done yet. Someone else was bound to come along with a better story. That guy was a dude name Augustine.
Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) started out as a premillennialist – as all Christians were – but then decided that chucking the whole thing out was a better idea. This was the guy who made Amillennialism stick. And, the group who were in alliance with Satan – The Roman Catholic Church – made him a saint for his efforts.
That’s right. Satan approved of Augustine.
I do not care about any of the ‘good stuff’ that ‘Saint’ Augustine wrote. None of that matters. What matters is that he and all his followers were under the curse of Revelation 22:19. No one gets to throw out half of the Bible and expect our Lord to approve of them. And, if that isn’t enough for you, having the stamp of approval by the RCC should tell you everything that you need to know.
If the Roman Catholic Church likes you, I would worry about your eternal destiny.
Unfortunately, all the harlot daughters of the Roman Catholic Church still follow Augustine’s Amillennialism. Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists – they all retained the Amillennialism of their harlot mother. And that’s not the only problem that Protestants have. When they left the RCC, they retained a huge number of the heresies created by the Papists – such as sprinkling, infant ‘baptism’ and a lethal desire to kill people who disagreed.
Does this mean that Protestants aren’t saved?
No.
I believe that God is merciful to those who sin in ignorance. However, no one should expect such mercy if they reject the truth when it is presented to them. Thankfully, I’m not the Judge in such matters.
Furthermore, those who lived during the first thousand years after Christ, would have had some reason to be persuaded by the foolishness of Augustine. It made a certain kind of sense that there was a City of God on earth. And, the fact that the Roman Catholic Church would kill you if you didn’t agree had a powerful persuasion all its own. But, we are now almost 2000 years into the so called ‘church age’, so it should be clear that Augustine didn’t get it right.
If you want a clearer argument, remember what Jesus said about fruits:
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
– Matthew 7:15-20 (NKJV)
The Protestants murdered Christians for disagreeing with them. The number one reason why the United States exists is because of Christians fleeing persecution from the Protestants – not just the murderous genocide of the Roman Catholic Church. And, even in the US, Protestants would try to throw you in jail if you were a Baptist. In Virginia, in 1770, three Baptist pastors (Lewis Craig, Joseph Craig and Aaron Bledsoe) were jailed for the crime of preaching the gospel.
Today, Protestants are less willing to jail you over a theological disagreement, and I consider that to be an improvement. But, don’t let that blind you to what they still are as a group.
Again, I’m not claiming who is saved and who isn’t. But, at the same time, I would never want to lay my hope for eternal life in the hands of a Protestant minister.
That’s a risk I would never want to take.
So, let’s look a little more closely at Augustine and his Amillennialism.
Aurelius Augustinus was, by all accounts, a good guy. He said some good stuff, and you will find people in every Christian denomination who think highly of him. He was thoughtful, intelligent, highly educated and extremely eloquent. But unfortunately, he blundered. Badly.
He had his reasons, and they are understandable for someone like him, living at the time. But, it doesn’t change how his writings strengthened the Roman Catholic Church and gave foundation to the worst heresies that currently grow in our midst.
So, let’s take a look at Augustine’s Greatest Blunder…
Augustine was born to a Catholic mother and a pagan father, in AD 354, near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in a town called Thagaste. Today, that town would be in northeast Algeria, on the border with Tunisia – North Africa. By that time, Roman Catholicism had been legalized in AD 313 and the imperial capital had been moved to Constantinople (now Istanbul) in AD 330. The Nicene Creed had been proclaimed in AD 325, and the Catholic Church had become the state religion in AD 380 (and the only religion allowed), when Augustine was 26.
Before he converted to Catholicism at age 31, Augustine was a devoted follower of Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, and he brought their ideas of the conflict between good and evil into his writings after his conversion. For instance, the idea of a conflict between the City of God and the City of Satan is very Manichaean. And, his Neoplatonic ideas were especially strong in his early writings.
He was also one of the great rhetoricians of his time. He was a product of the imperial philosophies that were the foundation of the Roman Empire. He saw nothing wrong with an imperial church. He was a Roman Catholic in every sense, and everything that he wrote was in furtherance to the Great Harlot that he thought to be the one true church.
Can you blame him?
Yes, but none of us really want to.
Remember that Augustine was emphatic in his Mariology, claiming that Mary was a virgin till she died – conveniently forgetting what the Bible says about the half-brothers of Jesus. He also strongly supported Catholic Ecclesiology, where he claimed that the priests were the direct successors of the Apostles and must be obeyed. He is the originator of the term ‘Just War’, in which it is a sin to not go to war for a ‘just’ cause. And, to quote Encyclopedia Britannica:
Intellectually, Augustine represents the most influential adaptation of the ancient Platonic tradition with Christian ideas that ever occurred in the Latin Christian world.
He fought relentlessly against the Donatists, who rightly believed that the state should have no involvement with the church and that those who betrayed the Body of Christ should not remain in positions of church authority. The Donatists were correct in every way, but Augustine wouldn’t see it, saying:
“The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak ‘We are the only Christians!’ “
Unfortunately, Augustine was wrong, and compounded his error in AD 411 when an imperial council was convened to resolve the conflict between the Donatists and the Catholics. Through Augustine’s superior rhetoric, he was able to convince the Roman Empire to deny the Donatists both civil and religious rights. This led to years of extreme repression, persecution and murder.
You could almost excuse Augustine for the above errors. We all get things wrong, and we are always influenced by those who brought us up in our faith. I’ve had my share of errors that I’ve had to repent of, so you could say the same about Augustine. But, there was one blunder in which he went too far:
Amillennialism
For most of Augustine’s Christian life, he was a solidly premillennial. He saw the Millennium as real and that it would come after the Return of Jesus Christ. But when the Visgoths sacked Rome in AD 410, all of that changed. Pagans blamed the Christians for Rome’s fall, and Augustine fought back with his magnum opus – The City of God.
However, instead of arguing from within a Biblical context, he flipped the script, blaming all of Rome’s troubles on corruption and immorality and then claiming that none of it mattered anyway, since the Millennium is allegorical and spiritual, rather than physical – in direct opposition to what was described in Zechariah 14 and Revelation 20.
Unfortunately, Augustine’s superior writing skill and oratory won the day, and Amillennialism became the core eschatology of the Roman Catholic Church. And, it has done terrible damage to the Body of Christ as well as giving Rome the right to engage in the mass murder of any Christians who disagreed with the Pope.
Being murdered by Roman Catholics was the norm for Christians for more than a thousand years after Augustine. It is what we were promised would happen, and we accepted this as our walk with Christ. After all, our willingness to die for Christ is part of how Satan is overcome:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
– Revelation 12:11 (KJV)
The biggest problem came when the Protestant Reformers broke with Rome and formed their own denominations. They threw out much of the visibly Roman elements of Catholicism such as the worship of saints, Mariology, transubstantiation, etc. But, there was one thing that they all kept, without exception:
Augustine’s Amillennialism
This ‘spiritualization’ of the 1000 year reign of Christ gave liberalism the opportunity to ‘spiritualize’ other parts of the Bible that they didn’t like. After all, if you can ‘spiritualize’ Zechariah 14 and the whole Book of Revelation, there is nothing in the Bible that you cannot ‘spiritualize’.
Don’t like Paul’s admonition against women preachers and pastors?
Spiritualize the whole discussion and make vague references to prominent women in the Bible.
Don’t like taxes?
Spiritualize what Jesus said about giving unto Caesar and get out your guns.
Do you want to build a megachurch?
Spiritualize all that stuff about purity in the Body of Christ and welcome all to join without any of that unpleasant need to repent of sins and turn towards righteousness.
I could go on, but you get my point. Augustine helped build the profound error that the wolves among us are using to tear down the Body of Christ. It gave the Roman Catholic Church the ‘right’ to murder us. It gave the liberals the ‘right’ to tear away at core principles of the Bible. Of all the errors that Augustine made, Amillennialism was the biggest.
For a deeper look into how much damage Augustine did with his Amillennial views, here is a very thorough analysis from Dr. John F. Walvoord:
Amillenniallism from Augustine to Modern Times
https://bible.org/seriespage/4-amillenniallism-augustine-modern-times
Amillennialism as a Method of Interpretation
https://bible.org/seriespage/millennial-series-part-5-amillennialism-method-interpretation
Amillennialism as a System of Theology
https://bible.org/seriespage/millennial-series-part-6-amillennialism-system-theology
That is a subset of Dr. Walvoord’s larger discussion of how the Millennium was viewed for the past 2000 years. Notice that he wrote all this around 1950. He was disturbed by what the liberals were doing then, and he would be even more profoundly upset over what they are doing now. I strongly disagree with Walvoord’s Dispensationalism, but his clarity on Amillennialism is definitely worth reading.
So, what should we say about Saint Augustine?
Was he a brother in Christ that took a wrong turn?
Or, was he just another clever facsimile, built up by Satan to lead the faithful astray?
Because I like him as a person, I don’t really want to say. But, we should all be very fearful of transgressing this verse:
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:19 (NKJV)
Augustine did that, so I have to assume that God took his part from the Book of Life. I hate the thought of that, but I don’t have a better conclusion to offer.
Please.
Do not let your part be taken from the Book of Life.
Back in the 1950s, Postmillennialism barely deserved a footnote in any discussion of eschatology. It had withered into something of a fringe movement. But, just a decade or so later, all of that changed with the arrival of Dominion Theology and the Charismatic movements of the ’60s and ’70s.
Just as Augustine’s Amillennialism put a sword in the hand of the Roman Catholic Church, Postmillennialism has done the same for corrupt ‘christian’ movements who seek political power. Christian Reconstructionism, Kingdom Now Theology, New Apostolic Reformation and Theonomy are all buzzwords for these people. And, it’s bad news for all of us.
After AD 1000, Augustine’s Amillennialism started to look a bit frayed at the edges. Many of his predictions remained unfulfilled and some Amillennialists were beginning to ask questions. Premillennialists weren’t able to answer any of those, because they were too busy being burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church. And anyway, the RCC was skilled at redefining ‘what God actually meant’ and keeping the peasants in line.
Then came the Protestant Reformation, which meant that the Pope began losing control of the debate. So, Rome launched a counter attack – unleashing every kind of dirty trick possible. They created Preterism and even an early form of pretrib rapture – which the Pope didn’t like very much. The Pontiff also unleashed the Jesuits against European monarchies, which was so successful that Europe started pushing back hard – leading to the temporary disbanding of the Jesuits by the ‘Holy See’ in 1773. But, let’s get back to Postmillennialism.
The questions about Amillennialism never went away, and some tried to put a positive spin on this eschatology by saying that Amillennialism wasn’t wrong because the symbolic Millennium taught by Augustine hadn’t started yet. And it was an Anglican Priest, Daniel Whitby, that set the ball in motion in his book, A Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament – first published in 1703 in two volumes. (And yes, that is a link to Walmart, which is bizarre.)
It was at the end of the second volume of this commentary, where Whitby proposed a ‘New Hypothesis’ about the Millennium. I was able to find a downloadable copy of that book and skimmed through what he said about this new idea. His commentary on the subject starts at page 1698 of the pdf. Here’s the link if you want to download the whole thing:
downloads.dbs.org/archive/English-(1703)-Whitbys-Paraphrase-and-Commentary-New-Testament-(Vol.-1-2).pdf
That’s a 273mb file, so I have disabled the link just in case you click it by accident. Just put an ‘http://’ at the beginning of that link, and it should download properly. Alternatively, you can go here to find it:
https://betterbibles.wordpress.com/versions/
(Just search for ‘Whitby’, and you’ll find it about halfway down the page.)
However, his ideas are such gobbledygook (and yes, that’s a word) that I would rather quote Clarence Larkin’s far more concise summary, from his book, The Second Coming Of Christ:
[Whitby] claimed that Israel and Mount Zion represented the Church. That the promised submission of the Gentiles to the Jews was simply prophetic of the conversion of the Gentiles and their entrance into the Church. That the lying down of the lion and the lamb together typified the reconciliation of the Old and New natures, and that the establishment of an outward and visible kingdom at Jerusalem, over which Christ and the saints should reign, was gross and carnal, and contrary to reason, as it implied the mingling together of human and spiritual beings on the earth.
His “New Hypothesis” was that by the preaching of the Gospel ‘ Mohammedanism would be overthrown, the Jews converted, the Papal Church with the Pope (Antichrist) would be destroyed, and there would follow a 1000 years of righteousness and peace known as the Millennium; at the close of which there would be a short period of Apostasy, ending in the return of Christ. There would then be a general resurrection of the dead, followed by a general judgment, the earth would be destroyed by fire and eternity would begin.
That appears to be a good synopsis of what Whitby said, and it’s horrifying.
How is it possible to read the Book of Revelation and come away with this view?
What utter madness.
Whitby took Augustine’s colossal blunder and made it even worse. He basically said that…
…it’s OUR job to create the Millennium!
According to Whitby, it won’t be the Return of our Lord who will usher in the Millennium. We’ll need to do that ourselves. Only after we have successfully conquered the world for Christ – and rule it for a thousand years – only then will Jesus return to accept the kingdom that we have created.
I know that Whitby was claiming that this would occur ‘naturally’ through the preaching of the gospel, but look around at the postmillennialists who have taken Whitby’s ‘New Hypothesis’ and decided that maybe the gospel wasn’t enough.
Would a Carrier Strike Group and a couple armored brigades help the process along?
If you think that those are strange thoughts, consider how the Roman Catholic Church was so successful in spreading it’s own version of the gospel. The RCC discovered very quickly that encouraging military conquest would make it easy for them to round up shattered civilians and drag them into the ‘loving arms’ of Rome.
I am finding far too many ‘christians’ who seem eager to take up arms to fight for their version of ‘christendom’. That is not the way of Christ, and all who live by the sword shall die by the sword – and then answer to God for their actions. But, let’s look at how Postmillennialism is talked about today.
For those looking for the history of postmillennialism in the 18th and 19th centuries, this article seems to lay out a concise explanation:
American Postmillennialism: Seeing the Glory
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/american-postmillennialism-seeing-the-glory
The events of World War I and World War II put a dent in the Postmillennial message of a Christendom ever-expanding. All forms of Christianity were in retreat across most of Asia and Europe. Godless Communism was ascendant and secular revolution was in the air. So, the 1950s marked a new low for Postmillennialism, which is why Dr. Walvoord was so dismissive of this eschatology. But, all that changed in the ’60s.
Three movements sprang up that pretty much define Postmillennialism today. One group came under the label of Christian Reconstructionism. Men like RJ Rushdoony, Gary North, Kenneth Gentry, and Greg Bahnsen were generally Calvinist/Reformed and advocated the idea of Theonomy – basically a government that imposed biblical laws upon the public.
Then you had a secularist group that may-or-may-not believe in God, but they certainly believed that mankind was destined for great things. Think of the Star Trek universe, where mankind no longer went to war with each other, and there was no need for such things as ‘money’. Crime wouldn’t exist and there would be plenty for all. Oh, and in this glorious golden age, humanity was no longer inherently sinful. You can bet that LGBT-and-Seeker-friendly churches fall into this group.
The third group is Pentecostal/Charismatic. They are often loosely defined as New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR – a term coined by C Peter Wagner in 1996. It’s not an official group, but it describes a movement within Charismatic/Pentecostal churches. And, the groups that fall under the NAR umbrella are:
Five Fold Ministries
International House of Prayer (IHOP)
Kansas City Prophets
Bethel Church
Morning Star Ministries
Hillsong Church
International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders
Generals International
Youth With A Mission (YWAM)
And, if you want an utterly corrupt translation of the Bible that rams home the NAR’s dogma, you can go here:
Passion Translation of the Bible by Brian Simmons
All three of these postmillennial movements are utterly corrupt. Worse, they invoke the curse of Revelation 22:19.
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:19 (NKJV)
Postmillennialism does that, just as much as Amillennialism does. But, these Postmill movements add a tremendous amount of corruption and a desire to restructure government into its own image. That last bit is deeply unsettling and something that every Christian should oppose.
Because that’s exactly the kind of thing that the Antichrist would take control of and bend to his will.
———————
A couple other sources on Postmillennialism:
Postmillennialism
https://www.monergism.com/topics/eschatology/all-millennial-views/postmillennialism
Creed of Christian Reconstruction
https://chalcedon.edu/creed-of-christian-reconstruction
Then, we take a step even farther into the darkness…
The idea that anyone would take a knife to the Bible, is horrifying. In fact, there is a question mark over the eternal destiny of all who do that. And no one does that more than the Preterists.
For them, all prophecy is history, and that is truly abhorrent. And, when you examine the roots of this awful eschatology, you’ll understand how they became what they are.
Like the pretrib fallacy, Preterism has its roots in a Jesuit attempt to deform the Reformation. So, let’s look into that, along with why Preterist Eschatology is so plainly wrong. That’s why I went looking for the roots of Preterism, and literally could not find any – at least, nothing before 1614. That’s rather shocking.
How can an entire movement spring into being like that?
Well, when you have the well-organized and well-funded Counter-Reformation pushing an idea, it can go viral pretty quickly. The irony is that Jesuits had lots of difficulty getting Protestants to believe the fable that they were peddling.
Why?
It’s like believing that the Earth is Flat. The only reason why you would do so, is because you want to. And no one wanted to believe that all prophecy was fulfilled by AD 70 – especially since the Pope wanted them to believe it.
If the Pope wants you to do something, you probably shouldn’t.
However, I mentioned 1614. That was the year when Luis del Alcázar published the book that launched the Preterist movement. This one:
Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi
(Tracing the Arcane Sense in the Apocalypse)
Unfortunately, for poor Luis, the steam powered printing press wasn’t around to make the book cheap enough for everyone to read it. And, he wrote it in Latin – a poor choice of language for a best seller.
He should have published the book in Spanish, in 1811, like another Jesuit Priest Manuel Lacunza – while also claiming to be a rabbi who had converted to Christianity. Poor Luis Alcazar had poor timing. Although, Lacunza didn’t write about Preterism. We’ll get to him later.
I find it interesting that Jesuit priests have been so successful in their efforts to corrupt our faith. It was their job, and they did it well.
So, what’s wrong with Preterism?
You mean, aside from being a Jesuit idea?
Well, everything.
Preterism claims that all prophecy has been fulfilled. All of it. The Millennium, the Second Coming, the Resurrection, The Great Tribulation, The Seven Seals, The Seven Trumpets, The Seven Vials/Bowls, and the Redemption of Israel. All of it. Done.
Oh, and all the prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures?
All done, too.
Yes, the Mount of Olives split in two (Zechariah 14). The Resurrection described in Daniel 12 happened. The Nile dried up (Isaiah 19) and Damascus was taken away from being a city (Isaiah 17). The Redemption of Israel already happened (Zechariah 12-13). Gog and Magog has already invaded Israel (Ezekiel 38 and 39). The Sun became as bright as seven days, and the moon as bright as the sun (Isaiah 30).
Oh wait. That didn’t happen.
Literally, the only way that anyone could believe such a lie, is if they wanted to. That’s the only reason why it persists, and it’s hard to believe that anyone can be a Christian and follow this cursed theory. And, yes… Preterists are cursed.
Again, here’s what God said will happen to you, if you take away from the Book of Revelation:
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
– Revelation 22:19 (NKJV)
I can’t think of any better example of ‘if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy’, than Preterism. They take the entire book, and chuck it into the waste bin. This means one thing, and one thing only:
Preterists are cursed
Their names are erased from the Book of Life, and the best that they can hope for is outer darkness for eternity.
If you are a Preterist, you need to repent now and beg God to forgive you for holding and preaching this terrible theory.
Almost 30 years ago, I began writing about Israel and geopolitics. It was an attempt to push back against the growing hatred of the Jews among Christians. I was living in Jerusalem, watching desperate attempt after desperate attempt to survive the constant war waged against Israel, while seeing Christians take the side of the those who sought the death of all the Jews.
Why would Christians do this?
It’s simple really. They bought into a Roman Catholic lie. Of course, the RCC has been spewing out lie after lie after lie for centuries. So, there are a lot of lies to choose from.
So, WHICH lie?
Well, remember that Jesuit Priest Luis del Alcázar? He published the book that launched the Preterist movement. This one:
Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi
(Tracing the Arcane Sense in the Apocalypse)
That book was published in 1614, and it provided the foundation upon which the Roman Catholic Church would seek to deflect negative attention from themselves to the Jews. And, this is the number one reason why Rome was pushing this lie so hard.
Under Preterism, it’s not the Roman Catholic Church who is the Great Whore and Mystery Babylon the Great. It’s Jerusalem and the Jews.
Under Preterism, the Harlot that rides the Beast is the Jewish people.
God help us, what a horrendous lie. In fact, it’s so vile that I have trouble even talking about it. And, this lie is gaining popularity because it gives people who want to hate the Jews, permission to do so. It gave them permission to claim faith in Christ while promoting every possible lie about the Jewish people.
Preterism is the ultimate ‘christian friendly’, neo-Nazi ideology.
Unfortunately, as you dig into Preterism, you’ll find more than a few similarities between that group of thugs and Preterists. Take Chuck Baldwin as an example. He claims the right to kill for political reasons. He is a heretic and a liar, and will spend an eternity in torment, unless he repents of his wicked ways and turns back to God.
Unfortunately, Baldwin will not repent because Preterism has corrupted every part of the Bible, making the truth impossible to see for people who have bought into that awful theology.
So, let’s dig into the astonishing heresies espoused by Preterists.
With no evidence whatsoever, Preterists claim that Jesus ‘returned in the clouds’ at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
What a shocking an abhorrent claim.
How is it possible that anyone should say such an evil antichrist thing?
But, that’s just it. They are antichrist.
Oh, and notice something important. NONE of the Church Fathers mentioned Christ’s Second Coming as having happened in AD 70. That’s right. None.
None of the Church Fathers were Preterists. Not a single one. But, that hasn’t stopped the Preterists from making outrageous claims against God.
Partial Preterists will try to claim that there will be a Resurrection. But full Preterists not only deny the Resurrection, but they also deny a New Heaven and a New Earth. They deny that there will be a resurrection, and they deny that there will be a judgment or reward.
They literally believe that sin will continue indefinitely.
Many of the Partial Preterists refine this view and say that we Christians must conquer the Earth so that we can hand a Christian planet to God. It’s as if they thought that Hitler had the right idea, but just didn’t do it right. And, when the Antichrist truly does arrive, you know who will stand in line waiting to worship him.
Another lie from the pits of Hell, that smells like smoke. There is literally no proof that Revelation was written during the time of Nero. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
Nero’s rage against Christians who refused to worship him as a god was mostly limited to Rome and surrounding areas. Furthermore, Nero didn’t banish Christians to Greek Islands. He just killed them.
On the other hand, Domitian did banish Christians – while confiscating all their possessions. And, John the Apostle is recorded as having been on the Island of Patmos until the assassination of Domitian on September 18, AD 96.
Furthermore, all early church writers who mentioned John and the Book of Revelation, all confirm that Revelation was written during the latter years of Domitian’s reign.
You can’t find ANYONE who is supporting Preterism until the Jesuit Luis Alcazar wrote his book, proclaiming it.
Wait. WHAT? NERO?
Yeah.
Nero.
I want to say that they were just kidding, but they aren’t. They think that Nero was the Antichrist – even though there is nothing that he did that warrants that foolish assumption.
First of all he committed suicide in AD 68, before the destruction of Jerusalem. And, there’s no record that he was ever in the area of Israel at any time during his reign. Yes, he sent Vespasian to put down the Jewish revolt in AD 66, but that is not the same as what the Bible describes the Antichrist as doing.
Then, there’s that attempt to make Nero’s name conform to 666. It doesn’t. They only way that they can come close to making it work is by using a variation of Nero’s name in Latin and substituting Hebrew characters – which still doesn’t work.
Did you know that pretty much every president of the United States had someone claiming that their name computed to 666?
Yeah. Even Kissinger got the 666 treatment. People really need to stop being so gullible and half-baked.
Right. They just wave their hand at that and claim they happened somewhere, somehow. This is worse than the Mormons claiming that the American Indians are Israelis that migrated to North America a long time ago.
If you read my Laying Out Revelation Series that I completed last week, you’ll know that it’s not possible that the Seals, Trumpets and Bowls were completed during the time of Nero. Or at any other time in the past 2000 years.
This alone proves that Preterism is a complete clown show.
Preterists claim that the Millennium began with the Resurrection of Jesus and ended at AD 70. And, I had no idea that Preterism could be this stupid.
A 40 year long Millennium?
What were they thinking?
The problem is that they aren’t – at least, not in any spiritual sense.
Unfortunately, the utter insanity of Preterism is growing. There have been forms of it infecting every Protestant denomination since the Reformation. After all, the harlot daughters of Rome would always be vulnerable to some form of Preterist eschatology.
Here in Taiwan, a few years ago, a woman brought her mother in to the Sunday school class that I was teaching. The daughter knew about the warning in Revelation 22:19 and was worried that her mother was in danger of that curse. And sure enough, she was.
The poor mother had been converted to the worst form of Preterism by Max King, who thankfully died this year. He took Preterism and made it even worse, launching two new terms:
I will leave it to you to plumb the depths of King’s heresy, but it’s really, really bad. He took a lie from the pits of Hell (The Roman Catholic Church) and made it even more antichrist than it already was.
I could go on, but I’ll stop here. But, you might not want to, so here is some extra reading – if you can stomach it:
WHY I AM NOT A PRETERIST
https://www.angelfire.com/nt/theology/preterist.html
A Critique of Preterism
https://www.evidenceunseen.com/theology/eschatology/a-critique-of-preterism/
The Trouble with Preterism
https://israelmyglory.org/article/the-trouble-with-preterism/
SIX REASONS TO REJECT PRETERISM
https://theserapeum.com/preterism-debunked/
Preterism
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28866
Preterism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism
Max King (theologian)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_King_(theologian)
And, if you’d like a good video, here’s one:
Preterism Debunked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijquvtO2E04
The above video is from a Pretrib/Dispensationalist perspective, but still an excellent resource.
(Note: You might need to turn the sound up.)
It’s time to stop lapping up the lies. Preterism is a vile and insane eschatology that is a perfect example of our love for lies, instead of the truth. As Paul said to Timothy:
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
Stop believing fables. Just stop. This goes for all the bad eschatology that we like, but especially for Preterism.
An Honest Error and a Corrupt Fable Meet The Printing Press
I love my Dispensationalist brothers and sisters. They are my favorite Christians. My home church in Jerusalem is Dispensationalist. My two favorite pastors are Dispensationalist. The church that my wife and I attend is Dispensationalist. And, I do not like upsetting any of them.
They are good brothers and sisters in Christ, I do not like having to attack an error that they have adopted so strongly. But, Dispensationalism and the Pretribulation Rapture Theory have done great damage to their ability to understand key parts of the Bible, and my love for them compels me to seek to neutralize this terrible poison that they have consumed. And yes, Dispensationalism is pure poison.
Why?
Because it attacks the finished work of the Cross.
To be fair, many Dispensationalists reject that part of Dispensationalism. But, that’s like trying to filter out the cyanide in your lemonade. I respect you for trying, but it doesn’t work.
NOTE: For those Dispensationalists reading this and are distressed by the criticism leveled at this theory, feel free to skip down to my rather brutal attack on Historic Premillennialism – aka, post-trib premillennialism. Most post-tribbers are truly horrifying.
It warms my heart that you share the same love for Israel that I do. And, I pray that you continue to be blessed by that.
Most do not realize that Dispensationalism is an attack upon the final sacrifice that Jesus made for all followers of God – from Adam to the last soul saved. Without the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Abraham could have no hope of eternal life. Without the finished work of the Cross, Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Moses and every other follower of God would have no hope of eternal life. Jesus was, is and always shall be the eternal sacrifice for all.
But, true Dispensationalism says that this is not true.
Again, I say ‘true Dispensationalism’ because many would be horrified by what Darby and Scofield were actually teaching. To them, Jesus was not the final sacrifice, and that – in the words of John Hagee – “Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah.”
In fact, let’s give the full quote of what John Hagee said in promotion of his book In Defense of Israel:
“This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people. In Defense of Israel will shake Christian theology. It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah. It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah. It will prove that there was a Calvary conspiracy between Rome, the high priest, and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live. Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah, how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered? Read this shocking expose, In Defense of Israel.”
– John Hagee
“The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation…Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha’i, needs to believe in Jesus, but not Jews”.
– John Hagee
You can find more here:
PASTOR JOHN HAGEE (CUFI), LET MY PEOPLE GO!!
https://www.oneforisrael.org/bible-based-teaching-from-israel/the-risk-of-loving-the-jewish-people-more-than-you-love-the-jewish-messiah/
That is beyond horrifying. This is an implicit denial of Christ. It denies that Jesus died for all who followed God, from the Adam to the final soul that accepts Him as Lord and Savior.
This is at the very root of why I oppose Dispensationalism and its eschatology of a pretribulation rapture.
Again, most Dispensationalists probably do not understand how awful this theory is. Some probably reject most of what Dispensationalism actually stands for. And like that 85% rule by Margaret Heffernan, there’s a lot of willful blindness running around in Dispensationalist churches.
It’s time for that willful blindness to stop.
So, like with all the other -isms that we’ve talked about, let’s start with some history.
The Pretribulation Rapture theory arises from an honest mistake and a corrupt fable – at a time when advances in printing made crazy ideas accessible. Books were the Internet of their time, and an information-starved populace couldn’t get enough. And, when Scofield put Dispensationalism everywhere in his ‘study bible’, it was the final blow.
The Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism, Communism, Eugenics, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and the Flat Earth movement – all owe their rise to the steam-powered printing press and a 19th century desire for a good story.
Irenaeus was a good guy from a great church (Smyrna). Jesus spoke highly of them in the Book of Revelation, so it shouldn’t surprise us that such a Godly group would produce someone like Irenaeus. To add even more buff to his reputation, the Apostle John discipled Polycarp, and Polycarp discipled Irenaeus.
You’d want to listen to someone with THAT background.
However, just because the teacher of your teacher was the Apostle John, won’t always mean that you deserve such respect. But, when a church in Gaul – now France – needed a pastor, Smyrna sent Irenaeus. And, he was at the right place at the right time to help lead the fight against Gnostic heresies, and is famous for his treatise, Against Heresies.
Unfortunately, in his haste to oppose the Gnostics, Irenaeus made a claim that he might not have thought through:
“And in the midst of the week,” he says, “the sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away, and the abomination of desolation [shall be brought] into the temple: even unto the consummation of the time shall the desolation be complete.“(8) Now three years and six months constitute the half-week.
– Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 25
That part in bold is from Daniel 9:
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
– Daniel 9:26-27 (KJV)
Unfortunately, Irenaeus was reading from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Septuagint. It would have been natural for him to do so, since he grew up in a Greek environment and came to Christ in a Greek-speaking church. And, I’m afraid that this Greek translation is full of errors. (Every translation is.)
So, here are verses 26 and 27, but this time from the original Hebrew:
VERSE 26 – And after sixty and two weeks will Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and a people of a prince that shall come and destroy the city and the holy place, and its end in the overflow, and to an end war is desolations determined.
VERSE 27 – And, a covenant shall be confirmed to many, for one week. And, [at] half of the week, there is a ceasing of sacrifice and offering. And, to the wing of abominations, devastation – until completeness and destruction is poured on [the] devastated.
– Daniel 9:26-27, JLV (John Little Version)
I’m sorry, but that Antichrist is nowhere in those two verses. Nor is there any gap between them. But, by inserting the Antichrist, Irenaeus was de facto adding a gap into the prophecy about the First Coming of Jesus Christ.
I doubt that this was his intention, but it happened. And once something like this is written down and sent out, it gains a life of its own.
By the way, Irenaeus did NOT believe in a pretrib rapture. He said that we were going through the Great Tribulation, but those who wish to promote the pretrib rapture theory, conveniently ignore this.
Again, I know that Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, who had been a student of the Apostle John. That doesn’t make him infallible. We all make mistakes. Sometimes, in writing. But, we are all susceptible to idolatry. And yes, elevating a commentary to the level of the Bible is pretty idolatrous.
We need to stop that.
Unfortunately, a charismatic speaker, John Darby, knew all about this claim by Irenaeus, and was building a new theology that had some of its basis in what Irenaeus said:
Dispensationalism
This unintentional ‘gap theory’ introduced by Irenaeus and expanded by Darby, is at the core of Dispensationalism. Without it, the whole idea collapses. But, we’ll talk about that more, when we get to Darby.
We like to blame John Darby for inventing the Pretribulation Rapture theory, but that’s not true. All that Darby did was give it a more popular spin and package it up inside an even bigger theory called Dispensationalism.
Who was the one to create this theory?
This might surprise you, but the Pretribulation Rapture Theory was invented by the Jesuits.
I’m not here to promote conspiracy theories about the Jesuits. They may, or may not, have been as bad as some claim. They may – or may not – be as deadly now as they were in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they were given the job of stamping out Protestantism. They may – or may not – be the most capable intelligence gathering organization in the world. I don’t know, and don’t care.
However, we can be certain that they were tasked with the destruction of Protestantism. And, since Protestants said that the Roman Catholic Church was the Antichrist, that had to be stamped out, too.
Oh, and all that trouble that they caused from the 1500s up through the 1700s?
Not a conspiracy theory. The Jesuits were a truly awful, nasty bunch.
The Jesuits, or Societas Iesu, was started when Ignatius of Loyola got six young men together and started their own monastic order in 1534. Pope Paul III put his stamp of approval on the whole idea six years later. They then went on to become one of the most vicious organizations ever devised by man. Heinrich Himmler, the founder and head of the German Gestapo, credits the Jesuits as being the model for his organization.
With such a powerful tool in the hands of the Pope, it is easy to see why the Pope would order the Jesuits to destroy the Protestant Reformation and all other forms of Christianity. They penetrated and subverted political institutions in Europe, as well as any and all religious institutions. They became so successful, that the monarchies of Europe pressured Pope Clement XIV to disband them, which he did in 1773. It was called the Suppression of the Jesuits. But, like a really bad case of cancer, they went underground before roaring back in 1814 – when Pope Pius VII reinstated them.
And, they wrote books.
In the late 1500s, two Jesuits, Francisco Ribera and Roberto Bellarmino thought of a way to neutralize the Protestant claim that the Roman Catholic Church was the Antichrist. They did that by creating a new Roman Catholic doctrine called Futurism, or Jesuit Futurism. Basically, Jesuit Futurism just says that the Roman Catholic Church can’t possibly have anything to do with the Antichrist. Of course, they wrote it in Latin, which kept it from being a ‘best seller’.
Fun Fact: Bernhard Stempfle may or may not have been a Jesuit, but he was definitely the Catholic Priest responsible for Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In fact, it’s not certain that Hitler wrote any of that foul book. Hitler expressed his gratitude by murdering Stempfle in the Night Of The Long Knives.
Oh, and remember that other theory the Jesuits invented?
Yup. That’s right. Preterism was the creation of Spanish Jesuit Luis del Alcázar around 1600, as a part of their attempt to corrupt Protestant eschatology. Protestants thought that the Roman Catholic Church was the Antichrist, and the Pope didn’t like that at all.
Along comes Chilean-born Manuel Lacunza, a Jesuit priest who found himself with too much time on his hands, because he’d been defrocked. (Remember that part about the Pope disbanding the Jesuits in 1773?) Lacunza built on the ideas of Ribera and Bellarmino by adding that all the good Christians (i.e., Catholics) would be resurrected BEFORE the Antichrist. However, he said that after this ‘rapture’, the Roman Catholic Church would side with the Antichrist.
The Pope liked it, except for the last bit, so he banned it.
Undeterred, Lacunza chose to write in Spanish and publish under the name Rabbi Juan Josafat ben-Ezra. The claim was that ben-Ezra was a rabbi who had converted to Christianity and then wrote a book about how Jesus would return. Of course, someone else could have chosen that fraudulent pseudonym, since the book was printed in 1811, ten years after Lacunza died. Whatever the case, the book gained popularity throughout Spain and eventually wound up in the hands of a Scottish Presbyterian, Edward Irving.
For Irving, it was love at first cite. In fact, he was so taken with the book that he promptly took up the study of Castilian Spanish so that he could translate the book into English. His translation was published in 1827 as “The Coming of the Messiah”. The name ‘Edward Irving’ might sound familiar because he is one of the fore-runners of the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements. The famous Margaret MacDonald, whose vision(s) created a massive sensation throughout Scotland and Great Britain in 1830, was a member of Irving’s congregation.
Also in 1830, it appears that Irving started preaching that the Rapture will occur in two stages – a secret one before the Antichrist and a public one at the end of the Great Tribulation. The question of which came first, Margret MacDonald’s vision or Irving’s teaching, gets a little more difficult to figure out. It sounds like Margaret internalized Edward Irving’s preaching, and then colorized it with ‘visions’.
By the way, have you tried to read Irving’s translation?
Wow. What a badly written book. It’s almost incomprehensible. I thought about uploading the copy that I have, but have decided against it. You would only want to read it, if you suffered from insomnia. What a sleep-inducing wall of words. This is probably why Edward Irving’s speeches at the Albury Conferences were more influential than that mind-numbing book in two volumes.
John Nelson Darby, was 30 when news of Margret MacDonald’s visions hit the headlines. He did his own investigation into the matter and incorporated it into his theory of Dispensationalism. It was the last piece that he needed to make Dispensationalism come to life.
Remember that Darby was expanding upon what Irenaeus said about Daniel 9:26-27. He inserted and expanded this theoretical gap, to claim that the Age of Grace (aka, Church Age) was a separate age from the Age of Law. And, he went on to basically say that the Age of the Law would return in the Age of Kingdom, when the Church was removed.
Now, just to be clear, there were others who were also looking into why there appear to be differences between periods of time, in the Bible. The era before the Great Flood had a system of worship of God, but seemed very basic in application. The time between the Great Flood and Abraham was also barely understood, with a basic worship of God, some sacrifices and seemingly little else. With Abraham, we saw a covenant that included the sacrament of circumcision in addition to sacrifices. Then Moses and the 613 laws of Torah.
People were seeing differences and trying to lay out a systemic approach to those differences. Unfortunately, this was an application of human logic, and not the Holy Spirit. The Bible doesn’t divide itself into ‘ages’. They forgot that Jesus died for all, for every follower of God, in every one of those ‘ages’. Everything pointed to Christ, but that wasn’t enough for Darby. But, let’s get back to Edward Irving’s influence on Darby.
Some say that Darby attended at least one of the Albury Conferences that Irving was preaching at, but I’m not sure that we can say this with confidence. He certainly could have gotten Edward Irving’s ideas from some other source. Just remember that no one but Edward Irving was preaching the idea of a pretribulation rapture before 1830.
The Albury Conferences collapsed in 1830, when Edward Irving was thrown out of the Presbyterian Church. Ministers in Scotland were aghast at some of the strange events occurring at his church – not just the visions of Margaret MacDonald. Irving died three years later.
By the time of Irving’s death, a thirty-something Darby was attending the Powerscourt Conference where some say that Irving’s Pretrib Rapture theory was explained to him. Whatever the case, that conference was what launched Brethrenism.
Darby isn’t just the father of Dispensationalism. He’s also the father of the Plymouth Brethren.
Darby went on to visit the US six times between 1859 and 1874, preaching Dispensationalism and the pretribulation rapture. He also spent much time preaching in Europe, developing a reputation as an interpreter of bible prophecy – a reputation that he most assuredly did not deserve.
Darby’s theory of Dispensationalism would have probably died quietly, were it not for the intervention of a corrupt lawyer – Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. He claims that his corruption – bribery, theft and forgery – were all before he became a Christian. But, we have reason to disbelieve that claim.
He said that he got ‘saved’ in 1879, at the same time that he was abandoning his wife and two daughters. His wife was forced to work to support herself and divorced him in 1883. Apparently, Scofield claimed to be a bachelor when he married Hettie Hall von Wartz, on March 21, 1882. Also in that same year, he was ordained as a Congregationalist Minister.
How is it possible for a ‘Christian’ to abandon his wife and daughters, marry someone else and get himself appointed as a minister?
But, it gets worse.
Scofield took Darby’s Dispensationalism, added his own corrupted ideas, and put all that into something called the Scofield Reference Bible. That ‘bible’ was published in 1909. By 1930, more than one million copies were in print.
Dr. Jeremy Rios had this to say about the Scofield Bible in his article, Scofield’s Abominable Study Bible:
The notes in the Scofield Reference Bible…
…reveal an agenda other than opening the text.
…reveal a fundamentally flawed methodology.
…expose a theology that reads the Scriptures.
To put it more bluntly, he had an axe to grind, and he ‘ground that axe’ at every opportunity. His ‘bible’ was not about helping you to understand what the scriptures meant, but to inject into the words of God his ideology. And, that third point by Dr. Rios is an important one to remember.
Instead of allowing the Bible to inform and instruct our view of God and His words, the Scofield Reference Bible forces the reader into the mindset of Scofield’s personal theology. That theology then directs the readers thoughts to see something in the Bible that is not there.
This has created an utterly bizarre approach to Biblical interpretation, where claims are made that have no reflection in what the Bible actually says. For instance, Bill Salus wrote an insane book, claiming that Psalm 83 was a prophecy about how Israel would fight some massive war in the near future and become a superpower.
There is literally no prophetic wording in Psalm 83 whatsoever.
Even if such a war were to be fought… it does not give us permission to twist the words of the Bible to fit our preconceived notions about what the Bible should say. In fact, it’s a sin.
God says this about adding to His words:
Do not add to His words,
Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.
– Proverbs 30:6 (NKJV)
I’m sorry, but Bill Salus and C.I. Scofield have been found to be liars. And, it’s not a good thing that we follow along in their errors. The words of God should be precious to us, and we are engaging in abomination in our abuse of them.
By placing his commentary of the Bible within the Bible itself, he essentially elevated his own thoughts on the Bible to the level of the Bible. Whether this was intentional, or not, is immaterial. The fact is that his errors instantaneously became legitimate in the eyes of everyone who was reading his bible.
With the advent of the Scofield Bible, seminaries became major proponents of the Jesuit Pretribulation Rapture theory.
Oh, and what did Scofield do with the massive amount of money that he made from publishing this ‘bible’?
He bought lots of expensive real estate and joined the prestigious Lotos Club. That ‘gentleman’s club’ had menus featuring topless women. And, at the same time, he was styling himself as having a ‘Doctor of Divinity’, without a single record of him ever receiving such an honor.
It is no surprise to see someone as corrupt as Scofield, being at the heart of the Dispensationalist/Pretrib Rapture movement.
Now, Lacunza, Irving, Darby and Scofield would not have been quite so successful without the help of a major technological advancement that came along at just the right time:
The steam-powered printing press.
The first successful implementation of such a printing press happened in 1814, when it was bought by the Times of London. From that moment on, books and newspapers became cheaper and cheaper as new innovations in printing press technology allowed more and more people to get access to cheaper and cheaper books.
Edward Irving’s translation of Lacunza’s book might never have happened without the steam-powered printing press. News of Margaret MacDonald’s ‘visions’ might never have reached the headlines. John Darby’s Dispensationalism might never have gotten popular. And, Scofield’s Reference Bible could never have sold a million copies in 21 years, were it not for the electric printing press that replaced the steam-powered versions in 1900.
Like the Internet of today, steam and electric powered printing presses made it possible for knowledge to expand. It also made possible for false teachers to get an even wider audience.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
And, the pretrib rapture is one whopper of a fable. Unfortunately, such fables are hard to dislodge from the minds of those who believe them. Once they have taken up residence, it takes a lot of hard work to get rid of them.
So, let’s tackle this Pretribulation Rapture that has captured so many hearts and minds.
Let me repeat that my favorite pastors believe in a pretribulation rapture. I currently attend a church that holds to a pretrib eschatology. So, my disagreement with this view is no reflection upon anyone’s faithfulness to God. In fact, pretribbers are generally better Christians than most post-tribbers. (And yes, I will be going after THEIR errors next.)
However, as your brother in Christ, I am required to point out where you get things wrong, especially if such errors put you in harm’s way. Just remember that tendency we have to blindness. It’s normal, but lots of sins are normal too. So, let’s try to keep our eyes open to the truth as we look at the reasons why the Pretrib Rapture Theory is wrong.
Okay, brace yourself. You’re probably gonna’ read some things that you aren’t going to like. Just remember that I’m saying all this because your spiritual welfare is important to me.
So, let’s try to set aside preconceptions and submit to what the Bible says.
If we can do that, we will be safe from the heresies that Satan has been cultivating around the world. If not, there’s a big target on our back.
Our first and most powerful reason for why the Pretribulation Rapture Theory is incorrect, is simply this:
There is no verse or passage that describes the Rapture as coming before the Great Triblulation.
That realization should surprise you as much as it shocked me. When I first crossed swords with proponents of this theory, I had thought that there would be at least one verse that described what they said. But, there wasn’t. I was dumbfounded.
How can such a huge theory exist without a single verse that describes it to be true?
What’s more, Dispensationalist theologians admit that this is true. Unfortunately, many are not willing to be so honest, and will either deny that they know this or will change the subject by claiming that there is no proof of a post-tribulation rapture. And, my response is always…
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
This is solid proof that the Rapture must occur AFTER the Great Tribulation. It’s not the only proof, but it does strike directly at the question.
In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul says this:
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV)
Paul is saying that the First Resurrection happens BEFORE the Rapture. There is only one First Resurrection, and the Rapture cannot come before it. This begs the question:
When does the First Resurrection occur?
Well, after describing the actions of the Antichrist in Daniel 11:21-45, God tells us in Daniel 12:
1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
– Daniel 12:1-2 (KJV)
THAT is the First Resurrection, and it is AFTER the Great Tribulation.
Just those two passages are absolute proof that the Pretribulation Rapture cannot be true. There are other, more complex proofs ahead. But, that is the second most clear description of why the Rapture cannot be pretrib.
To summarize:
Paul said that the Rapture is AFTER the Resurrection.
Daniel said that the Resurrection is AFTER the Great Tribulation.
However, the clearest explanation comes from the words of Jesus Himself:
I have stopped using the Olivet Discourse as my number one proof because Dispensationalists are already primed to twist this scripture. I am horrified at their willingness to do this, so I make Matthew 24 the third proof, instead of the first.
Here is firm evidence that Jesus is talking about a Post Tribulation Rapture:
29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
– Matthew 24:29-31 (NKJV)
That is the Resurrection and the Rapture AFTER THE GREAT TRIBULATION. The idea that Dispensationalists would twist the words of Jesus, to try and make His words say the opposite is mind-boggling.
Unfortunately, Dispensationalists have a little problem. They don’t know what to do with the coming of Gog and Magog. It’s a huge hole in their argument, so they either refuse to talk about Gog – or if they do, they claim that he’s the Antichrist.
The coming of Gog and Magog is directly described in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and indirectly described in Zechariah 12 and 13. If you can read through those passages and still say that Gog and Magog fits inside the Great Tribulation, you have a greater imagination than I do. But, maybe I should describe how important this question is.
If Gog is not the Antichrist…
…there is no pre-tribulation rapture.
…there will be no Third Temple for blood sacrifices.
…the Return of Jacob to God must happen years, even decades, before the Antichrist.
I did a deep dive into the timing of Gog and Magog, in my book When Gog Comes. When I undertook that study, I was hoping to find proof that my assumptions were wrong and that I had wasted my time writing Ezekiel’s Fire. To my horror, My research confirmed the timing, and I discovered that my assumptions were far too conservative. Ezekiel’s Fire was going to be worse than I thought.
So, I’m going to steal a little bit from When Gog Comes, to show you why Gog cannot be the Antichrist. The three biggest reasons are:
The invasion of Israel by Gog and Magog is not at all like the invasion of the Antichrist.
The events surrounding Gog and Magog are not at all like the events surrounding the Antichrist.
But, here’s the most important reason of all:
The salvation of Israel happens years BEFORE the coming of the Antichrist…
…while the Bible records this Return of Jacob as happening AFTER Gog and Magog.
Those three reasons, by themselves, are enough to prove completely that Gog is NOT the Antichrist, and that Gog and Magog are coming long before the Antichrist arrives. It also proves that you MUST prepare for the great catastrophe that will also come, when Gog leads his military alliance against Israel. But, let’s look at some more reasons. (The full list is in the book.)
There are five invasions of Israel by the Antichrist
(Gog is described as invading once)
The Israel at the time of the Antichrist will not look like the Israel of today
(What Daniel 11 describes is deeply disturbing. Israel will have suffered heavy damage, long before the Antichrist rises.)
The Antichrist captures Jerusalem.
(Gog does NOT capture Jerusalem.)
Israelis need to run away from the Antichrist
(Israelis do not need to run away from Gog)
The Antichrist will not be buried, but he and his false prophet will be thrown alive into Hell
(Gog will be buried and will have a grave in a valley called Hamon Gog.)
There are merely hours or maybe days between the destruction of the Antichrist and the Millennium
(After Gog is destroyed, there must be enough time for Israeli Christians to reach spiritual maturity and to seal the 144 thousand.)
In Zechariah 14, The Antichrist conquers Jerusalem and half the city flees into the wilderness
(In Zechariah 12, the inhabitants of Jerusalem successfully defend the city from Gog and Magog, with even the weakest being so incredibly strong that they will slay all their enemies, just like David did.)
In Zechariah 14, Jerusalem is rescued by God Himself
(In Zechariah 12, God gives the inhabitants of Jerusalem supernatural strength and the ability to defend themselves.)
In Zechariah 14, God PHYSICALLY saves Jerusalem and Israel
(In Zechariah 12 and 13, God SPIRITUALLY saves them.)
For a detailed analysis with scripture references, go here.
My discussion of Isaiah 30 in When Gog Comes brought up some interesting observations.
When does God send fire upon Magog and the other nations in Ezekiel 39?
AFTER the invasion of Gog and Magog has begun.
When does the fourth angel pour out his bowl upon the Sun in Revelation 16?
BEFORE the invasion of The Kings of the East and the battle of Armageddon.
That alone means that Gog CANNOT be the Antichrist.
Gog is NOT the Antichrist, and Gog must come years before the Antichrist. Therefore, the Redemption of Israel must come long before the Antichrist. But, there are more reasons why God will Redeem Jacob BEFORE the Antichrist arrives.
Remember that Revelation 12 shows that Israel is in a covenant relationship with God, when she flees into the wilderness, where she is sheltered from the Antichrist for three and a half years. Also, Daniel 11 shows that there is a spiritual relationship between Israel and God, BEFORE the Antichrist takes over Jerusalem. All of this means that:
Israel accepts Christ and is Christian BEFORE the Antichrist rises
(Ezekiel and Zechariah say that the salvation of Israel is AFTER Gog is destroyed)
The Return of Jacob must happen BEFORE the Antichrist invades Israel
(Only after Gog is destroyed, will Israel be saved.)
Here are some other key points:
NOTE: Please remember that the scroll described in Revelation 5-7 cannot open until AFTER all the seals are removed. If it was an unusual scroll that could open partially with each seal, John would have said so. Therefore, we MUST conclude that the Seals are all removed before any other events in Revelation can commence. I talk more about this in A Biblical Overview Of Revelation.
If nothing else, the sealing of the 144 thousand Israelis in Revelation 7 should be enough of a clue that Israel must be following Christ long before the Antichrist arrives – enough of a clue that we all should have serious questions about current theories concerning the Last Days. There is just no way that you can look at Revelation 7 and see anything else.
According to the words of Jesus there is only one Resurrection of the Just. And, Revelation 20 refers to only one First Resurrection:
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.
– Revelation 20:4-6 (NKJV)
What comes at the time of the First Resurrection?
This happens:
1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
– Revelation 20:1-3 (NKJV)
Also, Revelation 19 also shows us when the Resurrection happens:
7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
8 And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
9 And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.
…
11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
[Further description of Jesus and the armies of heaven]
19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
– Revelation 19 (KJV)
The Resurrection happens at the time when Jesus Returns with the armies of heaven. And, that event coincides with marriage of the Lamb. There is literally no way that the First Resurrection and the Rapture can happen before this.
Where else do we see this?
Zechariah 14 is interesting. It talks about the coming of the Antichrist and his capture of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Bible translations get an important word wrong:
1 Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
– Zechariah 14:1-2 (ESV)
As much as I dislike the ESV (due to their vile translation of Genesis 3:16), they get this passage right, while the KJV and other translations get it wrong. The key word is ‘exile’ (גולה). Other translations say ‘captivity’. and that’s incorrect. If half the city was taken captive, a different word would have been used, like sh-vee (שבי), which means captivity. If you are a prisoner, you are a shah-voo-ee (שבוי).
So, what does it mean that half of Jerusalem goes into exile?
Here is a snapshot of one part of the same event, from the Book of Revelation:
13 And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.
– Revelation 12:13-14 (ESV)
So, the ‘half of Jerusalem’ that goes into exile, looks like it is actually the great escape from the dragon, which makes the first two verses of Zecharia 14 about the third invasion/coup of Israel by the Antichrist. Again, the words of Jesus confirm the suddenness of this military operation by the Antichrist:
15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
– Matthew 24:15-18 (ESV)
So, upon closer inspection, it’s actually a positive thing for ‘half the city’ to go into exile. It means that half the population of Jerusalem followed the commands of Jesus and got out before the Antichrist could catch them. So, part of Zechariah 14:2 is good, even though the suffering after that is awful.
I find it deeply disturbing to discover that this KJV translation error had corrupted my view of what Zechariah 14:2 said. For decades, I had assumed that the Antichrist would forcefully depopulate Jerusalem and put the Jews into concentration camps, when the truth was that the people of Jerusalem were running away – just like Jesus told them to.
More importantly, if I had known that the word was EXILE, instead of CAPTIVITY, I would not have been as puzzled by Zechariah 14. This is yet another reason why the KJV cannot be trusted completely. You need to double-check what it says.
Unfortunately, you also need to double-check all the other translations, too. I am truly amazed at how awful the English translations of the Bible are. The publishing houses that commissioned these Bibles should be ashamed of themselves.
Then in verse three of Zechariah 14, all the English translations of the Bible get the first word completely wrong – at least, for the translations that I’ve seen:
Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
– Zechariah 14:3 (KJV)
That word ‘Then’ is deeply incorrect. The original Hebrew says ‘And’ and NOT ‘Then’. The word ‘then’ indicates a moment that is immediately after the events of verse two. But, since the word is ‘and’, the gap between verse two and three could be much, much longer than ‘immediately after’. And yes, for years I was caught by the false usage of ‘then’ in that verse. To put it another way:
There is a three and a half year gap between verse two and verse three of Zechariah 14.
Even though I knew that the KJV was imperfect, I still made the mistake of not double-checking the translation by looking at the original Hebrew. That’s why I – and so many others – have assumed that the events of verse three MUST come immediately after the events of verse two.
So anyway, verse three begins the liberation of Jerusalem from the Antichrist, and is where the Battle of Armageddon really begins. And, the next verse describes HOW Jesus begins His war upon the Antichrist and the nations:
On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west forming a very large valley. Half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half toward the south.
– Zechariah 14:4 (NASB)
Jesus will descend upon the Mount of Olives, and they will split in two. This is the Second Coming, as promised in the first chapter of Acts:
11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
– Acts 1:11 (NKJV)
Jesus will return in the same way that He left, with one difference:
The Mount of Olives will split in two.
Oh, and this indicates a very, very important point:
Yehovah is Jesus
If you are surprised by that, you might need to spend more time reading the Old Testament – not just the new. If you aren’t reading both, you are doomed to a stunted spiritual growth. Oh, and there are a lot more proofs that Yehovah is Yeshua (Jesus). If you want to get deeper into that, my friend Meno Kalisher wrote a great book called Jesus in the Hebrew Scriptures. (I helped with the very first rough draft.)
Zechariah 14 goes on to talk about the escape of those who are left in Jerusalem, followed by the plagues that God inflicts upon those nations that fight against Him. This description of Armageddon is followed by a discussion of what the Millennium will be like.
Oh, and we can confirm that God rescues Jerusalem BEFORE the Battle of Armageddon, because of this verse in Joel 3
16 The Lord also will roar from Zion,
And utter His voice from Jerusalem;
The heavens and earth will shake;
But the Lord will be a shelter for His people,
And the strength of the children of Israel.
– Joel 3:16 (NKJV)
Jerusalem will be rescued first, THEN the Battle of Armageddon starts. Or, maybe we could say that the Battle of Armageddon begins at Jerusalem. Furthermore, the people of God who live during this time will be sheltered by God, from the wrath that He will pour out upon the nations that fight against Him.
After Jesus fed the 5000 and walked on the Sea of Galilee, the next day Jesus spoke at the synagogue at Capernaum (K’far Nahum). That was when he spoke of Himself as the Bread of Life, that came from Heaven.
39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
– John 6:39-40 (KJV)
This means that the Resurrection is literally at THE LAST DAY. It’s AFTER the Great Tribulation. The LAST DAY is definitely not before the Great Tribulation.
Dr. Alan Kurschner says about this next proof:
“Second Thessalonians chapter two has been the nemesis for pretribulationism. Or what I refer to as the 800-pound gorilla in the Bible of the pretribulationist.
This biblical passage has convinced more ex-pretribulationists that their pretrib theology is wrong than any other Bible passage. The reason for this is straightforward: The fundamental premise of pretribulationism is that there cannot be any prophesied events that will take place before the rapture, and consequently they believe in the novel idea of what has come to be called the “any moment” rapture (a.k.a. imminence).”
– from Does Apostasia in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 Refer to a ‘Physical Departure’ (i.e. the Rapture)?
Unfortunately, in a desperate attempt to block criticism of their failed theory of a pretrib rapture, some Dispensationalists have chosen to redefine a key word to keep their theory alive. Here is the passage in question:
1 Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, 2 not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. 3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
– 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 (NKJV)
That phrase ‘unless the falling away comes first’ is dangerous to the Dispensationalist doctrine of imminence. If there is ANYTHING that must happen before the Rapture, then their position is severely damaged. So, some pretrib commenters have redefined ‘falling away’ to mean the rapture.
The Greek word in question is ἀποστασία (apostasia), and it’s where we get the word apostasy. Merriam-Webster defines ‘apostasy’ as:
“an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith”
That’s exactly what it means, and that is exactly how the Book of Acts and the Septuagint use that word. But, because apostasia means to ‘move away from a position of faith’, they have chosen to see it as just ‘moving away from a position’, as in… move up into the clouds. And no, the Bible has never referred to the Rapture in this way. Never. Read more from Dr. Kushner’s explanation, to understand what I mean.
Unfortunately, I believe that this habit of twisting the Bible will lead Dispensationalists into some very, very dark paths. And, Paul wrote about this a few verses down in this chapter:
10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, 12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
– 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 (NKJV)
Our only hope of safely getting through the difficult days that are coming, is to love the truth. Without it, we will perish, and I fear for our brothers and sisters in Christ because they have chosen a lie over the truth.
John Nelson Darby taught that there was a centuries-long gap between Week 69 and Week 70 because that was the only way to make Dispensationalism work. That’s right…
…Dispensationalism falls apart if there is no gap in Daniel’s 70 Weeks.
Over the years, several friends of mine acknowledged this to me by saying:
“We put a gap there, because we have to.”
And, the reason for this, is because Dispensationalism and the Pretribulation Rapture require the return of Temple Sacrifices, if they are going to escape the Great Tribulation.
Why?
Well, if you want the Rapture to happen before the Antichrist takes power, you need it to happen BEFORE the Return of Jacob to God. If Israel is saved before the Rapture, it means that we are all going to suffer terribly when the Antichrist arrives. And, they are desperate to avoid believing that.
Here is the full passage:
24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
– Daniel 9:24-27 (KJV)
According to verse 24, during this seventy weeks, the following was going to happen:
And, when those 490 years (each week is seven days, each day is a year) were completed, all of the above would have happened, and did happen. All of it. And, it happened exactly as prophesied.
Is there anything in that list that applies to the Last Days?
NO!! NOTHING!
The transgression of His people was finished. The sins of His people were ended. The reconciliation of His people was accomplished. Everlasting righteousness for His people was brought in. Vision and prophecy were sealed up. And, the Most Holy in heaven was definitely anointed with the Blood of Jesus. To say otherwise, is to not understand what Jesus did on the cross, in the grave and in heaven when he rose and went to the temple in heaven.
To say otherwise is to deny what Jesus did, two thousand years ago.
Don’t people know that Satan has ALREADY BEEN DEFEATED?
Satan lost, when Christ died for our sins, rose from the grave and poured out his blood upon the alter in heaven. And, I am astounded that so few seem to understand that.
Yet, they persist in saying that verse 27 has not happened yet.
How can this be?
Where in Daniel 9 does there indicate that a gap is inserted between week 69 and week 70?
Well, I know the answer. Honest mistakes were made by people who did not understand the underlying Hebrew, and those mistakes were picked up by Darby and amplified.
So, let’s look at verse 26 and 27 more closely, because THAT is where they claim the two thousand year gap is. And, while we do that, remember the purpose of this prophecy that was laid out at the beginning of this passage.
So, here are verses 26 and 27, but this time I have looked at the original Hebrew:
VERSE 26 – And after sixty and two weeks will Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and a people of a prince that shall come and destroy the city and the holy place, and its end in the overflow, and to an end war is desolations determined.
VERSE 27 – And, a covenant shall be confirmed to many, for one week. And, [at] half of the week, there is a ceasing of sacrifice and offering. And, to the wing of abominations, devastation – until completeness and destruction is poured on [the] devastated.
– Daniel 9:26-27, JLV (John Little Version)
Verse 25 speaks of a seven week period to build the city, and then – after 62 weeks – Messiah will be cut off. How much after? Well the clue is in verse 27, where He makes sacrifice and offering to cease. Of course, in the physical world, sacrifices and offerings continued, but they had as much significance as the offerings made to the demon in the temple that is just down the street from where I live, here in Tainan.
In the eyes of God, the sacrifices were over. Done. Finished. Of no value, whatsoever. But, verse 26 speaks about a prince. And, a people. And, the destruction of the city. And, remember that the focus is NOT on the temple, but on Jerusalem.
Who destroyed Jerusalem?
The Romans.
When?
AD 70.
Are we inserting extra time, here?
No, the Bible is making a parenthetical statement – a side point that adds important detail but is not essential to the main point. It is describing that Jerusalem will be destroyed (about forty years later), because they rejected their Messiah. And, you will notice that the Jews chose the leader of an insurrection, Barabbas, over that of Jesus. That was a very prophetic choice, since it was the insurrection of the Jews that caused the fall of Jerusalem.
Yes, I know that God could have made this ‘side point’ at the end of this prophecy, but God was describing the consequences of the rejection of Messiah – an extremely valid point. And, remember again the rule set out in verse 24. Verse 24 does not allow you to insert extra time. It described the time frame very concisely. It’s seventy weeks, and that’s it. There’s no, 69 weeks plus 2000 years plus one week.
No, it said 70 weeks.
But, what about the ‘abomination of desolation’ that Jesus spoke of?
Didn’t Daniel speak of abominations and desolations in Daniel 9?
Here’s the passage where Jesus referred to the Abomination of Desolation:
15 “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 16 “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. 18 And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. 19 But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! 20 And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
– Matthew 24:15-22 (NKJV)
Unfortunately for the Dispensationalists, Jesus was not referring to Daniel 9. He was referring to this verse:
31 And forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation.
– Daniel 11:31 (NKJV)
The last half of Daniel 11 (verses 20-45) is all about the Antichrist. He is the King of the North. And, we know that this must be so, because chapter 12 continues the vision with these two verses that should be familiar to you:
1 “At that time Michael shall stand up, The great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people; And there shall be a time of trouble, Such as never was since there was a nation, Even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, Every one who is found written in the book. 2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt.
– Daniel 12:1-2 (NKJV)
That’s the First Resurrection, and we want to be in that one. Oh, and that reminds me of the other place where the abomination of desolation is referred to:
11 “And from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days. 12 Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.
– Daniel 12:11-12 (NKJV)
The one speaking to Daniel was restating what was said in Daniel 11, for emphasis and clarity. He also adds that the period of time will be 1290 days.
How long is that?
Three and a half years.
The same amount of time referred to for the reign of the Antichrist. What a coincidence.
So, there you have it. The Pretribulation Rapture Theory is just not possible. It’s a fable created by a Jesuit fabulist, expanded upon by an Anglican fabulist and emphasized by a Congregationalist fabulist who made a ton of money selling millions of copies of his Scofield Reference Bible.
If we believe that the Bible is the Truth, then it’s time to submit to what the Bible actually says. You cannot believe in a Pretribulation Rapture and claim Sola Scriptura. You just can’t.
How can you claim to love and fear God, while twisting the words He gave us?
Yet, I also understand how easy it is to be hypnotized by passionate claims from pastors that you respect and admire. I understand how young men and women sent to seminary can be brainwashed into believing all kinds of things that just aren’t true. We have examples of this in almost every university and college across the world. And like all the corrupt nonsense being taught in our secular universities, this pretribulation rapture theory is just as corrupt and just as nonsensical.
It’s time to end the nonsense and submit to what the Bible actually says, instead of what we want it to say.
We have finally reached what should be the most Biblical eschatology that we can find. It should be the most literal view. It it isn’t supposed to insert ideas into the Bible that are not there. It even makes an effort to not symbolize that which is not symbolic.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Historic Premillennialists failed in what they should have been doing because they too followed a false teacher that brought some of the most corrupt fables into his commentaries and did terrible damage to not only eschatology, but also our understanding of the Bible.
Why must we always do that?
Well one of the biggest – if not the biggest – reasons is a thing called the theologian. The Bible ‘scholar’. These are the guys who sit around theorizing about why this or that philosophy of the Bible is the ‘best approach’. It’s as if they forgot that we’re talking about God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. It’s as if we are free to redefine what God is telling us, that it’s ‘okay’ to make God more ‘reasonable’.
Do Bible ‘scholars’ have ANY self awareness?
Don’t they know that we will one day stand before the Author and face His judgment on our lives?
I am truly amazed at what ‘scholars’ have done to us. Every young man or woman sent to our ‘scholarly’ seminaries are deluged with one foolish idea after another, until they can barely read the Bible without the help of a library of commentaries.
When did we forget to submit ourselves to the Words of God in complete humility?
What happened to us?
Well, the answer is quite simple:
Pride.
The same sin that caused Satan to fall, is the same that has destroyed our ability to see what the Bible actually says. Our ‘theologians’ love their ThD certificates that require you to bow before them. They love being invited to speak and having honors heaped upon them. And, it’s just like the Pharisees during the time of Jesus:
5 But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. 6 They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, 7 greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, Rabbi.’
– Matthew 23:5-7 (NKJV)
I’ve run into so much of this in our churches and on the Internet, that I am never surprised when I see it. In fact, it is so rare to see a truly humble man of God behind the pulpit, that every such experience is truly memorable.
Why has the humble pastor become so rare?
Because we don’t want humility.
We don’t want to hear a humble submission to the words of God. We want thunderous proclamations of fabulous tales that scratch our itchy ears.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4 (NKJV)
So, that’s what we’ve done. We hired pastors who would tell us stories that we want to hear – delicious fables that would scratch our itching ears. And that is why even the least popular eschatology – Historic Premillennialism – has corrupted itself.
So, what is this other premillennial eschatology, and why do they call it ‘historic’?
Premillennialism is the group of beliefs that make the claim that Jesus will Return before the Millennium. It also teaches that the First Resurrection happens before the Millennium and that Satan is bound for a thousand years. Both Historic and Dispensational premillennialism agree on these points.
The difference is that Historic Premillennialism says that Christians will experience the Great Tribulation and will see the judgment that God rains down upon the ungodly. Only after all that, will there be the Resurrection of the Just (Luke 14:14) and the Rapture. And, it is called ‘historic’ because it was the eschatology of all Christians before Augustine stuck his foot in with his Amillennialism. After that, Premillennialists had to be very quiet about their eschatology or get burned at the stake.
Unfortunately, this now-tiny group of Historic Premillennialists has now found itself further divided into two camps:
Those who see the Redemption of Israel before the Great Tribulation.
Those who shoot themselves in the foot.
And, I must tell you that I am deeply shocked that any Historic Premillennialist would toss Israel out of their eschatology. And, when I bring it up, they throw me out. Literally. I am unwelcome in their forums and unwelcome in their churches.
Part of the reason for why Historic Premils lost sight of Israel, is due to someone named John Gill. He was a Baptist pastor in England during the mid-1700s, who was also a prolific commenter on the Bible and the first to refute the Amillennialism of the Protestants and lay out a clear set of arguments for Premillennialism. Unfortunately, he dumped the Redemption of Israel into the tiny window of time called the Great Tribulation. That is not Biblical, but he obviously saw the terrible events that happen in Zechariah 13 and made the connection with the time of the Antichrist which would also be terrible.
Part of John Gill’s problem was the same mistake that I once made, thinking that the events of Zechariah 14 are directly connected to the previous two chapters – Zechariah 12 and 13. They aren’t. Not even a little, but you won’t be able to see all that until you’ve looked at the other prophecies of the Redemption of Israel to see the timeline. By the way, if you want to do that, my book When Gog Comes actually does that.
The other problem that John Gill had – and it’s a big one – was his love of Jewish commentaries on the Bible, called the Talmud. He even references a horrifying book called the Zohar. You might not think that this is a big deal, but I’ve had a lot of experience with those who study Talmud, and it’s heresy from one end to the other. And with his mention of the Zohar, he didn’t just dip into the heretical, he went straight for the the truly demonic.
Please, I’ll beg if I have to, never look to Rabbinic Judaism for insight into the Bible. What truth Judaism had at the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, was completely twisted out of shape and destroyed by the Rabbis who wrote the Talmud, and then… the Zohar. The Rabbis tried to ‘save’ Judaism by changing it into something that could survive without a Temple and ‘protect’ the Jews from following Christ. John Gill chose a dark path when he consulted their writings. And, if you know anything about how demonic Kabbalah is, you’ll know how dark and twisted the Zohar is.
Furthermore, Gill was writing down his thoughts during the 1700s. His whole view of the Last Days was wrapped around the events of his day, which is completely natural – since we do the same thing today. The problem lies with those of us who accept John Gill’s comments uncritically and promote them as truth to our congregations.
That is a giant mistake, one that we keep making.
John Gill may have had good intentions and might have been a good pastor. He certainly said some things that were correct, but that doesn’t change the fact that his ideas were seriously corrupted.
Our job as Christians is to seek the literal truth of God’s Word, by looking only at the words of God and submitting to them through the Holy Spirit. I tried to do that when I wrote this book:
When Gog Comes – Correcting The Timeline Of The Last Days
That effort was the result of my attempt to determine whether Historic Premillennialism was the correct way to look at Bible Prophecy. And, I chose the coming of Gog and Magog as the best, most clear, point to start my examination of what the prophets foretold about the days we seem to be entering. I wanted to be proven wrong, but found that the situation was even more dire than I had originally thought.
To be fair to John Gill and others, the Bible says that we would not understand the prophecies of the Last Days until they came upon us, so some mistakes are understandable. And, for all that I know, I might be completely mistaken myself. I certainly would be happy for that to be the case. Few things would thrill me more, than being proven wrong about what I wrote in that book. (And, if you think that I’m kidding, think again.)
But, there is a better example to look at – Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
He has been revered for over a century, and his devotions are still in print. They call him the Prince of Preachers, but I doubt that very many of them know that he was a Historic Premillennialist who understood that Israel would become followers of Christ before the Great Tribulation began. He also knew that our ability to understand the Last Days was very limited, which is why he didn’t talk about it very much. But, what he did say was really astute.
According to a study of his writings and sermons, Spurgeon’s eschatology was as follows [emphasis mine]:
1. After Pentecost, the church will continue for an undetermined time working in the world to spread the gospel by the power of and under the sovereignty of God.
2. In the last days the spiritual condition of the gentile world will grow progressively worse, while Israel as a national and political entity will both return to their land and submit themselves to the Gospel of Christ.
3. As a result of the spiritual deterioration, true believers will be increasingly persecuted, led by the “antichrist system” which for Spurgeon was the Papal system of the Roman Catholic Church.
4. God will judge the unbelieving world and the Antichrist system with a period of tribulation. During this great tribulation the true church, God’s elect (Jews and Gentiles) will be supernaturally protected and demonstrate a miraculous joy.
5. The personal and visible return of Christ will bring an end to the tribulation, as well as the end of the Antichrist system. His return will apparently also culminate the process of world- wide evangelism. Unbelievers will be swept away, Satan and the demons bound and the dead saints in Christ resurrected. Those Christians living on earth both Jew and Gentile), protected during the great tribulation will prosper and reign with Christ during the millennial kingdom on earth. Christ will personally reign from the throne of David in Jerusalem and the Jews will enjoy the full blessings of God that the earlier generation at the time of Christ had forsaken.
6. At the end of the 1,000 years the time for judgment of the ungodly will arrive and the second resurrection of the unjust will occur. Satan and the demons as well as all unbelievers from all ages will be cast into the “lake of fire” for all eternity. The New Heavens and New Earth will be revealed and all believers will move into the eternal state of heaven.
Dennis Swanson Charles H. Spurgeon and Eschatology: Did He Have a Discernible Millennial Position?
Remember that Spurgeon died in 1892, long before there was much hope for a State of Israel. Yet, he knew that it would happen at some time in the future. And, he also knew that Israel would one day accept Christ as their Lord and Savior before the Antichrist arose.
Why is it that so few are willing to accept such a remarkably Biblical view of the Last Days?
I am shocked at how unwilling we are to humble ourselves and submit to what the Bible actually says. Unfortunately, like all the other eschatologies, the vast majority of Modern Historic Premillennialists have failed to see where Israel fits in the Last Days. They think that Gog is the Antichrist and that the Battle of Gog and Magog happens at the Battle of Armageddon and that the salvation of Israel is… (waves hands) …for the Millennium. And that is just not possible.
I get it that the purpose of the Millennium is difficult to figure out. But, there are many things in the Bible that are hard to understand. Just because something is baffling, that doesn’t give you permission to play games with it.
If someone claims that the Redemption of Israel does not occur before the Great Tribulation, they are taking a knife to all the prophecies that foretell of Israel’s return to God. That means discarding a huge part of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Why would ANYONE do that?
Yet, they are doing that, and it’s completely maddening.
It’s as if we have decided to stone the prophets in absentia, for the crime of not conforming to our pet theories. That didn’t end well for the Jewish people 2000 years ago, and it won’t end well for us.
The prophets weren’t writing ‘apocalyptic literature’. They were warning us of a real cataclysm in an all to real future.
So, I’m sad to say that modern Historic Premillennialism shot itself in the foot and is now aiming at its head. What they have now is Modernized Historic Premillennialism, since it is NOT what the early church believed. Instead of following the Bible, they decided that a more ‘scholarly’ approach was called for. And God despises ‘scholars’ who seek to extract meaning that isn’t there.
It’s as if we have thrown the Redemption of Israel onto the rubbish heap, claiming that Zion is an outcast – that no one should seek the peace of Jerusalem.
16 ‘Therefore all those who devour you shall be devoured; And all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; Those who plunder you shall become plunder, And all who prey upon you I will make a prey. 17 For I will restore health to you And heal you of your wounds,’ says the Lord, Because they called you an outcast saying: “This is Zion; No one seeks her.”
– Jeremiah 30:16-17 (NKJV)
I am aghast at those who would claim that the nation of Israel has no place in the Body of Christ – that they will not receive Messiah in the way that the prophets decreed.
Why do we argue against what God clearly said, speaking to us through the Hebrew Scriptures and even the New Testament for thousands of years?
What insanity keeps us from seeing the proper place for Israel’s Return?
Not a single, modern eschatology has a clue about what God is doing with the Children of Jacob, and what He will do at Jerusalem.
This is a bitter state of affairs. We have gathered to ourselves false teachers because we wanted them to tell us fables that would scratch our itching ears. We chose ‘scholarship’ over the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And, we now find ourselves in the same place as the Pharisees, when Jesus said:
7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:
8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. 9 And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”
– Matthew15:7-9 (NKJV)
And, since we have ignored what God has been telling us, we will be unprepared for the moment when God brings Jacob back to Himself in the biggest cataclysm since the Great Flood. I call that event, Ezekiel’s Fire, but you could just as easily call it Zechariah’s Horses or Isaiah’s Sun. But, it will NOT be the Great Tribulation, even though every city around the world will be destroyed and billions will die.
You can ignore prophecy, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring prophecy.
After having done the deep dive into Bad Eschatology, I find myself shocked at how man-centered our faith has become. We no longer want to know what God says. We just want to know what other men say.
When was the last time your pastor prepared a sermon without consulting a book written by some dead guy?
It’s really rare.
Then there are our Bible translations. Every single Bible translation is riddle with errors – some of them intentional.
Why is all this happening?
We’ve become rebels against God.
I remember the first time that someone told me the meaning of the word ‘Islam’. I was repulsed.
Submission?
That’s what Islam means?
Boy, I was glad that I didn’t have to… oh, wait. Christianity means the same thing, but instead of submitting to the false god of the Qur’an, we submit to Christ, the Father and yes, the Holy Spirit.
Our very first step of faith in Christ is submission – along with every other step that we make until the day that we die. If you claim Christ, but refuse to submit – you are a rebel destined for an awful eternity.
People love to claim salvation by faith alone, as if belief in God is all that you need. But faith, without obedience, is dead. James said it this way:
But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?
– James 2:20 (NKJV)
The entire book of James is about submission to God, in whatever condition you find yourself in. And, if you won’t submit and do what God tells you to do, your faith is dead and your eternity uncertain.
Yet, when I mention to Christians the need for submission and obedience to God, I am met with either outrage or deafening silence.
I have met very few Christians who are willing to submit to the words of God given to us in the Bible. It seems that no one is able to contemplate the possibility that they could be wrong in whatever theological position that they take. And, I want to confess to you that I was in this position once-upon-a-time, and God had to knock me down hard to get my attention.
That’s right, I also was ignorant and arrogant – even insufferable. When Paul speaks of having been a Pharisee the son of a Pharisee, I completely identify with that. I’ve had to repent of a lot of what I am about to describe to you. So, when I throw out the following compare/contrasts of certain ideologies, I’m not just trampling your toes, I’m also trampling my own:
I could go on, but I’ll stop here. Like I said, I’ve had to repent of quite a few things that I listed above. I have gotten things wrong, but I have devoted my life to repenting of that which is in error. It’s not easy, but I hope that you will join me in clearing out the mess that we have created.
Ultimately, I blame our seminaries for perpetuating – even creating – our man-centered corruption of Christianity. It’s true that ‘schools of divinity’ seem like a good idea. But, we took whatever good that was there, and turned it into ‘scholarship’.
Instead of seeking the wisdom of God through the Holy Spirit, we engaged in ‘logical’ argument. We handed out doctorates to ‘theologians’ who could churn out ‘intellectual’ and ‘cultured’ arguments for doctrines that we liked – instead of the less pleasant truth.
Our seminaries taught our pastors to put on a good show, stand tall and pound their pulpits. They taught them to rule, instead of lead – forgetting that Christ called us to a humble spirit and service to others.
Have we gone insane?
Have we lost our minds?
What’s wrong with us?
It’s as if we’ve chosen to participate in a 2000 year rebellion against God. Instead of reading the Bible, we chose foolish commentaries by Augustine, Henry and Gill. And, when we translated the Bible, we hired incompetents who couldn’t do the job, or apostates intent on bending the Bible to their will. And, there’s one recent example that is one of the foulest that I’ve heard in a long time.
The 2016 version of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible is a blatant example of deliberate corruption. They deliberately changed Genesis 3:16 to mean the opposite of what the original Hebrew says.
They took this verse in the RSV:
To the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
And changed it to this:
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
Many people have communicated their outrage with Crossway over allowing such a crime to happen, but they refuse to budge. They literally see nothing wrong with deliberately reversing the words of God. They know that they did this. They know who did it. They won’t change it.
Wayne Grudem was the snake that pushed this change through, and he is cursed by God for doing it. And, Crossway is cursed for refusing to fix this deliberate corruption of God’s Word. I communicated with them directly, and they doubled down on this change.
Again, this was not a ‘mistake’. This was deliberate.
They did it on purpose with malice aforethought.
What other deliberate corruptions have they inflicted upon the ESV?
And then, what will probably turn out to be one of our biggest rebellions of all, we have cast aside God’s promise to bring the Children of Jacob back to Himself. The prophets are unanimous in proclaiming the redemption of Israel, yet we deny that God has any meaningful intention of doing so.
Every Christian group has either tossed away Israel completely, or shoved the salvation of the Jewish people into that tiny sliver of time in which the Antichrist rules the world. It seems that only Charles Spurgeon understood that Israel would join the Body of Christ before the Great Tribulation came. All others have flung aside what God explicitly said, for the illusory pleasures of comfortable fables.
This is a shocking and depressing thing to watch. And, as I discovered when I wrote my two books on the subject, there will be a very steep price to pay for ignoring what God so clearly proclaimed. So, God is justified in allowing us to suffer for our rebellious rejection of His word.
As Samuel said to Saul:
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He also has rejected you from being king.”
– 1 Samuel 15:23 (NKJV)
It’s time to end the rebellion. And, you can do that by simply reading your Bible every day and submitting to what you read. You could start by opening whatever Bible that you have, and reading that for 15 minutes at the beginning of every day. Or, you could buy a One Year Bible from Amazon or a used book store. Or, you could install one of many apps that are available for free for Android and iPhone.
I developed free Android apps that I myself use every day. You can find them here:
Android Apps
https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/
Reading through the Bible every year has helped me see where I was wrong, and what was right. And God still works with me every day through the priceless message of the Bible.
If you aren’t reading your Bible, now is the time to create a new habit that will enrich your life forever. If you truly wish to escape the rebellion, read your Bible.
Writing this has helped clarify a couple points that I hadn’t thought of as so foundational:
Our eschatology directly impacts what we believe about God.
Except for a tiny few – no one understands the Redemption of Israel, or even cares about it.
Our churches sent their pastors to seminary, where they were taught a man-centered faith. They learned ‘scholarship’ and how to be a ‘theologian’. They were immersed in the thoughts of men who promoted false doctrines of the worst kind. So, it’s no wonder that so few understand the Bible. And, it may be that my own peculiar background has given me the ability to see what others seem unable to.
One of these days, I will need to write a book about how I got to be where I am. It’ll probably be called:
Confessions of a Feral Christian
I have stories of mishaps and misadventures that are absolute proof that a boring and unexciting life is a blessing. And yes, curiosity can get you killed. So, stay boring. Really.
But wait. What’s a feral Christian?
You’ve heard of feral cats. They’re the opposite of the domesticated bundles of fur and claw that roam our houses and demand that doors should be open. House cats have learned the rules and regulations of living with humans. Feral cats have not.
Feral Christians?
Well, we didn’t go to seminary, and we were taught by those who rejected the artificial structures that Theologians imposed upon them. And, feral Christians like myself didn’t learn the complicated vocabulary that ‘christian’ scholars like to throw around.
I still remember the moment, quite a few years ago, when a friend said, “So, you’re a Dispensationalist.”
A WHAT?
Dispensationalist?
What was that?
Well, I had to do some research, and what I found seemed pretty good. But, my friend was a bit of a troublemaker, so I knew that there was a catch – which meant extra digging. That’s when I discovered that I was NOT a Dispensationalist. And, it took even longer to find out what category I could hang a hat on:
Historic Premillennialism – (The Spurgeon Kind)
The non-Spurgeon versions of that eschatology make the one mistake that all other bad eschatologies make:
They throw out the Redemption of Israel
And yes, every eschatology – every single one except for the one Spurgeon embraced – throws Israel onto the garbage heap of the Last Days. They either deny Israel’s Redemption outright, or claim that it happens within that tiny window of time called the Great Tribulation. And when I began this study, I was hoping to find someone, anyone who actually took the prophets seriously and knew God’s intention to bring the Children of Jacob back to Himself.
Yes, others claim to understand the prophets, and they make a lot of noise about how this prophet or that confirms their version of eschatology. But they are all, with almost no exception, parroting the words of someone like Augustine, Darby or Gill. The Feral Christian in me doesn’t want to understand why anyone would do that, but I’ve been domesticated enough at this point in my life to see why.
We love our teachers, and it’s really hard to go against what they taught us.
I get it, but it took a very long time to get there. However, that doesn’t change an important fact:
Domesticated Christians aren’t ready for what’s coming.
Those who follow Amillennialism, Postmillennialism, Preterism, Dispensationalism, or even Historic Premillennialism are not ready for what is coming. They have literally no idea that the coming of Gog and Magog will crush what is left of our civilization when it arrives. And if I’m right about what occurs during Revelation 6, we are definitely not ready for the ride of the Red, Black and Pale horses.
Our ‘modern’ civilization is an exceptionally fragile thing. It will not survive the Ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And when God shakes the Earth in Seal Six, what’s left will be crushed. And, I’m truly hoping that Seal Six is the Redemption of Israel, because if it isn’t…
…it’s all very much worse.
Trust me. You do NOT want to see Ezekiel’s Fire occur BEFORE the Four Horsemen ride. You just don’t. But, I’m saying that as if we have a choice. We don’t, and that’s where we’ve gone off the rails.
We thought that we could vote on how the Last Days would play out, and that God would be moved by our opinion.
We’re sheep. God isn’t going to ask us for permission on how the Last Days play out. What He requires is our obedience and submission to His actual words, and we are refusing to do that.
What is it that Samuel said to Saul?
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.”
– 1 Samuel 15:23 (NKJV)
Beware fellow Christian. If you rebel against God, do not expect Him to accept you and say “Well done.” We have been rebels for too long.
It’s time to end the rebellion.
So, let’s conclude this series on bad eschatology with a summary look at the rebellious ideas that have plagued the Body of Christ for far too long.
As I said, this study has been tremendously enlightening because it showed just how toxic bad eschatology is. And, it has reordered my understanding of how we got to this point, a time when so few know what the Bible actually says.
Yes, Augustine and his ‘City of God’. It was a well-crafted lie that made you want to believe it. It seemed so empowering. It gave permission for the ‘citizens of heaven’ to murder all who disagreed with the thunderous rule of the Papacy. It introduced the practice of turning difficult scriptures into something symbolic.
Do you want to know how we can be LGBTQ-affirming and appoint female and homosexual pastors?
Look no further than Augustine. By making the Millennium symbolic, everything in the Bible could be (and was) made symbolic. The Pope could be made infallible. You could sprinkle babies instead of immersing believers. You could burn heretics at the stake and call it mercy. You could worship idols and call them saints. You could call church elders priests and deny them the right to get married. You could ally yourself with Satan and still call it righteousness.
Without Augustine’s Amillennialism, it would have been harder for the Roman Catholic Church to do what it did. But, I’m sure that they would have found a way. Evil always does.
As the first thousand years after Christ ended, Amillennialism was looking a bit tattered. Augustines’ predictions failed miserably, and the Roman Catholic Church was looking a bit bewildered. So, their theologians looked for a way out. But, it wasn’t until an Anglican priest came along that an answer was found to their dilemma.
That ‘priest’ was a guy called Whitby. And he proposed that Amillennialists were all looking in the wrong direction. He claimed that the Millennium would start sometime in the future, after the world was conquered by the Gospel. And, he went on to say that after this thousand year rule by Christianity was finished, we would hand the Kingdom to Jesus.
That’s right, according to Postmillennialism, Jesus Returns AFTER the symbolic Millennium is over.
Unfortunately, this new ‘Amillennialism On Steroids’ has inspired modern Postmillennialists to think of how much faster we would get to their desired goal if we employed more Carrier Strike Groups and Armored Brigades.
Just think of how fast the Gospel could work, if we shot all the bad guys first, right?
There’s a part of me that is sympathetic to the idea of ‘shooting bad guys’, but that is NOT the Way of Christ. Here is how Satan is conquered:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
– Revelation 12:11 (NKJV)
You cannot defeat Satan by killing his minions. That’s not how Christ will have victory. Our job is to share the Gospel and die for our Lord, when the time comes.
A hundred years before Whitby, the Pope was in something of a bind. The Protestants were calling him the Antichrist, and he didn’t like it very much. He had already sent out the Jesuits to defeat the Protestant Reformation, but they weren’t getting much in the way of success.
That’s when Jesuit Cardinal Luis del Alcázar came to the rescue with his book Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi , published in 1614. It launched the Preterist movement. The Pope didn’t like it very much, so it didn’t make it into the Roman Catholic Catechism. But, the Jesuits did peddle their fiction to the Protestants with some success.
Preterism plodded along until Max King, who took Jesuit Preterism and made it worse. Lots of people fell into it, when they realized that Dispensational Premillennialism and the Pretribulation Rapture didn’t make sense. But, instead of seeking for a more Biblical answer, they dove into the worst possible eschatology.
We’re glad that Max is no longer around to cause trouble, but he didn’t shuffle off this mortal coil before launching two new ideas:
I will leave it to you to plumb the depths of King’s heresy, but it’s really, really bad. He took a lie from the pits of Hell (The Roman Catholic Church) and made it even more antichrist than it already was.
Why do we allow such evil to thrive in our midst?
Preterism wasn’t the only eschatology that the Jesuits created. They were also the authors of the Pretribulation Rapture theory. Their first attempt was in the late 1500s, when two Jesuits, Francisco Ribera and Roberto Bellarmino put forward the idea that the Rapture would happen before the Great Tribulation – where all the Good Catholics would go to heaven and leave behind the Bad Catholics.
The Pope didn’t like the idea of ‘bad Catholics’, so he banned their efforts.
Then, along comes Chilean-born Manuel Lacunza, a Jesuit priest who found himself with too much time on his hands, because he’d been defrocked. (Remember that part about the Pope disbanding the Jesuits in 1773?) Lacunza built on the ideas of Ribera and Bellarmino that all the good Christians (i.e., Catholics) would be resurrected BEFORE the Antichrist. However, he said that after this ‘rapture’, the Roman Catholic Church would side with the Antichrist.
The Pope liked it, except for the last bit, so he banned this idea, too.
Undeterred, Lacunza chose to write in Spanish and publish under the name Rabbi Juan Josafat ben-Ezra. The book gained popularity throughout Spain and eventually wound up in the hands of a Scottish Presbyterian, Edward Irving.
Irving was so fascinated by Lacunza’s ideas, that he could talk about nothing else. Eventually, this idea of a pretrib rapture got to John Nelson Darby, who decided that it was the perfect addition to his theory of Dispensationalism. However, Darby’s Dispensational Premillennialism might not have been successful without the steam-powered printing press and a corrupt lawyer – Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.
Scofield did the one thing that no one had ever thought to do – create a Bible that had his commentary inserted alongside the words of God. Some thought it to be a blasphemous idea, but it soon became one of the most popular Bibles of the early 1900s. Scofield made millions and injected the false theories of Dispensationalism and the Pretribulation Rapture into churches and seminaries across the English-speaking world.
It was proof that you could convince people of anything, if you said it often enough and loudly – along with inserting it into your version of the Bible.
Once this Jesuit pretrib theory took up residence in our seminaries, it was all over. Dispensationalism and all its terrible flaws was here to stay.
The least favorite of all eschatologies, is the oldest. It was the belief of all Christians before Augustine – which is why it is called ‘historic’. But after Augustine, you had to keep quiet about what you believed or get burned at the stake. That wasn’t the only reason the Roman Catholic Church would murder you, but Historic Premillennialism was certainly a clear sign that you needed to be killed.
After all, only a heretic would ever deny Amillennialism and believe that the First Resurrection and the Rapture would occur before the Millennium. And, everyone knows that heretics should be burned at the stake to cleanse them of such awful ‘heresy’.
However, the Protestant Reformation allowed persecuted Christians some breathing room, and Historic Premillennialism – originally just called premillennialism – started to gain ground. Unfortunately, John Gill stuck his foot in and muddied the waters with his love of Talmud, Mishna and the Zohar (Kabbalah).
John Gill was the number one reason why Historic Premils lost sight of Israel. He was a Baptist pastor in England during the mid-1700s, who was also a prolific commenter on the Bible and the first to openly refute the Amillennialism of the Protestants. His clear set of arguments for Premillennialism helped make this the eschatology of Baptists everywhere. Unfortunately, he dumped the Redemption of Israel into the tiny window of time called the Great Tribulation.
It was the ultimate face-palm moment for eschatology. It’s as if you were running the Marathon for the Olympics and were about to cross the finish line and win the gold medal, only to make a wrong turn at the last minute. Gill could have laid out an eschatology that was completely Biblical, were it not for his love of Jewish fables and demonic mysticism.
What a tragedy.
Were it not for Spurgeon, we wouldn’t have much of an example of Historic Premillennialists who understood Israel’s place in Eschatology.
All of this bad eschatology exists because of something that happened when Adam ate the fruit offered to him by Eve:
Willful Blindness
It’s literally everywhere you look. There isn’t a single corner of the human condition that isn’t affected by the scourge of willful blindness. We go to war because of it. We use it in politics and education. We preach it from our pulpits. We corrupt everything in our society because we love it so much.
Willful Blindness is the deliberate closing of your eyes to what is true because the consequences of believing it would be too severe. Here’s a statistic that will hopefully drive this point home:
About 85% of any given group of people are engaged in willful blindness.
Eighty. Five. Percent.
That figure comes from a number of studies of companies and institutions. And, I learned quite a bit about that from this TEDx talk by Margaret Heffernan:
Margaret Heffernan: The dangers of “willful blindness”
Eighty five percent of those who follow an error, know that there’s a problem with what they believe. They know that their beliefs just don’t ‘add up’. But, they refuse to acknowledge what they carefully refuse to see – because the price is too high.
To my mind, this is the number one reason why Christians hold on to bad eschatology. The truth is too expensive for them. The cost would destroy their comfortable existence that they’ve built for themselves, so they close their eyes and lie to themselves about what they claim that they cannot see.
As I mentioned at the start, part of the reason why I see the problems of bad eschatology is due to being raised as a Feral Christian. I was never force-fed the foolishness of this or that theologian, and ignoring commentaries gave me plenty of time to read the Bible. So I did.
Also, at the same time that my spiritual life was maturing, I had developed a fascination with Israel. As someone who had been studying the evil of war, the struggle for survival by the Jewish State was deeply compelling. It was the clearest story of Good versus Evil that you could find in our modern era. It was David and Goliath all over again.
Better yet, it was prophecy coming true.
So, when I was offered the chance to go to Jerusalem, to play whatever bit part I could in the Redemption of Israel, I jumped at the chance. And for 15 years, it was a place that I called home.
However, as is the story that so many of you can relate to, God had other plans for me. And, I find myself in another fascinating place that also has a David and Goliath feel to it – Taiwan. China is planning to invade and the lives of millions are at stake. But, I’m not sure that I would have been in the position to write all this, if God had not drawn me to this rather small island.
When you read the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, one thing becomes very, very clear if your mind is not weighed down by the dusty commentaries of men:
The Redemption of Israel is a cornerstone of eschatology.
There is a mountain of prophecy about Israel’s Return to faith in God. In fact, when I wrote my two books, I had to trim back the number of references to the Children of Jacob accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There were just too many to talk about.
Those who throw out the Return of Jacob from their understanding of the Last Days, are also throwing out a huge part of the Bible. In fact, to put it more bluntly:
To discard the Redemption of Israel is to trample upon the words of God.
I know that none of you want to do that, and I shudder to think of what God will say to those who hold such error. They will all answer for the false teaching we promoted, when they stand before God. I fear God greatly and know that I will answer for all the false claims that I have made. And, I’ve had to repent of quite a few false beliefs over the years, and I truly wish that more Christians were willing to do that.
It is time to end our rebellion against God and accept the proper place that the Redemption of Israel has in the Last Days.
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
We’ve done that, and it’s time to stop. The Redemption of Israel plays a key role in how the Last Days play out, and we’ve let fabulists (makers of fables) distract us from this important moment in time.
Jacob WILL Return to God, and not in the way that popular fables like to portray it.