Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts.

God's Remnant: Messianic Judaism

For two years now I have grappled with the idea of the post-tribulational rapture. In that time, my wife Laurie and I have come to realize that we whole-heartedly believe it to be true. As disheartening as it may sound, pre-tribulation rapture dispensationalism is heretical. That doesn't mean those who believe it are not Christians. It just means we've been deceived. Now, interestly, when doing a search for discourses exposing the underlying theology behind post-trib, I realized something...

Messianic Judaism is where the strongest "branch" of God's church will come from during the tribulation. This is because they have not been fooled by dispensationalism. More horrifying is the fact that the "falling away" discussed in scripture will be 2/3 of the evangelical Christian movement in the United States. For this reason, I am bumping up my campaign to gently notify and alert my close friends, Christian brothers and sisters that we need to get serious about understanding scripture's underlying doctrine regarding the tribulation and the rapture of the Church.

This link is a strong and clear argument by a Messianic Jew (I believe) about this topic: http://www.lightofmashiach.org/post_trib_rapture.html.

More on this later!

Social Networking: Pure Evil

It's late... and guess what. I'm up just wasting my time browsing around in the social networking world. What an absolute waste of time. But, since there's sooo much to see, you can't help but waste your time if you want to actually browse. Ugh!

And is all I want to do is add a couple of cool badges to my site for my various profiles. Seeing little icons for various social networking sites seems to give visitors warm fuzzies. Blah! Why do I even bother.

Nonexistence of Atheism

One day, I was walking along in the park and I encountered a young man, just over thirty I think. I decided to stop and talk to him, on no account of my own. "Hello, how are you doing?" I asked.

"Just fine." He said. "Just enjoying the weather."

"It is nice out, isn't it?" I asked, hypothetically. "Do you live around here?"

"Sure. Just up the street, there." He pointed towards a nearby neighborhood.

"Do you go to church?" I asked, swinging the conversation rather differently than he expected.

"Nah.. I don't believe in religion." He quickly stated.

"Religion...?" I asked. "You mean, you're an 'atheist'?" I used my fingers to indicate quotes.

"Yes, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God."

"Can I ask you a question?" Questions were just flying, already.

He paused a moment. "Yeah, go ahead."

"What if I said to you, 'I don't believe in atheists.' What would you say?"

He replied, "I'd say that's insane. I'm standing right in front of you, telling you I'm an atheist."

"Interesting... But do you know how many hairs are on the back of a full-grown male Tibetan yak?"

"No..." He stuttered.

"Do you know the combined weight of the sand on all the beaches in Hawaii?"

"No..."

"So you don't know everything?"

"No, I don't. Nobody knows everything." He seemed smug to admit his ignorance of all things.

"Thomas Edison once said, 'We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything.' That seems quite a statement, doesn't it?" I paused, but continued quickly. "Suppose you know one percent of everything. That's quite a generous hypothetical, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose." He replied.

"Well, in the 99 percent of everything you don't yet know, wouldn't it be possible that there is ample evidence to prove that there is in fact a God?"

"I... suppose." He stammered again, irritated just a little.

"If I were to say, 'There is no gold in China.' What would I need to prove that statement? I'd need to know that there is no gold in the rivers, coasts, mountains, dirt, pawn shops, or fillings of teeth in all of China, right? I'd literally have to know everything." He nodded, and I continued. "But if I were to say, 'There is gold in China.' I'd have a much safer statement. I wouldn't need to know much at all, would I? One ounce of gold produced could prove my statement absolutely correct." He nodded yet again, really bewildered by my reasoning. "So, I say to you sir, 'I don't believe in atheists.'"

He blinked. "I... I don't see how you arrived at that conclusion, from gold in China."

"In order for you to know that God doesn't exist, you'd need to know everything." I continued. "And we've already agreed that one percent of everything is more than you know. So, in fact, since nobody knows everything, no one can know that God doesn't exist, and therefore atheists do not exist."

He began to speak, but I kept on speaking. "In fact, you are only really saying that you don't really know whether God exists or not. They have a word for that: 'agnostic' or 'those who profess ignorance'."

He cringed, and I said, "Yeah.. I know. It's painful, but now you see that my unbelief in atheism is a lot safer than your unbelief in God, simply by logic alone. And here, I see God's creation all around us. It takes only a child's intelligence to know that a painting has a painter or that a building has a builder. The Bible says, 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good."

Adapted from Ray Comfort, The School of Biblical Evangelism.

Daniel's Seventieth Week

Yep, that's right. This is about the end times (eschatology)! Gotta love it!

After about three years of banging my head against a Bible, struggling to understand what in the world is going on in the multitudes of passages referring to end times events, and specifically the "rapture," I've finally hit the jackpot!

During a trip to Omaha for a friend's wedding, my wife and I stumbled on some unmistakable concepts. While reading through some passages in Matthew while completely free of preconceptions, we realized how painfully obvious it is when exactly the rapture occurs.

If you examine Matthew 24 (the teachings of Jesus himself... shocker!), you will notice some very specific language regarding information on the end of the age. Verses 4 - 8 discuss birth pains of the end. Verse 9 begins, "Then you..." Now, Jesus is talking to his disciples. What is it he says will happen regarding his disciples in the end times?

"...will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Matt. 24:9-14, NIV)
Huh... Interesting. "He who stands firm..." What's that? "...will be saved." I'm really freaking out now. What in the world does that mean? Obviously, it ain't yo mammas pre-trib doctrine, that's fo sho!
"So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel ... then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. ... So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." (Matt. 24:15-28, NIV)
So, if lightning, being visible from a great distance, so will be the coming of Jesus Christ. Interestingly, no Christians will deny that this is the second coming of Christ. So what's my point? right?
At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matt 24:30-31, NIV)
Ok, so I'm getting sick of quoting this stuff. Just read the whole chapter. I'll refer to it often from here on out.

Oh, it gets better. Check out the next passage. This is often where it gets confusing. The pericope heading on my bible is "The day and hour unknown." Which, by itself is meaningless, until you read the passage and listen to Jesus' words. "...you do not know on what day your Lord will come." If you do the math, and I have, it would be impossible for us to not know when Jesus was coming (roughly, plus or minus several weeks at the most), if we were to be raptured at the end of the tribulation, instead of the beginning. That's what got me for so long. We shouldn't know at all when Christ is coming, because that would nullify this passage. But, guess what! It doesn't!!! We don't know the day Christ is coming! That's all it says. The day!

At this point, it all starts coming together for me. I examine 1 Thessalonians 4 and continue on into 5, and notice the perfect lining up of events, Paul referring to trumpet blasts and angels, etc. Then, in chapter 5 verse 4, Paul tells us (why us, if we're raptured?) that we will not be surprised, but those who are pacified by the antichrist will be taken by surprise, Jesus coming like a thief in the night (vv. 1-3). Furthermore, his instruction to comfort each other is aimed at the worry of wrath being applied to believers during this time, and that we will not be made to suffer, but will enjoy Christ eternally, just as we were meant to do. This seems to go right back to Jesus mentioning those days being "cut short." It is a seven year period, after all, and won't last forever. That too would be comforting to the Christian striving to live through a horrible time such as the tribulation.

Now, if you need final clinching proof, check out Paul's words in the greek, specifically "meet" or "caught up with" and notice how the connotation is specifically mentioning the type of "meet" where you usher a foreign dignitary back to your city, which you just left to meet him. Zion, anyone? And finally, examining Revelations and Daniel, where again trumpets and angels are mentioned, and see how the entire series of events lines up perfectly through several concurrent passages.

Wow. It's over. I'm done. What more is there? My advice is this: quit sitting around looking up, expecting Jesus to appear "at any moment," and start living out his commands, preparing the world for the wrath to come. When Jesus finally does come, it's not going to be a surprise. We'll have been waiting for seven years, and the "rapture" that we've been taught about all our lives is simply us, going into the clouds to usher a conquering king into his new kingdom, where we will be with him forever, never to leave his side.

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