Recently, it seems like it is all the rage to claim that the Antichrist will be a Muslim, or possess a middle eastern ethnicity. Even John MacArthur has recently jumped on the bandwagon. My concern is that Antichrist birthers who are absolutely confident that the Antichrist will be a Muslim fail to recognize the clarity of Scripture when Jesus and Paul taught that the Church will encounter the Antichrist, particularly those of a pretribulational position.
Many Pretribulationists do not identify the sixth seal cosmic disturbances with the cosmic disturbances associated with the Lord’s Return in Matthew 24.
The most common reason I have heard is that Revelation states that the moon becomes a “blood red” color but in Matthew 24 it states that the moon does “not give its light.” Therefore, according to them, these are two completely separate events.
“the sun became as black as sackcloth made of hair, and the full moon became blood red” (Rev 6:12).
“the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light” (Matt 24:29).
This is a classic case of hyper literalism interpretation. Can you imagine if we applied such wooden principles to the gospels? For example, the story of Jesus calming the storm has Matthew’s account with Jesus saying, O men of little faith; Mark has Have you no faith?; Luke has Where is your faith? According to their logic, Jesus must have calmed the storm three different times. Many more examples could be adduced from the gospel writers having the inspired freedom to use their own expressions and paraphrases.
Writers had the literary freedom to express vivid images about monumental significance. It is naive to pit the parallelism between John and Jesus simply because John adds the element about the diminish light from a red moon and Jesus simply states the fact of a diminished light.
The same can be said about the description of the sun:
Jesus: “the sun will be darkened”
John: “the sun became as black as sackcloth made of hair“
Are we suppose to believe that by necessity Jesus and John are talking about two different events because John augments his imagery? Of course not.
And what about that little important thing called . . . context. Never mind the fact that this celestial sign takes place when Jesus says that the elect are gathered at the Great Tribulation (Matt. 24:21-22, 29-31), and consistently John says the same thing (Rev 7:14). Is that a coincidence? The burden of proof is on them to show that. As for me, I am going with the natural reading.
I am continuing my response to Pastor Bob DeWaay. This next part of his presentation is quite interesting. First, he notes this text:
And I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:14)
He says that this body of believers who have come out of the Great Tribulation is “a church.” Notice the indefinite article. I will come back to that in a moment. At this point in his lecture, he says that he disagrees with his pretrib friends who say that there is not a church during the Tribulation. Indeed, DeWaay does affirm that there is a rapture of the Church before the tribulation, but he also identifies a church in Rev 7:14 who has just come out of a great tribulation. Here is the reason why he thinks “a church” is identified in Revelation 7:14. He asserts:
“[W]hat is the definition of the [word] ‘church’? ‘the called-out ones.'”
This is demonstrably false. The Greek word for “church” is ekklesia, ἐκκλησία, which means “assembly, congregation, gathering, church.” One will not find a credible Greek lexicon listing the meaning of this word as “called-out ones.” One authoritative Greek lexicon even has this to say:
Though some persons have tried to see in the term ἐκκλησία a more or less literal meaning of ‘called-out ones,’ this type of etymologizing is not warranted either by the meaning of ἐκκλησία in NT times or even by its earlier usage. (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. 2d, Accordance electronic ed., version 3.8. New York: United Bible Societies, 1989.)
Moreover, both D.A. Carson and Moises Silva actually use this very term as a paragon for a lexical fallacy. See respectively, Exegetical Fallacies; and Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics.
So these lexical facts undermine DeWaay’s theology of having “a” church in Revelation 7:14, as if there is another church raptured before the Great Tribulation. The Church is seen in Revelation 7:14, not because the word “church” means “called-out ones,” but because the rapture/resurrection occurs between the sixth seal and the seventh seal, consistent with Matthew 24.
He may disagree with pretribulationists with how to label these saints in Revelation 7:14: “tribulation saints” or “a church.” Don’t let that mislead you because DeWaay agrees substantially with pretribulationists that there is a rapture of the Church before the Tribulation. So consequently, DeWaay’s position blunts the warnings of Christ because he still affirms that there will be a rapture before the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation. And this is in direct contradiction to our Lord’s teaching in Matthew 24.
We do know for certain who these warnings apply to in the Bible: the last generation of the present Church—not, as DeWaay would like us to think, a second created church that comes along after the rapture.
His position cannot explain the real warnings that Paul and Jesus make for the Church. And to place them in a “possible other church” context is exegetically unsupported and diminishes the force of Jesus and Paul’s Biblical teaching.
I am continuing my response to Pastor Bob DeWaay. He believes that prophecy (related to Christ’s Second Coming) is not given in chronological order in the Bible for this reason:
“[W]e can see prophecies in the Old Testament about Christ’s Coming that contains both first and second advent material not necessarily in order.”
There you go. That is his reason. Never mind that this is an illogical inference. And never mind bothering to look to see if God’s progressive revelation in the New Testament may have something to say about this. For DeWaay, since God did not reveal in the Old Testament a chronological relationship between the first and second coming, the New Testament therefore does not give a chronology of his Second Coming. He is adducing a logical deductive reason, not an inductive reason from the New Testament.
He does not explain how his premise (God did not reveal specific information in the OT) necessarily infers his conclusion (God did not reveal specific information in the NT).
Not only is this a logically unsound and invalid argument, but I have shown in Parts 3-5 in this series that the New Testament provides a clear chronological framework of Christ’s Second Coming.
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Biblical Calenders, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Danites
This is a session from the 2009 2nd Annual Prewrath Conference in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Charles Cooper explicates Biblical Ancient Calenders such as the Egyptian, Jewish, and Western calenders as it pertains to prophetic chronology. He also expounds on 2 Thessalonians 2, as well as Danites returning to Israel recently!
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