[Update: Biltz replied to this article. I have responded here.]
Many of you are aware of Mark Biltz’s recent discovery; and if you are not, then you will soon hear about it. From what I can tell, Biltz is pretribulational. I do not know if he has considered the Prewrath position. I have already had folks ask me what I think about his discovery. Right at the outset I want to make it clear that this article is not about parsing out the significance of his discovery vis-à-vis Biblical prophecy.
My purpose in this article it to make some comments and observations of how Pretribulational teachers including Biltz are understanding this discovery and to point out their inconsistencies.
It is true that the four spring feasts of the Lord were fulfilled prophetically during the First Coming of Christ. And Prewrath teaches that the three remaining fall feasts will be fulfilled during Christ’s Second Coming (Rosenthal articulates this well in his book The Feasts of the Lord; Van Kampen’s The Sign has a detailed discussion as well). And the Bible clearly teaches that a particular cluster of cosmic disturbances including the sun and moon will be a sign of the Second Coming. That we can be sure of.
Pastor Mark Biltz went on NASA’s U.S. Government website to see if he could discover any solar eclipse or lunar eclipse that might be significant for Biblical prophecy. He was surprised to discover a rare and uncanny cluster of four lunar eclipses and two solar eclipses around the Jewish Sabbatical Year of 2014/2015. Further, he found that they all landed on important Jewish holy days.
I am not going to delineate the specifics here. But you can read it here and here (It should be a foregone conclusion that we do not endorse the content of these pretrib sites that I am linking to.)
Also, Biltz did a popular interview. This is part one of the interview which is where he discusses the main issues; part two is not as significant. Here is the interview: DSL Video 56K Video Audio DLS Mac
My observations:
First, in the interview, Mark Biltz, Gary Stearman, and J. R. Church indicate that the cosmic disturbances of Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 are describing the same event (Prewrathers do the same). And they indicate that the Second Coming happens in conjunction during these cosmic disturbances (again, so far so good).
But then they assumed that this sixth seal cosmic event found in Revelation 6 happens at the close of the 70th week of Daniel. Here is the problem: what do they do with the trumpet and bowl judgments that follow after the seals? The fifth trumpet judgment itself is five months in duration! (Post-tribbers have this problem as well). Further, in their pretrib scheme they cannot place the cosmic disturbances before the 70th week concludes since they would also have to do that with the Second Coming, which would nullify what is definitional of pretribulationism.
(Many pretribbers try to get around this obvious problem by simply asserting that the sixth seal cosmic disturbance is not describing the same event in Matthew 24:29-30. This is untenable since the parallels and context between these two passages are undoubtedly depicting the same event.)
Here is where the Prewrath position solves this difficulty naturally and Biblically. We cannot assume that the Second Coming/Cosmic Disturbances happen at the completion of the 70th week of Daniel since Jesus himself places this dual event sometime after the midpoint of the 70th week of Daniel at the time when the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation (not the 70th week of Daniel itself) is “cut short” (Matthew 24:22). And thus, after the Great Tribulation is cut short with the Second Coming, the Day of the Lord’s wrath (trumpet and bowl judgments) will follow and unfold for the remaining part of the 70th week.
In short, the godly will be raptured when the Antichrist’s Great Tribulation is cut short, then God will pour out his subsequent Day of the Lord’s wrath upon the ungodly.
Second observation, notice that the theory places the Second Coming in the year 2015 (which is what the whole theory is predicated on); this then would necessitate, as they indicate from their pretrib view, a subtraction of seven years taking us to this fall of 2008 for the rapture, covenant with Israel, and the subsequent seven year “Tribulation Period” to begin.
In other words, this (pretrib) theory in essence is saying that the rapture will take place in the fall of 2008 — i.e., the church has about four months left on earth.
In the interview, Biltz tries not to be dogmatic (he is trying to avoid being a date-setter), but that is the whole point of the interview and the purpose of the theory. Of course, as in most cases of date-setting, even if they are implied, once the date elapses, the individual will “reinterpret” it in some new significance. To be sure, when pretribbers mishandle Scripture such as in this case, it does not invalidate the relationship of these astronomical facts with the Biblical calendar, if there is any import in that relationship.
As an aside, Hal Lindsey was asked about Biltz’s discovery and he said that he has not heard of Biltz’s theory, and called it “pure speculation.” How does one call a theory “pure speculation” when he has not heard of it? We are not told (Not that I am defending Biltz’s schema). Second, who would want to lend credibility to Lindsey’s opinion on this since he has no credibility left after his failed prediction of Christ’s Second Coming in 1988. For those who are not old enough to remember: Hal Lindsey wrote a popular book in the 70’s titled The Late Great Planet Earth. In it he claimed that the Biblical “fig tree” was Israel and a Biblical generation equaled forty years; then he added forty years from the time when Israel became a state in 1948, which would take it to 1988, the supposed year of Christ’s Second Coming. And in the pretrib scheme he disconnected the rapture from the Second Coming by seven years, accordingly, the rapture in 1981.
In short, Hal Lindsey is an unrepentant false prophet who has been showered with royalties since then (false prophets in the Bible were showered with stones).
Reader, understand this: regardless of any significance of these astronomical events and their supposed correspondence to the Biblical calendar, the fact that Jesus is coming soon should spur us to sober holy living. Christ’s Return will materialize — and we must take heed to be found “blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As we look at the world around us and observe the moral madness of humanity, the nations, and their unbridled hatred toward God, it is indeed difficult to think that the Lord will tarry much longer.
Category:
News Items
A Response to Mark Biltz — Second Coming, Blood Moon Eclipses, Solar Eclipses, 5775 Sabbatical Year (2014, 2015)
written by Alan Kurschner
God Is Lifting His Hand of Restraint, and the Result: godless Secularism Running Rapid.
written by Alan Kurschner
Take heed brothers and sisters:
White concludes his poignant article saying,
I pray God will cause me to love His truth, His church, His people, His gospel, more and more, so that my attachments to this world will grow ever weaker and weaker. The only Christians who will remain strong in the coming years will be those who realize the strong antithesis of these simple words: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). The only “leverage” the world has against us is that which we willingly give: our ungodly attachments to this world system. The more we are crucified to the world, the more we live in light of our death in Christ and our life in Him, the less power they will have. This is the secret of the persecuted church, and it is a lesson our brothers and sisters in other lands know well. It is one we must learn, and quickly.
Click here to read the full article.
I have added a new category here on the blog: persecution. We all know that our brothers and sisters are persecuted around the world by repressive regimes, whether they be atheistic/communistic (North Korea, for example), or religious (Islamic, Hindu). But it is no longer any secret at all that secularists want to silence Christians, whether they be of the dogmatic Darwinist sort (Dawkins) or others, such as the homosexual lobby.
We saw just recently that the Council of Europe (part of the EU) put forward document 11375 (17/9/2007 — in European date order, which makes more sense, in this case, than the standard US format) titled “The dangers of creationism in education.” The document can be found here. There is no room for debate, no room for discussion or dispute, as the document begins with its summary, “Creationism in any of its forms, such as ‘intelligent design’, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.” Well there you go! That settles it! Just as Rome attempted to silence criticism of its own misunderstandings centuries ago in Europe, no one seems to have learned a thing during the intervening centuries. While once it was religious bigotry that stifled the very ability of man to speak and debate and argue and disagree, now the secularist bigots have taken control, and they are just as intent upon stifling free speech and the expression of opposing viewpoints as ever their religious ancestors did.
Dogmatically committed to Darwinism with a fervor of faith beyond almost anything known today in European “Christianity,” the Secular Kingdom of Europe has firmly established its credentials as hating God’s law, hating God’s Word, and hating God’s truth. You will love homosexuality, abortion, and everything else that eats at the soul of man, or you will be an outcast, and feel the brunt of the heel of the kingdom’s boot. Of course, secularist Europe cannot withstand the onslaught of Islam, for the secularist is concerned only about himself or herself, and hence simply does not reproduce. So this monument to man’s hatred of God will be washed away in short order by the natural reproduction rates of the immigrant Islamic populations, and the work of persecuting Christians, begun by the secularist regimes, will fall to those with far more experience in that field.
There are so many contradictions and absurdities in the Council of Europe document that it takes one’s breath away. It is a monument to dogmatic secularistic fundamentalism. It does not even show a passing familiarity with the key issues in the debate, but, how could it? Darwinists do not want their theory debated. They want it obeyed. Period.
So today I was pointed to another indication of the incessant bent of the Western Rebel toward hatred of God. Here is another move to shut the mouths of those who would speak God’s Word in the UK. I have documented numerous times on this blog the push to establish “gay super rights.” Homosexuals, constantly suppressing the voice of conscience, want no one adding to that monumental effort by speaking the truth they are working so hard to suppress. So they seek to silence those who would say homosexuality is a life-destroying, culture damaging addiction by force of law. “Hate crimes” legislation is nothing more than a means of giving the government the right to peer into the hearts and minds on the basis of its own prejudice. It is a mechanism to suppress expression of “politically incorrect” views. We watched the old Soviet Union use these kinds of laws for decades as a basis for its brutal suppression of free thought, and now the West is mimicking its vanquished foe. While it will take longer for these laws to come to full effect in the US, the process has already begun. Free speech is now only for those who wish to promote godlessness thereby.
In a wonderful display of irony, I paged down to find one Dan from Sheffield making a comment on the news story. He concluded his comments with, “laws against incitement to hatred already exist for other things, this just extends that legal standard, and should extend equally, to everyone, whatever sky pixie they happen to believe in.” Why shouldn’t Dan’s description of my God as a “sky pixie” fall under the very same prohibitions of “hate speech”? No one can answer that question, since logic and reason are not relevant to those who promote this kind of mindless “political correctness.”
The days of our freedom to speak are numbered in the West, my friends. We must take advantage of them while we can! It will not be long before “counting the cost” will finally have meaning for those of us who have been blessed with unlimited freedom for a very long time.