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Simply Silly

Some Things Just Speak For Themselves…

by Alan Kurschner July 7, 2008
written by Alan Kurschner

Amillennialist Jason Robertson of the FIDE-O blog (who I otherwise enjoy reading on other subjects) was asked on his blog if he ever studied Prewrath. His response was this:

[Yes] I studied the Prewrath view and found it seriously lacking biblical continuity. It denies the New Covenant, it denies the kingdom of God, it denies the glory of the exalted enthroned Christ, it denies the Book of Hebrews, it denies the Gospel of John, it denies the Book of Romans, it denies the sermons of Peter in Acts, and it completely interprets Revelation wrongly for it doesn’t even understand that the “wrath” described in Revelation is a covenantal wrath against the covenant breakers of old Israel and was poured out upon it in the first century just as Jesus promised.

For a second there I thought he was going to say that prewrath even denies God’s existence!

July 7, 2008 0 comment
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AmillennialismPostmillennialismPremillennialismRevelation

Premillennial Nuggets – A Plea to Amillennialists to Read Revelation 20:1-6 in Context

by Alan Kurschner July 7, 2008
written by Alan Kurschner

Inevitably, when the discussion of Premill versus Amill is broached, the text “Revelation 20:1-6” is invoked. This is unfortunate because that is not where the passage begins, so the amill proponent (and sadly the premill can do this as well) dives right in the middle of the passage ignoring what precedes it. The immediate passage begins back in Revelation 19:11. In other words the passage under consideration should not be “Revelation 20:1-6” but rather “Revelation 19:11-20:10.” Chapter breaks are not inspired. And in this case, the “Chapter 20” break is bifurcating the whole passage giving the impression that the subject begins at Chapter 20:1. This is one of the causes of confusion regarding the millennial debate.

This passage includes the destiny of the “three enemies of God” — the Beast, False prophet, and then the Dragon, Satan. It is essential to note that the event that precedes this destiny of the enemies of God is the victory of Christ and the armies of heaven over the nations (vv. 11-18) Then the result of this victory of what follows after is the doom and destiny of the three enemies of God.

So here is the outworking of this text: Christ and the armies of heaven have victory over the nations; the result of this is that both the beast and false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire; then, rather than Satan being thrown in the lake of fire along with the beast and false prophet, his doom is delayed one thousand years for the purpose of not deceiving the nations. So for the Amillennialist to place the starting point of the one thousand years at Christ’s first Coming is simply unintelligible and unwarranted to the text.

Speaking of the nations, it should be observed carefully that v. 15 states that the “nations” were struck down, and to assure that the nations do not rise up again, it is said that the purpose of Satan being bound for a thousand years is “to keep him from deceiving the nations.” Do you see the reasoning there? The Amill has it backwards, they claim that Satan is bound before Christ and the armies of heaven strike down the nations. That is an absurd and tortured reading of the text. The nations are struck down by Christ and the armies, and to assure that they do not rise up again during the one thousand years, Satan is bound.

This is clearly all in the context of the result of God’s judgment at his Second Coming. To read or infer that Satan’s binding happens at Christ’s First coming is demonstrably indicative of Tradition and is not handling the context rightly. Further, in this entire passage, the Greek has a set of consecutive “kais” (ands). In other words, there is no indication of an interruption in this text. The destiny of the three enemies of God are to be viewed as a unit, not to be disconnected with lifting the binding of Satan from the text and placing it at Christ’s First Coming.

So the next time you are in a discussion with an Amill and they begin the discussion at Revelation 20:1 challenge them and insist that they back up to where the context begins, which is in verse 19:11 with the victory over the nations and the two previous enemies of God.

Context, Context, Context.

July 7, 2008 0 comment
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Exhortation

Remember our Persecuted Brothers and Sisters

by Alan Kurschner July 3, 2008
written by Alan Kurschner

ISTANBUL, July 3 (Compass Direct News) – After four weeks in police custody, Iranian Christian Mohsen Namvar was released “temporarily” last week to return to his home in Tehran. A doctor summoned to Namvar’s home after his release last Thursday (June 26) administered medicines and serum to treat the badly beaten prisoner. Arrested on May 31 from his home in Tehran, the convert from Islam was kept incommunicado until his release. “They put a great deal of pressure on his body and his mind,” an Iranian Christian told Compass. “No one knows exactly what they did to him during those four weeks.” Noting that government authorities know a great deal about Namvar’s Christian activities and want to punish him, the source said, “We praise the Lord that they have not killed him.” Last week local secret police authorities demanded that Namvar’s family put up just over US$43,000 in bail to secure his release. When relatives requested a receipt for the cash they handed over, police refused. “Don’t say anything,” a police official reportedly ordered them. “Give thanks to God that we are not keeping him under arrest.”
(H.T. J.W.)

July 3, 2008 0 comment
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Apologetics

Responding to Islam’s Objections to the Deity of Jesus

by Alan Kurschner July 2, 2008
written by Alan Kurschner

July 2, 2008 0 comment
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AmillennialismPremillennialism

Premillennial Nuggets – Hebrews 11:10, 16

by Alan Kurschner June 29, 2008
written by Alan Kurschner

These two verses are common proof-texts used by Amillennialists who make the false assumption that the “heavenly” new Jerusalem must be understood as nonearthly. Amillennialism frequently makes this false dichotomy, and you need to be aware of this in order to respond properly and Biblically.
The following is an excerpt from Robert L. Saucy’s book, The Case For Progressive Dispensationalism. pp. 53-57. (By the way, Part 4 of his book is priceless for those who are interested in solid, scholarly arguments for the Premillennial position.)
=================
Finally, in relation to the land promise, there is the teaching of the writer to the Hebrews concerning the hoped for destination of Abraham and the patriarchs. Of Abraham, it is said, “. . . he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb 11:10). Likewise, the patriarchs, as “aliens and strangers on earth, . . . were longing for a better country–a heavenly one” (11:13, 16). The divine construction of the city and the heavenly nature of the country lead many scholars to understand the goal of Abraham and the other patriarchs as heaven rather than any earthly land of the Old Testament promises. For example, F. F. Bruce states,

The truth is, their true homeland was not on earth at all. The better country on which they had set their hearts was the heavenly country. The earthly Canaan and the earthly Jerusalem were but temporary object-lessons pointing to the saint’s everlasting rest, the well-founded city of God [The Epistle to the Hebrews, 305].

There is no question that the writer’s description of their hope involved something more than the land of Canaan of their day. But a simple dichotomy between earthly Jerusalem and Canaan on the one hand and heaven on the other, with the implication that the literal land promise of the Abrahamic hope has been transcended in the New Testament, does not seem justified in light of the total biblical evidence.
In the first place, we should note that the immediate context refers to the literal land of Canaan, where Abraham lived “like a stranger,” as “the promised land” (Heb 11:9). Isaac and Jacob are described as “heirs with him of the same promise,” which can only be a reference to the same “promise land.” These statements surely bear some relation to the many Old Testament promises of the land given to the patriarchs. In addition, the hoped-for destination of “a country of their own” is not contrasted to earthly Canaan, but to “the country they had left,” namely, Mesopotamia. Thus it seems that we should not understand the promised destination as altogether separate from the earthly land promised in the Old Testament.
However, the language clearly portrays a situation beyond the temporal and beyond the transitory nature of the land in which Abraham and his descendants lived. The question is, was this eternal dimension somehow an aspect of the promise? Did the patriarch’s hope included a final, incorruptible heavenly city and country? The answers to these questions are already suggested in the Old Testament pictures of the new Jerusalem and a new earth.
As the “city of God” where he revealed his presence, the historical Jerusalem was already seen as founded by God. Thus the psalmist declared that God “built his sanctuary . . . like the earth that he established forever” (Ps 78:69). God himself “set his foundation [of Zion] on the holy mountain” (Ps 87:1; cf. Isa 14:32). But the prophets looked also to a renewed Jerusalem in the future. After the divine judgment that was to come on Jerusalem because of apostasy, God would return to bring salvation to the city (Isa 49:14f.; 41:27; 46:13; Zep 3:16-17). Into a darkness reminiscent of the first day of creation, God’s light would arise to shine on Zion (Isa 60:1-2).
In the Old Testament the new, eschatological Jerusalem to be created by God’s saving and redeeming action is pictured as an earthly city. But, as Georg Fohrer puts it, these predictions become “the starting point for the later idea of an upper or heavenly Jerusalem.” Of the “many and varied” explanations of the Jerusalem of the last days found in the apocalyptic writings, Eduard Lohse says,

On the one hand Jerusalem at the end of the days is the city of David built again with glory and magnificence. On the other the new Jerusalem is thought of as a pre-existent city which is built by God in heaven and which comes down to earth with the dawn of a new world.

Yet the description of the new Jerusalem as “heavenly” must not be hastily understood as nonearthly. When Jesus and the disciples announced the nearness of the “kingdom of heaven” (cf. Mt 4:17), they were not referring to a nonearthly entity. Rather, they were proclaiming the coming of the reign of God on the earth (cf. Mt 6:10: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth…”). The writer of Hebrews already gave a clue to his meaning of “heaven” in speaking of those “who share in the heavenly calling” (Heb 3:1) and “who have tasted the heavenly gift” (6:4). These phrases describe those who are participating in divine realities that have their origin from God in heaven, but who are locally on earth.
To describe Jerusalem and the country as heavenly is simply to speak of them in their final eternal state, which is the result of God’s salvation. The hope of the patriarchs and the prophets for a restored earthly Jerusalem ultimately merged into a Jerusalem of eternal, heavenly quality created anew by the final salvation of God. The final goal of such as “heavenly” land, however, does not negate the prophecies of a historical restoration of the nation of Israel to the land before that final regenerative action. Admittedly, the specific nature of the final “heavenly” fulfillment and its relation to the historical promised land is not clear. Perhaps the extension of the land promise of the Old Testament in to an inheritance of the earth may be paradigmatic of a general universalization of God’s blessing in the final state.
The blending by the prophets of a future restored Jerusalem and the final eternal city corresponds with their picture of the future of the entire earth and heavens. The hope of the Old Testament was ultimately for an eternal state of things, for the prophets knew that the present “heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment” (Isa 51:6). Consequently, along with their portrayal of the rule of the Messiah over a yet imperfect world (cf. Isa 2:1-4; Zec 14:16ff.), they looked forward to the creation of “new heavens and a new earth” (Isa 65:17; 66:22).
[Footnotes: (44) The belief in a temporary kingdom of the Messiah before the final perfect Age to Come was prevalent in the Jewish apocalyptic writings, cf. D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), 291-97. (45) It is noteworthy that contexts even of the statements concerning the new heavens and earth contain references that can only refer to the yet imperfect state before eternity (cf. Isa 65:20-23). Thus th Old Testament prophetic picture does not draw as clear a line of chronological demarcation between the present history and the final perfect state as appears in Revelation 20-22.]
Even as these references to the final perfected “new heavens” and “new earth” did not cancel out the historical prophecies that were to come before the end, so the references to the final country and Jerusalem in the book of Hebrews do not negate the reality of the historical before their ultimate arrival. The writer to the Hebrews speaks of believers as already having come to the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22), but this does not negate the reality of the present earthly history of the church that is not existentially lived in the new Jerusalem. Similarly, it need not negate the reality of a future period in which the historical earthly promises about Jerusalem and the land are fulfilled in further preparation for the eternal realities.
[Footnote: (46) . . . . As illustration of the Jewish understanding of the relationship between the earthly and the heavenly is seen in the statement by Rabbi Yohanan in the third century. In contrast to Origen, he refused to separate the earthly and heavenly cities: “The Holy One . . . said: I will not enter the Jerusalem which is above until I enter the Jerusalem which is below”. . .]
In this connection it is important to recognize that the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews is not to give us an interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. The book is rather a “word of exhortation” (13:22), which Bruce describes as a “form of sermon or homily.” Using material not from the prophets but primarily from the Psalms, with other materials added to elaborate the argument, the writer’s goal was to establish the superiority of the gospel in contrast to all that went before, particularly the levitical system. The primary evidence of the supremacy of Christianity is presented in its finality. Coming to Christ means final access to God without any barrier.
The writer’s references to heavenly realities must be understood in the context of this teaching of finality. Even as Paul’s teaching of present access to God does not do away with the actual historical situation of the church (cf. Eph 2:18). so our present coming to the heavenly Jerusalem must not be seen to deny the historical reality of prophecy. Abraham’s hope for eternal realities, likewise, does not negate the reality of the history that, according to God’s prophecy, must intervene before the actual attaining of the perfect state.
Thus the land aspect of the Abrahamic promise retains validity in the New Testament. Its link to the nation of Israel and to the coming kingdom indicates that the fulfillment of the land promise awaits the future both in this earth and in the new “heavenly” earth to come. There is no evidence that the promise of the land has been either completely fulfilled historically or reinterpreted to mean a symbol of heaven or the blessing of spiritual life in general.

June 29, 2008 0 comment
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