amillennialism today

Hey I think I know something we can agree on.....I think your wrong and you think I'm wrong!

 

Amen, Go2church -- you are so right on!

The sad thing is, if we believed 100% exactly right on all points
one of us would probably be redundant and have to go ???

Stay Go2church, Stay!

 

My understanding is that the premillennial view actually predates Christianity. Chiliasm is the Greek name for the view ("chiliad" means thousand in Greek = "millennium" means thousand in Latin) but the view itself and it's attendant interpretations of the Old Testament and especially "messianic" prophecy, originated with Rabbinic Jewish messianic interpretation that "Judaizers" brought into the church very early on. There is evidence of these doctrines being introduced into Christian congregations in the New Testament itself (those "traditions" of Rabbinic Judaism that Jesus warned against, which are in large part a painfully literal interpretation of the messianic prophecy of the OT). That's why there is evidence of a premil leaning in some of the earliest church writings . . . Papias and Irenaeus for example. These traditional Jewish doctrines of an earthly "messianic" kingdom of the same sort foreseen by premillennialism is the quite natural conclusion one would draw if the Christology of the OT were viewed from a strictly literal interpretation. That's why there is such a kinship between modern premillennialism and ancient Rabbinic Jewish messianism . . . they both have the same "vision" of how the Old Testament messianic prophecies would be fulfilled . . . literally. These doctrines were being taught by some early believers even while the New Testament Scriptures themselves were being written, some being letters in which Paul was refuting many of these errors and expounding a much more spiritual view of Jesus and the Christology of the Old Testament.

In Christ,
Deborah

 

Baptist pastor Benjamin Keach was pilloried in 1664 for writing a primer, The Child's Instructor, that taught a literal millennial kingdom.

From the trial:

"And so shall they reign with Christ on the Earth a thousand Years, &c."
"Judge. This is contrary to the Creed in the Book of Common-Prayer, and is an old Heresy, which was cast out of the Church a thousand Years ago, and was likewise condemned by the Council of Constance about five hundred Years ago, and hath lain dead ever since, till now this Rascal hath revived it."

 

Treed: //I did some research Pilgrimer and found proof
for what you said about the Jewish Rabbinic tradition.
You are right//

I did some research also and found what Jesus says:

Luke 12:1-3 (HCSB = Christian Standard Bible
/Holman, 2003/ )

In these circumstances, a crowd of many thousands
came together, so that they were trampling on one
another. He began to say to His disciples first:
"Be on your guard against the yeast
of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
2 There is nothing covered that won't
be uncovered; nothing hidden that won't
be made known.
3 Therefore whatever you have said
in the dark will be heard in the light,
and what you have whispered in an ear
in private rooms will be proclaimed
on the housetops. "

 

I can't talk to a Pharasee of the time of Jesus.
But there are Pharasees around today --
New York City is full of them

Over here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City

it says:

I know they consider me a lowly goy (or goylim -
i.e. a gentile) but thanks to the safety of the
internet - a Hasidic Jew (i.e. used to be Pharasees)
can talk to a goy Messanic Jesus Phreaque.

In the early 1990s probably I spake with
a rabbinical student on bulletin boards (bbs)
or chat lines. I asked him: how will you know
Messiah when He comes?

When Messiah comes He will:
1. bring peace to Yisrael & Hierusalem
2. restore the dailly sacrifice
3. have the Temple in Hierusalem (on Temple
Mount) rebuilt

The Daily Sacrifice can be made on the
altar while the Holy Place & Holy of Holies
building is being built (Ezekiel latter chapters
tell how to build and use a Temple - a
temple like has yet to be built).

If someone comes and claims to be the
Messiah (Greek: Christ) and can do these things,
then he will be accepted as Messiah.
But what happens if he is the antimessiah
(Antichrist)? He will still be followed.

IMHO the Antichrist will renew the Peace
Treaty that Clinton had Arafat and some
Jewish leader sign - a seven year treaty
for the safety of Jerusalme. That
was signed in 1993 (Oct) and expired
in early November 2000 (many though the
world would end then, but it didn't.
God is going to do things on His schedule
but He has shared it with us, once events
start:

Pretrib pre-mill outline of time forward:

0. church age continues -- you are here
1. rapture/resurrection
2. Tribulation time
3. Second Advent of Jesus event
4. literal MK=millennial kingdom
5. new heaven & new earth

So when the Antichrist gets the Temple built
some 3½-years later [probably at the dedication
of the Temple (where the daily sin sacrifice
has gone on for the 3½-years = 1260 days
(see details in the first part of Revelaltion
chapter 11) ] he goes into the Temple and
declares himself as god.

Millions of Jews who watch this on live T.V.
will see that the stone that the builder rejected
is indeed the real Messiah: Messiah Jesus
Ben Yosheph, Ben David, Ben Yudah,
Ben Abraham, etc.; carpenter of Nazereth.
(these are the ones who will protected by
the very Hand of God during the second half
of the Tribulation Period). When they
declare Him Messiah (and Lord) then
He shall become their Savior as well - just
like us gentiles.

Obviously the Rabbinical teaching of the
Pharasee Sect is a LITERAL (like: fundamental)
Old Testament reading.
I just added it into my literal New Testament
teaching and find it jives very well.

 

>That's why there is such a kinship between modern premillennialism and ancient Rabbinic Jewish messianism . . . they both have the same "vision" of how the Old Testament messianic prophecies would be fulfilled

>Obviously the Rabbinical teaching of the Pharasee Sect is a LITERAL (like: fundamental) Old Testament reading. I just added it into my literal New Testament teaching and find it jives very well.

Point made.

Hello Treed, I realize I'm getting off-topic here but these traditions we're talking about and the false messianic "vision" they resulted in is what blinded so many of the Jews to the truth about Christ. The reason so many Jews did not believe that Jesus is the Christ is because Jesus did not fulfill the OT messianic prophecies in the way these traditional interpretations demanded. But the problem is not that Jesus failed or even postponed fulfilling the messianic prophecies. The problem is that their interpretations were wrong, and they did not understand correctly who the Messiah would be and what he was to accomplish at his coming. Instead they were blinded by a false vision of a glorious earthly messianic kingdom, a vision that was born of their own vain imagination in reading the Word of God . . . "precept upon precept, line upon line" (Isaiah 28:9-13) . . . Therefore, I caution all students to take heed in researching or studying these traditions, they are only helpful in so far as the insight they can provide into the thinking of 1st Century Jewry, but always remember that these messianic interpretations led men not to the truth, but to unbelief and ultimately destruction.

In Christ,
Deborah

 

P.S. to Treed,
Do you understand how these false messianic interpretations led to the destruction of the Jewish state and the end of the Mosaic economy?

 

True. But the Roman army did not just lay waste to Jeruaslem . . . it laid waste to the whole land. The Romans were brutal when suppressing rebellion. They practiced a "scorched earth" policy. Josephus says that before the Roman armies the land had lain ripe and fertile, well watered and nourished, green and verdant, and behind the armies the land was scorched stubble and burned over fields, vast tracts of land empty and across the horizon pillars of smoke rising where once there had been cities and villages. Whole forests had been decimated, the Sea of Gallilee was turned red with blood and the Jordan River became so choked with dead bodies that, for the second time in history, the flow of the Jordan River was stopped. And what led to all this destruction was the zeal of the Zealots who, at best, honestly thought that if they just took a stand for God alone as the rightful ruler of Israel that God would be with them and would deliver them and usher in the golden messianic kingdom, and at worst were those men who came to power in the chaos of the war, those leaders of the Zealots, evil men, men without conscience, men who filled the courts of God's house with the blood of God's people, and trampled upon their bodies fighting one another, terrible men, men whose damnation did not come soon enough that they would do such things in what had once been God's Holy House. This "Great Revolt" (the word "apostasia" used in papyri and dss documents is used generally of political rebels) had to occur first before these wicked men were revealed . . . and were "consumed with the spirit of his mouth, and destroyed with the brightness of his coming."

In Christ,
Deborah

 

Interesting thread:thumbs:

 

Yes, very interesting.

Especially Sister Pilgrimer is putting actual DATA
in her posts including lots of FACTS (and a few
non-facts). This is so rare in most threads that
I felt it worthy of mention.

After awhile everybody gets so bored by
mono-sentence retorts that actual essays such
as those I mentioned reach a local board acme.

(Treed also can write actual paragraphs! Yea!
for Treed).

 

Hello Treed, and Happy New Year! May your year be especially bright and the Lord especially close to you.

>I do understand how false messianic interpretations led to the destruction of the Jewish state and the end of the Mosaic economy . . . They were looking to the Messiah to sit on the throne of David in a literal sense.

Well said . . . although in Rabbinic messianism the messiah himself was not as important as the kingdom which he was supposed to establish; which was basically setting up the nation of Israel as the geo/political rulers of the world with all other nations being subject to them. It wasn't simply that they desired to inherit the land, but that they expected to rule from the land over all the earth and Jerusalem would be the center of the world. So quite naturally, being subjects of Imperial Rome did not fit well with this sort of messianic expectation and when you throw in a few radical messianic movements you start getting false messiah's popping out of the woodwork proclaiming the day of deliverance had come and they were the ones who would lead the people to victory! There were a number of men who rose up in those days and led many people astray, some of them even being mentioned in the New Testament; for example, at one point Paul was accused of being that Egyptian false prophet that had led several thousands out into the wilderness area of the rift valley to gather forces and formulate a plan to attack Jerusalem. The Romans got wind of the operation and found them and cut down every one of them . . . although apparently the Egyptian himself escaped. But these tragic tales are all too familiar to historians, and to the thinking of many 1st century Jews, Jesus was just another in a long line of messiah's who rose and fell in those years. But of course, they were wrong, as time would tell.

But then again . . . it is true indeed that God and Christ do have at their right and left hand 24 elders who are seated on thrones ruling and reigning with Christ, all of whom are Jews, the 12 Patriarchs of the Old Covenant and the 12 Apostles of the New Covenant, washed and redeemed in the blood. But the authority to rule and reign with Christ has not been given these extraordinary 24 men so that they might lord it over the world in some sort of geo/political reign that all men, including the lost, would be obedient to, but rather that they might reign with Christ over all the world by the authority of the word of their testimony which they have left the world . . . the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone in all this earth has the power and authority to convict sin, and to save the sinner, to condemn the guilty, and to redeem the repentant. These elders of heaven, these 24 Jewish men, rule and reign with Christ right now, from Jerusalem, just as God promised, in a kingdom that the natural mind cannot even imagine.

So the Jews were right that Jews would rule . . . but like Christ . . . as servants, not lords.

In Christ,
Deborah

 

"we believe that the Christ who shall sit on the throne of his father David,
and whose feet shall stand upon Mount Olivet, is as much a personal
Christ as the Christ who came to Bethlehem and wept in the manger."
--C. H. Spurgeon, "The Two Advents of Christ"

"Another end of Christ's coming from Heaven, and another Work that he will do when he comes again, is this, viz. He will set up his Davidical kingdom on Earth"
--Hanserd Knollys (a prominent 17th century Baptist), The World That is to Come, 1681, p. 24

 

amen, Jerome -- good quotes!! :thumbs:

 

Hello Jerome, it is very nice to meet you.

>"we believe that the Christ who shall sit on the throne of his father David, and whose feet shall stand upon Mount Olivet, is as much a personal Christ as the Christ who came to Bethlehem and wept in the manger."
--C. H. Spurgeon, "The Two Advents of Christ"

I'm afraid I have to disagree with good brother Spurgeon about how exactly God was supposed to fulfill that promise to David. I tend to think Peter was much closer to the true meaning of that prophecy:

"Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the flesh of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne . . . this Jesus hath God raised up . . . for David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Acts 2:29-37

Peter claims, and I agree, that God fulfilled that promise to David when he raised up Jesus from death and then seated Jesus in His own throne at His own right hand and made Jesus both Messiah and Lord . . . even Lord over the Jews, and Jesus will reign until such time as God has made all Jesus' enemies his footstool . . . exactly as promised to the patriarch David.

>"Another end of Christ's coming from Heaven, and another Work that he will do when he comes again, is this, viz. He will set up his Davidical kingdom on Earth"
--Hanserd Knollys (a prominent 17th century Baptist), The World That is to Come, 1681, p. 24

I also have to disagree with the good brother Knollys, for the "kingdom" I see preached over and over and over in the Gospels and the Epistles is not the kingdom of Israel, but the kingdom of heaven, where Jesus is already seated on his throne, reigning from Jerusalem.

"My kingdom is not of this world." Jesus Christ, John 18:36

In Christ,
Deborah

 

Hello again Treed,

>Seventy weeks was determined upon the Jewish State, and I believe those very weeks have been accomplished. Jerusalem was laid waste by the Roman army fulfilling the prophecy proclaimed by Jesus himself.

Amen. Jesus and Daniel were on the same page. And both Jesus and Daniel were speaking of prophecies that have their well-spring in the Law. The destruction of the Jewish state and the end of the Mosaic economy was the fulfillment of what had been decreed in the Law if Israel ever broke covenant with God . . . and the Old Testament is rather authoritative proof that they did so . . . time and again . . . even at one time in their history going so far as to burn their own children alive in fire-offering to Baal, a sin so abominable that God said it had never even entered his mind that Israel would do such a thing. This sin was so atrocious in God's eyes that he said the day would come when the place where the Jews had committed this abomination (on a low promontory called "Tophet" in the valley of Hinnom; "Tophet" means "beat" and is derived from the priest's use of drums to drown out the screams of the children being burned alive) this place callled Tophet, in fact the whole valley of Hinnom itself, would be filled with their dead bodies that would be left to be food for the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the heavens . . . the "supper of the Great God" (Revelation 19:17-21; see Psalm 2; Ezekiel 39:17-22)

The Roman armies advanced upon and began to lay siege to Jerusalem in the spring of 70 A.D. during the Passover thus trapping many hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims within the city. The previous months had seen a cessation of the war. The Roman Empire had all but collapsed with the rapid succession of emperors rising and being assassinated. General Vespasian, who had been conducting the war against the Jews but suspended operations to see which way the empire would go, was proclaimed emperor himself by the armies in the east who fought with him, a well seasoned army of some of Rome's finest military. Before departing for the Imperial City, Vespasian sent for his own "right hand man," his Son Titus, who was leading the famous 15th Legion in Egypt but were quickly marched to Palestine to take over the operations there, thus fulfilling Daniel's prophecy that "the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary," speaking of the army of Titus who only weeks before the siege of Jerusalem literally became the "Prince" of the Roman Empire when his father became the Emperor, and eventually Titus himself became emperor and thus was the 8th head of the beast of the Revelation which was "of the 7th," the 7th being his father Vespasian.

Resuming the war efforts which had been temporarily suspended, Titus immediately broke camp and marched upon the largest and most secure of the four remaining strongholds of the revolt . . . Jerusalem, which population was swollen with the influx of multitudes of Passover pilgrims who had taken advantage of the lull in hostilities to go to Jerusalem for the feast and suddenly woke up one morning to find the Roman army camped outside the city walls on the slopes of Mt. Scopus overlooking the city itself.

The death toll among the Jews during the 5-month siege of Jeruaslem would probably not have reached such horrible numbers had it not been for the factional fighting among the rival Zealot parties, but in their zeal to wrest control of the city from all other contenders, the Zealots themselves had burnt the stores of grain in the Temple Treasuries that would have fed the populace for many months. As it was, the city quickly ran out of food and it only took a very short time for the spectre of famine to begin to plague the city, adding to the misery of those who were already victimized by the Zealots in the almost maniacal frenzy of fighting and murdering and looting that reigned in the city during these horrible months. And in the end, the majority of those Jews who died during the siege of Jerusalem died from famine rather than combat. Men, women, children, even infants were not spared. So many died in fact, that there wasn't room to bury everyone even if there were enough able-bodied men left who were willing to undertake such a daunting tast. But rather, the beautiful and spacious public buildings were used as charnel houses until they began to fill up and the stench of rotting bodies began to suffocate the living. So they began throwing the bodies of the dead over the city walls into the Hinnom Valley below, filling the entire valley with rotting corpses, unmarked, unmourned, and unburied, food for the beasts and the fowls:

"But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee . . . The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption . . . The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.” excerpts from Deuteronomy 28:15-38

“Thus saith the LORD, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee, And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them. Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury. Thus will I do unto this place, saith the LORD, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet: And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods. Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the LORD had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the LORD's house; and said to all the people, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.” Jeremiah 19

So it was written, so it was done.

In Christ,
Deborah