June 8, 2006

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Here is your Greek word for the day. Aside from the Biblical understanding of the number 666, there is an actual superstition that exists with some people.

June 6, 2006

A Prewrath "Testimony" from Iowa...

 We are starting a Prewrath "testimony" feature on the blog. I believe this will be an encouragement to other Prewrathers when they read the story of how others have come to the Biblical position of our Lord's return. I invite others to send in their prewrath "testimony" as well for posting. The following is our first story,

   

     30 years ago this fall, at age 23, my husband and I left our mid-west roots and headed to Texas in quest of a ThM for him, from Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS).  Having been raised in a church  that never taught from the book of Revelation, nor spoke of a ‘rapture’, I was clueless on the subject of eschatology when we arrived.  Also, I was a relatively new believer and knew nothing of the Bereans or of being one. 

     Putting all these pieces together, it wasn’t long before I became totally fascinated with the subject of prophecy and the end times.  Along with the Bible, I started reading Hal Lindsay and John Walvoord and wholeheartedly accepted DTS’s “position” on the subject, having no idea that there even was any other “position”.

     Being a full fledged ‘Pretriber’ with little understanding, I reasoned, “This is a seminary, filled with godly men and women who love God’s Word and have been studying it for years.  They know the truth.  They teach the truth.  Who am I?  What do I know?”  Besides, their stand on the subject was comfortable, safe and popular. 

     Continuing on with my interest and branching out in my reading, I was shocked to find out that not everyone held to the ‘Pretribulational’ view.  Mid-Trib?  Post-Trib?  “What’s up with this?” I wondered.  “Is the Bible vague on this topic?  Is it just too hard to understand?”  “Am I missing something?”  Wanting everything to be black and white in those early days, I became frustrated.  

     So one day I put down all the books, except the Bible.   “Lord”, I said, “You gave me Your Spirit when I became Your child.  You said that He would be my Teacher and Guide.  I’m going to trust You and let You teach me the truth about the end time events.”  With that, I put up a good sized piece of poster board, drew a line through the middle of it representing the 70th week of Daniel, and said to myself, “O.K., Carolin.  What is it that you know for sure?”

     According to Daniel 9:27, the Antichrist gets the final 7 years started by making a “firm covenant with the many”, (1st entry on my poster board).  3 1/2 years  later, he breaks that agreement desecrating the temple and claiming to be god (2nd entry).  

     The next big question for me was about the ‘Day of the Lord’.  What is it exactly?  What happens during that time?  Are Christians involved?  So I started a topical Bible search.  Zephaniah 1:14-18 taught me that “the Day of the Lord” is also known as “the day of the Lord’s wrath”, among other things.  And 1Thessalonians 5:9, 1Thessalonians 1:10, and Romans 5:9 encouraged me that one of the benefits of being a child of God is that He will deliver me “from the wrath to come”.  Just like in the days of Noah and Lot, the righteous were delivered before God’s judgment came.  (Luke 17:26-30)

     For me, finding out when the Day of the Lord begins was going to help answer a lot of questions.  And that’s when I came upon 2Thessalonians 2: 1-12.  Verses 1 and 2 told me that the Day of the Lord included at least two other specific events: “The coming of our Lord”  and  “Our gathering together to Him”.

     Just when I thought it couldn’t get much better, verse 3 showed me that 2 specific events had to take place before the Day of the Lord could happen.  The great apostasy and the revealing of the Antichrist.  Therefore, the Day of the Lord (His coming, our gathering together to Him, and His wrath) will begin sometime after the mid-point of the 70th week of Daniel.

     Now I realize that I’m not a theologian.  But my simple chart and these few passages convinced me that none of the three rapture ‘positions’ that I had read about worked.  My personally found position had no name that I was aware of, but that was all right with me. 

     Some years later my brother and nephew, (knowing I was interested in eschatology), handed me a book that they had read, The Sign.   I hadn’t read any extra-curricular material on the subject for some time.  Starting out somewhat skeptical, I was soon ecstatic to find that Robert Van Kampen had come to the same conclusion I had.  Better yet, he fleshed out my simple understanding and put together a time line that worked with all the random pieces I was still holding on to.  And now it had a name – The Prewrath Rapture!

     I am so appreciative for the Lord’s faithfulness to lead and teach me, for Robert Van Kampen and all his hours of study, The Sign, and the Sign Ministries.  I am also thankful to Dallas Theological Seminary.  I learned a lot during those 4 years about God’s Word – Particularly, who the Bereans were and how to be one!  (Acts 17:10-11)
    
Carolin Logan
West Des Moines, Iowa

June 4, 2006

Responding to Dave Hunt's Pretribulationism (Pt.2)

We continue our response to Dave Hunt’s “critique” of the Prewrath Rapture. After a couple more installments responding to his critique, we will begin to examine his other pretribulational material. We continue,

We have previously given numerous reasons why the church must be raptured at the beginning of the seven-year tribulation period.

“Numerous reasons”? No, they were simply assertions; further, he failed to cite one single Biblical text to support his assertion that the “church must be raptured at the beginning of the 'seven-year tribulation period.'" I would like to challenge Hunt by asking him to provide just one Biblical text that teaches that the rapture will occur before the “seven-year” tribulation period. This is the nature of Tradition... repeat a particular assertion and over-time it becomes assumed, and consequently, a desire to give a Biblical defense is lessened. Surprisingly, it took half way into his article to even mention the Prewrath Rapture position. He says,

Once the dominant belief among evangelicals, the pretrib Rapture is falling increasingly into disfavor. The latest attack upon this belief is found in Marvin Rosenthal's book The Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church: A New Understanding of the Rapture, the Tribulation and the Second Coming. This book's novel ideas cannot be supported by Scripture, and Rosenthal's attempts to do so create numerous contradictions.

i) Hunt suggests here that many pretribers are becoming prewrathers. I must take the occasion here to highlight Tim LaHaye's failed prediction about the Prewrath Rapture. Back in the early nineties in his book No Fear of the Storm he says on page page 113, "I predict it [Prewrath Rapture position] will prove to be an aberrant brainstorm that, despite its deep-pocketed two-year promotional campaign, will fade away before it becomes a fad."

I would council against anyone taking investment advice from LaHaye. Not only did the Prewrath Rapture view not "fade away," but over 15 years later it has become a popular and established view of the Rapture since then---not to mention that it is ironically the pretrib view that has lost popularity over the recent years. Interestingly, LaHaye gets personal by mentioning a "deep-pocketed two-year promotional campaign." This is rather hypocritical of LaHaye being that his own Left Behind series is an omnipresent promotional campaign with no end in site.

ii) Now, let me just stop a moment and say that in mature, responsible, and scholarly critiques of a position it is incumbent upon the person giving the critique to adequately explain the other person’s position so the readers can follow the argument. This entails citing texts and arguments that the other position uses to support their premises. Does Dave Hunt do this? Nope.

iii) He said, “that this position cannot be supported by Scripture.” So, I would expect Dave Hunt to interact with the position and Prewrath literature that he says lacks support. Where are these contradictions and Scriptural proofs? We are not told.

Rosenthal, long a confirmed pretribulationalist, has abandoned that position and "now believes that the Church will have to endure the persecution of the Antichrist." His basic thesis is that the church will "not escape all of the oppression of the 'Tribulation' period," but "will escape the wrath of God, which will be poured out...during the second half of the 'Tribulation' period."

Here is a perfect example in which Dave Hunt has all the facts in front of him to properly represent the Prewrath Rapture, yet he refuses to do so. Hunt fails to explain that the Prewrath Rapture does not believe that the “tribulation period” is all equally “oppression,” whatever that means.

Further, he says that this is the basic thesis. Again, he is in error. No mention that the Prewrath position holds that the Great Tribulation begins at the midpoint and which will continue for some unknown duration of time and then—we do not know the day or hour—it will be cut short with the Coming of Christ, which the righteous will be delivered and the subsequent Day of the Lord's wrath will commence. Now how easy would it have been for Hunt to give that most basic description, let alone a fuller explanation of it? Hunt continues,

Numerous problems immediately arise. Since the Antichrist, according to Rosenthal, must appear first, the church is no longer watching and waiting for Christ but for Antichrist.

According to Rosenthal? No, according to the apostle Paul and our Lord,

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3

Matthew 24:15 "So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel-- let the reader understand—

Both Jesus and Paul exhort us to look for the appearing of the Antichrist as a sign. Not because the Antichrist is our rescuer or deliverer, on the contrary, Antichrist is our persecutor. So it is not either/or for Jesus and Paul, as it is for Hunt. We keep alert for Antichrist so as to evade being deceived; we look for Christ to embrace his victory. These events can occur in any generation of the church, and therefore the revealing of the Antichrist will be a sign that our Lord’s return is ever so near.
 
In light of Hunt' teaching, Paul's words are fitting, "Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction." 2 Thessalonians 2:3 In our next installment responding to Hunt, we hope to see some of this "Scriptural support" that he says is out there, and hopefully some meaningful interaction with the Prewrath position, which we have not seen as of yet.

June 1, 2006

A Taste of Hyper-Preterism

Though you may never meet a hyper-preterist in your lifetime...trust me, they are out there. The following is a brief critique by Phil Johnson of a hyper-preterist site.

The Preterist Archive. Preterism suggests that the Tribulation prophecies of Matthew 24 were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But what you'll find here is not mere preterism; it's hyper-preterism (though the people who run this Web site prefer the term "consistent preterism"). Call it what you will; this view is heresy. It echoes the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who taught that the Second Coming was already past, thus overthrowing the faith of some (2 Tim. 2:17-18). Hyper-preterists teach that all New Testament prophecy is now fulfilled; the Lord has returned; and we now live in the New Heavens and New Earth. Sound bizarre? It is. Modern preterism is largely a reactionary movement against the fanaticism of premillennial end-times extremists. Hyper-preterists react to the end-of-the-world doom-and-gloomers by running to an opposite extreme, but their fanaticism is actually driven by a similar spirit. Here's a rule of thumb: when you encounter someone whose whole view of theology is shaped and driven by any eschatalogical theory (be it pre- post- or a-millennial), so that eschatology becomes their primary concern, you've found a candidate for the "really bad theology" category.