Posted in Age to Come, Church History, difficult texts, Doctrine, Kingdom of God, Kingdom Texts, Parousia, Primitive Christianity, Prophecy, The Church, The Gospel on November 30th, 2009 No Comments »
Since the Reformation, it has been taught more and more among Protestants that Jesus declared the Kingdom to have arrived, but that he taught his disciples the “true” understanding of the Kingdom, namely that of God’s reign in one’s heart. In addition, another common misunderstanding that leads to the belief that the Kingdom must have been redefined is the question of when Jesus expected it to take place. If Jesus had indeed meant a political kingdom that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, he would seem to have been wrong about it being “at hand.” Much is made of Jesus’ supposed belief that his return would be in the lifetime of his disciples, but he told them he did not know when he was going to return (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32).
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In Part 1, we saw that the words for “generation” (Hebrew, dowr; Greek, genea) can have more than one meaning, and one of the meanings is a group of people with like characteristics, especially a group characterized by negative traits, as in “this crooked and perverse generation.” We saw examples in the Old Testament, and we saw that this sense was in fact used more often than the literal sense in the Gospels.
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One of the main reasons that other viewpoints don’t like the idea of a futurist interpretation of prophecy is that certain sections of Scripture appear to have Jesus say that the end would come before that generation passed away. There has been much speculation about whether Jesus was mistaken or misunderstood, since the Kingdom apparently did not come to pass in the lifetime of his disciples. C. S. Lewis wrote in his essay, “The World’s Last Night” (in 1960),
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Posted in Age to Come, Death is Sleep, Doctrine, hell, Obedience to Christ, Parousia, Resurrection, Ron's Articles, Satan, truth on August 1st, 2009 17 Comments »
I love a good sermon on the biblical truth about death and what our future hope SHOULD be. Maybe it is just my Adventist roots showing, but I do so enjoy hearing this kind of message. It really gives purpose to WHY Jesus is coming back and better yet why we should EARNESTLY DESIRE it to happen! I found this looking through some E.W. Bullinger materials. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
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Death No Gateway To Heaven
By: Willard Smith
In the Christian realm today there is unscriptural teaching concerning the death of the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are constantly being told by well-meaning Christians that at death, “We go to be with the Lord.” This phrase is used especially at funerals where preachers misquote or take the Scriptures out of context to reassure the sorrowing that their loved ones are not really dead, but are really enjoying Heaven in God’s presence. This teaching promotes belief in the lie of Satan, rather than what God told Adam and Eve when He placed them in the Garden.In Gen. 2:17 God said,
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die.” In the Hebrew could read “Dying thou shalt die.”
This was a certainty.
In Gen. 3:1, Satan speaks for the first time in the scriptures. He asks Eve (by the Figure Erotesis for emphasis), “Yea, hath God said,” or “Can it be that God hath said…?” In Gen. 3:4, Satan’s second utterance, we read, “And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die’… “ This is a plain contradiction of God’s Word in Gen. 2:17. As one has said long ago, “This has become the foundation of spiritism and traditional belief as to death.”
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In looking through some old study literature, I ran across some articles I had saved from the late Bible scholar E.W. Bullinger. I thought I would post this shorter one here on Kingdomready in the hopes that others might find it interesting as well.
The One Great Subject of the Word
by E.W. Bullinger
The one great subject which runs through the whole Word of God is Christ: the promised seed of the woman in Gen. 3:15.
This verse marks the depth of the ruin into which man had descended in the Fall; and it becomes the foundation of the rest of the Bible.
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Posted in Parousia, Rapture on May 6th, 2009 40 Comments »
The following post was just made by our sister in Christ, Sue Wilding on the Tell Us How We Are Doing Page:
Knowing that you do not believe in the rapture, per say, could you please reconcile the difference between the scriptures talking about Jesus coming like a thief in the night and the scripture of every eye shall see Him (as lightning flashes from the east to the west). It would seem reasonable to me that these are two separate happenings. Also, what would be the point of us meeting Christ in the air only to accompany him to the ground, and where are we supposed to be during the wrath period as the word says that we (believers) are not appointed to wrath. Thankyou.
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