Key to understanding the Bible, is to begin to see that God had a plan for mankind from the beginning. Our all-knowing God, Yahweh, knew before it happened, that man would sin, and man would ultimately need a way to be cleansed from his sins so that he could be found pure, blameless and holy, to be able to dwell in the presence of our holy, righteous God.
God’s plan, all along, was to create a people who would love, praise and glorify Him, of our own free will. His desire is to dwell with mankind, on the fabulous earth that He created.
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The following article by Anthony Buzzard is from the August 2010 issue of Focus on the Kingdom, and can be viewed here.
A key verse defining the beginning of Jesus has been obscured in the KJV by the addition of the word “again” which is not in the Greek text.
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The Kingdom in the Prophets (Continued)
Jerusalem has been under the control of the Gentiles since the time of Daniel, as illustrated by his visions of the successive Gentile empires. But a time will come when it will be trodden underfoot, and Israel will turn back to God, at which time the Gentile kingdoms will be subdued by God’s Kingdom.
Matthew 23:
38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
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The Kingdom in the Prophets
The promise of land and blessings to Abraham and his descendants was only temporarily fulfilled by the kingdom of Israel. But they did not keep God’s covenant, and so they were divided, the northern kingdom (Israel) being defeated by Assyria and scattered, and the southern kingdom (Judah) being taken captive to Babylon. Yet God had promised to establish David’s throne forever.
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Many mainstream denominations have the following basic belief: “Whenever God gives people a prophesy, that prophesy is guaranteed to come true – exactly as it was stated.” In other words, the belief is that God’s prophesies always come true – regardless of what humans do.
From what I have seen, the above belief appears to stem from the idea of a completely “sovereign” God – i.e., the idea that God is explicitly controlling each and every event that occurs on the earth.
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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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I was going to continue with the next article in the series on my web site, about how the definition of the Kingdom has been changed over the years. But I’ve been doing some reading, especially in the Early Church Fathers, and will be expanding that article. In the meantime, this article is from the Future Events section, and deals with one of the most crucial issues regarding the nature and timing of the Kingdom of god. Thanks to Alex Hall for much of the research in this article.
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Posted in Age to Come, Doctrine, End Times, Holy Spirit, Kingdom of God, Kingdom Texts, Law, New Covenant, Prophecy, The Church, The Gospel on October 12th, 2009 3 Comments »
There is now a schedule for new blog posts, with a different writer each day of the week. From this point on I will be posting once a week, on Mondays. Today I will finish the article I started, and continue with another one next week. (Please note I added another passage of Scripture to Part 1 which I had missed before.)
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