glorydaz
Well-known member
So, I'm thinking your entire point is really whether Peter taught a gospel that was different than Paul's.
And, if that's your point, then I guess you have a good one.
What gospel exactly did Peter preach?
The Book of Revelation: Mystery Or Profitable?
- Thread starter Arial
- Start date
And, if that's your point, then I guess you have a good one.
What gospel exactly did Peter preach?
glorydaz
Well-known member
My goodness. I'm sure you think you, on the other hand, have proven so many brilliant things that perhaps you should set up your own pulpit.
Feel free, but you don't seem to be very clear in your own beliefs. You say I have been shown very clearly something that you claim is really making for a jumbled mess. It seems that way to you, because you have no concept of the FACT that God worked with different people groups in different time periods. It isn't a jumbled mess. You just don't know how to, yes, I'm going to say it. You don't know how to rightly divide the word of God.
I can barely believe I'm reading that.
Nope, we have lots to contribute. Too bad you don't like it.
Just trying to set you straight, girlfriend.
If it is your intention not to discuss dispensationalism then why do you keep posting things that are clearly intended to spark debate about exactly that?
Let's take what YOU said in YOUR thread point by point...
"Revelation has been utterly forgotten..."
This is just completely and utterly false! Revelations is one of most dispensationalist's favorite books to study! You can't sling a dead cat in a Christian book store without hitting a book about end's times prophecy that is not only written by a dispensationalist but is filled to the brim and running over with references to the book of Revelation.
"...over a foolish assertion..."
Ah, the ad hominem! Here is where those of us who have been doing this for decades know that you have no real answers for the arguments that dispensationalists make and, in fact, reject it not on the basis of scripture and sound reason but because you simply don't like it. It's an emotional issue for you that has nothing to do with how much sense it makes. Next time call it a "doctrine of demon's"! That really gets people's hearts pumping!
"...that has flimsy support in scripture..."
Another complete falsehood. So much so this time that I suspect you knew this was false when you said it. I saw a survey done by the National Association of Evangelicals that showed 82% of those surveyed were one flavor or another of dispensationalist. Fully 65% were premillennialists (i.e. the view that Christ’s second coming will occur prior to His millennial kingdom, and that the millennial kingdom is a literal 1000-year reign of Christ on earth). That is no accident! The biblical support is literally overwhelming. It is, however, a paradigm level issue. Those who aren't willing to explore outside Covenant Theology not only don't see it, they cannot see it. It is a form of paradigm blindness.
"...and no logical support according to the scriptures that teach that all are one in Christ, that salvation and entry into the kingdom of God, comes at conversion through faith."
Funny how there doesn't exist one single solitary dispensationalist that would deny that all are one in Christ and that salvation and entry into the kingdom of God, comes at conversion through faith. No, not one! But not even you believe that this was always the case, and what you cannot deny is that Paul is the only biblical author to teach such a thing.
If you want to read a book that presents the most biblically thorough and logically compelling argument for any doctrinal system that is possible to write, I invite you to read The Plot by Bob Enyart. You wouldn't even have to read the whole thing. Just the first four chapters of this book provides more rationally sound biblical analysis than most Christians have ever read their entire life combined. In fact, it is so well done that I dare say that there is no more eloquent argument that can be made for a doctrinal system. If it doesn't cause the light bulb moment to happen for you, nothing ever will.
"There is no support for separating the kingdom of God and the church as involving different dispensations."
This was simply a lie. Whether you agree with it or not, there has been a pretty fair amount of biblical support given in this very thread! I love it when people who disagree with me so overstate their case that they end up undermining themselves more than doing any harm to my positions.
"Of by grace through faith for Gentiles and another method of salvation for the Jew in a different dispensation of salvation through faith plus works."
If a Jew in Egypt had failed to kill a spotless lamb and smear its blood on their door posts, they would not have survived to participate in the Exodus! Does that sound like grace or works to you?
Did Moses come down the mountain with two tablets of grace or commandments?
When Moses struck the rock the second time and as a result wasn't allowed to enter the Promised Land, was that grace?
God was on His way to kill Moses because he had failed to circumcise his son! Even the Jews understood that circumcision was a work of the flesh (i.e. NOT GRACE).
Israel's entire system is run straight through with works! Do this, don't do that. But there isn't any who are perfect or even close to perfect really and so that whole system was under-girded by grace to be sure because God didn't have to provide any means of salvation whatsoever. The fact that He did so at all is grace unimaginable! Thus, it very simply cannot be rationally denied that, for the Jew, under law, salvation came by grace through faith plus works.
"That the believing Jew who has already been redeemed, now, in addition, will have to go back and repeat to perfection the keeping of the Law that Jesus already did for him, sacrificing bulls and rams and goats, even while the Lamb that was Slain, rules and reigns over them."
Well, once again, there isn't even one single dispensationalists that teaches or even believes this nonsense! Why do you rail so vehemently against a doctrinal system you know next to nothing about? If this ridiculous comment wasn't an outright lie and you actually believe that this is what dispensationalism teaches then it is you who have been lied to. Whoever it is that told you this is a flat out liar. This is so far away from what any dispensationalists believes or teaches that it can't be anything but an intentional fabrication.
Clete
and I have witnessed 17 years of it. Why can't you just let her present her views?
Arial
Active member
I see you are no more able to understand context in ordinary forum posts and understand why something is being said and what that something is, than you are in reading the Bible. Need my help? I said what I said because of what is being done with a thread that was intended to be about the book of Revelation. A certain sect, so enraged and emotional and intent of everyone knowing they know more than anyone who disagrees with them, they hijacked the thread in order to express their blown up egos. (Which they do by belittling those who won't agree with them.)
Well they should spend more time studying the rest of the Bible, instead of obsessing over things that they only have opinions on and consider that if they believe something that is proof that what they believe is the rigid truth. To heck with the actual message, and comfort and love of Jesus towards His people. (He also tells us to love one another. Oh wait, maybe that was a point Paul told the Gentiles and applies to them. No wait again. Peter, James and John also said the same thing, so I guess that is for the Jews also.) And as an aside, you would never find me slinging dead cats, and you will never find me in a Christian book store. The fact that something is trending and the move of God for today, or a eye catching and itchy ears scratching topic, has little to do with truth. It mostly about making money by selling books. And that statement to support what you are trying to say, "filled to the brim and running over with references to the book of Revelation", is a support statement that is about as empty as anything could be.
See your quote below.
It only makes sense if you compartmentalize the Bible.
Arial
Active member
I see the determining factor for you as to what is true or not true, who you will follow, what you will believe, is the numbers. The largest number who believe a things means that is the right thing. Never mind God's deep attachment to remnants, or that more sheep blindly follow the crowd than those who follow Jesus. One of the main reasons all the boxes you present above fall into the same category is because that is pretty much all that is taught, all people hear, and always presented without any other view being presented or examined, as though it were an absolute. A great many of those people would not have even heard the word dispensationalism or covenant theology, they just follow along, believe what they hear, and could care less anyway. It has a lot to do really with all those books in the Christian book store.
Well I am impressed. You know the thoughts and beliefs of every single solitary dispensationalist! But, let's suppose what you say is true------Then why do you feel the need to fight about it tooth and nail? Why is it you have this need to make everything about what you believe, and kick people in the teeth for not believing what you do? Not even give them room to have their own beliefs or speak about them, without you coming in to rip everything they say to shreds, by changing the subject, as thought just because you say something, that makes it so. Or that if you believe something that equals truth automatically, and everyone who doesn't get into that box with you is an idiot, knows nothing, doesn't think, can't read, is stupid.
There you go again. There is a new thread titled something on the lines of : Paul, Peter, James and John and the Two Gospels" This, and all future post on that subject belongs in that thread. This one is titled "Revelation: Mystery or Profitable".
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Interesting.
Interesting that you say that there are four main views of Revelation as a book, and that this thread is devoted to the dicussion of those views, but that here the one Revelation passage that is overtly, expressly mysterious (cf. the thread's title) there is only one possible interpretation that isn't unreasonable to you.
Interesting also that you invoke the earliest Church to support this notion.
What if it's Nero.
What if '666' doesn't refer to an 'office' that persists, and is 'held' by different men as history unfolds, but that 666 persecutes the Church uniquely.
He killed both Peter and Paul. I know we read about how Peter, James and John are the 'big three' Apostles in early Acts, but really it was Peter, Paul and John by the 50s and 60s. Nero 'took out' two of the Church's three strongest pillars in like a year.
666 appears as I'm sure you know in like three other books of the Bible, once it applies to a number of men, and twice it refers to King Jedidiah's gold. What are we to conclude from this coincidence? Given that Revelation is written in fairly comprehensive knowledge of the other books of the Old Testament, it wouldn't make sense that it was written in ignorance of the other appearances of the number 666, so what are we to do with this coincidence? Which of the four schools of interpretative thought deal with this matter best?
If the bride of the Lamb is the Church you say that's consistent with each of the four interpretations you've set out. What if 666 is only Nero and nobody else? Then is this also consistent with all four views? Or does it, in your categories, limit it to less than all four as possibilities?
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Nobody can ever do that again, that was the point of 666 maybe just being a single historical individual, in case anybody missed that.
Nero was the Roman emperor, and Peter and Paul were right in his backyard cultivating the Church that is in Rome. Paul wrote a famous epistle to this Church community called Romans, and we know from early Acts that Romans were among those present when Peter converted those first five thousand to Christ. Paul we know from Acts traveled to Rome, but we have to rely upon historical witnesses and 'Babylon' being a 'code word' to confirm that Peter also went to Rome. But if they were both there, and the historical accounts of the circumstances of their executions are reliable, then Nero being 666 isn't an unreasonable possibility.
What Nero did to the Church on the earth is not repeatable.
Does this view make what you're calling 'preterism' the only option?
Because truth matters.
Truth matters. If what you believe is based on falsehoods, it will affect the way you think.
We don't.
No one said you couldn't have your own beliefs or speak about them.
That's what this entire forum is for.
The problem is that YOU are the one who doesn't want to discuss either the consequences of your own beliefs, nor do you seem to want to acknowledge that there might be something better to believe than your own beliefs.
If your beliefs are getting torn to shreds, are they really worth keeping?
No one has changed the subject.
How ironic.
Neither I nor Clete have ever said that something is true just because we believe it.
If someone isn't getting into the box of acknowledging what is true, after being shown that that something is true, and refuses to even consider getting into that box, then they are, in fact, an idiot who cannot think, someone stupid.
No is preventing her from doing so, least of all me!
Why can't you (and she) just let me present my views?
Peter preached the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every post have been in direct response to your own words, Arial.
Saying it doesn't make it so. No one is angry other than you. We are simply pointing out errors in the ideas you say you want to discuss. It seems you only want to discuss it with people who agree with it.
You're only arguing here against yourself and demonstrating a near complete ignorance of what dispensationalism teaches, not to mention why it teaches it. None of this nonsensical objection touches me or a syllable of what I believe!
Great!
Who is it that ignores context and normal use of language again?
That wasn't the point and I think you know it. The point is that it's a pretty long stretch for you to claim that "Revelation has been utterly forgotten...".
That is an entirely baseless claim by any metric.
Unless my point, which you have now tacitly acknowledged as true, was to point out that "Revelation has been utterly forgotten..." is a stupid thing to even think, never mind actually state in public.
"Rightly divide" is the term you're look for.
Clete
Arial
Active member
My goodness. I'm sure you think you, on the other hand, have proven so many brilliant things that perhaps you should set up your own pulpit.
Feel free, but you don't seem to be very clear in your own beliefs. You say I have been shown very clearly something that you claim is really making for a jumbled mess. It seems that way to you, because you have no concept of the FACT that God worked with different people groups in different time periods. It isn't a jumbled mess. You just don't know how to, yes, I'm going to say it. You don't know how to rightly divide the word of God.
I can barely believe I'm reading that.
Nope, we have lots to contribute. Too bad you don't like it.
Just trying to set you straight, girlfriend.
Arial
Active member
Maybe in your head. You seem stuck.
That is funny, that you think I am angry, therefore I am. I rest my case.
What I have learned from your branch of dispensationalism I learned from the things you and also Glorydaz, have said. And I know what I say touches neither one of you. Nothing in opposition to your beliefs does. It is called refusing to listen because you refuse to entertain the thought that you don't already know everything, that you could be mistaken, that there are different ways of seeing scriptures that have legitimacy and therefore extending grace to your brothers and sisters in Christ, rather than simply throwing rubbish all over them. It is called refusing to learn, thinking you have nothing else to learn. Stagnation in other words.
You can really say that when you go back and read how the thread turned to a stuck conversation about two gospels, one for the Jews and another for the Gentiles? As though there had been nothing even posted about one particular interpretive view of Revelation. No discussion on what was presented there at all. I doubt it was even read by them or you. People need to learn what a discussion is and either participate in that discussion or put it in an appropriate thread. Last I heard that was actually the purpose of starting a thread on a particular subject, and is why I started the one I did. I didn't start it so it could be filled up with people fighting or debating or arguing over whatever other subject they chose. And last I checked there were also rules against derailing a thread. Even here, and as long as I engage with you----which this is about it----the conversation has zero to do with anything.
in your head maybe.
Only in your head. Have you even bothered to read what was posted about Revelation besides the OP and maybe the next one after that? You certainly haven't made any comment on any of it. Just this one thing you got stuck on and changed the subject with and insist is commenting on Revelation, and now have reduced even farther by making it nothing but a personal tit for tat.
No Clete. Stop telling me what you cannot know about me and using it as a support for your position. I used the word compartmentalize because that is exactly, precisely the word I meant to use.
End of this type of discussion in this thread. Either get on board and stop this nonsense or I will have you removed from this thread if possible. If not you will be on ignore.
That's the stupidest accusation that I think anyone has ever leveled at me!
If you want to be isolated? Just decide to become an Mid-Acts Dispensational Open Theist.
If you slung 10,000 cats in all the Christian book stores that exist in your whole city, you'd never once get within ten miles of hitting a book written by such a person. I have to travel 850 miles to get to the nearest congregation of like minded Christians.
If there's a remnant, we're it!
Now this I agree with!
People are sheep! They believe what they've been taught and the closest they can come to defending a syllable of it is to quote their pastor or perhaps an isolated sentence in the gospels.
Those of us here on TOL do not have any such mindset or at least that's the way things used to be here and I can 100% guarantee you that there is not one single person, and I mean not even one single person, who accepts my doctrine mindlessly. It just doesn't happen.
It isn't necessary to know their thoughts to know the idiotic stupidity that you attempt to pass off as dispensationalism is a load of made up nonsense that dispensationalists do not teach.
It isn't tooth and nail! You said something on a debate forum that I disagreed with and so I explained why I believe it is wrong. That's the whole idea of being here!
I am not kicking anyone in the teeth! You are the one that responded with anger, not me. Go back and look! I wasn't insulting you. I wasn't being hostile in any manner other than to clearly and rationally refute the ideas you've expressed. You came at me with hostility and insults!
As I've repeatedly told you already, this is not your personal blog site, Arial. I responded to what you said in your opening post. I responded to a point that seemed to me to be foundational to the whole concept your were putting forth. In effect, I saw what seemed to me a place where you took a wrong turn and centered my comments on that issue.
And I've never suggested to anyone that something is true because I say it. Quite the contrary! It isn't practical, or even possible, to establish every single point that is made every time you make it. You have to proceed as though people are able to follow your reasoning to at least some degree. But if that assumption proves false and there is a point I make that you question the veracity of then all that is required is for you to ask me to establish it and then you will find that, unlike most people on this website, I am not only able but quite willing and even eager to do so.
No, Arial, I do not think anyone is an idiot or stupid because they disagree with me. I believe people are stupid because they say demonstrably stupid things. I believe people are liars when they say things that they have no basis to believe are the truth. I believe people are evil when they do or say evil things. Etc.
Some of the longest winded discussions is TOL history have been between me and people who strongly disagree with me. I'm as patient as Moses with people who respond with substance and reason but I do not suffer fools well. People who waste my time with mindless repetition of the same exact points that have already been responded to (which describes much of this post of yours by the way) get under my skin rather quickly and for good reason. Discussion is a two way street and people that waste my time with lunacy or mindlessness don't get treated with kit gloves.
This thread is about a subject that is flawed from its foundations because it fails to rightly divide the word of truth. If you wish to ignore that issue then do so but just as saying something doesn't make it so, ignoring an argument doesn't count as a refutation.
Clete
The whole thread is still here for the whole world to read, Arial!
Right back at ya!
Hypocrite!
This was an INTENTIONAL LIE!!!
Right back at ya!
Hypocrite!
It's all right here for us to read, Arial! I quote YOUR OWN WORDS and then respond directly to them.
I am not the only one on TOL, Arial. My posting here does not prevent you or anyone else from having whatever conversation they want have completely independent of a word I've said.
That's not my fault! You're the one that got emotional and shut down.
I read every word of the opening post. As I said a moment ago. It was at what seemed to me to be a foundational assumption that I focused my comments on.
If dispensationalism is true then you thesis is false, is it not? In what world does that make dispensationalism irrelevant to the issue?
I've derailed nothing. I responded directly to your own words, Arial. YOU OWN WORDS!!!
If I had tried to bring up a discussion about flat earth theory or whether or not the Nephalim were real or what sort of stone the ten commandments were written on or what bread of dog is best for police work any one of a trillion other possible topics that have nothing to do with what you said then you'd have a point. But that isn't what happened.
Except that I just made an actual argument in support of what I said, so...
"Revelation has been utterly forgotten..." is not a true statement because you showed up here to tell us all.
Even if it were even partially true it most certainly isn't because of dispensationalism! There are dispensationalists that are all but obsessed with anything and everything concerning end times prophesy. They've built whole ministries and careers around that exact subject! Do you remember a book called "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey? It was the number one selling book of the entire 1970s! Just about the only thing the authors of that book got right, by the way, was that Israel and the Body of Christ are not the same thing (that's an over statement but the point is that I don't endorse the book). The point being that for at least the last 40+ years, Revelation has been anything but "utterly forgotten" and you have dispensationalists to thank for it.
The reason you use the term is because you think it has a negative connotation to it and thus you are making a rhetorical argument which is refuted by simply stating the proper, biblical, phrase which is "rightly divide". The operative words there being "rightly" AND "divide". Meaning that dispensationalist absolutely do divide the word of God and proudly so but not by spurious or arbitrary means.
I will respond to whatever post I desire to respond to in the manner that I have become accustomed to responding. That way being to directly quote what has been said and then to respond directly to what was said.
Clete
Arial
Active member
You assume that what you believe is truth and anything that disagrees with what you believe is not truth. Pretty arrogant.
First of all I never said I believed what I have posted about the idealist/amillennialist approach to Revelation was true, or that I agreed with all of it. And I would bet my last dollar you haven't even read any of it. You certainly haven't commented on any of it. So where do you get the idea that you are authorized to make such blanket and arrogant, full of pride, statements that my beliefs are false, and that not only that, you and Clete of all people, have proven them to be wrong. You have done no such thing. First of all, you don't even know what they are as you have read none of what was presented. Second, if you had proven it to me, then I would accept the proof. All you have offered is your belief and your interpretation of a couple of scriptures. And those scriptures can have legitimate, not contrived, other ways of interpretation. Neither interpretation interferes or cancels out the gospel of salvation so where do you get off announcing that my interpretation is false and therefore affects the way I think. You don't know how I think (more arrogance) and you have no business worrying about how I think. Worry about how you think.
You do. You simply won't acknowledge that or face your own behavior. It is far better to point out the perceived log in another's eye. Scary to take an long hard honest look at ourselves. But unfortunately that that leads to a stagnating of growth in sanctification.
The consequences of my own beliefs? According to who? Oh right, you. Well that is meaningless. And you know a scant almost nothing about my beliefs or how I arrive at them, and yet you have that arrogance to set yourself up as the judge over them. And you have only stated that my beliefs have consequences but you have never actually discussed what those consequences are, so your statement is mute. And I don't want to believe something that I deem "better" or that you pronounce as "better" (arrogance and pride again). I want to search out and find truth---God's truth---and submit to it whether I like it or not. Ever tried that approach? I have been changing my beliefs on some things steadily for the last forty years, and will continue to do so til the end. It is called growing in the knowledge of God. That is why I look at many possibilities, and pardon me for thinking that as Christians we all did that, and offering up something to contemplate.
Is that how you reason things out? Look who they are being torn to shreds by. People who consider their opinions the gospel truth, and all else false and are intent on devouring any brethren who dare to not agree with them. That is all you have been doing in all your posts to me since I dared to disagree with you way back in a different thread. You have married yourself to one view point, you are going to remain faithful to that view point and pity the man or woman who says anything against this belief you are wedded to that might just tear it asunder. In fact you won't even read what they have to say, not giving place to any possibility of that ever happening. And you can hold to your beliefs. It makes no difference to me, as it is a belief that does not affect salvation. I simply present my case, and you refuse to even hear it, yet you pass judgment.
Well I can say for sure that is not true. You don't even read anything pertaining to the subject, so how could you respond to the subject?
Then you are the only two people in the whole world who does not do that. Congratulations!
You haven't shown me anything that I find to be true. And I am not getting into any box. Enjoy the one you live in.
Also get back to the topic or keep your opinions to yourself. It is disruptive. After I get finished with this nonsense and take a break, I will continue on with the subject "Revelation: Mystery of Profitable?" You are free to read what I post and comment on it, but I expect you to actually support what you say, from your viewpoint, rather than just pronounce the viewpoint I offer as false.
False.
My beliefs have no bearing on what is true. I simply believe what it is that has been shown, through rational discourse, to be true.
I am completely open to changing what I believe, so long as it can be shown to be a more valid position than what I currently hold to.
So far, you have done nothing, said nothing, that is worth me changing what I believe.
I (and Clete) have presented arguments against what you have presented, because we see problems in what you presented. In what way is that arrogant?
Good for you.
Nor do I have to comment on everything you say in order to point out the flaws in something else that you post.
Authorized?
You're on a discussion board.
I (and Clete) have presented arguments against what you have presented, that shows what you have presented to be false.
Bearing false witness is a sin, Arial. Stop it.
So far, the only people in this thread (and the thread bears witness to the following) who have even attempted to make rational arguments against what you have said is myself and Clete and a few others. You have not done so against what we have said.
If you think we're the ones who are wrong, then all you have to do is make the argument.
Because you say so?
Again, as Clete said, the thread is still here for anyone to read.
No you wouldn't.
Nope.
What I have presented is a rational argument against what you said. So far, you've refused to engage it.
Because you say so?
Because you say so?
By presenting the argument that shows it to be false. Which I and Clete have done.
Do you agree or disagree, if someone believes something that is false, and refuses to acknowledge that it is false, especially after someone shows them that it is false, that continuing to believe it will affect the way he thinks?
If not, why?
If you believe something false, would it not be loving to point out to you that you're believing something that's false?
Or would it be more loving to let you continue in your ignorance, however willful?
No, we don't.
Hypocrite.
I think you've got the analogy backwards...
I have no idea what you're talking about at this point.
Yes, all beliefs/ideas have consequences.
Have you considered the consequences to your own beliefs?
I know only what you have posted on TOL.
So far, I'm not impressed.
I didn't give myself the username "JudgeRightly" for nothing...
1 Corinthians 6:2-5
2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3 Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life? 4 If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge? 5 I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren?
John 7:24
24 Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”
Reread what I said more carefully.
I said that you aren't considering the consequences of what you believe.
The statement was made on the basis that ideas/beliefs have consequences, and that you're ignoring the consequences of what you believe in.
And yes, I have pointed out at least one consequence of believing scripture says something a certain way over another.
I told you that believing that the Body of Christ has replaced Israel, for example, leads to Replacement Theology.
Neither do I.
I simply want to (and want you) to seek the truth, because the Truth will set you free.
So far, you have shown no interest in the truth, only in "presenting a particular interpretation of scripture" without considering what that particular interpretation leads to.
You sound like @God's Truth when you say that. You aren't one of her sock accounts, are you?
So far, you haven't shown that.
So far, you've shown that you reject what you don't like, especially if it conflicts with what you're posting.
I have. It's partly why I'm a Mid-Acts Dispensationalist and Open Theist.
Though, that's mostly because someone presented rational argumentation for those things, and I have yet to find anything that can unseat those things from being rational.
Again, if your beliefs are being torn to shreds by rational argumentation, then maybe they're not worth holding onto.
I didn't say that they were guaranteed to be false, as it could be that you're just not equipped to make a rational argument against them (which is why 1 Peter 3:15 is so important).
Who makes the argument has nothing to do with it.
Truth matters. Not who makes the truth claim.
Both I and Clete have stated that we would be more than happy to be shown to be wrong.
You simply haven't done so, and have instead doubled down in your beliefs.
Trying to get you to make the argument isn't "devouring any brethren who dare to not agree with [us]" at all, nor does it make us right by default, nor does it make you wrong by default.
What makes you wrong is the fact that your position isn't consistent with reality.
False.
Again, you are more than welcome to try to convince me to believe something else.
But you won't.
If you think you can say anything against my belief that could "tear it asunder," then I'm all ears!
But you won't. Because, as you say:
I have responded directly to what you have said, every time I have responded to your posts. How is that "refus[ing] to hear it"?
I pass judgement because what you have said is full of holes that you are intentionally ignoring.
Because you say so?
How do you know? Maybe I just didn't feel like there was anything worth responding to?
Why do I have to respond to everything you write?
Isn't that YOU being arrogant, to think that you're so important that you deserve for someone to have to respond to everything you say?
HYPOCRITE!
Your subjective opinion has no bearing on what IS true.
Just because you don't "find something to be true" doesn't mean that it isn't true.
We've never left the topic.
We have. You've rejected it out of hand.
Arial
Active member
I did not say that it is a discussion of all four views. I mentioned them to clarify the very base interpretive approaches. I am presenting for discussion the idealist/amillennialist approach. And as I have said, I am not presenting it as the only reasonable interpretation, but only presenting what it is. I have also said there is most likely strengths and weaknesses if all the views. And yes, there are still mysteries (truths that are not revealed or fully revealed) in Revelation.
Invoke is not what I am doing. Revelation was written during the time of the first century church, whose beginnings we see in Acts and the writings of the apostles. That is why I said what I did. Somethings that are utterly mysterious to us, were not so mysterious to them, because they were familiar with the type of writing (genre) and the language and symbolism used it the book, whereas we have to search it out---as you say primarily in the OT where that same genre and the same symbolism is used.
666 the Beast, does persecute the church, in particular, because he is going after God's people and ultimately the reign of God over creation. I would not say uniquely, if that word is used as a one and only, because the influence and working of the Beast (who does the will of the dragon) is felt throughout all the earth. And he works through men. Therefore the final battle, which will be against the church, and in the form of political power (more on that view in another post) will most likely playout on earth through a man. If I am not mistaken, the preterist view does see Nero as the beast mentioned in Revelation (the anit-christ). Idealism sees Nero as one of many anti-christs, because they see the things portrayed in Revelation taking place in various ways throughout the time period that encompasses the resurrection until the second coming. I suspect the final antichrist will be far worse than all who went before him. As all the negative things we see in Revelation will come to a head in the final battle that ushers in the second coming and the judgment. Satan's last hoorah so to speak.
There are no coincidences with God, and so no coincidences in the Bible. It is from the Bible itself---not numerology---that we ascertain the symbolism found in numbers. How does God use them? To delve into that aspect of the number 666 gets very involved and take up too much space in this post. I may cover it later, as I am trying to keep things organized so as not to get out of hand. So in brief, the number 6 is the number of man, falling short of God's perfection (7) as we discussed. Its first use in scripture is with Solomon's gold, and in that set of passages we see Solomon violating a law concerning kings. That they are not to multiply horses, chariots, wives and wealth. Which is exactly what Solomon did. So it relates to, bottom line, an utter disregard for and obedience to and worship of God and God alone. In the Beast and the mark of the Beast it would represent worship of the beast rather than God, allegiance to him, and the ultimate rebellion against God. This is pretty much the idealist view and I do not know what the others put forth, though there is a general agreement among Christians on the meaning of the number 6 and 6 multiplied. The differences arise in who he is and when he will appear. Also in 666 we see a trinity, and the devil in Revelation is portrayed as a false, or unholy trinity.
If 666 is only Nero it is not consistent with all four views, but only pretirists. And most likely not all preterists see it this way. I don't know all preterists.
Arial
Active member
Skimmed a couple of lines. Heard it all before. Off topic therefore I will not stoop to replying.