Critiquing the 2018 Rapture Theory: The Parable of the Fig Tree & Last Generation

Critiquing the 2018 Rapture Theory: The Parable of the Fig Tree & Last Generation

islamic antichrist

in Daniel Revisited Discovering the Four Mideast Signs Mark Davidson
links all the critters in Daniel's visions to the present time. It is argued that
the reference to the ram and the goat being for the time of the end, means
that it is for now. Though already fulfilled in the wars of Alexander the
Great against Persia and the subsequent breakup of his empire, it could be
redone again.

A book arguing for preterism noted correctly that "the end of the world"
etc. terms refers to the end of the AGE not the end of all ages. That book
End Times Bible Prophecy: It's Not What They Told You by

Brian Godawa makes a good case for hyperbole as typical middle eastern

communication style, so likely to be used poetically by God in speaking

to them, and therefore various cosmic references are symbolic of falling

of kingdoms and so forth (and/or a sarcastic slam at such who may have

equated their status with that of heavenly bodies). However, this doesn't

rule out some catastrophic stuff necessarily.

 

Godawa argues against double fulfillment, but a double fulfillment IS

done by the Messiah, Christos in Greek, because Jesus fulfilled the

priestly and sacrificial prophecies which puzzled rabbis some of who

thought there would be a messiah bar Joseph who would die and a

messiah bar David who would live forever. Then, having come back

to life and ascended to heaven in His flesh (He will never die), He

will come back and fulfill the rest of those messianic prophecies, where

He rules on earth.

 

So this in fact is not exactly a double fulfillment but a two stage fulfillment,

a partial fulfillment followed by the rest.

 

So where something was not done in ancient times in a prophecy and you

can't ascribe this to a city's repentance or something, then the whole thing

might play out again later, with some of the already done things happening

again, and whatever was not done happening also.

 

Yes, Matthew 24 does refer to the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem and the

Temple, but there are statements also about the Second Coming that can't

be anything but literal about Jesus, and not symbolic about, for instance,

Constantine. the parallel to the last days being like the days of Noah,

when everyone (except Noah and his family) were carrying on business as

usual and caught by surprise, so likewise will the Second Coming of

Christ and judgement catch all by surprise, would indicate that other

parallels might exist.

 

But it is also said that that generation that Jesus addressed wouldn't

pass away until all was done, this can be the generation that sees all these

things happen at once not in segments will see the Second Coming, but He

also said that some alive when He was speaking would not die before then.

 

Well, you got Enoch and Elijah who never died, Elijah appeared with

Moses (who did die) talking with Jesus at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
These are likely the two witnesses of Revelation. Or it might be others,

since these die and are resurrected and taken up to heaven before the Second

Coming. Enoch and Elijah might well have been invisibly among them.

And some could have been miraculously kept alive to now, and will be kept

alive until the Second Coming. 

 

But the issue is, that we need to read the Bible with the Jewish mindset

of the time in mind, and not our modern very precise scientific etc. attitude

or the Greco Latin attitude that led up to that. Fine, but there are still details

that show that while AD 70 indeed fulfilled some prophecies, all prophecy

is not fulfilled, and some replay will happen.

 

The Septuagint adds that the winged lion (or lioness in LXX and Britain and

America have led the charge in rolling back male supremacism and female

disempowerment) is driven from the face of the earth, and earth would be

haretz in Hebrew, not the whole world but the land, and the lioness also

appears still existing at the time of the Second Coming. So this is something

that comes from outside of "the world," not an alien invasion but outside of

the Middle East, outside of the regions of the Roman and Persian empires.

Since it is driven from the face of the earth, yet continues to exist.

 

Daniel Revisited  relates the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to events in

modern Iraq, which is silly. They are expressly things that would SOON come

to pass so has to be a bit earlier. A big deal is made about the first horseman

having a bow but no arrows are mentioned, and Saddam Hussein admitted

he had no weapons of mass destruction so it was an empty bow he had so to

speak.

 

A bow IMPLIES the arrows. an archer. This probably refers either to the

Persian invasion of Jerusalem during Christian times, or to the Islamic

conquests or the Turks.

 

The notation of how olive oil and wine prices stayed stable while petroleum

oil went up doesn't fit, because increase of price is not harming something.

 

So far, I have read nothing that persuades me that the assessment Chris White

and others and myself have made of Daniel's four beasts is wrong.

 

The angel told Daniel that they were four kings or kingdoms that would arise

after him. But Daniel was living in the time of the Babylonian empire, which

if the equation of four beasts to four sections of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's

dream is correct, would have Daniel living in the time of the first beast, and

therefore the angel would have said THREE more kingdoms after Daniel,

not four. So these since the fourth ends with the Second Coming, must not be

ancient kingdoms at all. That doesn't mean that the antichrist won't come from
an Islamic context, but the main reason given for this, by Richardson and Shoebat,
that John mistook the Arabic letters for the jihad slogan for the Greek letters
adding up to the triple six number, is absurd. Surrounding this is the reference
to calculating by someone with wisdom, in other words a reference to gematria,
where the numerical value of letters used as numbers in absence of separate
symbols for numbers as we now have, is applied to figure the numeric value of
a word or phrase made of those letters. This is not numerology, where some
mystical implications or predictions of someone's future is drawn from calculating
the numerical value of their names, which in modern times adds all digits to break
down to two digits, add them to get one digit and figure the mystical implications
of the number that results. that is nonsense, and not how such calculations were
made originally. and the purpose wasn't fortune telling except when it was, but
a way of looking for similarities based on same number value of words and phrases,
looking for hidden meanings.