One thing I am not, never considered myself to be, is a Bible exegete. I always look to pastors and theologians to clarify the Bible for me, understanding that scripture tells us pastors and teachers are given to us by God for that purpose. We can't all be Bible interpreters although we are all to know the Bible nevertheless.
So I'm always a bit surprised when I come to a different reading from some pastors and teachers I look to, and it does happen from time to time that I do. Well, maybe more often than I want to think. My study of the head covering for women in 1 Corinthians 11: 2-16 led me away from most of the teachers I usually rely on, to the point that I believe the majority of teachers in the Church are leading their peop0le to commit a sin against God's Creation Ordinance, which I think likely accounts for some of the falling away of the churches in areas involving sex roles in particular, even ultimately providing ground for the cultural deviation of gay marraige. I've discussed this here many times.
I am also distressed at the apparent lack of sensitivity in the churches to the chaotic effect of the modern Bible versions, the different translations of well known passages leading to difficult in simply discussing what the Bible means among other things. This is a problem on top of the main problem of the false Greek manuscripts on which those new translations are based, which forces those who recognize this poroblem back to the KJV which has its own difficulties of language although at least its und4erlying manuscripts are reliable.
My preoccupation at the moment is with the way some passages are understood in the Premillennial End Times frame of reference. I've also discussed this before but I keep running across it so I want to get into it here with the relevant quotes. I discussed this in the recent post about End Times Conundrums but I want to try to be more thorough here.
First I'm thinking of the Great Apostasy which is based on First Timothy 4 and interpreted to refer to the very last days before Jesus' return. As I read it I always end up agreeing with the Protestant reformers, Martin Luther in particular, who see it as referring to the rise of the hegemony of the Roman Church and the papady in the seventh century, not to the veryh last days unless of course we can think in terms of a continuing effect or even a double fulfillment, which we do find in scripture for various prophecies.
4 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; 3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
It is particulrly disturbing to hear this passage quoted to support the Premill Pretrib eschatology which puts these events at the very end, which we are now living through, BY LEAVING OUT THE THIRD VERSE which so clearly identifies the Roman Catholic Church's celibate priesthood and the forbidding of meat that Catholics I knew growing up adhered to on Fridays, which made fish the most available meal in most restaurants to accommodate them. It was clearly THESE "doctrines of devils" the passage refers to, among the many others the Romaan Bishop imposed on the Christians who now came under their domination. The Bishop of Rome became the dominating bishop over all other bishops and the whole of western Christendom in 606 AD. THAT was the furture time prophesied in First Timothy, not the very last days. The Reformers knew it and I put up a post a few years ago listing many other Christians who also recognized the Pope as the Antichrist down the centuries to the Reformation. I know there are arguments against the Reformers' interpretaion but I have to reject them. The passage is too clear, and again, it is very disturbing that so many of today's teachers ignore the third verse which puts their own interpretation into doubt. We are clearly in a time of major apostasy in the Church today, but that passage points to the Roman Church as what we call the Great Apostacy. This is all of a piece with other evidence that Rome and the papacy are the Antichrist system. It dominated through the MIddle Ages and is expected to dominate again at the very end, during the Great Tribulation. The fact that this and other passages are not interpreted to identify the RCC explains why they are expecting an unknown to emerge as the final Antichrist, while the real Antichrist is already in international prominence every day.
The other passage that is interpreted to support the Premill Pretrib eschatology that seems pretty clearly instead to refer to the Roman Church as the seat of the Antichrist, is 2 Thessalonians 2:
2 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God./blockquote>
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5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
Acording to the Reformers "that Wicked" was revealed when thne Bishop of Rome became Universal Bishop over all western Christendom in 606 AD. He was rectgonized even at the time as the Anticrhist, and afterward by many others down the centuries, a list of whom was compiled by Christ Pinto, most of which I posted here a few years ago. To interpret this to apply only to the very last days is to complet4ley miss the identity of the Antichrist already known to true Christians and to the Reformers. He's been revealed, he was revealed in the seventh century, and the Antichrist papacy continues today and it will no doubt be a Pope who is THE final ANtichrist.
Guess I should clarify here that the Reformers understood the Pope to put himself in the place of God, tand his title Vicar of Christ says that quite directly. He's considered to be Christ's representative on earth, although Christ sent the Holy Spirit to play that role, making the Pope a usurper of the role of the Holy Spirit. He retains the God-usurping titles today, and one verison of them in Latin adds up to 666 which I've shown before. As for his "sitting in the templer of God showing himself to be God" the Reformers understand the temple to be the people of God which scripture clearly tells us is the case, we all being living stones of that temper. So there is no particular reason to expect him to set himself up in a literal temple in Jerusalem, he's already put himself in the place of God in the true temple of God. It's possible he MIGHT also do that, as Antioches Epiphanes, the precursor and model of the Antichrist desecreated the temple in Jerusalem. But it's not necessary, and since the rebuilding of the physical temple in Jerusalem and the resumption of animal sacrficies there would be extreme blasphemy against Christ whose sufficient sacrifice was the reason for the destruction of that t4emple in 70 AD. They seem to be getting ready to rebuild the temple when it becomes possible in God's Providence but again it's not necessary, the Antichrist has already taken his seat in the true temple.
The one who withholds or restrains the revelation of this person is interpreted today to be the HOly SPirit who supposedly will be4 removed with the CHurch at the Rapture, after which THEN the Antichrist is expected to be revealed. First of all the Holy Spirit can't be removed, He's omnipresent, and He is the cause orf salvation so since they believe an uncountable number will be saved after the reveleation of the ANtichrist He has to be present. Second, and more important for thinking about how to interpret this passage, if it were the Holy Spirit Paul was talking about he would have had no need to speak in such secretive cryptic terms. The reason he spoke that way was that in his time the Caesars were still the rulers and since the Anticrhist was going to come out of the CHurch to supp-lant the Caesars he had to keep from revealing that prophetic fact. The Bishop of Rome was elevated to that seat in the seventh century, well in the future from Paul's time, and the papacy jostled for power with the kings of Europe for the next millennium until the Protestant Reformation. And the Reformation is probably the "wound" to one of the heads of the Antichrist beast in Revelation, which was healed, indicating that the ROCC will have recovered its political power in those very last days still to come.
Again, there would have been no reason whatever for Paul to speak cryptically of the identity of the Restrainer or the identity of the Antichrist if these things did not imply a threat to the Roman emperors. I think that is conclusive for interpreting this passage. That the Roman Empire was continued under the Popes ought to be clear enough from the fact that thed called the overarching coalition of sorts of the European kingdoms the Holy Roman Empire, and you can also see that notion in the use of the title "Caesar" in some of the nations, such as "Czar" and "Kaiser," and in Hitler's dubbing of his Germany as the Third Reich meaning the Third Roman Empire. The EU can be regarded as the burgeoning Fourth Reich or revival of the Roman Empire. The Premill eschatology also looks for a Revived Roman Empire without recognizing that it's been with us in religio-political form under the papacy all along.
So what is to manifest at the very end is a renewed politico-religious "Roman Empire" under the Antichrist Pope, a recovery of the Holy Roman Empire which the various self-identified "Caesars" including Hitler kept trying to revive. A revived "Holy Roman Empire" and a revived Inquisition to slaughter all the "infidels" which means everybody who is not Roman Catholic (or possibly Muslim too since there is reason to include Islam in this revival which I've mentioned elsewhere but won't repeat here.).
You really don't want to be around when this comes down. It will last seven years, most virulently three and a half years which refers both to the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, and then Jesus will return to claim His rightful title to the planet. Stick it out without capitulating, even to the death, and you will be blessed, but getting there will be the worlst thing anyone has ever had to endure.
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NOTE: More Christians and especially pastors and teachers should be more up on the history that supports the Reformation interpretation Two books that I think I first heard about from Chris Pinto though maybe it was Richard Bennet, are Wylie's History of Protestantism, and Dowling's History of Romanism. I think it was Wylie's book that includes a history of the Jesuits and their Counterrefromation efforts to destroy Protestant nations, and it looks to me like they've just about succeeded with America. John Adams warned against them but so did many others a century or so ago. They work in advisory positions to politial leaders, they teach in the universities and turn students away from our true history, they tried to bomb England's parliament and kill their king back in the seventeenth century, they foment wars, they circulate vicious propaganda, they oritginated the concept of Social Justice, but nobody knows that bevcause they always work behind the scenes and keep a low profile.
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