No the Restrainer is Not the Holy Spirit and TGhere Is Nothering to Be rfestrained about the Antichrist Before the Tribulation

 Ah well, it seems to bbe my spiritual gift to raise questions about other people's theologies.  Oh well.  An odd one I admitg but it's where I alwayss gravitate.  ANYWAY, this time it's again about Jan Markell's eschatology.  This week's radio show had a guest who gave the usual interpretation of the Restrainer. I'm sorry I didn'g look up the verse first, it's the verse where Paul stells the Thessalonians that the Antichrist won't be reveals until "he who restrains 

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The problem is that this is interpreted as if it said the power or existence or activityh of the Antichrist can't occur until this Restrainer is "out of the way."  But all it says is that this Antichrist won't be REVEALED until then.  And surely it needs to be recognized that Paul is using very cryuptic language to avoid saying exactly who this Restrainer is, but why?  The popular interpretation is that He's the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit in the CHurch, but this makes no sense because there is no reason whatever why Paul would find it necessary ro be so careful about his language if it was the Holy Spirit.  No dire consequences would follow from identifying the Holy Spirit as the Restrainer.

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But dire consequences wouldcertainly follow if the Antichrist was to be a usurper of the role of Caesar, which could certainly be said of thePope in the seventh century which is when the Bishop of Rome assumed that role, and the Restrainer was Caesar himself since Caesar would be threatened by such a claim.  

This is one bit of the Pre Trib Rapture scenario I definitely reject.  I think the Roman Church was rthe Great Apostasy and all this happened in the Weventh century and the Roman Church under the papacy continued to reign throughout the next millennium until the Protestant Reformation.  Certainly we can suppose that the Great Apostasy could resume in the last days just as I would assume that the papapc6y will again be in the ascendant and will no doubt be the seat of the ANtichrist during the Tribulation.  

I mighr as well add here that the Pre Wrath position does make some sense to me, and that was sdiscussed on Jan Markell's radio show troday too.  Nevertheelss that one also has problems, questions and doubts in my mind.  All of the different eschataologies have some problem or another as I see it.

Supposedly the First Horseman of the Apocalypse can't ride until the Church is Raptured, the first horseman being the antichrist, the Church being the possessor of the Holy Spirit.

What is "Our Blessed Hope?"

 I have bcked off the Pre-Tribulation Rapture end times scenario but that doesn'[t mean I'vew arrived anywhere else yet.  I have questions and doubts about all the different eschatologies and in some cases, ull preterism and Amillennialism for instance, I reject them completely.  

ere's another problem I have with the Pre-Tr4ib rapture position:  Jan Markell is always saying that the Rapture is "our blessed hope" according to Titus 2:13, but as I read that passage it's not talking about the Rapture or it may or may not be, it's not all t that definite as she claims it is.   It ways we are waiting for the blessed hope of the "florious appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Chirst."  That's the Second Coming.  to attribute that to the Rapture is simply to assume the Pre-Trib Eschatology, but in any eschatology we all anitcipate the blessed hope of Jesus' appearing to take us home to be with Him.  I don't know why Jan is so adamant that there is only that one way of reading it.

If we are to escape the events of the Tribulation then the blessed hope would be the Rapture, band I find that argument convincing, but it's nevertheless true that the tibus passage is talking about the GLORIOUS return of Christ and that's not the Rapture.

Why Do GOod Christians Always Forget the Meaning of the Fall?

 John Lennox is probably the best, though certainly at least one of the best, debates against the atheists on the side of Christianity.  I heard him against Richard Dawkins a while back and here he is in another debate though I don't know who he is debateing this time as I've only heard his talk.  As usual he's excellent.

BUT.  Why is it that so many otherwise good solid orthodox Christians stumble on the Problem of Pain>  Ireally don't get it.  He said that this is the biggest problem he's had to face in his Christian life.  Why?   Surely the Fall explains it all.  The Fall is certainly orthodox theology, why is it so often forgotten in this context?

This world is not the world God created, this is a world destroyed by sin and by judgment for sin brought by God, especially in the worldwide Flood of Noah.  From the moment our first parents disobeyed God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which He had forbidden to them, we hvave been subject to every kind of injury, disease and death, every kind of suffering and pain.  All these things are the death that God said would be the consequence of their disobedience and because we are all the genetic descendants of Adam we inherit the death that he brought into the world.    Jesus has brought us healing for the Fall but it isn't yet a full healing and won't be until He has returned and reclaimed His Creation.

A Blast At Science's Contemptible Misrepresentation of Christianity

 I'm SO tired of hearibng this from the smug "science" people  and stheists who  attack "religion" as a mental aberration.  Richard Dawkins carries on in this way and here's someone else, another scientist, doing the same thing.  I don't know who he is and I don't care.  I heard about half a minute of this video and had to write this post:

Steven Weinberg: All Time Best Arguments Against Religion #1 - YouTube

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PuhLEEZE stop lumping Protestant Christianity with Islam for starters, there is NO similarity between the two "religions>"  None.  Zip, nada, none.    RThere is also very little commonality between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.  Whther they are guilty of this charge orf not I'm not even going to speculate, I'm only concerned to correct the complete misrepresentation of Protestantism.

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This guy says the main conflict between science and "religion" is tin the method of approach to trtuh.  Supposely all "religion" decides questions of truth on the basis of authority, and science does not.  Again I'm not going to consider to what extent this charge may or may not be true of Islam or Roman Catholicism, but it most certainly is false concerning Protestantism.

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The word Dawkins likes is "faith" to stand for the most vilified method of "religion."  Supposedly "religion" applies "faith" every question of every kind.  Yikes.  Again leave aside Islam and ROmanism.  I doubt it's even true of those two false religions but it most certainly is not true of Protestant Christianity, which is TRUE Christianity.  The biblical definition is "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseeen."  THAT's how we use faith.  Fiath is our necessary posture toward GOD and toward the things of God.  We are exhorted over and over again in scripture to believe, believe in what scripture is telling is about GOD, not in anything else.  Believe in Christ, beliecve He is the Messiah, believe in tghe miracles He performed, believe in the accounts of his life and in fact all the accounts of the Bible.  WE ARE NOT ASKED TO APPLY FAITH TO ANY OTHER QUESYIONS.  Certainly not to scientific questions.  And it is so utterly ridiculous and annoying that the could think such a think I'm having trouble sstaying calm as I write this.

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Faith is necessary with things of the spirit that we cannot observe.  We must trust those who have witnessed them and lived them, that's the only way we can know about them.   The miracles were cddone to authenticate the claims of Christ to be Christ.  We weren't there, we have no choice but to believe or disbelieve what tthe writers of the Bible report about them to us.   Jesus was willing to show thomas His wounds to prove to Him empirically that He did indeed die and rise again, but He also said "blessed are those who did not see and yet believewd."  We are to truth trustworthy people.  Thomsa  had refused to believe what the other disiples had told Himj.  He was blessed to get the direct proof, but the majority of believers don't get that kind of proof.  We are relegated to treusting the witnesses, and there are scroes and scrores of switnesses who in my judgment are utterly trustworthy, from the writers of the Bible to the people they write about to people who have believede tghe Bible accounts from that time on.

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WE DO NOT USE FAITH TO DETERMINE THE TRUTHS OF SCFIENCE.  In fact it was biblical treuth that was the original impetus to empirical science and if it had not existed we woudl still be flouding ing around with the old weird "science" of the Early Greeks an Romans and Aristotle

It's no doubt all about the Creation-Evolution debate, which they think is about science but evolution is barely a science at all because being a historical science, about events in the past that can never be replicated or tested, it has to remain noothing but speculation.   And since it contradicts the Bible we reject it both on the basis of our faith in the Bible and on the scientific reasoning creqationists have brought to bear on evolution's claims.    Faith has nothing to do with true science, science that is based on observation, but evolution is not based on observation, it can't be, it's purely invention. 

The Molecular Basis of Life

This is just plain astonishing.  I've seen many of these by now but wanted to post this one because it includes more of the story than some others I've seen.  this stuff is mind-blowing.  Microsopic molecules, proteins and whatnot, behave like sentient beings, craetures with minds that obey some kindof commands to perform their complicated tasks for the replication of DNA.   

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I dn't know why I can't get the video to come up for me burt here's the URL to the page:

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The Molecular Basis of Life - YouTube

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The most mind-boggling thing of all of course is how all these processes result in the features that make up a living organism.  How does the production of a protein by a gene result in a trait such as, oh, hair color or whatnot?   I don't think I've ever seen anyone even attempt to explain that.

Some Odd Manifestations of the Holy Spirit, Or . . .?

An odd little topic here. John MacArthur preached in a sermon I heard recently at You Tube, about the various thingsx that are attributed to the Holy Spirit in the charismatic churches. He listedn falling over backwards, laughing uncontrollable, shaking and quaking, the hiccups, jumping up and down and other things. I hadn't heard about the hiccups as an effect of the Holy Spirit, but all thhe rest is familiar to me from my time in the charismatic movement.

Some of it I'm sure he's right about, that that these things are not the work of the Holy Spirit. The laughter I know isn't. Watchman Nee wrote about that in his book Soul Power and made it quite clear that it comes from the flesh or from something in the soul left over from the powers God originally gavbe to Adam and Eve, but it doesn't come from the Holy Spirit.

Falling over backwards has always seemed to me to be unlikely but I'm not completely sure of that one. However, shaking and quaking have always seemed to me to be genuine manifestations of the Holy Spirit and I've experienced them many times. When you spend a lot of time with the Lord in prayer you may get the shakes and the quakes and I think that's a good sign that it's from God. The Quakers and the Shakers wer eaptly names for that particular experience. As I've spent a lot of time seeking the Lord in the last few months I've had that experience a few times after prolonged periods of prayer. Surely it is something that happens to us as a result of the Holy Spirit's working in us.
As for the hiccups, that one is very strange but I've also had bouts of the hiccups in this same period of intense seeking of the Lord, though I hadn't had hiccups for many yhears. I didn't connect it with my spiritual practices though until MacArthur mentioned it. Now I don't know. An odd one, that's for sure.

Dawkins Series on Darwinism

Well, it's all here, all laid out to be taken apart:



Darwin observes the variations between isolated populations of various species and sees no reason why a Creator would need to make versions of each Kind with small variations. This was within the cultural context of the day that considered each variation to be a separate creation by God. AAs I recall, there was also the idea that not only were they separate creations but some of them were created long after the Creation Week of Genesis. Im'm not enitrely sure about that, but at least they were considered to be separate creations.

Then he went on to ponder the structural similarities of various creatures, the fact that limbs, whether arms or wings or flippers or whatnot, are constructured with the same parts and funcdtions although in different proportions according to their different uses. This suggests to him that they are all related to each other.

It is Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, according to Dawkins, that persuaded DCarwin to the theory of Natural Sepection as the mechanism fore ecvolution from species to species. Those that succeeded best eitherat catching prey or escapting being caught would pass on their characteristics to their offspring in greatter numbers.Mbr> Mbr> According to Darwin it is modern genetics that clinches darwin's theory absolutiely , so that he can call it a Fact.