Monthly Archives: March 2020

Family Worship

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Article: Family Worship 101 by William Boekestein (original source: https://www.ligonier.org/blog/family-worship-101/)

“Why did you steal my gods?” With these words, Laban ended a passionate speech against his son-in-law Jacob (Gen. 31:30). In fact, Laban’s daughter Rachel had stolen his idols, doubtless to keep alive the memory of her family after moving away with her husband, Jacob. Rachel literally took her family religion with her.

Every family has a god. Every day, young adults leave home with the gods of self-fulfillment, money, leisure, work, or even ministry. Some leave with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To a large extent, the difference is determined by how our families worship in the home.

Understanding Family Worship

Family worship is the regular use of Scripture, song, and prayer by a family unit, guided by the head of the household.

Family Worship Is Worship
Family worship is not merely a religious discipline; it is a meeting with the triune God in a spirit of adoration by means of three key ingredients.

First, families worship through Scripture. When we read the Bible, God preaches about Himself and the indescribable gift of His dear Son to a needy world. This message is not just for information, but also for exaltation.

Second, families worship through singing. It is inescapable: God’s people sing! The 150 psalms reference singing around 150 times. The New Testament call to admonish one another through song applies well in the context of the home (Col. 3:16).

Third, families worship through prayer. Since prayer is the chief way in which we show thankfulness to God (see the Heidelberg Catechism, question 116), our prayers must be worshipful, not merely formal. Family prayers should reflect the pastoral ethos and pathos of our High Priest (John 17).

Family Worship Is Regular
As illustrated by the practice of the early church, weekly congregational worship is insufficient for families that have been touched by God’s grace (Acts 2:47; 5:42). Scripture exhorts us to worship God daily, giving glory to Him in all things (Ps. 92:2; 1 Cor. 10:31).

Family Worship Is Covenantal
Before God established worship in the tabernacle, his people worshiped in family tents. “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous…” (Ps. 118:15). Job’s piety shines in his prayers for his children (Job. 1:5). The faith of young Timothy blossomed in the fertile soil of family worship (2 Tim. 1:5). Christians must spend time alone with God in their prayer closets (Matt. 6:6). But they should also worship together with their families through the use of Scripture, song, and prayer.

Defending Family Worship

Scripture Requires Family Worship
Specifically, God requires heads of households, like good shepherds, to lead their families into green pastures (Josh. 24:15). God expected Abraham to “command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD” (Gen. 18:19). Consider also the example of Cornelius, “a devout man…who feared God with all his household” (Acts. 10:1). It is no surprise that when Peter came to Caesarea to preach the gospel, Cornelius rallied his household to attendance. “We are all present before God,” he said, “to hear all the things commanded you by God” (v. 33).

Family Worship Yields Spiritual Growth
Family worship is an indispensable instrument for instilling both old and young with a consciousness of the Lord, His Word, and our call to worship. In his research for one of his books, George Barna demonstrates that parents who pass along to their children the baton of spiritual maturity and vitality have one thing in common: they “take God’s words on life and family at face value, and apply those words faithfully and consistently.” Missionary John Paton relates the indelible impact family worship left on his life: “When, on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in Family Worship, [our father] poured out his whole soul with tears…for every…need, we all felt as if in the presence of the living Saviour, and learned to know and love Him as our Divine Friend.”

Children notice when worship is only a once-a-week activity. God often works powerfully in young lives whose souls are warmed by the incubator of daily family worship.

Improving Family Worship

Many families are convinced by the need for family worship, but struggle in implementation. In such cases, what can be done?

Study Family Worship as a Family
Some time ago, our family spent a month carefully reading and discussing Joel Beeke’s booklet Family Worship. Partly due to the dynamic of learning together, this study made a lasting impression on us.

Stick to a Plan
Haphazard Scripture reading rarely edifies over the long haul. Families should include variety in their plans and adjust them over time. But following a regular Scripture reading plan helps us read the Bible the way it was meant to be read: as a cohesive history of God’s redemptive work.

Select a Time that Works
Unless worship is codified in a family’s schedule it will likely be supplanted by life’s busyness. Some families will flourish with morning worship; others will better meet in the evening. Families that can find no time in their week for worship need to adjust their schedule.

Sing!
For some Christians—particularly those who were not raised in the church or in singing homes—the thought of introducing song into family worship seems utterly unrealistic. But, as with all things, in order to establish a fresh tradition of family singing, begin with what you know. Start with familiar songs and progress to less-familiar songs with the help of tools (e.g. www.hymnary.org).

Strive for Regularity, Not Perfection
Most of us have become frustrated when our family worship ideals eclipsed reality. Family worship is like a great friendship. It has its bumps, but it is forged through regular, meaningful interaction. William Gouge observed that “a nail that at one blow barely enters, with many blows is knocked all the way in.” So it is with repetition in family worship.

Through the gospel, Jesus enters our lives and our families. Where He has entered, He is to be worshiped. Where He is worshiped, we trust He will stay and live and work and bless.

Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then? (Updated)

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Dr. Dan Wallace is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, a consultant for several Bible translations, and the author of numerous journal articles and books including Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics.

Dr. Wallace explains the copying of the New Testament books and shows the reliability of the scribal processes. Video from the Sacred Words History of the Bible Conference, February 21–22, 2020. Hosted by the Text & Canon Institute. This video is followed by a Q&A with the plenary speakers, the directors, and pastor Josh Vincent.

The Church in the Old Testament

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Article: “The Church is All Over the Old Testament” by Gary DeMar (source: https://americanvision.org/22591/the-church-is-all-over-the-old-testament/)

Dispensationalists continue to spread the false claim that the Church is something new in the New Testament. As a result, dispensationalists make a distinction between Israel and this supposed new entity called the “church.” The argument goes something like this: When Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah, God stopped dealing with Israel and started with something that was unknown in the Old Testament—the church.

First, Israel did not reject Jesus as the promised Messiah. Some Jews did and some Jews didn’t. It’s the remnant principle (Rom. 9:27–29). The gospel was first preached to Jews in Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). The first converts were Jews. Peter’s message was directed at “the men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem” (2:14) and the “men of Israel” (2:22). When the people heard Peter’s message “they were pierced to the heart” and asked what they should do (2:37). They were told to “repent and be baptized” (an Old Covenant symbol) in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (2:38).

Peter tells them that what was happening was a promise to Israel, those Israelites living in Jerusalem and Judea and those living in the diaspora (the dispersion, James 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:1). The result was that “there were added that day about three thousand souls” (2:41). Not long after, “those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand” (4:4).

These believing Jews, part of the remnant, were the ekklēsia—the “church”—the assembly of God’s people (5:11, 13).

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature notes that “the term ἐκκλεσία apparently became popular among Christians in Greek-speaking areas for chiefly two reasons: to affirm continuity with Israel through use of a term found in Gk. translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, and to allay any suspicion, esp. in political circles, that Christians were a disorderly group.”

Why did Paul persecute the “the church [ekklēsia] in Jerusalem” (8:1)? Because the Jews identified themselves as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises about their future redemption. Paul understood what was going on. No Jew ever asked, “What’s the church?”

This short analysis should be enough to convince anyone that the church isn’t anything new, but, alas, it doesn’t seem to be enough for some people. So, we continue.

The ekklēsia is all over the Old Testament. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the Hebrew qahal was in most cases translated as ekklēsia.

It is . . . probable that the rendering ἐκκλεσία was used purely for its general surface meaning of “assembly” and corresponded simply to an understanding of qahal as “assembly”; and that the derivation from καλέω “call” or any associations with ἔκκλητος “called out” or κλῆσις “calling” (in the theological sense) had no importance. [1]

The Hebrew translation of the Greek NT translates qahal  as ekklēsia. Ekklēsia is not a new word or idea in the NT.

It’s unfortunate that King James insisted that ekklēsia be translated as “church” rather than “congregation” or “assembly” as William Tyndale did in his translation of the New Testament. His insistence cost him his life.

Here is how Tyndale’s translation handled the first two appearances of ekklēsia in the New Testament (spelling modernized):

  • “And upon this rock I will build my congregation: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). [2]
  • “If he hear not them, tell it unto the congregation: if he hear not the congregation, take him as an heathen man, and as a publican” (Matt. 18:17). [3]

Catholic Church officials protested Tyndale’s use of “congregation” as the proper translation of ekklēsia since at that time “church” signified an “organized body of the clergy” and a place to worship [4] and resulted in a clear distinction between the clergy and laity.

In 1529, Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) published Dialogue Concerning Heresies, a frontal assault on Tyndale’s New Testament translation. “At bottom, More asserts that Tyndale’s offence has been to give the people Paul in English, and to translate key words in their Greek meanings as ‘senior’ [presbuteros], [5] ‘congregation’ [ekklēsia], ‘love’ [agape] and ‘repent’ [metanoia], instead of the Church’s ‘priest’, ‘church’, ‘charity’, and ‘do penance.’” [6]

More wanted to ensure that the hierarchy of the church was protected and the division of the clergy and laity maintained. It’s no wonder that More attacked Tyndale on the translation of specific words that would have called into question the hierarchical division. The common reader could have seen, in addition to how ekklēsia was translated, that the English word “priest” [7] referred either to Jewish or pagan priests and not elders in the Church. “As a result, many New Testament references that could have been taken as endorsing the institution of the Church were now to be understood as referring to local congregations of believers.” [8] More believed that Tyndale’s translation undermined “the authority of Tradition,” [9] that is, the ecclesiastical traditions of the Roman Catholic Church.

Like Wycliffe, Luther, and others, Tyndale believed that the invisible Church of the faithful was the only true Church, and that, as C.S. Lewis observed, “the mighty theocracy with its cardinals, abbeys, pardons, inquisition, and treasury of grace” connoted by the word “Church” was “in its very essence not only distinct from. But antagonistic to, the thing that St. Paul had in mind whenever he used the Greek word ekklesia. More, on the other hand, believed with equal sincerity that the ‘Church’ of his own day was in essence the very same mystical body which St. Paul addressed.” [10]

For his efforts, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536 for defying church authority, opposing the Church by promoting doctrines such as sola Scriptura, justification by faith alone, the denial of purgatory, questioning the number of sacraments, and translating particular words that could lead the laity to believe that the Church’s authority was limited. Tyndale’s most pernicious “attack” on the Church was his insistence that ekklesia should be translated “congregation” rather than “church”:

In his major defense of his translation, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, Tyndale begins with ekklesia in its relation to the English word church. He announces that “This word church hath divers [many] significations” (PS 3.11). [11] He then sets out . . . three senses of the English word: first, a building; second, the clergy; and third, “a congregation; a multitude or a company gathered together in one, of all degrees of people” (PS 3.12). [12] He rejects church as a translation of ekklesia, because the first two senses do not appear in the New Testament, and the last is “little known among the common people” (PS 3.12). [13] They would thus be misled into thinking that “church” referred to the bishops, monks, and priests, rather than to themselves as a collectivity. He therefore prefers congregation, which carries the third sense clearly, and the first and second not at all. [14]

As William Stafford writes, it was understood by the laity and church officials that “it was the clergy who were the ecclesia, the church.” [15] But as Tyndale saw it, “the church was not the clergy, nor was it the hierarchical, legal, and ceremonial edifice sustaining the clergy, but rather the congregation of all who responded to the word of God.” [16] This hierarchical understanding of ekklēsia did not stop with protests against Tyndale’s more accurate translation of the word. One of the Rules to be Observed in the Translation of the [King James] Bible required the following: “The old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.” [17] It seems that church officials, this time “the Anglican establishment,” [18] wanted to impose on ekklēsia a contemporary “ecclesiastical” understanding of the word rather than its biblically contextual definition. Because of Rule 3, the hands of the translators were tied since they were in the employ of the king.

[Bishop Richard] Bancroft was determined to ensure that the translation process was judiciously guided, and limit the freedom of the translators. The translators were instructed to follow strict “rules of translation,” drawn up by Bancroft and approved by [King] James, designed to minimize the risk of producing a Bible that might give added credibility to Puritanism, Presbyterianism, or Roman Catholicism. [19]

Whether translated “church” or “congregation,” neither Tyndale nor the ecclesiastical powers of his day had any notion of the modern-day dispensational understanding of ‘church.’ Even so, it’s unfortunate that some of these early English translations—the Geneva Bible (1560) and the King James Version (1611)—translated ekklēsia as “church” since the word obscured its biblical definition of “assembly.” In a similar way, because dispensationalists did not make a formal study of the translation issue, they developed a foreign understanding of ekklēsia that had more to do with the state of the church in the 18th century then with the actual meaning of the word.

That’s why Stephen could mention the “ekklēsia in the wilderness” and the writer to the Hebrews could quote Psalm 22:22: “I will proclaim Thy name to My brethren, in the midst of the ekklēsia” (Heb. 2:12). The ekklēsia doesn’t replace Israel. The nations were grafted into the ekklēsia that was made up almost exclusively of Jews.

  1. James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University, 1961), 121.[↩]
  2. “And I saye also vnto the yt thou arte Peter: and apon this rocke I wyll bylde my congregacion. And the gates of hell shall not prevayle ageynst it.”[↩]
  3. “If he heare not them tell it vnto the congregacion. If he heare not ye congregacion take him as an hethen man and as a publican.”[↩]
  4. Benson Bobrick, Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 114.[↩]
  5. In a later edition, Tyndale translated presbuteros as the more accurate “elder.”[↩]
  6. David Daniell, The Bible in English: It’s History and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 149.[↩]
  7. The Greek word hiereus, not presbuteros, is translated accurately as “priest.”[↩]
  8. Alister McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 75.[↩]
  9. Bobrick, Wide as the Waters, 115.[↩]
  10. Bobrick, Wide as the Waters, 115–116.[↩]
  11. William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (Cambridge: The University Press, [1536] 1850), 11.[↩]
  12. Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, 12.[↩]
  13. Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, 12.[↩]
  14. Matthew Decoursey, “The Semiotics of Narrative in The Obedience of a Christian Man,” Word, Church, and State: Tyndale Quincentenary Essays, eds. John T. Day, Eric Lund, and Anne M. O’Donnell  (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 1998), 77.[↩]
  15. William S. Stafford, “Tyndale’s Voice to the Laity” in Word, Church, and State: Tyndale Quincentenary Essays, 105.[↩]
  16. Stafford, “Tyndale’s Voice to the Laity,” 106.[↩]
  17. Quoted in Daniell, The Bible in English, 439.[↩]
  18. McGrath, The Story of the King James Bible, 172.[↩]
  19. McGrath, The Story of the King James Bible, 173.[↩]

Is This The Pale Horse of Revelation?

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Article “Is Revelation 6 a Prophecy About Today’s Pandemic and Other Apocalyptic-Like Events?” by Gary DeMar (source – https://americanvision.org/22538/is-revelation-6-a-prophecy-about-todays-pandemic-and-other-apocalyptic-like-events/)

Some prophecy writers are claiming that Revelation 6 depicts what’s taking place today with earthquakes (one just hit Utah) and pestilence or plagues. Is the Coronavirus a fulfillment of Revelation 6:8?:

I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, “to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence [θανάτῳ] and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

The Greek word translated “pestilence” is θανάτῳ (thanatō) and is translated elsewhere as “death.” The rider of the horse is named θανάτῳ, the same word translated as “pestilence” in some translations.

Similar language is used in Jeremiah 15:2–3 for a local judgment against Jerusalem (15:4–14). The same is true in Jeremiah 24, especially verse 10, where a different Hebrew word is used and is translated as “pestilence” and not just “death.”

The more accurate translation in Revelation 6:8 is “death” that would include pestilence and other effects of war and famine. “The story of Mary of Bethezuba is a story of cannibalism told by Josephus in his Jewish War (VI,193) which occurred as a consequence of famine and starvation during the siege of Jerusalem in August AD 70 by Roman legions commanded by Titus. The tale is only one account of the horrors suffered at Jerusalem in the summer of 70. “

In Luke 21:11, the Greek word λοιμοὶ (loimoi) is used and is translated as “plagues,” the only time the word is used in the New Testament. As I have mentioned in a previous article, pestilences and plagues are not unusual. They can be found in the Old Testament, secular history, and the era leading up to Jerusalem’s judgment in AD 70. For example, the Roman historian Suetonius wrote that there was such a “pestilence” at Rome during the reign of Nero that “within the space of one autumn there died no less than thirty thousand persons, as appeared from the registers in the temple of Libitina.” [1]

Wars and rumors of wars, famines, plagues, and earthquakes. These are the biblical signs. All of them are realities of planet earth each days. Is Jesus coming back soon? Did Jesus provide an exact, predictable scenario as so many modern prophecy writers advocate?Buy Now

Now we come to the meaning of Revelation 6. What’s going on in this chapter? James M. Hamilton, Jr., a premillennialist, writes that “the opening of the seals in Revelation 6 corresponds to what Jesus describes in the Olivet Discourse in the Synoptic Gospels.” [2] I agree. See my books Is Jesus Coming Soon?, Last Days Madness, and Wars and Rumors of Wars.

The following chart is from Hamilton’s commentary on Revelation:

If the Olivet Discourse is describing events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem that took place within a generation (Matt. 24:34), then Revelation must be given a similar interpretation. Consider how stellar phenomena are depicted.

A verse-by-verse study of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 that puts it into its biblical and historical context.Buy Now

In Revelation 6:13­–14, we read, “the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” This passage is a partial citation from Isaiah 34:4 using the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX), which reads, “all the stars shall fall.” [3]

If this is a description of physical stars, there would be an immediate end to the earth, and yet we find the earth still intact in Revelation 8:10 where “a great star fell from heaven.” If one star hit the earth, the earth would be vaporized in an instant. In fact, if a star like our sun gets close to earth, the earth would burn up before it hit. How could the earth survive if a “third of the stars of heaven” had been thrown down to the earth (Rev. 12:4)?

Then there’s the description of the male goat in Daniel 8:10 that causes “stars to fall to the earth,” an action that would destroy the earth if Daniel was describing actual physical stars. These fallen stars are then “trampled” by the horn of a goat. It must have been a mighty big goat horn, similar in size to the giant woman in Revelation who was “clothed with the sun,” stood on the moon, and had a “crown of twelve stars” on her head (Rev. 12:1). Most likely the horn refers to a civil ruler and the stars represent civil or religious authorities [4] under the ruler’s dominion.

Jesus is using language that was understood by the people of His day. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with similar symbolic “sign” (Rev. 1:1) language. There is dramatic end-of-the-world language in Zephaniah that is directed at Jerusalem and Israel (Zeph. 1). John Lightfoot makes the point that seemingly end-of-the-world language is a common feature in the Bible and most often points to the end of the social, religious, and political status of a nation:

The opening of the sixth Seal [in Rev. 6:12–13] shows the destruction itself in those borrowed terms that the Scripture uses to express it by, namely as if it were the destruction of the whole world: as Matt. 24:29–30. The Sun darkened, the Stars falling, the Heaven departing and the Earth dissolved, and that conclusion [of] ver. 16 [in Rev. 6]. They shall say to the rocks fall on us, &c. doth not only warrant, but even enforce us to understand and construe these things in the sense that we do: for Christ applies these very words to the very same thing (Luke 23:30). And here is another, and, to me, a very satisfactory reason, why to place the showing of these visions to John, and his writing of this Book [of Revelation] before the desolation of Jerusalem. [5]

For many Christians, interpreting Bible prophecy is a complicated task. As a result, they often turn to so-called Bible experts and complicated charts that include gaps in time, outrageous literal interpretations, and numerous claims that current events are prime indicators that the end is near. Many Christians are unaware that the same Bible passages have been used in nearly every generation as “proof” that the end or some aspect of the end (the “rapture”) would take place in their generation.Buy Now

When was this judgment to take place? Jesus had His present audience in view as He made His way to the cross:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed’ [Matt. 24:19; Luke 21:23]. Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US’ [Isa. 2:19–20; Hos. 10:8; Rev. 6:16] For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:28–31).

When was the tree dry and without fruit? The last days of the generation that was confronted from the judgment sequence prophesied by Jesus.

Even though this virus is not an end-of-the-world sign or event, it should get our attention that we are mortal and almost any unforeseen event could lay us low and even kill us. Eternity is but a heartbeat away.

  1. C. Suetonius Tranquillus, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Nero, 39.[↩]
  2. Hamilton, An Interview with Dr. James Hamilton. For further discussion of this point, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 166–167. Also, Louis A. Vos, The Synoptic Traditions in the Apocalypse (Kampen, Netherlands: J.H. Kok N. V., 1965), 181–188.[↩]
  3. J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 179–210.[↩]
  4. James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 2nd ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision Press, 2007), 426–436.[↩]
  5. John Lightfoot, The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot Containing “The Harmony, Chronicle and Order of the New Testament,” ed. John Rogers Pitman, 13 vols. (London: [1655] 1823), 3:337.[↩]

Scoffers in the Last Days?

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Article: Is the Dissolution of the Heavens and Earth on the Horizon? by Gary DeMar – source https://americanvision.org/22532/is-the-dissolution-of-the-heavens-and-earth-on-the-horizon/

If there’s one passage of Scripture that is repeatedly brought up as an indictment against people who object to modern-day prophetic speculation it is 2 Peter 3:3–18. If you dispute with those who argue that all the signs around us indicate that we are living in the “last days,” then you are labeled a “scoffer” or a “mocker” (2 Peter 3:3; Jude 18). If this is how the passage is to be understood, then how should Bible students who argued against similar prophetic speculation during the two World Wars and previous periods of social, civil, and moral unrest going back centuries be evaluated? Those who questioned the prophecy speculators were correct in their skepticism that they were not living in the last days!

Every generation has had people who claimed the end was near and others who argued that the end was not near. Appealing to contemporary signs to make predictions of a near end of all things has a long history as Francis X. Gumerlock demonstrates in his book The Day and the Hour. One would think that by now Christians would stop doing it. But they don’t. They know revving people up over the “last days” sells books . . . lots of books.

The people Peter and Jude accuse of being “scoffers” were enemies of Jesus and the gospel and were alive when Peter and Jude wrote their letters. They scoffed at the claims made by Jesus that the temple would be destroyed (Matt. 24:2) and Jesus Himself would be the person to make it happen before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34; 21:18-46; 22:1-14). Since nearly 40 years—a generation—had passed since Jesus had prophesied about the impending destruction, and the temple was still standing with no indication that it would be destroyed in their lifetime, the scoffers began to mock the words of Jesus. “Where’s the sign of His coming? Your Jesus predicted it with certainty, and it has not come to pass. All is as it has been. Based on the Law of Moses, this Jesus was a false prophet” (see Deut. 18:22).

A similar situation happened regarding the prophecies related to Judah’s captivity in Babylon. Consider the following from 2 Chronicles 36 and compared it to Jesus’ description of the destruction of Jerusalem that was prophesied by Him in the Olivet Discourse in the Synoptic Gospels:

Furthermore, all the officials of the priests and the people were very unfaithful following all the abominations of the nations; and they defiled the house of the Lord which He had sanctified in Jerusalem. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy. Therefore He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. All the articles of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officers, he brought them all to Babylon. Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete” (vv. 14-21).

There’s a big difference between a “scoffer” who rejects God’s word outright and someone who argues for an alternative position using sound biblical arguments. A person who disagrees with modern-day prophetic speculation is not a “scoffer,” especially when there have been so many failed attempts at predicting the certainty of the end over the years.

One could just as easily make the case that modern-day prophetic speculators are “scoffers” and “mockers” because they twist and distort Jesus’ clear words that He would return in judgment before that first-century generation passed away (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32). Some of today’s prophecy speculators try to argue that the Greek word genea—best translated as “generation” (Matt. 1:17)—can be translated “race” or “nation.” When that doesn’t work, some argue that “this generation” (the generation of Jesus’ day: e.g., Matt. 12:41–42; 23:36), should be translated “that generation” (a future generation). For example, Henry Morris, who insisted that the Bible should be interpreted literally on issues related to creation, does not take the same approach when he interprets the Olivet Discourse prophecy:

The word “this” [in Matt. 24:34] is the demonstrative adjective and could better be translated “that generation.” That is, the generation which sees all these signs (probably starting with World War I) shall not have completely died away until all these things have taken place. [1] That is, that generation—the one that sees the specific signs of His coming—will not completely pass away until He has returned to reign as King. [2] Now if the first sign was, as we have surmised, the First World War, then followed by all His other signs, His coming must indeed by very near [3]—even at the doors! There are only a few people still living from that [4] generation. I myself was born just a month before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Those who were old enough really to know about that First World War—“the beginning of sorrows”—would be at least in their eighties now. Thus, we cannot be dogmatic, we could very well now be living in the very last days before the return of the Lord. [5]

When Jesus’ clear words don’t suit their prophetic paradigm, words are removed, new words added, and Greek words redefined. “This generation” becomes, “the generation that sees these signs,” as if Jesus was addressing a generation other than the one to whom He was speaking. Jesus made it clear that His present audience (“you”) would “see all these things” (Matt. 24:33).

Second Peter 3 links “scoffers” (v. 3 in KJV; “mockers” in NASB) with “the last days” (v. 3), “the promise of His coming” (v. 4), the “day of the Lord” (v. 10), and the passing away of the “heavens” and the “earth” (v. 10). “Last days” is not code for events leading up either to an event called the “rapture of the church” or a future second coming. Gordon Clark comments:

“The last days,” which so many people think refers to what is still future at the end of this age, clearly means the time of Peter himself. I John 2:18 says it is, in his day, the last hour. Acts 2:17 quoted Joel as predicting the last days as the lifetime of Peter…. Peter obviously means his own time. [6]

There are other passages like Hebrews 1:1–2 (note the use of the plural near demonstrative: “in these last days”), Hebrews 9:26 (note the use of “now”), “as you see the day drawing near” (10:25; also 1 John 2:18), 1 Corinthians 10:11 (“upon whom the ends of the ages have come”), and James 5:3 (the storing up of their treasure was in “the last days” not “for” the last days). The question is, the last days of what?: the last days of the old covenant with its stone temple, blood sacrifices, and earthly sinful priesthood, the theme of the book of Hebrews. It’s not only the end of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants.

Twice in the New Testament an explicit comparison is made between Jesus and Adam. In Romans 5:12–21, Paul argues that ‘just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19, NIV). In 1 Corinthians 15:22, Paul argues that ‘as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,’ while in verse 45 he calls Jesus the ‘last/ultimate/final [ἔσχατος/eschatos] Adam.’”

Given that most Christians who make the “scoffer” charge are premillennial, that is, those who believe that after a future seven-year period that includes the Great Tribulation, a thousand-year reign of Jesus on the earth will immediately follow. It’s only after this 1007-year period (the 7-year tribulation period plus the 1000 years of Revelation 20) that the events described in 2 Peter 3 come to pass (the new heaven and new earth). According to the dispensational view, the “new heaven and a new earth” comes into existence after the first physical heaven and the first physical earth passes away (Rev. 21:1). Given premillennial assumptions (which I believe are wrong), this means that the events described by Peter could never be near since more than 1000 years is not near.

How can a person be a “scoffer” or a “mocker” of prophetic events that are about to happen when the supposed dissolution of the cosmos is more than a thousand years away? It doesn’t make any sense. The charge only makes sense if the described events are actually near, near to those living in Peter’s generation and were familiar with Jesus’ prophecy. Those in Peter’s audience were looking “for these things” (2 Peter 3:12). How could they be looking for “these things” if they were at least 1007 years in their future?

Why didn’t Peter say that their math was out of whack, that the “new heaven and the new earth” are more than 1000 years in the future. According to the dispensational way of interpreting prophecy, we have at least 1000 years before there will be a physically renovated cosmos. This can’t take place until after Jesus reigns on the earth for 1000 years.

In fact, once Jesus sets foot on planet earth again, according to premillennialism, it will be quite easy to calculate when the events of 2 Peter 3 will take place—exactly a thousand years later. To silence a “scoffer,” all a person has to say is, “Look, God promised that these events won’t happen for a thousand years.” This means that for the premillennialist, the events revealed and described by Peter can’t have anything to do with our time. They are still far in the future. This means that this section of Scripture can’t be used to club those who reject the notion that we are living in the last days.

Peter specifically says, once again following the premillennial paradigm, the last days are at this moment in time at least 1007 years in the future. So, if the “last days” refers to the period just before the dissolution of the cosmos that is at least 1007 years in our future, then we can’t be living in the “last days” and there are no signs that can be called into evidence to support the claim that a new physical heaven and earth are on the prophetic horizon.

  1. Henry M. Morris, The Defender’s Study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: World Publishing, 1995), 1045.)

Prior to these comments that are found in his Defender’s Study Bible, Morris wrote the following extended comments on Matthew 24:34 in his book Creation and the Second Coming:

In this striking prophecy, the words “this generation” have the emphasis of “that generation.” ((I received the following comment in an email from someone supporting the view held by Morris: “I will admit that the word ‘this’ has ALWAYS presented an obstacle to a full understanding of the Discourse. Have you ever considered [if] this word COULD HAVE BEEN ‘that’ in the original [Manuscript]? I believe from my reading that could have been possible” (November 12, 2007). Almost anything is possible, but there is no indication that the Greek word ekeinos (“that”) was ever used. It’s pure conjecture.[↩]

  1. There is nothing in Matthew 24 that says Jesus is going to return to reign as king on the earth.[↩]
  2. Why does “near” mean “even at the doors” for Morris in his day, but it did not mean “near” in the first century?[↩]
  3. Notice how Morris uses the far demonstrative “that” to refer to a generation in the past. How would he have described the generation in which he was living? Obviously with the near demonstrative “this” to distinguish it from “that” past generation.[↩]
  4. Henry Morris, Creation and the Second Coming (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1991), 183. Morris died on February 25, 2006 at the age of 87.[↩]
  5. Gordon H. Clark, II Peter: A Short Commentary (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1975), 64.

Can The Pre-Trib View Be Found Before the 19th Century?

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by Gary DeMar (original source here: https://americanvision.org/22451/is-the-pre-tribulation-rapture-found-before-the-19th-century/)

I’ve been corresponding with some dispensationalists on Facebook on the topic of the rapture. There are several people who claim that dispensationalism, mostly the pretrib rapture, has some historical precedent before John Nelson Darby.

I don’t have enough access to historical sources to do the necessary research, so I am dependent on what other dispensationalists put forth as evidence. For example, I found “Pretribulation Rapture Taught by Early Church” by  J.R. Church interesting:

In 1844, a bound volume of New Testament books was found in an excavation at the Saint Catherine monastery located near the foot of Mount Sinai. It is called the Sinaiticus. It contains all 27 New Testament Books, plus two others—the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermes [Hermas].

In the Shepherd of Hermes [Hermas],the author relates a vision. He said, “I saw a huge beast [1] [corresponding to the beast of Revelation 13]. [2] The beast has four colors [corresponding to the colors of the four horsemen of Revelation 6]. It is 100 feet long. But I escaped, thanks to the grace and power of God.”

Then he meets a virgin dressed in white who says, “Thou hast escaped a great tribulation because thou hast believed and at the sight of such a huge beast, have not doubted. Go therefore and declare to the elect of the Lord His mighty deeds and say to them that this beast is a type of the Great Tribulation which is to come. If you, therefore, prepare yourselves and with your whole heart turn to the Lord in repentance, then you shall be able to escape it.”

Regardless of the stylized circumstances related in his reported vision, Hermes, nevertheless, taught a pretribulation rapture.

It’s important not to ignore “the stylized circumstances related in his reported vision.” Hermas does not argue from the biblical text. It’s based on a vision, and a weird one at that.

There are a number of ways to escape tribulation.

Notice this line from the vision that Church does not quote: “ye shall be able to escape it, if your heart be made pure and without blemish, and if for the remaining days of your life ye serve the Lord blamelessly. Cast your cares upon the Lord and He will set them straight.” There is no rapture. Hermas can escape it by being faithful for the remaining days of his life.

Richard Buckham’s offers the following commentary:

The beast is explained in xxiii. 5 as a figure (τυπος) of the imminent great tribulation. To the threat of this tribulation Christians may react in two different ways: their faith may waver (doublemindedness) (xxiii. 4) or they may repent and prepare themselves to face it (xxiii. 5). The doubleminded will be “hurt” (xxiii. 4) by the great tribulation and thereby experience God’s wrath (xxiii. 6). The repentant, on the other hand, will put complete trust in the Lord (xxiii. 4 f.), face the tribulation with courage (xxiii. 8), and “escape” (xxiii. 4). (Richard Bauckham, “The Great Tribulation in The Shepherd Of Hermas,” Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1974), 31.))

Church is importing his pretrib rapture theory into the word “escape.” Does “escape” mean being taken off the earth to avoid tribulation? To escape the tribulation in the lead up to the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in AD 70, all a person had to do is head to the hills on foot (Matt. 24:16–20). In Luke’s version, Jesus said the following:

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you will know that her desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country stay out of the city. For these are the days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written. How miserable those days will be for pregnant and nursing mothers! For there will be great distress upon the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (21:20–24).

Those who heeded Jesus’ warning escaped the tribulation without ever leaving earth.

Lot and his daughters escaped God’s wrath by fleeing to the mountains: “When they [angels] had brought them outside, one said, ‘Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away’” (Gen. 19:17).

The Israelites escaped the plagues brought on Egypt; Rahab escaped the judgment on Jericho; Daniel’s three friends were protected in the fiery furnace; Daniel was spared in the lion’s den; Joseph, Mary, and Jesus escaped from the horror of Herod’s slaughter of the children.

Thomas Ice confronted me after our debate at BIOLA (February 2002) about Francis X. Gumerlock’s statement in his book The Day and the Hour (2000), a book published by American Vision and edited by me, that “The Dolcinites held to a pre-tribulation rapture theory similar to that of modern dispensationalism” [3].

If Ice and other dispensationalists want to claim the Dolcinites as proto-dispensationalists, they can have them. According to Gumerlock, Brother Dolcino and his followers “believed that they were the only true church of the latter days…. Believing they were living in the last three and a half years of End-time tribulation, Dolcino and his followers, motivated by certain Bible passages, fled ‘Babylon’ for the mountains of Piedmont. In the mountains they armed themselves for conflict with the papal forces of Clement V, in 1307 a bloodbath ensued in which four hundred of them were killed. Dolcino was burned at the stake.” [4].

Fra Dolcino (c. 1250 – 1307)

If Dolcino believed in a pre-trib rapture, why would he and his followers escape to the mountains and arm themselves?

As far as I can tell, Dolcino does not make a biblical argument for his views.

There are more problems with using Dolcino’s views to support a pre-trib rapture. The fourteenth-century text, The History of Brother Dolcino, “was composed in 1316 by an anonymous source,” [5] meaning that this text was not written by Dolcino. The original letters of Dolcino are not in existence.

Dolcino and his Apostolic Brethren were a violent cult hell bent on the purification of the Roman Catholic Church through violence that ended in their destruction. [6]

Dolcino justified the actions of his followers by appealing to Titus 1:15: “To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted.”  “As reported by the Anonymous Synchronous, Dolcino maintained “[…] that it was legitimate for him and his followers to hang, behead, […] people who obey … the Roman church and burn down, destroy, […] because they were acting to redeem them and thus without sin.”

[H]e was considered by some to be one of the reformers of the Church and one of the founders of the ideals of the French revolution and socialism. In particular he was positively reevaluated toward the end of the 19th century and was dubbed the Apostle of the Socialist Jesus….

Gumerlock quotes the Historia Fratris Dolcini Haeresiarchae in an end note (the English translation is Gumerlock’s):

Again, [he believed, preached, and taught] that within the said three years Dolcino himself and his followers will preach the coming of the Antichrist; and that the Antichrist himself would come into this world at the end of the said three and a half years; and after he had come, Dolcino himself, and his followers would be transferred into Paradise, where Enoch and Elijah are, and they will be preserved unharmed from the persecution of Antichrist; and then Enoch and Elijah themselves would descend to earth to confront the Antichrist, then they would be killed by him; or by his servants, and thus Antichrist would reign again for many days. “Once Antichrist is truly dead, Dolcino himself, who would then be the holy Pope, and his preserved followers will descend to earth, and they will preach the correct faith of Christ to all, and they will convert those, who will be alive then, to the true faith of Jesus Christ” (91–92).

Even after all that we know of Dolcino and his cult, Thomas Ice still wants to claim him as someone who taught a pre-trib rapture before Darby.

This is typical of dispensationalists who will enter almost any source into evidence if it can be used to prop up their system.

  1. “from its mouth fiery locusts issued forth”[↩]
  2. Hermas does not mention Rev. 13.[↩]
  3. Day and the Hour, 80[↩]
  4. Day and the Hour, 80[↩]
  5. James F. Stitzinger, “The Rapture in Twenty Centuries of Biblical Interpretation,” TMSJ 13/2 (Fall 2002), 159. See Francis X. Gumerlock, “A Rapture Citation in the Fourteenth Century,” Bibliotheca Sacra 159 (July-September 2002), 354–355.[↩]
  6. Gian Luca Potesta, “Radical Apocalyptic Movements in the Late Middle Ages,” The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, eds. Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 2003), 300–302.[↩]