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JustaServant
Guest
Have him send me an email.I really, REALLY wish you could meet this person I’m talking about. I think he would probably listen to you.
Do "rapture" believers realize it isn't part of consistent Christian tradition?
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JRRTFAN
Guest
The Rapture isn’t erroneously based on anything in Scripture. It’s based on a need to conform thought to an erroneous theology.
Notice that these verses all provide for sounds and notice attending the return of Our Lord.
The Rapture propounds a SECRET second coming. Nobody knows, you’re just ----NOT THERE anymore. Your car crashes, your baby drops to the floor, your newspaper settles into the chair, your airplane is pilotless, but you (the Rapturee) are not there (Rod Serling comes in at this point). There is NOTHING scriptural about a rapture, it’s goofy misleading nonsense.
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Nicea325
Guest
What is even more bizarre of some TV evangelist claim many early church fathers taught it and believed? Really?
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CopticChristian
Guest
The rapture is erroneously based on Scripture.
The erroneously states exactly what you say…To say that something is erroneously based on something means that which it is based on is not evidence for its basic premise.
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CopticChristian
Guest
In the scheme of the transmission of thought in time…
Historical Premillinalism was a Patristic belief, rejected by the OHCAC in favor of Amellinialinism.
Next came the Reformed Postmillinialism
Next resurrection of thoughts of old…millinialinism of various types…
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Little_Mary
Guest
He’d never do it. I could send you his email but he would probably just ignore you. Worth a try if you’re up to it.
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BigFellaMick
Guest
If you read a previous post, the Catholic Church teaches the Rapture at the second coming of our Lord. What is unchristian and not scriptural is the belief some protestants and non denominational groups adhere too that they will be spared the suffering of the great tribulation by a rapture then. God is not going to come down and swoop up a handful of people out of a baptist church prior to the tribulations. We will all be here to suffer it, just as Christ suffered for us. We will suffer yet through the grace and love of Christ we will endure. And eventually when the trumpet sounds the world over for Christ’s coming and imminent victory, THEN the rapture will occur in which all things will face Christ for judgement.
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Miriam1947
Guest
Years ago Phillip Wylie wrote a book called The Disappearance and it was about the men disappearing and the women disappearing. They disappeared from one another. Great book. I read it when I was just a kid.
amazon.com/Disappearance-Philip-Wylie/dp/0899684157
Book Description
Publication Date: June 1993 (Paperback) Original publication date 1951
“The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of February at four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o’clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature.”
On a lazy, quiet afternoon, in the blink of an eye, our world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. After families and loved ones separate from one another, life continues in very different ways for men and women, boys and girls. An explosion of violence sweeps one world that still operates technologically; social stability and peace in the other are offset by famine and a widespread breakdown in machinery and science. And as we learn from the fascinating parallel stories of a brilliant couple, Bill and Paula Gaunt, the foundations of relationships, love, and sex are scrutinized, tested, and sometimes redefined in both worlds. The radically divergent trajectories of the gendered histories reveal stark truths about the rigidly defined expectations placed on men and women and their sexual relationships and make clear how much society depends on interconnection between the sexes.
Written over a half century ago yet brimming with insight and unsettling in its relevance today, The Disappearance is a masterpiece of modern speculative fiction.
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sallybutler
Guest
I’ve always wondered why people worry about it. Jesus Himself said no one but the Father knows when it will occur. So right there, trying to figure out the time is going against the direct words of Jesus.
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AmateurPianist
Guest
Who says I haven’t?
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AmateurPianist
Guest
I get that to Catholics anything that is contrary to all dogma taught by the Catholic church is demonic.
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CopticChristian
Guest
It is all part of a paradigm.
Do you know if you will go to heaven tonight?
You can know!
The process then continues in the Protestant paradigm as the confession with the lips etc and the getting saved and firm knowledge of heaven tonight is at hand. Then the introduction through Bible study and services to the Dispensational theology…if you are saved you won’t be left behind…etc
The Rapture has an intimate relationship with the first question as to whether or not you know and can know that you will go to heaven tonight.
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CopticChristian
Guest
Well golly. You have and I should have said if you have not then you should and if you have then you will understand as I do.Who says I haven’t?
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CopticChristian
Guest
If you believe that the Church is the Pillar and foundation of all truths, the mystery hidden for all ages, the mystery through which the manifold wisdom of God is known and is the Body of Christ and Christ is the head and that all you believe comes from God…you can understand that when “thoughts” like this one that are contrary to what we believe…
what we believe to be the truth…it is seen as coming from other than God…for where do you draw the line…how do you then propose to register your opposition with a Mormon…who believes that they too have God revealed truth…Protestants claim this to be so, so why can’t they…?
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Little_Mary
Guest
Wow, you’ve got a pretty broad brush there.
Can you back that up please? Can you cite specific posts here, or specific publications from anywhere that you have read, that can back up your claim?
I am requesting no less than you have requested on other threads here.
Thanks.
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JRRTFAN
Guest
Nothing a TV Evangelist says is bizarre. It’s all true. Isn’t it?
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AmateurPianist
Guest
Sure.Wow, you’ve got a pretty broad brush there.
Can you back that up please? Can you cite specific posts here, or specific publications from anywhere that you have read, that can back up your claim?
I am requesting no less than you have requested on other threads here.
Thanks.
First I look up the Catholic definition of heresy.
From the Catholic encyclopedia
From this web site
Above being the scope of heresy. The article goes on to list the “great heresies” Protestantism (whatever that is).
The second part is Catholic sources linking heresy and Satan.
From the Catholic encyclopedia I found this quote by St. Jerome
Heresy per the Catholic church is a mortal sin
This souce links mortal sin to satan.
I am confident that if I want to spend more time I can find more sources along this line.
Finally, from this thread
Given that heresy is a mortal sin and given the Catholic definitions of heresy and mortal sin, these statements make sense.
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patrick457
Guest
To quote myself:
Indeed, many of the Church Fathers and other various shades of early Christians expressed a premillennialist view in their writings, such as Papias, St. Victorinus of Pettau, St. Justin Martyr (though some argue that his own eschatological views were not consistent), St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Melito of Sardis (as per St. Jerome’s testimony), Lactantius, and others, and even various gnostic groups and the Montanists. Justin makes it clear from early on though that the view he holds was not universal and that there was some differences in opinion, as “many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise.”
The concept of a temporary earthly messianic kingdom at the Messiah’s coming was not an invention of Christianity; instead it was a theological interpretation developed within the apocalyptic literature of early Judaism. You can already see this line of thinking in some apocalyptic works like 1 Enoch (2nd-1st century BC) and 2 Esdras (post-AD 70?). Some rabbis even debated as to how long the messianic kingdom would last, with figures ranging from sixty years up to 2000 years, or whether there would even be a messianic kingdom at all. Far from being a newly-invented Christian idea, it seems that premillennialism was already alive and thriving when Revelation was still being written. This is probably what is meant by the disciples of St. John understanding Revelation in a premillennialist light: one can say that they had merely inherited their beliefs from some Jewish schools of thought.
Now that being said, early Christian premillennialism, known as historic premillennialism, and the new-fangled Dispensationalist premillennialism of Darby and his ilk - the kind you encounter today in some Protestant circles - are two different beasts. Historic premillennialism, for instance, sees no radical theological distinction between Israel and the Church, unlike Dispensationalism. It maintains chiliasm because of its view that the Church will be caught up to meet Christ in the air after a period of tribulation (notice here: **no Rapture for the believers!) and then escort Him to the earth in order to share in His thousand-year rule. Early Christian premillennialism was often bound up with the belief in sexta-septamillennialism, the view which holds that the created universe will last for only six thousand years and then will enjoy a thousand years of Sabbath rest before the end. This septamillennial scenario echoes the six days of creation and the seventh day that God rested.
There had been rising opposition to premillennialism in the Patristic period, especially in the 3rd century AD. One of the first recorded opponents to this belief was the infamous hereitc Marcion. Not just the idea of a thousand-year messianic kingdom, he in fact doubted whether there would be a Parousia at all. There was no logical place in his system for a real second coming, all because he never believed that Jesus really became human in the first place.
Another one whom we know disagreed with this idea was Origen. Through allegorical interpretation, Origen had been a proponent of amillennialism, but in some of his writings he apparently took his allegoricalism too far and completely spiritualized Christ’s second coming: “Christ’s return signifies His disclosure of Himself and His deity to all humanity in such a way that all might partake of His glory to the degree that each individual’s actions warrant.” (Commentary on Matthew 12.30) Even Origen’s milder forms of this teaching left no room for a literal millennium and it was deemed so extreme that few actually followed it.
Dionysius, Pope of Alexandria (reigned 248-265) - himself once a student of Origen - stood against premillennialism when the chiliastic work, The Refutation of the Allegorizers written by an Egyptian bishop named Nepos, who was a strict literalist and designed the book to be a refutation of those who held allegorical interpretations of Scripture, became popular in Alexandria. With his reply, On the Promises, he argued against Nepos’s influence convincingly and with charity (he held Nepos in high regard and managed to criticize the doctrine without attacking the person!) and convinced the churches of the region of amillennialism.
We know this because the historian and bishop Eusebius of Caesarea preserved the story for us (Church History 7.24-25). Eusebius, for the record, had low regard for Papias, and attributed his premillennialism to a “misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures,” all because he had “very limited understanding.” (History 3.39.12-13)**
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patrick457
Guest
It was with St. Augustine - who was himself a premillennialist early in his career before shifting his view to amillennialism - that the amillennialist view became the dominant position in later theology; his influence in Western thinking has, after all, been great. His shift in views is believed to be the cause of:
- *]Reaction to Donatist Excesses: Augustine displayed a revulsion to the Donatists’ bacchanal feasts which seemingly used excessive amounts of food and drink (City of God, 20.7). Donatists were premillennial and it would seem that St. Augustine formed a connection between their ‘carnal’ behavior and their earthly eschatological expectation.
*]Reaction to Eschatological Sensationalism: The millennial fervor of premillennialists as the year AD 500 was nearing caused them to have overly jovial celebrations: some septa-/sextamillennial interpreters calculated Jesus’s birth to have happened 5,500 years after creation; thus AD 500 should, according to these calculations, mark the beginning of the thousand-year Sabbath and the End of Days. These celebrations, in Augustine’s view, appeared to take more pleasure in the physical world than the spiritual.
*]Preference for Allegorical Interpretation: Finally, St. Augustine was influenced by the popular allegorical interpretation of Scripture, particularly of Revelation. In this he took influence from Ticonius, the African Donatist writer about whom little is known except that in addition to two works in defense of Donatism, he wrote the Book of Seven Rules (Liber de septem regulis), detailing seven rules for interpreting the Bible, and a Commentary on Revelation itself, where he applies those same rules. Gennadius of Massilia wrote that Tyconius interpreted the book of Revelation in ‘a spiritual sense, nothing carnally’, and describes Tyconius’ interpretation of the book as a revelation, not of the (temporal) last days, but of the time of the Church:
He denied the idea of a kingdom of the righteous on earth lasting a thousand years after the resurrection. Nor did he admit two future resurrections of the dead in the flesh, one of the good and one of the bad, but only one of all, in which the misbegotten and deformed will rise too, so that no part of the human race ever animated by a soul shall perish. He showed the distinction of the resurrection really to be that we must believe that there is a revelation of the righteous now in this world, when those justified by faith rise by baptism from the death of sin to the reward of the eternal life, and the second [resurrection] to be the general one of all flesh.
His influence on St. Augustine is especially manifest in the work The City of God.
After moving away from premillennialism to amillennialism, St. Augustine viewed Sabbath rest in the sexta-/septamillennial scheme as “symbolically representative of Eternity.” Moreover, the millennium of Revelation 20 became for him “symbolically representative of Christ’s present reign with the saints.” His view laid the eschatological foundation for the Middle Ages onward which practically had all but abandoned premillennialism. Julian, Bishop of Toledo (642-690) summarizes the medieval doctrine of the millennium by referring to it as “the church of God which, by the diffusion of its faith and works, is spread out as a kingdom of faith from the time of the incarnation until the time of the coming judgment.”
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CopticChristian
Guest
That certainly fills in the blanks for the framework of Historic Premillinial, Amellinial, Postmillinial and the Millinialist of today…
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