Is Jack Van Impe Right About the Millenium?

[Timmy_Z]

You gave me the kind of answer I wanted, thanks!

I was not trying to put you on the spot.

I just wanted to know how they see the rapture etc.

I do not know about those things.

I merely wanted information.

THANKS!!!

As far as I know JVI and Tim Lahaye (author of Left Behind) share the same dispensationist premillenialism. It is all charted out here:
timlahaye.com/shopexd.asp?id=134&bc=no
or here:
amazon.com/Charting-End-Times-Understanding-Prophecy/dp/0736901388

The eschatology of it goes basically like this (this is obviously a very brief summary):

We are in the 6th Dispensation (the Church/Grace Age). It ends with the Rapture (all the saved meet Christ in the clouds and are spared the end). With the salt of the Earth gone it rots pretty quickly. The anti-christ comes with a 7yr tribulation. The last 3.5 is the worst part. Throughout God pours out the judgements of Revelation. The Tribulation ends when Christ comes and establishes the millenial kingdom and binds satan. At the end of 1000 yrs satan is loosed one last time and then comes the Great White Throne Judgement.

Honestly the books or chart I cited above are pretty cheap and will give you a pretty good understanding of of the theology and eschatology of the majority of todays Christians with the Scripture citations.

-Tim

 

[JustaServant]

Did St. Augustine change church teaching from believing in the 1000 year reign of Christ on earth to the current teaching which does not accept the 1000 year reign?

Jack Van Impe (a prominent televangelist) teaches there will be a Rapture, Tribulation, and then Christ will rule on earth for 1000 years. My question is about the 1000 years of Christ’s rule on earth.

On his television show on 5-7-08, Jack Van Impe (JVI) stated that there were 21 Early Church Fathers who agreed with the 1000 year reign of Christ after the Tribulation. JVI said the following Early Church Fathers agreed with this teaching: St. Barnabas, St. Bartholomew, St Irenaeus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Lactantuus, and St. Methodious, and others.

Then in 431 AD, according to JVI, St. Augustine changed the church teachings of these 21 Early Church Fathers to a position which says the 1000 year reign is not valid. JVI states that Ambrose & Origen (who were “Jew Haters”) convinced St. Augustine to drop the idea of Christ’s reign of 1000 years because this teaching was too close to the Jewish teaching of end times.

This is the same guy who claims when Jesus said "there shall be signs in the Heavens’, that was referring to the moon landing. He also quoted an OT passage relating to ‘chariots of fire’ and claims that refers to automobiles.
Methinks he takes things out of context to suit his own purposes.
One of the purposes fundamentalists have in studying ECFs is to find something that agrees with then so they have more ‘traction’, especially with Catholics who watch his ‘show’.
I have to say this:
I know people think he is ‘sincere’. I’m sorry, he’s not.
The only reason he is no longer anti-Catholic is because of the scores of Catholic little old ladies who watch his program and give money for his propaganda. Half of his program is SELLING his material to Catholics fascinated with ‘end times’ and don’t know their faith well enough to know how to refute the garbage he delivers.
There, my mind is clean.

 

[garysibio]

Did St. Augustine change church teaching from believing in the 1000 year reign of Christ on earth to the current teaching which does not accept the 1000 year reign?

Jack Van Impe (a prominent televangelist) teaches there will be a Rapture, Tribulation, and then Christ will rule on earth for 1000 years. My question is about the 1000 years of Christ’s rule on earth.

On his television show on 5-7-08, Jack Van Impe (JVI) stated that there were 21 Early Church Fathers who agreed with the 1000 year reign of Christ after the Tribulation. JVI said the following Early Church Fathers agreed with this teaching: St. Barnabas, St. Bartholomew, St Irenaeus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Lactantuus, and St. Methodious, and others.

Then in 431 AD, according to JVI, St. Augustine changed the church teachings of these 21 Early Church Fathers to a position which says the 1000 year reign is not valid. JVI states that Ambrose & Origen (who were “Jew Haters”) convinced St. Augustine to drop the idea of Christ’s reign of 1000 years because this teaching was too close to the Jewish teaching of end times.

I recently read David Currie’s Rapture and he mentions that St. Irenaeus believed in a literal Millennium but speculated that he did so because it fit well with his defense of the Gospel against the Gnostics. I didn’t look up the passage.

Gary

 

[ryanoneil]

Yes. St. Justin Martyr’s opinion in favor of a literal 1000-year reign can be found in his Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 80-81. He says that he himself and many other Christians share this opinion but he admits that there are many true Christians who think otherwise.

Thanks Todd.

Peace,

Ryan

 

[drpmjhess]

mo3Do you have a timeline for those ideas from Jack Van Impe?Thanks!

The world will end on May 21, 2011. (Harold Camping, Time has an End.)

 

[garysibio]

The world will end on May 21, 2011. (Harold Camping, Time has an End.)

This is the same guy who said it would happen in 1994.

Gary

 

[drpmjhess]

This is the same guy who said it would happen in 1994.Gary

Right. He now says that God has conveyed a lot more information to humans than was available in 1994. I’m looking forward to it, because since I’m Catholic I won’t be raptured, and real estate prices will be in free fall with all those evangelicals being raptured. I expect to be able to pick up furnished houses for my kids relatively inexpensively, to live in during the tribulation period.

Petrus

 

[Bastoune]

Then in 431 AD, according to JVI, St. Augustine changed the church teachings of these 21 Early Church Fathers to a position which says the 1000 year reign is not valid. JVI states that Ambrose & Origen (who were “Jew Haters”) convinced St. Augustine to drop the idea of Christ’s reign of 1000 years because this teaching was too close to the Jewish teaching of end times.

I’m curious how Origen changed Augustine’s mind in 431 when Origen was born in A.D. 185 and died in 232… so the two never had a chance to meet given that Augustine was born in 354. Oh yeah, and he DIED on 28 August, 430.

Ambrose was the bishop of Milan and responsible for Augustine’s conversion. He taught Augustine everything he knew. How he “changed” Augustine’s mind is beyond me then. And he too not only didn’t know Origen, but he lived from A.D. 340 (?) - 397.

But at least Jack Van Impe (the only Darbyist who is actually Catholic-friendly!!! He told people on the air to READ THE CCC because it is “saturated with the Word of GOD”!!!) is a little closer with his dates.

On one episode, cited in Carl Olson’s book, Will Catholics be Left Behind Van Impe claimed that Augustine “changed” from Pre-Millenialism in A.D. 190!!!

Van Impe like most Protestants (look at Chick tracts…) like to throw out “factoids” knowing full well that no one watching will bother to confirm if they are true or not.

But in his defense, he seems a sincere, devout man, and indeed, his love of the Catholic Church is very surprising in such circles.

 

[bogeydogg]

I think the millennium is a restatement to the Jews of the promised thousand year reign. But then again, I think the Apocalypse is largely a book written from Jesus to the Jews to assure them that though Jerusalem will soon be destroyed it does not mean that God has cast them off forever. It is also a warning to Christians to remain faithful because they too were, a lot of them, Jews who were converted who would have seen the destruction of the Temple as a terrible thing and would find it nearly unexplainable at that time. I realize of course that the Church has since processed it and now we can understand it better but at the time it had to be a terrible shock even though Jesus had prophesied it.

 

[mom4truth]

What is the official Church Doctrine on the Tribulation? Anyone know? I’m curious and I keep finding different answers

Thanks!

 

[Nita]

"The millennium is a golden age not when compared to the glories of the age to come, but in comparison to all prior ages of human history, in which the world was swallowed in pagan darkness. Today, a third of the human race is Christian and even more than that have repudiated pagan idols and embraced the worship of the God of Abraham." from the link as provided in the quote.

I am trying to figure out what the underlined statement implies.

Thanks for the quote Katy. For us, 2000 years later, I think it’s a point we often fail to consider or grasp (ie.Christianity in a pagan dominated world- contrast between the two). Altho the way things are going in our nation, we may experience it before we die. Have heard this era labelled “Post Christian” more than once.

I think the underlined portion is a reference to Jews and Moslems who also believe in one God, the creator of the universe.

Nita

 

[Nita]

What is the official Church Doctrine on the Tribulation? Anyone know? I’m curious and I keep finding different answers

Thanks!

CCC#675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
(See 677 and 678 also.)

 

[cothrige]

A simple method of dealing with abusers of CF writings is to ask for one CF who rebelled after a dispute was settled by the Church. There are none, for the simple reason that one cannot be called a Church Father and oppose Church teaching after the fact.

I am not too sure, but doesn’t St. Thomas Aquinas quote Origen in his Catena Aurea as a Church Father? Didn’t Origen finally fall from the true faith as you describe above? And what about Tertullian? Or were they only condemned later, never facing correction in their lives? I wouldn’t have thought so though, and am not too sure if that would really change things.

As to St. Augustine, looking in Book XX Chapter 7 of City of God (De Civitate Dei) there are these statements which I thought may be relevant:

“Thos who … have suspected that the first resurrection is future and bodily, have been moved, among other things, specially by the number of a thousand years, as if it were a fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest during that period, a holy leisure after the labours of the six thousand years since man was created, and was on account of his great sin dismissed from the blessedness of Paradise into the woes of this mortal life, so that thus, as it is written, ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,’ there should follow on the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it is for this purpose the saints rise, viz., to celebrate the Sabbath. And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion.”

Here St. Augustine admits to having once been what he a few sentences later calls a Chiliast and so something did in fact change his mind. I do not know who or what, but it did happen. And as City of God was written in the late evening of his life it is possible he had been a chiliast for some time.

Patrick

 

[mom4truth]

So - the “mystery of iniquity” is the same as the tribulation, correct? I’m just trying to get this all straightened out in my lame brain!

 

[rtconstant]

I am not too sure, but doesn’t St. Thomas Aquinas quote Origen in his Catena Aurea as a Church Father? Didn’t Origen finally fall from the true faith as you describe above? And what about Tertullian? Or were they only condemned later, never facing correction in their lives? I wouldn’t have thought so though, and am not too sure if that would really change things.

As to St. Augustine, looking in Book XX Chapter 7 of City of God (De Civitate Dei) there are these statements which I thought may be relevant:

Here St. Augustine admits to having once been what he a few sentences later calls a Chiliast and so something did in fact change his mind. I do not know who or what, but it did happen. And as City of God was written in the late evening of his life it is possible he had been a chiliast for some time.

Patrick

What the poster is meaning is that once the Church speaks on a matter no Church Father continued to oppose it. Or at least corrected himself. Sure many Church Fathers have held to beliefs here and there that would not be completely orthodox by today’s standards but that is because that times has forced The Church to define things for clarification that it had not defined before. That doesn’t mean though that those in the past are now heretics they held to their beliefs in good faith.

Also in regards to Origen he was Church Father and a great one. Nor did anyone during his lifetime consider him anything other than an exemplary Christian. The controversies that surround him were after his death and are suspect at best.

 

[Bastoune]

Also in regards to Origen he was Church Father and a great one. Nor did anyone during his lifetime consider him anything other than an exemplary Christian. The controversies that surround him were after his death and are suspect at best.

Which is why he was not canonized. Still a genius:

newadvent.org/cathen/11306b.htm

All about the controversy.

Tertullian, on the other hand, did end up in a schismatic group, though otherwise before that brilliant.

 

[drpmjhess]

Thanks for the quote Katy. For us, 2000 years later, I think it’s a point we often fail to consider or grasp (ie.Christianity in a pagan dominated world- contrast between the two). Altho the way things are going in our nation, we may experience it before we die. Have heard this era labelled “Post Christian” more than once.Nita

I’m sure the church will be around for thousands of years more, as long as humanity is. The economic meltdown coming in the next decade as we run out of affordable petroleum will reduce human numbers drastically to a billion or two, but humans will survive, as will civilization in pockets, and I’m sure Christianity will be there as well. Animal life on Earth will survive for another five hundred million years, and the earth itself for five billion years until the sun swells to Red Giant size and swallows up Mercury, Venus, and Earth. Perhaps the “second coming” will be related to that event.

Petrus

 

[Minnesota_Mary]

CCC#675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
(See 677 and 678 also.)

I think section 676 of the CCC is important also:

“The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatalogical judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.”

Jack Van Impe has conveniently ignored this part of the CCC.

 

[Minnesota_Mary]

mo3

Do you have a timeline for those ideas from Jack Van Impe?

Thanks!

The timelines you want to look at are the ones in David Currie’s book, “Rapture, The End Times Error That Leaves The Bible Behind.”

Currie’s book, along with “Will Catholics Be Left Behind” by Carl Olson, and "The Rapture Trap, by Dr. Paul Thigpen, are the best books out there to refute the heresy of millenarianism. Each of the authors was raised on that belief system and departed from it because it is unbiblical.

 

[Nita]

So - the “mystery of iniquity” is the same as the tribulation, correct? I’m just trying to get this all straightened out in my lame brain!

To tell the truth, I’m not positive, but I think so.
There really isn’t much Church doctrine concerning the end times. It just hasn’t been a main focus in Catholicism - like it has been in some Protestant religions. It is Catholic dogma that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Teachings in connection with this final coming are derived from Scripture (Info from Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma):

1. Gospel preached to whole world (Mt 24:14)
2. Conversion of Jews (Rom. 11: 25-32)
3. False prophets and apostasy (Mt. 24:4 and sequence; 2 Thess 2:3)
4. Appearance of anti-Christ (2 Thess 2:3)
5. Severe tribulations (Mt. 24:29)

I think in Catholicism we tend to use the phrase “end of the world” rather than “tribulation”. For us “tribulation” would just be a word that can be used to refer to the trials and sufferings that will occur at the end. In Fundamentalism it has more specific meanings that would not be part of our teaching (eg. 7 literal years; for some, the 7 years split into two periods of 3 1/2 years; etc.)

Nita