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The Purposeful Contortion and Confusion of End Time Truth
A primary way Satan keeps people deluded about life and the world is by his contortion and confusion of either origin or end time truth. God reveals with pristine clarity the beginning and ending of everything. Both of these revelations are vital for faith and practice. Satan wants people deceived on how they got here and what will happen to them in the future.
Naturalism breeds more lust. I like to say, it means we got here by accident. No one’s your boss, so you’re your own boss. That sounds great to most people, doing what they want to do. Since they just happened, no design, they aren’t accountable to anyone or anything. They live like they want, which, based on the nature of man, means following lust.
Origins
Even if someone contemplates a possibility of God, that isn’t strong enough to replace the dominion of lust in a life. All the truths about God transmit from Him as origination of everything. Other truths about God diminish when He didn’t create us. The elimination of God creating man for HIs glory greatly decreases the power and importance of everything else scripture says.
The perversion of beginnings relates most to its compatibility with the theory of evolution. Modernists of the nineteenth century began rethinking the meaning of Genesis to fit with Darwinism. An allegorical interpretation of the first three chapters of the Bible allows to read evolution and an old earth into Genesis.
With people unsure about the beginning, it’s no wonder they doubt the ending. Even theologians turn eschatology into a non-essential now. They relegate prophecy to ambiguity. Many churches have removed most of their eschatology from their doctrinal statements. You don’t need a position to fit into a church. It’s too uncertain to require for even professing Christians.
Endings
On a recent prophecy post I wrote here, an anonymous commenter (whom I did not publish) called crazy (he used “nutjobs”) churches that talk about or preach prophecy. Opinions and speculation abounds on end time events.
The doctrines of Christ, salvation, man, and angels dovetail with prophecy. When Jesus arrived in the first century, very few were ready or awaited His coming, because they had detached from prophetic reality. The promises of God become of no effect as people falsify what He says will happen in the future. This then deadens their anticipation and smothers their hope.
History functions in a chiliastic manner. You could call it “going full circle.” Paradise lost and paradise regained. The destruction of the first necessitates the destruction of the last. This renders meaningless everything in between. Why believe anything if you can’t know how it starts and how it ends?
Many theologians and church leaders have capitulated to the attack on the origin and the ending. This relegates most everything to what people call, living in the present or living in the moment. I understand that concept in a positive way to a certain degree. Living in the moment requires mindfulness and focus on the task at hand and perhaps gratefulness for what you’re experiencing in the present. However, God wants futuristic living for the saints, an outlook of expectation.
A Forward Look
Scripture requires a forward look. Paul in Philippians said, “reaching forth unto those things which are before” (3:13) and “we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20). Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). If we can’t know our beginning or ending, we lose the basis for living like scripture says. An ultimate motivation for Paul was “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
‘Putting on the helmet of salvation’ (Ephesians 6:17) relates closely to last days events. Salvation is complete in the future. If people can’t be sure about most of the details, what can and do they mean? How would we be sure that these uncertain things could be true? This is where it stands in most ways today in eschatology.
Spiritualizing
The fastest growing view of the future is to spiritualize or allegorize the future. People allegorize almost all of the prophetic passages and they take on numerous different possible meanings. This has become not just possible but the preferred take in many places.
Now men spiritualize and allegorize the first few chapters of the Bible and the last book of the Bible. People can make it mean what they want. It’s no wonder people won’t take God’s Word seriously and churches are apathetic. If people can’t really know the beginning and the ending, why care about everything in between?
God and the Bible Are Dispensational (Part One)
God Wants Understanding of His Word
God delivered His Word for men to understand and by which they would live. Men must study it and then rightly divide it (2 Tim 2:15), but God made its meaning accessible (Rom 10:8-10, Deut 30:11-14). He will judge men according to it (John 12:48).
The Bible is not indecipherable. Its degree of opaqueness relates almost entirely to desire and belief. Proverbs 2:3-5 say these such things:
3 Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and] liftest up thy voice for understanding; 4 If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; 5 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
Still People May Not Understand God’s Word
Rebellious
On the other hand, Psalm 106:7 says,
Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.
God wanted understanding, but those who did not have “ears to hear” could not understand. Ezekiel 12:2 explains that some “have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.” Not understanding does not always relate to supernatural blinding. A student in class may not like the subject, so he does not comprehend or retain. Almost everything is lost on him. Furthermore, Jesus revealed in Matthew 13:13-15:
13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. 14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: 15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
Satanic
A sufficient degree of the understanding of scripture becomes unattainable to the one not caring about it or wanting it. An unbeliever might hear and comprehend, but still miss what God says. This testifies to the uniqueness of scripture. Isaiah 8:17 says: “And I will wait upon the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.” To some, God hides His face, and others will look for God, apparently finding Him because of that looking.
The Apostle Paul says Satan works toward deluminating blindness. “[T]he god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor 4:4). What someone might ordinarily understand, he cannot because Satan keeps him from getting it through various Satanic means.
God Wrote His Word with Plain Meaning
Since God wrote a book to man to understand, a man would expect a reading of it in accordance with a plain meaning. God intended accessibility of its message. Men would live by what He said even from a child.
I didn’t make this up. But how I explain plain meaning is understanding scripture like the people heard it in that day. What did the words mean and how were they used at the very time men wrote and received them?
What was God saying in Genesis to the original audience of Genesis? Or, what was the Lord saying in Matthew to the original audience of Matthew? When someone gets that interpretation, what God was really saying, what is that called? Someone might call that a literal interpretation or a grammatical-historical interpretation.
An original audience, the children of Israel, received the original manuscripts of the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah or Pentateuch. As they read through those writings, they received more understanding of each part as they also knew more of the whole. When God gave other inspired writings through various other human authors, such as Joshua, Judges, historical books, and poetic ones, the meaning of the previously given books, the Torah, did not change in meaning. Genesis still means the same as it did when the first readers first set eyes on it.
God Changed His Methods and Manner of Operation Sometimes
Different Eras or Ages
As God gave more writings, one could understand more of His will. Through history, sometimes God changed His methods or His manner of operations. God didn’t change. As He continued communicating with mankind, He used different, sometimes new genres. He spoke in different ways. God used symbolic or figurative language among other types of writing.
Looking back at proceeding time periods, historians recognize eras, ages, or periods of time. They may disagree with the dividing points for these periods, but they admit shifts in thinking and lifestyle. You’ve heard of premodern, modern, and postmodern as a description. Surely you’ve heard said, ancient, middle, and modern. Broader periods can break down into even more detail.
The Bible is Dispensational
The changes of methods and manners of God as seen in scripture also divide into epochs of time. In order to systematize a literal understanding of scripture, grammatical and historical, men organized scripture into dispensations. The system of interpretation became known as dispensationalism. Dispensation- alism recognized the continuity and discontinuity of God’s methods and manner of operation across these various ages.
God is dispensational in His revelation of Him and His will. The Bible is a dispensational book. Any literal or true view of history is dispensational.
Old Testament Priority
Succeeding new generations of recipients of original scripture could understand what they read in their day. Scripture did not change in meaning. However, God makes prophesies. He uses prophets to tell the future. The understanding of a divine prophecy could increase with time, closer to or after its fulfillment (cf. Daniel 12:4). The Babylonian captivity shed light on the prophesies of captivity. The return to the land after captivity shed light on the prophesies of return to the land.
The added understanding with a fulfillment of prophecy is not a change in meaning. God wanted understanding of what He said. He gave His Word to man to be lived. God meant the original audience of the Old Testament to understand its meaning. “Hearing” meant understanding (Deut 19:20, 21:21, 31:12-13). God did inspire the Old Testament with a New Testament priority. The Bible does not read as though God a thousand or more years later said what He really was saying in what He earlier inspired.
More to Come
Do We Need Evidence Outside of the Bible or Do Biblical Presuppositions Count as Evidence?
This post relates to the Ross-White Debate and the Related Subject of Landmarkism
In numerous ways God established the truth and authority of His Word. Believers rely on scripture for their faith and practice. They trust the Word of God as evidence. God said it, so it is true.
Scripture talks about Noah, so there is a Noah, Abraham, so there is an Abraham, and Moses, so there is a Moses. You don’t have to find something outside of the Bible about these figures to believe what God says about them in the Bible. It is self-evident. Whatever scripture says is true.
The Bible teaches justification by faith. Does evidence show that God imputes the righteousness of Christ to us, forgives all our sins, or justifies us by faith? I can’t point to the truth of this outside of the Bible. I believe it because God’s Word says it.
Was there a tree of life? Yes. Did the sun stand still in Joshua? Yes. Was there a Samson? Yes. How can we answer “yes” to any of these questions without something outside of the Bible?
Authentication of Scripture
Authentication of scripture exists outside the Bible. Men investigate the people and events recorded in it, outside of it. Nothing men find contradicts what it says. They can’t confirm everything, but for what they can find confirmation of the Bible outside of the Bible, it confirms it.
The Bible makes thousands of predictions. These are most often layered predictions with many different details to the prophecies. For the prophecies to come true, much happens that involves many different people and places. Fulfillment of every prophecy occurred.
Extra-scriptural written materials validate people and events in scripture. Archaeology confirms people and events in the Bible. When comparing one part of the Bible with another, one part or more confirms another part. Different sections confirm each other with their agreement. Fulfilled prophecies authenticate the truth and authority of what scripture says.
Copying Scripture
Scripture so impressed its readers and adherents that they copied it more than any other document. More hand copies exist than any other document in all of history, and by far. Hand copies of the Bible far exceed any other book. Many, many throughout history accepted it as true.
We can look at this world and know that it didn’t occur by accident. What we witness in nature requires more than naturalistic explanation. The supernatural explanation of the Bible matches what we see in the world. The comparison of passages within the Bible attest to their explanation of the origins of the world, people, nations, nature, civilization, events, and language. It provides a cohesive view of the world in which we live.
The Bible is its own evidence. By itself, it is a standard. The writings themselves ring with authority and truth. No one could just make them up.
Scripture Is Evidence
With everything that I have written so far, a reader of the Bible can depend on its contents to believe its doctrine. Where there is no sure evidence outside of scripture, scripture is the evidence. If God says holy men of God wrote the words of God under verbal, plenary inspiration, we believe that. If He says He will preserve all of those same words and how He will do that, we believe that. Whatever might contradict what scripture says, we hold to scripture and reject what contradicts it.
Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church, so they didn’t. Jesus said His Words would not pass away, so they didn’t. Believers deny whatever contradicts what God said. They deny modern textual critics who deny the perfect preservation of scripture. Believers deny the disappearance of true churches outside of the state church. They deny alterations of the creation story in Genesis 1 through 3. True Christians accept the table of nations in Genesis 10. Everything God says is true and every man a liar.
Scripture is the test of truth. Jesus said, God’s Word is truth. As an example, today so-called experts talk about climate change and the end of life on earth. We reject those claims. Even the evidence outside the Bible challenges their assertions, but the Bible presents a different view.
The Bible Guides the Right Interpretation of History
The Bible provides the authoritative basis for the right interpretation of history. If a view of history contradicts the Bible, believers accept the Bible over the view. Isaiah 40 to 48 talks about the interpretation of history. Isaiah calls these “the former matters.” Isaiah, because of God, could relate former matters with present and future ones. God sees it all at all times. He knows it all.
Since the Bible is true, it is also evidence. This is a matter of faith. We believe it, based on that evidence. It guides our interpretation. When we look back at what happened, we start with presuppositions based upon the Bible. Our interpretation of history must conform to the Bible.
In the recent debate with James White, Thomas Ross started with scriptural presuppositions. They are true. God said what He would do with scripture. We might not prove the fulfillment of these presuppositions outside of scripture. They’re still true.
If God said He would preserve every word, God would make all of them available to every generation of believers, and He would use the church to do it, that’s what we believe. What God said provides the authoritative basis for the right interpretation of history. I believe what God said He would do, because what He said is true.
What Pleases God
When people come up with other points of view on preservation that reject or deny what God said, I reject those. They may say they have evidence. I will look at it, and I have. Their so-called evidence is an interpretation of history. That’s all it is. They say this and that about Erasmus or Beza or Athanasius that all conforms to their naturalistic point of view. I listen to it, see how it fits into a biblical view of history, and if it doesn’t, I don’t believe it. That is what pleases God.
How I look at the history of the preservation of scripture is also how I look at the history of the preservation of the church. It is how I look at the history of Christian doctrine. Because I don’t believe in an apostasy of orthodox doctrine and practice, I reject that it happened. History seems to say it did in certain instances, but how trustworthy is history before the printing press?
Example
James White uses the example of Athanasius as proof that the Comma Johanneum (important part of 1 John 5:7) did not exist at that time. Athanasius didn’t quote it apparently. First, we have to depend on Athanasius. Then we have to rely on the report of Athanasius. Did someone report him accurately? And then we have to trust the preservation of the report of Athanasius. Why was this report preserved and other reports not? To the victors go the spoils.
On some doctrinal content, not necessarily this one, did the Roman Catholics control the flow of information and destroy what did not confirm its doctrine? Someone can say it’s true, because they read something. James White did that. It works today for his point of view. Did what he say fit with scriptural presuppositions? He says it fit with Athanasius, and what scripture says, be gone. I reject his interpretation of it because it contradicts scriptural presuppositions. That is how believers should interpret history.
Greeks Seek After Wisdom
Paul said the Jews seek after signs. They validated with signs. He said, Greeks seek after wisdom. They validated with wisdom. For something to be true, was it accompanied by signs? For something to be true, does wisdom confirm it? Believers say, the foolishness of preaching, which is the substance of preaching from scripture. That glorifies God.
When James White and others present their wisdom, who is glorified? They are. When we speak, they say it sounds like foolishness. Does this sound familiar when you think about what the Apostle Paul said?
The Regular History of Clever New Interpretations, Teachings, or Takes on and from Scripture: Socinianism
One way to get a Nobel prize in something, you’ve got to break some new ground or discover something no one has ever seen. In the world, the making of a printing press or light bulb changes everything. People still try to invent a better mousetrap. It happens. The phone replaced the telegraph and now our mobile devices, the phone.
Everyone can learn something new from scripture. You might even change or tweak a doctrine you’ve always believed. On the whole, you don’t want to teach from the Bible what no one has ever heard before. The goal is the original intent and understanding of the Author.
From the left comes progressivism. The U. S. Constitution, just over two hundred years old, means something different than when it was written. Loosely constructed, it has a flexible interpretation into which new meanings arise. Hegelian dialectics say a new thesis comes from synthesis of antithesis and a former thesis. Everything can be improved.
Early after the inspiration and then propagation of the Bible, men found new things no one ever saw in scripture. Many of these “finds” started a new movement. People have their fathers, the father of this or that teaching, contradictory to the other, causing division and new factions and denominations. Some of these changes become quite significant, a majority supplanting the constituents of the original teaching.
At the time of the Reformation, it was as if the world first found sole fide and sole scriptura. Men often call justification the Reformation doctrine of justification. This opened a large, proverbial can of worms. Many could read their own Bible in their own language. Others now dug into their own copy of the original languages of scripture. Skepticism grew. “If we didn’t know this before, what else did they not tell us?” It became a time ripe for religious shysters and this practice hasn’t stopped since then.
Socinus
The Italian, Laelius Socinus, was born in 1525 into a distinguished family of lawyers. Early his attention turned from law to scripture research. He doubted the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Socinus moved in 1548 to Zurich to study Greek and Hebrew. He still questioned established doctrine and challenged the Reformers. Laelius wrote his own confession of faith, which introduced different, conflicting beliefs. They took hold of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, born in 1539.
Faustus rejected orthodox Roman Catholic doctrines. The Inquisition denounced him in 1559, so he fled to Zurich in 1562. There he acquired his uncle’s writings. His doubt of Catholicism turned anti-Trinitarian. The Reformation did not go far enough for Socinus. His first published work in 1562 on the prologue of John rejected the essential deity of Jesus Christ.
Socinus’s journeys ended in Poland, where he became leader of the Minor Reformed Church, the Polish Brethren. His writings in the form of the Racovian Catechism survived through the press of the Racovian Academy of Rakow, Poland. His beliefs took the name, Socinianism, now also a catch-all for any type of dissenting doctrine.
Socinianism held that Jesus did not exist until his physical conception. God adopted Him as Son at His conception and became Son of God when the Holy Spirit conceived Him in Mary, a Gnostic view called “adoptionism.” It rejected the doctrine of original sin.
Socianism denied the omniscience of God. It introduced the first well developed concept of “open theism,” which said that man couldn’t have free will under a traditional (and scriptural) understanding of omniscience.
Socinianism also taught the moral example theory of atonement, teaching that Jesus sacrificed himself to motivate people to repent and believe. His death gave men the ability to be saved by their own works, who weren’t sinners by nature anyway.
Unitarians
The work of Socinus lived on in the belief of early English Unitarians, Henry Hedworth and John Biddle. Socinian belief was helped along also by its position of conscientious objection, a practice of refusing to perform military service. This principle was very popular with many and made Socinianism much more attractive to potential adherents. The First Unitarian Church, which followed Socianism as passed down through its leaders in England, was started in 1774 on Essex Street in London, where British Unitarian headquarters are still today.
As the Puritans of colonial America apostatized through various means, Unitarianism, a modern iteration of Socinianism took hold in the Congregational Church in America. After 1820, Congregationalists took Unitarianism as their established doctrine. The doctrine of Christ diminished to Jesus a good man and perhaps a prophet of God and in a sense the Son of God, but not God Himself.
Spirit of Skepticism
I write as an example of the diversity in the history of Christian doctrine and why it takes place. When you read the beliefs of Socinians, you easily see them in modern liberal Christianity. They influence on religious cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
A limited amount of skepticism wards away the acceptance of false doctrine. Better is a Berean attitude (Acts 17:11), searching the scripture to see if these things are so, and what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, proving all things, holding fast to that which is good.
As I grew up among fundamentalists and independent Baptists, I witnessed regular desire to find something new in the Bible. Many sermons espoused interpretations I had never heard and didn’t see in the text. A preacher often said, “God gave it to me.” You should know God used the man because no one had seen such insights into scripture.
The same spirit of doctrinal novelty continues today in many evangelical churches. The same practice led Joseph Smith in his founding of Mormonism. Many cults arose in 19th century America under the same spirit of skepticism of established historical doctrines.
The Temptation of Novel Teaching
The temptation of novel teaching preys on anyone. Faustus Socinus accepted many orthodox doctrines of his day. He rejected Christ as fully God and fully human because it was contrary to sound reason (ratio sana). This steered Socinians toward Enlightenment thinking, where human reason took the highest role as arbiter of truth.
Warren Wiersbe wrote that H.A. Ironside, longtime pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, said, “If it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Elsewhere I read that Spurgeon first said that. I don’t know. Clever new interpretations, teachings, and takes on and from scripture corrupt and overturn scriptural, saving doctrines in the hearts of men. They condemn them through all eternity.
Are We Living in the Last Days? The Right Approach to Biblical Prophecy
The Bible is a prophetic book. That alone is an amazing statement, because it is the only prophetic book in the world, because it is the only one written by God. Prophecy has a lot of purposes, a major one being a validation that that the Bible is in fact the Word of God. As you open the New Testament, it is easy to see the importance of prophecy all over it. God wants us to take it seriously.
The first page of the New Testament in Matthew, a genealogy, is related to prophecy, because the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are prophetic. The genealogy proves that Jesus is a fulfillment of those predictions. Then you get the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy that says that Jesus is a fulfillment of that. Then you have the magi setting off looking for the Messiah based upon what? Prophecy. Then there are four wondrous prophecies in four different geographical locations in the second half of Matthew 2 that confirm who Jesus is. Matthew 3 talks about John the Baptist, himself another fulfillment of prophecy.
When Peter preaches on the Day of Pentecost, almost every point he makes relies on prophecy. When the baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs, what is that? It is a fulfillment of the prophecy of John the Baptist, Acts 1:5, which is repeated by Jesus before He ascends into heaven. When the unbelievers mock what’s happening in Acts, Peter defends it with what? Prophecy. He refers to Joel 2:28-32 in Acts 2:17-21 to kick off his sermon there, explaining to the audience what’s going on. He starts:
15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. 16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God
It is such an unusual, outlying event, outside of the norm for comprehension, Peter makes the connection to the Old Testament. This gigantic crowd wasn’t all drunken. This is what Joel was talking about, and Peter says that what was occurring there on the Day of Pentecost was “in the last days.” Generally, when people say, “We’re in the last days,” they mean something different than what Peter says, so that becomes confusing. Peter’s usage of the last days is the correct usage and it’s what we should imitate.
We’re not waiting for the last days. We’re already in them. Peter was saying that he and his audience were in them. 1 John 2:18 says,
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
“Last days” or “last time,” which is the same terminology, is ironically a terminology from Old Testament prophecy. That’s what is supposed to get us up to speed is the Old Testament usage. Here are some places:
Isaiah 2:2, And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
Jeremiah 23:20, The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.
Ezekiel 38:8, After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
Daniel 10:14, Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
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