The Evangelical Universalist Forum

70 AD- calling you Davo

Davo, If we are not following the ways of the One True God, we are not reconciled to God. Since the beginning of creation, there have been false beliefs and doctrines which still continue to be preached today. Throughout the Old Testament there were times when these false beliefs were more prevalent( times of darkness and bondage) and times of refreshing, when the people turned their hearts back to God and became prosperous. This seems to be a reoccurring process.

I think davo was saying that God did his part without us having to follow anything, and that it was Christ that did the atoning work of redeeming Israel, and thus the whole of humanity. Our following, is a by product of our ‘understanding’ of what God has done though Jesus.

LLC, I agree that there is a distinction between Israel the man, and the nation of Israel. Further, Romans 2:28 states, *“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.”
*
But we need to be wary of Replacement Theology. I believe the following verse (referenced in Luke 24:21) is referring to national Israel:

He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. Psalm 130:8.

**So I disagree with you that, ***“When the New Testament speaks of redeeming Israel, I think that they are talking about any man who follows the true God.” *

Consider Romans 11:25-29 (NKJV):

For me, as a futurist, the above passage points to a future national repentance, at the time of the future, physical, second coming of Christ. (Yes, the first Christians were all Jews; and there are many Jewish converts today. But the majority of Jews are still unsaved.)

Again, as a futurist, I recognize this related prophecy to be as yet unfulfilled:

Let me add that I believe God was, is, and will only ever be, nonviolent. Hence, I no longer buy into any bloodbaths supposedly perpetrated by God. As I have said elsewhere,

We are not to be passive or fatalistic about the devil. As my friend Richard Murray has said,

Blessings.

The pantelist position understands that God unilaterally reconciled the world to Himself through Christ, where He God unilaterally forgave humanity’s sins… this is the most obvious and plain reading of 2Cor 5:19, i.e., it’s there in black and white. IOW… divine reconciliation is NOT predicated on human response.

‘Human response’ comes from the resultant “realisation” where one gets an inkling of the grace of God that established such wondrous reconciliation and accordingly expresses one’s heart-felt gratitude to God for this.

Belief does NOT establish truth — truth however can establish belief! << read that again!Again, a pantelist understanding views “the reconciliation” as the established work of God, period. However… coming into the revelation OF reconciliation expressed by a faith response brings one into the realm of “eternal life” in accord with Jesus’ specific definition where eternal life is a coming into the knowledge of God and Christ, as per Jn 17:3. You will note such ‘eternal life’ has EVERYTHING to do with THIS LIFE here and now. This is the life Jesus saves us to. What lies beyond is not an issue.

Paul gives a good distinction between God’s established reconciliation AND THEN the salvation (eternal life) faith releases one into…

Christ’s death (crucifixion) wrought reconciliation for all, period; Christ’s life (resurrection) wrought salvation, i.e., eternal life to those grasping it. Salvation is about purpose not position it is about service to God in this life and NOT about getting to heaven in the next.

Even as a futurist, I agree with this idea of unilateral reconciliation as an accomplished fact. However, here is a definition of pantelism offered by Theopedia.com:

Based on my earlier comment today (above) I obviously disagree that the Second Coming of Christ occurred [invisibly? spiritually?] at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. For me, that idea is somewhat akin to,

  1. Jehovah’s Witnesses: “Watch Tower Society publications teach that Jesus Christ returned invisibly and began to rule in heaven as king in October 1914. They state that the beginning of Christ’s heavenly rule would seem worse initially for mankind because it starts with the casting out of Satan from heaven to the earth, which according to Revelation 12, would bring a brief period of ‘woe’ to mankind.” From Wikipedia.

  2. Latter Rain/Manifest Sons of God/Joel’s Army teachings that Jesus comes “spiritually and invisibly” to His Church to “incarnate” the Corporate Body and reveal Himself to the world through miraculous signs and wonders performed by the “Manifest Sons of God.” (See here, here, and here.)

Also,

That doesn’t sound quite right to me. Service to God now? Yes. Divine healing available now? Yes. Nevertheless, these mortal bodies are to be transformed:

And as evangelical universalist Charles H. Pridgeon said in his esteemed treatise differentiating time and eternity (***Is Hell Eternal or Will God’s Plan Fail? ***available here or here):

Blessings.

You’ll find the true, proper, unadulterated and full whole enchilada right HERE.

This is more than a bit of a misnomer… I’m afraid aiming for ‘guilt by association’ when you don’t properly know a position’s stance only shows one to be ill-informed; these two positions are in fact both FUTURISTS positions, and as such have far more in common with your own futurism.

HOW does the potential for transformation (regardless of the argument as to what that is said to be) negate the bible’s call to godly service in this life; like what’s your point of… “that doesn’t sound quite right to me”?

In my most recent comment (a little above) I referenced the JW’s and the Latter Rain/Joel’s Army/Manifest Sons of God, because, like the supporters of pantelism, they share a belief that the Second Coming of Christ has already occurred, invisibly or spiritually (in the case of pantelism, circa AD70).

So, we are debating this issue of the Second Coming: you say it has already occurred; I contend it most certainly has not. I believe the Scriptures plainly indicate there should be no ambiguity or debate about the Second Coming of Christ:

Again, very conspicuous when it happens; no ambiguity:

That contrition over the rejection of the “pierced” Messiah at his Second Coming was previously mentioned by Zechariah:

The idea that the Second Coming of Christ occurred at the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., does not comport with Zechariah stating that, at his coming, the Lord would [successfully] defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; that every eye would see him; or that the inhabitants of Jerusalem would mourn for him as one mourns for his only son.

At the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, “Josephus claims that 1.1 million people were killed during the siege, of which a majority were Jewish, and that 97,000 were captured and enslaved.…” Wikipedia.

Again, I maintain that God is nonviolent, and that the prophets, through ignorance, sometimes conflated God with Satan in the events they were seeing prophetically. So, to say it was God who killed all those Jews in 70 A.D., because He was angry with them for rejecting His Son, is now reprehensible to me.

That reiterated, I am still a convinced futurist, and take the warning of the apostle John about the spirit of Antichrist seriously:

I agree with this viewpoint about John’s warning,

According to the late Professor Arthur E. Bloomfield, it is indispensable to understand that prophecy is addressed to those living when the prophecy is fulfilled. His assertion is certainly of relevance to the preterist/futurist debate. In *All Things New: A Study of Revelation *(1959), he clarifies,

Thank you.

Well it’s not a very good rationale… that’s like saying pantelists believe the resurrection is past… so did Hymenaeus and Philetus; QED pantelism is the Hymenian heresy, and yet such simplistic reasoning has no real understanding as the the nature of the resurrection Hymenaeus and Philetus had in mind.

Jesus’… “Do not go running off after them” needs to be understood in its historical context. In THEIR day there were ALREADY false messiahs-type-figures doing their thing deceiving many (Acts 5:36-37, also Dositheos, Judas of Galilee, Theudas) — so Jesus’ prophetic warning ACTUALLY meant something to them, i.e., he wasn’t speaking blithely and pointlessly over their heads; they were his people and he cared about them.

The very text itself (Rev 1:7) militates against your futurism… “tribes of the land” i.e., none other than “Israel”. And as to Zechariah… yet another demonstration of futurist convenience. There is little value in appealing to Zechariah given your stated position of… “I maintain that God is nonviolent” WHEN right in the middle of that very passage GOD SAYS… “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.” You cannot with any consistency have it both ways.

It only doesn’t “comport” for you because you don’t understand it. Jesus was to… “come in the glory of the Father”. Yahweh’s glory was awesome and fearful and whenever He came in judgement the literality of the event was understood by the means (usually another nation) whereby this occurred…

It’s the same apocalyptic language of Jesus’ mini-apocalypse of the gospels… cosmic heavenly language describing temporal earthly events that held great spiritual significance. This was the way Yahweh “came” in OT judgement; the events of AD70 reflect the same, and those who trusted in the Lord were duly “saved” (Mt 24:13).

Davo, from what I understand God is omnipresent. He never left.So it is you, yourself that needs to come to the to the truth that is already there.

LLC… I’m not sure where or how you’ve read that God “left”? That there was a break or hindrance in man’s “relationship” with God is a given, at least in biblical story of beginnings, and how that was remedied IS the biblical story of redemption and ultimately reconciliation. What was fractured by the first Adam was restored by the last Adam.

Again… human response doesn’t make reconciliation real, rather, human response taps into that pre-existing and established reality.

Noah’s taking God’s warning seriously saved him, his family, and the whole human race.

I believe the worldwide Genesis Flood literally occurred, and produced a geological record showing catastrophe. Massive, worldwide coal, oil, and natural gas deposits are carbon-based byproducts of compressed and decaying organic matter.

It is a known fact that the poles were once warm, even tropical, and that they suddenly became cold, and flooded with water at the same time.

As to the argument that the Flood was a local event, there are sedimentary (water-laid) layers all over the earth, and those sediments contain the buried remains of billions of creatures. The fossilization of living things is evidence that they were buried rapidly, not slowly, since they did not simply decompose.

Layers of sedimentation from the floodwaters have been erroneously labeled as geological ages separated by vast quantities of time. There is a spiritual aspect to this scientific misinterpretation.

Peter acknowledges that the Flood was a literal event:

(However, as you know, I believe Peter was incorrect in not assigning responsibility for this violence to Satan. However I don’t throw out everything Peter says because of this disagreement, any more than I throw out futurism because I now recognize God is nonviolent.)

Peter later associates unbelief about the literal, physical worldwide Flood with unbelief about the literal, physical Second Coming of Christ:

And we observe that in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus links the conditions before the Flood of Noah with the conditions characterizing the earth at the time of the coming [first] Rapture:

There is nothing wrong with eating and drinking, or in marrying and giving in marriage. The point is the people were so carried away with the pleasures of the world that they were indifferent to Noah’s prophetic warnings. God always tries to warn people of Satan’s schemes, and to provide a way of escape.

In distinction to other futurists, I do NOT believe the Rapture is imminent.

Perhaps a fourth of the Bible is prophecy, and I would argue that the bulk of that must yet be fulfilled during a short period of time in the relatively near future, just a “generation” in length (Mt. 24:34).

Regarding the sign of the fig tree, I believe the tree will begin to leaf when the Antichrist comes on the world stage. Prior to the Pre-Trib Rapture, some global crisis will come, and be resolved militarily by the Antichrist; his uprooting three horns signifies defeating three countries:

Again, please allow me to quote Professor Bloomfield, from *Signs Of His Coming: A Study Of The Olivet Discourse *(1962):

In addition to evangelism, and acts of charity, the church needs to be prayerfully reconsidering the prophetic Scriptures.

I would further argue that today we need to be earnestly pursuing the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:31), for example, the gift of the discerning of spirits (1 Cor. 12:10).

Blessings.

That Noah’s flood was literal is uncontested… but nothing you said prior to this necessitates a single global flood. All such things were possible by multiple regional deluges. Not only that but the planet is predominately covered with water and ancient geological activities can well explain and so produced the same.

This is where your position forces you to become creative and imaginative in introducing to the text what simply IS NOT THERE, period. That you choose not to believe the Apostle Peter, and Moses’ account (Gen 6:6-7) is fine, but changing the text by saying other than what Peter said is disingenuous at best and dishonest (IMO) at worst.

Jesus had some very stern words about assigning or attributing the work of God to being the work of Satan… Mk 3:22, 28-30 et al; which is pretty much an insult to the Spirit of grace, as per Heb 10:29 and maybe in the ballpark of the likes of Rev 22:18-19. :astonished:

Well this is interesting Hermano… WHERE does Peter actually speak of this supposed… “unbelief about the literal, physical worldwide Flood:question:
Yep some were indeed mocking the apparent lack of Christ’s parousia AND YET THAT’S the very same thing you’re doing — you likewise scoff, saying it hasn’t happened — hello pot this is kettle!

Davo, I’m clueless :confused: God is unable to establish a relationship with man? Obviously God can and did establish relationships with men. The Old Testament gives plenty of examples of people who walked with God and obeyed his voice.

There were also men in the Old Testament who walked in faith and had the knowledge and wisdom of God.

Again, there were many servants of God in the days of old.

LLC… none of my quotes you provided above were found wanting by any of your comments that followed. :open_mouth:

Davo, Maybe I’m just not understanding where you are coming from because I don’t think God’s word is progressive. Maybe I’m wrong but, as Genesis 8:22 says "while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. There will be times that we rise and times that we fall, when places that were once fertile become wastelands and from wastelands springs of water will flow forth. We know the future in a way because history repeats itself.

That’s a slightly wrong question but given most here come from a futurist background a fair question. I could ask my own wrong or rhetorical question following the same reasoning… if humanity has been forgiven (or at least believers in Christ) why do those who believe still die, or need to die?

But to get to the nub of your question… what was done away i.e., in the AD70 parousia, was the old covenant mode of law existence that had served its purpose and reached its use-by-date. Jesus was Israel’s Prophet and through him God was actually pleading with and giving warning to His people Israel of the impending political and national disaster that was looming on their generational horizon (Mt 24:34).

It wasn’t God’s “will that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2Pet3:9) MEANING… if Israel would but follow Jesus’ “words of life” they would escape the eschatological melee and mayhem that was coming. Paul was on a similar page…

Those in Israel who refused to listen choosing instead to cling to the ship went down with it… not knowing IN THIS LIFE the forgiveness that was theirs, not realising or grasping the reconciliation wrought through the Cross.

Oops, I picked the weakest translation of the verse (NASB) with which to make my point!

My point being that rejection of the literal, physical WORLDWIDE flood…

…is spiritually linked by Peter to the willful rejection of the literal (and, as per 1 Jn. 4:2-3, * “in the flesh”*) Second Coming of Christ:

It has been argued that the mountains at the time of the worldwide flood of Genesis were not as tall as today—because today’s mountains could have been produced, or heightened, when, during that catastrophe, the crustal plates collided, and the compressional deformation crumpled the rock in the collision zone to produce new mountain ranges, and taller mountains.

But biblically, the various references unambiguously indicate the flood of Noah covered the entire world, and killed every single person and animal that was not inside that ark.

My larger concern is about those who teach against the future, physical return of Christ, because,

  1. The hope of his appearance purifies us (1 John 3:2-3), and
  2. Teaching that Jesus has already returned invisibly and spiritually (not physically and visibly) leaves the hearers unprepared to correctly interpret the coming prophetic signs.

Blessings.

My understanding is that ‘under the heavens’ in this context means literally ‘from horizon to horizon’. Their concept of the shape of the Earth was incomplete.
Do I care one way or the other? Not really.

I came across a very interesting article:

A Response to the Preterist Interpretation of the Olivet Discourse(Matthew 24)

Let me just quote a couple of highlights:

Now that I didn’t know :exclamation: :smiley:

I have to read this later, and see how solid - the author’s position is. :wink:

Maybe later, I’ll look into this article:

PRETERISM Examined & Refuted

Just a note for Davo. It’s good to see, what the competition is up to. :laughing:

Ay, Dave! ¿Que es eso?! Consider similar sedimentation layers around the planet. Consider fossilized plants and animals, around the planet.

Some earlier material indicating the worldwide Flood of Genesis was not from God, but that it did literally occur:

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Richard Murray has an essay concerning the Genesis Flood, as it relates to the TRUE nature of God, entitled Did God Drown All The Children In The World With A Killer Flood? Or Did Satan?”, which is very enlightening. As Murray points out in that essay:

Finally, as to the possible mechanical dynamics of the Flood, you may find of interest the work of Professor Walt Brown. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. Please watch this five minute overview of Brown’s Hydroplate Theory, from 1986. (Regarding Satan’s possible role as a master geologist and murderer, especially note what Brown says at the 2 minute point: "Failure in the crust began with a microscopic crack.”)

Blessings.