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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jamey who wrote (36420)	1/17/2004 12:25:46 AM
From: Stan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

James, Those are good questions you ask concerning Jesus' words! I admit that readily. I don't dismiss them nor do I hold such questions in contempt. Those who hold to different eschatological views all have compelling points. I deliberately don't drum mine, but if pressed I will talk about what I believe about those doctrines. They are fascinating, and worthy of study. Eschatology is scattered throughout Scriptures like the Levites throughout the land of promise. However, all relevant passages must be studied until a cohesive body of truth emerges. You can't insist on the literalness of Imminency verses and leave every other pertinent issue unworthy of the same treatment. These are unequal weights in your bag and you have no currency of truth. If I said to you that the receivers of the fulfillment may not be the ones who are currently hearing the prophecies, you may accuse me of being arbitrary. Yet, there is precedence in Scripture for prophecies spoken to one person or group and meant for another far in the future. Examples? OK. King Ahaz in Isaiah 7. Ahaz refused the offer of a sign from the Lord, so The Lord said to him, that He would give him a sign -- a virgin would conceive and bear a child, and will call his name Immanuel. Now the "him" was Ahaz, but he lived @700 years before the fulfillment of those words in Mary and Jesus. How do you account for that? It certainly sounds and reads imminent, but it wasn't. We know that from hindsight and Matthew's quotation of it that it concerns Jesus. Also, in Deut. 18, Moses said the same sort of thing to the Israelites that "the Lord would raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee. . ." This is actually Jesus, who would live about 1500 years after the hearers were told that it was unto them and from their midst. So, precedents are established about prophecies within the holy text itself and the way they are stated and to whom they are to be fulfilled. Accordingly, the actual hearers may not be the ones to experience them. If the Bible is so hard to understand and does not mean what it says, used in the proper context, than how does anybody understand what is being said? I do not say automatically that you are wrong to expect imminency in the words of Jesus, and be tempted to conclude as preterists do. But I ask you, "Do you have solid authority to take Jesus's prophecies as imminent when Scripture establishes different modes in their fulfillment?"