"What are some things that many Laodiceans decide?"
Dr Robert Thiel
God has not been using dreams to communicate in the 21st century, despite the view of the old Worldwide Church of God that God would use dreams in the future and the Apostle Peter saying they would be given by God in the last days (see Does the CCOG have the confirmed signs of Acts 2:17-18?).
In other words... "Now I know that, as a man of science, dreams are just dreams, or at least I should know, but since I need to be a prophet, going back to the age of ignorance on such things is important to my all about ME need and status in the Churches of God. Being a prophet comes like way ahead of being a man of science for me. Thus, superstition, hearing the voices of God in MY head and magic serves ME. "
God is not using any prophets in the 21st century yet, despite the Apostle Peter saying God would use them in the last days (see also Church of God Leaders on Prophets).
In other words... "Look, here's the deal. Since these definitely are the Biblical "last days" and since the Bible says there will be prophets in the last days, I simply must be a prophet since I have said I am and it's the Last Days! Duh! What word don't you understand?"
Being comfortable with their current situation is more important than being willing to support the main Philadelphian remnant because of limited local congregations (see also Congregations of the Continuing Church of God).
In other words... "Ok, here's another deal. It's obvious no one knows who I am, being a prophet and all that. I know I don't have any local churches for people to not forsake the assembly of our true selves in. I do recognize that I may not have support because few agree with me. Lack of support is like that. But that shouldn't keep people from agreeing with ME and recognizing just who I am! And too, I'm comfortable with my current situation and it is more important for them to support my insignificant self than for me to support their insignificant selves."
It is not necessary to learn to instruct many in this age, despite the prophecies in Daniel 11:33 (see also Preparing for the ‘Short Work’ and The Famine of the Word).
In other words... "Instruction, as the only true Prophet in the Church of God cults today must obviously be from ME. How can they learn anything that's actually true, without hearing it from ME? If they don't hear instruction from ME, then it's not instruction and can't possibly be true! This ain't rocket science. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Laodiceans! That's why! I get no respect!"
It is okay to believe various prophetic errors (for details, check out the article Do You Hold to Any of These Laodicean Prophetic Errors?).
In other words... "If I believe something to be so and they don't agree with ME, then OBVIOUSLY they believe prophetic errors! Hello! It's them, not ME. I imagine they think it's also ok to belong to the FALSE CHURCH! Though when I think about that, no one really thinks that way, but when you don't follow ME and agree with ME, that is exactly you are thinking is ok. Oh sure, that's how I think about my own sliver created church too, which is ok, because it's MY CHURCH! And because I'm a prophet and it's MY church, it has to be the true one . What? Do you think I'd believe errors? Hello! They are not errors precisely because I believe them not to be! I'm a prophet for God's sake!"
17 comments:
Dennis wrote, "God is not using any prophets in the 21st century yet, despite the Apostle Peter saying God would use them in the last days..."
I had a look at the supporting links and there was so much material there that I could not isolate Peter's advocacy of prophets in the last days. May be there. I just could not find it. But I did not spend much time.
There is the well established issue that the term prophet can be used to mean a prognosticator or an inspired speaker. The Millerism practiced in Splinterdom seems to always use the latter meaning without justification.
I personally believe that prophets were active in the pre-70 AD church but not thereafter. It is interesting that their role was so important that none of their utterances/predictions were documented and passed down to us. A few in the NT are mentioned such as Agabus.
John of Patmos, at the end of Revelation 22, seems to be ending the era of prophets. He wrote:
"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:"
What is it that the latter day Splinterists prophets are doing but adding to the Book of Revelation. This leaves me wondering about the reference to Peter's advocacy in Dennis' statement. I would like to have a look at the scriptures.
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Anybody using dreams for meaning are going to run into a lot of conundrums.
Virtually everyone has dreams, and they are often weird, off beat or illogical. How should one decide that it is from God or not?
What about 3rd hand dreams from yet another person? Another very dangerous layer of inaccuracy, confirmation bias, and manipulation.
We would all give Booby a shot at it , if his dreams had an extremely high statistical and empirical test, with his dreams having a specificity that would be many orders greater than chance, ie, very specific spots , times, coordinates, magnitude etc of an earthquake for instance.
NeoTherm said...
Dennis wrote, "God is not using any prophets in the 21st century yet, despite the Apostle Peter saying God would use them in the last days..."
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That's a quote from Bob in his article. I did not write say that personally.
To learn why splinter members are not surfing on over to the CCOG, Bob needs to actually watch a couple of his own embarrassing video presentations. Even people who are not blessed with terribly high IQs are going to make value judgments based on those videos, and to conclude that he is not worthy of being followed.
He was a nuisance that was finally gotten rid of over at LCG, and now he is finding that nobody from the other splinters wants him either. This is a mystery only to Bob himself. Strange little man!
So Neo you don't believe in the two end time prophets of God?
NEO -
Bob was probably referring to Acts 2:17, where Peter quotes Joel:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
When quoting this elsewhere, Bob said he was old enough to be considered an "old man".
Anonymous 10:57
No, I do not believe in the two "end time" prophets. I believe that there were two prophets - they just had nothing to do with the end time. I believe the book of Revelation, with the exception of the last couple of chapters, has been fulfilled. I think Revelation was written before 70 AD and almost all of its prophecies happened prior to or during 70 AD. You can refer to various commentaries for the fulfilling events.
If you don't believe this, you need to give a plausible explanation for the following scripture:
"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass..."
Is "shortly" 2,000 years later?
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Hoss
Thanks for the reference. No doubt that is what the Splinterist preacher was referring to.
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The life expectancy in "Bible" days was about 55. So most of the people on here are old men.
The end should have came within 55 years--one generation--of Jesus's prophecy, proving the bible is junk.
The life expectancy in "Bible" days was about 55. So most of the people on here are old men.
The end should have came within 55 years--one generation--of Jesus's prophecy, proving the bible is junk.
How long will it be before some ACOG prophet reminds us that Methuselah lived for more than 900 years, so any "within a generation" prophecy needs to allow that much wiggle room?
Anonymous 12:43
In Matthew 24, the "one generation" promise referred to the 70 AD events not the Parousia. But you have to give it a careful reading to see that. In fact, the separation between these two tracks is so subtle that Paul, who was not there to hear Jesus' words in Matthew 24, apparently believed everything would happen at once. Peter did not believe this and stated so in the book of Acts. Peter saw the Parousia as conditional.
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12.23 PM
NEO, the book of Revelation was primarily written for this generation. This is because an army of 200 million killing a third of mankind, all things in the sea dying, etc has never happened before. So the "shortly" is very definitely "shortly" for those alive today.
Why do you come here and harass good Christians with such verbal trickery?
Anonymous 5:03
That is such an absurd and unprovable idea that I must categorize your comment as rank trollery.
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NEo is correct 12:23. Written just before the Fall of Jerusalem, it is a failed prophecy with the Romans winning. The 3 1/2 year expectation from 69 ish to 73 ended with the fall of Masada in April of '73. "Shortl" "Behold I come quickly" and "Of things which must shortly come to pass" was written to them, not us.
But it made a cool addition to the Bible and even comes with a built in threat, put last in the NT not to mess with any of it. Alas it's toast.
If you think that "shortly" is your shortly, don't be surprised if it turns into longly and you get no prize.
There's a warning in Revelation about not adding or subtracting from the book. That would include intellectualizing away its contents. Those who insist on doing so are risking the books curses which includes the loss of one's eternal life.
Anonymous 4:09
To observe that the book of Revelation has already had its fulfillment in real events that took place prior to 70AD is hardly intellectualizing it away. And though John of Patmos might seem to some as restricting this curse to those who make physical additions to his book, he is speaking, from context, of the intellectual scope of the topic of that book. And it is nothing less than the entire future including, in the last chapters, the Eschaton itself. And it is to this scope that the latter day apoclayptic Millerites have illicitly added many additional prophesies. When a Splinterist preacher says that Jesus is returning next Tuesday, he is trampling on the Book of Revelation - by extending it beyond the author's original boundaries. The scope of the book is so encompassing that it is impossible to author a predictive prophecy about the Parousia or world events that does not violate the restriction of John of Patmos.
The principal means that apocalyptic Millerites use to crash the boundaries of John of Patmos is something called type-antitype. Wile this literary device is present in the Bible, it is not something to be used with abandon. For instance, one cannot convert ever passage in the Bible, even passages that are obviously historical, into predictive prophecy. And its off-handded application to the book of Revelation does not have credibility in my view.
I believe the curse of John of Patmos essentially ends the era of predictive prophecy for the Christian movement. It ended the era by giving us the final word. If you want prophecy, you got it. It's in the book of Revelation - with no augmentation - no changing the setting to some putative "end time."
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I would suggest that if the Bible is read as ANE literature, with Revelation as apocalytic literature “shortly” doesn’t necessarily mean “in a short time” - as in a modern-western literal reading.
“Like John, we must face this issue of the expectation of the nearness of the End squarely and early on, for it is fundamental to interpreting not only the Apocalypse but much of the New Testament. The interpreter who learns how to deal faithfully with this issue learns something that will be helpful in understanding the New Testament as a whole” (M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, INT, p.68).
As a partial preterist won’t be convinced, and visa vera, a few observations will be made.
Rev 1:1b to show to his servants the things that must soon [en tachos, 5034] take place.
Rev 22:6b has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon [en tachos, 5034] take place.
Rev 22:7a And behold, I am coming soon [tachu, 5035].
Rev 22:20 Surely I am coming soon [tachu, 5035] (ESV).
Rev 3:11 I am coming soon [tachu, 5035] (ESV).
HELPS Word-studies:
5034 taxos – swiftness (speed), i.e. done as quickly (speedily) as is appropriate to the particular situation. See 5035 (taxy).
5035 taxy does not mean "immediately" or necessarily "in a very short time" but rather "without any delay."
Lk 18:8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily [en tachos, 5034]. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Ro 16:20a And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly [en tachos, 5034].
“Time as chronological sequence is of secondary concern in prophecy. This perspective is common to the entire NT, Jesus taught that God would vindicate his elect without delay (Luke 18:8), and Paul wrote to the Romans that God would “soon” crush Satan under their feet (Rom 16:20)” (Robert H. Mounce, the Book of Revelation, Revised, NICNT, p.41).
Rev 1:1b the things [ha, 3739] that must [dei, 1163] soon [tachos, 5034] take place [ginomai].
Da 2:28 what things [ho, 3739] must [deo, 1210] come to pass [ginomai] in the last days. (LXX).
“These comments [what must “soon” take place (v.1) and the ‘time in near” v.3)] are more than incidental; they are integral to his message: the first one is a word he has intentionally added to the scriptural expression borrowed from Daniel 2:28...” (M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, INT, p.68).
“ “What must soon take place” implies the revelation concerns events that are future (cf. Dan 2:28-29, 45; Mark 13:7; Rev 4:1, 22:6). But in what sense can we understand that the events will arise “soon” (en tachei)? From the preterist point of view (the events are seen to be imminent to the time of the author...), the sense is plain: all will “soon” take place - i.e, in John’s day. Others translate en tachei as “quickly” (grammatically this is acceptable) and understand the author to describe events that will rapidly run their course once they begin. However, it is better to translate en tachei as “soon” in the light of the words “the time is near” in v.3 (cf. 22:10).
“Yet, if we adopt this sense, it is not necessary to follow the preterist interpretation of the book. In eschatology and apocalyptic, the future is always viewed as imminent without the necessity of intervening time (cf. Luke 18:8)... Therefore, “sooness” means imminency in eschatological terms...” (Alan F. Johnson, Revelation, EBC, Vol.12, pp.416-17).
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