Subject: What was the Lord's expectation? |
Bible Note: Chris, There is nothing to forgive. I was not offended in anyway at all and if I was I would not hold it against you. Chris, they were wrong for believing in something that neither existed nor was taught from Holy Scripture. Nowhere does our Lord ever teach that His return to call out His church would be an any-moment event, meaning God has never concluded exactly when He would return. What we commonly call the rapture, is a definite and determined event that will occur but once and is only an "at one-moment" event. Our Lord knows precisely when He will return because it is an already fixed event in the mind of God. Humans cannot change that event simply because they do not know when it will happen. Saying it is an "any-moment" event contradicts the foreknowledge of God in that it will happen only once and cannot happen at any other time in our history other than the predetermined and fore-ordained time God has already fixed for it to happen. "Assuming" what God can do is not the same as "proving" what God will do. Out of the ANYTIME He was free to choose, He only determined that event to happen at one particular time in history and not before or after that time. Chris, the very fact that our Lord has not returned is the evidence that proves the Father had not ever determined to send His Son until some future time and no time in the past (to us) could ever have been the time the Father had pre-determined to send His Son back for His Church. Again Chris, your view undermines the foreknowledge and pre-determination of God in fore-ordaining the events only He would cause to happen at the appointed time. I don't know if you are familiar with the term "Open Theism", but your view is very close to it. No disrespect intended Chris but not IMPOSSIBLE TO GOD is a common "catch-all" phrase Chrsitians enjoy using when we have no other "biblical" answer. Whenever we can't defend a particular position in which we believe, we just simply say that God can do anything He wants to do and that is supposed to settle the issue. It doesn't and furthermore, it only confuses and further contradicts the issue. Of course I believe nothing is IMPOSSIBLE TO GOD, but that doesn't prove anything. It's not impossible that God could have re-grown all the hair on my head 10 years ago, being almost bald now, but He didn't. Obviously, it was not His will to do so even though it is not impossible. Get the point? If our Christian forefathers truly expected the return of Christ to happen, then they surely believed it would happen. If they surely believed it would happen, they must have had sound biblical warrant for such a belief. However, they were mistaken because it never happend and could not have happened since it was obviously not the Father's will for it to have happened. The false assumption of an unbiblical teaching of an immanent return is VERY MUCH responsible for past and present faulty predictions of our Lord's return. Faulty predictions are the result of faulty understandings which come from a faulty view of scripture. Actually Chris, the idea of a supposed immanent return does indeed espouse a date for the return of Christ. Isn't the very moment you are reading this response considered an "any-moment" in our history? So then, Christ could return at the very moment you are reading this and that is most definately espousing a specific date. However, we leave ourselves an easy-out since we do not specifically name a calendar date. But what's the difference? Isn't the very moment you are reading this a calendar date? The very fact the we not only CANNOT know, but also WILL NOT know, proves the "any-moment" idea is false. You cannot say the rapture will be at any moment, yet I do not know if it will be at any moment. And for what should Christians be "looking out" Chris. Will a sudden, immanent return change anything at all about our relationship with Christ, our salvation, our redemption, our eternal destiny? If "looking-out" means we should live holy lives, then our Lord has already given us a clear, unambiguous and distinct command to do this without any reference to a future rapture. I look forward to hearing from you Chris. Sam Hughey |