Be careful about accusing others of being nihilists because of their views on the end times. My faith and ambition in Christ is not reliant upon the current or future state of the world.
Hi and thanks for the response;. God bless you.
Nihilism? Not sure what that has do with what I posted. However, the expectation of moral decline does in fact weaken expectation for widespread positive change in society. What we are expecting in terms of evangelism and positive change do in fact effect our motivation for improving society.
I'll not get into the rapture debate but regardless of you view on this, do you think the world will be in a state of this great awakening and then, POOF, everyone's following the Anti-Christ?
I believe the Rapture event is a separate event from Christ's return. It is in fact God's desire to Rapture the Church in the midst of a last great awakening/revival. The "spoof" you speak of is not descriptive of my model.
There will not be a restraining effect on evil in the world once the Church is gone and no longer interceding for the nations--and the 144,000 probably has no mandate to evangelize the world in general, as we do. So rapid support for the anti-Christ after the Church is taken is not surprising.
All scripture that describe inevitable moral decline can be ascribed to that period of 7 or more years separating the Rapture and the Return. Some reference to decline concerning people falling away and propagating heresies has already occurred. Such apostasy is not representative of worldwide increasing evil as described by certain verses.
No, the world must decline to that point over time. Using the great awakening during John Wesley's time is a perfect example actually. He lived in the 1700's. Compare that to today. Britain was somewhere in the lower 90% Christian already. The rest of Europe was probably somewhere around that
A demographic of identified Christians is not necessarily representative of the genuiness of all such Christians. The Great Awakenings occurred as a response to Christian identified societies that were recognizably decaying morally.
John Wesley specifically described the deplorable moral condition of his society, and it was not pretty. His society was turned around morally/spiritually. Such impressive reversals alone are contrary to the pre-Rapture inevitable decline claim.
We had entire Christian continents and empires. Can you say that about today? A previous sitting U.S. President stated in front of the world that we are no longer a Christian nation.
In terms of law and policy, we now have a President that has done more to further the Christian agenda in the US than any other US president in recent history. That of course is contrary to pre-Rapture inevitable decline claims.
There are other examples. The Reformation; civil rights improvements in the 60's, etc. The evidence does in fact deny the Pre-Rapture inevitable decline claim.
Eschatology impacts our evangelistic efforts and results. That is a fact.