Hosea 4:1-6 You inhabitants of the Land of Israel, hear the Word of the Lord: There is no good faith or loyalty and no [very little] acknowledgement of God in the Land. People break oaths, they kill and commit adultery. Violence and apostasy rule, there is no justice. But it is not for mankind to bring charges, it is My contention and it is with you, the prophets and priests. Day and night you blunder on in your ignorance of My true Word. You bring your nation to ruin with your want of knowledge. As you reject the teaching of God, so I reject you as My priests.
Therefore the Land will be made desolate and all who live in it will suffer, the animals, birds and even the fish will vanish.
Hosea 4:7-19 The more priests there are, the more they sin against Me. Their dignity I shall turn into dishonor. The leaders of My people [Judah and Israel] have given themselves to immorality and strong drink, their wits are dulled and they seek advice from divinators. A people so devoid of understanding will soon come to grief, a powerful wind will hit them and they will realize their practices and beliefs are a delusion.
Hosea 5:1-12 Hear then, you congregation leaders of My people: Sentence is passed on you because you have misled your flocks. I shall punish all those who spread false doctrines and now all Ephraim, Israel [the Western nations] have become promiscuous and their misdeeds have barred their way back to their God. So now a terrible invader is set to devour their lands.
Sound the alarm! On the Day of wrath and punishment Ephraim will be laid waste, certain desolation is decreed for Israel and Judah.
Hosea 6:1-3 Come let us go back to the Lord, He has punished us but He will heal us. After two days He will revive us and on the third day, He will raise us up to live in His presence. Let us press on to know the Lord, His coming is as sure as the sunrise. He will come to us like a refreshing shower, like the spring rains He will water His people with the Holy Spirit.
Ref: REB, NIV. Some verses abridged and paraphrased.
‘not for mankind to bring charges’ – Isa. 3:13-15, Zeph. 3:8, Mal. 3:5, Hebrews 10:26-27
‘the Land made desolate’ – Isa.28:22, Eze.20:47, Jer.6:7, Jer.7:34, Zeph.1:18, Micah 1:6
‘a powerful wind will hit them’ – Jer.23:19, Jer.4:26-28, Psalm 3:14-15, Joel 1:15-20
‘the Lord’s Day of vengeance and wrath’, Isa.13:9-13, Eze.30:3-5, Zeph.1:14-1, 2 Pet.3:10
‘destruction decreed for Israel and Judah’ Jer.23:9-18, Isa.25:2, Isa 28:22, Amos 6:11
All great verses - and all fulfilled in Eschatological Tension as Israel was judged for her apostacy and then
all the nations were judged on the cross - but of course we still look forward to their judgement and our salvation on the Last Day.
‘teachers and leaders of the flock judged’, James 3:1, Jer.23:1-2, Rev. 2:20-22
I'm not sure why you're mixing OT and NT verses together, because when ripped out of their OT context OT verses can be made to say all sorts of stuff.
‘after two days comes revival, on the third day we will live in His presence’. – Luke 13:32,
That's not what the text says! Talk about misquoting the bible. I guess I have to go over this verse again for you, or at least for any lurkers reading over our shoulders as they discern this 'prophecy' you're quoting?
31 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
32 He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!
I see Jesus being assertive.
I see him fearing God, not man.
I see gospel.
I do NOT see prophecy!
2 Peter 3:8
The Lord’s timeline: 4000 years before Christ = 4 days. Then 2000 years of church dispensation = 2 days, His people will be revived and back in the holy Land. Isaiah 62:1-5
Then after the Return of Jesus, He reigns for 1000 earthly years = 1 heavenly day, giving a total of 7000 years of earth time and 7 days of heaven time from Creation until Completion.
I am so over the way 2 Peter 3:8 is misused.
There are well over a
million mountains on earth, let alone all the smaller hills.
If the Israelites always used the number 1000 literally, then quite a few passages in the bible are making weird claims! Look at Psalm 50:
Psalm 50
I have no need of a bull from your stall
or of goats from your pens,
10 for every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
11 I know every bird in the mountains,
and the insects in the fields are mine.
12 If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
The whole world is his - and everything in it.
Except the 999,000 other hills that he apparently doesn't own the cattle on?
See,
literally this would be saying God
only owns the cattle on a thousand hills -
what about the rest?
Instead, the Hebrew people frequently used the number 1000 the way we might use a 'gazillion' or some people say 'gajillion'. It just means a really big non-specific amount. All of the money - or people - or whatever. "We're going to rob a bank and steal a gazillion bucks!"
That's the thousand. In fact, in the OT unless it is actually counting out something like how many soldiers were going into a certain battle, the number 1000 is
rarely literal. It means a big all encompassing complete number.
It's the same in the New Testament. 2 Peter 3:8 says:
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
It is showing the different ways God can view time, from viewing the overarching grand progress of the whole of history - all gazillion years of it - down to zooming in and studying each day and each person's single prayer like He had the whole of eternity to concentrate on it!
2 Peter 3:8 is far from some sort of spy-code suggesting how to decode weird end-times-tables. Rather, it is a profoundly practical and comforting verse. It says God is capable of knowing both the whole of eternity and stooping down to listen to your individual prayer as if you were the only person in the whole world.
Futurists grab 2 Peter 3:8 as some kind of Rosetta stone or Enigma machine that then lets them install their end-times-tables randomly over any parts of the bible that refer to days. It’s their excuse to justify their futurist presuppositions and charts. But they ignore the other part of the message. If a day is like a 1000 years, when do futurists turn around and do the other equation and make 1000 years like a day? When do they take each day and multiply it by 1000? It's now 2020 which is about 737,300 days. Multiplied by 1000 would equal 737.3 MILLION heavenly years! Um, what to do with that? Futurists just ignore it.
Apparently 2 Peter 3 can only be read their way, and then the flip around and include this bit and ignore that bit and draw up a few lines on their crazy-wall and tada! It's all happening in the next 7 years. Every time. Because apparently if Revelation isn't a timetable about us - then it's boring.
View attachment 286458
John didn't really mean Chapter One where he says he has written it to HIS generation, ABOUT his generation, FOR HIS generation to KEEP and OBEY. No - apparently that's all code for our generation. When his generation of Christians was about to experience the wrath of the Roman Empire, apparently he decided to tell them "Forget your troubles - wait till you see what happens in 2000 years!" Yeah, apparently.
But I'm not buying it. When I read Chapter 1 - it is definitely about his generation - reminding them that the Lord would win. No matter how bad it got, stay faithful, because God is worth it.
Even if Satan
seemed to be in charge in times and places - there would also be ways in which he was also bound. He is bound
in regards to stopping the gospel getting out to the nations. That's it! He's not bound from setting up Hitler or Stalin or North Korea. That stuff happens! That stuff may always happen until the Lord returns. But the gospel can thrive even in these nations - and it still goes on from persecution to triumph. The church is thriving in both Iran and China. Indeed, I'm hopeful China becomes a democracy in the next generation under the influence of a huge church that may create some social tipping points.
The 1000 years is one of the most misunderstood verses in the bible - but ultimately when read as the metaphor it is for a gazillion years - both 2 Peter 3 and the so-called 'millennium' and many other things fall into place. And maybe we can get on with the gospel, stop trying to guess the date of the return, and put our crazy-walls away.
Fulfilled in their immediate OT sense of a judgement on Israel - but also aware that they foreshadow the final Judgement Day which will end the world, raise the dead, judge the dead, rescue the saved, install a New Heavens and New Earth all in that split second when the Lord returns forever.
