Part of the problem here is that you're conversing with a Pentecostal, and where eschatology is the focus, it is also tied into an entire array of other aspects of their specific theology. So, you won't be able to simply argue points about eschatology and convince them. They're embedded into their identification with their denomination.
True. There's also the fact that many Pentecostals seem to value their own subjective experiences even more than the Bible, so now we are back to a discussion about the four areas of authority and which one has the final authority.
On top of that, I don't think any of us has the epistemic access to know exactly how all of Prophecy, let alone the entirety of the book of Revelation, will play out on the landscape of human history.
I'm not saying I know every single Old testament and New testament prophecy inside and out. I'm saying I've seen enough consistent results from the biblical theology of covenant theology to be convinced of their position.
Imagine Keras trying to teach someone else his methods so that they can reproduce his results on all these passages!
It just seems to be whatever Keras makes of it.
But the biblical theology, or in other words how the Old testament relates to the New testament and vice versa, of covenant theology rings true every time.
So rather than the mess of dispensational theology which says there is no one over arching plan and theme to scripture, and that God tried to different things at different times to see what would work, covenant theology sees the Bible as a unified whole pointing to Jesus from whatever position in the Bible you are in.
Why do they see this? Because it's what's there.
From the moment of the fall God promises Adam and Eve that there will be a seed that will crush the head of the serpent.
So we are looking for this person from the moment of the very first chapters of the Bible. Then there are repeating patterns of human saviours arriving, but failing. Noah saves the human race, but then gets rolling drunk and naked.
And this pattern continues throughout the period of the judges and then the kings, but each time we meet a new potential saviour we learn a little bit more about what we are looking for and what God is going to do.
While all this is going on other things are being developed about sacrifice, temple, where God lives and the rules when God lives with people, kingship, servant hood, sharpening, provision of food in the desert, water that baptizes an entire nation as they walk through the sea, water that emerges from a rock, water that will one day split a mountain open and gush out to save the world, and so much more.
Then Jesus arrives and says he is the perfect sacrifice, he is the temple, he is the bread, he is the water that gives life that will mean people no longer have to worship on that mountain, indeed that mountain can fall into the sea now if people have faith in him!
Then you realise that so many of the Old testament prophecies are actually pointing to Jesus. Ezekiel and his huge super temple with all those details, and then there's a renewed creation with holy water coming out of the temple down into the land to renew it, it all makes sense.
We cannot do it on our own. That's why the Old testament is so much longer! It's detailing how human systems that try to enact these patterns on their own will fail. But those who had faith in God are saved not by those mechanisms themselves, but by the grace of Jesus Christ that they point to.
And an essential lesson in all this is in Deuteronomy where God says he will be faithful both to his people but also to his holiness. The book is prophetic, the prophetic foundation for understanding vast chunks of the Old testament!
It does not say if they fail. It says when, if and when they fail the Covenant with God!
And so then we arrive in the spirals of descent into sin and rebellion during the brain of the ever worst kings. Archaeologists have found thousands of urns with the burned remains of babies sacrificed to foreign gods from this period.
And the prophets warn of the coming judgement in Assyria and Babylon - and then even the judgement on these armies of the Lord that hurt his people as Persia rises.
It's all to do with fulfilling Deuteronomy, and showing us in the lessons of history itself that we cannot save ourselves bye our obedience to various sacrificial mechanisms.
Any message that then tries to rip these prophetic interpretations of the armies of the Lord out of context and shove them 2, 500 years into an irrelevant future no one at the time would care about basically destroys the overall thrust of the biblical story!
Right when any good reader of the Bible should be asking is God out of control when Assyria and Babylon start marching on God's people, prophets arrived that start babbling about some solar event 2,500 years later?
It's like someone playing cricket and understanding the rules, but then suddenly having a whale dumped in the cricket grounds.
It just doesn't fit
So, arguing in ad infinitum about this or that point isn't really going to go anywhere.
But it might stand as a disclaimer to others against this message that has already failed various prophetic interpretations. That is there are predictions about January just a few months ago that did not pan out!
And others might discover some of the great resources I share.
