Jipsah
Blood Drinker
- Aug 17, 2005
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Hardly comparable, is it? Face it, mate, the failure rate for date setters over the last 2000 years has been 100%. They've earned a lot of scoffing, haven't they? And please spare me the obligatory quote of 2 Peter 3:4. Every date setter for the past 2000 years has flung that at everyone who has questioned their unscriptural attempts to establish a schedule for our Lord's return. Most of us who scoff at date setters confess that our Lord "ascended into Heaven...from whence He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead". No "where is the promise of His coming" from us. We accept that promise without reservation. It's the utter futility of trying to know what our Lord said no one knows that we scoff at. And so far our rejection of the "End Times" mystics and their elaborate prognostications, usually rinforced with declarations tht God must do thus and so, have proven justified.
Considering that I made no such ridiculous analogy, or anything close to it, no. But it is far better to ignore the blatherings of amateur prophets who construct "End Times" timetables from random Scriptures, the dates of Jewish holidays, the phases of the moon, the letters in the names of world leaders, news articles, ad absurdum.
Our "End Times" may be before we draw our next breaths, and if we die tomorrow it becomes utterly irrelevant to us whether our Lord returns here next week or in 10,000 years. We should be ready to go NOW. If we're ready to meet the Lord at our death, then we're ready to meet Him at His return if we're still alive here.
Nope, I have a much greater sense of urgency then that. I've been withing minutes of death in the past, so the necessity of being prepared is far from lost on me. Our Lord may return soon, or He may not, but our time here is short. That time is, for all of us, "at hand", and and "even at the door".
The Lord's glorious return has ever been the hope of the Church. But millions of believers have lived and died since He ascended into Heaven, and if they were unprepared for their own departure from this life, then when our Savior chooses to return is the very least of their concerns.
I have often wondered if "pastoral beatings" might not have a salutary effect on some of our brethren who can't otherwise be persuaded to behave themselves, but I seem to be alone in that belief.
So what you're asking, if I take it aright, is that those who reject your curious "End Times" beliefs just aren't as Christian as you are, and may not in fact be Christians atall. Close? You know, that may wel lbe, but I think it unlikely. I think it more likely that they believe, based on much historical and Scriptual evidence, that End Times predictions are most likely untrue, and quite likely to be the veriest hogwash.
What I realize is that the "the rapture of the saints", as used to describe an event other than the Glorious Return of our Lord, is a modern, mostly American, doctrine, that has little or no Scriptural support, requires massive amounts of erroneous asumptions, knight-jump exegesis, wholesale eisegesis, a lot of wishful thinking, and a generous helping of rhetorical balderdash (Kind of like using 2 Peter 3:4 against those think your doctrine is rubbish.)
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