Was Ellen a fulfillment of Joel 2?

[Leaf473]

Interesting -- It shows that the delay is not God's fault-- but we are most certainly in that delay.

The commencement of that time of trouble," here mentioned does not refer to the time when the plagues shall begin to be poured out, but to a short period just before they are poured out, while Christ is in the sanctuary. At that time, while the work of salvation is closing, trouble will be coming on the earth, and the nations will be angry, yet held in check so as not to prevent the work of the third angel. At that time the "latter rain," or refreshing from the presence of the Lord, will come, to give power to the loud voice of the third angel, and prepare the saints to stand in the period when the seven last plagues shall be poured out." EW 85​

​

The great work of the gospel is not to close with less manifestation of the power of God than marked its opening. The prophecies which were fulfilled in the outpouring of the former rain at the opening of the gospel, are again to be fulfilled in the latter rain at its close. . . . {FLB 332.5}​

(That part looks future at least)

What's causing the delay?

 

[BobRyan]

What's causing the delay?

The term "Adventist" in the 1800's applied to all in the Millerite movement that accepted the 2300 year timeline and the fact that the appearing of Christ would be pre-mill. (As Walter Martin points out in his book - the pre-mill appearing of Christ idea was not popular in those days). Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 were likened to Israel rejecting the command to enter Canaan and as a result were sent back to the wilderness for 40 years.

 

[Leaf473]

The term "Adventist" in the 1800's applied to all in the Millerite movement that accepted the 2300 year timeline and the fact that the appearing of Christ would be pre-mill. (As Walter Martin points out in his book - the pre-mill appearing of Christ idea was not popular in those days). Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 were likened to Israel rejecting the command to enter Canaan and as a result were sent back to the wilderness for 40 years.

So... Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 are causing the delay?

 

[Gary K]

I see. Looks like they wouldn't be an identifying mark of the remnant Church, then.

Yes. LOL. It was unfortunate for them that they refused the prophetic gift as they both later met Mrs. White and said they were lost because of their refusal.

 

[Gary K]

So... Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 are causing the delay?

How would that be possible? They have been dead for more than 100 years.

 

[Leaf473]

How would that be possible? They have been dead for more than 100 years.

It didn't make sense to me, that's why I asked
Do you have input on what's causing the delay?

 

[The Liturgist]

The term "Adventist" in the 1800's applied to all in the Millerite movement that accepted the 2300 year timeline and the fact that the appearing of Christ would be pre-mill. (As Walter Martin points out in his book - the pre-mill appearing of Christ idea was not popular in those days). Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 were likened to Israel rejecting the command to enter Canaan and as a result were sent back to the wilderness for 40 years.

Indeed, all traditional churches reject Chiliasm, since the obvious interpretation of the thousand years in question is “a long time” as that is consistently used to refer to long periods of time, and the Kingdom of Christ will last forever according to the revised Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed. It was in the fourth century that the Church settled on Amillenialism; some second century fathers like St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus of Lyons did embrace Chiliasm, but others did not, and by the fourth century enough time had past for the problems with that interpretation of the prophecy to become apparent.

It is probable that chiliasm only existed in the second century due to a misunderstanding by some Early Church Fathers in the West, where both St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus were located (in Rome, and Lyons, the latter the second largest city in France at present, and also quite large in Roman times, when it was known as Lugdunum)/ In contrast, in Alexandria, home to the local church founded by St. Mark the Evangelist, what we of the traditional churches regard, for good reason, to be the correct view, which is amillenialism, was always adhered to.

 

[BobRyan]

Indeed, all traditional churches reject Chiliasm

They rejected the literal millennium because they held the bible at too great a distance . But it is in Rev 20 all the same.

, since the obvious interpretation of the thousand years in question is “a long time”

nope. That is the preference of "some" but is not what the word means.

It was in the fourth century that the Church settled on Amillenialism;

3 centuries too late.

First century writers gave us the pre-mill doctrine as we see it in Rev 19 - before the Rev 20 millennium

 

[BobRyan]

So... Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 are causing the delay?

Everyone in Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years could always point to someone who was alive when Israel failed to go into Canaan - then say "yes but this or that person is now dead - we should be going into Canaan today".

In any case "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world - and then shall the end come"
And the Dan 7 judgment completes before the end comes.
And God has unlimited resources - still Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

 

[Leaf473]

Everyone in Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years could always point to someone who was alive when Israel failed to go into Canaan - then say "yes but this or that person is now dead - we should be going into Canaan today".

In any case "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world - and then shall the end come"
And the Dan 7 judgment completes before the end comes.
And God has unlimited resources - still Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

Is that a Yes? Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 are causing the delay?

 

[BobRyan]

Is that a Yes? Those "Adventists" that rejected the 3 angels messages in Rev 14 are causing the delay?

It is a "yes" those Israelites that died one year after Israel rejected the entry into Canaan and who were part of that rebellion - were key to the reason why they were going to wander another 39 years in the wilderness.

i.e. - the obvious.'

It is a "yes" - God has unlimited resources
IT is a "yes" -- Jeremiah 18:5-11 is true

You and I keep playing your game where you ignore details in my responses that address your question, and I keep showing that I still remember those details.

Ever read Jeremiah 18:5-11 when going off on that tangent to your OP?

============================

And it is still a "no" - Ellen White is not complete fulfillment of Joel 2. More to come.

 

[Leaf473]

It is a "yes" those Israelites that died one year after Israel rejected the entry into Canaan and who were part of that rebellion - were key to the reason why they were going to wander another 39 years in the wilderness.

i.e. - the obvious.'

It is a "yes" - God has unlimited resources
IT is a "yes" -- Jeremiah 18:5-11 is true

You and I keep playing your game where you ignore details in my responses that address your question, and I keep showing that I still remember those details.

Ever read Jeremiah 18:5-11 when going off on that tangent to your OP?

============================

And it is still a "no" - Ellen White is not complete fulfillment of Joel 2. More to come.

Thank you for your time, but that's not the question that I asked

 

[Gary K]

It didn't make sense to me, that's why I asked
Do you have input on what's causing the delay?

God's people aren't ready, and by that I mean all Christians.

 

[The Liturgist]

They rejected the literal millennium because they held the bible at too great a distance

Nonsense. We are literally talking about the people who wrote the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which is the Statement of Faith on ChristianForums, and who set the New Testament canon. The creed contains the clause “Whose Kingdom shall have no end” which was a refutation of Chiliasm, which was one of the errors held to by the Apollinarians, who were compliant with the original version of the creed adopted at Nicaea in 325, like the Pneumatomacchians, thus requiring the creed to be strengthened, which it was, at the Council of Constantinople.

 

[The Liturgist]

First century writers gave us the pre-mill doctrine as we see it in Rev 19 - before the Rev 20 millennium

No they did not, but interestingly, it was concern that the Apocalypse would be used in support of Chiliasm, which had been rejected by most of the Church in the third century, under the influence of the Catechtical Schools of Alexandria and Antioch, which caused much of the Church, including Antioch, which was home to the literal-historical form of exegesis, to object to its inclusion in the canon. However, St. Athanasius, the Pope of Alexandria and the chief opponent of the Arians insisted it be included, and at the same time he was no Chiliast - as an Alexandrian he expected that the Apocalypse, since it was a prophetic book, would be read using the Alexandrian typological-Christological-prophetic system of hermeneutics.

I suppose this is however why of the ancient churches only the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Hagioritic monasteries (those on Mount Athos), presumably at one time the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, before its liturgy was Byzantinized around the 12th century, read the Apocalypse in its entirety, on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, as it happens. Most other churches do not include it in their lectionary. Indeed most Protestant churches did not have it in their lectionary until the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary, although it was in the Anglican Divine Office (Mattins and Evensong), but not the main liturgy of Communion or Ante-Communion.

However, interestingly, your favorite denomination (I say this ironically), the Roman Church, quotes heavily from the Apocalypse in the Roman Mass, both the traditional Latin mass and the post-1969 Novus Ordo Missae, which is usually celebrated entirely in the vernacular. However it is a myth that Catholics did not understand it when it was only said in Latin, for there are these books called “Hand Missals”, and hearing it enough, one picks it up and makes the connection. Before hand missals appeared and before literacy was widespread, there was a period, prior to the Reformation and Counter Reformation, when only preaching was in the vernacular, and Martin Luther’s criticisms in the 95 theses against that era of the Roman church, which lasted from around 1100 to 1600, by which time the reforms mandated by the Council of Trent had been implemented, were mostly valid (although a few of the 95 theses were illogical or theologically erroneous, about five or ten of them if I remember correctly).

 

[Leaf473]

No they did not, but interestingly, it was concern that the Apocalypse would be used in support of Chiliasm, which had been rejected by most of the Church in the third century, under the influence of the Catechtical Schools of Alexandria and Antioch, which caused much of the Church, including Antioch, which was home to the literal-historical form of exegesis, to object to its inclusion in the canon.

Ahh... I always wondered why Revelation was slow to be adopted in the east, especially since the seven churches it's addressed to are in present-day Turkey, often considered "the east". So I've heard.

 

[The Liturgist]

Ahh... I always wondered why Revelation was slow to be adopted in the east, especially since the seven churches it's addressed to are in present-day Turkey, often considered "the east". So I've heard.

Well it was slow to be adopted in the Church of the East, which today survives as the Assyrian Church of the East, mainly in Iraq, Iran and Eastern Syria. It, and the Syriac Orthodox Church, were victims of the Sayfo (what the Syriac Orthodox call 1915, “the Sword”, the genocide that killed millions of Armenians, and about 90% of the Syriac Orthodox and Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire, and about two thirds of the Pontic Greeks…most of the churches mentioned in Revelation are no longer extant due to a combination of the Sayfo and the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s. Eastern editions of the Peshitta lack the Apocalypse; the West Syriac Peshitta used by the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics and Maronite Catholics does include the Apocalypse and the other books missing from the East Syriac Peshitta, which has only 22 books in its New Testament; these books were translated as part of a new translation in the 16th century by St. Thomas of Harqel, known as the Harkleian Bible, and were added to the Western Peshitta. In existing English translations however one will not notice a change of literary style, since this is usually lost in translation, although with the original Greek New Testament, there is an exciting new translation by the controversial Eastern Orthodox scholar Dr. David Bentley Hart* which seeks to preserve the distinct literary styles of each of the authors. Reading it one realizes that St. Luke wrote the most elegant prose of anyone in the New Testament, although of course if one reads the original Greek one can come to the same conclusion.




*Dr. Hart is controversial because he is a universalist and Eastern Orthodoxy officially regards Universalism as a heresy, but thus far no one has anathematized him, since there exists in two or three of the less strict Anglophone Orthodox jurisdictions a tiny minority that includes a few priests who are universalists and justify it based on the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Origen (who was anathematized as a heretic in the Chalcedonian churches by Emperor Justinian for teaching Universalism), and St. Isaac the Syrian, who it turns out was a member of the Church of the East and like most members of the Church of the East between 600 and 1500 AD, believed that Hell was a temporary place of punishment. You will not find Universalists in ROCOR, or the Serbian Orthodox Church, or the Georgian Orthodox Church, or any of the more traditional Orthodox churches that use the Julian Calendar for fixed feasts as well as the movable feasts connected to Pascha (Easter Sunday), which all Eastern Orthodox churches except for the Church of Finland and the portion of the Church of Estonia that uncaonically left the Moscow Patriarchate and entered the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople without a release, which is contrary to the ancient canons; the EP has encroached on the territory of several other churches including the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church in America, whose autocephaly the EP does not recognize, because it was granted by Moscow in 1970, so I suppose the EP views the OCA as part of the Moscow Patriarchate even though its not, as demonstrated by the vigorous criticism the OCA has directed at the MP over the tragedy in the Ukraine, criticism which would cause their bishops to be deposed if they actually were still a part of the MP. Ironically, the Universalist faction mainly exists in the Ecumencial Patriarchate, the Orthodox Church in Amerida and the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the status is the Antiochians have severed communion with the EP because the EP has sanctioned intrusions on Antiochian canonical territory by the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, which is stricter and more traditional than Antioch, and as mentioned above, the EP pretends the OCA is a part of the Moscow Patriarchate because they are unwilling to admit that the power to grant autocephaly is held by all autocephalous churches and not just the EP, and the OCA meanwhile tries to work with both in the Society of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of America to increase unity among the churches of North America.

 

[Leaf473]

Well it was slow to be adopted in the Church of the East, which today survives as the Assyrian Church of the East, mainly in Iraq, Iran and Eastern Syria. It, and the Syriac Orthodox Church, were victims of the Sayfo (what the Syriac Orthodox call 1915, “the Sword”, the genocide that killed millions of Armenians, and about 90% of the Syriac Orthodox and Assyrians living in the Ottoman Empire, and about two thirds of the Pontic Greeks…most of the churches mentioned in Revelation are no longer extant due to a combination of the Sayfo and the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s. Eastern editions of the Peshitta lack the Apocalypse; the West Syriac Peshitta used by the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics and Maronite Catholics does include the Apocalypse and the other books missing from the East Syriac Peshitta, which has only 22 books in its New Testament; these books were translated as part of a new translation in the 16th century by St. Thomas of Harqel, known as the Harkleian Bible, and were added to the Western Peshitta. In existing English translations however one will not notice a change of literary style, since this is usually lost in translation, although with the original Greek New Testament, there is an exciting new translation by the controversial Eastern Orthodox scholar Dr. David Bentley Hart* which seeks to preserve the distinct literary styles of each of the authors. Reading it one realizes that St. Luke wrote the most elegant prose of anyone in the New Testament, although of course if one reads the original Greek one can come to the same conclusion.




*Dr. Hart is controversial because he is a universalist and Eastern Orthodoxy officially regards Universalism as a heresy, but thus far no one has anathematized him, since there exists in two or three of the less strict Anglophone Orthodox jurisdictions a tiny minority that includes a few priests who are universalists and justify it based on the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Origen (who was anathematized as a heretic in the Chalcedonian churches by Emperor Justinian for teaching Universalism), and St. Isaac the Syrian, who it turns out was a member of the Church of the East and like most members of the Church of the East between 600 and 1500 AD, believed that Hell was a temporary place of punishment. You will not find Universalists in ROCOR, or the Serbian Orthodox Church, or the Georgian Orthodox Church, or any of the more traditional Orthodox churches that use the Julian Calendar for fixed feasts as well as the movable feasts connected to Pascha (Easter Sunday), which all Eastern Orthodox churches except for the Church of Finland and the portion of the Church of Estonia that uncaonically left the Moscow Patriarchate and entered the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople without a release, which is contrary to the ancient canons; the EP has encroached on the territory of several other churches including the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Church in America, whose autocephaly the EP does not recognize, because it was granted by Moscow in 1970, so I suppose the EP views the OCA as part of the Moscow Patriarchate even though its not, as demonstrated by the vigorous criticism the OCA has directed at the MP over the tragedy in the Ukraine, criticism which would cause their bishops to be deposed if they actually were still a part of the MP. Ironically, the Universalist faction mainly exists in the Ecumencial Patriarchate, the Orthodox Church in Amerida and the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the status is the Antiochians have severed communion with the EP because the EP has sanctioned intrusions on Antiochian canonical territory by the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, which is stricter and more traditional than Antioch, and as mentioned above, the EP pretends the OCA is a part of the Moscow Patriarchate because they are unwilling to admit that the power to grant autocephaly is held by all autocephalous churches and not just the EP, and the OCA meanwhile tries to work with both in the Society of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of America to increase unity among the churches of North America.

Very interesting!

 

[The Liturgist]

Very interesting!

I find it fascinating. If ever you want a guided tour through early church history, especially as it pertains to worship and liturgics, and also heresiology (the study of heresy) or the history of mystical theology, monasticism and lives dedicated to prayer, such as St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers, or the famed Hesychasts of Mount Athos in Greece, as well as the confusing but interesting plethora of religious orders in the Western church (a uniquely Western concept; the Orthodox do not have specialized religious orders with distinct rules like the Franciscans, Redemptorists, Mercedarians, Dominicans, Carthusians, Jesuits or Opus Dei, although each monastery can adopt its own rule within reason and some monks serve as parish priests, like Catholic friars, but on a more ad hoc basis), I would love to share with you what I have learned, and I can if desired even introduce you to a range of interesting people such as English speaking Orthodox bishops and even the eccentric founder of a heretical Christian denomination, which although heretical, is not a cult. That said many people are shy, but for those who are outgoing, even introverts like myself, it can be enlightening to hear the perspectives of different people.

 

[Leaf473]

I find it fascinating. If ever you want a guided tour through early church history, especially as it pertains to worship and liturgics, and also heresiology (the study of heresy) or the history of mystical theology, monasticism and lives dedicated to prayer, such as St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers, or the famed Hesychasts of Mount Athos in Greece, as well as the confusing but interesting plethora of religious orders in the Western church (a uniquely Western concept; the Orthodox do not have specialized religious orders with distinct rules like the Franciscans, Redemptorists, Mercedarians, Dominicans, Carthusians, Jesuits or Opus Dei, although each monastery can adopt its own rule within reason and some monks serve as parish priests, like Catholic friars, but on a more ad hoc basis), I would love to share with you what I have learned, and I can if desired even introduce you to a range of interesting people such as English speaking Orthodox bishops and even the eccentric founder of a heretical Christian denomination, which although heretical, is not a cult. That said many people are shy, but for those who are outgoing, even introverts like myself, it can be enlightening to hear the perspectives of different people.

Thanks for the offer, perhaps in the future when other threads have calmed down

Peace be with you!