Zephaniah

[eclipsenow]

Because 1 Thess 5:3 and Zephaniah 1:18 are about the same event.
The Lord WILL act to correct mankind to a similar extent as He did in the days of Noah. 2 Peter 3:1-7 plainly warns us of this forthcoming disaster by fire.
I read and understand the Prophesies about the Day of the Lord's vengeance and wrath, just as they are Written. Any other interpretation, such as you promote; requires a valid case for making those plainly stated Prophesies, say and mean anything else.

The Prophesies about this terrible Day of fire, earthquakes, storms and tsunamis, all say they will strike suddenly and simultaneously.
But the Prophesies about the glorious Return of Jesus, do not say that Day will be unexpected or there will be fire then.
Jesus will Return when the armies of the 'beast' have assembled at Armageddon. There will be another earthquake and storms, which may be just localized. Revelation 16:18-21
Christians around then, will surely be aware and anyway, they simply need to count 1260 days from the day the Anti-Christ sits in the Temple.

Context: You need to actually read and ascertain what Zephaniah is telling us, in the plain context of His Judgment by fire.
Look at Zephaniah 1:2-3 I shall utterly destroy everything from the face of the land, humans, birds and fish; all wiped out.
The parallel passages are; Hosea 4:3 and Jeremiah 9:10-11 & 22, Isaiah 13:9-13, Romans 1:18, Hebrews 10:27

And around and around we go!

1. Context: Zephaniah is pre-Jesus and doesn't know all those details - mainly knows about the nations God is about to judge, including God's own people

2. I know you like to read literally - but that's the hyperbole language of un-creation. It's like the opposite of Genesis. It's a metaphor as much as our metaphor of a 'sunrise'. It's that recognisable to Israelites that grew up with the Genesis 1 narrative. It's the opposite of Genesis 1. It's a visual image that basically says "We are going to be UNMADE." NOT partially destroyed by a CME. As a nation, they were going to experience something as bad as uncreation unless they repented.

3. Judgement Day / The Return / Angels / Fire / NHNE all happen on the same day. You ignore what the CLEAREST plainest verses in the NT say on That Day - and then rely on the metaphoric hyperbole of the OT to make your point for you. You're reading Shakespeare as an engineering manual - and so getting it all wrong.

4. How do I REALLY know you're just making all this up about the OT prophets? Tell me, why don't you go on and on and on about Ezekiel eating food cooked over poo for a year? Where does that fit in your end-times table? What about him building toy models of Jerusalem and attacking it? What about lying on his side for a year? Cutting the hair off his head and chopping it up into tiny bits. Aren't all these about the future as well? Please - go ahead and re-read all the OT prophets whom you have selectively ripped the fire out of context, and explain all their OTHER dramatic metaphors and symbols and how they fit in and where they are mentioned in Revelation. Or don't they fit your CME narrative? Are they about something else? Are they about something more immediate and local? Hint hint - then that might mean the fire verses are two - especially when they SAY they are because there's so much about the swords of the Babylonians in the very same chapters!

(I note how you never bothered responding to my sword corrections of Ezekiel 21 and 30. Nice job there avoiding the actual reality and context!)

 

[Douggg]

The Bible plainly states the Lord's holy people will make an agreement with the 'beast' and he breaks it at the mid point; Daniel 7:25, Revelation 13:7

Daniel 7:25, Revelation 13:7 are about the person persecuting the saints. The Jews, Israel, turn to Jesus right before then.

In Daniel 7:25, the person changes the times and laws is a violation of the law of Moses covenant.

___________________________________________________________

In Matthew 24:15-31 which is end times, when the abomination of desolation is set up....

Jesus telling them in Judea to flee to the mountains....

And pray that their flight not be on the Sabbath.... verse 20.

It is because they are Jews not Christians.

 

[eclipsenow]

Daniel 7:25, Revelation 13:7 are about the person persecuting the saints.

There are plenty of verses about vines - let's put them ALL together... and say that because Jesus was the true vine, all these other verses are somehow in there as well. Great bible reading method! Cool hermeneutics ... not.

 

[Douggg]

Tell me, why don't you go on and on and on about Ezekiel eating food cooked over poo for a year? Where does that fit in your end-times table? What about him building toy models of Jerusalem and attacking it? What about lying on his side for a year?

Yes, you are right about those things are about the Jews going into captivity. You are criticizing Keras for overlooking those things.

....but you are doing the same regarding Gog/Magog event to happen in the latter days, latter years.

 

[Douggg]

There are plenty of verses about vines - let's put them ALL together... and say that because Jesus was the true vine, all these other verses are somehow in there as well. Great bible reading method! Cool hermeneutics ... not.

If you are trying to make a point relevant to Daniel 7:25 and Revelation 13:7, I don't know what it is.

 

[eclipsenow]

Yes, you are right about those things are about the Jews going into captivity. You are criticizing Keras for overlooking those things.

....but you are doing the same regarding Gog/Magog event to happen in the latter days, latter years.

The first thing to note is that this imagery comes from Ezekiel 38 and 39, which itself was highly symbolic and not literal. Gog is a personification of enemy nations, much like Ezekiel does with other names like Oholah/Oholibah in Chapter 23. Gog is an ancient name from Genesis invoking powerful nations from the distant past. Gog symbolises all God's powerful human enemies. Now the judgement imagery is thorough and awful destruction - but not literal - because it's inconsistent and contradictory. Then the mopping up exercise with the highly symbolic seven months to bury the dead and 7 years to burn all the weapons (as fuel for Israel) is also inconsistent, because it takes 7 months to bury the dead but the dead are all going to be eaten by the birds of prey, etc. Also, seven means perfection: Israel is given the perfect amount of time to heal from her enemies.
Watch the Bible Project on this second half of Ezekiel for more context. 7 minutes (Nearly 1.3 million views.)

I think the Bible Project was under pressure to include the first 'literal' interpretation of this temple because of the huge rise of the various Millennialisms in the United States after the popularisation of the Scofield study bible. No other force (except maybe for Hollywood and the rise of The Omen movies etc) has shaped American eschatology as profoundly. But the Bible Project hints at the fact that they side with the symbolic reading of the temple - given that everything else in Ezekiel is symbolic.

Now, what does all this mean for a literal futurist reading of Revelation? Basically it adds no credibility whatsoever to a literalist future timetable for a war involving Gog. Ezekiel's Gog is as symbolic and metaphorical as it is in Revelation. Futurist literalistic assumptions - so desperate to plead the case for their 'literal timetable' - have run roughshod over the evidence we have from Ezekiel and Revelation that both books tell us REAL theological truths in profoundly symbolic language. The Bible Project (nearly 2.1 million views) shows how John includes Gog in a vast collection of all the symbolic metaphors of the enemies of God. Futurists read Gog as some sort of literal prediction to decipher. But seen in context, both Ezekiel and Revelation are clear that it is a symbolic genre of literature using powerful metaphors to preach theological truths to encourage all Christians, for the last 2000 years and beyond.

Reducing it to some sort of future timetable for the last 7 years is not sensible, robs it of meaning for the Christians of the last 2000 years, and will have Christians fighting over their literalistic timetables for all time to come. It even risks the paranoia associated with death-cults like Jonestown and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas. It's got to stop! John was writing a symbolic sermon to his generation for ALL Christians to be encouraged, for all time to come.

 

[Douggg]

Gog symbolises all God's powerful human enemies.

No, it doesn't. The beast in Revelation is not ever called Gog.

Gog/Magog is a literal end times event.

 

[Douggg]

Reducing it to some sort of future timetable for the last 7 years is not sensible, robs it of meaning for the Christians of the last 2000 years, and will have Christians fighting over their literalistic timetables for all time to come. It even risks the paranoia associated with death-cults like Jonestown and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas. It's got to stop! John was writing a symbolic sermon to his generation for ALL Christians to be encouraged, for all time to come.

You are trying to rationalize your position, instead of dealing with the text.

You are appealing to Christians to ignore Gog/Magog like you, which is never going to happen. Christians who understand fundamental end times events that they read about in the bible, that those events are going to happen. Those Christians are called futurists.

 

[keras]

How do I REALLY know you're just making all this up about the OT prophets?

Because what I promote is what the Prophets actually said.
Your interpretation of what they said; is to contend that they didn't mean what they said. They just spouted some kind of 'highly symbolic' waffle.

both Ezekiel and Revelation are clear that it is a symbolic genre of literature using powerful metaphors to preach theological truths to encourage all Christians, for the last 2000 years and beyond.

I contend that if the Prophetic Word is only symbolic genre, then the Christians now and over the last 2000 years; gained nothing from it.
This belief is of course, why preachers ignore it and why there is so much confusion and delusion about what will happen.

Therefore; Bible Prophecy cannot be just symbolic, or of no consequence to us, because if that is correct, then God is just fooling us, He has given us how we can obtain Salvation, but His plans for our future are a riddle that we cannot solve.

I totally reject this, as we are told that we can know what God will do and what we can expect in the future.
The people who say Bible Prophecy is symbolic, spiritual, or has already happened, are fooling themselves and their failure to understand plainly stated future events may result in disadvantage for them.

 

[eclipsenow]

If you are trying to make a point relevant to Daniel 7:25 and Revelation 13:7, I don't know what it is.

You saw 2 people persecuting God's people and just ripped them out of context and made them about the same person. In context, however, they're totally different.

Daniel 7 is hard, but is probably Rome.
Then Jesus is incarnate and his kingdom explodes out over the earth and will never end.

Rev 13? Completely different thing

 

[keras]

Jesus telling them in Judea to flee to the mountains....

And pray that their flight not be on the Sabbath.... verse 20.

It is because they are Jews not Christians.

You just assume they are Jews, to suit your beliefs. Matthew 24 does not say Jews, verse 16...those who are in Judea... Who will be the Christian peoples, from every tribe, race, nation and language.

In fact; Matthew 24:22 says they are God's chosen people. Who are Christians; John 15:14-16, 1 Peter 2:9

You have added to scripture and you promote wrong theories and doctrines.
Its a shame that you seem unable to understand the truths of Bible Prophecy, but you have plenty of company and at the end of it all, the Lord will forgive the errors of His faithful people.

 

[eclipsenow]

You are trying to rationalize your position, instead of dealing with the text.

Great submission of evidence there
The moment you're out of ideas you go all Dr Freud again.
Trying to psychoanalyse why I'm wrong, rather than prove that I'm wrong

Bulverism is a term for a rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning with presumption or condescension. The method of Bulverism is to "assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error." The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake (even if the opponent's claim is actually right) by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive. The term Bulverism was coined by C. S. Lewis[1] to poke fun at a very serious error in thinking that, he alleged, recurs often in a variety of religious, political, and philosophical debates.
Bulverism - Wikipedia​

You are appealing to Christians to ignore Gog/Magog like you,

Not ignore - understand correctly.

Oh - and it's not me. I'm nobody. It's Phd's in this stuff. I actually didn't know Gog / Magog was that old. But look up Genesis - and these Phd dudes are right. Who knew?
So Daniel quotes Genesis - so what? Well, given he is so far removed from those times - it's like he said "Then all those bad guys teamed up like Nazis". What I read in various commentaries shows that by Daniel's age, the Gog / Magog theme as representing the united nations of badness was quite recognisable as a meme - an idea - rather than a specific set of people's or persons.

Christians who understand fundamental end times events that they read about in the bible, that those events are going to happen. Those Christians are called futurists.

Oh right - only you futurists understand the bible.
That's why Amils tend to cluster around a few basic ideas, and there are 666,000* types of futurists. Understanding always comes out so consistently, ya know?

(*See what I did with the number symbolism there? I said there are as many man-made futurist timetables as the Nero Caesar name times a gazillion.)

 

[eclipsenow]

Because what I promote is what the Prophets actually said. Your interpretation of what they said; is to contend that they didn't mean what they said. They just spouted some kind of 'highly symbolic' waffle.

So why did Jesus teach in parables?

I contend that if the Prophetic Word is only symbolic genre, then the Christians now and over the last 2000 years; gained nothing from it.

Prove it! I content the exact opposite.

EG: Imagine your church is being fed to the lions and your last known Apostle says you have to obey this prophecy. "In the year 4000AD the Cylons will Zorg the Daleks, and there will be a great shaking and upheaval of the land." How on earth does that help? How do you 'obey' that. Someone in your family just got fed to the lions, and the crowd was LAUGHING at it!

But if, on the other hand, John actually wrote a wonderful sermon about suffering and the gospel and nature in chaos, tyrants in charge, comparing and contrasting the 2 cities ("Babylon" and Jerusalem), etc... then you've been given a shot in the arm, a powerful, colourful, highly emotive sermon full of vivid expressions and symbols that actually teach ALL Christians across the last 2000 years how to stay faithful to Christ in dozens of scenarios.

but His plans for our future are a riddle that we cannot solve.

He's already told us that it will be like a thief in the night! His plans are spelt out theologically, giving us a glorious vision of the kind of future we'll have in eternity. But who said we have a right to know what God is going to do this side of eternity? We just don't know.

Doesn't this contradict the humility and ignorance James recommends? James 4.

3 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.​

I 'contend' that your end-times-tables is an eschatological version of boasting that you and you alone have worked out the future. And it's all a bit silly - we just don't - and Revelation wasn't written just to tickle our fancy about things God hasn't promised we should know about. Hope inspiring characteristics, yes. Details and timing? Absolutely not - and I think futurists should repent of their endless quest for it and concentrate on the gospel.

Reducing it to an end-times-table of the last few years of history that only one obsessive little futurist out of hundreds of thousands of obsessive little futurists will EVER understand does NO ONE ANY GOOD - and there are NO CONSEQUENCES for getting it wrong! You have already got 2012 wrong. Who cares? Well - me as it's a classic example of why futurism is futile.

But you have already said I will be in your fictitious nation with you, able to study everything you've been saying - IF you're right. No consequences, zip.

But if you're wrong and I'm right, all these futurists playing "pin-the-tail-on-the-end-times" are going to wreck young people's faiths when so many of them fail. Indeed, there's an Australian secular 'coming of age' movie all about getting out of cults like that. Your timetable will fail - another dime-a-dozen futurist wreck. You don't have a Phd in Hebrew symbolism, don't even have a basic Bachelor in Theology, and don't have a clue how to read the OT.

Oh, and you chickened out on commenting on this bit:-

4. How do I REALLY know you're just making all this up about the OT prophets? Tell me, why don't you go on and on and on about Ezekiel eating food cooked over poo for a year? Where does that fit in your end-times table? What about him building toy models of Jerusalem and attacking it? What about lying on his side for a year? Cutting the hair off his head and chopping it up into tiny bits. Aren't all these about the future as well? Please - go ahead and re-read all the OT prophets whom you have selectively ripped the fire out of context, and explain all their OTHER dramatic metaphors and symbols and how they fit in and where they are mentioned in Revelation. Or don't they fit your CME narrative? Are they about something else? Are they about something more immediate and local? Hint hint - then that might mean the fire verses are two - especially when they SAY they are because there's so much about the swords of the Babylonians in the very same chapters!

 

[Douggg]

You just assume they are Jews, to suit your beliefs. Matthew 24 does not say Jews, verse 16...those who are in Judea... Who will be the Christian peoples, from every tribe, race, nation and language.

The part about praying that their flight not being on the Sabbath applies to Jews ,not Christians. The Jews do not travel but so far on the Sabbath in their keeping the Torah.

 

[Douggg]

reat submission of evidence there
The moment you're out of ideas you go all Dr Freud again.
Trying to psychoanalyse why I'm wrong, rather than prove that I'm wrong

You are still not dealing with the text. There is no mass grave site of Gog's army in Israel. The text of Ezekiel 39 says that there will be. The Jews themselves recognize that Gog/Magog has not taken place yet.

 

[eclipsenow]

The part about praying that their flight not being on the Sabbath applies to Jews ,not Christians. The Jews do not travel but so far on the Sabbath in their keeping the Torah.

Sigh.

Matt 24:15–21
24:15–21 Although some interpreters take this passage to refer exclusively to the Second Coming, there are unmistakable references to the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70, as is clear from the parallel account in Luke 21:20–24. The destruction of Jerusalem was a foretaste of the Last Judgment and so is a sign of the coming wrath. It stands as a unique declaration of the end of the old age, and so is a specific and uniquely important sign.
Matt 24:15–21 - ESV Reformation Study Bible - Bible Gateway
​

Also,

22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.​

What does the commentary say?

Matt 24:22
24:22 those days. Although this verse is usually taken with vv. 15–21, it is also possible to understand it as reverting to the general “beginning of the birth pains” of vv. 4–14.​

So the question you have to ask yourself with each section of Matt 24 is what is it discussing out of the 2 options? From the introduction:

“Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”​

These things = temple and persecutions up to AD70
sign of Jesus return / "that day"

 

[Douggg]

24:15–21 Although some interpreters take this passage to refer exclusively to the Second Coming, there are unmistakable references to the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70,

Where in the text of Matthew 24:15-21 is there any mention of the destruction of Jerusalem?

Where in the text of Matthew 24:15-31 is there any mention of the Jews, afterward, being lead captive into the nations, as in Luke 21:24?

 

[eclipsenow]

You are still not dealing with the text. There is no mass grave site of Gog's army in Israel. The text of Ezekiel 39 says that there will be. The Jews themselves recognize that Gog/Magog has not taken place yet.

You are still not dealing with the text, as you have not recognised what it's actually saying. THINK! It's like you're telling me I'm not a Christian because I haven't gone through the eye of a needle yet. THINK! What genre are you reading? How many other metaphors are in Ezekiel? When is the great roasting over pooh, the great hair cut, and the great tiny model actually fulfilled in history? It's all got to fit, because you're ripping some metaphors out of Ezekiel and saying "SEE! It's literal!" and yet not others. Why is that? Was Ezekiel a prophet or not? So why did so many other prophecies not come literally true? When were THEY all fulfilled?

 

[eclipsenow]

Where in the text of Matthew 24:15-21 is there any mention of the destruction of Jerusalem?

Well, I thought the commentary spelled that out for you - so I'm surprised you had to ask.

Compare the similar themes in Luke.
Wars and desolations from Rome
Run away to live
Don't be pregnant

MATTHEW 24
Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places....
....8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. 15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

Luke 21
20 “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. 22 For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. 23 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Where in the text of Matthew 24:15-31 is there any mention of the Jews, afterward, being lead captive into the nations, as in Luke 21:24?

Why do the two gospel accounts have to have exactly the same details in every single detail, when the big 3 are present in both? Anyway, the idea of the Jews becoming the diaspora is wrapped up in the 3 themes above: Rome is going to march in and trash the joint, so run away, don't delay, don't be pregnant - get out of town or else. Can it be any clearer?

 

[Douggg]

Well, I thought the commentary spelled that out for you - so I'm surprised you had to ask.

The word Jerusalem, nor city, nor surround is found in the text of Matthew 24.

And conversely, "abomination of desolation" is not found in Luke 21.

Why do the two gospel accounts have to have exactly the same details in every single detail, when the big 3 are present in both? Anyway, the idea of the Jews becoming the diaspora is wrapped up in the 3 themes above: Rome is going to march in and trash the joint, so run away, don't delay, don't be pregnant - get out of town or else. Can it be any clearer?

They don't. The details prove that the Matthew 24:15-31 is not the 70 AD event of the destruction of Jerusalem, followed by Luke 21:24 the Jews lead away captive into the nations..

In Matthew 24:31, just the opposite, the elect are gathered. You can't say that
gathering is the rapture, because you have placed the rest of Matthew 24 in 70 ad. And since the rapture coincides with the resurrection of the dead in Christ, the bones of Christians who have died are still in the graves, proves the rapture has not taken place yet,

The Jews in Matthew 24:31 are gathered back to Israel - completely opposite of what took place in Luke 21:24. Matthew 24:31 corresponds to Ezekiel 39:28 - Jesus Himself speaking in the text. That chapter you disregard as yet to happen.