Dear Pastor Bob,
Thank you for your posts, and
please, keep posting. I wish you were still preaching and in my area
(RI). I would be your most faithful congregant.
Daniel
9:27 has always been explicitly clear to me. As you point out, the rule
of antecedents prohibits alternative interpretations. The context is
clear. Here is a link to Tom McElmurry, another retired pastor, who,
while being a believer in the rapture, manages to support the
alternative interpretation. His main argument seems to be that prior to
Darby, speaking of people whose character has been assassinated, in the
early 1800's, no Christian "scholar or authority" supported the
antecedent interpretation. He also believes that the AC will emerge from
what was greater Syria in times past. I have the greatest respect for
Tom along with some profound disagreements. Anyway, you may find his
material interesting.
Over
the years I've become rather skilled at uncovering SDA speakers,
documents and websites. (THEY NEVER, EVER IDENTIFY THEMSELVES UP FRONT
AS SDA!) I've attended two of their roadshow prophecy seminars and
performed the necessary historical research to refute their case. In all
instances, their speakers are highly trained, masters of their subject,
polished, interesting, personable and likable. They sound good, and
they can set the weak faithed, particularly those of limited Biblical
and historical knowledge, to tottering. Here are the red flags.
1. They ask, "Has the Sabbath ever been cancelled?"
2. They obsess on 1798 -- Napoleon throws the Pope out of the Vatican.
3. They define history by emphasis on Rome's defeats by the Goths, Visigoths and other marauders too numerous to mention.
4. They hold to the alternative interpretation of Daniel 9:27
5.
They obsess over the Catholic Church ... changing times and seasons,
etc. and charge Protestantism with inheriting or carrying on much of
Catholicism's transgressions.
6. They conclude by denying the rapture.
7. They then typically go into a health food rant.
I
like to summarize their position with: Everything that's going to
happen has happened except the second half of the 70th. week.
There's
much more, but if the presentation emphasizes any of the previous
seven, it's of the SDA. Typically I have to perform a two or three level
Google drill down to make a positive ID.
He
describes the book as a Jewish document addressed to the Jews of the
end times. The Church, the body of Christ, has no part nor presence in
it. The "churches" (ecclesia - called out assembly) are in fact
Messianic synagogues in the end times. Parenthetically, John and all the
apostles expected Christ's imminent return. They had no idea that God
would stop the clock for the dispensation of grace. So, these ecclesia were existing synagogues in John's day and may well be functioning even now, although I've been unable to verify this.
The
Bride of Christ is not Christ's Church. The Church is the body of
Christ. The Bride is the assembly of righteous Jews from Abraham
forward, the Jews who believed God.
And, there
is much, much more, all of which raises the hackles of conventional
Christianity. Bullinger is described as an ultra-dispensationalist by
Ironsides, who wrote a fierce rebuttal around 1950.
Les,
a layman, a consummate Biblical scholar and English grammarian, has
independently reached Bullinger's position. Les is a bit more ambitious,
however, tackling the whole Bible. I'm now on page 6000 of an estimated
10,000 pages of transcripts from his lectures and TV shows spanning
about 13 years.
According to Les, the Gospels
are really an extension of the OT. Christ's ministry was to Israel
(according to Scripture, had to be). Paul and only Paul was chosen as
the Apostle to the Gentiles. Christian doctrine should derive only from
Pail's epistles. The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is:
I Corinthians 15:
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
As Les puts it, "faith plus nothing". Additions ... repentance, baptism, sacraments, works, etc. count as nothing for salvation.
Paul,
alone among the Apostles, spent three years with the risen ascended,
glorified Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul alone received the gospel of
salvation by grace through faith. The gospel that Christ preached during
his ministry and which the eleven Apostles subsequently preached was
the Kingdom Gospel. They're two different things and cannot be mixed.
That's
my synopsis of 6000 pages. Actually, the level of detail, the Scripture
backed with Scripture, in Les' transcripts is astounding. No one will
ever accuse him of taking lone verses out of context.
I'd
know of none of this except for 5DOVES, which has provided me with some
absolutely astonishing leads to people and works of whose existence I
wasn't aware. I'm profoundly grateful for John Tng's labor and
dedication. And, I'm always searching for people to partner with in my
voyages through documents to huge to read. They wrote faster with a
quill than I can read.
Well, this turned out to be a bit longer than I intended. I really meant to write a simple "Thank you" for your posts.
Maranatha,
Bob Anderson