"The Time is at Hand"

End Times
dwilkins
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dwilkins » Sat Jun 20, 2015 8:48 pm

One of the defects of standard Protestant Christianity is to fail to appreciated the authority that the Apostles had. We do so as a push back against the RCC because they propose that the Apostle Peter's authority continued through their Popes. This is an over reaction in my opinion. The Apostles in the first century were assumed to be speaking for God. So, anything the 12 plus Paul wrote was assumed to be authoritative. If this is so, John's Revelation would be authoritative and shouldn't have been doubted by the Christians unless is wasn't able to be authenticated. But. If John's book wasn't enough there were more than 300 other direct and indirect time texts in the New Testament that asserted that the Second Coming would be within their generation. So, the time was indeed "at hand".

The point of the Olivet Discourse was to keep believers from being conned by non-Apostalic predictions.

Doug

dizerner

Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dizerner » Sat Jun 20, 2015 8:50 pm

300 seems to be quite the exageration.

dwilkins
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dwilkins » Sat Jun 20, 2015 9:52 pm

Actually, my most recent count is 361 in the whole New Testament. Some of them are indirect, and some of them happen more than once per verse. Some of them are in Revelation itself, so would seem to be out of bounds for the sake of this discussion. So, to be generous for the sake of argument, I'd simply say more than 300. But all of them say either state or imply that the Second Coming would be in the first century. There isn't a single verse that directly claims it would be outside of the generation of the Apostles.

The issues, then, becomes rather simple if you think that scripture was inspired: If the statements were to be taken at face value then they were meant to be taken seriously by the first century believers. If the statements were meant to be spiritualized then they were meant to encourage believers in every generation.

If a single instance of a time statement was meant to be taken literally then preterism is inevitable.

Doug

dizerner

Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dizerner » Sat Jun 20, 2015 10:20 pm

I have one.. that says no one knows the time.

dwilkins
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dwilkins » Sat Jun 20, 2015 10:47 pm

Saying that no one knows "the time" (though that's not the phrase that's used in scripture and I would probably dispute your understanding of the phrase that is there) is not that same thing as saying that somehow "the time is at hand" can mean 2,000 years and counting. To say that no one knows the day or hour certainly isn't the same thing as a specific assertion that it will be outside of the basic window established by Christ himself, which is that the generation of the Apostles would not pass away until the prophecies in question were fulfilled.

Doug

dizerner

Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dizerner » Sun Jun 21, 2015 2:42 pm

dwilkins wrote:Saying that no one knows "the time" (though that's not the phrase that's used in scripture and I would probably dispute your understanding of the phrase that is there) is not that same thing as saying that somehow "the time is at hand" can mean 2,000 years and counting. To say that no one knows the day or hour certainly isn't the same thing as a specific assertion that it will be outside of the basic window established by Christ himself, which is that the generation of the Apostles would not pass away until the prophecies in question were fulfilled.

Doug
There's no indication that future generations wouldn't notice the Day or Coming of the Lord, but there is a warning against people who say it already has come.

Saying "the day or the hour" must be taken literally, so that you know the "week," seems just desperate, sorry.

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robbyyoung
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by robbyyoung » Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:45 pm

dizerner wrote:There's no indication that future generations wouldn't notice the Day or Coming of the Lord,
Hi dizerner,

This is totally absent from any context regarding The Coming of The Lord. You show us where The Coming of The Lord speaks to another people, time and place other than the specific audience within The Roman World in the 1st Century!

Let's see who will start spiritualizing the context to support a paradigm. ;)
dizerner wrote:but there is a warning against people who say it already has come.

Saying "the day or the hour" must be taken literally, so that you know the "week," seems just desperate, sorry.
Ok brother, let's look at the discussion that took place, shall we.

dizerner, I'm going to place a name in the historical conversation, maybe then clarity can be shown, from my point a view. First, we are in essence reading a document claiming to be an accurate witness to personal conversations and interactions with REAL PEOPLE of the day. Therefore, Yeshua is answering questions presented to Him by His Disciples. Yeshua isn't speaking randomly into the air, NO, He's looking into the eyes of the ones asking the questions and pulling them into the response, for THEY will be instrumental in the answers given. So we read in Matt 24: 36

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

Then we read in vs.44

“For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

Let's checkout the personal pronouns:

“For this reason YOU also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when YOU do not think He will.

Let's make this even more personal and add a name, let's use Peter, since he was there:

“For this reason Peter, you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you, Peter do not think He will.

Yeshua specifically told The Disciples He WILL, not MIGHT, come when THEY will not expect Him!

Where is the confusion????

This squarely places The Coming of The Lord, in which no one knows the day or hour, in the lifetime of The Disciples.

Again, let's see who spiritualizes their way around the context to desperately support a paradigm. ;)

God Bless.

dwilkins
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dwilkins » Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:57 pm

I think you are assuming that my answer to the issue of not knowing the day or hour is that you can at least know the week. I've seen that argument before. Though I think there is a strong connection between the "day and hour" language and the Feast of Trumpets (which means that regardless of what year it is it is likely to happen during that festival), my primary argument is completely different. As Robby has quoted, it is clear in Mark that Jesus didn't know "the day nor hour" while on earth. Only the Father knew. But, it is also clear that Jesus told the Disciples that when the Spirit was issued he'd teach them things to come the Jesus hadn't,

John 16:12-13 (ESV)
12 "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

We also learn from Paul in 2nd Thessalonians that he has given them specific tangible historical events to look to in order to know when the end is about to happen. They'd been told before. The historical events that had unfolded had confused them somehow (notice that the universe did not melt in the process). So, in chapter 2 he says,

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 (ESV)
1 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers,
2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction,
4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?
6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders,
10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

It is clear that more information had been passed about when things would happen since Jesus stopped teaching on earth. None of the new information above implies the events will happen to future generations. But, since the one restraining is already alive and functioning, it does restrict the events to the time related to his lifespan.

Maybe the point I should be emphasizing to you is that the assertion that no one knew the day nor hour was given quite early in the NT narrative, and this condition didn't necessarily last throughout the whole narrative.

Doug

dizerner

Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dizerner » Mon Jun 22, 2015 2:59 pm

not that same thing as saying that somehow "the time is at hand" can mean 2,000 years and counting.
Actually it would seem the Apostle Peter did have this very understanding, as he specifically mentions "1,000" years as being like a single day to God. See some things I wrote on Preterism previously:

http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 109#p66096

dwilkins
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Re: "The Time is at Hand"

Post by dwilkins » Mon Jun 22, 2015 4:45 pm

dizerner wrote:
not that same thing as saying that somehow "the time is at hand" can mean 2,000 years and counting.
Actually it would seem the Apostle Peter did have this very understanding, as he specifically mentions "1,000" years as being like a single day to God. See some things I wrote on Preterism previously:

http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 109#p66096
God himself may experience time differently than we do, but that doesn't invalidate every time statement in scripture. In fact, in the OT every time statement that was given was fulfilled precisely unless it was explicitly altered. There is no reason to think that time statements given in the NT follow a different precedent. As far as 2nd Peter 3 goes I tend to think that the point Peter is making is the opposite of what people assume (because they are driven by their need for the Second Coming to be in our future). His point is that God is reliable and will execute the day of the Lord as promised. So, the key would be to see what the day of the Lord means elsewhere in scripture. It turns out that it has always meant a military or national disaster brought on as a point of judgment by God. If the events of the Roman War are an iteration of the day of the Lord then the burden of proof is on futurists to prove that Peter was talking about a different one.

Doug

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