3/20/20

Incorrect Eschatology Can Read Like a Novel

Christian pre-millennialists and Muslims share an incorrect interpretation of scripture concerning when and how the end times will present. Muslims believe that Jesus will return to help a Muslim mahdi wrap things up with war and death while pre-millennialists interpret scripture including the New Testament in such a way that is too familiar to Hollywood and writers with a transporter-rapture of Christian and an anti-Christ taking over the world with sundry cataclysms and Armageddon. That is apparently all wrong.

The end times of New Testament scripture generally referred to the horrific events of the first century A.D. the Lord said would occur. Jerusalem was destroyed with more than a million dead etc.  The new age that followed was the Christian era and long term increase of the faithful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. That time of increase could go on for thousands of years except for the malfeasance of unsound environmentally rotten economic policies evolved from the past that are maladapted to a very populous world. No one knows when the Lord will actually return for a third time to really wrap things up (counting his appearance after crucifixion as his second coming). People must soberly wait and see.

In the meantime, especially during the novel coronavirus 19 mileau, it is a good time to establish a priesthood of believers church structure with Christians meeting in small egalitarian groups sharing liturgical duties with a standardized, Biblically correct structure. Maybe eight people is enough, sitting around a few card tables with safe distancing. A network of priesthood of believers church groups could be maintained after the conclusion of covid 19.

One other point about wrong hermeneutics; People commonly misunderstand the book of Genesis. God creates time and is himself atemporal and unbound by strictures or dimensions of space and time. If God evolved the world in six days that comprised for Earthers billions of years; if the world is 4 billion years old, the meaning of end times itself could be quite a few more than one would expect in the context of a thriller novel. The actual meaning of the end of the age, besides the end of the Old Testament covenant way of salvation of obeying the law of Moses strictly as all that was provided (when Jesus provided a new way that was more difficult to flunk) can have several meanings- even several thousands years starting with the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord.


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