We can't ignore the birth of Jesus, as being a prophecy fulfilled. Nor can we ignore the fact that those who were given that sacred trust completely overlooked it when it happened, why? Because they'd tried to interpret the prophecies to fit the meaning they desired. The rulership of Israel was looking for a conquering Messiah. The priesthood was waiting for their great expectation of a liberating man of God. The people had been convinced that a hero, a king was going to come to free them and they had their prime example in Moses. They wanted another Moses only this time they were expecting a liberator that would free them once and for all, and put all others, all the gentiles under subjection to them. Do you know, this is what Israel still expects today. They've refused to look at the prophecies in the light of history and watch how miraculously, and meticulously the key points have been met. They refuse to believe prophecy has been fulfilled and where does that leave them? Lost.
We dare not do the same.
What do I mean? We believe in Jesus so there is no chance of us not believing in His birth, death, and resurrection, right? Right. There's no chance we'll ever dismiss Jesus as the Son of God, our Messiah, our King, our Lord, and Savior. However it is very possible that we will do the same with this Little Horn power. People do NOT want to believe things are other than they've been taught to imagine.
People have grown up on the belief that the Antichrist is just a single person.
Do you know where this belief comes from?
Read this first--
'Many Protestant reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and Cotton Mather, identified the Roman Papacy as the Antichrist.[31] The Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg headed by Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume "Magdeburg Centuries" to discredit the papacy and identify the pope as the Antichrist.'
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'The view of Futurism, a product of the Counter-Reformation, was advanced beginning in the 16th century in response to the identification of the Papacy as Antichrist. Francisco Ribera, a Jesuit priest, developed this theory in In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarij, his 1585 treatise on the Apocalypse of John. St. Bellarmine codified this view, giving in full the Catholic theory set forth by the Greek and Latin Fathers, of a personal Antichrist to come just before the end of the world and to be accepted by the Jews and enthroned in the temple at Jerusalem — thus endeavoring to dispose of the exposition which saw Antichrist in the pope.'
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We need to discuss Futurism, we need to discuss this personal Antichrist because SO many are caught up in this they've failed to realize this was something the PAPACY instigated to counter Biblical proofs from - Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and Cotton Mather.
We've already studied to reveal the Papacy as the Little Horn power which would exist until our Savior returns. We've studied at great lengths and it adds up as NO other adds up.
History has proven this even beyond what those men of the reformation identified the Papacy as being the Antichrist. The Papacy labeled those who believed this as heretics and they had to come up with something to counter this and that something was…futurism.
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'Futurism' is the idea of a future figure anti-Christ such as a Damien Thorn of the Omen movies' , developed by Jesuits as a distraction from 'Historicism' of the anti-Christ as the historical Roman Catholic Church
From http://www.lmn.org/magazine/170/Jesuits.html
'At the Council of Trent, the Jesuits were commissioned by the Pope to develop a new interpretation of Scripture that would counteract the Protestant application of the Bible’s Antichrist prophecies to the Roman Catholic Church. Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), a brilliant Jesuit priest and doctor of theology from Spain, basically said, “Here am I, send me.” Like Martin Luther, Francisco Ribera also read by candlelight the prophecies about the Antichrist, the little horn, that man of sin, and the Beast. But because of his dedication and allegiance to the Pope, he came to conclusions vastly different from those of the Protestants. “Why, these prophecies don’t apply to the Catholic Church at all!” Ribera said. Then to whom do they apply? Ribera proclaimed, “To only one sinister man who will rise up at the end of time!” “Fantastic!” was the reply from Rome, and this viewpoint was quickly adopted as the official Roman Catholic position on the Antichrist.
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“In 1590, Ribera published a commentary on the Revelation as a counter-interpretation to the prevailing view among Protestants which identified the Papacy with the Antichrist. Ribera applied all of Revelation but the earliest chapters to the end time rather than to the history of the Church. Antichrist would be a single evil person who would be received by the Jews and would rebuild Jerusalem.”5 “Ribera denied the Protestant Scriptural Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2) as seated in the church of God—asserted by Augustine, Jerome, Luther and many reformers. He set on an infidel Antichrist, outside the church of God.”6 “The result of his work [Ribera’s] was a twisting and maligning of prophetic truth.”7
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who helped popularize and propagate the futuristic interpretation of biblical prophecy.
Following close behind Francisco Ribera was another brilliant Jesuit scholar, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) of Rome. Between 1581 and 1593, Cardinal Bellarmine published his “Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of the Christian Belief Against the Heretics of This Time.” In these lectures, he agreed with Ribera. “The futurist teachings of Ribera were further popularized by an Italian cardinal and the most renowned of all Jesuit controversialists. His writings claimed that Paul, Daniel, and John had nothing whatsoever to say about the Papal power. The futurists’ school won general acceptance among Catholics. They were taught that Antichrist was a single individual who would not rule until the very end of time.”8 Through the work of these two tricky Jesuit scholars, we might say that a brand new baby was born into the world. Protestant historians have given this baby a name—Jesuit Futurism. In fact, Francisco Ribera has been called the Father of Futurism.
Futurism in America
One of the most important figures in this whole drama is Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921), a Kansas lawyer who was greatly influenced by the writings of Darby. In 1909, Scofield published the first edition of his famous Scofield Reference Bible. In the early 1900s, this Bible became so popular in American Protestant Bible schools that it was necessary to print literally millions of copies. Yet, in the much-respected footnotes of this very Bible, Scofield injected large doses of the fluid of Futurism also found in the writings of Darby, Todd, Maitland, Bellarmine, and Ribera. Through the Scofield Bible, the Jesuit child reached young adulthood. The doctrine of an Antichrist still to come was becoming firmly established inside 20th-century American Protestantism.
Cyrus Scofield, the famed publisher of the Scofield Reference Bible, liberally interspersed the footnotes of his Bible with large doses of Futurism. These footnotes are still widely accepted by many theologians today.
The Moody Bible Institute and the Dallas Theological Seminary have strongly supported the teachings of John Nelson Darby, and this has continued to fuel Futurism’s growth. Then in the 1970s, Pastor Hal Lindsey, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, released his blockbuster book The Late Great Planet Earth. This 177-page, easy-to-read volume brought Futurism to the masses of American Christianity, and beyond. The New York Times labeled it “The number one best-seller of the decade.” Over 30 million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into over 30 languages. Through The Late Great Planet Earth, Jesuit Futurism took a strong hold over the Protestant Christian world.
Left Behind
Now we have Left Behind. In the 1990s, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins took the future one-man Antichrist idea of Hal Lindsey, Scofield, Darby, Irving, Newman, Todd, Maitland, Bellarmine, and Ribera, and turned it into “The most successful Christian-fiction series ever” (Publishers Weekly). Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was largely theological, which limited its appeal, while Left Behind is a sequence of highly imaginative novels, “overflowing with suspense, action, and adventure,” a “Christian thriller,” with a “label its creators could never have predicted: blockbuster success” (Entertainment Weekly). The much-respected television ministries of Jack Van Impe, Peter and Paul Lalonde, and Pastor John Hagee, have all worked together to produce LEFT BEHIND: The Movie. The entire project has even caught the attention of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, resulting in an interview of LaHaye and Jenkins on Larry King Live. The Left Behind books have been made available on displays at WalMart, Fry’s Electronics, and inside countless other stores.
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Francisco Ribera
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Francisco Ribera (1537–1591) was a Jesuit doctor of theology, born in Spain. He began writing a lengthy (500 page) commentary in 1585 on the book of Revelation (Apocalypse) titled In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarij, and published it about the year 1590. He died in 1591 at the age of fifty-four, so he was not able to expand on his work or write any other commentaries on Revelation. In order to remove the Catholic Church from consideration as the antichrist, Ribera proposed that the first few chapters of the Apocalypse applied to ancient pagan Rome, and the rest he limited to a yet future period of 3½ literal years, immediately prior to the second coming. During that time, the Roman Catholic Church would have fallen away from the pope into apostasy. Then, he proposed, the antichrist, a single individual, would:
Persecute and blaspheme the saints of God.
Rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
Abolish the Christian religion.
Deny Jesus Christ.
Be received by the Jews.
Pretend to be God.
Kill the two witnesses of God.
Conquer the world.
So, according to Ribera, the 1260 days and 42 months and 3½ times of prophecy were not 1260 years as based on the year-day principle (Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6), but a literal 3½ years. Therefore, none of the book of Revelation had any application to the Middle Ages or the papacy, but to the future; to a period immediately prior to the second coming, hence the name Futurism. If this interpretation is correct, the reading and exposition of Revelation is unnecessary; a position that is in direct opposition to the reason it was written (Rev. 1:1-3).
The Futuristic system of interpretation was instigated by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) as a response to the Protestant reformation. Jesuit priests, Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine, over several decades, developed the proposition that everything in Revelation from chapters 4-22 was to come to pass sometime in the future, thereby removing all incriminating interpretations against the Papacy. The Historicist method of interpretation had been building for 1500 years with input, argument, and discussion from hundreds of scholars, scientists, and theologians (most of which were Catholic). However, the Counter-Reformation solution proposed by Ribera and Bellarmine was in direct conflict with Peter's clear statement, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." 2 Peter 1:20, according to Froom (1948, Vols. 2, 3)
The first Protestant to accept and espouse Futurism was Samuel Roffey Maitland (1792–1866) curate of Christ Church, Gloucester, who wrote a 72 page pamphlet in 1826 denouncing the year-day principle. Even though many defended the traditional historical positions, Futurism became more and more popular with Protestants, especially after the printing of the Scofield Reference Bible about 1900. (Froom, 1948, Vols. 3, 4)
[edit] References
Ralph Thompson, Champions of Christianity in Search of Truth, p. 91.
H. Grattan Guinness, History Unveiling Prophecy or Time as an Interpreter, New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1905, p. 289.
The Incredible Cover-Up: Exposing the Origins of Rapture Theories, by Dave MacPherson. Omega Publications, Medford Oregon. 1980.
Leroy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1948, Vol. 2, pp. 486–493, Vol. 3, pp. 533, 655, 731, Vol. 4, 1195, 1196, 1204.
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The opposite of Futurism is Preterism- Not future but past, all the prophecy has been fulfilled in the past- something that absolutely IS NOT supported by prophecy!
'Preterism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets prophecies of the Bible, especially Daniel and Revelation, as events which have already happened in the first century A.D. Preterism holds that Ancient Israel finds its continuation or fulfillment in the Christian church at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The term preterism comes from the Latin praeter, which is listed in Webster's 1913 dictionary as a prefix denoting that something is "past" or "beyond," signifying that either all or a majority of Bible prophecy was fulfilled by AD 70. Adherents of Preterism are commonly known as Preterists.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism
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If you've read all this then you've had a lot to take in, a lot! But mostly history and not Bible studying. The two go hand in hand with prophecy as we've stated and will continue to state.
The history proves that this isn't some NEW fad thought up by someone but rather these beliefs began a long, long time ago and as time continued on the puzzle pieces continued to be put into the puzzle and the picture has grown clearer and clearer.
Our Savior would have us WATCHING and PRAYING!
We are watching!
Luk 12:37 Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.
Found watching. Don't you want to be found watching? I want to be found watching!
Please Lord find us watching for you! Find us watching as the prophecies You have given us are fulfilled. Find us watching as you instruct us to watch. Lord we need You, we need Your guidance. We need Your enlightenment. We need the Holy Spirit to touch our hearts and minds, opening our understanding. Please Lord as we continue to study Your prophecies help us, bless us!
By Your amazing love! By Your grace! Only through YOU!
Amen.
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