This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world...

[JLB]

I don't understand why a particular group of people will be caught up into God's throne while the rest of the Christians who keep the commandments of God and His testimony face war from Dragon as in Rev 12:17.

My personal belief is that they represent "the stone that was cut out without hands" of Daniel 2.

In addition, I agree with Tri Unity that the 144,000 don't represent literal members of those tribes. However that does not mean the 144,000 are the Man Child.

The sons of God would be my short answer.

19 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. 23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.Romans 8:19-23


JLB

 

[felix]

Joseph's "tribe" was allotted to his two children; he didn't receive his own personal tribe.

In 144000 tribe of Ephraim is missing and substituted by tribe of Joseph. In Num 13:11, tribe of Manasseh is mentioned as tribe of Joseph.

Hence, tribe of Joseph means either one of the tribes of Ephraim or Manasseh.

 

[Stormcrow]

I agree with Tri Unity that the 144,000 don't represent literal members of those tribes.

Pffft. Utterly ridiculous.

from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed. Revelation 7:5-8 (NASB)

If the 144,000 were not literal members of these tribes, then Jesus was not from the tribe of Judah and Paul was not from the tribe of Benjamin.

The reason you are all struggling with this is because you are trying to fit these words into a modern, futurist paradigm.

Oh well. :bigfrown

And yes, Joseph was a patriarch. He did not, however, receive a portion of the land. But then, neither did the Levites. John's list here is a list of the patriarchs, not merely of those who received a portion of the land of Canaan.

 

[Stormcrow]

No Christian had challenged Irenaeus during his life-time.

How do you know? At best, you are arguing from a position of silence on the issue. You've made a blanket assertion that can only be supported from silence.

 

[Stormcrow]

It makes no rational sense to argue that it was for the Apostles merely on the basis that he spoke it to them, and then add that it was also to whom the Apostles wrote the letters. If you want to argue that, then you must also believe that the letters are not for us.

Well, while it's true not a single word of the epistles were written to us, they were preserved so that even we might know the gospel.

Is there anything written in Paul's letter to Philemon written specifically to you?

If not, why do you assume anything else in the Bible was written to you?

 

[Tri Unity]

The testimony of Irenaeus is the earliest and most trustworthy account that we have. Nothing else comes close to the reliability of Irenaeus’ statement. The Syrian “early date” view is taught from a work written 1500 years after Irenaeus.

The reference to “ancient copies” means the “oldest copies”. Philip Schaff says of this verse: “Already in Irenaeus’ time there was a variation in the copies of the Apocalypse. This is interesting as showing the existence of old copies of the Apocalypse even in his time, and also as showing early works became corrupted in the course of transmission. We learn from his words, too, that textual criticism had already begun.” (NPNF2-01)




The most significant revelation here is that the early church, up until 1627, believed that the apocalypse of John was written after 70 AD. This means that there were no believers who subscribed to this theory that the Revelation was describing events prior to 70 AD. This view is a modern invention. Other early writers who quote the Revelation as being futuristic are:

• Didache (80AD)
• Clement of Rome, 2nd Clement (90 AD)
• Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (140 AD)
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies (170 AD)
• Tertullian, On the Jews (200 AD)
• Hippolytus, Christ and the Antichrist (220 AD)
• Cyprian, Letters (230 AD)
• Origen, Commentary on John (235 AD)
• Dionysius of Alexandria, On the Apocalypse (260 AD)
• Victorinus, Commentary on the Apocalypse of John (270)

The only view taught by the earliest fathers was futurist. All other views are modern inventions.

 

[Tri Unity]

The futurist view of scripture was so thoroughly saturated in the mindset of believers that the gnostics, who attempted to dislodge Christianity, were even futurists (See Tertullian, Against Valentinians). The gnostics were competing against Christianity for the hearts of mankind. They offered counterfeit doctrines on almost every Christian teaching; and not even they proposed a pre-70 AD apocalypse. This is simply an ignorant view of the teachings of Christianity. This is what happens when we become teachers without a true foundation of the history of the Church or its teachings. We start introducing new doctrines and new teachings that appeal only to those who do not know or those who refuse to be educated by history.

 

[JLB]

Pffft. Utterly ridiculous.

from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed. Revelation 7:5-8 (NASB)

If the 144,000 were not literal members of these tribes, then Jesus was not from the tribe of Judah and Paul was not from the tribe of Benjamin.

The reason you are all struggling with this is because you are trying to fit these words into a modern, futurist paradigm.

Oh well. :bigfrown

And yes, Joseph was a patriarch. He did not, however, receive a portion of the land. But then, neither did the Levites. John's list here is a list of the patriarchs, not merely of those who received a portion of the land of Canaan.

What is utterly ridiculous is, you take the literal words of Jesus who is explaining events that concern the end of the age and you "spiritualize" and "allegorized" and explain away His words the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, so you can convince people He has already returned.

But, when your are reading a symbolic book full of symbolic phrases now you want to say they are literal - THAT IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF RIDICULOUS!


Save your breath, no one with any spiritual discernment takes anything you say serious!


JLB

 

[reba]

2.5: Respect each others' opinions. Address issues, not persons or personalities. Give other members the respect you would want them to give yourself.

If this thread gets closed i will not reopen itl

 

[Stormcrow]

For those so inclined:

Iraneuas taught that Jesus lived to fifty years old….

For how had He disciples, if He did not teach? And how did He teach, if He had not a Master’s age? For He came to Baptism as one Who had not yet fulfilled thirty years, but was beginning to be about thirty years old; (for so Luke, who hath signified His years, bath set it down; Now Jesus, when He came to Baptism, began to be about thirty years old) and He preached for one year only after His Baptism: completing His thirtieth year He suffered, while He was still young, and not yet come to riper age. But the age of 30 years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, everyone will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was of when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness, who in Asia conferred with John the Lord’s disciple, to the effect that John had delivered these things unto them: for he abode with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but others also of the Apostles, and had this same account from them, and witness to the aforesaid relation. Whom ought we rather to believe? These, being such as they are, or Ptolemy, who never beheld the Apostles, nor ever in his dreams attained to any vestige of an Apostle? (Against Heresies, 2:22:5)

And that the world would end in the sixth thousandth year since creation:

For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded. And for this reason the Scripture says: "Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their adornment. And God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works." This is an account of the things formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come. For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year." (Against Heresies, 5:28:3)

Neither of those things were true. Thus being a disciple of John was no surety against error. The fact is that the early church had quite an eclectic and at times highly confusing eschatology that was far from developed into any level that would allow such dogmatic statements from any position. I have abundant testimony that some early church fathers in fact did view the Olivet Discourse in at least some aspects (from which we get the phrase "Great Tribulation") as being fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/s...ch-Fathers-and-Revelation&p=179520#post179520

Irenaeus is not a credible witness, and if he is the witness upon whom many of the other early church fathers are depending for the dating of Revelation, then they are as wrong as he is.

 

[Tri Unity]

Irenaeus is not a credible witness, and if he is the witness upon whom many of the other early church fathers are depending for the dating of Revelation, then they are as wrong as he is.

Irenaeus is indeed a reliable testimony; but assuming he is not, he is not the only witness. The list of witnesses begin in the first century (Didache, Clement); they continue in the second century (Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Theophilus, Tertullian); and they continue in the 3rd century (Cyprian, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, Lucian, etc). All of the witnesses in the early church are futurists. All of the witnesses look beyond the first century for the “consummation of the ages”; for the resurrection; for the “new heavens and new earth”.

The website you offered as evidence (above) actually shows the opposite of what you believe. The few examples that demonstrate an emphasis of the destruction of Jerusalem was a common theme back then when they were talking to Jews (see for instance Tertullian, On the Jews). You are welcome to believe whatever you like, and you can call us turgid or grandiloquent; but you cannot say that the early church were not futurists. They all were.

 

[Stormcrow]

The testimony of Irenaeus is the earliest and most trustworthy account that we have. Nothing else comes close to the reliability of Irenaeus’ statement.

Iraneuas taught that Jesus lived to fifty years old….
And that the world would end in the sixth thousandth year since creation...

Irenaeus is indeed a reliable testimony...

Evidence to the contrary – as cited above – notwithstanding, apparently.

The website you offered as evidence (above) actually shows the opposite of what you believe.

The excerpt from the website I offered was offered as evidence to illustrate how your faith in the reliability of Irenaeus is misplaced, and that was the only reason that excerpt was offered. And since you allege that “nothing else comes close” to your primary sources's reliability, you are left with a serious problem: Irenaeus couldn't even get the age of Jesus right when Christ died. What would lead anybody to believe he could get something as complex as apostolic eschatology right?

...you cannot say that the early church were not futurists. They all were.

And, like futurists today, they were equally wrong.

 

[Stormcrow]

Many others of a later age could be cited supporting this same connection between John and Domitian, but it would seem that this does no more than to continue a tradition which appears to have come from the language of Irenaeus. The conclusion most come to at this point is that the external evidence of John writing the Apocalypse at the close of Domitian's reign rests on the sole testimony of Irenaeus, who wrote a hundred years after that date, and whose words were from a verbally transmitted second source during the childhood of Irenaeus. To make matters worse, the words he used can easily have two different meanings!

An ancient document known as the Muratorian Canon which comes down to us from AD 170–210 states, "Paul, following the order of his own predecessor John, writes to no more than seven churches by name." The seven churches that Paul wrote to were: Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossi and Thessalonica. John, in his addressing the writing of Revelation, wrote to seven churches as indicated in Revelation 1:4. The implication of this statement in the Muratorian Canon is that John had written his book of Revelation BEFORE the completion of Paul's writings to the seven churches he had written to. Paul died under Nero's persecution. Nero's rule ended in AD 68!

Clement (AD 150–215) makes the following statement supporting an early dating: "For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, end with Nero" (Miscellanies 7:17). Clement seems to indicate that he believes that the Scriptures were completed by the end of Nero's reign which ended in AD 68.

Epiphanies, AD 315–403, stated that the book of Revelation was written under Claudius [Nero] Caesar. This Roman ruler was emperor from AD 54 to AD 68.

Andreas of Capadocia, about AD 500, in a commentary on Revelation, dates the book as Neronian.

Arethas, about AD 540 assumes the book to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem and that its contents was prophecy concerning the siege of Jerusalem.

There is no shortage of those from the above date forward who support the earlier dating of the book of Revelation.

http://christeternalchristianchurch.com/learningactivity39.htm

Alfred Edersheim in his book, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services, Books for the Ages, Albany, Oregon, 1997, states on pages 95 and 96 that the internal evidence of the book of Revelation points to a date prior to the destruction of Jerusalem for the writing of Revelation.

Philip Schaff in his work History of the Christian Church, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan, vol.1, p. vi writes "...the date of the Apocalypse (which I now assign, with the majority of modern critics, to the year 68 or 69 instead of 95, as before."

Robert Young, who authored "Young's Analytical Concordance, wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation which was published about 1885. In that work, Young makes the following statement: "It [the book of Revelation] was written in Patmos about A.D. 68, whither John had been banished by Domitius Nero, as stated in the title of the Syriac version of the book; and with this concurs the express statement of Irenaeus in A.D. 175, who says it happened in the reign of Domitianou - i.e., Domitius (Nero). Sulpicius, Orosins, etc., stupidly mistaking Dimitianou for Domitianikos, supposed Irenaeus to refer to Domitian, A.D. 95, and most succeeding writers have fallen into the same blunder. The internal testimony is wholly in favor of the early date."

http://christeternalchristianchurch.com/learningactivity40.htm

 

[Tri Unity]

And since you allege that “nothing else comes close” to your primary sources's reliability, you are left with a serious problem: Irenaeus couldn't even get the age of Jesus right when Christ died. What would lead anybody to believe he could get something as complex as apostolic eschatology right? And, like futurists today, they were equally wrong.

It is difficult to argue when there is a lack of education. Some things in Irenaeus, as in almost all ancient writings (including the bible), have typo errors, or errors placed in there intended to be footnotes that later became part of the text. An example found in the bible, one of many, is in the Gospel of Mark 16:9-20. Most bibles will identify in this section a long and short version. The same is also true in another gospel chapter.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/endmark.html

Rufinus, in the 4th century, wrote to Jerome and claimed that gnostics had tampered with many writings, including Jerome's, and made them say things that they did not originally say in order to create confusion among Christians. The most fundamental way to overcome this is by examing all of the united threads in their literature. This is Textual Criticism. It is a nessecary part of the process of discovery. It is only those who are ignorant who capitalise on a minor flaw to proclaim their own teachings. Even atheists use this same rationale to criticise the bible. Your argument is simply based on a lack of education on the processes of discovery. All of the early Christians were not wrong for being futurists. It is your own argument which is lacking support.

 

[Stormcrow]

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the future Nero, was born on 15 December 37 in Antium, near Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero

Having read the excerpt from Young's Concordance and seeing this, it's entirely possible that Irenaeus did, in fact, use Nero's birth name Domitius, and that others mistakenly interpreted this as Domitian!

If so, this completely obliterates the argument that Irenaeus was a futurist and puts his earlier comment about "ancient copies" of Revelation in the proper context of a pre-70 AD writing!

So much for the idea that everyone in the early church was a futurist!

 

[Tri Unity]

An ancient document known as the Muratorian Canon which comes down to us from AD 170–210 states, "Paul, following the order of his own predecessor John,writes to no more than seven churches by name." The seven churches that Paul wrote to were: Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossi and Thessalonica. John, in his addressing the writing of Revelation, wrote to seven churches as indicated in Revelation 1:4. The implication of this statement in the Muratorian Canon is that John had written his book of Revelation BEFORE the completion of Paul's writings to the seven churches he had written to.

That is a very unnatural conclusion. John was Paul's predecessor in time; but he does not state that John wrote before Paul. Using the same logic, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas should also be in the bible, for it says:

"We receive also the Apocalypse of John and that of Peter, though some amongst us will not have this latter read in the Church. The Pastor, moreover, did Hermas write very recently in our times in the city of Rome, while his brother bishop Pius sat in the chair of the Church of Rome"

Do you accept the Hermas and Peter too, or are you just cherry picking?

Clement (AD 150–215) makes the following statement supporting an early dating: "For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, end with Nero" (Miscellanies 7:17). Clement seems to indicate that he believes that the Scriptures were completed by the end of Nero's reign which ended in AD 68.

Clement was the disciple of Peter and Paul, and yet you have him born at the year 150 AD. (Phil 4:3) Clement said this because at the time he wrote his epistles the gospels and other books had appeared to be finished. John wrote the apocalypse about 30 years later. Are you suggesting that Clement was inspired, and that he whould have known if John was going to write another book?

By the 4th and 5th century there was a tendency to date revelation earlier to take the attention away from their own generation of perverse sinfulness. If you read Gregory of Narzianzen, Oration 2, you will see how the prophecies seem to match the 4th century. Some wayward priests started to re-shape revelation to make the prophecies appear to be already fulfilled from this time. Your quotes from this time are meaningless, because you do not know about the history, and you have not taken this into consideration.

Tri

 

[Stormcrow]

It is difficult to argue when there is a lack of education.

I get what you're doing. Calling me “stupid†doesn't advance your argument.

Your argument is simply based on a lack of education on the processes of discovery.

And repeatedly calling me “stupid†is a violation of the TOS.

 

[Tri Unity]

I get what you're doing. Calling me “stupid” doesn't advance your argument. And repeatedly calling me “stupid” is a violation of the TOS.

I am not calling you stupid; you are clearly not. I am saying you are not educated on these matters, which is very clear.

 

[Stormcrow]

Clement was the disciple of Peter and Paul, and yet you have him born at the year 150 AD. (Phil 4:3)

And, of course, there could only and ever be one Clement in the church for all time. 2

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA A.D. 150 - c. 215

 

[Stormcrow]

I am not calling you stupid, you are clearly not. I am saying you are not educated on these matters, which is very clear.

So merely disagreeing with you reduces one to the status of the "uneducated."

Don't make this about me. That is also a violation of the TOS.