You said..........
"True, there is wrath for those unbelievers, yet the judgment seen in the N.T. is the judgment of Israel."
I can in NO WAY agree with you. Is Gods wrath aimed at Israel to turn them to Himself......but I do not see any Scriptures which say that that wrath of God will NOT BE felt by all of the world.
Now then you used....Matt.16:27,28- to I think suggest that Jesus presence was His coming.
I apologize for the length of my post. I feel like I am teaching a Bible Study class all of a sudden which I love to do.
As you said and I agree...comparing Scripture to Scripture we can say that All this is true,
but in the context of Matthew 16:28, Jesus is talking
about the kingdom of God in the sense he most commonly uses it in the gospels. One aspect of the kingdom of God is the church of Christ. The
church is the kingdom. In fact, Jesus had just finished making that point in Matthew 16:17-19 where Jesus clearly equates the church with the
Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus appears to use the phrase Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven virtually interchangeable in the gospels.
So when was the prophecy fulfilled?
The answer is that the Kingdom of God and of the Son Jesus Christ came on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after
the resurrection of Jesus. This fulfillment is found in Acts chapter two.
Many prophecies, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament point to the coming of the Kingdom in a new and unique way on the Day of Pentecost. For example, one could look at Isaiah 2:2-4. Daniel 2:44,45, Matthew 3:2, Luke 24:45-47, Matthew 16:18-20 and Matt 16:28 all point to the events of the pouring out of the Spirit, the first public gospel sermon and the first conversions to Christ which all occurred on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts chapter two.
Jesus did not visibly, physically come back on the Day of Pentecost, but he God certainly did come in the person of the Holy Spirit on that day.
There are many passages which express the thought that Jesus comes to us when we receive the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians
15:24, John 14:15-21 and John 16:7-15 come to mind.
You see, when Rev. 6 unfolds the future beginning of these very disturbing events on earth as the beginning of the terrible seven year Tribulation be unfolding. We must remember that believers in this the Church Age will be in heaven with the Lord and be spared from this judgment that God is about to pour out on earth.(1 Thess. 5, Rev. 3:15. The ones left on the earth will be the unbelieving LOST and the religious of the whole earth.
You said..........
"When you comment on the thousand years in Revelation, it sounds like a cartoon to me. No offense."
NO offence taken my dear. You only said what I already knew. That is the result of the PRETERIST position of the Scriptures.
And I hope you will not take offence either, but if the 1000 year rule of Christ has already taken place, and it is already over two thousand years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, has his thousand-year reign already ended? But how could it have ended since believers are supposed to reign with him? Are we already reigning or are we yet to reign?
The purpose of the 1,000-year reign is to fulfill various promises God made to the world. Some of these promises, called covenants, were given specifically to Israel. Others were given to Jesus, the nations of the world, and creation. Jesus’ 1,000-year reign will be a time of promises kept.
The problem with your thesis is that some of those covenants have not been fullfilled!
The purpose of the 1,000-year reign is to fulfill various promises God made to the world. Some of these promises, called covenants, were given specifically to Israel. Others were given to Jesus, the nations of the world, and creation. Jesus’ 1,000-year reign will be a time of promises kept.
Abrahamic Covenant = Abraham did go to the Promised Land, he did have many descendants, and he is the forefather of many nations. Several hundred years after Abraham, Joshua led the Israelites to claim ownership of the Promised Land
. But Israel has never possessed the specific boundaries that God promised.
How do you as a PRETERIST answer the historical facts that Not even Solomon ruled over this particular area (
1 Kings 4:21–24). Although he did reign from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates, he did not hold the area from Mount Hor to Hazarenan (
Numbers 34:7–9)—into present-day Lebanon and Syria. In addition, the covenant God made with Abraham was that he and his descendants would have the land forever (
Genesis 13:15;
17:8;
Ezekiel 16:60).
The current Israeli state may be a step in this direction, but they still do not possess the boundaries God laid out.
For your thesis to be true......those Covenants MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE!
Then there is the
The Davidic Covenant = It says that God’s covenant with David was that his line would never die out and that David’s heir would sit on the throne of Israel forever (
2 Samuel 7:16). Biblical scholars agree that Jesus is the fulfillment of this covenant—one of the reasons His genealogy is given for both His adoptive father (
Matthew 1:1–17) and His mother (
Luke 3:23–38). The Jews understood this when they laid down palm branches and their cloaks as Jesus rode into Jerusalem (
Matthew 21:1–17). They expected Him to be a military/political leader that would liberate them from the Romans and make Israel a great nation again. However THAT DID NOT HAPPEN!.
But they didn’t understand the nature of Jesus’ work at the time was for the
New Covenant, not the Davidic Covenant.
The 1,000-year reign will be the beginning of Jesus’ reign over Israel and the earth with David as the vice-regent and thus fulfilling God's promis.
Then you stated that..........
"Babylon" in Revelation was Jerusalem!
If YOUR PRETERIST theory of Babylon = Jerusalem hypothesis is correct then Jerusalem will never be rebuilt again. Revelation
Rev. 18:21-23+ describes the permanent destruction of Babylon. . . . according to the Babylon = Jerusalem view, Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 and will never be rebuilt again. Yet, how can this be a description of Jerusalem when scripture repeatedly speaks of its return to prominence during the millennial reign (Isa.
Isa. 2:3; Zec.
Zec. 14:16; Rev.
Rev. 20:9+)? Scripture is quite plain that God still has a plan for ethnic Israel and yet the Jerusalem view seems to teach the opposite.
5
Thus says the LORD God to Jerusalem, . . . “Indeed everyone who quotes proverbs will use this proverb against you: ‘Like mother, like daughter!’
You are your mother’s daughter, loathing husband and children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and children; your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.’ ” (Eze.
Eze. 16:3,
Eze. 16:44-45) [emphasis added].
In chapters 17 and 18, of the Revelation, Babylon is presented as an administrative, economic, religious and cultural worldwide center. According to Revelation 14:8, this city or fortress loses its worldwide leadership position in the middle of the seventieth week, and at the end of the week it is utterly destroyed forever............
" And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication".
While Jerusalem, in the middle of the week (3 and 1/2 year mark) with the setting up of the Beast or Antichrist in the Temple of Jerusalem, becomes a worldwide center. In other words, the fall of Babylon as a position will be conditioned by the passage of the worldwide power to Jerusalem. On the other hand, we understand that the position of Babylon in Revelation is related to the rule of the Beast or the Antichrist, which we know must ascend into the Roman Empire and must be of Roman origin.
So, Babylon of Revelation chapters 17 and 18 is not the Jerusalem city of Israel.
Again.........I apologize for such a lengthy
