Time (singular) times (plural/dual) half a time (1/2) = 3 1/2.
Four score and seven = 87.
Both seem pretty specific to me.
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NT Wright false teacher?
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Four score and seven = 87.
Both seem pretty specific to me.
Me too. D.A. Carson disagreed, not me (I was always taught it was 3 1/2 years and until Carson's explanation I hadn't thought of it as symbolic for something other than 3 1/2 years).
One of the things I always told my students was, when in doubt what something in the bible means, just keep reading.
Revelation 11:2, "42 months". Revelation 11:3, "1260 days."
When people start spiritualizing things away, I want to know their basis for doing so. I always take everything in the book of Revelation as literal UNLESS it does not make sense in the context OR the context demands it is to be understood figuratively.
I don't know where 'Four score and seven' comes into it (Gettysburg Address?), but 'Time, time and half a time' is indeed 3 1/2 times. If a 'time' equals a year, then the phrase also equals 42 months and 1,260 days. Now literally it was the time of the drought in the time of Elijah (James 5:17) and it is the time that the saints are given over to Antiochus Epiphanes (?) in Daniel 7:25 and the time that must elapse before the 'fulfilment of these wonders' in Daniel 12:7.
But in Revelation it is also the time that the Gentiles will tread the holy city underfoot, the time that the two witnesses are prophesying (Revelation 11:2-3), the time that the woman is nourished in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6, 14) and the time that the beast from the sea blasphemes (Revelation 13:5). I think I've got them all. There is also a much shorter time of 3 1/2 days when the two witnesses lie dead in the street.
If you think all these numbers are literal, I can't agree with you, but I suppose that we shall just have to wait and see how it turns out.
Before we add him to the false teacher list, I don’t think D.A. Carson is “spiritualizing” or “dismissing” when he attributes this to an age. He sees the primary controlling figure as the three and a half years of Syrian tyranny. In three and a half years the Maccabeans fought the Seleucid until they achieved victory at the battle on the Orontes River. The temple was rededicated and “time, times, and half a time” because a symbol in Jewish culture for a period of time. Specifically it embodied the period of Jewish suffering that ended in God’s triumph as the people of God were exonerated. D.A. Carson believes this 3 ½ years to have that symbolism (partly because it would have been recognizable as such not only to the first century Jew but also to those who would be the immediate audience).
Carson may be wrong, I'll grant that. But just like "four score and seven years ago" brings back that address rather than mere numbers, it could be that John was using "time, times, and half a time" as it would have been recognized to his audience.
http://w3927.blogspot.com/2014/03/speaking-on-eschatology-revelation-12-d.html
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You are conflating "heaven" with earth. This cannot be done. Heaven cannot be earth in any form redeemed or otherwise. Heaven refers to that which is above. There are several heavens spoken of in scripture. Maybe you might want to do a study on them.
Is someone actually labeling Carson as a false teacher?
Thanks for the suggestion. It is not at the top of my list of studies, but I will revisit the topic at some time, I"m sure.
Not labeling but asking.
The OP implied that perhaps N.T. Wright was a false teacher because of his view on Heaven expressed in the book “Surprised by Hope”. In that book Wright says that contemporary Christianity and many songs seem to look for a time when we “all get to heaven” with Heaven being where we go when we die, our final home, where God resides, the place in the sky with the angels. Wright instead contends that when we die we are in the presence of Christ, but our final home is in a new earth and that heaven will come down and God will make his eternal dwelling among men on the new earth.
This is not an uncommon view. It is shared by D.A. Carson, Tim Keller, John Piper (Piper says almost the exact same thing – “John says that there will be a new earth and that heaven will come down, as it were, and God will make his eternal dwelling among men on the new earth”). J.I. Packer noted “As life in the ‘intermediate’ or ‘interim’ state between death and resurrection is better than life in this world that preceded it, so the life of resurrection will be better still”
And, to be honest, it really does seem to me that Revelation 21:1-4 at least allows for the possibility that our final home (what has been presented in contemporary culture as Heaven) is not us going to live forever up in the sky with God but God making his eternal dwelling among men on the new earth.
That said, and back to the OP and your question, if N.T. Wright is a false teacher because of his view on Heaven then so is D.A. Carson, J.I. Packer, Tim Keller and John Piper. Like them, I also believe Revelation 21:1-4 means that coming down out of heaven God will make his eternal dwelling among men on the new earth. I agree with Wright, Carson, Piper, and Keller - that the picture we are often presented of Heaven (i.e., the hymn "When we all get to Heaven) takes place on a new earth when God himself will dry our tears and make his home eternally with man. Perhaps we both need to reexamine the topic.
I agree with Wright. God made this earth for our eternal existence. That did not change because of the fall. Romans 8 says all of creations is waiting redemption. Revelation shows a new heaven and a new earth. The heaven in that picture is the area directly above the earth the air, the sky etc.
I also agree that it is a misconception about our eternal state that is widely believed that we will go to Heaven. However, the rejection of Heaven (upper case H) where God has His throne and where Saints reside with Him is just odd.
I agree with your view of the "New Creation", and look forward to that day.
I'm not sure what he believes on Heaven (in terms of God's throne), but the book is about what is often presented as Heaven in our culture. He does say that Jesus sits at God's right hand, now, in Heaven. And that this Heaven is not in our own "space-time world" but in God's world, and that "one day these two world bill be integrated completely and be fully visible to one another, producing that transformation of which both Paul and John speak." So it might be going to far to say that N.T. Wright rejects Heaven where God has His throne ("Surprised by Hope, 134).
Wright clarifies that "sleep" does not refer to the soul but the body ("the body is 'asleep', in the sense of dead, while the real person continues", pg. 170). He says that this "state is not, clearly, the final destiny for which the Christian dead are bound, which is, as we have seen, the bodily resurrection. But it is a state in which the dead are held firmly within the conscious love of God and the conscious presence of Jesus Christ while they await that day. There is no reason why this state should not be called heaven, though we must note once more how interesting it is that the New Testament routinely doesn't call it that and uses the word heaven in other ways. (172)"
Personally, I don't have a problem with someone leaving it "up in the air"...so to speak....when it comes to this intermediate state, so long as it is defined as being in the presence of Jesus Christ. Sometimes I think that we are more concise than is Scripture about the matter, but what is important is being with our Lord.
I am leery when people speak of "God's time world". We have no real information on that and it is nothing more than an assumption. Neither is it necessary to know or understand.
Yea, me too. But we get that a lot to explain various things. Wright uses it to explain God in heaven yet "not far off". I've seen it come up in discussions dealing with OT saints as "born again" Christians before the Cross. I suppose there's value to it as we can't understand everything (sometimes I am sure that there is very little, relatively speaking, that we can understand). I take it that he's repeating the often used idea that God is "outside" of our time and space.
And I cringe when I hear things like this. It can lead to all sorts of crazy doctrines. Neither is it actually supported by anything clear. We need to avoid speaking on things like that. We just have no real knowledge of it in any way.
If that were the case, if that particular phrase had that particular meaning then why didn't John stick with that phrase instead of changing it later to 1260 days and 42 months??? However, that was not my real concern, I was really speaking about the New Jerusalem. Paul claims at the writing of the book of Galatians there was such a city now above:
But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. - Gal. 4:26
I guess some consider this a literal city inhabited by non-resurrected spirit people and others (like Piper, Carson, and the sort) it as a state of being with God in Christ.
People disagree when it comes to these things. I recall John MacArthur explaining that "water" in Heaven won't be made of hydrogen and oxygen because there will be no more sea. I remember someone else viewing this as symbolic of a separation John was enduring on Patmos.
But my answer to the OP remains. These folks are not false teachers because of their teaching on Heaven. In fact, Carson, Wright, Keller, Packer, and Piper....while in agreement on the topic of the OP....all leave much open to interpretation as we simply don't know.
Personally, that I will be with Christ us enough for me to be dogmatic about.
False teachers they are not and it is an absurd question.
What exactly does that mean? Is the City real or not? Are the streets real or not? Is the Throne real or not? Are the foundations real or not? Is the wall around the City real or not?
Is He Who sits on the Throne real or not? If real, does He sit on an imaginary throne? Was Ezekiel's vision real or just an hallucination?
To write all this off as a "state of being" (whatever that means) seems to me to discard a lot of God's revelation to us.
The New Covenant was/is a brand new work Of God, as the death/resurrection of Jesus completely surpassed amd made obsolete all those that came before it!
Wright seems to hold to the New Covenant being basically Judaism with some of its warts smoothed out...
He believes that when people are baptized and celebrate the Eucharist (among other things) that they are in fact participating in the Kingdom (experiencing the Kingdom within a covenant relationship) in the present instead of just participating in a symbolic ritual in anticipation of a future Kingdom. Those wacky Anglicans and their Eucharist.
http://www.reformedworship.org/article/march-2009/nt-wright-word-and-sacraments-eucharist
Another error though, baptismal regeneration...
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