Earthly Messianic Kingdom

Ed,

I would agree that the church was always in God's plan. I think that is entirely scriptural. I also would say that It was always the meaning of the scripture that the children of the promise were the faithful, not all of the physical children of Abraham. This is explained in Romans 9:6-8

"Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed."

Always clear from a careful reading of the Genesis.

Bottom line, I believe you were correct in your post

 

The message of hte gospels was "Repent for the kingdom fo heaven is at hand." He went around doing kingdom type things. And the Jews did not repent. In Acts 3, you have the kingdom offered again based on the repentance of the Jews. They still have not repented.

Why do you ask these questions? Do you seriously not know? Or are you just trying to pick fights because you come to Scripture with different presuppositions?

BTW, speaking of followers of Darby/Scofield is really perjorative an useless. I don't call you a follow of Allis. The fact is that we all believe we are followers of Scripture. Trying to prejudice it with certain names is a bad debating tactic.

 

Pastor Larry: //Why do you ask these questions? Do you seriously not know? Or are you just trying to pick fights because you come to Scripture with different presuppositions?
//

Amen, Brother Pastor Larry, he must be doing the latter.

I'm still looking for an evangelical a-mill post
from this poster.

 

Earthly Kingdom????

Part #1 - The Kingdom of Chirst was always intended to be spiritual - not literal.

Question 1. Please answer this - Why would Christ set up an earthly kingdom on a sin-cursed earth that is destined to be burned and of which even Jesus doesn't deny that it is his kingdom - his rulership?

This sin-cursed earth was given to Satan. A literal co-earthly kingdom with equal possesion with Satan is a contradiction of the highest degree. When Satan tempted Jesus with "power to rule the earth," Jesus did not deny that the power to rule the kingdoms of the world had been delivered to him and that it was his territory.

</font>

• Luk 4:5 "And the Devil, leading Him up into a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time."
  
  Luk 4:6 "And the Devil said to Him, All this power I will give you, and the glory of them; for it has been delivered to me. And I give it to whomever I will."</font>

Part #2 - Now, in additon to this, please answer the following questions with this thought in mind;

When God came down from heaven to live on earth and to take upon himself human flesh, and at only one point in the history of mankind, he came as an infant born of a woman. However, Christ left this world a spirit to return to God.

Acts 1:11 says that "Jesus, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." - as a spirit, not in the flesh. So, in any "earthly kingdom" doctrinal position, how is your king going to rule? As a spirit king or as a fleshly king?

Question 2. If it is as a "spirit king" where are your verses to support your position?

Question 3. If it is as a "fleshly king" how is God going to "take upon himself human flesh" once again?

</font>

• a- As an infant?
  b- As an adult?
  c- Where are your verses to support his coming in human flesh rather than as a "spirit as it says in Acts 1:11?"</font>

Please keep your answers to the NT. If Acts 1:11 and other NT verses refer to his second coming as a "spirit", then your supporting texts for "in the form of human flesh" should be your basis and it should be just as clear as Act 1:11 and not in highly symbolic language.

 

Then why did God use very literal, easy to understand terms in the prophesies about it? You have God deliberately misleading his people to beleive something that was never going to happen.

Wow, this is a change. Usually your side is arguing for the unity of SCripture and denying progressive revelation. What a strange turning of the tables.

But why do you wnat to avoid the OT? Is it not as true as the NT? The NT builds on the OT and you can't simply limit your scope. That is like saying Show me the doctrine of salvation by faith alone in Christ alone but use only 1 Chron 1. That is simply a bad way to do theology. You don't do theology by ruling out part of God's revelation as relevant to the issue.

 

It's not radical, and it is clear in teh NT. I gave you some sampling of passages above, where you can quite clearly fit it together. Secondly, understand that the church was not an "unplanned" parenthesis. The church was always in God's plan.

Incorrect. All hte members of the early church were not Jews. In Acts 2, the gospel is going out to people of 11 different nationalities (if my memory serves me correctly). In Acts 6, you have Greeks as a part of the church. In Acts 8, you have Samaritans. In Acts 10, you have full blown Gentiles. Quite clearly, the early church was not Jewish. That is the reason for the dispute in Acts 15 that you brought up earlier. Secondly, Acts 3:19ff clearly prophesies a time of "restoration" that occurs after Christ is received in heaven for a time. As I have pointed out (the obvious), a restoration has to be something that previously existed. There is no way that refers to a spiritual kingdom. It is earthly.

What relevance is this? It has nothing to do with the point at hand.

It is a historical fact that the principles of dispenstionalism precede Darby by many many years. And it is pure guesswork to say it would have died out without Scofield. But both of those are irrelevant. The point is simply this: Is is what the Bible teaches? To that, we must unequivocally say Yes. Therefore, it needs to be believed.

 

No, of course not.

There was no church prior to Pentecost. Paul said the building block of hte church was Spirit baptism (1 Cor 13:12) and John said that was still future (Mark 1:8 et al). In fact, it didn't happen until Pentecost, which is when the church began. As for the Samaritan woman, that was already discussed in another thread. Why do you think Christ would only reveal himself to certain people and not others? That doesn't seem to have any scriptural basis.

Dispensationalism does not really disagree with that. Had the Jews repented, he would have established the kingdom. But they didn't, and that was part of God's plan. This really isn't an issue that is germane.

Sure. Christ, Paul, John, Peter all believed it. As for evidence after that, there was a recent article in Bib Sac about it that you will find of interest. I don't remember the exact date but it was within the last five years. But to the bigger point, your question reveals a faulty assumption. You believe that if something cannot be found in church history that it is wrong. At any point in church, that argument would fail on certain doctrines. Church history has shown us that doctrines underwent development at certain times during church history as the need arose. Eschatology was the last of those to undergo major study. By this standard, your doctrine of amillennialism would have failed in the first three centuries of the church because no one believed it. Second, you assume that we know everything that the early church believed. But consider manuscript evidence. In the last several hundred years, we have discovered manuscript evidence that we did not know existed before. It gave us information we did not have before. It is entirely possible that we do not have all the beliefs of the early church neatly preserved.

The test of doctrine is not "who believed it in history," but "Is this what Scripture teaches?" On this standard, pretribulationism clearly fits the bill.

 

No, because the Jews would reject him.

 

Because that is what the OT teaches. Everyone basically teaches that ... Even you do, don't you? The difference is that you think he actually started his kingdom then, and it is a spiritual kingdom. We think otherwise. Amills or post mills essentially think we are in the kingdom promises or the kingdom era, although amills would say it differently.

That a king would come and establish a kingdom was the OT promise. And so Christ came for that. He also came to die. The kingdom as predicated on the acceptance of the Jews. They didn't accept. Therefore he didn't establish it.

 

"work". He has more to do, not necessarily work:
KJV John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Matthew 11
12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come...

Later He said...

Matthew 21
42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.

HankD

 

No, go back yet again and see what I said. He came to establish a kingdom but that was not God's plan. You keep missing that point. His plan to harden his people so that they would reject him, which would bring in the churhc, but "he has not cast off his people Israel forever" as Paul says, though he has for a while. The Law which came 430 years later and was the reason for Israel's rejection did not annul the Promise. It is still good.

This is the consistent teaching of the OT from Deut 30 right on through. Zech 12 says it will come after they repent. Acts 3 predicates it on repentance, as does the new covenant in Jer 31. It is in more passages that I can name here in a reasonable amount of time.

It seems like we are losing the art of correlation. You don't appear to be willing to put any passages side by side and correlate them together. You think if there is not an explicit statement about something that it can't be true. The Bible was not written in that fashion. It was written in a historical context. Many, if not most, on your side do not adequately deal with that context and as a result end up with strange interpretations. You have to correlate these passages together. God only has one truth and it all fits together.