canadyjd said:
Is this speaking of the New Jerusalem that will come after the New Heavens and New Earth are formed and after the old heavens and old earth pass away? It must be, since the passage says it will not be destroyed anymore forever.
Is it your contention that there are dead bodies and ashes in the New Jerusalem? I would not think there would be. Furthermore, all these locations are physical locations. You can go and look at them. That marks the location as something on this earth, not the New Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven. As for not being destroyed, the context is clearly falling under the ravishes of war from the curse of the Lord for disobedience. That will never happen again when this is rebuilt.
Aren't you making a distinction where there is no difference. James saw the Gentiles coming to Christ as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Amos, that is clear.
Is that clear? That's not what James says. He says it “agrees” with, which means simply that everything that is happening with the incoming of the Gentiles does not contradict the promises. That was the concern in Acts 15. All these Gentiles are getting saved and messing up our promises. And James corrects that faulty theology, not by saying that the promises have changed, but by saying that the promises are still good.
Notice some key features.
First, James is addressing the issue of whether Gentiles must be circumcised and obey the law, to proselytize to the Jewish faith in order to be saved. Nothing in Amos, at face value, addresses this issue in Acts 15. James makes several changes that distinguish the events Amos has in view with the events in the early church.
“In that day” becomes “After these things” – This refers to the period after God’s present activity of calling the Gentiles to salvation.
He adds “I will return” to show that Amos’ prophecy would not be fulfilled until after Christ returned.
He follows the LXX which has a slightly different translation. The LXX translates “possess” (yireshu) as “seek” (yidreshu); and Edom (edom) as man (adam). (The transliteration is not exactly perfect.)
1. James is showing that God was calling Gentiles to salvation without their first becoming Jews (Acts 15:14). He cites Amos for support that such activity is not in contradiction to God’s prophecies in the OT. What God was presently doing in the church was exactly what he had promised to do in the Kingdom at the return of Christ and the resurrection of the Davidic throne.
2. James does not say that Amos’ words were being “fulfilled,” but that the “words of the prophets were in agreement.”
Furthermore, Amos 9:11-15 speaks of the rebuilding of ruined cities, and people living in them. That makes no sense in the church. We are not living in ruined cities that have been rebuilt. We don’t have the great outpouring of God’s blessing on crops that were ruined as a part of the Palestinian covenant. This prophecy only makes sense in a millennial context.
What is also clear is that James believed both the Jews and the Gentiles had a common future in Christ, not a separate future.
This is both true and false. The church is made up of Jew and Gentile who have a common future in Christ. But Israel as a nature has a separate future in Christ.
How can God keep His promise to Israel to keep their rebuilt city from being destroyed anymore "forever" if God is going to destroy that city when the old heavens and the old earth pass away to be replaced by the new heavens and the new earth.
Because the context of the passage is the destruction that comes from a curse on the nation for disobedience.
Again, I think these passages are insurmountable without doing great damage to the text. Your position requires us to think that there are landmarks, dead bodies, and ashes in the New Jerusalem. It requires us to think that “rebuilding cities and living in them,” really means something entirely different.