"Will Not Taste Death..."

I think "will not taste death" is that they would still be alive and they would be a witness of the things Jesus was talking about.

To me it shows that the events were going to happen in their lifetime.

That verse perplexed me when I first read it years ago. I thought that there might be some of those fellas living today. That would make them almost 2,000 years old.

Silly me.

Dave.

 

I've come to believe it means just what it says.

 

That's a good question.

It could be referring to the transfiguration, the description of which follows Christ's statement in all three passages. Any other thoughts?

 

Me too. That is why I have remained a futurist and not a preterist.

When did a few of the disciples see Christ in his kingdom?

THE TRANSFIGURATION.

 

Good point ... So do I. It is interesting (as was already pointed out) that all three synoptic writers follow this statement with its fulfillment at the Transfiguration. Seems hardly coincidental. It seems that the obvious answer is usually the one overlooked.

 

Many have said that it points to the next chapter when Jesus took Peter, James, and John apart to a high mountain and was transigured into His Glory in their sight.

Others believe that It is a refrence to the day of Penticost when the Holy Spirit empowered the church to a witness of God's Kingdom in this world.

 

How did Peter interpret the fulfillment of what Jesus said? The transfiguration (1 Peter 1:16-18).

 

Everyone likes to look at the next verse and say it must be the transfiguration. However no one wants to look at the preceding verse:

27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then shall he render unto every man according to his deeds.

So did the angels accompany Jesus in the Transfiguration? Was the Judgement at the Transfiguration? If these verses refer to the Transfiguration then you are much more of a Preterist than I.

 

Just how was Jesus "coming in his kingdom" at the transfiguration? Words DO mean things.

Tim

 

This is hilarious coming from you. You have made a life out of denying that words mean things in contexts where you don't like them. It is strange now that you want to play the game both ways ... Wierd stuff theology is

 

Pastor Larry,

It looks like you're avoiding a tough question.

Dispensationalists have their own difficult scriptures that they love to ignore--many of them the words of Christ himself, as this thread demonstrates. They're as literal as a stop sign with their favorite O.T. prophecies, but start weaseling with words like "soon", "shortly", "generation", etc. in the N.T.--giving them anything but a "normal" reading in order to fit the system.

My point in the question in my previous post is that if Peter, James and John saw Christ "coming in His kingdom" at the mount of transfiguration--then Christ's kingdom must have come in at that point in history. Is that what you believe? If not--in what way did they see it?

In Christ,

Tim

 

Might I offer an opinion?

Jesus told the disciples that some who were there would not taste death until they saw the kingdom come with power. Just what is the kingdom of God? A little food for thought:

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. (Luke 17:20-22 KJV)

"For the kingdom of God is within you." I think Pentecost could possibly be considered as an alternate solution (I believe the Transfiguration is the right one, though). When the Holy Spirit came upon the scene, the kingdom of God came into its power.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

there are two kingdoms mentioned in the Bible. The kingdom of Heaven which is the literal kingdom built of the saints of God.

The second kingdom is the kingdom of God which is the spiritual kingdom that is the believers of the Church.

Jesus told His disciples that they would see the kingdom of God meaning the Church at Pentecost and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

 

No it doesn't. I have answered this many times.

There are difficult Scriptures. I find it hard to think you can honestly say we ignore them. In fact, I have dealt with all of those Scriptures here. You didn't agree. That is fine. But to say that I have ignored them is patently false. I think those words are literal. But I think you misunderstand what their literal meaning is.

That is clearly not what Peter and John believed, based on their response in the early part of Acts. I do not feel compelled to believe something they did not. If this was Christ coming in his kingdom as you would like to think, then why did Peter and the apostles keep preaching that the kingdom would come later?? That doesn't make sense to me. If that was Christ coming in his kingdom, why hasn't the judgment taken place?? Again, it does not make exegetical sense in light of history. If that was the kingdom, why do we see nothing that the kingdom was prophesied to be? You cannot take the passage in isolation from the scriptural teaching on teh kingdom. You must interpret it with Scripture.

We could look at Matt 12 where Christ bound the strong man and say that is where the KOG started. Some amills do in fact do that. So if the KOG started in Matt 12, how does it then start in Matt 17? And how do Peter and the apostles prophesy that it is something that will not start until later? All of this must be put together and, to me, it is more difficult than taking a position and then changing the meaning of words around to fit that position.

Having said that, there are a number of interpretations on Matt 16:28 and no clear winner. I am inclined to think that "kingdom" references the glory and power of Christ coming on the clouds. The disciples most certainly saw that glory and in fact did not want to leave. That leaves ample room for the text to be explained. In the end, there are difficult texts for both sides. But there are far more difficult texts for your side than for ours. We are simply unburdened by the necessity of holding years of interpretation to be accurate. It is we who have returned to the position of the early church.

In the end, you will not be convinced by my position and I certainly will not be convinced by you. That is why you will never preach for me and I will never preach for you. But that doens't mean I question your salvation or your love for God. We simply disagree on this issue.

But for you to say I have avoided passages is too much. I have dealt with all of them at one point or another. In more than 6500 posts, I have said plenty on these topics. It just gets old after a while so I usually just drop out.It just ceases to be interesting and becomes a waste of my time. So I say a few things and then move on ...

 

Pastor Larry,

I didn't say that the disciples saw the kingdom come with power at the transfiguration. I don't believe they did. But if you say they did--how did they?

Jesus didn't say they would see him in His glorified state before they died--He was talking about the coming of the kingdom. I really see no relationship to the transfiguration in Jesus' statement. The fact that the transfiguration follows that statement is merely a matter of chronology.

But if we consider Pentecost as the coming of the kingdom with power--that makes a lot more sense. The church was the spiritual kingdom--formed out of the faithful remnant of Israel (just as God had promised in the O.T.). The question then becomes, why do we need another kingdom yet to come? THE kingdom came with power before the disciples died, according to Jesus.

In Christ,

Tim

P.S. If you need to move on, that's fine. I'm sure someone else will pick up the dispensational ball and run with it.

 

Pastor Larry,

I know the feeling. I haven't been around here as long as you, but I'm already tired of some of the dogmatic shenanigans that are transpiring on the Board. It's fine to state an opinion, it's fine to debate, but when people start getting mean and ugly, attacking other's person and beliefs...it makes me sick.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

Me too.

Tim

 

So Close....

put together a series of events and you have the Goal of the message.

from the cross.."dying to self" via the law

journeying across to "Galilean sea"...

(Conversion within persecution)...
as we hear jesus saying..."winds be still".

(is Jesus in Your Boat?)..many boats have been sunk in that "sea"

and the final destination ..the transfiguration..

the realization of faith coming to fruition.

the appearing, or acknowledgement of the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ "within our physical bodies".

God is showing man the process of man becoming "alive into the kingdom" via the actions of Jesus Life. through his death, resurrection and coming into His Glory by the power of God OUR Father into US...our very physical bodies..

His Eternal Life coming into existence within the Believers physical life..

some hearing his words will not "taste" death (of their physical body) before this transfiguration (regeneration and conversion) of the discovery of Jesus spirit within the people standing there.

 

REmember the glory they saw was so overwhelming, they didn't want to leave ... kind of like hte kingdom glory will be. As I say, there are a number of interpretations. To me, that is the one that best deals with all of the evidence. To say that the chronology is "just a matter of chronology" seems to be too eager to dispense with a distinct chronological relationship recorded by all three synoptics.

Several problems: First, the disciples asked aboutthe coming of the kingdom in Acts 1. As I pointed out, they assumed that the kingdom would be exactly what I think it is ... a literal earthly kingdom. And remarkably, Christ did nothing to correct them. He allowed them to go on thinking that and simply told him that it was not for them to know the time. As a result, in Acts 3, you have a premillennial, dispensational teaching of the kingdom: it will come after Christ is received into heaven for a time and it will involve the restoration of all things and particularly the fulfillment of hte Abrahamic covenant.

The second problem you have is that the "kingdom" you say we are now in looks nothing like the kingdom the prophets prophesied of. There is no way that one can look at the OT language about the kingdom and say that this current time is the kingdom without raping the text and the words in the text.

Thirdly, the church was not formed out of a fiathful remnant of Israel. The church is in fact not Israel (Gal 6:16; Rom 9-11; etc.). The church is routinely contrasted with Israel in the NT. Israel was a nation identified by an ethnicity. The church is not. In fact, that is the defining mark of the church ... that race is no longer a factor as it was with Israel. The church was formed out of people from all nations and tongues and is contrasted with Israel. However, as Paul says, that does not mean that God has cast Israel off. In fact, he promised he would not cast Israel off in Jer 31. If you read that passage closely, you will find that that Israel who will not be cast off is the Israel whose fathers made the Mosaic covenant with God. That positively cannot be the church under any legitimate rules of exegesis. The exegesis of that passage shows that Israel of the New Covenant is the same Israel as the Old covenant. You cannot simply change the referent without making God out to be a liar. The faithful remnant that God promised in teh OT was a remnant of ISrael ... not non-Israel. And it comes when the nation accepts Christ as the Messiah and the Spirit of supplication is poured out on them.

YOu ask, "Why do we need another kingdom?" The answer is that we don't. It is not another kingdom. It is the restoration of the OT kingdom of God on earth, this time with the perfect Davidic ruler, the Messiah who will rule over his people. You might ask, "Why do we need that kingdom?" Because God promised it and his promises never fail.