A Neutral Point of View??

Is wikipedia capable of maintaining a “neutral point of view”?

The concept of a “neutral point-of-view” is a nonsensical delusion. It is a contradiction of itself because first, it holds up one point-of-view as refraining from judgments about other points of view, while holding itself immune from judgment.

But the realquestion is WHO DECIDES what is “neutral”?

The “germ theory” of disease was considered crackpot science when first proposed, and the doctor that insisted on it was finally put into an insane asylum.

So not even the “consensus” view is so reliable, nor the majority view, nor the minority view, and certainly not the “experts'” view. Caveat emptor, in history, science, religion, government,

See Michael Crichton’s view of “consensus”:

http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

Totally wrong data permeates wikipedia (and by the way, government textbooks in all areas too!). There is material stated as fact on wikipedia that I know from personal experience is unequivocally false, and tried to correct, only to be overwhelmed by admins and other misguided souls.

The “traditional” print encyclopedias have a point of view, and now wikipedia’s example is proving that the air of authoritative factual statement is a veneer.

A ruling “committee of truth” cannot make the content true or falsify it. The truth stands on its own merits. “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth”.

Each point of view should have its own web page. I have known of special-topic wikis that implement a policy of providing two separate web pages for where there is more than one conflicting view.

It is STUPIDITY to think wikipedia is reliable or factual, once you simply consider the thought. It is useful in a hurry in things that have no significant dissent, but why should anybody actually think it is the last word on anything?

The same for any self-appointed arbiter of things Internet that fake an air of objective analysis. Ha. Beware of wolves wearing sheep’s clothing!

THINK FOR YOURSELF!

-trutherator

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Pre-Trib or Post-Trib?

For a bit of historical background, the idea that Jesus is coming back before the “Great Tribulation” is an idea introduced at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, popularized in England chiefly by Bible doubter John Nelson Darby, and in the United States by Cyrus Scofield, he of the famous Scofield Notes which permeate the Scofield study Bible.

The following link

http://www.libertytothecaptives.net/darby_pretrib_immediacy.html

provides an excellent chart that shows the changes Darby made to the Bible. These alterations are reflected in Scofield’s notes, a disciple of John Darby, who was generous in correcting the Bible accordingly.
Americans at the time had a stronger independent Christian tradition, since the mavericks dominated migration to the New World and they brought their faith, and they were not so easily fooled by new “authorities” who came saying that their tested and proven Bible (aka Authorized Version) was wrong. So Scofield had to put these ideas into so-called “notes”.

The breaking of the Covenant and the placing of the “Abomination of Desolation”:

There are many passages on the timing of the “Rapture”, starting with Jesus’ own words. After giving us a list of signs he gave the apostles in answer to their questions about signs of “the end of the world”, he refers directly to the tribulation you read about in Daniel 9:24-27:

Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)….

Daniel 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

The week referred to here is a week of years, seven years, that is the last seven years before Jesus descends at the Armageddon battle to defeat Satan and the Antichrist and begin the direct rule of the Earth for a thousand years, a period also known as the Millennium.

The placing of the “Abomination of Desolation” Begins the Tribulation:

Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Then immediately after the “tribulation of those days”:

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

And finally, Jesus comes back and gathers together his elect:

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Certainly when Jesus comes back, one shall be taken and the other left…But also it doesn’t say anywhere that it will be a big secret. In fact, the two famous prophets of Revelations 12 are taken up into heaven in the sight of the whole world:

Revelation 11:11 And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.

This event, the ascension of the two prophets, is not explicitly linked to the “gathering together” but they “shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”, close enough to the three and a half years, the last half of the “week” of Daniel.

And that’s just getting started! Since I’m not the Antichrist, I won’t “wear out the saints”, so all this is just an abbreviated version of the issues that point to POST-Tribulation gathering.

+=========================+

Paul quells rumors of “any-minute” Rapture:

“Pre-Tribbers” sometimes use the next passage as if it proved the opposite of what it says. Now read it this time without all the extraneous baggage, suspending what I or anybody else told you, just read it “straight up”, as I like to call it, for what it is. Just keep this question in mind: What has to come FIRST before the “the day of Christ”,

2 Thessalonians 2:1 ¶Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
3 ¶Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
2 Thessalonians 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

In Revelations it is an explicit description of the way the Lord shall descend from heaven and defeat Satan with the Word from his mouth, and the “brightness of his coming”.

The Last Trump:

1 Corinthians 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

In Revelations 8 and 9 six angels sound trumpets of tribulation plagues that are unleashed in the Earth. Chapter 14 has visions of saints and glory in Heaven, and then the seventh trumpet opens up the plagues of the wrath of God in chapter 15.

The plagues that come down with each of the vials of the wrath of God are much worse than the Tribulation plagues unleashed with the trumpets. Paul said the “last trump shall sound”, and John’s seventh trumpet shows visions of Heaven, and then, the angels with the vials of the wrath of God.

Revelation 15:1 ¶And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.
2 And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.

The seventh vial sets off the return of Jesus Christ with his army of saints at the Valley of Meguiddo, where the devil and his angels are vanquished and banned to the lake of fire for a thousand years! Those must be some kind of horses!

On dispensations and kingdoms:

This will be expanded later, but there is another way that “pre-Trib” is forced into places where it doesn’t fit. Some say that there is a series of “dispensations” where God sets up changing rules for salvation.

Based on this idea of what those dispensations are, they think that the “kingdom of heaven” of Matthew is meant for the Jews, and Matthew 24 in particular for the Jews that are saved after the Tribulation. But! They claim that this is another “dispensation” of works!

But the verses that clearly state flat-out that there is “no man” on earth “that doeth good and sinneth not”, both throughout the Old Testament and the New, this is clearly an unacceptable arrogation of man to “earn” his way to salvation and heaven. The examples abound from Job to David to Jeremiah, “all our righteousness is as filthy rags”, and that’s that!

As to “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God”, just get a concordance and find that these two phrases are used in identical ways in identical contexts numerous times in the Gospels.

–More later,
Alan

Were there people before Adam and Eve?

It has come to my attention that there are some who have misread the following passage in Jeremiah and say that it refers to people living before Adam and Eve:
Jeremiah 4:23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

One must keep this following verse in mind, a warning against misusing the Word:
2 Timothy 2:15  Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
How to “rightly divide”? This issue is also addressed in the Word:
Isaiah 28:10  For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:
A couple of verses down, the principle is repeated, and the warning is expanded:
Isaiah 28:13  But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
Your knowledge can build as you go along, but if you start thinking ahead of the Lord, then you can miss the mark.
If you read the whole chapter, in context, you will see this in a new way.

Jeremiah 4:19  ¶My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
20  Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.
21  How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?
22  For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
24  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
If you read the first three chapters, and then the rest of this entire book, you’ll find it’s talking about the destruction that was coming for Israel for having forsaken God. The book starts with God calling Jeremiah directly when he was twelve years old, telling him he was going to be the messenger to warn the children of Israel.
So in context, after telling them they cannot hope for salvation from the hills, he tells them that even their earth would suffer total devastation.
Look at verse 29:The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city [shall be] forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.
It is in the same spirit as the previous text, and says these same people will go into the rocks and thickets and forsake all their cities.

Note, then, the multiple differences between the context of verse 23 of chapter 4 of Jeremiah, and Genesis 1:2, and while considering them, also consider that the verse and chapter divisions were not there in the original manuscripts, and we can say that these verse and chapter divisions are not themselves “inspired”. In other words, they are continuous narratives, not an isolated piece inserted out of place.
If Jeremiah 4:23-28 refers to a pre-Adamic world, it is definitely out of place and out of context.
The rest of the chapter in Jeremiah, and continuing into Jeremiah, talks to the desolation coming to God’s people for their sins.
The first chapters of Genesis speak to the six days of Creation. Note that it is after verse 2 of Genesis One that God says, “Let there be light”, and that’s when there was light.
To take those first two or three chapters as meaning there was light and earth and life and destruction before that Creation week, and then to “allegorize” the rest of it, is to force-fit a square peg into a round hole.
And make no mistake. The chapter says that there was grass and herb and its seed yielding fruit on the third day, and no sun until the fourth day. If you say the “days” were “millions of years”, you have to explain how plants survived all that time without sunlight.
The “gap theory” fitting anything between verses one and two before Creation week also has to explain how there were plants and animals before God created light, stars, moons, plants, animals, and, of course, people.
There is a commentary from Francis Dake, probably originating with Charles Darby and Cyrus Scofield, making the claim that there were worlds that existed before the Garden of Eden, that also uses the passage in II Peter 3, torturing the passage to claim that the worlds before were destroyed by water. Read it again, and this time, keep the flood of Noah in mind, same as Christians up until the two aforementioned spoiled the waters (as in the water of the Word).
It is such an obvious reference to the flood of Noah, that a simple read of it will suffice, except to say that if it fits Noah’s flood (which you can see for yourself in a straightforward read), then that’s what it is, and to invoke man’s wisdom to say otherwise is foolishness.

……….(links to be added….)