Some in the past have argued for seeing some kind of thematic connection between The Fifth Trumpet in Revelation 9 and The Flood account in Genesis 7 and 8 based on parallel time periods. First 40 days and then five months. I'd noticed this months ago and mentioned it on this blog.
More recently (it came up while I was engaging with Flat Earthers) I've realized that the Abyss/Bottomless Pit could possibly be the same place as The Great Deep where much of the Flood waters were before The Flood. Abyss has sometimes been translated as Deep. There is no water there now, it's all on The Earth's surface, but it's interesting.
That makes the possibility of a connection here even stronger. A period of 40 days of something coming out of the Deep to punish mankind for five months. Very different but an interesting connection.
In the very first post on this blog I argued that the opening of The Abyss in Revelation 9 is the removal of Restraint mentioned in II Thessalonians 2. And I've discussed how the Antichrist's Resurrection is defined as him ascending out of The Bottomless Pit. I do not consider those arguments dependent on identifying The Antichrist or False Prophet with anyone specific in Revelation 9, we can debate Apollyon all day. The point is nothing can ascend out of The Abyss before Revelation 9 happens. I'll return to this later.
Could this connection mean the 40 days of Revelation 9 happen on the Hebrew calendar about the same time as the 40 days of rain from The Flood account?
The Rain began on the 17th day of what was the Second month but is now the Eight. I believe back in Pre-Flood times all months had 30 days because the Lunar and solar cycles were in sync putting the end of the rain on the 26th of Kislev. But a repeat of that today would put 40 days that began on the 17th of the Eight month as ending on the 27th of Kislev.
Both of those days have in common that they are part of the the Eight Days of Hanukkah.
In my discussion of Winter Pagan holidays I pointed out that the claims of Anitochus Epiphanes being born on the 25th of Kislev or December are spurious, but that he did die seemingly during or near the first Hanukkah according to the accounts in both books of Maccabees.
I had also pointed out in that post that the Solstices were when pagans placed deaths and resurrections/conceptions, not births. And I have also argued that IF The Antichrist is someone from the past who already lived coming back, it would most likely be be Antiochus Epiphanes, and certainly could only be a Seleucid ruler.
If this theory is true, I believe it would be the Hanukkah that occurs 9 months before the Yom Teruah that marks the Midway Point of the Week, when the Seventh Trumpet will be sounded and The Rapture will happen.
The first of Tishri is when Noah removed the Cover of the Ark in Genesis 8:13. That fits being connected to the 7th Trumpet. Perhaps the 6th Trumpet will then be linked to the first day of Tammuz (Genesis 8:5).
Further Update: Reading Maccabees more carefully it seems less likely Epiphanies died that close to Hanukkah. The First Hanukkah celebration being at the end of Chapter 4 in First Maccabees, with the account of Epiphanies demise being Chapter 6.
However Second Maccabees tells the story of Epiphanies Demise in Chapter 9 and then the first Hanukkah celebration at the beginning of Chapter 10 right after. I generally consider Second Maccabees less reliable however.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The Seven Spirits are The Holy Spirit
Christ White has gone and argued against the Seven Spirits of Revelation 1:4 and other verses being The Holy Spirit. Arguing they are the Seven Angels who sound The Trumpets.
First he suggests it's confusing that in Revelation 8 these Seven Angels show up apparently with no prior introduction if you don't identify them with the Seven Spirits. I never felt that way at all, new things are showing up constantly in Revelation. The Angels I have always pictured standing on or by the Altar of Incense, which was not in the scope of chapters 4 and 5. They are clearly not between the 24 Elders and the Four Beasts as the seven Lamps are.
Also Angels are NOT Spirits, not the good ones anyway, they all have physical tangible forms, we can entertain them unawares. Demonic Spirits are distinctly different kinds of beings.
He attacks the connection of this verse to Isaiah 11:2, repeating a common mistake an English first glance reading will give you, that only Six Spirits are described there.
The intimate relationship between The Lamb and the Seven Spirits in Chapter 5 makes clear they are The Lamb's Spirit just as he described The Holy Spirit as His Spirit. The means by which He communicates with and guides believers still on Earth.
The problem I have with this bad interpretation is that when you read Revelation 1 without being distorted by the man made verse divisions, verses 4 and 5 have a clear expression of The Trinity.
Update April 2016: Maybe you could make an argument the Spirits are the same because the Angels mentioned are the Holy Spirit, because again Angel must means messenger and we need to quite thinking of it as a technical term.
The Angels of the Seven Churches are I believer Believers in those congregations with the Gift of Prophecy, White is right that the Early Churches weren't monarchical, but that doesn't rule out that Angel can mean a human messenger, as it was used of John The Baptist.
I have a new theory about the Seven Trumpets, Shofars, explained in my The Ram study.
There is still no doubt in my mind the Seven Spirits are The Holy Spirit.
First he suggests it's confusing that in Revelation 8 these Seven Angels show up apparently with no prior introduction if you don't identify them with the Seven Spirits. I never felt that way at all, new things are showing up constantly in Revelation. The Angels I have always pictured standing on or by the Altar of Incense, which was not in the scope of chapters 4 and 5. They are clearly not between the 24 Elders and the Four Beasts as the seven Lamps are.
Also Angels are NOT Spirits, not the good ones anyway, they all have physical tangible forms, we can entertain them unawares. Demonic Spirits are distinctly different kinds of beings.
He attacks the connection of this verse to Isaiah 11:2, repeating a common mistake an English first glance reading will give you, that only Six Spirits are described there.
And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORDThe Six are additional Spirits that come from but are sort of distinct from the First Spirit mentioned.
The intimate relationship between The Lamb and the Seven Spirits in Chapter 5 makes clear they are The Lamb's Spirit just as he described The Holy Spirit as His Spirit. The means by which He communicates with and guides believers still on Earth.
The problem I have with this bad interpretation is that when you read Revelation 1 without being distorted by the man made verse divisions, verses 4 and 5 have a clear expression of The Trinity.
from him which is, and which was, and which is to come
from the seven Spirits which are before his throne
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.It's absurd to think beings that aren't God would be sandwiched in between titles which clearly apply only to God.
Update April 2016: Maybe you could make an argument the Spirits are the same because the Angels mentioned are the Holy Spirit, because again Angel must means messenger and we need to quite thinking of it as a technical term.
The Angels of the Seven Churches are I believer Believers in those congregations with the Gift of Prophecy, White is right that the Early Churches weren't monarchical, but that doesn't rule out that Angel can mean a human messenger, as it was used of John The Baptist.
I have a new theory about the Seven Trumpets, Shofars, explained in my The Ram study.
There is still no doubt in my mind the Seven Spirits are The Holy Spirit.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Jesus ministry was only about a year
I argued for that when arguing for a 30 AD Crucifixion. Other have btw argued for a 30 AD Crucifixion while keeping a 3-3.5 year ministry, but there are other chronological reasons I can't accept that.
Problem is others out there are arguing for an only 1 year ministry but doing so in a completely different way, that ignores the not so chronological nature of John and still thinks the John 2 Passover was a separate Passover from the Passion which is absurd as I argued before.
But worse then that, they argue that John 6 has a scribal error thus casting doubt on the preservation of God's Word. Which is why I fear this is a Satanic ploy to discredit arguing for a 1 year ministry at all.
The verse in John 6 mentioning Passover is apparently missing from some manuscripts, but I'll bet as usual these are chiefly the Alexandrian Manuscripts. I base my view of Scripture on the Received Text.
They say this can't actually be Passover because Jesus would have to be in Jerusalem if it's Passover. The wording in John 6:4 doesn't say it is on Passover exactly, it says the Passover is nigh. For the Passion week Jesus entered Jerusalem on the preceding Sunday, which I believe fell on the 10th of Nisan, the day the Passover Lamb is presented.
Passover could be nigh certainly if it's Nisan already, but in time Jewish tradition came to think of the Passover Season as beginning in a sense as soon as Purim ended around the 15-17th of Adar. Not unlike how in modern America the Christmas season begins as soon as Thanksgiving ends. Also the Samaritans had developed a tradition of having a build up to Passover that begins 10-11 weeks in advance, recounting the entire Exodus narrative from when Moses first came before Pharaoh.
For all these reasons I have decided, though I hadn't decided this firmly yet when I first made the 30 AD post, that I believe the Passover of John 6 is also the same Passover as the Crucifixion. But I do think for reasons explained elsewhere Jesus Baptism was possibly near the Passover of the previous year.
I believe the break between chapter 6 and 7 should be moved up a verse, that 7:2 starts the Tabernacles narrative and 7:1 ends the John 6 narrative. So I feel justified in speculating that John 7 took place 5 or 6 months before John 6.
They say the Synoptic accounts of the same Miracle that is the centerpiece of John 6 clearly place it at the end of Summer, I disagree, I don't see that. The basis seems to be thinking the Synoptics account refers to the Feast approaching after this account correlates to John 7 depicting Tabernacles next. As I feel the cleansing of The Temple issue proves, John isn't always chronological, even if a face value reading of his transitions seem that way.
The Synoptics unlike John are only concerned with that one Passover where he was Crucified, no other Feasts. So any reference to a Feast or Festival approaching in the Synoptics I'm certain means that Passover not any other.
I'll go ahead and repeat what I said before on the cleansing.
____________________________________________________________________
The biggest chronological mistake made when dealing with the Crucifixion is when people incorrectly state that John refers to three or four Passovers occurring during Jesus's ministry. (The discrepancy between three and four is a Feast being refereed to that isn't identified.) John 2 (It's second story), John 6 and 12 all refer to Passover clearly, the last the Passover season of the Crucifixion. John 5 refers to a Jewish feast but doesn't identify which, many then assume this is Passover. Since the Passover is largely the thematic heart of John's narrative I believe he would have identified it if it was Passover. I believe the one in John 5 is possibly Purim or Pentecost.
So John has three at most. The problem is the basic narrative of the Synoptic Gospels does not seem to allow more then a Year and a few months for Jesus' Ministry. The thing people overlook is that John's Gospel is the most Mystical of the Gospels, and because of that it's not always purely Chronological, sometimes events are described next to each other for symbolic reasons, not because they actually happened side by side.
John 2 describes two stories. The first is the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding banquet. That story clearly seems to be at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, since it's presented as his first public miracle. The second story involves The Temple. I believe they're told side by side because together they make John 2 a Beth chapter. Beth is the second letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, and it also means house. So John 2 deals with both The House as in the Family and The House as in the House of God. Both also refer to a three day period of time.
What is so often and to me annoyingly overlooked is that John 2 gives clearly a more detailed account of the Cleansing of The Temple. Which the Synoptics clearly place in the same week as the Crucifixion. Some would suggest it happened twice, but in the Synoptics it's clearly the last straw that drives the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Priesthood to want Jesus dead, if he'd done the same thing 2 or 3 years before that wouldn't make much sense. It's also interesting that the Synoptic account alludes to what only John records Jesus saying here, (About destroying this Temple and rebuilding it in 3 days) in the form of false witnesses misrepresenting it. But my point here is it's presented as something he recently said.
So in truth John gives a Ministry of only just over a year (many Atheists criticize the Gospels by saying the Synoptics clearly depict a ministry of only about a year and that John's three year model is then a contradiction. I've provided the means to refute that,) or maybe even less. And since John 2 is recording the Passover season of the Crucifixion, that is very useful since John 2 dates itself."Forty and six years has this temple been in building". The renovation of the Temple Herod started wasn't finished till the 60s, so this is referring to them speaking 46 years after Herod's renovations began. 20/19 BC is when Herod first announced the project, but as a careful study of Josephus shows it really began in late 18 or early 17 B.C. So 46 years latter on Passover brings us to 30 A.D. Ussher dated John 2's Temple incident to the same year, but repeated the error I explained above.
____________________________________________________________
Luke 4:19 refers to the acceptable year of The Lord. Exodus 12 said the Passover Lamb should be of the first year.
What annoys me is how the 3 to 4 year ministry continues to be accepted by people who do not have a preterist view of the 70th Week. Since it's origin (yes even among Early Church Fathers who taught it, Eusebius was the first) is in trying to justify a Preterist view of the 70th Week, that Jesus ministry was the first half.
But it's mistaken even as a Preterist view, I've decided a Preterist interpretation of the 70 Weeks isn't impossible (I see it as a dual fulfillment), but that when you clarify certain misunderstandings there is still no doubt that the Crucifixion was where the 69th ends and 70th begins, not the middle of a Week.
The Crucifixion being in Nisan makes it being the middle of a year impossible.
Problem is others out there are arguing for an only 1 year ministry but doing so in a completely different way, that ignores the not so chronological nature of John and still thinks the John 2 Passover was a separate Passover from the Passion which is absurd as I argued before.
But worse then that, they argue that John 6 has a scribal error thus casting doubt on the preservation of God's Word. Which is why I fear this is a Satanic ploy to discredit arguing for a 1 year ministry at all.
The verse in John 6 mentioning Passover is apparently missing from some manuscripts, but I'll bet as usual these are chiefly the Alexandrian Manuscripts. I base my view of Scripture on the Received Text.
They say this can't actually be Passover because Jesus would have to be in Jerusalem if it's Passover. The wording in John 6:4 doesn't say it is on Passover exactly, it says the Passover is nigh. For the Passion week Jesus entered Jerusalem on the preceding Sunday, which I believe fell on the 10th of Nisan, the day the Passover Lamb is presented.
Passover could be nigh certainly if it's Nisan already, but in time Jewish tradition came to think of the Passover Season as beginning in a sense as soon as Purim ended around the 15-17th of Adar. Not unlike how in modern America the Christmas season begins as soon as Thanksgiving ends. Also the Samaritans had developed a tradition of having a build up to Passover that begins 10-11 weeks in advance, recounting the entire Exodus narrative from when Moses first came before Pharaoh.
For all these reasons I have decided, though I hadn't decided this firmly yet when I first made the 30 AD post, that I believe the Passover of John 6 is also the same Passover as the Crucifixion. But I do think for reasons explained elsewhere Jesus Baptism was possibly near the Passover of the previous year.
I believe the break between chapter 6 and 7 should be moved up a verse, that 7:2 starts the Tabernacles narrative and 7:1 ends the John 6 narrative. So I feel justified in speculating that John 7 took place 5 or 6 months before John 6.
They say the Synoptic accounts of the same Miracle that is the centerpiece of John 6 clearly place it at the end of Summer, I disagree, I don't see that. The basis seems to be thinking the Synoptics account refers to the Feast approaching after this account correlates to John 7 depicting Tabernacles next. As I feel the cleansing of The Temple issue proves, John isn't always chronological, even if a face value reading of his transitions seem that way.
The Synoptics unlike John are only concerned with that one Passover where he was Crucified, no other Feasts. So any reference to a Feast or Festival approaching in the Synoptics I'm certain means that Passover not any other.
I'll go ahead and repeat what I said before on the cleansing.
____________________________________________________________________
The biggest chronological mistake made when dealing with the Crucifixion is when people incorrectly state that John refers to three or four Passovers occurring during Jesus's ministry. (The discrepancy between three and four is a Feast being refereed to that isn't identified.) John 2 (It's second story), John 6 and 12 all refer to Passover clearly, the last the Passover season of the Crucifixion. John 5 refers to a Jewish feast but doesn't identify which, many then assume this is Passover. Since the Passover is largely the thematic heart of John's narrative I believe he would have identified it if it was Passover. I believe the one in John 5 is possibly Purim or Pentecost.
So John has three at most. The problem is the basic narrative of the Synoptic Gospels does not seem to allow more then a Year and a few months for Jesus' Ministry. The thing people overlook is that John's Gospel is the most Mystical of the Gospels, and because of that it's not always purely Chronological, sometimes events are described next to each other for symbolic reasons, not because they actually happened side by side.
John 2 describes two stories. The first is the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding banquet. That story clearly seems to be at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, since it's presented as his first public miracle. The second story involves The Temple. I believe they're told side by side because together they make John 2 a Beth chapter. Beth is the second letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, and it also means house. So John 2 deals with both The House as in the Family and The House as in the House of God. Both also refer to a three day period of time.
What is so often and to me annoyingly overlooked is that John 2 gives clearly a more detailed account of the Cleansing of The Temple. Which the Synoptics clearly place in the same week as the Crucifixion. Some would suggest it happened twice, but in the Synoptics it's clearly the last straw that drives the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Priesthood to want Jesus dead, if he'd done the same thing 2 or 3 years before that wouldn't make much sense. It's also interesting that the Synoptic account alludes to what only John records Jesus saying here, (About destroying this Temple and rebuilding it in 3 days) in the form of false witnesses misrepresenting it. But my point here is it's presented as something he recently said.
So in truth John gives a Ministry of only just over a year (many Atheists criticize the Gospels by saying the Synoptics clearly depict a ministry of only about a year and that John's three year model is then a contradiction. I've provided the means to refute that,) or maybe even less. And since John 2 is recording the Passover season of the Crucifixion, that is very useful since John 2 dates itself."Forty and six years has this temple been in building". The renovation of the Temple Herod started wasn't finished till the 60s, so this is referring to them speaking 46 years after Herod's renovations began. 20/19 BC is when Herod first announced the project, but as a careful study of Josephus shows it really began in late 18 or early 17 B.C. So 46 years latter on Passover brings us to 30 A.D. Ussher dated John 2's Temple incident to the same year, but repeated the error I explained above.
____________________________________________________________
Luke 4:19 refers to the acceptable year of The Lord. Exodus 12 said the Passover Lamb should be of the first year.
What annoys me is how the 3 to 4 year ministry continues to be accepted by people who do not have a preterist view of the 70th Week. Since it's origin (yes even among Early Church Fathers who taught it, Eusebius was the first) is in trying to justify a Preterist view of the 70th Week, that Jesus ministry was the first half.
But it's mistaken even as a Preterist view, I've decided a Preterist interpretation of the 70 Weeks isn't impossible (I see it as a dual fulfillment), but that when you clarify certain misunderstandings there is still no doubt that the Crucifixion was where the 69th ends and 70th begins, not the middle of a Week.
The Crucifixion being in Nisan makes it being the middle of a year impossible.
Which wrong view on The Rapture is the most dangerous?
The popular answer is the Pre-Trib view, the one thing all non Pre-Tribbers seem to agree on.
I really don't understand how the people who are now not believers or believers who are uninterested in Prophecy talk about being raised on the Pre-Tirb Rapture and being constantly terrified by it. They clearly did not truly understand what The Rapture is if they found it frightening.
But what I'm going to discus here is how most of my fellow non Pre-Trib Futurists seem to think, simply by virtue of it being currently the mainstream view, that Pre-Trib is the most dangerous view. That once we're clearly in the 70th Week and no Rapture happens countless formally faithful Pre-Tribbers will lose their faith and fall away.
Post-Tribbers particularly then see the dangers of Pre-Trib as innate in any more obscure view that has the Rapture as distinct from Revelation 19, even though I am adamant Christians will face Great Tribulation. They are unwilling to listen to anything I have to say on Prophecy so long as I'm not Post-Trib like them.
I don't think so low of Pre-Tribbers, or anyone else who disagrees with me. But especially Pre-Tribbers because I've grown a lot in the Spirit listening to other issues talked about by Pre-Tirbbers like Chuck Missler. Pre-Tribbers are often the most likely to agree with me on Eternal Security, it seems the Pre-Wrath camp has a lot of Calvinism in it.
I've listened to a lot of Pre-Tribbers, many do believe American Christians will face persecution first. I'm confident they will simply get over it and rework their understanding once Pre-Trib is proven wrong.
I don't think there is any risk of truly Saved people being "deceived" by the II Thessalonians 2 event. I certainly don't think it's possible for a saved person to take the Mark, if you think that 100% of people who take The Mark are damned, but also believe in Eternal Security, then you have to believe no Saved person could take the Mark. I think the Mark is instituted after The Rapture has just happened, and the awakening Israelites are fleeing to the wilderness. So no one already saved will be presented with that dilemma.
Rob Skiba likes to say that the warning to Believers to not be deceived clearly means it's possible for us to be deceived. That is true but it's not about the II Thessalonians 2 event, that event isn't a deception at all, that's when the Deception ends and the enemy just comes right out and says what he means, he will not claim to be Jesus or The God of The Bible he will claim to be better then The God of The Bible.
Before that, during the first half of the Week it might, MIGHT, be possible for Believers to wind up being tricked into helping/supporting the Man of Sin.
Pre-Trib will be proven wrong pretty much as soon as the 70th Week starts. I believe The Temple will be standing before we enter it, and all of the first Six Seals will be opened before the Nisan that starts it is over.
So I'm more concerned that the default position among people is that IF Pre-Trib is wrong Post-Trib must be the only other option. Then after that is the trendy Pre-Wrath view. And also that movie from the Pastor I do not like to name that is presenting a model technically Mid-Trib in form but is really a hybridization of Post-Trib and Pre-Wrath ideas. Pre-Wrathers especially love to brag about Mid-Trib being a "defunct view". Well they should remember that it'd suit Satan well if the correct view is the least popular.
All three of those models place the Seventh Trumpet at the end of the 70th Week rather then The Mid-Way point as a plain reading of Revelation clearly shows. Post-Trib sometimes sees the sixth or seventh Seal as the same event but not always. Pre-Wrath places the Sixth Seal some indeterminate amount of time after the Mid-Way point.
Meanwhile there are also people arguing that there is no 70th Week, that the entire period is only 3.5 years and so every 3.5 year period referenced is the same. And most who do believe in a 70th Week have this wrong idea that those years will begin and end on Yom Teruah, when Yom Teruah should Biblically mark the midway point.
I've talked to Pre-Wrathers who think it's possible we're already in the 70th Week now and aren't aware of it. I firmly believe it can't start till The Temple (it could be just a Tabernacle) is standing in Jerusalem. Pre-Wrathers also tend to think the Persecution only starts at the Abomination of Desolation.
Basically what I'm saying is I fear once Pre-Trib is firmly debunked people may be deceived into thinking we're already at or past the Mid-Way point when the 70th Week has really only just started.
The only issue there is how can people be tricked into thinking The Abomination of Desolation has happened already when it really hasn't? Paul certainly makes what it is unmistakable in II Thessalonians 2. But lots of people are already trying to alegorize or twist that.
I think there will be plenty of Christians who won't fall for this deception, even if their current views make them vulnerable to aspects of it. But we need to be aware of how that deception could work.
1. Thanks to how the 1290 days reference from Daniel 12 is commonly misunderstood, most people assume the Sacrifice and Oblation is made to cease at the same time as the Abomination of Desolation when it's really 1290 days before it.
2. The Anti-Semites of the world may well think the Temple being rebuilt itself is the Abomination of Desolation. That's what some of Texe Marrs logic seems to imply. And since many other Dispensationalist and Zionsit Christians think it's possible The Temple won't be rebuilt till very soon before it happens, they are not prepared to refute that argument timing wise.
3. Then there are the people who allegorize what The Temple means in II Thessalonians to being The Church. Don't assume that view will lose credibility once a Third Temple is standing, many of them are clarifying they do think The Jews might get their Temple rebuilt, but that Christians should not be tricked into thinking that is prophetically relevant.
4. Rob Skiba has gone and wrongly defined what The Abomination of Desolation of Antiochus Epiphanes was, saying it refers to when he offered the Pig on the Altar (a legend that is apocryphal to begin with) not the Idol. So imagine if it's Nisan, perhaps on Passover, someone invades Jerusalem, enters the Temple and kills a Pig on the Brazen Altar. Rob Skiba is set up to be deceived, especially if that same Decoy Antichrist claims to be Nimrod.
5. I've also seen someone argue (with the intent of supporting a Prestist view however) that when Jesus said "The Holy Place" really means "A Holy Place" and that the Abomination need not happen in specifically the Inner Sanctuary at all. This is especially tempting to fall for once you notice Antiochus Epiphanes lesser Abomination Idol wasn't in the Holy Place but on the Brazen Altar. That's probably why Rob Skiba got confused. But II Thessalonians 2:4 says he sits in The Temple, the only sitting Place in The Temple was the Ark itself which lid was the mercy Seat, this Temple I don't think will have the real Ark.
6. I also think some might get confused by a person deifying himself or giving Messianic status to himself and forget that The Beast will also speak AGAINST the True God.
All of these could be relevant, since Satan will probably try to have multiple deceptions going on with multiple Decoy Antichrists. Maybe even relevant in ways that sometimes overlap.
I really don't understand how the people who are now not believers or believers who are uninterested in Prophecy talk about being raised on the Pre-Tirb Rapture and being constantly terrified by it. They clearly did not truly understand what The Rapture is if they found it frightening.
But what I'm going to discus here is how most of my fellow non Pre-Trib Futurists seem to think, simply by virtue of it being currently the mainstream view, that Pre-Trib is the most dangerous view. That once we're clearly in the 70th Week and no Rapture happens countless formally faithful Pre-Tribbers will lose their faith and fall away.
Post-Tribbers particularly then see the dangers of Pre-Trib as innate in any more obscure view that has the Rapture as distinct from Revelation 19, even though I am adamant Christians will face Great Tribulation. They are unwilling to listen to anything I have to say on Prophecy so long as I'm not Post-Trib like them.
I don't think so low of Pre-Tribbers, or anyone else who disagrees with me. But especially Pre-Tribbers because I've grown a lot in the Spirit listening to other issues talked about by Pre-Tirbbers like Chuck Missler. Pre-Tribbers are often the most likely to agree with me on Eternal Security, it seems the Pre-Wrath camp has a lot of Calvinism in it.
I've listened to a lot of Pre-Tribbers, many do believe American Christians will face persecution first. I'm confident they will simply get over it and rework their understanding once Pre-Trib is proven wrong.
I don't think there is any risk of truly Saved people being "deceived" by the II Thessalonians 2 event. I certainly don't think it's possible for a saved person to take the Mark, if you think that 100% of people who take The Mark are damned, but also believe in Eternal Security, then you have to believe no Saved person could take the Mark. I think the Mark is instituted after The Rapture has just happened, and the awakening Israelites are fleeing to the wilderness. So no one already saved will be presented with that dilemma.
Rob Skiba likes to say that the warning to Believers to not be deceived clearly means it's possible for us to be deceived. That is true but it's not about the II Thessalonians 2 event, that event isn't a deception at all, that's when the Deception ends and the enemy just comes right out and says what he means, he will not claim to be Jesus or The God of The Bible he will claim to be better then The God of The Bible.
Before that, during the first half of the Week it might, MIGHT, be possible for Believers to wind up being tricked into helping/supporting the Man of Sin.
Pre-Trib will be proven wrong pretty much as soon as the 70th Week starts. I believe The Temple will be standing before we enter it, and all of the first Six Seals will be opened before the Nisan that starts it is over.
So I'm more concerned that the default position among people is that IF Pre-Trib is wrong Post-Trib must be the only other option. Then after that is the trendy Pre-Wrath view. And also that movie from the Pastor I do not like to name that is presenting a model technically Mid-Trib in form but is really a hybridization of Post-Trib and Pre-Wrath ideas. Pre-Wrathers especially love to brag about Mid-Trib being a "defunct view". Well they should remember that it'd suit Satan well if the correct view is the least popular.
All three of those models place the Seventh Trumpet at the end of the 70th Week rather then The Mid-Way point as a plain reading of Revelation clearly shows. Post-Trib sometimes sees the sixth or seventh Seal as the same event but not always. Pre-Wrath places the Sixth Seal some indeterminate amount of time after the Mid-Way point.
Meanwhile there are also people arguing that there is no 70th Week, that the entire period is only 3.5 years and so every 3.5 year period referenced is the same. And most who do believe in a 70th Week have this wrong idea that those years will begin and end on Yom Teruah, when Yom Teruah should Biblically mark the midway point.
I've talked to Pre-Wrathers who think it's possible we're already in the 70th Week now and aren't aware of it. I firmly believe it can't start till The Temple (it could be just a Tabernacle) is standing in Jerusalem. Pre-Wrathers also tend to think the Persecution only starts at the Abomination of Desolation.
Basically what I'm saying is I fear once Pre-Trib is firmly debunked people may be deceived into thinking we're already at or past the Mid-Way point when the 70th Week has really only just started.
The only issue there is how can people be tricked into thinking The Abomination of Desolation has happened already when it really hasn't? Paul certainly makes what it is unmistakable in II Thessalonians 2. But lots of people are already trying to alegorize or twist that.
I think there will be plenty of Christians who won't fall for this deception, even if their current views make them vulnerable to aspects of it. But we need to be aware of how that deception could work.
1. Thanks to how the 1290 days reference from Daniel 12 is commonly misunderstood, most people assume the Sacrifice and Oblation is made to cease at the same time as the Abomination of Desolation when it's really 1290 days before it.
2. The Anti-Semites of the world may well think the Temple being rebuilt itself is the Abomination of Desolation. That's what some of Texe Marrs logic seems to imply. And since many other Dispensationalist and Zionsit Christians think it's possible The Temple won't be rebuilt till very soon before it happens, they are not prepared to refute that argument timing wise.
3. Then there are the people who allegorize what The Temple means in II Thessalonians to being The Church. Don't assume that view will lose credibility once a Third Temple is standing, many of them are clarifying they do think The Jews might get their Temple rebuilt, but that Christians should not be tricked into thinking that is prophetically relevant.
4. Rob Skiba has gone and wrongly defined what The Abomination of Desolation of Antiochus Epiphanes was, saying it refers to when he offered the Pig on the Altar (a legend that is apocryphal to begin with) not the Idol. So imagine if it's Nisan, perhaps on Passover, someone invades Jerusalem, enters the Temple and kills a Pig on the Brazen Altar. Rob Skiba is set up to be deceived, especially if that same Decoy Antichrist claims to be Nimrod.
5. I've also seen someone argue (with the intent of supporting a Prestist view however) that when Jesus said "The Holy Place" really means "A Holy Place" and that the Abomination need not happen in specifically the Inner Sanctuary at all. This is especially tempting to fall for once you notice Antiochus Epiphanes lesser Abomination Idol wasn't in the Holy Place but on the Brazen Altar. That's probably why Rob Skiba got confused. But II Thessalonians 2:4 says he sits in The Temple, the only sitting Place in The Temple was the Ark itself which lid was the mercy Seat, this Temple I don't think will have the real Ark.
6. I also think some might get confused by a person deifying himself or giving Messianic status to himself and forget that The Beast will also speak AGAINST the True God.
All of these could be relevant, since Satan will probably try to have multiple deceptions going on with multiple Decoy Antichrists. Maybe even relevant in ways that sometimes overlap.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
2018-2025 Seventieth Week Theory
The basic reasoning behind my developing this theory I have laid out in my Suleiman The Magnificent post. Of course one needs to understand my reasons for disagreeing with those who say Date-Setting is inherently wrong. At any-rate I'm not saying I know, it's a theory.
I'm not making any money off talking about this theory, I'm not writing a book about it, everything I have to say on it is up for free on this Blog. And I do not have any kind of advertising arrangement that allows me to make money off of the clicks I get.
The gist is, it seems that the entire 70 weeks could have a double fulfillment not just the first. And Sulieman's decree was issued possibly in Nisan of 1535. 490 years latter is 2025 putting the last week beginning in 2018. Potential support for this comes from it being more then 70 but less then 80 years since 1948.
This puts the Mid-Way point and sounding of the Seventh Trumpet on Yom Teruah/First of Tishri 2021 AD. Because the 70 Weeks all begin and end in Nisan. Now we can't know for certain when Yom Teruah falls in 2021 because of what I explained about the Biblical Reckoning not always agreeing with The Rabbis. At any-rate though, the Rabbis currently expect Yom Teruah of 2021 to fall on September 7th or 8th, the moon will be under Virgo's Feet on September 10th.
(Update: On further Stelarium study, I think 2021 is likely one of those years the Rabbinic Calendar is a month off. So I think Yom Teruah will be October 6th or 7th, the Moon will be under Virgo's feet on the 7th.)
I speculate on how the 70th Week could play out here.
I recently explained why I feel The Rapture of The Man-Child is The Rapture of The Church. That view is not at all dependent on adding any Virgo related speculation for the signs, but I decided to use Stelarium and take a look.
When The Moon is under Virgo's Feet on September 14th 2021, Venus will be between The Moon and Spica. And the time Venus will be visible will be less then an hour.
Now in the Man-Child study I felt Revelation 2:27 and it's Rod of Iron reference was important, well the very next verse Jesus also says "I will give him The Morning Star". How linked are those? Could Venus represent the Rod of Iron in some way?
I don't know if this model will happen, but I will be paying attention. I have an important follow up here.
I'm not making any money off talking about this theory, I'm not writing a book about it, everything I have to say on it is up for free on this Blog. And I do not have any kind of advertising arrangement that allows me to make money off of the clicks I get.
The gist is, it seems that the entire 70 weeks could have a double fulfillment not just the first. And Sulieman's decree was issued possibly in Nisan of 1535. 490 years latter is 2025 putting the last week beginning in 2018. Potential support for this comes from it being more then 70 but less then 80 years since 1948.
This puts the Mid-Way point and sounding of the Seventh Trumpet on Yom Teruah/First of Tishri 2021 AD. Because the 70 Weeks all begin and end in Nisan. Now we can't know for certain when Yom Teruah falls in 2021 because of what I explained about the Biblical Reckoning not always agreeing with The Rabbis. At any-rate though, the Rabbis currently expect Yom Teruah of 2021 to fall on September 7th or 8th, the moon will be under Virgo's Feet on September 10th.
(Update: On further Stelarium study, I think 2021 is likely one of those years the Rabbinic Calendar is a month off. So I think Yom Teruah will be October 6th or 7th, the Moon will be under Virgo's feet on the 7th.)
I speculate on how the 70th Week could play out here.
I recently explained why I feel The Rapture of The Man-Child is The Rapture of The Church. That view is not at all dependent on adding any Virgo related speculation for the signs, but I decided to use Stelarium and take a look.
When The Moon is under Virgo's Feet on September 14th 2021, Venus will be between The Moon and Spica. And the time Venus will be visible will be less then an hour.
Now in the Man-Child study I felt Revelation 2:27 and it's Rod of Iron reference was important, well the very next verse Jesus also says "I will give him The Morning Star". How linked are those? Could Venus represent the Rod of Iron in some way?
I don't know if this model will happen, but I will be paying attention. I have an important follow up here.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
I think The Man-Child is The Church
I did a post on the subject of The Rapture of The Man-Child before. But my thinking has changed since then. First read this so you understand that all of this follows The Seventh Trumpet.
Back then I was focused on how The Man-Child could be both Christ and The Church, because The Church is the Body of Christ. And that remains an important part of the argument. But I've come to think it's placement in Revelation makes him, particularly in terms of his being "Caught Up", more about The Church.
The Greek term Harpatzo isn't used of the Ascension, it wouldn't be because Jesus ascended on His own, no one had to come down to get him. But that same key word used in I Thessalonians 4, that is via it's Latin Translations the origin of the term Rapture, is used once and only once in Revelation, right here.
I'm aware that Harpatzo/Rapture/Caught Up is used of things not relevant to The Rapture debate. My point here is that the alternative view of what The Man-Child's Rapture refers to is the one and only Ascension in The Bible where using that term would be inappropriate. Harpatzo implies the person ascending isn't in control of their ascension, someone else is. That's why the term enraptured comes from rapture. Jesus was in full control of his Ascension, and is in full control of every other Biblical Ascension.
And also that the term could have accurately described some other events in Revelation, like 4:1 or the Ascension of the Witnesses. But John used it only here. Now in the first century that particular word Paul used in 1 Thessalonians 4 may not have been a point of contention, but The Holy Spirit knew it would be and I think maybe was specific about how to use it in The Apocalypse.
I've seen it argued the Man-Child can't be the Church because he's Caught up to God's Throne. Revelation 12 does NOT say the Man-Child sits on the Throne (which it probably would have if the Man-Child was Jesus), the terminology is consistent just with the Man-Child being in the Throne Room. Read chapters 14 and 15.
Ruling the nations with a Rod of Iron is applied to presumably Jesus in Psalm 2, and again later in Revelation in chapter 19. But in the context of reading through Revelation on it's own without knowledge of what's ahead, the promise to rule the nations with a Rod of Iron was applied to faithful believers in Revelation 2:27.
I recommend a study on my other blog where I point out how some of our casual Christian lingo is wrong. We are "Born Again" at the Resurrection not when we are saved. We are begotten again or conceived when we are Saved. So if the concept of New Birth is linked to the Resurrection, and The Rapture we know happens when we are Resurrected. Then it's quite interesting that The Man-Child is born and Raptured in the same verse.
Numerous passages outside Revelation speak of a woman travailing in child birth as an idiom of the signs of the the Second Coming. But we never connect that to Revelation 12 because we're so used to this assumption that the Birth of The Man-Child there is referring to something that already happened at The First Advent.
Isaiah 66 also clearly defines The Man-Child as Zion/New Jerusalem.
As an individual our begetting happens when we're saved. The Church as an entity was Begotten arguably you could say over the course of The Spring Feasts in 30 AD. The Woman is Israel, we were conceived in Israel's Womb from the Bodily fluids of Jesus shed at The Cross.
Jesus is represented differently at different parts of Revelation, the Lamb, the Son of Man, ect. The Church is the same situation. We are definitely The Bride. And I see the 144,000 as a specific group that sort of represents the whole at times. They are on earth through The Trumpets, but on the Heavenly Zion in Revelation 14, and described with terms Paul linked to the Resurrection like First Fruits and Redeemed from the Earth.
Some insist The Church can never be symbolically masculine due to the Bride of Christ doctrine. Well we can't be Jesus Body then now can we? Paul even talks in Corinthians about our members being the members of Christ. That's leaving aside that some people don't even agree with The Bride doctrine, and over time I've re-thought that myself. Psalm 45 depicts The Messiah and his Bride as having children.
There were no chapter divisions in the original text. Revelation 12 follows 11, this is still the aftermath of the Seventh Trumpet, where it says now is the time of The Dead. I believe firmly that that Trumpet sounds on Yom Teruah. The 70th Week will begin and end with Nisan.
Revelation 12's beginning could also be the Sign of the Son of Man that Jesus spoke of. Or the Signs in the Sun, Moon and Stars from Luke 21.
And maybe that is why this is when Satan is finally kicked out of Heaven (Michael is the aggressor here). It is when We are there fully Redeemed and brought there that God won't tolerate Satan's presence there any longer.
As far as the desire to link this to possibly Constellation alignments involving Virgo. While the time of year that points to happens to agree with when I believe this will happen for many other reasons, I remain highly skeptical. Ultimately I think this is something Supernatural, but it could be Supernatural and also involve Virgo. I've posted on related conjectures before. However I was mistaken when I said Virgo is completely not visible then. when the Sun is just starting to enter Virgo she remains partially visible at Dusk for a hour or so.
Back then I was focused on how The Man-Child could be both Christ and The Church, because The Church is the Body of Christ. And that remains an important part of the argument. But I've come to think it's placement in Revelation makes him, particularly in terms of his being "Caught Up", more about The Church.
The Greek term Harpatzo isn't used of the Ascension, it wouldn't be because Jesus ascended on His own, no one had to come down to get him. But that same key word used in I Thessalonians 4, that is via it's Latin Translations the origin of the term Rapture, is used once and only once in Revelation, right here.
I'm aware that Harpatzo/Rapture/Caught Up is used of things not relevant to The Rapture debate. My point here is that the alternative view of what The Man-Child's Rapture refers to is the one and only Ascension in The Bible where using that term would be inappropriate. Harpatzo implies the person ascending isn't in control of their ascension, someone else is. That's why the term enraptured comes from rapture. Jesus was in full control of his Ascension, and is in full control of every other Biblical Ascension.
And also that the term could have accurately described some other events in Revelation, like 4:1 or the Ascension of the Witnesses. But John used it only here. Now in the first century that particular word Paul used in 1 Thessalonians 4 may not have been a point of contention, but The Holy Spirit knew it would be and I think maybe was specific about how to use it in The Apocalypse.
I've seen it argued the Man-Child can't be the Church because he's Caught up to God's Throne. Revelation 12 does NOT say the Man-Child sits on the Throne (which it probably would have if the Man-Child was Jesus), the terminology is consistent just with the Man-Child being in the Throne Room. Read chapters 14 and 15.
Ruling the nations with a Rod of Iron is applied to presumably Jesus in Psalm 2, and again later in Revelation in chapter 19. But in the context of reading through Revelation on it's own without knowledge of what's ahead, the promise to rule the nations with a Rod of Iron was applied to faithful believers in Revelation 2:27.
I recommend a study on my other blog where I point out how some of our casual Christian lingo is wrong. We are "Born Again" at the Resurrection not when we are saved. We are begotten again or conceived when we are Saved. So if the concept of New Birth is linked to the Resurrection, and The Rapture we know happens when we are Resurrected. Then it's quite interesting that The Man-Child is born and Raptured in the same verse.
Numerous passages outside Revelation speak of a woman travailing in child birth as an idiom of the signs of the the Second Coming. But we never connect that to Revelation 12 because we're so used to this assumption that the Birth of The Man-Child there is referring to something that already happened at The First Advent.
Isaiah 66 also clearly defines The Man-Child as Zion/New Jerusalem.
As an individual our begetting happens when we're saved. The Church as an entity was Begotten arguably you could say over the course of The Spring Feasts in 30 AD. The Woman is Israel, we were conceived in Israel's Womb from the Bodily fluids of Jesus shed at The Cross.
Jesus is represented differently at different parts of Revelation, the Lamb, the Son of Man, ect. The Church is the same situation. We are definitely The Bride. And I see the 144,000 as a specific group that sort of represents the whole at times. They are on earth through The Trumpets, but on the Heavenly Zion in Revelation 14, and described with terms Paul linked to the Resurrection like First Fruits and Redeemed from the Earth.
Some insist The Church can never be symbolically masculine due to the Bride of Christ doctrine. Well we can't be Jesus Body then now can we? Paul even talks in Corinthians about our members being the members of Christ. That's leaving aside that some people don't even agree with The Bride doctrine, and over time I've re-thought that myself. Psalm 45 depicts The Messiah and his Bride as having children.
There were no chapter divisions in the original text. Revelation 12 follows 11, this is still the aftermath of the Seventh Trumpet, where it says now is the time of The Dead. I believe firmly that that Trumpet sounds on Yom Teruah. The 70th Week will begin and end with Nisan.
Revelation 12's beginning could also be the Sign of the Son of Man that Jesus spoke of. Or the Signs in the Sun, Moon and Stars from Luke 21.
And maybe that is why this is when Satan is finally kicked out of Heaven (Michael is the aggressor here). It is when We are there fully Redeemed and brought there that God won't tolerate Satan's presence there any longer.
As far as the desire to link this to possibly Constellation alignments involving Virgo. While the time of year that points to happens to agree with when I believe this will happen for many other reasons, I remain highly skeptical. Ultimately I think this is something Supernatural, but it could be Supernatural and also involve Virgo. I've posted on related conjectures before. However I was mistaken when I said Virgo is completely not visible then. when the Sun is just starting to enter Virgo she remains partially visible at Dusk for a hour or so.
We should follow the Karaite reckoning rather then the Rabbinic calander
There is no call in The Bible to try and predict in advance when various days will fall.
The first of Nisan is the only new year that is Biblical. And it should always be the first New Moon after the Barley Harvest in Israel starts. When the Barley Harvest happens in Adar (or second Adar if they have one) then the Rabbinic calendar happens to be right. And the Karaite reckoning does wind up corresponding with the Rabbinic calendar more often the Samaritan Calendar does.
If the Barley Harvest happens late and i doesn't occur in Adar, then that is when you do a second Adar, whether or not it was expected. And if the Barley harvest happens in first Adar, then there shouldn't be a second Adar whether or not the Rabbinics had planned one.
http://www.karaite-korner.org/holidays.shtml
Likewise for the months. The Rabbinics have complicated way of counting things, and because of that even when the month is right Tabernacles often doesn't fall on the true Astronomical Full Moon. If the New Moon happens sooner then expected then that months ends early, if it happens latter then expected then that months has an extra day or two.
Now today we can predicts New Moons and Full Moon pretty accurately with our astronomical sciences that the Ancient Hebrews didn't have. How nature cooperates for the Barley Harvest is not as dependable however.
Christians who think The Biblical calendar still has significance, should start as soon as it's February looking for the Barley Harvest in Israel.
Karaites aren't Christians, but they are the Protestants of the Jewish world in terms of Sola Sicprtura. Some may at times be like many Protestants who pay lip service to Sola Sciprtura while attacking Catholics but then just build traditions of their own. But it looks from the website I linked to that they have a pretty solid understanding of the Biblical reckoning of the times and seasons.
Update Jan2016: Knowing that the Rabbis are doing can still help predict some basic things, the New Moons are not likely be off by any more then 2 days. And from there using Stellarium from a view point in Israel can maybe help one predict if the New Moons will be off. The Rabbis are expecting 2016 to have a Second Adar. And with Shevet beginning less then half way into January I think it's likely there will be one for the Karaites too.
Some Karaites have chosen to outright identify themselves with the Sadducees and deny the Resurrection of the Dead The Afterlife and a coming Messiah. But not all take that position.
The first of Nisan is the only new year that is Biblical. And it should always be the first New Moon after the Barley Harvest in Israel starts. When the Barley Harvest happens in Adar (or second Adar if they have one) then the Rabbinic calendar happens to be right. And the Karaite reckoning does wind up corresponding with the Rabbinic calendar more often the Samaritan Calendar does.
If the Barley Harvest happens late and i doesn't occur in Adar, then that is when you do a second Adar, whether or not it was expected. And if the Barley harvest happens in first Adar, then there shouldn't be a second Adar whether or not the Rabbinics had planned one.
http://www.karaite-korner.org/holidays.shtml
Likewise for the months. The Rabbinics have complicated way of counting things, and because of that even when the month is right Tabernacles often doesn't fall on the true Astronomical Full Moon. If the New Moon happens sooner then expected then that months ends early, if it happens latter then expected then that months has an extra day or two.
Now today we can predicts New Moons and Full Moon pretty accurately with our astronomical sciences that the Ancient Hebrews didn't have. How nature cooperates for the Barley Harvest is not as dependable however.
Christians who think The Biblical calendar still has significance, should start as soon as it's February looking for the Barley Harvest in Israel.
Karaites aren't Christians, but they are the Protestants of the Jewish world in terms of Sola Sicprtura. Some may at times be like many Protestants who pay lip service to Sola Sciprtura while attacking Catholics but then just build traditions of their own. But it looks from the website I linked to that they have a pretty solid understanding of the Biblical reckoning of the times and seasons.
Update Jan2016: Knowing that the Rabbis are doing can still help predict some basic things, the New Moons are not likely be off by any more then 2 days. And from there using Stellarium from a view point in Israel can maybe help one predict if the New Moons will be off. The Rabbis are expecting 2016 to have a Second Adar. And with Shevet beginning less then half way into January I think it's likely there will be one for the Karaites too.
Some Karaites have chosen to outright identify themselves with the Sadducees and deny the Resurrection of the Dead The Afterlife and a coming Messiah. But not all take that position.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Israel's Spiritual Blindness is temporary
I'm not a Dispensationalsit anymore. I no longer view The Church and Israel as completely separate. And I even agree that the "Synagogue of Satan" refers to the non Christian Jewish Religion (not unbelieveing Jews as individuals).
But I suggest you remember when reading that Isaac and Ishmael analogy in Galatians that Ishmael did have a promise and an inheritance too.
Romans 11 makes clear after all the talk about them being enemies of The Gospel currently that the spiritual blindness on them will be lifted. Verses 25 and 26.
Hosea 5:15 says "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early." Return implies he left it. This verse is a strong Old Testament witness to two Advents. But people who want to deny a future Salvation of Israel ignore it.
Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 wasn't finished. You can deduce how it was going to end by seeing his pattern was that Israel always got it wrong the first time but right the second time.
The other places where Jesus says something similar to this could be seen as referring to the Triumphal entry. But Matthew 23 is taking place after that. Verse 37.
Keep Paul's fullness of the Gentiles connections for when Israel's blindness is lifted in mind as you read Luke 21. Now Luke 21 is about 70 AD until verse 24 where Jerusalem is trodden under foot of The Gentiles.
After The Witnessess are killed, and lay dead for three and a half days, then are risen and taken up to Heaven and an earthquake happens, the people of the City give glory to God. This is new in Revelation, earlier people didn't repent or praise God no matter what.
Then the next thing after they give glory to God is The Last Trumpet Sounds.
Now many people fear this doctrine that Israel will be Saved is setting the stage to trick Christians into accepting any Messiah accepted by Jews. NONE of the Dispensaitonlists I've followed are ignorant that the Abomination of Desolation happens before Israel's salvation. And they all know that Jesus return isn't something a Believer will miss if they aren't watching the News at that moment. We will be taken to where he is.
But I suggest you remember when reading that Isaac and Ishmael analogy in Galatians that Ishmael did have a promise and an inheritance too.
Romans 11 makes clear after all the talk about them being enemies of The Gospel currently that the spiritual blindness on them will be lifted. Verses 25 and 26.
For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:Paul makes a distinction through Romans 9-11 between physical Israel and Spiritual Israel. But saying all Spiritual Israel will be Saved would be a pointless statement because you are already saved if you're spiritual Israel.
Hosea 5:15 says "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early." Return implies he left it. This verse is a strong Old Testament witness to two Advents. But people who want to deny a future Salvation of Israel ignore it.
Stephen's sermon in Acts 7 wasn't finished. You can deduce how it was going to end by seeing his pattern was that Israel always got it wrong the first time but right the second time.
The other places where Jesus says something similar to this could be seen as referring to the Triumphal entry. But Matthew 23 is taking place after that. Verse 37.
"For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."That and Hosea above are two witness for implying Israel accepting Jesus will trigger his return. Pre-Tirbbers and even usually Pre-Wrathers and fellow Mid-Tribbers tend to see that as the Revelation 19 return not when he comes in the Clouds. Well I think there is truth to that too, Israel's salvation will happen in phases over the course of the 70th Week. But.....
Keep Paul's fullness of the Gentiles connections for when Israel's blindness is lifted in mind as you read Luke 21. Now Luke 21 is about 70 AD until verse 24 where Jerusalem is trodden under foot of The Gentiles.
"And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."The times of the Gentiles being fulfilled and the fullness of the Gentiles coming in are probably the same thing. Revelation 11 talks about the last three and a half years Jerusalem will be trodden under foot of The Gentiles. It's the same time period as the ministry of The Witnesses, clearly to me the first half of the 70th Week.
After The Witnessess are killed, and lay dead for three and a half days, then are risen and taken up to Heaven and an earthquake happens, the people of the City give glory to God. This is new in Revelation, earlier people didn't repent or praise God no matter what.
Then the next thing after they give glory to God is The Last Trumpet Sounds.
Now many people fear this doctrine that Israel will be Saved is setting the stage to trick Christians into accepting any Messiah accepted by Jews. NONE of the Dispensaitonlists I've followed are ignorant that the Abomination of Desolation happens before Israel's salvation. And they all know that Jesus return isn't something a Believer will miss if they aren't watching the News at that moment. We will be taken to where he is.
The Abomination of Desolation is before The Rapture
I was clear on that in the first post I made on this blog. I had sort of back tracked on that in one or two posts since, but I'm repudiating that now. I won't delete those posts cause some thoughts I expressed in them may still be helpful, but the Abomination of Desolation happens before The Rapture.
To be very clear The Man of Sin in The Temple declaring himself God form II Thessalonians 2 must happen first. The Image of The Beast of Revelation 13 may or may not.
The defining moment of The Beast will happen before The Rapture/Second Coming.
To be very clear The Man of Sin in The Temple declaring himself God form II Thessalonians 2 must happen first. The Image of The Beast of Revelation 13 may or may not.
The defining moment of The Beast will happen before The Rapture/Second Coming.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Latin Vulgate translation of Revelation 12:5
Et peperit filium masculum, qui recturus erat omnes gentes in virga ferrea: et raptus est filius ejus ad Deum, et ad thronum ejus,
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Is it appropriate to use the tern Antichrist how we use it?
I'm going to keep using it because it's casual usage is so ingrained in our society. And I want even readers of my blog who aren't Prophecy experts and won't recognize easily all his other titles to follow the discussions.
But I'm growing more and more skeptical it's Biblically appropriate to use that word of the coming future world leader.
I'm NOT denying there is a future world leader. I believe the two beasts of Revelation 13 are literal individuals. The Beast of the Sea is certainly more then an individual, it's his Kingdom, but the Eight King is also The Beast. It is two individual persons who are cast alive into the Lake of Fire. And I believe info about those individuals does exist elsewhere in Scripture like in II Thessalonians 2 and Daniel 7. And I believe that is yet future.
The word Antichrist is used 5 times in 4 verses. 1 John 2:18, 2:22, 4:3 and 2 John 1:7. It is well known that most of those are about there being many antichrists and the spirit of antichrist, and how any denial of Jesus divinity or Jesus as the Son of God come in the Flesh is the an antichrist heresy.
But the insistence exists that the first reference does allude to a future individual. Well here is what John said.
It proves the belief in a coming Antichrist was there already, but John was repudiating that belief.
An individual is coming, but he is not equal in power and importance to Jesus, or Jesus' Evil Counterpart, he's not the manifestation of all wickedness. He's just a sinful man who is going to become very powerful, who wants to believe he's that important, but he really is not. He's not really much different then any other tyrant who has persecuted God's People throughout history.
At the very least John is saying not to get so caught up in the future one that you forget to concern yourself with the contemporary adversaries of The Gospel. And I feel the obsession with connecting every contemporary evil to the future Beast is itself a distractionary counterproductive way to deal with those evils. Just oppose them on their own merits. Not to mention people doing this with things I don't agree are evil. I deal with those things mostly on the SolaScurpturaChristianLiberty blog.
But I'm growing more and more skeptical it's Biblically appropriate to use that word of the coming future world leader.
I'm NOT denying there is a future world leader. I believe the two beasts of Revelation 13 are literal individuals. The Beast of the Sea is certainly more then an individual, it's his Kingdom, but the Eight King is also The Beast. It is two individual persons who are cast alive into the Lake of Fire. And I believe info about those individuals does exist elsewhere in Scripture like in II Thessalonians 2 and Daniel 7. And I believe that is yet future.
The word Antichrist is used 5 times in 4 verses. 1 John 2:18, 2:22, 4:3 and 2 John 1:7. It is well known that most of those are about there being many antichrists and the spirit of antichrist, and how any denial of Jesus divinity or Jesus as the Son of God come in the Flesh is the an antichrist heresy.
But the insistence exists that the first reference does allude to a future individual. Well here is what John said.
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.He said "ye have heard". Throughout The Gospels Jesus contrasts "it is written" with "you have heard it said". "It is written" refers to what's Written in The Scriptures, while "heard it said" refereed to the oral traditions of the Pharisees that Jesus was rebukeing. By the time John wrote his Epistles, the Christian community was already developing their own oral traditions it seems.
It proves the belief in a coming Antichrist was there already, but John was repudiating that belief.
An individual is coming, but he is not equal in power and importance to Jesus, or Jesus' Evil Counterpart, he's not the manifestation of all wickedness. He's just a sinful man who is going to become very powerful, who wants to believe he's that important, but he really is not. He's not really much different then any other tyrant who has persecuted God's People throughout history.
At the very least John is saying not to get so caught up in the future one that you forget to concern yourself with the contemporary adversaries of The Gospel. And I feel the obsession with connecting every contemporary evil to the future Beast is itself a distractionary counterproductive way to deal with those evils. Just oppose them on their own merits. Not to mention people doing this with things I don't agree are evil. I deal with those things mostly on the SolaScurpturaChristianLiberty blog.
Flat Earth Debate
So I watched material from last month from Rob Skiba. I don't know if this has changed since then but he was saying he still thinks the Earth is Round but was talking a lot like he doesn't. That's why last night I copied here something on Isaiah 40 I had written elsewhere last year sometime. That post shares the Flat Earth Debate label with this post. As I've said before I like Skiba, I want to see the TV show he's making. But he goes off the deep end in a few places. Probably his greatest objection to me would be on the subject of Nimrod. I also answered his challenge for a second witness for additional Angel incursions.
This is a work in progress by the way, I'm constantly adding to it.
His doubt about the Earth's shape has a lot to do with the ability to apparently sometimes see what you would think should be below the horizon. That doesn't surprise me at all I've been familiar with that fact for awhile, I don't remember exactly how to explain it but I know it does make sense. I think it might have been covered in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
He talks about not trusting NASA. Look, I'm a conspiracy theorist too, but we've put a lot of people in space and not one has yet repented and admitted to being part of some massive conspiracy to lie about the shape of The Earth and the Universe. A lot of things far easier to cover up have leaked.
But mostly I'm not worried about all that. I'm worried about his insistence that if you take The Bible at face value it clearly teaches a Flat Earth.
https://youtu.be/aJGOQEyeHbE
First I do not agree with the law of first mention. The law of needing more then one witness has actual verses it's based on. The law of first mention does not, it's a game lots of people like to play to help limit what a Biblical term can mean, but it's not supported by Scripture. It's related to the lexical fallacy.
Most stuff written by Christians to argue that The Bible teaches a round Earth is in response to Bible Skeptics, rather then trying to engage in an exegetical debate with Flat Earth supporters. And Rob mocks those arguments. What he didn't quite understand is the citing of Luke's Olivite Discourse isn't about refuting the modern Flat Earth model but about skeptics saying The Bible agrees with ancient Flat Earth models where having night and day at the same time wasn't possible.
The Bible doesn't clearly unambiguously teach The Earth's shape one way or the other. It doesn't seem to be something The Holy Spirit felt we needed to know. So yes I think it's a fallacy to teach The Bible can only be teaching a Round Earth. But no Bible passages exist primary for the purpose of telling as The Earth's shape.
You can't build doctrine on most of Ecclesiastes or what Job's friends said. Solomon was in that book describing how things seem to be to untrained unbelieving mortal eyes of his time with the intend of in the end saying that's wrong, but yet what he says gets misused by people to build bad doctrines like that there is no After Life. And Job's Friends were simply idiots.
Pointing to Psalm 22 as a Prophecy of Jesus does not contradict that the Psalms (and many passages outside The Psalms are Poetic too, especially in Isaiah) use Poetic figures of Speech that should not be taken literally. Including in Psalm 22 we have the Bulls of Bashan. Does Rob Skiba think God literally has wings and feathers?
The Bible uses a lot of the same terminology that everyone who believes The Earth is Rounds use all the time. Not just the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, but also the talk f the Ends of The Earth. Alexander The Great believed the world was round as a student of Aristotle, yet he still talked abut wanting to reach the ends of The Earth.
The Hebrew word for Earth is Erets, and it also means Land. Sometimes it's used specifically of the The Holy Land but those contexts are very obvious. Similar with the Greek word Ge. Sometimes Earth is contrasted with Sea like with the two Beasts in Revelation 13. Both words clearly can the mean land masses/continents (Genesis 1:10 says so) and so do have ends even in a round Earth Cosmology.
What's Beneath the Earth's crust could also be considered foundations or pillars regardless of shape, especially with the Law of Gravity in mind. For all intents and purposes the center of The Earth is still beneath us and without everything between us and it we would fall into it. I can't but laugh actually at how the "pillars" in the traditional models of Hebrew cosmology look more like stalactites then things helping to hold the world up up.
Here is the thing, this modern Scientifically plausible (based on what we now know from Magellan's voyage and so on) Flat Earth model that Skiba promotes is not compatible with a literal face value assumption reading of those Scriptures either. The Sun and Moon are not actually rising and setting under it either, they are sort orbiting around the North Pole above the equator. I wonder how things like the phases of the Moon are supposed to make sense in that model.
All ancient flat earth models and geocentric models agreed with our modern one that Venus and Mercury are farther from the Earth then the Moon but closer then the Sun. That is apparent even to the most untrained observers.
But more important then that, The Bible when it does casually and poetically talk as if the world were a flat circle. It doesn't treat the North Pole as the center, the land of Magog is is treated as being as far North as you can go. It treats Israel, the Holy Land as the center. North is north of Israel and South is south of Israel. And so on.
If The Earth is a sphere and has no real geographical center, at least on the surface. Treating where Africa and Eurasia meet as the center makes perfect sense. But not a flat circle where the North Pole is the center.
Let's talk about the Four Corner references since those often seem the most compelling to people. Revelation 7 directly links the four Corners to the Four Winds of Heaven. Daniel 11 tells as that Alexander's empire was divided to the Four Winds of Heaven. This is a good excuse to promote my recent Daniel 7 study.
When Revelation 20:8 in the KJV describes nations in the Gog and Magog war coming from the Four Quarters of the Earth. The Greek word for quarter is the exact same one rendered corners in Revelation 7. Matthew 6:7 uses the same word also. As well as when Jesus is described as the Stone at the Head of the Corner. The word's Strong number is 1137.
Now I believe firmly against what's popular today that Ezekiel 38-39 are the same Gog and Magog invasion. There it is clarified that the corners are Magog and and other Japhetic nations for the North. Persia for the East, Cush/Ethopia for the South (specifically used of Nubia a lot but can be all of sub Saharan Africa). And Phut/Libya for the West (not actually modern Libya but rather North Western Africa, from where Carthage was to the Straights of Gibraltar).
The point is even if a Flat Earth cosmology is assumed the corners are not corners outside of some Dome containing the entire world, but the edges of the land masses.
He appeals to extra-Biblical sources like Enoch. Again the Jewish Fables Paul warned us to pay no need to in Titus. I have proven elsewhere that the so called Jasher can't be a book Joshua quoted.
Then he appeals to what the Pagan cosmologies of Babylon and Egypt were. The same person who thinks it's a Sin to celebrate Jesus birthday on the wrong day if there happens to be a Pagan holiday there (his date for Jesus birth is equally linkable to the Autumn Equinox), is okay with defining the world's shape based on Pagan cosmologies??? Someone has their paganism rejecting priories mixed up. I'm sure the casual Hebrews did think in terms of that cosmology, but they also often worshiped those false gods.
Those same ancient flat earth models do also have the Sun literally rising and setting. The Koran alleges to record a man traveling to where the Sun sets. The New Testament was written by and to people educated in Greek. They all knew the world was round, it's circumference had been deduced in Alexandria. A minority even deduced that The Earth revolved around The Sun, lie Aristarchus. I don't like the Evolution and Old Earth stuff in Cosmos but overall I recommend Carl Sagon's Cosmos (not the remake), especially the Alexandria portions. The burning of the Library and Hypatia he gets wrong of course but the rest is good.
Now I want to address what he says about the Firmament. He does point out a valid flaw in the traditional Canopy theory. But the fact remains, the Water that was placed above isn't above anymore, that Water came down in the Flood. Genesis 7:11 makes that clear, there was no rain in the Pre-Flood world. However that played out it can still fit a round earth cosmology.
God's Throne is not literally on top of a Dome. Ultimately God is outside Space and Time, to make him Finite like the JWs and their Masonic founder Charles Russel do merely makes him a Platonic Demiurge (which is not exactly the same thing as the Gnostic Demiurge, but similar).
It's been assumed the only reason for Christians to defend a Round Earth interpretation of The Bible is to defend it from skeptics. But looking at what Skiba and other are arguing for here I've now realized a theological reason. It unwittingly justifies Star Worship. They're basically saying Polaris is Yahweh.
He may have a sort of dwelling place within the Heavens. That is the same land mass that will eventually descend as New Jerusalem. And may be where Enoch and Elijah are now. And maybe that is in the Polaris system, or maybe not.
But if The Earth is Flat how come the southern hemisphere sees completely different stars and constellations and doesn't really have a Pole Star? This enclosed Dome cosmology was imagined by ancient who didn't even know about the southern hemisphere, they grossly underestimated the size of Africa and Asia. The Hebrew had every reason to be just as ignorant of the South and yet...
Psalm 107:3 refers to East, West, North and South. But the Hebrew word translated South there is Yam which is also the Hebrew word for the Sea. I can't help but feel like that alludes to how the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, most of the Land masses are north of the Equator.
Job's last few Chapters (what God says) has a lot of Scientific facts in it. But some of those facts alluded to like the Moon effecting the Tides don't work as well if you reject the round earth cosmology. It also alludes to the Northern Icecaps melting in the future. But they are defined as the North.
Also as a Six Day Young Earth Creationist I respond to people who question how Genesis 1 had days before the Sun and Moon were made by reminding them that a Day is the Earth's rotation on it's Axis. The Sun and Moon are only how we measure a day. Not to mention the fact that the Earth's rotation is slowing is evidence against millions of years.
I want to end by talking about The Bottomless Pit. This often isn't cited as Biblical evidence for a Round Earth. But it is something that can only be taken literally with a Round Earth view. It fits perfectly that there could be a pit at the center of The Earth's gravitational pull with fallen angels and demons chained to it's ceiling(s) and dangling from it.
The Pit is only defined as Bottomless in the New Testament. In English the word Bottomless (Abyss) is only used in Revelation in the KJV. But the same Greek word is used in Romans 10:7 where we are told Jesus went there during the time he was in the heart of the Earth. In fact describing Sheol/Hades as the Heart of the Earth itself makes more sense with a Round Earth model then a flat one.
But the Pit is in the Old Testament, I've referred to it studying Isaiah 14. The New Testament clarifies a lot of what wasn't clear before. Especially Revelation. Tarteros is a synonym for it, Jude also refers to chained fallen angels.
When Jesus said every eye will see him at his return, that does not need to make scientific sense to me. Because it's the Creator of Space and Time reentering it in a way different he has before. Reason why using that to argue a Flat Earth is silly to me is because number 1 distance still makes it seem implausible. Number 2 when he says every eye I do not think people standing in a room with no windows are an exception, I don't think prisoner locked in underground dungeons are an exception, I don't think people looking the opposite direction are an exception, I also don't think the Blind are an exception. I don't think he'll actually be in one place at one time strictly speaking, he'll be gathering his people.
And the Satan and the High Mountain thing I always found silly when skeptics mentioned it. But my personal theory has always been he took him to a mountain on the moon. Plenty of the Earth still didn't have kingdoms in 29 AD. So a moment where all Kingdoms are visible from outer-space isn't implausible.
The Bible also refers to God stretching out the Heavens. That fits what modern science knows of the Universe expanding perfectly. But not a solid unmovable dome.
As far as this talk about the miracles done for Joshua and Hezekiah. Saying if the Earth stopped spinning or spun backwards it's have caused all kinds of problems that'd have effectively killed everyone on the planet. 1. If God is doing it supernaturally I trust he can account for all that.
2. I don't know what happened, what mattered is that Hezekiah saw a sign and Joshua was assisted. It could be God just did something not unlike whatever those demonic forces behind the Fatima apparitions did that made it look like the Sun was behaving weirdly. No one outside Fatima saw those things which why we know nothing weird happened with the real Sun. Likewise no one else seems to have recorded what happened in Joshua and Hezekiah's day. And Hezekiah was a contemporary with the danw of the Classical period in Greece.
I might as well also talk a but about Geo-Centrism. There other Creationists have addressed actual Geneticists and not just the accusation from Bible Skeptics.
To my understanding of God's character the last thing he would do is put Man in the center of The Universe. He explicitly wants to keep Man's ego in check. And he wants us to believe in him based on Faith, which is why I don't think he explicitly confirmed the true Cosmology long before Science discovered it.
I will say this, to show that I am not at all divorced from a fringe viewpoint. I could be open to the idea that the Cosmology of The Universe has changed since it was first created.
Maybe we were at the center and/or flat until The Fall or The Flood, or even the days of Joshua and Hezekiah could mark shifts in the cosmology. The strongest verses in the case Skiba built were all of the Creation or referencing back to it. And maybe things will change back in the New Creation in Revelation 21.
It changes several times in Tolkien's fictional history of Arda but that of course isn't compatible with a Biblical Young Earth timeline (it ultimately fails to even match a good Gap theory timeline, though the original premise when it only had the First Age could have fit the Gap theory perfectly). But Tolkien in an odd introduces some interesting ideas. I find it really amusing how he's a Catholic yet dealt with Faith in his writing in a way that did not seem very favorable to organised religion.
But at the end of the day I don't feel even that will ever be certain till we are with Jesus.
Update July 2 2015: So Rob has a new video and a webstie.
First he has developed this notion that it's inherently hypocritical to stand by Young Earth Creationism but not take these Flat Earth implying verses literally. Maybe he should realize it's a problem to be unseeing the exact same logic the enemies of The Bible are using.
The difference is the Age of the Earth of the Earth comes up in two verses that are part of how Paul defined The Gospel itself. Two verses I've cited strongly when refuting the Gap Theory.
And then secondary to that in 2 Peter 3 which foretells the Evolutionary uniformity theory. When talking about lies that would exist to make people doubt the Promise of Jesus coming however Peter said nothing about them ignorantly believing the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun, even though the precedents for those existed in his day with far more popularly then the idea of denying The Flood which was then still in every Pagan mythology including even Plato's cosmology.
There is a detail to 2 Peter 3 that I'm sure Rob would read as relevant to his dome theory. But that is not the point of what Peter is saying, the point is what is being denied about the past, not about the shape of the present.
Again, I can equally say it's hypocritical of these modern Flat Earthers to try and use The Bible to support their theory, but not place the Earth's geographical center would that same logic of Biblical interpretation would place it, Jerusalem.
And he appeals to Michael Heisser, a man's approach to interpreting The Torah has angered me for awhile now, I don't care how many degrees he has. He like the Atheists has an agenda to deny a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I take The Bible literally, that does not mean I have to pretend it never used poetically descriptive language like lots of people believing in a Round Earth do today.
He talks about the history of how the Globe/Heliocentric model developed, and is fairly selective about it. Aritsolte and Ptolemy get mentioned as supporters of Geocentrism but did not seem to acknowledge they absolutely supported a Round Earth. Nor does he mention Aristarchus, or certain of the Epicurians who were the earliest Heliocentric advocates. And were neither attacking The Bible nor loyal to any Sun worshiping religion.
Nor does he address how every early Church Father who wrote on the subject at all clearly believed in a Round Earth. Augustine there were probably continents on the other side but didn't think they would be inhabited. I consider none of them authoritative, but Rob Skiba loves to cite them in support of his Nephilim theories or Nimrod vilification, or saying Christians are still under the Law. But he will ignore them here, as well as the Birth of Jesus, because yes even the Pre-Constantine fathers clearly believed in a December or January birth for Jesus, not September. They did often place when Gabriel appeared to Zacharias around Yom Kippur. And also claimed the then still existed Roman Census records clearly placed Jesus Birth on December 25th.
I fortunately don't have this problem, I consider The Bible alone the Authority and have been rejecting the Church Fathers for awhile.
He talks about the very Ancient Pre Classical Monolith building Civilization being in his view more advanced then the Greek and Romans among whom he sees the Round Earth Model as being born, to try and discredit the idea of believing in a Flat Earth being primitive.
First of all as a fellow Conspiracy Theorist I"m not sure the elites in charge of building those structures actually believed the same cosmology they taught to their peasants. People are argued the circumference of the Earth is implied in how the Great Pyramid was designed. Maybe it is, but I do not subscribe any longer to the idea of the Giza Pyramid being build by YHWH worshipers.
Oh, speaking of the Circumference of the Earth, here is a website that argues it can be deduced from Ezekiel 40-48 and Revelation 21-22.
On just the subject of Geocentrism v Heliocentrism, I could mention there is a view out there that the Universe does look exactly how mainstream science says, yet the Earth is still the Center, it's just a matter of perception. The Sun and Moon revolve around The Earth and everything else in the Solar System revolves around The Sun.
This is a work in progress by the way, I'm constantly adding to it.
His doubt about the Earth's shape has a lot to do with the ability to apparently sometimes see what you would think should be below the horizon. That doesn't surprise me at all I've been familiar with that fact for awhile, I don't remember exactly how to explain it but I know it does make sense. I think it might have been covered in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
He talks about not trusting NASA. Look, I'm a conspiracy theorist too, but we've put a lot of people in space and not one has yet repented and admitted to being part of some massive conspiracy to lie about the shape of The Earth and the Universe. A lot of things far easier to cover up have leaked.
But mostly I'm not worried about all that. I'm worried about his insistence that if you take The Bible at face value it clearly teaches a Flat Earth.
https://youtu.be/aJGOQEyeHbE
First I do not agree with the law of first mention. The law of needing more then one witness has actual verses it's based on. The law of first mention does not, it's a game lots of people like to play to help limit what a Biblical term can mean, but it's not supported by Scripture. It's related to the lexical fallacy.
Most stuff written by Christians to argue that The Bible teaches a round Earth is in response to Bible Skeptics, rather then trying to engage in an exegetical debate with Flat Earth supporters. And Rob mocks those arguments. What he didn't quite understand is the citing of Luke's Olivite Discourse isn't about refuting the modern Flat Earth model but about skeptics saying The Bible agrees with ancient Flat Earth models where having night and day at the same time wasn't possible.
The Bible doesn't clearly unambiguously teach The Earth's shape one way or the other. It doesn't seem to be something The Holy Spirit felt we needed to know. So yes I think it's a fallacy to teach The Bible can only be teaching a Round Earth. But no Bible passages exist primary for the purpose of telling as The Earth's shape.
You can't build doctrine on most of Ecclesiastes or what Job's friends said. Solomon was in that book describing how things seem to be to untrained unbelieving mortal eyes of his time with the intend of in the end saying that's wrong, but yet what he says gets misused by people to build bad doctrines like that there is no After Life. And Job's Friends were simply idiots.
Pointing to Psalm 22 as a Prophecy of Jesus does not contradict that the Psalms (and many passages outside The Psalms are Poetic too, especially in Isaiah) use Poetic figures of Speech that should not be taken literally. Including in Psalm 22 we have the Bulls of Bashan. Does Rob Skiba think God literally has wings and feathers?
The Bible uses a lot of the same terminology that everyone who believes The Earth is Rounds use all the time. Not just the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, but also the talk f the Ends of The Earth. Alexander The Great believed the world was round as a student of Aristotle, yet he still talked abut wanting to reach the ends of The Earth.
The Hebrew word for Earth is Erets, and it also means Land. Sometimes it's used specifically of the The Holy Land but those contexts are very obvious. Similar with the Greek word Ge. Sometimes Earth is contrasted with Sea like with the two Beasts in Revelation 13. Both words clearly can the mean land masses/continents (Genesis 1:10 says so) and so do have ends even in a round Earth Cosmology.
What's Beneath the Earth's crust could also be considered foundations or pillars regardless of shape, especially with the Law of Gravity in mind. For all intents and purposes the center of The Earth is still beneath us and without everything between us and it we would fall into it. I can't but laugh actually at how the "pillars" in the traditional models of Hebrew cosmology look more like stalactites then things helping to hold the world up up.
Here is the thing, this modern Scientifically plausible (based on what we now know from Magellan's voyage and so on) Flat Earth model that Skiba promotes is not compatible with a literal face value assumption reading of those Scriptures either. The Sun and Moon are not actually rising and setting under it either, they are sort orbiting around the North Pole above the equator. I wonder how things like the phases of the Moon are supposed to make sense in that model.
All ancient flat earth models and geocentric models agreed with our modern one that Venus and Mercury are farther from the Earth then the Moon but closer then the Sun. That is apparent even to the most untrained observers.
But more important then that, The Bible when it does casually and poetically talk as if the world were a flat circle. It doesn't treat the North Pole as the center, the land of Magog is is treated as being as far North as you can go. It treats Israel, the Holy Land as the center. North is north of Israel and South is south of Israel. And so on.
If The Earth is a sphere and has no real geographical center, at least on the surface. Treating where Africa and Eurasia meet as the center makes perfect sense. But not a flat circle where the North Pole is the center.
Let's talk about the Four Corner references since those often seem the most compelling to people. Revelation 7 directly links the four Corners to the Four Winds of Heaven. Daniel 11 tells as that Alexander's empire was divided to the Four Winds of Heaven. This is a good excuse to promote my recent Daniel 7 study.
When Revelation 20:8 in the KJV describes nations in the Gog and Magog war coming from the Four Quarters of the Earth. The Greek word for quarter is the exact same one rendered corners in Revelation 7. Matthew 6:7 uses the same word also. As well as when Jesus is described as the Stone at the Head of the Corner. The word's Strong number is 1137.
Now I believe firmly against what's popular today that Ezekiel 38-39 are the same Gog and Magog invasion. There it is clarified that the corners are Magog and and other Japhetic nations for the North. Persia for the East, Cush/Ethopia for the South (specifically used of Nubia a lot but can be all of sub Saharan Africa). And Phut/Libya for the West (not actually modern Libya but rather North Western Africa, from where Carthage was to the Straights of Gibraltar).
The point is even if a Flat Earth cosmology is assumed the corners are not corners outside of some Dome containing the entire world, but the edges of the land masses.
He appeals to extra-Biblical sources like Enoch. Again the Jewish Fables Paul warned us to pay no need to in Titus. I have proven elsewhere that the so called Jasher can't be a book Joshua quoted.
Then he appeals to what the Pagan cosmologies of Babylon and Egypt were. The same person who thinks it's a Sin to celebrate Jesus birthday on the wrong day if there happens to be a Pagan holiday there (his date for Jesus birth is equally linkable to the Autumn Equinox), is okay with defining the world's shape based on Pagan cosmologies??? Someone has their paganism rejecting priories mixed up. I'm sure the casual Hebrews did think in terms of that cosmology, but they also often worshiped those false gods.
Those same ancient flat earth models do also have the Sun literally rising and setting. The Koran alleges to record a man traveling to where the Sun sets. The New Testament was written by and to people educated in Greek. They all knew the world was round, it's circumference had been deduced in Alexandria. A minority even deduced that The Earth revolved around The Sun, lie Aristarchus. I don't like the Evolution and Old Earth stuff in Cosmos but overall I recommend Carl Sagon's Cosmos (not the remake), especially the Alexandria portions. The burning of the Library and Hypatia he gets wrong of course but the rest is good.
Now I want to address what he says about the Firmament. He does point out a valid flaw in the traditional Canopy theory. But the fact remains, the Water that was placed above isn't above anymore, that Water came down in the Flood. Genesis 7:11 makes that clear, there was no rain in the Pre-Flood world. However that played out it can still fit a round earth cosmology.
God's Throne is not literally on top of a Dome. Ultimately God is outside Space and Time, to make him Finite like the JWs and their Masonic founder Charles Russel do merely makes him a Platonic Demiurge (which is not exactly the same thing as the Gnostic Demiurge, but similar).
It's been assumed the only reason for Christians to defend a Round Earth interpretation of The Bible is to defend it from skeptics. But looking at what Skiba and other are arguing for here I've now realized a theological reason. It unwittingly justifies Star Worship. They're basically saying Polaris is Yahweh.
He may have a sort of dwelling place within the Heavens. That is the same land mass that will eventually descend as New Jerusalem. And may be where Enoch and Elijah are now. And maybe that is in the Polaris system, or maybe not.
But if The Earth is Flat how come the southern hemisphere sees completely different stars and constellations and doesn't really have a Pole Star? This enclosed Dome cosmology was imagined by ancient who didn't even know about the southern hemisphere, they grossly underestimated the size of Africa and Asia. The Hebrew had every reason to be just as ignorant of the South and yet...
Psalm 107:3 refers to East, West, North and South. But the Hebrew word translated South there is Yam which is also the Hebrew word for the Sea. I can't help but feel like that alludes to how the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, most of the Land masses are north of the Equator.
Job's last few Chapters (what God says) has a lot of Scientific facts in it. But some of those facts alluded to like the Moon effecting the Tides don't work as well if you reject the round earth cosmology. It also alludes to the Northern Icecaps melting in the future. But they are defined as the North.
Also as a Six Day Young Earth Creationist I respond to people who question how Genesis 1 had days before the Sun and Moon were made by reminding them that a Day is the Earth's rotation on it's Axis. The Sun and Moon are only how we measure a day. Not to mention the fact that the Earth's rotation is slowing is evidence against millions of years.
I want to end by talking about The Bottomless Pit. This often isn't cited as Biblical evidence for a Round Earth. But it is something that can only be taken literally with a Round Earth view. It fits perfectly that there could be a pit at the center of The Earth's gravitational pull with fallen angels and demons chained to it's ceiling(s) and dangling from it.
The Pit is only defined as Bottomless in the New Testament. In English the word Bottomless (Abyss) is only used in Revelation in the KJV. But the same Greek word is used in Romans 10:7 where we are told Jesus went there during the time he was in the heart of the Earth. In fact describing Sheol/Hades as the Heart of the Earth itself makes more sense with a Round Earth model then a flat one.
But the Pit is in the Old Testament, I've referred to it studying Isaiah 14. The New Testament clarifies a lot of what wasn't clear before. Especially Revelation. Tarteros is a synonym for it, Jude also refers to chained fallen angels.
When Jesus said every eye will see him at his return, that does not need to make scientific sense to me. Because it's the Creator of Space and Time reentering it in a way different he has before. Reason why using that to argue a Flat Earth is silly to me is because number 1 distance still makes it seem implausible. Number 2 when he says every eye I do not think people standing in a room with no windows are an exception, I don't think prisoner locked in underground dungeons are an exception, I don't think people looking the opposite direction are an exception, I also don't think the Blind are an exception. I don't think he'll actually be in one place at one time strictly speaking, he'll be gathering his people.
And the Satan and the High Mountain thing I always found silly when skeptics mentioned it. But my personal theory has always been he took him to a mountain on the moon. Plenty of the Earth still didn't have kingdoms in 29 AD. So a moment where all Kingdoms are visible from outer-space isn't implausible.
The Bible also refers to God stretching out the Heavens. That fits what modern science knows of the Universe expanding perfectly. But not a solid unmovable dome.
As far as this talk about the miracles done for Joshua and Hezekiah. Saying if the Earth stopped spinning or spun backwards it's have caused all kinds of problems that'd have effectively killed everyone on the planet. 1. If God is doing it supernaturally I trust he can account for all that.
2. I don't know what happened, what mattered is that Hezekiah saw a sign and Joshua was assisted. It could be God just did something not unlike whatever those demonic forces behind the Fatima apparitions did that made it look like the Sun was behaving weirdly. No one outside Fatima saw those things which why we know nothing weird happened with the real Sun. Likewise no one else seems to have recorded what happened in Joshua and Hezekiah's day. And Hezekiah was a contemporary with the danw of the Classical period in Greece.
I might as well also talk a but about Geo-Centrism. There other Creationists have addressed actual Geneticists and not just the accusation from Bible Skeptics.
It is important to note that the same Hebrew word for ‘moved’ (môwt) in the same niphal stem is used in Psalm 16:8, ‘I shall not be moved’. Presumably even Bouw wouldn’t accuse God of poor communication if he didn’t believe that the Bible taught that the Psalmist was rooted to one spot! Rather, the passage teaches that he would not stray from the path that God had set for him. If that’s so, then it’s impossible to deny that ‘the world … cannot be moved’ could mean that Earth will not stray from the precise orbital and rotational pattern God has set for it.What's funny Is I've seen it argued The Bible is Geo-Centric just from references to the Sun moving that does't even talk about where. No one believes the Sun is the center of The Universe, it does move either way.
To my understanding of God's character the last thing he would do is put Man in the center of The Universe. He explicitly wants to keep Man's ego in check. And he wants us to believe in him based on Faith, which is why I don't think he explicitly confirmed the true Cosmology long before Science discovered it.
I will say this, to show that I am not at all divorced from a fringe viewpoint. I could be open to the idea that the Cosmology of The Universe has changed since it was first created.
Maybe we were at the center and/or flat until The Fall or The Flood, or even the days of Joshua and Hezekiah could mark shifts in the cosmology. The strongest verses in the case Skiba built were all of the Creation or referencing back to it. And maybe things will change back in the New Creation in Revelation 21.
It changes several times in Tolkien's fictional history of Arda but that of course isn't compatible with a Biblical Young Earth timeline (it ultimately fails to even match a good Gap theory timeline, though the original premise when it only had the First Age could have fit the Gap theory perfectly). But Tolkien in an odd introduces some interesting ideas. I find it really amusing how he's a Catholic yet dealt with Faith in his writing in a way that did not seem very favorable to organised religion.
But at the end of the day I don't feel even that will ever be certain till we are with Jesus.
Update July 2 2015: So Rob has a new video and a webstie.
First he has developed this notion that it's inherently hypocritical to stand by Young Earth Creationism but not take these Flat Earth implying verses literally. Maybe he should realize it's a problem to be unseeing the exact same logic the enemies of The Bible are using.
The difference is the Age of the Earth of the Earth comes up in two verses that are part of how Paul defined The Gospel itself. Two verses I've cited strongly when refuting the Gap Theory.
And then secondary to that in 2 Peter 3 which foretells the Evolutionary uniformity theory. When talking about lies that would exist to make people doubt the Promise of Jesus coming however Peter said nothing about them ignorantly believing the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun, even though the precedents for those existed in his day with far more popularly then the idea of denying The Flood which was then still in every Pagan mythology including even Plato's cosmology.
There is a detail to 2 Peter 3 that I'm sure Rob would read as relevant to his dome theory. But that is not the point of what Peter is saying, the point is what is being denied about the past, not about the shape of the present.
Again, I can equally say it's hypocritical of these modern Flat Earthers to try and use The Bible to support their theory, but not place the Earth's geographical center would that same logic of Biblical interpretation would place it, Jerusalem.
And he appeals to Michael Heisser, a man's approach to interpreting The Torah has angered me for awhile now, I don't care how many degrees he has. He like the Atheists has an agenda to deny a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I take The Bible literally, that does not mean I have to pretend it never used poetically descriptive language like lots of people believing in a Round Earth do today.
He talks about the history of how the Globe/Heliocentric model developed, and is fairly selective about it. Aritsolte and Ptolemy get mentioned as supporters of Geocentrism but did not seem to acknowledge they absolutely supported a Round Earth. Nor does he mention Aristarchus, or certain of the Epicurians who were the earliest Heliocentric advocates. And were neither attacking The Bible nor loyal to any Sun worshiping religion.
Nor does he address how every early Church Father who wrote on the subject at all clearly believed in a Round Earth. Augustine there were probably continents on the other side but didn't think they would be inhabited. I consider none of them authoritative, but Rob Skiba loves to cite them in support of his Nephilim theories or Nimrod vilification, or saying Christians are still under the Law. But he will ignore them here, as well as the Birth of Jesus, because yes even the Pre-Constantine fathers clearly believed in a December or January birth for Jesus, not September. They did often place when Gabriel appeared to Zacharias around Yom Kippur. And also claimed the then still existed Roman Census records clearly placed Jesus Birth on December 25th.
I fortunately don't have this problem, I consider The Bible alone the Authority and have been rejecting the Church Fathers for awhile.
He talks about the very Ancient Pre Classical Monolith building Civilization being in his view more advanced then the Greek and Romans among whom he sees the Round Earth Model as being born, to try and discredit the idea of believing in a Flat Earth being primitive.
First of all as a fellow Conspiracy Theorist I"m not sure the elites in charge of building those structures actually believed the same cosmology they taught to their peasants. People are argued the circumference of the Earth is implied in how the Great Pyramid was designed. Maybe it is, but I do not subscribe any longer to the idea of the Giza Pyramid being build by YHWH worshipers.
Oh, speaking of the Circumference of the Earth, here is a website that argues it can be deduced from Ezekiel 40-48 and Revelation 21-22.
On just the subject of Geocentrism v Heliocentrism, I could mention there is a view out there that the Universe does look exactly how mainstream science says, yet the Earth is still the Center, it's just a matter of perception. The Sun and Moon revolve around The Earth and everything else in the Solar System revolves around The Sun.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Isaiah 40:22 "the circle of the earth", Round Earth or Flat
This verse is often brought up discussing whether The Bible implies a Flat Earth or Round Earth model.
But the Bible critics are equally absolutist, insisting the verse can only mean a Flat Circle, and would have used "Sphere" if what we now know the actual shape of the Earth to be was what this Author (who I view as Isaiah, but to skeptics it's "Second Isaiah") intended to describe.
That of course ignores that we are dealing with a translation of an ancient language that didn't have as technically precise a vocabulary as modern English.
The word "Sphere" is never used by KJV translators for any Hebrew word. The argument can be made that a Sphere is basically a type of circle.
I've seen people argue Isaiah would have used the word translated elsewhere as ball. Ball is not a synonym for Sphere, all balls are spheres but not all spheres are balls. I would not describe the shape of The Earth or the Moon or any other astronomical body as being a ball. You could say they are shaped like a ball but you could not actually describe them as balls. The earlier Isaiah reference to a ball says it is tossed, that tells me it means something you can toss like a ball you play games with.
You can carve into a Sphere shaped object by the way. And you could carve something else into a Sphere shaped object.
The word translated "circle" in this verse is used in total only 3 times. Isaiah 40 is the only case where it is translated "circle". Job 22:14
The grand point to me is, it doesn't mater what the Human Author thought he was describing. The Holy Spirit made sure it was not worded in a way that was incompatible with Scientific Fact.
"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:"Here is the thing, I'll agree that the way some Christians cite this verse as completely proving a Round Earth and ignoring the possibility of a Flat Circle is wrong.
But the Bible critics are equally absolutist, insisting the verse can only mean a Flat Circle, and would have used "Sphere" if what we now know the actual shape of the Earth to be was what this Author (who I view as Isaiah, but to skeptics it's "Second Isaiah") intended to describe.
That of course ignores that we are dealing with a translation of an ancient language that didn't have as technically precise a vocabulary as modern English.
The word "Sphere" is never used by KJV translators for any Hebrew word. The argument can be made that a Sphere is basically a type of circle.
I've seen people argue Isaiah would have used the word translated elsewhere as ball. Ball is not a synonym for Sphere, all balls are spheres but not all spheres are balls. I would not describe the shape of The Earth or the Moon or any other astronomical body as being a ball. You could say they are shaped like a ball but you could not actually describe them as balls. The earlier Isaiah reference to a ball says it is tossed, that tells me it means something you can toss like a ball you play games with.
You can carve into a Sphere shaped object by the way. And you could carve something else into a Sphere shaped object.
The word translated "circle" in this verse is used in total only 3 times. Isaiah 40 is the only case where it is translated "circle". Job 22:14
"Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven."And Proverbs 8:27
"When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:"Looking at these usages of the word, I've actually considered a 3rd option, maybe it doesn't mean either a flat circle or a sphere, maybe it's not describing the Earth's shape at all? Maybe it's referring to the Earth's Orbit (Circuit) around the Sun.
The grand point to me is, it doesn't mater what the Human Author thought he was describing. The Holy Spirit made sure it was not worded in a way that was incompatible with Scientific Fact.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
More on The Southern Conjecture
I want to clarify that my support for the Southern Conjecture view is independent of how it may or may not tie into Eschatology. I'm not even confident anymore the Third Temple will be built on the same place (Revelation 11 is the only reason I'm certain it's in Jerusalem and not somewhere else like Shiloh, Shechem or Bethel where Ezekiel's Temple will be). If it is built on a High Place like where the Dome of The Rock now is that'll just be further proof The Temple the Man of Sin will violate was never truly of God.
My views on End Times Prophecy have shifted since I made the first Southern Conjecture related post on this blog. For one that was originally devised when I was much more convinced then I have been recently of the Mahdi=Antichrist view. But even more recently I've perhaps become less hostile to it as my fondness for Chris White's view has waned.
But more importantly I brought Daniel 11:36-45 into it a great deal. I now no longer view that as End Times.
I do state during that Daniel 11 study that I think the Appeden refers to the Antonia Fortress. Which I view as having been where the Dome of The Rock is now. Reasons for that are argued for by other Southern Conjecture supporters here. The Antonia fortress was the seat of Roman Government within Jerusalem.
Josephus Antiquities of The Jews Book 12 Chapter 5 clearly describes there being a hill overlooking The Temple, and on that hill Antiochus Epiphanies built a fortification.
Between the Antonia Fortress and the Dome of The Rock it was Hadrian's Temple Complex. Looking at the pictures of how they line up, I'm not an expert on Roman Temples but it looks like the Jupiter Temple proper was where the Al Aqsa Mosque is, I'm not sure what that circular area over the Rock would be. If anyone would like to explain it to me feel free to leave a comment.
I don't know what was there if anything before the Antonia Fortress. I must correct my past statements about wherever Solomon placed his Idols to Chemosh and Moloch. Apparently that was probably the Mount of Olives.
I also want to reiterate my view that the Giihon Spring site being advocated now by Bob Conruke was where the Tabernacle of David stood. The site of Solomon's Temple David didn't buy till after the Census and the Plague and Absolam's death. The Ark remained in the Tabernacle of David all through the construction of Solomon's Temple.
My views on End Times Prophecy have shifted since I made the first Southern Conjecture related post on this blog. For one that was originally devised when I was much more convinced then I have been recently of the Mahdi=Antichrist view. But even more recently I've perhaps become less hostile to it as my fondness for Chris White's view has waned.
But more importantly I brought Daniel 11:36-45 into it a great deal. I now no longer view that as End Times.
I do state during that Daniel 11 study that I think the Appeden refers to the Antonia Fortress. Which I view as having been where the Dome of The Rock is now. Reasons for that are argued for by other Southern Conjecture supporters here. The Antonia fortress was the seat of Roman Government within Jerusalem.
Josephus Antiquities of The Jews Book 12 Chapter 5 clearly describes there being a hill overlooking The Temple, and on that hill Antiochus Epiphanies built a fortification.
Between the Antonia Fortress and the Dome of The Rock it was Hadrian's Temple Complex. Looking at the pictures of how they line up, I'm not an expert on Roman Temples but it looks like the Jupiter Temple proper was where the Al Aqsa Mosque is, I'm not sure what that circular area over the Rock would be. If anyone would like to explain it to me feel free to leave a comment.
I don't know what was there if anything before the Antonia Fortress. I must correct my past statements about wherever Solomon placed his Idols to Chemosh and Moloch. Apparently that was probably the Mount of Olives.
I also want to reiterate my view that the Giihon Spring site being advocated now by Bob Conruke was where the Tabernacle of David stood. The site of Solomon's Temple David didn't buy till after the Census and the Plague and Absolam's death. The Ark remained in the Tabernacle of David all through the construction of Solomon's Temple.
Will The Antichrist be accepted as a Jewish Messiah?
Christ White wrote a book False Christ where he argues that that The Antichrist certainly both will claim to be the Jewish Messiah and be accepted as such. I sort of halfway went along with that theory for awhile, and I still think there might some small truth to it. But it has some major problems.
The first thing he does, before delving into any Scripture, is attempt to demonstrate that it was the unanimous opinion of the Early Church Fathers. Like many Protestants he tries to deny he's calling on tradition or Church Authority here. But he clearly acts like this is a vitally important argument, how could they ALL have been wrong? Well they were also ALL post-trib (if Futurist at all), and rarely did one actually seem to teach Salvation by Faith Alone or Eternal Security.
The Early Fathers also, by the time any of these references he cites start popping up, were developing major Anti-Semitic tendencies, largely in response to Jewish Persecution of Christians during the Bar-Kochba Revolt. And were also already trying to reconcile Christianity with Rome. The Pre-Constantine Fathers were all Heretics as far as I'm concerned, Catholicism didn't just begin with Constantine. If anything I've seen evidence that things at first got a little better after Constantine, until Augustine happened.
Tertullian is among the Church Fathers he cites, and Tertullian actually rejected Paul as an Apostle in Against Marcion. At any-rate White misrepresents Hippolytus of Rome who believed The Antichrist would come from The Church.
Regardless of what the Antichrist may or may not claim to be. The argument that The Jews will actually accept him as their Messiah is built primarily on one verse.
John 5:43 “I come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another come shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”
Here is the funny thing. Chris White's refutation of both the Psalm 83 War and how Micah is used to support an Assyrian Antichrist is based on pointing out that those prophecies have a hypothetical context to them. This verse however is far more blatantly hypothetical, the word "if" is right at the beginning of the second part of it.
In the past I've been inclined to apply this to Bar-Kokhba. Now I've decided that using Scripture to interpret Scripture it is really quite obvious this is about Barabbas. John's Gospel is the least eschatology minded of The Gospels, it's all about Jesus being The Passover Lamb in 30 AD. And Barabbas could be viewed as the Azazel goat.
Christ White's particular elaboration has a lot to do with his Jerusalem as Mystery Babylon view, which I refute firmly here. However I've recently pointed out additional overlooked fatal flaws to seeing Babylon as anything other then a Mesopotamian City here and here.
The other specific verses White likes to cite on the subject are mostly from Daniel 11:36-45. Which I have shown recently is probably not about The Antichrist at all. Even if it were, I agree with White about what "God of his Fathers" and "Desire of Women" mean. The problem is this person is NOT regarding those two things.
You can say "he's a FALSE Messiah so he's not truly regarding them". But no it doesn't work that way. The Hebrew Bible always distinguishes between worshiping other gods and worshiping Yahweh in a wrong way. Often that difference doesn't matter to God, especially in terms of giving the name Yahweh to an Idol, but it's a distinction that's made. Which is why we know the Northern Kingdom did worship Yahweh, they just did so Idolatrously, and Edom was probably the same.
It's the same with II Thessalonians 2. The Man of Sin deifies himself, but is also opposing the True God, not merely co-opting his worship. Now I do think what he says at that moment won't necessarily match his earlier claimed beliefs.
White argues that since we Christians know The Messiah is also God that the Antichrist will make that argument from The Old Testament. That again ignores that this deification of himself also involves opposition to the Biblical God.
He also brings up "die the death of the Uncircumcised" from Ezekiel 28 as saying he is circumcised. I feel that is a pretty hard thing to back up. The immediate context of Ezekiel was clearly the then contemporary ruler of Tyre who was a Gentile.
He insists The False Prophet must be claiming to be Elijah since he's calling Fire down from Heaven. Problem is Elijah is expected to come first.
I think the idea of The Antichrist claiming to be or being claimed to be the rabbinic Messiah Ben-Joseph is plausible in light of how that concept is for a number of reasons considered to possibly be fulfilled by a Gentile leader in how many look at it.
Ultimately however The Beast is overwhelmingly presented as an enemy of Israel. But maybe he won't show his true colors at first.
My problem with White's view is he thinks this claiming to be The Messiah deception is still going on before and during The Abomination of Desolation and for awhile after. That somehow Orthodox Jews will become Okay with making an Idol of The Messiah.
When the Abomination of Desolation happens, Israel (the Woman of Revelation 12), flees to the Wilderness where she will be protected. Jesus when he returns, returns to defend Jerusalem.
At the Abomination of Desolation his system becomes open Satanism, whatever he taught before no longer matters.
What does "Antichrist" mean?
antichristos, Greek 500, Strong’s
antichristos, an-tee'-khris-tos; from Greek 473 (anti) and Greek 5547 (Christos); an opponent of the Messiah :- antichrist.
It means being an adversary of The Messiah, not a False Messiah, or alternate Messiah. John defined Anitchrists not as people who claim to be Jesus or Christ, but as denying Jesus was God, the main heretics doing this in John's time fully believed Jesus and not anyone else was The Christ, like the Ebonites.
Jesus warned of many False Messiahs, but nothing to solidly link any of those to The Abomination of Desolation.
Now I'm not even sure I consider it appropriate to affiliate the term "Antichrist" with the Eight King/The Beast. But there are people who want to cite it as meaning "False Messiah" or "opposing Messiah", so that is why I bring it up.
The first thing he does, before delving into any Scripture, is attempt to demonstrate that it was the unanimous opinion of the Early Church Fathers. Like many Protestants he tries to deny he's calling on tradition or Church Authority here. But he clearly acts like this is a vitally important argument, how could they ALL have been wrong? Well they were also ALL post-trib (if Futurist at all), and rarely did one actually seem to teach Salvation by Faith Alone or Eternal Security.
The Early Fathers also, by the time any of these references he cites start popping up, were developing major Anti-Semitic tendencies, largely in response to Jewish Persecution of Christians during the Bar-Kochba Revolt. And were also already trying to reconcile Christianity with Rome. The Pre-Constantine Fathers were all Heretics as far as I'm concerned, Catholicism didn't just begin with Constantine. If anything I've seen evidence that things at first got a little better after Constantine, until Augustine happened.
Tertullian is among the Church Fathers he cites, and Tertullian actually rejected Paul as an Apostle in Against Marcion. At any-rate White misrepresents Hippolytus of Rome who believed The Antichrist would come from The Church.
Regardless of what the Antichrist may or may not claim to be. The argument that The Jews will actually accept him as their Messiah is built primarily on one verse.
John 5:43 “I come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another come shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”
Here is the funny thing. Chris White's refutation of both the Psalm 83 War and how Micah is used to support an Assyrian Antichrist is based on pointing out that those prophecies have a hypothetical context to them. This verse however is far more blatantly hypothetical, the word "if" is right at the beginning of the second part of it.
In the past I've been inclined to apply this to Bar-Kokhba. Now I've decided that using Scripture to interpret Scripture it is really quite obvious this is about Barabbas. John's Gospel is the least eschatology minded of The Gospels, it's all about Jesus being The Passover Lamb in 30 AD. And Barabbas could be viewed as the Azazel goat.
Christ White's particular elaboration has a lot to do with his Jerusalem as Mystery Babylon view, which I refute firmly here. However I've recently pointed out additional overlooked fatal flaws to seeing Babylon as anything other then a Mesopotamian City here and here.
The other specific verses White likes to cite on the subject are mostly from Daniel 11:36-45. Which I have shown recently is probably not about The Antichrist at all. Even if it were, I agree with White about what "God of his Fathers" and "Desire of Women" mean. The problem is this person is NOT regarding those two things.
You can say "he's a FALSE Messiah so he's not truly regarding them". But no it doesn't work that way. The Hebrew Bible always distinguishes between worshiping other gods and worshiping Yahweh in a wrong way. Often that difference doesn't matter to God, especially in terms of giving the name Yahweh to an Idol, but it's a distinction that's made. Which is why we know the Northern Kingdom did worship Yahweh, they just did so Idolatrously, and Edom was probably the same.
It's the same with II Thessalonians 2. The Man of Sin deifies himself, but is also opposing the True God, not merely co-opting his worship. Now I do think what he says at that moment won't necessarily match his earlier claimed beliefs.
White argues that since we Christians know The Messiah is also God that the Antichrist will make that argument from The Old Testament. That again ignores that this deification of himself also involves opposition to the Biblical God.
He also brings up "die the death of the Uncircumcised" from Ezekiel 28 as saying he is circumcised. I feel that is a pretty hard thing to back up. The immediate context of Ezekiel was clearly the then contemporary ruler of Tyre who was a Gentile.
He insists The False Prophet must be claiming to be Elijah since he's calling Fire down from Heaven. Problem is Elijah is expected to come first.
I think the idea of The Antichrist claiming to be or being claimed to be the rabbinic Messiah Ben-Joseph is plausible in light of how that concept is for a number of reasons considered to possibly be fulfilled by a Gentile leader in how many look at it.
Ultimately however The Beast is overwhelmingly presented as an enemy of Israel. But maybe he won't show his true colors at first.
My problem with White's view is he thinks this claiming to be The Messiah deception is still going on before and during The Abomination of Desolation and for awhile after. That somehow Orthodox Jews will become Okay with making an Idol of The Messiah.
When the Abomination of Desolation happens, Israel (the Woman of Revelation 12), flees to the Wilderness where she will be protected. Jesus when he returns, returns to defend Jerusalem.
At the Abomination of Desolation his system becomes open Satanism, whatever he taught before no longer matters.
What does "Antichrist" mean?
antichristos, Greek 500, Strong’s
antichristos, an-tee'-khris-tos; from Greek 473 (anti) and Greek 5547 (Christos); an opponent of the Messiah :- antichrist.
It means being an adversary of The Messiah, not a False Messiah, or alternate Messiah. John defined Anitchrists not as people who claim to be Jesus or Christ, but as denying Jesus was God, the main heretics doing this in John's time fully believed Jesus and not anyone else was The Christ, like the Ebonites.
Jesus warned of many False Messiahs, but nothing to solidly link any of those to The Abomination of Desolation.
Now I'm not even sure I consider it appropriate to affiliate the term "Antichrist" with the Eight King/The Beast. But there are people who want to cite it as meaning "False Messiah" or "opposing Messiah", so that is why I bring it up.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
The Edomites worshiped Yahweh
Esau was not a bad guy overall, the negative legacy of Edom comes from his descendants. In-spite of his flaws he was a worshiper of Yahweh.
Deuteronomy 33:2 and Judges 5:4-8 seem to imply Seir was once a Holy Mountain of Yahweh as much as Sinai was.
The Bible mentions the names of the Idols/Abominations of the other people around the Israelites a lot. The Caananites (including the Sidonians/Phoenicians) worshiped Baal and Astarte, the Philistines worshiped Dagon, Moab had Chemosh and Ammon had Moloch/Milcom. None of these were the only gods of those pantheons (the pantheon as a whole overlapped), but they were the most popular and/or the patron deities.
But no such Patron deity of Edom is mentioned. Now I think the Edomites probably came to worship Yahweh in an idolatrous fashion. Not unlike the Northern Kingdom, which besides the brief Baal system under Jezebel was always Yahweh worshiping, it had Kings with Yahweh theophoric names like Jehu and Jehoram.
In I Kings 11 the Edomite wives are implied to be as complicit in leading Solomon into Idolatry as the rest, but their own Idol isn't named. I think the other wives promoted their alternate gods, and the Edomite ones played the role of coaxing him into thinking it need not conflict with being faithful to Yahweh.
Some may say the Hittite Idols weren't named either. The Hitites of The Bible were NOT the Hittites of Anatolia, I know many in Apologetics have come to love that identification, but it doesn't fit. Those Hittites were Indo-European, in my view probably descended from Chittim. Their land wasn't subject to David and Solomon as the Biblical Hittites were. The Biblical Hittites were another Caananite tribe and so probably worshiped the same Idols as the Zidonians. In fact the Hittites are sometimes mentioned in ways that imply thy're geographically closer to Jerusalem then Zidon. Actually reading Genesis 23 and 25 tell us the Hittites/Children of Heth lived in the area of Hebron.
Qos/Kaus is an Edomite god imagined by Scholars only from that name being part of the name of two Edomite Kings known from Assyrian inscriptions. They may have indeed worshiped a god by that name also as they became polytheistic in their Yahweh worship. But it's also possible that name was just a royal family name.
However since I agree with Bill Cooper in After The Flood Appendix 1 that the Idumeans were of Ishmael's son Dumah, not Edomites. And we know they are linked to Qos via names like Costobarus. And Quzzah is evidence of Qos being worshiped by other Arabs. I think maybe these Edomites of Assyrian inscriptions were also the nation of Dumah, who Isaiah 21 does link to Seir about this same time.
So how does this fit in with Edom becoming Rome?
The Edomites who came to Italy (I suspect they came in different waves) eventually intermingled with Indo-Europeans, and more or less adopted their language and religion over time.
But Roman religion as we tend to know it comes from their much later merging it with Greek mythology. The sacking of Rome by Gauls in the 390s BC destroyed a lot of their earliest records. But Plutarch says the second King Numa Pompilius
The Roman/Latin form of the Indo-European Dyeus Pater (who to the Greeks was Dios/Zeus) was Jupiter, originally Iopater/Iupater/Iupiter. The "Pater" part means father, it's one of the words Latin has in common with Greek. Ju/Jo/Io is the shortening of Jove or Iove. The actual word Dyeus in Latin became not the proper name of a deity but their word for god, Deus. Jove is also one of the Roman deities who's name wasn't derived from Etruscan, the Etruscan Zeus was named Tinia. Roman mythology also had an alternate storm god, Summanus, he did come from the Etruscan pantheon.
Yahweh is never rendered in Greek in New Testament manuscripts or the Septuagint or Josephus or Philo or any other Judaic Greek works for a number of reasons. The Rabbinic Jewish superstition of not pronouncing the name of God due to a flawed understanding of the fourth commandment was already developing. The New Testament goes along with it I believe only because Yeshua/Iesous/Jesus has superseded Yahweh as the personal name of God.
Rendering YHWH in Greek would be difficult due to only one of the letters even having a solid Greek equivalent. But one Greek text does seem to show us how it might have been rendered.
According to Eusebius, Philo of Byblos, a Hellenized Phoenician, claimed his probably made up source Sanchniathon used as a source a book by a Hierombal (possibly a Greek form of Jerubaal, a Hebrew name that appears in The Bible only as an alternate name for Gideon) who he calls a Priest of Ieou. Ieou makes sense to me as a Greek rendering of Yahweh due to it happening to be how Jesus is rendered in Greek only minus the Sigmas. Yeshua spelled in Hebrew without vowels has the same first and third letters as Yahweh.
In Latin manuscripts Ieou becomes Jevo. Jevo can become Jove simply by switching it's vowels around. So maybe it's possible Jove came from a corruption of the name Yahweh?
Now Edom-Rome once again worships the Biblical God but in an Idolatrous Fashion, via Catholicism. Vatican Hill is the new Mount Seir.
Update 1/23/2016: I've changed my mind on the proper pronunciation of YHWH, I now favor Yahuah.
Deuteronomy 33:2 and Judges 5:4-8 seem to imply Seir was once a Holy Mountain of Yahweh as much as Sinai was.
The Bible mentions the names of the Idols/Abominations of the other people around the Israelites a lot. The Caananites (including the Sidonians/Phoenicians) worshiped Baal and Astarte, the Philistines worshiped Dagon, Moab had Chemosh and Ammon had Moloch/Milcom. None of these were the only gods of those pantheons (the pantheon as a whole overlapped), but they were the most popular and/or the patron deities.
But no such Patron deity of Edom is mentioned. Now I think the Edomites probably came to worship Yahweh in an idolatrous fashion. Not unlike the Northern Kingdom, which besides the brief Baal system under Jezebel was always Yahweh worshiping, it had Kings with Yahweh theophoric names like Jehu and Jehoram.
In I Kings 11 the Edomite wives are implied to be as complicit in leading Solomon into Idolatry as the rest, but their own Idol isn't named. I think the other wives promoted their alternate gods, and the Edomite ones played the role of coaxing him into thinking it need not conflict with being faithful to Yahweh.
Some may say the Hittite Idols weren't named either. The Hitites of The Bible were NOT the Hittites of Anatolia, I know many in Apologetics have come to love that identification, but it doesn't fit. Those Hittites were Indo-European, in my view probably descended from Chittim. Their land wasn't subject to David and Solomon as the Biblical Hittites were. The Biblical Hittites were another Caananite tribe and so probably worshiped the same Idols as the Zidonians. In fact the Hittites are sometimes mentioned in ways that imply thy're geographically closer to Jerusalem then Zidon. Actually reading Genesis 23 and 25 tell us the Hittites/Children of Heth lived in the area of Hebron.
Qos/Kaus is an Edomite god imagined by Scholars only from that name being part of the name of two Edomite Kings known from Assyrian inscriptions. They may have indeed worshiped a god by that name also as they became polytheistic in their Yahweh worship. But it's also possible that name was just a royal family name.
However since I agree with Bill Cooper in After The Flood Appendix 1 that the Idumeans were of Ishmael's son Dumah, not Edomites. And we know they are linked to Qos via names like Costobarus. And Quzzah is evidence of Qos being worshiped by other Arabs. I think maybe these Edomites of Assyrian inscriptions were also the nation of Dumah, who Isaiah 21 does link to Seir about this same time.
So how does this fit in with Edom becoming Rome?
The Edomites who came to Italy (I suspect they came in different waves) eventually intermingled with Indo-Europeans, and more or less adopted their language and religion over time.
But Roman religion as we tend to know it comes from their much later merging it with Greek mythology. The sacking of Rome by Gauls in the 390s BC destroyed a lot of their earliest records. But Plutarch says the second King Numa Pompilius
"forbade the Romans to represent the deity in the form either of man or of beast. Nor was there among them formerly any image or statue of the Divine Being; during the first one hundred and seventy years they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed in them no figure of any kind; persuaded that it is impious to represent things Divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding".And that was kept up for 170 years. Numa was contemporary with Hezekiah, maybe he was inspired to try and bring Rome back to the true worship of the Patriarchs.
The Roman/Latin form of the Indo-European Dyeus Pater (who to the Greeks was Dios/Zeus) was Jupiter, originally Iopater/Iupater/Iupiter. The "Pater" part means father, it's one of the words Latin has in common with Greek. Ju/Jo/Io is the shortening of Jove or Iove. The actual word Dyeus in Latin became not the proper name of a deity but their word for god, Deus. Jove is also one of the Roman deities who's name wasn't derived from Etruscan, the Etruscan Zeus was named Tinia. Roman mythology also had an alternate storm god, Summanus, he did come from the Etruscan pantheon.
Yahweh is never rendered in Greek in New Testament manuscripts or the Septuagint or Josephus or Philo or any other Judaic Greek works for a number of reasons. The Rabbinic Jewish superstition of not pronouncing the name of God due to a flawed understanding of the fourth commandment was already developing. The New Testament goes along with it I believe only because Yeshua/Iesous/Jesus has superseded Yahweh as the personal name of God.
Rendering YHWH in Greek would be difficult due to only one of the letters even having a solid Greek equivalent. But one Greek text does seem to show us how it might have been rendered.
According to Eusebius, Philo of Byblos, a Hellenized Phoenician, claimed his probably made up source Sanchniathon used as a source a book by a Hierombal (possibly a Greek form of Jerubaal, a Hebrew name that appears in The Bible only as an alternate name for Gideon) who he calls a Priest of Ieou. Ieou makes sense to me as a Greek rendering of Yahweh due to it happening to be how Jesus is rendered in Greek only minus the Sigmas. Yeshua spelled in Hebrew without vowels has the same first and third letters as Yahweh.
In Latin manuscripts Ieou becomes Jevo. Jevo can become Jove simply by switching it's vowels around. So maybe it's possible Jove came from a corruption of the name Yahweh?
Now Edom-Rome once again worships the Biblical God but in an Idolatrous Fashion, via Catholicism. Vatican Hill is the new Mount Seir.
Update 1/23/2016: I've changed my mind on the proper pronunciation of YHWH, I now favor Yahuah.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Isaiah 14 has nothing to do with the Morning Star
Because in Greek mythology the Morning Star was the son of the Dawn goddess Eos (Aurora to the Romans) the Greek Septuagint translators of Isaiah 14:12 chose to render the personage identified as a "son of the Dawn" as Heosphorus, the Morning Star. Which became Lucifer in Latin versions like the Vulgate.
Repeatedly people will tell you that scholars believe Isaiah 14:12 and up references a Canaanite myth about the god of the Morning Star named Helel who was the son of Shachar god of the Dawn rebelling against El Elown. (Elown is the Hebrew title translated "Most High" or "The Highest".)
What they won't tell you is they have no actual text or inscription describing that myth with those names. It's all conjectured from their assumption that Isaiah 14 must be drawing on some kind of Canaanite myth.
Shahar is the Hebrew word for Dawn (morning in the KJV but that's unfortunate because it's not the standard word for morning, Dawn is more accurate) used in Isaiah 14:12. That word is also the name of a pagan Caananite (assumed to be male) god associated with the Dawn, his brother Shalim being Dusk. Shachar and Shalim were among the sons of El Elown.
There are NO texts outside Isaiah 14 that identify Shachar as having a son named Helel.
Attar (also rendered Ashtar, Ishtar, Astar, and Athtar) was a god affiliated with Venus the Morning star. But he is not associated with the name Helel nor is he ever refereed to as a son of Shachar. He was a male counterpart to Ashteroth/Astarte, who's name is similar and was also affiliated with Venus. We don't know for certain his position in the mythological genealogy but I'd suspect he was like a brother maybe even twin of Ashtroth, or her son. Astarte was a sister/wife of Hadad and daughter of El. Hadad would probably be the father of any children of hers.
So the morning star and the Dawn in Caananite mythology were siblings or maybe uncle/nephew but not father and son.
There is a Canaanite myth about Attar rebelling against Baal Hadad but NOT against El, Hadad himself was the rebel against El.
Isaiah 14:12 is the only verse to use the word Helel. But Helel is just the noun form of the verb Halal (Strongs number 1984). Which has a variety of meanings, shine, boast, celebrate, glory, praise, rage, mad, all words the KJV has rendered it as. The context of mentioning dawn implies shine works best, the YLT translates it Shining One.
A more accurate Greek rendering could be Phoibos/Phoebus which means bright or shining one which was an epithet of Apollo given to him after he became affiliated with the Sun (he originally was not). Or Phainon, a Greek name for the planet Saturn which Cicero says in On The Nature of the Gods meant "Shining".
However that Boasting is very much what this personage goes on to describe him doing suggests that "boastful one" would fit best. Interestingly Bromius, a name for Dionysus, means "noisy", "roaring", or "boisterous", from βρέμειν, to roar.
Helel may also be Yalal (Strong number 3213) with a definite article. Making it a title not a name. It means Howl or Howling, so as a title would mean Howling One or Howler. English Translations of the Peshita version of Isaiah 14:12 don't even interpret Helel as a noun but as a verb saying things like "Wail at Dawn" or "Howl in the morning". (Interestingly I've seen the name of the Shinto deity Susanoo interpreted as meaning Howler.)
The New Testament refers to Jesus as the Morning Star (Revelation 22:16) and the Day Star (2 Peter 1:19). The Day Star reference used a poetic name for Venus "Phosphorus" which cosmologically refers to the same star Heosphorus does, and has the same meaning Lucifer has in Latin. Phos=Lux=Light and Phorus=Ferus=Bearer/Bringer.
I've seen it described as though the Septuagint uses "Heosphorus" for the entire phrase "Helel ben Shahar". So the Heosphorus being a son of Eos in Greek mythology is probably the origin of this mistake, since other mythologies don't make the Dawn a parent of any stars. Interestingly the etymology of Heosphorus perhaps makes a better translation of the "Ben Shahar" part, meaning "Dawn-Bearer" or Born of Dawn.
I've been thinking however, what if Dawn isn't even an accurate translation of Shahar here? It definitely means Dawn in many places, but a Hebrew word spelled the same also means "Black" or "Dark". When Shulamith is described as being "black" like the tents of Kedar (Song of Solomon 1:5), Shachor is the word translated black. Perhaps this similarity makes a certain kind of sense, "the Night is darkest just before the Dawn". Maybe Satan is actually being called the "son of the Darkness".
So calling Satan the Morning Star fits his agenda quite well. The Latin Vulgate indeed uses Lucifer in both Isaiah 14 and the NT Morning Star references. Because of this there are some Latin Catholic hymns that call Jesus Lucifer which ignorant Protestants have had paranoid reactions to.
And maybe even identifying Satan as an offspring of the Dawn is dangerous. Because one could easily argue if they wanted to that the Woman of Revelation 12 is being described with Dawn Goddess imagery. Eos is frequently depicted in Greek art and poetry as wearing Saffron robes, Saffron is a shade of the color yellow that is commonly identified as being the Sun's shade of yellow. And since the Sun rises as the Moon is setting one could also say the Moon is under her feet.
Gnostics and certain other enemies of Christianity could make use of such arguments.
Repeatedly people will tell you that scholars believe Isaiah 14:12 and up references a Canaanite myth about the god of the Morning Star named Helel who was the son of Shachar god of the Dawn rebelling against El Elown. (Elown is the Hebrew title translated "Most High" or "The Highest".)
What they won't tell you is they have no actual text or inscription describing that myth with those names. It's all conjectured from their assumption that Isaiah 14 must be drawing on some kind of Canaanite myth.
Shahar is the Hebrew word for Dawn (morning in the KJV but that's unfortunate because it's not the standard word for morning, Dawn is more accurate) used in Isaiah 14:12. That word is also the name of a pagan Caananite (assumed to be male) god associated with the Dawn, his brother Shalim being Dusk. Shachar and Shalim were among the sons of El Elown.
There are NO texts outside Isaiah 14 that identify Shachar as having a son named Helel.
Attar (also rendered Ashtar, Ishtar, Astar, and Athtar) was a god affiliated with Venus the Morning star. But he is not associated with the name Helel nor is he ever refereed to as a son of Shachar. He was a male counterpart to Ashteroth/Astarte, who's name is similar and was also affiliated with Venus. We don't know for certain his position in the mythological genealogy but I'd suspect he was like a brother maybe even twin of Ashtroth, or her son. Astarte was a sister/wife of Hadad and daughter of El. Hadad would probably be the father of any children of hers.
So the morning star and the Dawn in Caananite mythology were siblings or maybe uncle/nephew but not father and son.
There is a Canaanite myth about Attar rebelling against Baal Hadad but NOT against El, Hadad himself was the rebel against El.
Isaiah 14:12 is the only verse to use the word Helel. But Helel is just the noun form of the verb Halal (Strongs number 1984). Which has a variety of meanings, shine, boast, celebrate, glory, praise, rage, mad, all words the KJV has rendered it as. The context of mentioning dawn implies shine works best, the YLT translates it Shining One.
A more accurate Greek rendering could be Phoibos/Phoebus which means bright or shining one which was an epithet of Apollo given to him after he became affiliated with the Sun (he originally was not). Or Phainon, a Greek name for the planet Saturn which Cicero says in On The Nature of the Gods meant "Shining".
However that Boasting is very much what this personage goes on to describe him doing suggests that "boastful one" would fit best. Interestingly Bromius, a name for Dionysus, means "noisy", "roaring", or "boisterous", from βρέμειν, to roar.
Helel may also be Yalal (Strong number 3213) with a definite article. Making it a title not a name. It means Howl or Howling, so as a title would mean Howling One or Howler. English Translations of the Peshita version of Isaiah 14:12 don't even interpret Helel as a noun but as a verb saying things like "Wail at Dawn" or "Howl in the morning". (Interestingly I've seen the name of the Shinto deity Susanoo interpreted as meaning Howler.)
The New Testament refers to Jesus as the Morning Star (Revelation 22:16) and the Day Star (2 Peter 1:19). The Day Star reference used a poetic name for Venus "Phosphorus" which cosmologically refers to the same star Heosphorus does, and has the same meaning Lucifer has in Latin. Phos=Lux=Light and Phorus=Ferus=Bearer/Bringer.
I've seen it described as though the Septuagint uses "Heosphorus" for the entire phrase "Helel ben Shahar". So the Heosphorus being a son of Eos in Greek mythology is probably the origin of this mistake, since other mythologies don't make the Dawn a parent of any stars. Interestingly the etymology of Heosphorus perhaps makes a better translation of the "Ben Shahar" part, meaning "Dawn-Bearer" or Born of Dawn.
I've been thinking however, what if Dawn isn't even an accurate translation of Shahar here? It definitely means Dawn in many places, but a Hebrew word spelled the same also means "Black" or "Dark". When Shulamith is described as being "black" like the tents of Kedar (Song of Solomon 1:5), Shachor is the word translated black. Perhaps this similarity makes a certain kind of sense, "the Night is darkest just before the Dawn". Maybe Satan is actually being called the "son of the Darkness".
So calling Satan the Morning Star fits his agenda quite well. The Latin Vulgate indeed uses Lucifer in both Isaiah 14 and the NT Morning Star references. Because of this there are some Latin Catholic hymns that call Jesus Lucifer which ignorant Protestants have had paranoid reactions to.
And maybe even identifying Satan as an offspring of the Dawn is dangerous. Because one could easily argue if they wanted to that the Woman of Revelation 12 is being described with Dawn Goddess imagery. Eos is frequently depicted in Greek art and poetry as wearing Saffron robes, Saffron is a shade of the color yellow that is commonly identified as being the Sun's shade of yellow. And since the Sun rises as the Moon is setting one could also say the Moon is under her feet.
Gnostics and certain other enemies of Christianity could make use of such arguments.
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