John also says some fairly interesting things, when it comes to life and death, and what believing in Christ means:
John 5:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 8:51
Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”
John 20:31
but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John 3:15
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
1 John 3:14
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.
What do you suppose all these could mean? Some of them are rather clear, are they not? Outside of Christ, we are currently dead. The life we have, is no life at all…a parody of animation. When we believe in Christ, THEN we truly have life. We have passed from death TO life.
Now…while that does not DEMAND that we interpret Rev 20 and the ‘first resurrection’ in this light, it certainly makes it not just biblically possible, but, in my view, suggests we take it quite seriously.
Why? If…before we even reach Revelation, we have the biblical authors speaking about a spiritual resurrection (life in Christ) AND then a bodily resurrection (at his return)…then why on earth, when we get to Revelation, do we need to find another sort of resurrection to fit into our model? The bible has already given us what we need, so in my mind, we ought to follow it.
I find this unconvincing, sorry. It’s not Daniel or John giving us visions they made up. It’s them writing down “what they saw”. In which case, it’s God who gave the vision. So…unless you believe God just couldn’t quite see 3000 years into the future, I don’t buy it.
Also….fussing about details like “It’s got to be the UN! Look, it’s an exact match!”….I think that is not, perhaps, what Revelation is about. How do you ‘exact match’ something that is given in symbolic visions? It’s fine if they visions have been interpreted very clearly for us, as they were in Daniel…ie: that will be the Kingdom of Greece….but we don’t tend to find that in Revelation. Instead, we are just warned to be on guard against systems and governments who are anti-God. Which are plenty. There will, quite possibly, be a final one which will prop up this Man of Sin, and I suspect once it arrives and does its thing, we’ll know about it, simply because of the severity of it. But until then? Trying to guess and “pin the tail” on certain aspects of the book…not what it was intended for.
Paul clearly speaks about the Man of Lawlessness. And that he will deceive the nations. One might conclude that he deceives the whole world simply to be famous, but if he truly is like most evil men, he’ll want power and to force his will on other men.
It’s not a stretch to link Paul’s “man of lawlessness” to Daniel’s little horn, or John’s Antichrist. Or Revelations first ‘beast’.
Whether you believe it to be a world power or a single man, there seems to be the idea that Christ will have SOMETHING he will need to kill with the breath of his mouth when he returns.
Okay. Let me ask you two questions here. First one: when Satan confronted God about Job, and demanded to torment him, what did God say?
He gave permission, right? Except…he put strict conditions on what Satan could and could not do. So…we know it’s entirely possible for God to limit how Satan works, and Satan has no choice but to obey him. But that does NOT mean Satan is completely helpless; he still made Job’s life woeful.
Second question: when Jesus said this: “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house.”(Matthew 12:28-29)
Do you think he was just being facetious?
Or do you think he was telling them something profound. Like the fact that the Kingdom of God had come in a very real way, and that it was going to ‘prevail against the gates of hell’ despite everything, because Christ had bound the strong man.
So many people, when they look at Rev 20 say “Satan’s not bound, because he can still do stuff!”
But Rev 20 only says that Satan is bound against deceiving the nation into gathering together against the Saints of the Most High. In other words…Satan is forbidden in making a concerted effort to wipe Christianity from the face of the planet. Which is why he hasn’t, even though he is the ‘Prince of this world’. I mean, think about it…if Satan really was the Prince of this world and it was his to command, all people and demons his to command, why is Christianity still the largest religion there is? Why aren’t we hunted everywhere like they are in North Korea or Iran? That’s what you’d expect, right? Unless….Satan has restrictions placed upon him, so that the whole, in its entirety, may not stand as one against us. The Church will prevail.
Are you speaking of all the times Jesus restored old life to dead people, or are you speaking resurrection…as in, new resurrection bodies, of the sort Paul talks of in 1 Cor 15?
Because nothing in scripture tells us that these other ‘coming to life’ events, where legit ‘resurrections’. In fact, I’d argue against it. The ‘coming out of the graves’ event in Matt 27…that happened before Jesus’ resurrection, right? Paul tells us in 1 Cor 15 that Jesus is the “first fruits” of new resurrections bodies. And that while he has his now, we shall received ours AT his return. So…no…no one gets their resurrection body until the end. Which means anyone else who showed up out of the grave or back from the dead before that, had a miraculous, life extending event happen. But it wasn’t a “real” resurrection. Scripture basically stamps that idea out.
Timtofly needs to realize that when the abomination of desolation reveals the son of perdition, it’s not a revelation that Satan exists - it’s that the false Messiah reveals that he’s the satanic antichrist, when he claims to be God, after entering the 3rd temple and stopping the sacrifice.
I have no doubt that during the general tribulation of the first 42 months, there’s continuing controversy about whether the AC is really the AC or not - just like the speculation for the first year or so of WW2 whether Hitler was the Antichrist- but when he dies from a head wound, rises from the dead possessed by Satan, then goes into the temple and declares himself God, it will remove all doubt.