Continue From Beware the Pseudo-Rapture Doctrine Part 2

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WalterandDebbie

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Sunday 12-18-22 1st. Day Of The Weekly Cycle, Kislev 23, 5783 86th. Fall Day

In the Middle Ages, however, God’s Church fled the confines of the Roman Empire because of its relentless, vicious persecution, beginning in the days of Nero and continuing through Hadrian, Domitian, and many others anti-Christian emperors (see Rev.12:6). They escaped to Spain, France (Gaul), and the region of modern-day Switzerland and Europe.


God is able to protect His people wherever they are, but when signs of trouble come, He warns them to flee out of danger and not just stay behind in a dangerous, threatened location. He wants His people to prepare and plan wisely. Solomon wrote, “A prudent man foresees evil, and hides himself, but the simple pass on, and are punished” (Prov.22:3, NKJV).

Isaiah tells us, “Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation is past” (Isaiah 26:20).


I believe when the time comes, God will reveal to His zealous, earnest, obedient people what they should do and where they should go. Those who remain behind will indeed be “left behind” – to suffer the wrath of the serpent, that old dragon, Satan the devil (Rev.12:14-17).


“Let Us Remove Hence!”​


In the days when the Roman armies under Titus surrounded Jerusalem and besieged it, there were a great number of false prophets who told the inhabitants of the city that they should wait upon God to deliver them. But other wise men, seeing the signs of the times, and the evidence of forthcoming desolation and destruction, encouraged the people to surrender to the Romans.


During those trying times, Josephus the Jewish historian relates, “there was a star, resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year” (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Bk.VI, v, 3).


During the festival of Pentecost, Josephus relates, “as the Priests were going by night into the inner temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us remove hence’” (ibid.).


These may well have been the voices of God’s people, taking the warning of Yeshua, and beginning their flight to a place of safety from the ensuing attack and destruction that followed. History records that they fled to the region of Qumran, and thence to Pella, a small community across the Jordan river.


In the days of the early New Testament Church, when the Roman armies under Titus and Vespasian attacked Judea, the Church fled to safety. Hurlbut, the Christian historian, relates: “In the fall of Jerusalem, few if any Christians perished. From the prophetic utterances of Christ the Christians received warning, escaped from the doomed city, and found refuge at Pella, in the Jordan valley” (Story of the Christian Church, p. 42-43).


F. F. Bruce in New Testament History, declares, “At some point between James’ death and the outbreak of the revolt in A.D. 66, Eusebius says, the church received an oracle, given by revelation to those in Jerusalem who were ‘approved’, bidding them leave the doomed city and settle in Pella, one of the cities of the Decapolis, east of Jordan.” Bruce says, “That some Christians did settle in Pella in due course is certain . . . But in view of the rioting between Jews and Gentiles which broke out in Pella, as in the other Gentile cities of that region, at the beginning of the war, it seems more likely that they sought refuge at first in the less-frequented parts of the Transjordan; indeed, the flight of the mother-church into the wilderness and her preservation there during the period of tribulation is reflected in the apocalyptic language of Revelation 12:14” (p.375-376).


Says Philip Schaff in History of the Christian Church, “The Christians of Jerusalem, remembering the Lord’s admonition, forsook the doomed city in good time and fled to the town of Pella in the Decapolis, beyond the Jordan, in the north of Peraea, where king Herod Agrippa II, before whom Paul once stood, opened to them a safe asylum. An old tradition says that a divine voice or angel revealed to their leaders the duty of flight” (vol.1, page 402).


“To the Mountains”


How does this history help us, in our day, to determine how God intends to protect His people?


The suggestion that God sent a “warning’ – an “oracle” – to the leaders of the Church is significant. Why wouldn’t He do the same, in our generation?


The Bible specifically says, “Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains” (Matt. 24:16). That is where the Jerusalem Church was protected. As prophecy is often DUAL in nature, then, the mountains of Judea or “Israel” will once again be a place of refuge for the people of God living in Israel and Jerusalem during these last days. This could refer to the Judean hills, the region of Qumran, or En-gedi, a place on the western side of the Dead Sea where David fled and hid from king Saul.


The principle which God may intend for us in this generation to derive from these Scriptures is that He will provide a place of protection for His people no matter where they live. When we see danger ahead, in our own region, we should flee to the mountains near us. It is possible that God may provide a number of places of safety or refuge for the Church during the Great Tribulation. God will reveal what we need to know in a timely manner, when we need to know it. His message of warning will no doubt be given to those whom He “approves” – those who are really doing His bidding, and serving Him, as the early church in Jerusalem was doing.

In these last days, when once again Jerusalem and Israel become the focal objective of the armies of the revived “Roman Empire” or New World Order, the saints of God will once again have to flee for their very lives to escape the holocaust to follow.


But whether or not we are “approved,” or “accounted worthy,” or not, depends solely upon us, as individuals.


Jesus Christ warned, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be ALERT at all times, PRAYING that you may have the strength to ESCAPE all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36, NRSV).

When the Great Tribulation is about to descend like a shroud upon all the earth, where will God’s true saints go? Although the Scriptures do not pinpoint an exact location, they do speak clearly on this subject.


We read in Revelation, “So when the dragon [Satan] saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman [the church of God] was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time. Then from the mouth of the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from its mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus” (Rev.12:13-17, NRSV).


The woman will be protected IN A WILDERNESS region from the ravages of the devil! But not all will be protected. Only those who qualify to escape the horrible things which are shortly going to come to pass, will do so – those who are praying, studying, preparing, keeping vigilant and alert. Those who are not doing so will be caught in the trap – seized in the maelstrom – and will suffer the full wrath and fury of that old dragon, the devil and Satan!


This protection will last for “a time, times, and half a time” – that is, three and one half years (compare verse 14 with verse 6 – 3 ½ times equals 1260 days, which makes a “time” equal to a Biblical prophetic “year”).


God says, in Isaiah’s prophecy, “Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; HIDE YOURSELVES for a little while until the wrath is past. For the LORD comes out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no longer cover its slain” (Isaiah 26:20-21). The word for “chamber” is cheder and means, “apartment, secret chamber, parlor,” from a primitive root chadar, meaning “to enclose,” as a room or an inner chamber.


David wrote, “One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple. For he will HIDE me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will CONCEAL me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock” (Psalm 27:4-5).

By William F. Dankenbring

Love, Walter and Debbie
 
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Mama Etna

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This reads like Anglo Israelism
They believe that the United States is Ephraim and that England is Manasseh. I used to have neighbors that belonged to this group. They aggressively tried to get me to join the World Wide Church of God. They just didn't accept that I didn't want to.
 
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