Sadly, the understanding that is rife throughout the "Christianised" world is not predominately scripturally based, because of the inability to see the spiritual activity/influence behind the various manifestations within the worldly environment of mankind.
As is evident on this forum, many people have tried to unravel the prophetic words about the events that have and will occur right up and until the end of the age of the ages.
The rivalry between the various "Christian sects" is not healthy for God's Church/assembly of saints and what is seen from outside is the bullying, name calling and domination of the strongest voices in support of their pet theories.
The story line of the events are present in the scriptures, but they are not all linked as neatly as we would like, nor are we able to easily see long periods of time between events along the time line of God. We treat the word "then" as an indicator of events that immediately follow each other, rather than a list of events that follow each other with different periods of times between the listed events. Where the listed events may be give in a forward or regressive order of occurring. That the scriptures can be like a jigsaw when the picture must be put together from the disconnected pieces of information provided in the scriptures. That the word pictures presented in telling the storyline of prophecy may not be as we would like them to be understood. That a time gap not present in one particular prophecy may have to be found in another prophecy concerning the same prophetic event. The outcomes of one event may need to be found in a number of prophetic accounts of the same event.
When our understandings of God's prophetic prophecies is lacking, it is best that we back off from our dogmatic approaches and wait patiently for the right understanding to come.
This thread would seem to be one case where this would be appropriate.
Shalom
As is evident on this forum, many people have tried to unravel the prophetic words about the events that have and will occur right up and until the end of the age of the ages.
The rivalry between the various "Christian sects" is not healthy for God's Church/assembly of saints and what is seen from outside is the bullying, name calling and domination of the strongest voices in support of their pet theories.
The story line of the events are present in the scriptures, but they are not all linked as neatly as we would like, nor are we able to easily see long periods of time between events along the time line of God. We treat the word "then" as an indicator of events that immediately follow each other, rather than a list of events that follow each other with different periods of times between the listed events. Where the listed events may be give in a forward or regressive order of occurring. That the scriptures can be like a jigsaw when the picture must be put together from the disconnected pieces of information provided in the scriptures. That the word pictures presented in telling the storyline of prophecy may not be as we would like them to be understood. That a time gap not present in one particular prophecy may have to be found in another prophecy concerning the same prophetic event. The outcomes of one event may need to be found in a number of prophetic accounts of the same event.
When our understandings of God's prophetic prophecies is lacking, it is best that we back off from our dogmatic approaches and wait patiently for the right understanding to come.
This thread would seem to be one case where this would be appropriate.
Shalom