I like to add that the difference is that someone says things that cannot be
Biblically validated and passes them off as the actual Word of God. Allow me to demonstrate the difference.
For example, if I were to say that I think
many Jewish revolutionaries were hold up in the hills in AD 70, and someone else says they think that only a
few revolutionary Jews went up into the hills, then we have a legitimate difference of opinion. Either of us could be right or wrong in our opinion, we can't really know for sure. But this has NOTHING to do with understanding the Bible or prophecy.
On the other hand, if I were to say that the Bible teaches that in the New Testament dispensation that started at the cross, the Holy Temple of God is the Church and
no longer the Jewish Temple, and you were to deny that in some way, this is
NOT a simple matter of legitimate difference of opinion, this is
a denial of the Word of God. There is a difference! When you do everything you can to avoid receiving the truth of scripture, it's not opinion, it's denial and what God calls rebellion. It's about keeping the Word of God faithfully, rather than trampling it under foot, ignoring it, or finding some "irrational" way to get around it. You simply cannot look at Lamentations chapter four of the gold becoming dim and changed, and "read into" this scripture that it is referring to the Elect. That is just "abominable handling" of the scriptures.
Psalms 119:4-7
- "Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently.
- O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
- Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.
- I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments."
Likewise, we cannot postulate that God Himself is making a prophesy of an Old Testament Temple, years after Calvary, and calling it the "Holy Temple" that is becoming abominable, and that believers must then flee from when they see this action take place. That's
ludicrous! The Old Testament system of ceremonial worship in the "holy place" in the Holy Temple of Israel came to an
END at the cross, not AD 70! God is not saying the abomination will start in AD 70 and that is when the Apostles should look for it and flee. Huh?! That makes absolutely
NO biblical sense. AD 70 wasn't the beginning of a new era. No it wasn't. It was the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The fact is, their house was abominable then, and it's desolation ushered in the New Testament Church dispensation! So the "difference" in our approach to prophesy is that one (the AD 70 interpretation) is extra-Biblical historical speculation, and the other (that Israel fell at the cross) is the "witness of the Word."
When Christ said true Christians "hear His words" He is not just whistling Dixie. It is an divine characteristic of true Christianity to receive God's Word, and a characteristic of the unfaithful to do everything in their power to get around it, or to not receive it. Because true Christians have the Spirit of God within them, who is
not offended by
His own Truth. Thus, by the Spiritual, we receive the Spiritual word.
Matthew 11:14-15
- "And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
- He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Christ says "IF" you will receive it, because He knows full well that the Scribes, Pharisees, Judaizers and other sundry religionists will not receive it. They cannot receive it. For this reason, some Premillennialists are still looking for Elijah to come back today to fulfill that prophecy. Like those enamored with Josephus, they are so constrained by the historical or physical, that they cannot even comprehend that this scripture was fulfilled already some other way. Likewise with the destruction of Israel. What many fail to understand was that Israel was prophesied to fall
spiritually by the hand of God, not physically by the hand of Roman soldiers! But because their eyes are on the temporal, the worldly, the physical rather than the spiritual, the physical is all that they seem to see. They don't recognize the Prophet Elijah came before Christ, or that the Temple was destroyed long before AD 70. As Christ said, "IF" you will receive it, he who hath an ear, let him hear. The Truth is, stones fell, highways were straightened, ears were made deaf, valleys made low, eyes blinded, cities wasted, fig trees cursed that they never bear fruit again, etc., and it had nothing to do with the physical!!!! People "recognize" that in the mind of God the temple fell with the tearing of the veil in the Temple at Christ's death, but they then "irrationally" refuse to RECEIVE the truth that this (according to the mind of God, which they recognize) was the fulfillment of the fall of the Temple. It is "foolishness" to some people that we would declare such a thing unless a physical temple falls. ..But not so!
1st Corinthians 2:14-16
- "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
- But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
- For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."
You see knowing the mind of Christ involves "following The Word of God." Because that is the revealed mind of Christ that instructs us. Not Josephus nor his merry band of Historicists.
The problem is, every gospel that is not the true gospel, does this dance called the "half-step." They refuse to receive "some particular truths of scripture," and others want to simply chalk our difference in methodology to a difference of opinion when it's not really that simple. Whether Free Willism, Premillennialism, Roman Catholicism, dispensationalism, Mormonism, Preterism, Ecumenism, Liberalism, whatever! They all come to their conclusions based upon the flawed premise that they can interpret the scriptures, when only God can interpret scripture. Not Josephus, Not John Darby, not the Pope, not Joe Smith, not John Calvin, not TribulationSigns, or any man.
Interpretations belong to God, that we have to seek for it in HIs Word! Thus the fall of the Temple is
defined by the mind of Christ, not by the vain imaginations of man looking at "history!"
What is the difference you may ask? The difference is that "GOD SAID" that He destroyed Israel, took the Kingdom from her, and gave it to another nation who would bring forth the fruits. By everyone's account, this spoke of the Church! Period. This Church of the kingdom of God already started at Pentecost, not AD 70! Period. What further witness do we need than that of the Bible? Josephus? Other Jewish historians? Traditions? No, it's just common sense that we simply "RECEIVE" if we have ears to hear. But I think that it was Francois Voltaire who said, "common sense is just not that common!" Oh how right he was. What he (and most of the rest of mankind) didn't understand is the reason for this. It's because man is a sinful creature, desperately wicked, and he wants "his will" to be done rather than God's. Another way to describe irrational behavior, is sin.