Mid-Acts Dispensationalism and the Day of Pentecost

Tony Garland...

The Washer Experiment

I have an agnostic friend who was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. Like other nominal Catholics he doesn't go to church etc. Every once in a while he asks me about my beliefs. Of course I try to articulate the gospel as best I can. Unfortunately, like many today, he has the ingrained conviction that he's basically a good person. And I have to confess that in many ways, he's better than I am. In fact I told him so. But that doesn't cut it.

His premise is that a loving God wouldn't cast a person into hell for lack of belief in His Son - especially someone who is otherwise a good person, who performs good deeds. So if there's a God, he thinks he'll go to heaven. This is a difficult mindset to break through. I could only answer via Scripture. We let it go at that.

The last time this came up in conversation, I introduced him to the Paul Washer experiment. In The Gospel's Power & Message, Washer has a section called Are We Really That Bad? In it he asks us to imagine how we would feel if there was device which could project every guarded secret thought and action we ever had, or done. Now imagine that our family and all our friends sit down and watch it all on a movie screen. How would we feel at the prospect of that? 

My friend looked decidedly uncomfortable at the concept. It stopped him in his tracks. It should also be a sober thought-experiment for us all. Are we that bad? Yes we all are!

Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church

John MacArthur weighs in on the current Gov imperatives for Church meetings HERE.

No doubt this will stir up more controversy - likely already has. I'm on his side on this one.

Red flags & Michael Heiser

Dr Michael Heiser is very popular in prophecy circles. I've been aware of him for a number of years (around 12). He's written extensively on the Divine Council and other related matters.

Some time ago I watched Dr. Darrell Bock interview Mike Heiser regarding his book "The Unseen Realm." So I bought it. I had several concerns. The Creation Ministries International article linked below goes into others. Dr. Heiser is a very smart man. He'll tell you that his ideas and materials are peer-reviewed (they are) and do not fall out of the realm of orthodoxy. Perhaps that's one problem facing the church today...

 Dr Michael Heiser is a scholar of Hebrew and semitic languages who moves in Evangelical circles. CMI’s first interaction with him was something in common: criticism of alien abduction claims (see the Alien Intrusion book and DVD). However, later on, there were serious concerns.

He is very opposed to biblical (‘young-earth’) creation. But unlike, say, Hugh Ross, who affirms biblical inerrancy, albeit pretzelizing it beyond recognition, Heiser uses another tactic, all too common among compromisers these days. This is to impugn Scripture itself, by claiming that it was teaching an erroneous cosmology, including a flat earth. So, they claim, if we don’t accept its flat-earth teaching, we should not accept its chronology and order of events if it conflicts with modern ‘science’...keep reading

"Cling to the Cross" - 1 Corinthians 1:18

Tom Drion of GraceLife London

Commentaries on Revelation

You can read Dr Paul Henebury's Personal Thoughts about Commentaries on Revelation HERE One of the commentaries mentioned is a new one by Buist Fanning. I was sufficiently interested that, when I was graciously gifted with some money, I bought it on Amazon.

Buist M. Fanning III – A new and impressive premillennial work with great exegesis. Tries to please everyone and dabbles in idealism, but still good. 600+ pages, but needed more. ~ Dr. Henebury

There's a fuller review of it HERE Excerpt:

It seems strange to describe a 600+ commentary as brief, but this only in comparison to the mammoth commentaries from Aune and Beale. Fanning’s contribution is worth consulting, especially as a representative of a future-orientated commentary on Revelation. ~ P. J. Long

I might add that many of the pages are double column. There's a lot there to digest.

Incidentally when I Googled Dr Fanning's Commentary I came across a website called pretribulationism-dot-com. In fact the site is an extension of Eschatos Ministries - a website dedicated to promoting the prewrath rapture and debunking pretribulationism. I guess pretribulationism-dot-com functions as "clickbait" for attracting pretribbers. Nevertheless, I'd like to thank the webmaster for promoting an excellent commentary on Revelation which takes a firm premillennial and pretribulational position.

The Father’s Love for Jesus as Mediator

Paul Washer talks about Puritan Robert Hawker. Some of Hawker's prayers appear in the book "Piercing Heaven." In the video, Washer says he loves the old books. So do I!

Timing of the Day of the Lord in 1 Thess 5

I recently posted an article on Zeteo 3:16 on the topic of the Timing of Day of the Lord in 1 Thess 5. You can read it HERE. This is a controversial topic which I've been thinking about for a while. Can the eschatological Day of the Lord really be restricted to narrowly defined parameters, or is it more flexible than some insist? The more I study this topic the more I'm persuaded that it's the latter.

I was prompted to briefly comment after reading Nicholas Claxton's two interesting articles at Tyndale, and Paul R. House's lengthy Day of the Lord discussion in Central Themes in Biblical Theology.

In the Bible 'the Day of the Lord' is one particular way, but not the only way, of discussing judgment. Every 'Day of the Lord' is an instance of judgment although not every depiction of judgment is called a 'Day of the Lord'. ~ House

Passages such as Joel 2:30-31 indicate that cosmic signs occur before the Day of the Lord. Yet House and others connect passages such as Isaiah 2 with the DotL and the 6th seal. In his commentary on Revelation, Buist Fanning notes this too, as well as noting several Old Testament DotL motifs in the 4th seal (see his chapter on Rev 6:1-17).

From my Zeteo 316 article:

For a discussion on the timing of the Day of the Lord in 1 Thess 5, see Nicholas James Claxton's two-part series in Tyndale's Journal of Dispensational Theology : Part One (p 77) and Part Two (p 53). Without being dogmatic, and while making a fair case for pretribulationism, Claxton discusses many of these themes including imminence, expectancy, suddenness, the term "thief in the night" etc. 

For more read Tony Garland's The Day of the Lord and When Does the Day of the Lord Dawn? and also Jacob's Trouble and the Great Tribulation. Tony's articles can be accessed HERE (original source) as well.

See also Robert Culver: Israel, Church & the Rapture.

Shane & Shane: Psalm 46

Unmoved and Unafraid (Psalm 46:2-3)

A few years ago I was going through a particularly difficult time. I found reading the Psalms to be very encouraging. One which I constantly went back to was Psalm 46. I often read it aloud. Steven Lawson's recent blog strikes a familiar and helpful chord with me...

In times of great difficulty, we often feel like the ground is shaking beneath our feet. It may seem like the world is collapsing around us. Nevertheless, there is one sure foundation that will never be moved—found in God Himself.

In Psalm 46, the author found himself in such an earthshaking time of upheaval. He wrote, "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride (verses 2-3)...keep reading