@NealNealNeal,
It's someone on Discord, not necessarily you.
I'm actually probably a-millennial. I don't believe in a peaceful millennium. That's a trick from the devil. Life is inherently filled with challenges, good and evil are not absolute, and God wants us to live in a world that is imperfect to spiritually grow. But I am post-millennial insofar as I accept that Jesus established the kingdom of God.
I agree that Europe and the United States are in a bad place morally, but I think part of the mentality of end times is to whip people into a state of despair. As things get bad, we have an opportunity to repent and return to God. But end times don't allow this option. You missed the signs, you get burned up forever because you didn't get things perfectly.
I only abridged Daniel. I did throw out Revelation (more below), followed by Thessalonians (too much fundie crap), followed by Hebrews (there were a number of errors, but the clincher was that Anointed kept quoting it with regard to God supposedly saying "today" you have become my son, introducing adoptionist heresies). I took out Ezekiel, but eventually added it back in as a Cliff's Notes. I'm glad I did. I hated the signs and visions of Ezekiel, but my summary does it justice. No seeing the wheel within a wheel, instead I talked of the Temple, and Ezekiel's mission.
Revelation was unacceptable for the following reasons:
1. Jesus said "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (right after the famous John 3:16) So in direct contradiction, here God is sending his Son to condemn the world, not to save it.
2. Jesus never said he would come again to judge everyone, never made any prophesies that he would destroy people. You only see this in later writings, most notably the fundie ones that I sorta kinda tossed into the rubbish pile. Top of the list is this one.
3. You know what he did prophesy though? That many false versions of Christ would come, and there'd be all kinds of events like wars and such but we are not to be alarmed.
4. We already have reason enough to discount it, but that it was told to John by an angel immediately reminds us of Galatians 1. "6I am amazed how quickly you are deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is not even a gospel. Evidently some people are troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an
angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a curse!" And angel from heaven, huh?
5. Further, Jesus's personality doesn't match up. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do" vs killing fractions of Earth's entire population because they do some sin or the other.
5b. We have two writings to back up the idea that this is not some end times "Jesus had enough" thing, but an actual contradiction of Biblical teaching. The first is Romans 3:23 ("All have sinned and fallen short...") and Romans 8:38-39 ("For I am convinced that (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God...") If all of us have fallen short, who would be worthy enough to make it in this end times? Nobody! All of us would die horribly, because we have all failed to measure up to God's perfection. Likewise, if nothing can separate us, then all of us receive grace.
6. Mark Twain, Martin Luther, Jefferson, and the entire Orthodox church prior to Catholicism's forcing it as canon all rejected Revelation. Martin Luther is particularly enlightening:
Quote:About this Book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.
First and foremost, the apostles do not deal with visions, but prophesy in clear and plain words, as do Peter and Paul, and Christ in the gospel. For it befits the apostolic office to speak clearly of Christ and his deeds, without images and visions. Moreover there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals so exclusively with visions and images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.
Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly (Revelation 22)—indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important—and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.
Many of the fathers also rejected this book a long time ago; although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous places is too generous.
Finally, let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it. But to teach Christ, this is the thing which an apostle is bound above all else to do; as Christ says in Acts 1:8, “You shall be my witnesses.” Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.
Romans 8 teaches Christ, and so I keep it. The hellfire and damnation stuff? Jesus did say some fire and brimstone speeches, but they were always tempered with the idea that sinners were forgiven. I concur with Luther.
