The world’s wise and politically cushioned[1] reject the King.[2] Jewish religious leaders enlisted the State to support their rebellion.[3] Institutionalized religion always seeks the support of the State.[4] The secular State is often more Godly than the institutional “church,”[5] but the “church” convinces the State to be as lawless as the ecclesiocrats.[6]
Notes
1. e.g., John 11:48; 19:15
2. Luke 2:34; 1 Corinthians 2:6-9; Hosea 14:9
3. John 18:35
4. Revelation 13:11ff.
5. John 19:6
6. John 19:7-8,12-13,15
References
Both "Church" and "State" are archist. They trust -- and therefore seek -- human power. Denying God's Predestination, they seek earthly predestination at their own hands.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
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8 comments:
This is completely wrong. The state is more Godly than an institutional Church? It was the Roman Catholic Church that built the West. God established a Church and a Kingdom, not a decentralized network of prideful churches quibbling and fighting over whose understanding of theology is correct.
I didn't say "always." You said "completely." Paul needed the State (Rome) to protect him from the Church (Jews). Commenting on 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7, F.F. Bruce says Paul viewed "the imperial power" as "a safeguard against the unruly forces which endeavored to frustrate the progress of the gospel." If Israel was "the church" in the wilderness (Acts 7:38), the "the church" became the enemy of the Gospel in the first century. Even today, "the church" is an anti-christ.
I don't agree with comparing the Sanhedrin of the Jews, the Synagogue of Satan, to the Church that Jesus Christ founded to spread the Gospel. The Church Jesus founded He promised never to abandon and sent the Holy Spirit to guide it unto all truth. Which Church is an anti-Christ today?
Any church which denies that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ/Messiah is, by definition, anti-Christ. That covers nearly every enterprise in the world today that calls itself a "church." They all claim that Jesus will not begin reigning in full-strength until he comes again, sometime in our future. In the meantime, "the church" is under no obligation to beat "swords into plowshares." Augustine's "City of Man" reigns today, not "the City of God." Satan, not the Christ. That's the message of my website YourChurchistheAntiChrist.com.
The Roman Catholic Church does not deny that Jesus is currently king of Heaven and Earth. It has proclaimed that throughout the ages. The Roman Pontiff is His steward or vicar (Al Habayit) on earth until His return. Your theology has no regard for the Second Coming of Christ when He will raise the dead and reign as King among us, bringing the Heavenly Jerusalem to Earth?
Call me a "hyper-preterist." (I'm not, actually, but close enough that I believe everything you relegate to the future has been accomplished in the past. Apparently, you don't believe that Jesus is fulfilling all Messianic prophecies in the present age; some fulfillments have been postponed to after His "second" (actually, third) coming.)
I am an amillenial partial-preterist, but these positions are not dogmatically defined by the Roman Catholic Church. In her humility, she has left this mystery either to God or future generations of holy men to discover.
But I don't see how we can say that everything in Matthew 24-25, Mark 13, Luke 21, Revelation, and the Book of Daniel has been fulfilled completely. The Catholic answer is typically, yes, but not in its fullness. The Kingdom of Heaven has begun, but Jesus has not come down to earth to rule with an iron rod. He has no remade the Heavens and the Earth.
Can we at least agree that Dispensationalism is crazy and a heresy?
I agree that dispensationalism is a heresy. I can't find even one verse which was intended by the author and understood by the original audience to teach that Jesus would "come down to earth to rule with an iron rod" thousands or millions of years after the closing of the canon. On the Olivet Discourse, see Gary DeMar, *Wars and Rumors of Wars*, David Chilton, *Paradise Restored*, or John L. Bray, *Matthew 24 Fulfilled*. There are many other preterist books on Matt. 24, but once you get it, you get it.
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