We Celebrated Christmas. Let Us Not Forget...

..the Jewish people.
This year, while we were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, the Jews had a very similar holiday of their own - the Hanukkah. This is a eight-day holiday celebrated by the Jews to commemorate a miracle which took place in 165 BC, long after the last book of the Old testament, Malachi, was written. Therefore nothing of it was recorded in the Old Testament. But it is mentioned in the New Testament, in John 10:22 as "the Feast of Dedication, and it was winter."

Their Hanukkah, which means Dedication always begins on the 25th day of Kislev, on the Hebrew calender. Because their calender is based on lunar months, their dating varies from late November to late December on our Gregorian calender. This year, the 25th of Kislev coincided with the sunset of the 20th December, which meant that our Christmas day fell on their fifth day of their holiday.

So what is exactly the Hanukkah?

It was when the Temple in Jerusalem was re-dedicated to the God of Israel in 165BC. As part of this ceremony, a candle had to burn on the Altar for eight days. At the time, there was enough olive oil to fuel the candle for just one day. But the candle kept on burning for the whole eight-day duration despite the lack of the fuel supply, and this was considered a miracle from Heaven - a wonderful sign when considering that the Temple was desecrated three years earlier by the Greek Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 168BC. This was when pigs were sacrificed at the Altar, which was, in turn, dedicated to the Greek God Zeus. Judaism was banned, as with male circumcision, and foods which was not Kosher were forced to be eaten by the Jewish population. A group of Jews, which became known as the Maccabees, revolted and successfully liberated the Jewish nation, which afterwards the Temple was re-dedicated.

Hanukkah had since then been celebrated by lighting one of each of the eight candles of the menorah, the Hanukkiya which actually has nine candles, the ninth, known as the Shamash is usually in the middle of the menorah, either higher or lower than the other eight candlesticks. Shamash is generally used for lighting up the others.

The Hanukkiya

On the first evening, the Shamash is lit with the first candle. They burn for half-hour into the night. The next night two candles are lit, and so it goes on until on the eighth evening when all eight are lit. The only exception is before sundown on the Friday, where the appropriate candle must be lit before sundown, and not on the Sabbath itself. Therefore often a longer candle is provided for this occasion.

Gifts are usually given to children, as well as to each other, particularly in the USA and in Israel, where the Jewish children don't feel left out where other children receive presents at Christmas. Also throughout the period, food cooked in olive oil is eaten, and a game known as Dreidel is played among family members. This consist of a four-sided spinning top, each side having a Hebrew letter printed on it. The letter which lands face up determines the action of the player who had thrown it, namely whether to add some coins in a central bowl, take all of the bowl's contents, or half of it, or not do anything at all. The player which has all the coins wins.

Unlike the Passover and other God-ordained Jewish festivals, there is no strict sabbath keeping with the Hanukkah festival. Work is permitted as during the rest of the year. But every Hanukkah festival will have a Sabbath within it, which is observed normally.

So we begin to see some striking parallels between Christmas and Hanukkah. Both are in winter, both involve lighting candles, both involve giving of presents, both involve cooking festival meals, both involve family games, both involve a period of days - Hanukkah has eight days, Christmas has twelve, and both involve allowing to work throughout the holidays. After all, it is vital for public services such as television broadcasting, the Police, hospitals etc. to be adequately staffed on Christmas day.

And furthermore, Christians are obliged to give honour to the Jews, as their own Christian faith was originally Jewish, and its launch was from none other than Jerusalem, the Jewish capital. Romans 15:27 reads:

For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.

If only Christians over the past two millennia realised this! Instead, the Roman Catholic Church, along with some Protestant churches as well, had persecuted the "Christ-killing Jews" - despite that the Lord Jesus himself said that no man can take his life from him, but he lays down his own life according to his Father's commandment. (See John 10:18.) One of church history's hall of fame greats was Martin Luther, a Catholic monk who one day read Romans 1:17 and realised that the just shall live by faith, launching the Reformation. Yet he was never freed from Rome's dislike of the Jews, referring to all their synagogues as "Synagogues of Satan" a reference taken from Revelation 2:9. Then not to mention the Nazis, and their leader, Adolf Hitler, who had six million Jews exterminated simply because he felt that the Jews were an "inferior" race to them.

Yet what really astonishes me are the two straightforward verses found in Genesis 12:2-3, which reads:

I will make you (Abraham) into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

With verses like these, one would think that the Jews would be the most popular nation on earth, with people showering blessings upon them and in turn be blessed themselves. How could it be so possible to be hated and cursed for so long, not only throughout the Christian age, but going back well into Old Testament history when the fledgling nation was troubled by the Canaanites, then later by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and by the Arabs today?

Paul the Apostle never had any dislike for the Jews, especially being one himself. Rather, in Romans 9 he shows his feelings of distress over how his fellow countrymen can be so blinded from the truth of the Gospel, and was even willing to be severed from Christ if it meant many, if not all, of his fellow Jews believed and were saved. Paul had the right attitude, and so must we, who are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, even though the majority of us would not go as far as forfeiting our salvation for their sakes, nevertheless, our recognition for who they are and our fervent love for them and our desire to see them come to faith in their Messiah, must not cease among true Christians.

When I was backpacking Israel in 1993, I was walking through a street at Tel Aviv when I saw an Orthodox Jew trying without success to lift a laden trolley onto the sidewalk from the street. At his beckoning, I approached and together we lifted the trolley. He was so thankful as he dismissed me with a smile, that I walked along grinning from ear to ear with happiness! Later, during the vacation I felt God revealing to me much about Israel as a nation and the land he calls his own, and with everything fitting together, I could only gasp with awe at the inspiration of the Bible and the promises he made and kept, and will keep.

God had not forgotten his chosen people

Paul in his letter to the Romans, had written that the Jews were blinded from the reality of their Messiah Jesus in order that Gentiles, that is non-Jewish people, can believe the Gospel and be saved. He likened us to branches from a wild olive tree grafted in to the cultivated olive tree. He then warns us (non-Jews) not to become big-headed and arrogant after being recipients of God's mercy. Unfortunately, that has happened, and the Church's history had been tainted ever since, with many Popes having lived wicked lives and suffering horrible deaths, particularly of syphilis or even murdered by an angry mob, a jealous husband or anti-pope (a rival of the current Pope occupying the Throne of St Peter at the time.) Such a sorry state of the Church, the body of Christ, during the Dark Ages, could well be the link with their hatred of the Jews as "Christ-killers". In the Old Testament, for example, looking at the fate of the Canaanite kings at the time of Joshua and afterwards, Goliath during the reign of King Saul, Haman at the time of the Persian dominance over the Jewish Diaspora, and in modern times, Adolf Hitler, none had suffered such infamy and despicable deaths than they.

Their demise serves as a warning to us. God said to Abraham that anyone who curses him and his descendants (i.e. Israel) will himself be cursed. It is a matter not to be taken lightly. In turn, anyone who shows favour to the Jews, to the nation of Israel and Jerusalem in particular, will be blessed by God and enjoy his favour.

Contrary to the opinion of some Christians, God is not finished with the Jews on a national level. As I have mentioned already in previous blogs, there is a large quantity of passages in the Bible that prophesies that Israel will inhabit their own land of Canaan in the future, with Jerusalem as their capital city. When the Lord Jesus Christ returns to earth as King of kings and Lord of lords, he will enter the city of Jerusalem and there set up the throne of his father David. If you want reference, read Jeremiah chapters 30 to 33, and the last twelve chapters of Ezekiel. Also consider Romans 11:25-32, particularly verse 26, where Paul promises salvation to all of Israel in the future.

The Jews are the Lord's physical brethren and in a sense, our spiritual brethren. True enough, they are sadly blinded from the truth of the Gospel for our sakes, but this won't last for ever. One day, when all non-Jewish Christians are brought in, their veil will be removed and will all be saved.

May God bless you as you be a blessing to our Jewish brothers.

Happy New Year.

Prophecy: God's most Powerful Tool - Ahem...

Leicester Square, in the heart of the "swinging" West End of London. Standing on a soapbox, a Christian evangelist was stumped by a group of Muslims who were asking him for proof on why his Jesus was greater than their prophet Mohammad. Checking out the situation while passing through, I felt my spirit rise to the level when I was no longer able to resist, and I called out loudly:
JESUS CHRIST HAS RISEN!
I then made haste to my destination, a bookshop geared to the likes of backpackers located close to Convent Garden, without looking back.

Jesus Christ has risen. This was the testimony given by the apostles to their listeners. The apostles were eyewitnesses to this event. It was the ultimate proof that this Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Jewish Messiah. But to add further backing, the apostles added proof from the writings of the Prophets. The very first sermon preached to a wide audience in Acts chapter 2 contained the prophecy of Joel and from King David, while Peter's testimony in chapter 3 contains quotes from Moses. These are prophecies focusing on Christ's first advent, or coming, which includes his death by crucifixion, his resurrection and the formation of the Church, here at the Temple in Jerusalem. The first miracle took place at the same location, the strengthening of the legs of a crippled beggar, to add further endorsement to the prophecies that this Jesus of Nazareth, whom they nailed to a tree, was the Christ, and by believing, receive eternal life.

In acts 4:25,26 Peter continues to quote King David, while in chapter 7, Stephen summarises the entire history of Israel right back to Abraham. The next chapter records Phillip and the Ethiopian who was in his chariot reading from the scroll of Isaiah. From the same scroll, Phillip proved to the Ethiopian that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, and the rider believed and was baptised at a nearby pond.

In Paul's ministry, he quotes from the prophets Isaiah, Habakkuk and the Psalms of King David to demonstrate to his fellow Jews that Jesus was their Messiah. And in every case it was to do with the first advent of Jesus Christ and believing to have their sins forgiven and receive eternal life.

When it came to the subject of the Second Advent, before his ascension to Heaven from the Mount of Olives, Jesus made it clear to his apostles that it was not for them to know the times and the seasons of his return (Acts 1). This applies to us to this day.

But what I have seen and heard about in the last forty-plus years was the rise of what I personally call Antichrist Mania. I believe that three main factors contribute to this rise:

1. The resettlement of the Jews in their original homeland since the Balfour Declaration of 1918, followed by the establishment of Israel as a sovereign nation from 1948 and the city of Jerusalem being made the Jewish capital in 1980, after some 2,500 years after being sacked by the Babylonians.

2. The occurrence of the two World Wars, the Great War commencing in 1914 and the second in 1939. Tying in with this is the misinterpretation of what Jesus called "This generation" as recorded in Matthew 24:34.

3. The dawning of a new Millennium.

Then there is the issue with the term Antichrist. The term first appears quite late in the Bible, in the first letter of John (2:18) which is near the end of the New Testament. When Martin Luther, John Calvin and their followers began to study the Bible for themselves, they eventually concluded that the Great Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17 was the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope as the Antichrist. This interpretation of Scripture grew within Protestantism, with many believing that the Catholic Church was counterfeit Christianity (see my blog, 25th September, 2011).

It was Jesuit Francisco Ribera who in 1590 wrote a thesis defending the Papacy by declaring that the Antichrist is a single person who will rule the world immediately before the end of human history. This idea was taken up by other scholars including Protestants such as Presbyterian minister Edward Irving and James Darby, who developed Ribera's idea into a theological theory known as Dispensationalism which simply means that human history is Biblical divided into seven time periods, each period emphasising a method in which God had, and will relate with mankind.

The fact that I favour the Dispensation theory brings up the question:
Did God speak to Jesuit Francisco Ribera, a member of a society formed by Ignatius Loyola who in turn, had an occultic vision of the Virgin Mary instructed him to destroy all Protestants? Would God enlighten such an individual with the truth of the Bible? Again, why wouldn't he? This is another case of the sovereign will of God, doing what he pleases, and not contained within man's reasoning. After all, the early Protestant movement would never had considered the possibility that the Lord would have chosen a Jesuit, - one who fights against anyone who holds the doctrines of salvation by grace through faith, without works - to reveal to him the secrets of the future. In short, Ribera may not have had a divine revelation. But there was a good chance that he did.

And other Protestants accepted Ribera's thesis, including Plymouth Brethren James Darby, followed by Cyrus Scofield, who published The Scofield Bible which became the focus of Dispensationalism, particularly taught at the Dallas Theological Seminar and reaching into many Protestant churches around the Western World.

With the idea of "Antichrist Mania" (as I call it) finding its roots as early as 1909, I wouldn't have been surprised that as the century wore on with the two World Wars, the formation of Israel as a sovereign nation and the dawn of a new millennium not far away, it only took a little imagination to infiltrate both the bookshelf and the wide screen with Antichrist propaganda.

The first to step out in this direction was author Ira Levin, who wrote the novel Rosemary's Baby (1967) - which was made into a blockbusting movie about a young married woman (Mia Farrow) who was raped by a demon and conceived, with the baby displaying cat's eyes, born on the 28th June, 1966 (6/66). As such, the new millennium would have dawned six months after his 33rd birthday, a good time and age to commence ruling the world!

The Omen was released to the wide screen in 1976. This movie was about a young boy, Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens), whose mother was a jackal, and displaying evil supernatural power while under the care of his adopted father Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck). Young Damien was also timed to take rule at the start of the 21st Century.

Then evangelical Christian Hal Lindsey in 1970 wrote The Late Great Planet Earth and predicted that the future Antichrist would come to power in the early 1980s. He followed his publication with two follow ups: The 1980s Countdown to Armageddon and The Terminal Generation. All three of these books pushed the idea that the future Antichrist was alive and well at the time of writing and no Christian alive at the time would see the start of the 21st Century - the Rapture already having taken place by 1983.

At about the same time, Tim LaHaye wrote The Beginning of the End with which he had to borrow material from Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth to support his own arguments. LaHaye, however was concerned about "this generation" quoted by Jesus Christ himself in Matthew 24:34, after telling his disciples that "nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famine, pestilences, earthquakes" and so forth. According to LaHaye, and no doubt, Lindsey as well, this "generation" who were alive to see both world wars were quickly dying out! LaHaye then tries to stretch the time scale by insisting that one only had to be a young child to remember his parents fighting in that 1914-1918 war.

Norman Robertson wrote, Understanding End Time Prophecy in 1989. He believes that the end time generation began in 1948, the year of the birth of the nation of Israel, and not 1914 as Lindsey and LaHaye taught. Even so, at the time of this writing, a baby born in that year would be 63 years old now, so there is still a chance for Jesus to return to earth during this generation, but he'll better hurry up! This generation is already on the wane, and the Lord said that this generation shall in no wise pass away until all these things come to pass.

But there are a few problems. If Jesus was talking about a future generation, then why did he say, "This generation," rather than "That generation." As one who adhered to the dispensationalist viewpoint, I have found this grammatical inconsistency something of a stumbling block. It was the crack which dulled the whole structure from ringing true. Yet with this belief, I felt that I had to wind things up fast, for I wouldn't be around much longer!

It wasn't until I came across another book, perhaps also classed within the "end of century Antichrist Mania" - written by Dave Hunt, How Close Are We? (1992) which solved the dilemma. Of all prophecy teachers, I have found Hunt to be the most sensible, authoritative, and absolutely dismisses any idea of dating prophecy. According to him, "This generation" does not mean a people living at a certain time in human history, as the language imply. It means instead, the Jews as a race of people having a particular characteristic. This changes the whole concept entirely. In this case Jesus was right. The Jew is as much with us now as in his day, and the Jew will continue to exist until the end of history.

With all this "Antichrist Mania" filling our Christian bookshelves and shown on the wide screen as horror movies, has this brought on an influx of new converts into our churches? Rather has this whole propaganda turned people off, thinking that all Christians are a bit nutty?

Let's take the Gay community. I have access into one of its websites, which on its forums there is a column set aside for spiritual issues. Through it, the vast majority of male homosexuals are against the Bible, what it teaches. They are fully aware of Leviticus 18:22 which forbids a man lying in bed with another man, and certainly against what they call "Organised religion" namely the Christian church. Surprisingly to me, the names of Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey are very familiar to them, particularly with his book, The Late Great Planet Earth.

The situation is made a lot worse by leaders such as Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. He and his congregation gather in the street in front of a Gay parade with placards ablaze with "God Hate Fags" logos and "God Hates America" and so forth.

As such attitudes turns the average person away from Jesus Christ and from eternal life he has to offer, I feel that the "Antichrist Mania" has done the same. Why do I say this? Because all the things which Lindsey and LaHaye, and to a certain extent, by Norman Robertson had all written, had failed to come to pass. The Rapture hadn't occurred. 28 years after 1983, the year the Rapture should have occurred, we as Christians are still here. And eleven years into the 21st Century, Antichrist had not shown up.

Then there is the likes of atheists such as Richard Dawkins, to whom the name of Hal Lindsey is well familiar. Lindsey's failure of his prophecies coming true is just the fuel for Dawkins' fire of ridicule. Little wonder that delving into end time prophecy, instead of its original intention of bring people to Christ and filling our churches, had done the exact opposite. Dawkins is driving people out of the churches and Lindsey and his ilk had accelerated this process further, resulting of many perishing in Hell without hope.

Prophecy IS a powerful tool for evangelism. But it must be used in the same way the apostles used it. To prove that the Jesus who walked this planet, was crucified and rose from the grave, is the Christ who has laid his life for our redemption. There are many prophecies relating to Christ's first coming. Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 are great examples, and there are plenty more. These are the prophecies we need to use when sharing Jesus Christ with others, as well as a rebuke to the likes of Islam's Mohammad.

Antichrist? Don't bother with him. He's not worth a single mention.

"Christ Will Be Coming Back." Whoops!

There is a story of a farmer milking his cows one Sunday morning when a church vicar who was walking past the farm, paused and called out,
"Christ will be coming back!"
He then walked on, without saying anything else, towards his church to prepare for that morning's service.

Not long after the service had began, the vicar spotted the farmer, now changed into clean clothes, sitting at one of the pews, listening to the sermon. Afterwards, the farmer was asked what brought him here.
"When you reminded me that Jesus will be coming back, I wouldn't had wanted him to catch me milking cows when I should be at church, would I?"

And so says the Scripture:
But you know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
1 John 3:2b-3.

The Second Coming of Christ, nowadays a belief held by nutters and crackpots - as the secular world regards fundamental Christians, or "fundies" as they are often known by. And little wonder. If the idea of supernatural creation has been robbed of any element of truth and relegated to that of a crackpot belief held by nutters and fundies, it would be of no surprise that any idea of the return of Christ would be regarded in the same manner. Just as Peter predicted:

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
2 Peter 3:3-4.

By reading the above quote, it becomes obvious that supernatural creation is intrinsically linked to the Return of Christ. To admit one is to admit the other. To deny one also denies the other. And so the idea of supernatural creation keeps on getting stabbed in the back. At present, we are about halfway through a series of programmes broadcast on the BBC, Planet Dinosaur where the theory of evolution is "proved" over and over again. Last week we watched on the development of feathers on one species of dinosaur, allowing it to glide from tree to tree in order to catch its prey. Evolutionists then declared that by fossil evidence our modern bird species are direct descendants of these gliding lizards. Divine creation doesn't stand a chance!

Then just today, the Mail on Sunday carried it front page headline, the BBC is to jettison the initials BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) out of political correctness, i.e. that these initials are offensive to other faiths. These will be replaced by the BBC with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). The scoffers, by winning the heart of such a worldwide broadcaster, had certainly won a victory.

The second coming of Christ had always been a topic of great interest to me, ever since the 1970s, when I found myself in discussions with some Jehovah's Witnesses on this subject. The Watchtower Society of Jehovah's Witnesses published books on prophecy with movable dates. When that particular day in human history came and went, it wasn't a case of "Whoops, not this time" but clear proof, so they said, that the Society is constantly revising and improving on their creeds as the Lord hands down more and more revelation from his "heavenly table." As such, the Society remains unblemished.

Aside from all this, my keen interest on the Second Coming has its beginnings in the 1970s. This became a study known as Eschatology (knowledge of last things). This subject certainly peaked in sales at Christian bookshops within the last thirty years of the Twentieth Century, when a new Millennium was about to dawn. I have books written on the Last Things by quite a number of authors. These include:

Hal Lindsey: Late Great Planet Earth
Hal Lindsey: The 1980s Countdown to Armageddon
Hal Lindsey: The Terminal Generation
Hal Lindsey: There's A New World Coming

Hal Lindsey

Dr. De Hann: The Jew and Palestine in Prophecy.
Tim LaHaye: The Beginning of the End
Norman Robertson: Understanding End Time Prophecy
Salem Kirban: 666
Dave Hunt: How Close Are We?
Dave Hunt: Global Peace
Dave Hunt: Occult Invasion
Dave Hunt: The Cup of Trembling
Dave Hunt: A Woman Rides The Beast

More than a dozen books written by six different authors line my bookshelf, each either dealing directly with Eschatology or have some reference to it. And all agreeing with each other, one can call as truth the Pre-Trib Rapture and the Second Coming, two future events with the seven-year Tribulation period, dominated by the rule of the future Antichrist, in between. So to lay out the chronology of the Last Things as expounded by these authors, we get something like this:

1. Church Age (present)
2. Rapture of the Church (future, and on from there)
3. First 42 months after Rapture: Tribulation, Rise of the Antichrist.
4. Second 42 months: Reign of Antichrist, Great Tribulation. Total: 84 months or seven Hebrew years.
5. The Second Coming of Christ, Antichrist destroyed, wicked judged.
6. Establishment of Christ Kingdom on Earth, reigning from Jerusalem for a thousand years (hence Millennium). Israel to be the chief nation of the whole planet.
7. Final Rebellion.
8. Last Judgement.
9. Re-creation of God's eternal Kingdom.

It is important to note that the nation of Israel must be fully established before Christ can come back to reign. I believe it was first, the establishing of Israel as a nation once again in 1948 after approximately 2,530 years of non-existence - a phenomenon no other nation can claim. And secondly the winding up of the twentieth Century with the onset of the 21st Century and also the third millennium which resulted in "end-time prophecy mania" which hit the Christian bookshelf.

I for one, fully believe in a pre-Trib, Pre-Mill Rapture. But I want to base my belief in it on what the Bible has to say on it, not merely on authors' verifications, even if there is agreement between them all. First, 1 Thessalonians says this:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.
4:16-18).

Also read Isaiah 26:16 to 27:6. Don't let the chapter break throw you. It is one passage, as it has been for the first two thousand years after it was written. The whole of Eschatology can be contained here, in a nutshell.
Breaking it down, it says first, that Israel as a nation mourns over its own history, 26:16-18.

Then the "dust of the earth gives up the dead, verse 19.
The living told to "Go, hide themselves from the wrath to come, verses 20, 21. Where they are told to hide cannot be on this planet because they could still be found by someone. This "hiding away" must be a heavenly transfer. Note that first, the dead is raised. Secondly the living saints disappear. This tallies exactly with Paul's version in his letter to the church in Thessaloniki.

27:1, Judgement of Leviathan, tallying with Revelation 20:1-3.
27:2-6, Christ's Kingdom established, as with Revelation 20:4-6.

So there is a Biblical reason on why I believe in a pre-Trib Rapture. But how did this teaching develop? Actually it comes as a surprise that some Calvinists reject this branch of Eschatology altogether. It is believed that during the Reformation started by Martin Luther and endorsed by John Calvin, many Christians who began to read and understand the Bible for themselves soon discovered that the Great Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17 was the Roman Catholic Church with its Pope as Antichrist. Both Luther and Calvin believed this, as did their followers. The Reformation, as a result, denounced the Church of Rome as counterfeit Christianity.

It was in 1590 that Jesuit Francisco Ribera, in order to protect the Papacy from these accusations, formulated the pre-Trib Rapture and the rise of Antichrist as something deep in the future. As a result, the Pope was seen as innocent from the accusations aimed at him by the Protestants. Ribera formulated a doctrine which is known by present theologians as Premillennialism.

Ribera's thesis was taken up by Cardinal Bellarmine, the same individual who convinced the scientist Galileo that the Earth could not possibly orbit the Sun. Also, Edward Irving, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, also accepted Ribera's thesis as authentic, therefore also shielding the Pope from being the beast riding the whore of Revelation chapter 17.

A leader of the Plymouth Brethren, lawyer James Darby also accepted the views of Ribera, Bellarmine and Irvine, and developed the doctrine of Dispensationalism, which features the Rapture, Tribulation, the rise and reign of the Antichrist and the Second coming of Christ, followed by his reign from Jerusalem. I feel it is necessary to expound exactly what dispensationalism is, for the reader who is not acquainted with theology or church history and teachings. In a nutshell, I could describe the dispensation system, which means that human history is divided by a series of dispensations, or time periods which were defined by James Darby. They are as follows:

1. The age of Innocence - Adam and Eve
2. The age of Conscience - from the Fall of Adam to the Flood.
3. The age of Human Government - from the Flood to Abraham.
4. The age of the Promise - from Abraham to the Exodus.
5. The age of the Law - from Mt Sinai to the death of Christ.
6. The age of Grace (Church Age)- from the Resurrection to the Rapture.
7. The age of the Kingdom - from the Second coming to the end of history.

In 1909 Cyrus Scofield published his Scofield Bible, based on Darby's work, which became central to most American seminaries. So, according to some Calvinists, the doctrine of Dispensationalism was from a Jesuit, Francisco Ribera, exonerating the Papacy from Protestant's accusations of being the Great Whore of Babylon.

The Church of Rome - exonerated from the Reformer's accusations.

There are Christians who will believe that the seven time periods are simply too many, and argue that there were only two, Law and Grace. But I dare to go a step further - the dispensation of Grace spanning the whole of human history. In reality, nobody can keep the Law of Moses perfectly. And absolutely perfect obedience is required for everlasting life. But since it's impossible to keep the Law, that's where the death and resurrection of Christ plays the major role. Eternal life is a free gift of God given through faith alone. It has always been a free gift of Grace, from the fall of Adam and Eve into sin to the very end of history. Faithful men of God were saved by Grace even before Jesus Christ came along. They were saved by faith in the promise of the coming Messiah, as depicted in Genesis 3:15. Today one is saved by looking back at the Messiah crucified.

I will ask: Is the knowing of the Return of Christ necessary for Christian living? Yes, absolutely.

As with the story of the farmer at the beginning of this article, the thought of Christ's return spurs the soul to holiness and greater purity in his life. It plays a big role in Christian living, giving greater motivation to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, to reach for the lost, to encourage love and bonding between brothers. It is also an ingredient for church growth.

I could be called a preMillennialist. I could even be accused of defending Roman Catholicism, or to be tainted with the lies of a Jesuit, or even be called a Catholic and be classed as a partaker of the Whore of Babylon. But none of these are important to me. Just as I believe that there are many Catholics who have trusted in Jesus Christ and are actually saved, so it does not matter whether I believe that the Rapture will come or not, or Christ will come with another method. What is important to me is, am I reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ? Am I filled with the Holy Spirit? Do I delight in reading the Bible? Do I love the brethren? These are the most important questions we all need to look at. Getting your points in Eschatology is lower on the list, but nevertheless, knowing that Christ will come back spurs us to holiness.