Part 2 of The Last Days from 2nd Peter 3
As you will soon see Peter is no longer quoting Joel in 2 Pe 3:3, but he does tie “The Last Days” to “the day of the LORD.” If you have read my book or some of my blog posts you know that the day of the LORD is Yahweh’s day, not the day of Christ or the day of the Lord Jesus. In Joel as well as the rest of the Old Testament through Malachi, when God, who is The Holy Spirit, wanted YHWH mentioned the word LORD in all capital letters was used.
Unfortunately when the New Testament translators referred to the day of the LORD they did not put the word in all caps, but as Lord, which has caused much confusion. All one really has to do is look back and see what a time calamity the day of the LORD is when the day of the Lord Jesus is a time of rejoicing.
2 Pe 3:10 says But, the day of the LORD will come like a thief, and then (sometime later) the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire and the earth and everything that is done on it will be burned up…..waiting for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God.
Old Testament prophets didn’t know anything about The Gathering Together, the episunagoge, of the church of God. They didn’t know there would be a Church of God, or that salvation would be available by undeserved divine favor, because God kept it secret from them. If He had not kept it secret from them, the devil would never have allowed Jesus Christ to be crucified and die! (See 1 Cor 2:8).
2nd Thessalonians 2 tells us implicitly in verses 2-3 that the day of the LORD will not come unless the departure, the apostasia, comes first. “And then (and not until then) will the lawless one be revealed!” The revealing, apokalupto, the unveiling of the False Prophet, an Antichrist, marks the beginning of the Great Tribulation and the day(s) of the LORD. The Departure, the Gathering Together, marks the end of salvation by grace.
No one knows when the last days will be or the end times, but we should all live like they are here now since none of us are promised tomorrow. When I say we should live like these are our last days I mean operating the ministry of reconciliation like there was no tomorrow. We are our friends’ and acquaintances’ last best chance to believe in Christ as their Savior. Romans 10:9 and 10 is the number one best scripture for persuading someone to be saved and how to be saved. Let us not be weary in well doing.
The Last Days (Don’t put your foot in your mouth too)!
There is not just a little confusion over the Last Days. One of the reasons for this is because of what Peter said in Acts 2:14-21. What he said was not true and you will see that it was not true if you just look at Joel Chapter 2, from which he was quoting. The only thing Peter got right was the spirit being poured out.
Joel 2 is speaking about the coming of the Days of the LORD—“days of darkness and gloom, the sun an.d the moon are darkened, the stars quit shining, Yahweh utters his voice at the head of his army, numberless are they who obey his command, etc.” We are all guilty one time or another in a time of excitement of putting our foot in our mouths and this was one of Peter’s. After all, he did not know about the secret and wouldn’t know about it for a few years yet.
Believers spoke in tongues on the Day of Pentecost; they didn’t prophesy. the sun did not go black; the moon did not turn to blood and stars did n0t quit giving their light. What happened was not “what was spoken through the prophet Joel.”
The second usage of the words “in the last days” is in 2 Tim 3 where it says distressing times will come where people will be:
- lovers of themselves, implacable, slanderers, swollen with conceit,
- lovers of money, profligates, brutes, treacherous,
- boasters, arrogant, abusive, haters of good, reckless
- disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman
- lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
- holding to the outward form of godliness, but denying its power
Paul goes on to say that these folks are of corrupt minds and counterfeit faith, who oppose the truth. they are wicked people and impostors who will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and even themselves. Rather than spend time wondering who they are Paul exhorts Timothy and the rest of us “to continue in what we have learned and firmly believed, know from whom we have learned it (who did Timothy learn from? His teacher, his/our father in the Word, Paul).
I have covered this subject in great detail in my book, available at http://www.fredswolfe.com with my money back guarantee (if you don’t like it send it to me and I will send you your money back with shipping).
What do you think; do you think just because someone says something in the Bible makes it automatically true?
Illustrations by Rev. Clarence Larkin who died 90 years ago, which represent Oikonemia in Scripture
This picture represents what the prophets (including Jesus Christ) could see and know from the Scriptures. As you can see here the Prophets could not know or understand anything about the Church Age because God kept it a Secret from everyone until it was revealed to Paul and the other Apostles by the ascended Christ.
Rom 16:25-27
And to Him who is able to establish you, according to my good news, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the secret, in the times of the ages having been kept silent,
26 and now having been made manifest, also, through prophetic (Christian) writings, according to a command of the age-during God, having been made known to all the nations for obedience of faith —
27 to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to him [be] glory to the ages. Amen.
YLT
Eph 3:3-5
3 that by revelation He made known to me the secret, according as I wrote before in few [words] —
4 in regard to which ye are able, reading [it], to understand my knowledge in the secret of the Christ,
5 which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it was now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the spirit —
YLT
1 Cor 2:7-8
7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a musterion, secret, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
KJV
This one represents the Church of the Body of Christ versus the Kingdom of God and Christ. The resulting affect of this hidden wisdom is that the coming Kingdom which Jesus and the apostles expected soon after his ascension, would be put on hold or held in abeyance. As you can see, the Kingdom most Christians speak about as if it existed today, will not exist until after the Great Tribulation. As for now, Jesus is our Lord, not our king.
2 Peter 3:14-18
Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, 18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
NASU
This revelation is NOT to be ignored; you do so at your own destruction.
Will you be found blameless?
Are you among the untaught (unteachable) and unstable?
Are you being lead astray by the error of unprincipled men?
Are you growing in knowledge as well as grace?
The 2nd Coming of Christ is NOT the Rapture
The 2nd Coming of Christ
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Tribulation Now?
As thrilling as it might be to read things about the End Times & the Great Tribulation, no one knows when they will be. In chapters XI, XII, XIII & XIV of my book, I go into great detail why these events cannot be known and there are no prophecies that pertain to the times in which we live.
Before you order it through Amazon at https://fredswolfe.com/ you can “Look Inside.” Basically, before Jesus’ ascension, he did not know about the Age in which we live today. (Here is where some of you will say, “but he was God and God knows everything,” yet in his own admission he stated that only the Father knows when he is coming back.
There are some people who are now saying that we are in the beginning stages of the Tribulation because of all the atrocities and wars going on throughout the world, as well as the lawlessness that prevails in many government leaders. Because I am here, and am writing this, I can assure you that we are not. The False Prophet is unveiled at the beginning of the Tribulation, performing lying signs, miracles and wonders. Has anyone heard of this?
Many Christians do not believe in the Rapture of the Church prior to the unveiling of the False Prophet, one of the antichrist’s, but I do. The Bible states that unless “a falling away” he apostasia, comes first the son of perdition will not appear. You can see the true meaning of Apostasia in the footnotes of page 106, but basically it means departure. This departure is called the “gathering together” or episunagoge.
As far as prophecies go, yes there are many about the end times but not the administration of the Secret which God kept a secret until He told it to the ascended Christ who in turn revealed it to the apostle Paul. It only stands to reason by mere deduction that if only God knew about it, no one could prophesy about it. Doesn’t that make sense?
Yes, these are trying times and when this age will end, no one knows. For now all of our friends can still be saved by the grace of God for merely making Jesus The Lord of their lives and believing God raised him from the dead. After the tribulation begins, this will not be the case, as there will no longer be salvation by grace. During the tribulation salvation will only be available by staying faithful through it or to the end of your life, whichever comes first. The latter will most likely come first.
Take advantage of this opportunity to get saved, now, before it is too late. God Bless!
The Last Week of Christ’s Life
One of the more important times of the Christian calendar is what we call Easter, yet for as much as we think we know about it, there is much to be learned. Approaching the subject seems as exhaustive as an hour of the suffering that the Lamb of God, Jesus the Messiah, experienced. It seems to me that such an important time, culminating in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, more time should be spent than a few hours in Sunday School when we were children. A key ingredient that has led to some misunderstanding, in general, of the Bible is that it is an Eastern Book, written from the mindset of an Easterner as opposed to a Westerner.
In the East a new day begins at Sunset and the pre-day at dusk. The weekly Sabbath of Saturday, for those who observe it, are in a hurry to get home on Friday, before sundown, so they can observe that holy day properly. In the West we chose 12 midnight to begin our days because it is probably a lot more consistent. 12 midnight is always 12 midnight; while sunset changes 365 days a year, not too consistent. This makes it real easy for those of us who read the Bible to lose 12 hours and sometimes even 24 of a timeline, from here and there.
Because the last week of Jesus’ life is such a detailed study I am going to pass it off to one of my Teachers, John Schoenheit, of Spirit and Truth Fellowship International.
http://www.truthortradition.com/articles/the-last-week-of-christs-life
Another related teaching of John’s is , “Did God Really Forsake Jesus Christ on the Cross?”
http://www.truthortradition.com/articles/did-god-really-forsake-jesus-christ-on-the-cross
Enjoy Holy Week, as never before!
God bless,
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