BILLY GRAHAM IS NOT IN HEAVEN... YET

BY PASTOR DOUG BATCHELOR

There is voluminous evidence in the Bible that the Kingdom of God will reign on this earth!

"But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the House of the Eternal shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people [physical human beings will still be alive on the earth during that day!] shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Eternal, and to the House of the God of Jacob and He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Eternal from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Eternal of Hosts has spoken it" (Micah 4:1-4).

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God [meaning, 'God-breathed'], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16)

Major footnote: When Paul wrote his letter to Timothy there was No "New Testament". Paul is talking about the Tanach (what christians call the old testament)

The divinely-revealed Word of God is the ultimate source to which we must go to discover the real truth about the reward of the saved, about what happens at death; about the promise of "heaven," or the threat of "hell."

Wouldn't it seem logical to you that if heaven is the reward of the saved; that if hell is the reward of sinners; that if the saints are raptured away to heaven—there would at least be one scripture somewhere in the Bible plainly saying so?

Jesus was a Jew. I know, shocking to some, he would most definitely been versed in the thirteen principles of faith, one of which is the belief in the resurrection of the dead.

"The Christian idea of rapture is another such idea, which has little or nothing to do with Jewish tradition, which has always believed in the notion of the resurrection of the dead.”

Belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead is so fundamental to Jewish thought that it is one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith. These 13 basic Jewish beliefs were compiled in the 12th century by the one of the greatest codifiers of Jewish law, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (also known as Maimonides or Rambam).

I believe with perfect faith that there will be a resurrection of the dead at the time when it shall please the Creator, Blessed be His name, and His mention shall be exalted for ever and ever.

"Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise–awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust–for Thy dew is as the dew of light, and the earth shall bring to life the shades.” Isaiah 26:19

"When Christ returns, the false prince—Satan—will be judged and cast out (John 16:11)" ~Pastor Doug Batchelor

Christian, what are you going to say to G-d of Israel when your god Jesus doesn’t return?

Worshiper of Jesus, Christian/Messianic, what are you going to say when you stand before G-d after the false man-god Jesus whom you worship and to whom you pray doesn’t appear? What are you going to say to your Maker when you knew all along (and I am merely reminding you here now) that worshiping anyone or anything other than Him is a grave sin and betrayal? How will you justify your worship of a mortal creature to whom billions bow their knees? Will you deny that you knew that He has warned you that He was neither a man nor a son of man (Numbers 23:19), that He had no visible form and that He can’t be compared to anything He created? Will you try to defend yourself that you only followed your leaders or will you admit to G-d your sin of idolatry? Will you appeal to the polished literary character from the pages of your New Testament? Will you tell G-d that Jesus paid for your sins by his blood when He explicitly warned that He doesn’t approve of human sacrifices (Leviticus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 12:31) and that no man can punished for the sins of another (Ezekiel 18:20)? Will you point to the [Greek] Testament in your defense and claim it to be the “word of G-d”? Will you claim that you have put your faith in Jesus, Paul, apostles, the church scribes, church fathers, pastors and evangelists? Will you attempt to boldly walk into the Holy of Holies as the author of Hebrews exhorts you to do (Hebrews 10:19) and demand to be allowed in since you placed your trust in a “son of man”, despite the fact that G-d has told us in Numbers 23:19 not to do just that? What will come out of your mouth? Do you know?

The Bible already knows what you are going to say. Indeed, it gives us a glimpse of your very words and it tells us in the Jewish scriptures, the writings that you call “the Old Testament”, the words all of the nations will utter before the G-d of Israel in the end of days:

“To you (Hashem) shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Do people make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!” (Jeremiah 16:19-20)

Today, however, the choice is still yours. Today, you can still either choose to continue worshiping Jesus as you god, to proclaim him as your “lord and savior” or you can choose to discard your idolatry and turn to the living G-d of Israel and Him alone. Make no mistake – you DO have a choice whom you will serve – if a man Jesus whom Christianity has deified to seat him on G-d’s throne is your ba’al (Hebrew word for “lord”), serve him. But if the G-d of Israel is the L-rd, then you know what you need to do. If you choose idolatry over the Living G-d of Israel, do not think that there is safety in the great numbers among the nations that Christianity and other religions can boast. As G-d said:

“Before Him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by Him as worthless and less than nothing. To whom, then, will you compare G-d? What image will you compare him to?” (Isaiah 40:17-18)

Source: https://dailyminyan.com/2014/12/15/christian-what-are-you-going-to-say-to-g-d-of-israel-when-your-god-jesus-doesnt-return/

The End Was Nigh: "88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988"

"88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988...2012" (Eschatology is Hard)

I recently joined an online discussion about eschatology, or the study of the "end times". I began my thoughts with reference to a modern "classic" (er, sort of):

Actually JB, the book that comes to my memory is "88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988". Apparently we missed it! :)

The truth that strikes me about date-setting specifically (and predictions more generally) is that, despite the fact that Jesus' first coming was, at the time, the most prophesied event in human history, nearly everyone got it wrong ... including (indeed, especially) the most humanly "prepared"--the Jewish clergy. Their problem was not a lack of information, it was the hardness of their hearts compounded by the inability to imagine God's actual plan beyond their narrow, self-referential interpretation of Scripture.

What this tells me is that the purpose of the prophecies about His second coming is not prediction, but preparation.

If pressed, I will confess to amillenialist leanings, which is to say that I tend to think the "last days" began in the 1st Century (Heb 1:2) and that the "thousand years" of Revelation 20 is a figurative reference to Christ's present reign over His church (this interpretation requires a non-chronological reading of Revelation). I generally admit to that tentatively, because I find the topic to be more divisive than it ought to be; because I think Jesus' first coming demonstrates that interpreting prophecy is much harder than we tend to think it is; and because it is far from being a central point of the Faith.

Moreover, my understanding of church history is that eschatology can be very trendy ... in other words, the popular view of this subject often changes with the times, with the ebb and flow of world events. This is an understandable phenomenon, but should caution us that our interpretations are easily influenced by the specific places and times in which we live.

My guess is that, when He does return, the circumstances will be unlike anything most of us has quite imagined, yet all of us will afterwards conclude that we should have known (and, more importantly, should have been prepared), as the prophecies will have clearly foretold precisely the way it actually happened. In other words, it'll be kinda like the first time, if only in that sense ... :) 

Back to my point about "not prediction, but preparation", I rather like the way Keith Green put it (*Update -- the old Keith Green YouTube video was taken down, so I've replaced it with another version of the same song):

Source:

"Back to my point about "not prediction, but preparation" 

Many Protestant Christians believe that the end of the world will come in the form of what they call the Rapture, when the righteous will all be whisked away to heaven. Shakers believed the Rapture would come in 1792. Seventh Day Adventists first calculated it would happen in 1843, then when nothing happened, they found an error in their calculations and corrected it to 1844. The Jehovah's Witnesses made firm predictions for 1918, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1984, and 1994. A book was published in 1988 called 88 Reasons the Rapture is in 1988. A number of Bible scholars found firm scriptural evidence that the Rapture would happen in October of 2005. Thousands of Koreans gave away all their money and possessions in preparation for the Rapture on October 28, 1992. Even Sir Isaac Newton made a calculation based on scripture that showed the Rapture could not happen before 2060. Some Jewish scholars place the "end of days" via Armageddon in the year 2240. I couldn't find 2012 mentioned in any of these stories.

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Is the Rapture a Biblical Doctrine?

The Doctrine of the Rapture of the Church is the popular Nicean Christian belief that at some point in the future HaShem will extract all true "Christians" from the earth, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" leaving everyone else here to suffer under the reign of the coming Antichrist (Rex Mundi).

This idea gained popular support through the teachings of Dr. Clarence Larkin (Dispensational Truths), Rev. Charles Scofield (The Scofield Bible), a plethora of Second and Third Great Awakening Evangelists (see my study The Great Awakenings for more on these religious developments), and more recently from the unbiblical works of fiction by Tim Lahey known as The Left Behind Series in which the Antichrist is depicted as a Transylvanian Dracula-type Liberal do-gooder gone bad! Likewise, Family Radio of Harold Camping has used this teaching to mislead millions. We need to understand the truth of this! Is this a biblical doctrine?  More: