Missionaries: What I don't like about 'em

I have been thinking about missionaries recently. Not everything that I have been thinking is complimentary.

First, let me start by saying that I absolutely support the idea of missionaries, including the idea that they receive financial support.

My complaint with missionaries is that I suspect (not being able to actually read anyone's heart) that it is one of the most abused "professions". I am convinced that many who seek to become missionaries have their own glory in mind rather than God’s—even if they don’t recognize it. Not all, maybe not even most, but a sizable “some”.

It is well worth remembering that simple catechism lesson: Man's chief aim is to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31).

Regular readers know that I am strongly in the Calvinistic predestination camp. There may be suspicion that this view disinclines me as to the merits of missionary work and evangelism. If so, that reflects an inaccurate view of Calvinism. Proper Reformed teaching states that, at least in the normative sense, man must hear the gospel in order to be saved (Rom. 10:13-15).

After all, the Apostle Paul was both the world's greatest teacher of Calvinism and the world's greatest missionary. ¹

Now it is true that as a Calvinist I view missionary work different from an Arminian. I think a missionary should have this point of view:

God, grant me the privilege of being used to preach your gospel.

Rather than

God, I want to reach the unsaved and help them to accept Christ as their "personal Lord and Savior".

The former approach is the one supported in scripture (e.g., Acts 8:25,40). The latter is not.

And this does touch upon some of the errors made by missionaries. Here are a few:

• Over there syndrome This is the view that, somehow, souls are more valuable in far away places than in your backyard. If 25% of Americans are saved (a generous assumption) that still leaves about 200 million unsaved Americans, more than the population of most countries. Now a Calvinistic missionary, who understands that preaching the gospel, not collecting converts, is the role of the missionary, has a stronger argument for going to remote places. He could argue that most of these 200 million Americans have heard already. An Arminian missionary, to be consistent, should go for numbers, which he easily can find at home. In either case, one much watch for this mistake: It is far sexier to be a missionary in a remote and even dangerous place than at the shopping mall near home.
  
  
• God Needs Me Syndrome This is a kind of missionary-guilt, very Arminian, that causes a missionary or potential missionary to worry that people will go to hell if he cannot do the missionary work he desires. There is no support for such a concern in scripture. Nowhere do we read that the Holy Spirit was disappointed because He wanted to regenerate someone, but Paul just didn't make to the right place and so the poor soul was lost. On the contrary, scripture teaches that the sheep are saved in spite of man's efforts, not because of them (John 10: 27-30).
  
  
• I must be a professional Missionary Syndrome Here the missionary is overwhelmed with the notion that he is being called to be a missionary. Maybe he is, but maybe he just wants to be a missionary. Admittedly knowing the will of God is not easy. But I am convinced that many potential missionaries will ignore multitudinous signs that they should not go into the field. Signs such as a lack of support, or other opportunities and people that God is placing before you. If you find yourself saying that is a great opportunity, but right now I just want to concentrate on getting support for my missionary work, then I suggest that you may be ignoring God's will.

The financial support question is interesting and tricky. I do believe that pastors and missionaries deserve our support. However we do have Paul's teaching:

⁷For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, ⁸nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. ⁹We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. (2 Th. 3:7-9)

Now the "tentmaking" doctrine is often misused, but I think Paul is teaching that a good model ² is a missionary who works and preaches the gospel. Paul could take his work with him. Some people can't. What type of missionary better fits the model: A high school teacher who, one evening a week and on Saturdays preaches the gospel to people on the streets of his hometown (while at the same time glorifying God in the manner he conducts himself at work and maintaining fellowship in a local church) or a high school teacher that quits is job and heads out to the missionary field, living on the financial support of others? It sure ain't obvious to me that the latter glorifies God more than the former.

---

¹ Usually when you write "Paul was the greatest (whatever)" somebody will respond that no, Jesus was the greatest (whatever). Fair enough. Jesus did teach predestination effectively. In fact, on at least two occasions He summarized the entire doctrine in a single verse, namely: Matt 22:14 and John 6:44.

² This is not unlike the issue of celibacy. Paul teaches, fairly clearly, that the model for a pastor/missionary is celibacy, while acknowledging that not everyone will be up to the task (1 Cor 7:32-34). The Roman Catholic church errs in turning a suggestion into a requirement. Protestants make a more insidious error in the other direction. We applaud extreme violations of Paul’s suggestion, looking with admiration upon pastors and missionaries who boast that they’ll have as many kids as God gives them. And to our shame, I suspect we would look upon with suspicion an unmarried pastoral candidate who said he never intended to wed.

Who can be Optimistic?

A common criticism of Postmillennialism is its optimism, namely its assertion that things will improve prior to the Second coming. The world will become more and more Christian. Surely you cannot say, so the complaint goes, that things are getting better. Why only a fool would make such a claim.

First of all, a good argument can be made that, worldwide, things are getting better. But I am not going to make that argument, for it is irrelevant.

Secondly, one could reply to this argument, which is based on newspapers rather than scripture, with a similarly non-scriptural-referenced feel-good rebuttal. Such as: Do you think Christ is really going to return only to find an utterly defeated church? No, your God is too small. Christ will return a victorious King, His Church, through the power of the Spirit having spread to all nations.

Actually that argument can be backed by scripture, but it is sometimes made without referring to scripture, as if it is manifestly true.

Even if we concede that things are getting worse, it is totally and utterly irrelevant. If the dismal state of society alone convicts us that things cannot turn around and get better, then, in effect, the implication is that Satan has more power than God. Do you really think that God cannot usher in a revival at any point in history of His choosing?

The only relevant question is whether scripture promises a victory for the church on earth. If it does, then we must embrace the optimism of postmillennialism regardless of present conditions. We cannot assume that things are so bad that even God cannot alter our downward spiral.

To do so is to make the error of Sarah, who laughed at God’s promise of a son. Surely even God cannot cause seed to grow in an old barren womb is an argument of similar logic to the one that rejects postmillennialism merely because it is optimistic.

¹ The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. ² "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Gen. 12:1-3)

Some translations use the phrase all families rather than all peoples. No matter, through one descendent of Noah, God has vowed to bless representatives of all descendents of Noah.

This is a promise—an unconditional promise. It does not read, all peoples will be blessed IF AND ONLY IF YOU DO (whatever). It is a promise God made, and surely He will keep.

There are three possibilities:

1. God has fulfilled the promise already.
2. God will fulfill the promise after Christ returns.
3. God will fulfill the promise before Christ returns.

Postmillennialists believe the third option is correct, and find support for their position elsewhere in scripture.

But that's enough for now.

Absence

Sorry for the extended absence, I hope to be posting on a regular basis, starting with "The Old Testament is not a journal", below.

The Old Testament is not a journal

The Old Testament is highly eschatological. This is contrary to the usual view, wherein the Old Testament is viewed as historical.

In fact, the Old Testament is best described eschatological in a historic setting. The reason that we don't recognize it, is that it is an eschatology that looks forward to something that (for the most part) has now been fulfilled: primarly the first advent and, I believe, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.

In the "faith" chapter of Hebrews, chapter 11, we read:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. (Hebrews 11:13)

"These people" refers to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., as well as other great practitioners of faith, such as Rahab. The lived by faith in eschatological promises never fulfilled in their lifetime, such as the occupation of the Promised Land and the coming of the Messiah. Likewise we live with a promise, most likely to remain unfulfilled in our lifetime, of the Second Advent.

As early as Genesis 3 we find an eschatological promise:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." (Gen 3:15)

Here God promises a Redeemer to crush Satan’s head, which is accomplished through Christ’s finished work on the Cross.

The ancestry of the promised Redeemer is refined throughout the Old Testament. He is the seed of Eve in Gen 3:15, a descendant of Abraham in Gen 22:18, of the tribe of Judah in Gen 49:10, and the descendent of David in 2 Sam 7:12-13.

Another eschatological promise in the Old Testament is the New Covenant. We read in Jeremiah:

³¹ "The time is coming," declares the LORD , "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, " declares the LORD . (Jer. 31:31,32)

In Hebrews 8:8-13 it is confirmed that this New Covenant was ushered in by Christ.

Other Old Testament eschatological promises include: The restoration of Israel (Jer. 23:3) (although exactly what that means is the subject of intense debate), The Day of the Lord (e.g., Isa. 13:9-11, Zeph 1:14-15) (again, fierce debate as to what that means) and Pentecost (Joel 2:28-19).

There is even Old Testament eschatological promise for which there is nearly universal agreement (save for full preterism proponents) that it has not yet been fulfilled: A new heavens and earth:

"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. (Isa. 65:17).

Do not mistakenly view that Old Testament as having been written as a journal, merely recording events as they occurred. It is overwhelmingly forward-looking.

Persuing Holiness: the Impossible Dream

A trishagion is a Hebrew literary device used to denote an extreme form of emphasis. The thing being emphasized is repeated three times. It is used only a few times in scripture, such as in

As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: "Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!" (Rev. 8:13)

It’s not bad news for the inhabitants of earth, or really bad news, or even really, really bad news. It is really, really, REALLY bad news.

More commonly in scripture we find the use of the weaker yet still powerful, in terms of its emphasis, bishagion. Jesus used it, for example:

Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)

Only once is the pent ultimate trishagion used to describe an attribute of God. It occurs in Isaiah:

And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." (Isaiah 6:3)

The attribute is holiness. To me, it is the most important of God’s attributes, and for me, the least understood.

We are called to be holy. And are made holy (sanctified). But I think God’s holiness is of a different kind altogether. There are blue M & Ms (I think). And the sky is blue, for different and more complicated reasons. And then there is the concept of blueness. All the same, blue, but all different. So it is with holiness.

The reason I say this is twofold. And both reasons are nebulous.

First, for all other attributes of God, such as mercy, love, patience, etc., I have seen and understand the attribute when I see it in men. I have seen men be merciful, loving, and patient.

I never met a man and then said to myself, this man is holy.

Second, I think that God’s holiness is what necessitates a redemptive plan that involves Christ dying a substitutionary death on our behalf. Because to me, the greatest mystery of all is: why. Why did Christ have to come to die in our place? God is all powerful. He is a God of mercy. Why not just forgive us as we are and accept us into heaven. Why did there have to be a perfect atonement? What demanded it?

The usual answer refers to another attribute of God, his justice. Justice, so it is said, demands payment. But mercy exactly nullifies that: an undeserved avoidance of punishment; a suspension of the sentence. In some sense God was not merciful at all, he demanded and received payment. Just not from the guilty party, but from His Son. Of course that is just a strange way to look at it. In truth He was/is infinitely merciful to provide a plan of redemption for a fallen race.

But that is a rabbit trail. To say that God requires the Cross because of His justice is, to me, a tautology. A reformulation of the question as a statement—He demands it because He demands it.

No, I think the answer lies in God’s holiness. There are lots of mind games people play about "is there anything an all powerful God cannot do". They are always poorly formed dilemmas. The real question is: is there any power that can thwart God’s sovereign will? The answer is no. But are there things God cannot do? There surely are—anything that violates His character. He cannot lie. And His holiness cannot be sullied by the presence of sinful creatures. He cannot accept us without the atonement not because He is a God of justice, although indeed He is, but because His perfect holiness simply cannot accommodate us as we are.

There is only one passage in the scriptures that gives me any sense of insight into the incomprehensibility of God’s holiness. Again from Isaiah:

Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5)

Isaiah felt the awesomeness God’s holiness, or at least a vision of it, and his response was almost suicidal. God’s holiness is not like ours, only better. We are the blackest black, He the whitest white.

We are to pursue holiness, but in all honesty I don’t know how. It is like chasing a forgotten dream.

Mail Call (Cont.)

Continuing now with Robert Bauer’s objections to Calvinism.

The second objection is one of consciousness. If some have been predestined to be unrepentant sinners, then why are they conscious? Wouldn't it be better for them to be merely "furniture" for the Elect?


Yes it would be better for them. Just as it would have been better for Judas. However, we don’t get to make that call. God has prepared these unfortunates according to His own plan, as much as it seems pointless and cruel to us.

Again, this problem is not just for Calvinists. On average, every day more people die who have not heard the gospel than on any other day in history. (I would give proper attribution if I could remember where I heard it.) Arminian theology teaches that, at least in the normative sense, these poor souls who have not made a personal commitment to Christ are lost. It would also be better for them to have never been born.

For that matter, why would the Elect be conscious if their consciousness had no bearing on their actions, as God knows exactly what they'll do in a given circumstance and manipulates events to cause the Elect to follow their inclinations in such a way as to be led to Salvation?

God's knowing what people will do in a given circumstance is part of his Sovereignty. Arminians do not deny this attribute. Predestination is taught by both Calvinists and Arminians, It has to be, it is mentioned so prominently is scripture. Calvinists teach "classic" predestination, while Arminians teach the "foreknowledge based" version.

The only manipulation suggested by Calvinism, and I agree it is radical, is that man is given a new heart, one that seeks God. And it is true that by this means he inevitably draws us to Him. At the same time, the free will is not dead and the old self is alive and kicking, causing a great deal of mischief for which we will have to make an accounting. So Calvinism does teach that (a) God violates our will be giving us a new heart and (b) The elect are irresistibly and inevitably drawn to him. But it also teaches that, far from robots, we are engaged in a constant, personal battle of the will against temptation and sin.


It seems to me that at least *some* volition is necessary on the part of the sinner. Let's say a man has fallen into a ravine, and while he's not seriously hurt, he's going to die if he can't get out. He's got a park safety brochure with him, and so he pulls out his cell phone and dials the ranger station for help, and they dispatch forces to help him. The rangers throw him a rope and tell him that if he'll just grab it and keep hold of it, they'll pull him up to safety. If he does so, then it is not of any act of his own that he got out except by calling for help. He is free to let go of the rope at any time, if for instance he distrusts the rangers or wants to make a go of extracting himself without their help. Similarly, when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge, I'm not sure they fell into utter helplessness. As they now had knowledge, they not only knew that many earthly pleasures might make them happier than obeying God, but also (or at least their later descendants did) that they had an escape from pain available by God's outstreched hand.


Yes, that is a classic Arminian metaphor. The problem is that it is not found anywhere in scripture, as much as we would wish it so. (Personally I don’t wish it so. I am happy that the only thing I contribute to my salvation is my sin.) What scripture says about fallen man is not that he is gravely ill, but that he is dead, and he can contribute no more to his rebirth that Lazarus could have assisted in being brought back to life. To wit, scripture teaches:

• The intent of our heart is "only evil continuously".
  
  
• Our "righteous" deeds are filthy garments.
  
  
• Nobody is good.
  
  
• We cannot see the Kingdom of God.
  
  
• We are not righteous.
  
  
• Nobody understands; Nobody seeks God.
  
  
• We have turned aside; we are useless. None of us does good.
  
  
• We do not fear God.
  
  
• We are hostile to God. We are unable (not just unwilling) to submit to the law of God.
  
  
• We cannot please God.
  
  
• We were dead (not just gravely ill) in our sins.
  
  
• We walked according to Satan.
  
  
• We lived in the lusts of our flesh. We were children of wrath.
  

Not a pretty picture. Just look at one of them: We cannot please God. Would not our assent to the Gospel, from our natural will as demanded by Arminianism, please God?

Arminianism demands the impossible.

Mail Call

I got email from Robert Bauer aka The Hokie Pundit with some tough questions regarding Calvinism/Predestination. He gave me permission to use it as the basis for some posts, which I will do by addressing his objections one-by-one. Notice I didn’t say answer his objections. I promise nothing.


Dear David,

Partially sparked by some of your posts, I'm examining Millennialism and the Calvinist/Arminian debate right now, though concentrating mostly on the latter for now. I've been reading Sproul and Boettner, and while they make a very good argument for Predestination, it's the contradiction with what I perceive to be God's nature that poses the problem for me. While I've looked for their answer to certain objections, they either haven't answered or their answers have gone over my head (Boettner is especially frustrating, since his response to any objection seems to be "It's a mystery. Moving along..."). The main problems as I see them are on the origin of sin, on consciousness, and on the power of God.

We are constantly assured that God isn't the author of sin. However, in viewpoints which seem to support Predestination, it's hard to escape the opposite conclusion. When Adam was created, he either had no predispositions, was predisposed to good, or was predisposed to evil. If he had no predispositions, then he would have no reason to obey or disobey God and would have to have been given prods and urges, effectively making him inclined to either good or bad. Genesis says that God saw that his creation was "good," and so must Adam have been. It would appear to me that it was Satan who changed this, by creating a situation where Adam sinned by not preventing Eve from eating from the Tree of Knowledge. This raises two points. Firstly, God allowed man to be corrupted when he could've prevented it (though I'll buy an argument that says God had to allow it for some other purpose, such as a promise to Satan or for a greater good). Secondly, we've simply moved up one step, and need to ask how the very best of God's angels could've been corrupted. The only answers I can deduce from this objection are that either God created sin or there is another being with at least partial sovereignty (leading to either Manichaeism or Arminism, depending on whether you want that being to be natural or supernatural).


Robert,

These are good questions, and I do not have any answers. Much smarter people than I (e.g., Jonathan Edwards) have struggled with the problem of the origin of sin or the introduction of evil, and nobody has come up with a plausible explanation that clearly protects God from culpability, which means nobody has uncovered the correct explantion.

I have no clue whatsoever where evil comes from, and agree than if you pawn it all off on Satan you simply hide the problem at one level removed, accomplishing nothing. Clearly this is indeed a great mystery.

I also agree that it is manifestly obvious that God allowed man to sin and thus to fall, in the sense that He could have prevented it. Why didn't He? I don't know. Oh, you can say "so that He could demonstrate his love by providing a plan of redemption" but that seems more a restatement of what happened rather than an explanation.

However, I don’t see how all this especially a problem for Calvinism.

I think one must always be careful not to equate Calvinism with determinism. The pre-fall free will is exactly the same to a Calvinist and an Arminian. Their views on the post-fall free will are essentially the same, with one small but significant difference: To the Calvinist, fallen man, due to the radical extent of his corruption as a result of Adam’s failure (the true meaning of original sin) has a moral inability to choose God. He has the natural ability, i.e., he has free will, but his degradation prevents him from even seeking God. That does not detract one iota from the liberty of his will.

Not a perfect analogy, but think about this: (Most likely) you will never choose to hold a hot iron to your face, or shove a nail into your eyes. You just "can't" choose it even though you "can".

To the Arminian, man has at least a vestigial ability to choose God. His will isn't any freer, but he has slightly different inclinations in his repertoire.

The Calvinist and the Arminian agree that (a) Adam chose to sin and (b) Adam had the ability, natural and moral, to chose not to sin.

It is only after the fall where we being to disagree, a disagreement ultimately over the extent of the corruption.

Adam was created with a free will; he, as are we, was a volitional creature. The difference between Adam and post fall (unsaved) man is that Adam had inclinations to please God. He had the moral ability not to sin. After the fall, man lost those inclinations along with the moral ability. Before being saved, man cannot choose not to sin. Everything an unsaved man does, no matter how noble it appears, is sinful.

There is a simple model, about which I have posted, that says man only chooses that to which he is most inclined, i.e. man is a slave to his desires. That is a model of the will, and Calvinism or Reformed theology does not depend on that specific model, although I do believe (a) that model has a great deal of merit and (b) it is too simplistic to be the total answer. Calvinism does stand-or-fall (in my opinion) on unsaved man's inability to choose God on his own, independent of how the will actually works itself out.


I will post and address the rest of Robert’s email in the days to come.

Awaiting Christ’s Third Coming

Virtually all Christians believe in a rapture of some form or another, with the familiar definitive text coming from 1 Thessalonians:

¹⁶For 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. ¹⁷After 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.(1Th 4:16-17)

The questions which divide us are (a) when this is to occur and (b) whether there is a great seven year tribulation which occurs afterwards. More succinctly, does this passage refer to The Second Coming of Christ, bodily to earth, or does it refer to a secret second coming, or maybe the onset of The Second Coming, with the caveat that it takes seven years to complete.

The highly popular (and highly effective at generating revenue) 170 year young dispensationalist premillennial view proclaims the following complex schema:

The rapture occurs, resulting from a secret second coming, and the church is taken away. All non-believers are “left behind”.

There follows:

• The appearance of the antichrist
  
• The seven year “great tribulation”
  
• The tribulation ends with the Battle of Armageddon, at which time Christ returns for the second time, a second time.
  
• For 1000 years, Christ will rule from David’s throne in Jerusalem.
  
• The temple is rebuilt, memorial animal sacrifices are re-instituted (of all the aspects of this view, this one borders on an abomination, in my opinion).
  
• At the end of the millennium, Satan will be released and a short-lived rebellion takes place. After it is crushed, the wicked are cast into the lake of fire and the eternal state begins.

Why is the rapture "secret"

This is complicated, and related to the belief that the tribulation occurs after the rapture.

The main reason is that Christ's "real" second coming is tied to judgment and the general resurrection. But neither (at least not the judgment of the wicked) occur before the tribulation, yet the tribulation occurs after the rapture. Hence the rapture cannot be the real second coming, but a preliminary secret mission to remove the church.

The church must be removed for two reasons; one is a red herring in my mind. The true reason the church is removed (in this schema) is so that God can go back to dealing with the ethnic Jews, a hallmark of dispensationalism.

However, another reason given is that there is scriptural support that believers are spared the tribulation. Unfortunately, there is also scriptural support that believers are not spared. In fact, if we look at the consummate tribulation text in the Olivet Discourse, we read:

¹⁹How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! ²⁰Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. ²¹For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now--and never to be equaled again. ²²If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. (Matt 24:19-22)

Virtually everyone agrees that this is a description of the tribulation, and that elect refers to believers (independent of one’s view of predestination). Surely then, there are believers at the time of the tribulation.

No problem, say the pretrib premills, these are believers that come to Christ after the rapture. The are given a "second chance" as it were.

The real mystery to me is who wouldn't believe in Christ after they were left behind, at least those millions who know (from reading Left Behind) what happened.

But the house-of-cards is on shaky ground here, apart from purely common sense questions. Consider this passage

⁶And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. ⁷For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. ⁸And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. (2Th 2:6-8

The problem is this:

• The He who removes His restraint at the start of the tribulation, freeing the antichrist to make his mischief is the Holy Spirit.
  
• This is consistent with removing the Church—since the Spirit indwells believers, if you remove the Church you remove the Spirit, and vice versa. So far so good.
  
• Exactly how are those left behind to become believers without the Spirit?
  

As I said, I think removing the church so that it doesn't have to endure the tribulation is not the real reason. The real reason is dispensationalism and its belief that God is not finished with the ethnic Jews.

On the other hand, is there precedent for removing His people to avoid a tribulation?

And God sent horrible plagues upon Egypt, culminating with the death of the first born. To spare the Hebrews from this great tribulation, He removed them from the earth, and kept them safe in the sky until the his wrath was satisfied, then he returned them to Egypt from where His servant Moses led them out of captivity.

Uh – no that is not how it happened. The Hebrews both endured the tribulation and yet were spared the brunt of it, in situ. The same will be true for the Church.

Secret? Some secret

Another problem is that the rapture, as described in 1Th 4, does not sound very secret. It talks about Christ visibly returning, with the voices of the archangels, and the shouts of trumpets. Possibly graves are split open as the dead in Christ arise. At any rate, this is hardly the "poof, they’re gone" as described in Left Behind. To avoid this problem, we sometimes are told that all these things do happen, but they are visible/audible only to the believers who are being raptured away. Convenient—and mentioned nowhere in scripture.

Oh That 70th Week

The dispensationalist premillennial view of the seventy weeks of Daniel, the cornerstone of their eschatology, results from one slightly tortured piece of exegesis. Take a look at the familiar passage:

²⁴ "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.
²⁵ "So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.
²⁶ "Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.
²⁷ "And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate."(Dan 9:24-27)

The decree to rebuild Jerusalem, mentioned in verse 25, is reasonably assumed to come from Artaxerxes in 445 BC (Neh 2:1-8). There is general agreement for treating each week as seven years (perhaps of only 360 days, but that is a detail). The point of the prophecy is so that one might discern, at least roughly, when to expect the Messiah, namely after sixty nine weeks, or 483 years, which is in the ball park (especially with 360 day years, but no matter).

The problem with the premillennial view comes in the all-important seventieth week, and it is twofold:

1. Dispensationalism views the seventieth week as starting just after the rapture, at the onset the "great tribulation" wherein the antichrist has made a pact with Jerusalem, only to renege on the deal halfway through the week (3 ½ years). However, as we all know, the rapture has not yet occurred. This means the dispensationalist pre-trib pre-mill view has the first sixty-nine weeks as continuous, while for some reason there is a (two-thousand years and counting) gap between week sixty-nine and seventy, a gap that receives no mention whatsoever in scripture.
   
2. The second problem is related to the first. The subject "he" in verse 27 is taken to be the antichrist, or the "prince" of verse 26. However the general rules of grammar hold that if a subject is ambiguous, then it is assumed to be the subject of the previous sentence. The antecedent of "he" in verse 27 is "the Messiah" of verse 26, not the "prince". Much like the construct:
   
   The man took the dog out in the morning. He picked up the newspaper.
   
   Here, absent further elaboration, we are compelled to assume that the "he" who picked up the newspaper was the man, not the dog.

For postmillennials and amillennials the "he" in verse 27 is Christ (You gotta love it, some say it’s Christ, some say its antichrist) and the half-week refers to Christ’s roughly 3 ½ year ministry. There is no "gap" between weeks sixty-nine and seventy.

Technical Problems

My blog has been experiencing paroxysms of agony recently. Is it just me, or are all/many blogspotters seeing more and more of the dreaded "page not found" when hitting their site? Not to mention problems with speed, permalinks, and occasional faulty formatting.