Spiritual Wrestling In the Last Days Conflict

Posted : 20 Oct, 2012 04:56 AM

Spiritual Wrestling In the Last Days Conflict



"Spiritual Wrestling In the Last Days Conflict" does not fit the

end time or tribulation period scenario of the most popular theology

which came out of several 19th century theologies, such as the

Mormons, the Christian Science movement and Jehovah's Witnesses. Some

would include the Seventh Day Adventists in this list.



The concept of a heightened conflict in the very end times between

a majority of evangelicals allied with the Hebrew Roots, Messianic

Judaism and Sacred Name people who uphold the chosen people teaching

against the Remnant of Israel is certainly not mainstream church

doctrine and is not a part of dispensationalist end time prophecy.



But in the New Testament what is the falling away of II

Thessalonians 2: 3-4? This falling away in dispensationalist prophecy,

I believe, is to happen only during the tribulation period, and

apparently is part of the end time reign of the dispensationalist

Anti-Christ figure.



What kind of conflict within Christianity could lie behind the

martyrdom of Christians taught in John 16: 2 ("the time cometh that

whosoever killeth you will think he doth God service)?



The reference to synagogues is not limited to Jewish synagogues.

Synagogues is Strong's number 4864, meaning "an assemblage of persons,

a Jewish synagogue, by analogy, a Christian church, assembly,

congregation, synagogue." Sunagoge in the Greek, or synagogue, can

mean a Christian church.



Luke 21: 16 says: "And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and

brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they

cause to be put to death." "Some" has been added to the King James

English in Luke 21: 16, because the Greek word "tis", or "men",

meaning some is not in the Greek Textus Receptus, from which the KJV

is translated.



"And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates,

and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or

what ye shall say:" Luke 12: 11



And Matthew 24: 9 also mentions martyrdom of Christians. "Then

shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye

shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake."



It is interesting that the Greek word witness, for example, the

two witnesses of Revelation 12: 3 is Strong's number 3144, "martus,

mar-toos, a witness, by analogy, a martyr."



The Remnant of Israel in the last days heightened conflict against

those who uphold false doctrines are witnesses for Christ, and some

might become martus, or martyrs. Those who obey Isaiah 29: 24 and

Revelation 18: 4, and come out of false doctrines into the truth may

also become witnesses or martyrs.



In Luke 9: 51-56 there is the account of James and John who wanted

Christ to call fire down on the village of the Samaritans who rejected

Jesus. "And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be

received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

52. And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and

entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.

53. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though

he would go to Jerusalem.

54. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said,

Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and

consume them, even as Elias did?

55. But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what

manner of spirit ye are of.

56. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to

save them. "



"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it

more abundantly." John 10: 10



At that time James and John were still in the mindset of the Old

Covenant. In the transformation of physical Israel to that spiritual

house of I Peter 2: 5-9 one of the large changes was that in Christ

Jesus God's people no longer deliberately seek to kill others as had

been done under the Old Covenant and was done under the rule of the

Pharisees and Talmudic Judaism.



Christ came to bring spiritual life and, in addition, he did not

come to bring physical death.



Look at a concordance for the word kill, especially in Luke, John

and Acts. You will find a large number of verses in which the people

of physical Israel are trying to kill or have killed Christ and others

they considered to be threats. "Woe unto you! for ye build the

sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.

48. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers:

for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres.

49. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them

prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute:

50. That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the

foundation of the world, may be required of this generation;

51. From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which

perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It

shall be required of this generation." Luke 11: 47-51



"Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not

only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father,

making himself equal with God." John 5: 18



"After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk

in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.....Did not Moses give

you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to

kill me?" John 7: 1, 19



"When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and

they gnashed on him with their teeth..........Then they cried out with

a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one

accord,

58. And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the

witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name

was Saul.

59. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord

Jesus, receive my spirit.

60. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay

not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell

asleep." Acts 7: 54, 57-59



In Acts 21: 31 "And as they went about to kill him, tidings came

unto the chief captain of the band, that all Jerusalem was in an

uproar." The Jews caught Paul in the temple where he was sent by James

to take part in a ceremony of purification and tried to kill him.



Death is spiritual death in Scripture, and Hell is a place of

torment. The use of

Death and Hell, with Death usually coming before Hell, (except in

Revelation 1; 18) in Scripture almost suggests that Death and Hell are

being used as personifications. As persons might be thrown into the

lake of fire, in Revelation 20: 14 Death and Hell are said to be cast

into the lake of fire.



In Revelation 6: 8 the name of the rider on the pale horse is

Death, and Hell followed after him.



Rejecting the Gospel message that Christ as fully God appeared on

earth in man's flesh leads to spiritual death, as Peter says in Acts

3: 23 every soul who rejects Christ is destroyed from among the

people. He is talking here to the Jews, but what he says about being

destroyed spiritually by rejecting Christ applies to everyone.

However, for our understanding of who and what Israel reborn in Christ

is as our identity in Christ, Peter's statement that Jews who rejct

Christ are destroyed from among the people is significant. There is

only one Israel reborn in Christ, and all who belong to it are saved

because they accept Christ.



Jesus Christ is life. Christ in John 4: 14 says "...but the water

that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up

into everlasting life."



One of the two parts of Satan's work

in men to defeat the Gospel of Christ is the spirit of anti-Christ and

the second is the False Prophet. Neither are one man, but represent many

with the spirit of anti-Christ and many false prophets.



The spirit of anti-Christ is death because it openly rejects

Christ who is life. The false

prophet, who in Revelation 13: 11-12 is the second beast who

causes "...the earth and them

which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound

as healed," who is the spirit

of anti-Christ, is hell.



In his book, Dispensationalism (1966), Charles Ryrie says "The

essence of Dispensationalism, then, is the distinction between Israel

and the church."(page 3, "Dispensationalism")



"The nature of the church is a crucial point of difference between

classic, or normative, dispensationalism and other doctrinal systems.

Indeed, ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church, is the touchstone

of dispensationalism(and also of pretribulationalism)."

(page 123, Charles Ryrie Dispensationalism (Chicago: Moody Press,

[1966], 1995)



J. Dwight Pentecost is another dispensationalist theologian who in

his book Things To Come ( 1965) says "The church

and Israel are two distinct groups with whom God has a divine plan.

The church is a mystery, unrevealed in the Old Testament. This mystery

program must be completed before God can resume His program with

Israel and bring it to completion. These considerations all arise from

a literal method of interpretation."

(page 193, J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come, Zondervan, 1965).



The term dispensationalism can be misleading for those who do not

know the basic

starting position of this theology, that God has two different

peoples, not one as John 10: 16

clearly says, and that unsaved physical Israel which as a house

rejected Christ remain God's

chosen people. Christian Zionism is a more accurate term for the

theology.



In Christian Zionism Israel is always all physical Israel, and no

distinction

is made between that majority of physical Israel that rejected

Christ and the

remnant which accepted him. So, the theology is honoring those who rejected

Christ, and did not just substitute a similar Christ and a similar

Gospel for him and his real

Gospel. Therefore the theology honors those who support death.

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