Posted by: John Mark Coney
Comment: #2
Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:40 AM
As a Christian Zionist, who was taught to expect the rapture c2000AD, I find anti-Zionism to be odd.
I never expected nuclear war, and still do not, although I believe some Any-Moment-Rapturists do find
descriptions in the Prophets of flesh being burned. I could never embrace a futuristic interpretation
of the Revelation, and embraced the Historical interpretation of the decendants of the Reformation when
I encountered it. In fact, I discovered the claim that the Futuristic interpretation was invented by a
pair of Jesuits seeking to answer the "Historicist" claim that "Pope is Antichrist", or more accurately,
"Pope is Beast", that is the first beast of Revelation chapter 13, if not the second beast also. I was
intrigued by the dialogue between Dispensationalists (Any Moment Raputure theorists) and Post-Millenialists.
As early as 1984, I was describing myself as a "Post-Millenial Dispensationalist", a better name is
Zionistic Post-Millenialist. I have embraced Barnabas' statement in chapter 15 of his epistle, that
history is created by God to last 7 millenia, the final millenium being the Sabbath millenium of "righteousness
covering the earth as the waters cover the seas", when we "beat our swords into plowshares and our spears
into pruninghooks." Actually, there has long been an expectation among the evangelicals that I know of this
fact (history is 7000 years), but without explicit scriptural basis, although Peter in one of his epistles writes
"one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day" to the Lord, apparently thinking of
Psalm 90 (or 91): A thousand years are as yesterday. I must lump all anti-Zionist Christians with the
modern day Post-Millenialist who call themselves "Reconstructionists". My problem with the "Reconstuctionists"
is that I cannot take seriously the idea that Medieval Europe was an ideal age. Gary North, in particular (the
inventor of the label Reconstructionist) is glad to be rid of anti-papal post-millenialism. In fact his father-in-law
R.J. Rushdoony modified his Monophisite Armenian religion by embracing the council of Chalcedon, where it was
decreed that Christ was fully God and fully man, with two natures, which were inseparable, plus 3 other adjectives.
The Armenian church was one of five Eastern churches that in the words of Cyril of Alexandria believed that Christ's human nature was "a drop in the sea" of his divine nature. The other extreme was Nestorius, who said
that he could not view the Ancient of Days as a babe in a manger. I have recently read that the Nestorian churches of which the Assyrian is the only one to my knowledge, chose to say that Christ actually had two persons, rather than two natures. Since at least 1984, I have looked for the fulfilment of Isaiah 19:22-25,
which pedicts a highway from Egypt through Israel into Assyria. I look forward to the partition of Iraq, with
El-Anbar uniting with Syria, for a resurrection of Assyria, as a Nestorian Christian nation!
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