Sunday, April 21, 2024

Present tense of prophecy list

Bible.org Rev 22:12 “I am coming” in the Greek is a present tense verb. It is what we call a futuristic or prophetic present. This is used of an event which is so certain that it is regarded as already in the process of coming to pass.

For future judgment:

  • John 3:36b "the wrath of God remains on him."

  • Matt 3:10 The axe is already laid at the root of the trees...every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

  • Matt 23:38 "your house is left desolate";

  • Matt 26:28 “this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

  • Eph. 5.6 the wrath of God "has come upon"; cp. Rom 1.18 "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven"; 

  • 1Cor 10:11 “the end of the ages has come”!


For the coming Kingdom on earth:

  • John 3.36 "anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life";

  • Matt 23:13 "are entering the kingdom of heaven";

  • Eph. 1.14 holy spirit is the guarantee of "our inheritance," cp. Eph. 5.5 "has any inheritance";

  • Rev 5.10 some manuscripts read "they are reigning";


For the coming Messiah:

A Layman's Theology, James Clark, p 93. "The prophecies generally considered to apply to Jesus in Isa 9 and Isa 53 are couched in all three major tenses - past, present, and future."

  • Isa 40:3a “a voice is calling”;

  • Isa 53:2b “he has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him

  • Isa 53:5b "by his wounds we are healed";

  • Isa 63:1 "Who is this who comes from Edom? He is majesty, marching."


For the Resurrection from the dead:

  • John 5:25 "an hour is coming and is now [here]"


All 3 Tenses:

Henry Jones in Principles of Interpreting the Prophecies, p 70. "The promiscous use of the present, past, and future tenses in the ancient Prophets, shows that the sign of the past tense was no sign against the future fulfilling of the things thus written. [see Isa 40.2-6; 53.1-3; 63.1-6]"

  • Hebrew 8:13 "He has made the first one obsolete [past]; and what is obsolete [present] and aging will soon disappear [future]". NOTE: spoken from the perspective of when the words first spoken by God through the prophet hundreds of years earlier.

  • John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life [present tense] and will not be judged [future] but has crossed over from death to life [past tense].”

  • Rev 17:8 "The beast that you saw was [past], and is not [present], and is about to rise [future] from the bottomless pit and go to destruction."

Saturday, April 20, 2024

1 Timothy 3: Should women be ordained elders?

What’s always ignored or missed, perhaps due to the uninspired chapter breaks, is the fact that Paul goes on to explain what he means by not allowing a woman to oversee a man. For example, in 1Tim 3 Paul limits the office of an overseer, aka pastor/elder, to males only by the phrase "the husband of one wife," which literally means "a-one-woman-man."

NOTE Paul's presupposition that a man is to be faithfully married does not of course mean that a single man was disqualified from the position. Paul himself was probably single and elsewhere even recognized celibacy as perfectly suitable for ministry.

The ESV Study Bible note on 1Tim 2.12 explains that “Since the role of pastor/elder/overseer is rooted in the task of teaching and exercising authority over the church, this verse would also exclude women from serving in this office (cf. 1 Tim. 3:2). Thus, when Paul calls for the women to be quiet, he means quiet with respect to the teaching responsibility that is limited in the assembled church."

The NET Bible adds that the phrase "must remain quiet" is used in Greek literature either of absolute silence or of a quiet demeanor. For example, in 2Thess 3:12 Paul uses the same Greek word to urge some in the church to do their work quietly. Hence, my paraphrase:

The woman is not to oversee the church by taking on the teaching and authority of the male elder but instead she should maintain a quiet demeanor.

Thursday, April 4, 2024

Favorite Pro-Life slogans

 

Life begins at conception. It ends at Planned Parenthood.

 

I worked in the abortion industry. I am now pro-life. You CAN quit!

 

Heartbeats detected must be protected.

 

1/3 of my generation is missing.

 

It’s a child – not a choice; I regret my abortion.

 

I mourn my aborted sibling.

 

I regret lost fatherhood.

 

Terrorists have killed 3,000 since 1990. Abortionists killed over 2,500 in America yesterday.

 

We protect: rainforests, whales, trees – but not unborn babies.

 

Call me an extremist but I think that dismemberment is wrong.

 

No law can give me the right to do what is wrong.

 

This feminist opposes discrimination by dismemberment.

 

A fetus=a child=a human being (Luke 1:39-45).

 

Real men love babies.

 

In the name of women’s rights – babies’ rights are snuffed out.

 

I am the pro-life generation; my generation will end abortion.

 

There is no argument for abortion that makes sense!

 

Both lives matter! Life is for everyone!

 

If abortion is about women’s rights – where were mine?

 

All those in favor of abortion have already been born!

 

The greatest threat to Planned Parenthood is the Truth!

 

Abortion is called a choice – but someone dies.

 

The unborn are human beings just like you and me. That is why it is wrong to kill them

 

A massacre of Innocents; abortion is an American holocaust.

 

I survived the rape. I never got over my abortion.

 

It is not a war on choice; it is a revulsion against killing.

 

Abortion is an industry of death.

 

Abortion is always wrong because it is always killing.

 

We march for those who can’t.

 

One unborn baby is murdered every 98 secs.

 

Abortion on demand = the gospel of choice.

 

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish. ( Mother Teresa?)

 

No law can give you the right to do what is wrong,

 

Abortion is legal because babies can’t vote.

 

Every abortion has 2 victims: one damaged, one dead.

 

It’s not science; it’s violence. Pro-life is pro-science.

 

Speak up for those who cannot. I cannot stand by while innocent lives are being lost.

 

Butchering babies for trade in the open market is barbaric.

 

The most dangerous place for a black American baby is in the womb of its black American mother.

 

My birth mother walked out of Planned Parenthood. 60,086,776 babies never left. I walk for them.

 

Your baby has its own DNA. That makes you separate humans!

 

I love adoption!

 

Abortion is the definition of evil – pure and simple.

 

The Constitution says: “No state shall deprive any person of life…” So why is abortion legal?

 

Abortion really is about adults wanting to kill children legally.

 

I am pro-life because there is always a better answer than abortion.

 

Abortion is not medicine. It is not necessary. It is just a license to kill.

 

Why do grown-ups get to bash the baby, when we kids don’t get to break our toys or hurt our pets? Isn’t abortion like breaking my doll – only worse?

 

One unplanned pregnancy saved us all!

 

Help us make abortion unthinkable.

 

You have to join the side you are on!

 

Some babies die by chance, None should die by choice!

 

Sanctity of Life vs. Sanctity of choice!

 

It’s OK to kill a baby in the womb when?____________________

 

Life is for everyone!

 

It’s not choice – it’s violence.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

The Friday of Passover Week: John 19:14

 From The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties 

The uniform impression conveyed by the synoptic Gospels is that the Crucifixion took place on Friday of Holy Week. If it were not for John 19:14, the point would never have come up for debate. But John 19:14 says (according to NASB): 

"Now it was the day of preparation [paraskeue] for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he [Pilate] said to the Jews, `Behold, your King!'" 


The NIV suggests a somewhat less difficult handling of the apparent discrepancy: 

"It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour." 

This latter translation takes note of two very important matters of usage. 


First, the word paraskeue had already by the first century A.D. become a technical term for "Friday," since every Friday was the day of preparation for Saturday, that is, the Sabbath. In Modern Greek the word for "Friday" is paraskeue.   


Second, the Greek term tou pascha (lit., "of the Passover") is taken to be equivalent to the Passover Week. This refers to the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (Heb. massot) that immediately followed the initial slaughtering and eating of the Passover lamb on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month Abib, which by Hebrew reckoning would mean the commencement of the fifteenth day, right after sunset. The week of masso-t, coming right on the heels of Passover itself (during which masso-t were actually eaten, along with the lamb, bitter herbs, etc.) very naturally came to be known as Passover Week (cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed., 12:1041), extending from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of Abib, inclusively. (Arndt and Gingrich [Greek-English Lexicon, pp. 638-39] state: "This [i.e., Passover] was followed immediately by the Feast of Unleavened Bread...on the 15th to the 21st. Popular usage merged the two festivals and treated them as a unity, as they were for practical purposes.") It was unnecessary to insert a specific term for "week" (such as sa-bua`) for it to be understood as such. Therefore, that which might be translated literally as "the preparation of the Passover" must in this context be rendered "Friday of Passover Week."   


It turns out, therefore, that John affirms just as clearly as the Synoptics that Christ was crucified on Friday and that His sacrificial death represented an antitypical fulfillment of the Passover ordinance itself, which was instituted by God in the days of the Exodus as a means of making Calvary available by faith to the ancient people of God even before the coming of Christ.   


Note that in 1 Corinthians 5:7 Jesus is referred to as the Passover Lamb for believers: 

"Purge out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, just as you were unleavened. For Christ our Lamb was sacrificed for us." 


The statement of E. C. Hoskyns on John 19:14 is very appropriate here: 

"The hour of double sacrifice is drawing near. It is midday. The Passover lambs are being prepared for sacrifice, and the Lamb of God is likewise sentenced to death" (The Fourth Gospel [London: Farber and Farber, 1940], ad loc.). 


It simply needs to be pointed out that the lambs referred to here are not those that were slaughtered and eaten in private homes--a rite Jesus had already observed with His disciples the night before ("Maundy Thursday")--but the lambs to be offered on the altar of the Lord on behalf of the whole nation of Israel. (For the household observance on the evening of the fourteenth of Abib, cf. Exod. 12:6; for the public sacrifice on the altar, cf. Exod. 12:16-17; Lev. 23:4-8; 2 Chron. 30:15-19; 35:11-16. These were all known as Passover sacrifices, since they were presented during Passover week.)   


Thus it turns out that there has been a simple misunderstanding of the phrase paraskeue tou pascha that has occasioned such perplexity that even Guthrie (New Bible Commentary, p.964) deduced an original error, for which he had no solution to offer. The various ingenious explanations offered by others, that Christ held His personal Passover a night early, knowing that He would be crucified before the evening of the fourteenth; that Christ and His movement held to a different calendar, reckoning the fourteenth to be a day earlier than the calendar of the official Jerusalem priesthood; or that He was following a revised calendar observed by the Essenes at Qumran--all these theories are quite improbable and altogether unnecessary. There is no contradiction whatever between John and the Synoptics as to the day on which Christ died--it was Friday.