Eternal Security for Tribulation ? - Qs and As

Republished from gracethrufaith.com

Monday, February 29th, 2016

• Great Tribulation
• Once Saved Always Saved

Q. You have stated that you feel the post rapture believers will be on their own when it comes to staying faithful to their belief in Christ as their Lord and Savior. In Revelation (7: 1-9) it says that the Angel of God will put a seal on the foreheads of the “servants of God”. It goes on to show that the 144,000 from the 12 tribes (Jews) were at least part of this group, but then it moves right into discussing the “multitude” in white robes that were “serving God and The Lamb” day and night.
I believe the multitude are the tribulation Saints and that they are being included in the group that were sealed on their foreheads by the Angel of God, identifying them as “servants of God”. Also, I don’t think the gentile Christians during this period would be left to suffer the stings of these demonic creatures of Rev. 9 so they must have the seal. In summary; I believe that the tribulation believers will not be able to lose their salvation. Do you disagree with this?

A. Rev. 7:1-3 shows the four winds being held back by four angels. Then another angel with the seal of God comes forward, telling them not to harm the land or sea until he puts the seal on the foreheads of the servants of God. Rev. 7:4 says the number of those who are sealed is 144,000 and then Rev. 7:5-8 lists 12,000 from each of 12 tribes of Israel. From this I conclude that the 144,000 are the only ones sealed. This all happens on Earth.

After that John sees the multitude, but they are before the throne of God (Rev. 7:11). That’s in Heaven, and the elder tells John they’ve come out of the Great Tribulation. The Greek word translated “come out of” applies to both location and time. In essence it means they will have been martyred and come to heaven before the Great Tribulation begins. They and the 144,000 are not part of the same group. In the first place the 144,000 are all Jews. The martyrs are from every nation, tribe, people and language.

Your concern for Tribulation believers is commendable but I don’t think it’s consistent with Scripture. Both Rev. 14:12 and Rev. 16:15 indicate Tribulation believers are responsible for remaining faithful. Matt. 25:1-13 confirms this. Eternal Security is a special blessing given only to the Church.

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Responding To An Unbeliever - Bible Qs and As

Republished from gracethrufaith.com

Saturday, February 20th, 2016

• Evangelism
• Salvation

Q. I was discussing the meaning of Matthew 15:24 with a co-worker today and he said that my Bible (the New King James Version) cannot possibly be God’s Word because God didn’t write the Bible in English, that the Hebrew vocabulary was so limited back in the day that the words didn’t exist to say what the passage says, that it’s impossible to accurately translate what may have been said into the proper context, and that whatever oral stories may have been handed down, that they were embellished along the way.

We then went onto the topic of Daniel 9:24-27. When I told him that the first 483 years were fulfilled to the day, he started on me about how they didn’t even have a Jewish calendar back when Daniel made the prophecy. They didn’t know what a year was.

He also said that dinosaurs and the Genesis account of creation are mutually exclusive, which is why we cannot take the Bible literally because science has already proven that dinosaurs existed. He also wanted to know how, if the theory of evolution is to be excluded, Noah could put billions of species of animals etc. on an ark that was only the size of a football field? Because, he says, we have billions of different kinds of species of living things and they would have all had to fit on that ark.
Will you please help me with these questions?

A. I assume you’re not asking me this because you think there may be some truth to what this person is saying. The fact is, there are no rational responses to these opinions because they aren’t based in fact. They are fabrications that your friend has chosen to believe to avoid the truth. Even though with a little research you can easily expose them as being ridiculous, it won’t change anything.

For instance, the existence of complex written languages in the time before the flood has been verified. And a copy of the Book of Isaiah was found among the Dead Sea scrolls. It was 900 years older than the oldest copy previously discovered, and yet varied by only a few words, none of which altered the book’s meaning. A few minutes of legitimate research on line will confirm that your Bible’s consistency with original texts exceeds every other ancient text and is beyond question.

The Old and New Testaments are the most thoroughly documented and verified works in existence. Daniel’s prophecy was authenticated by no less an authority than the London Royal Observatory over a century ago.

I don’t know of anyone who doubts the existence of Dinosaurs. A simple study that anyone can perform will show that the Ark was 450 feet long (1 1/2 times the length of a football field). At 75 feet wide each of the ark’s decks contained 33,750 square feet of floor space. Since the ark was 45 feet tall there was over 1.5 million cubic feet of space under its roof, equivalent to a train with 500 boxcars. According to zoological studies, of the 1.8 million (not billion) named species on Earth today, there are 1,000 species of amphibians, 6,000 reptiles, 9,000 birds, 15,000 species of mammals, and 20,000 of fish (who don’t count). The rest are insects. The average size of all the animals is equivalent to a sheep. Shippers load 250 sheep per boxcar. At 2 per specie the ark would easily have accommodated the number that would be required today, and in Noah’s day there were far fewer species.

But none of this information will do you any good, because had this person wanted the truth, he could have easily discovered it on his own. Instead He has chosen to believe a lie.

Remember, it’s not possible to debate or persuade or “sell” someone into the Kingdom. As Christians, we present the gospel, and then pray for those who hear it. Since only the Holy Spirit can convert someone, Anything more on our part is “casting our pearls before swine.”

Column One: Israel’s dangerous consensus

Republished from jpost.com

 

 

 

 

Directing his remarks at a friend of mine, he declared that 99 percent of Mossad and Shin Bet officers are leftists. 

IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot (R), Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo credit:GPO) 

Recently I found myself in a chance conversation with a former head of the Mossad’s Directorate of Operations. The former master spy, whom I had never met before, knew that I am a journalist.

He was aware of my political views.

Directing his remarks at a friend of mine, he declared that 99 percent of Mossad and Shin Bet officers are leftists. He then added triumphantly that according to a former commander of the air force whose name he cited, 99% of the air force’s pilots are similarly leftists.

Initially, I dismissed his comments as obnoxious chest-beating by a man who felt like irritating a group of right-wingers.

But given the source, it is impossible to simply brush off what he said. And to be clear, far more troubling than the prospect that Israel’s security establishment is uniformly leftist is the notion that there is any intellectual or ideological uniformity of any kind in the ranks of our defense community.

But given our defense community’s record in recent years, there is ample reason to believe that there is more than a grain of salt in the spy chief’s boast.

Consider Israel’s handling of Gaza.

According to a number of senior officers, at the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the IDF’s senior commanders convened in Tel Aviv to determine how to handle the Hamas regime going forward.

During Protective Edge, Israel learned a few things about Hamas and about the strategic balance of power between Israel and Hamas in the region and the world.

On the ground Israel learned that Hamas bases its offensive capabilities on civilian infrastructure.

Hamas placed its missiles, its communications centers and its operational commands inside civilian buildings including private homes, hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques and UN offices.

As far as the strategic balance and resources of both sides, during the war Hamas enjoyed the de facto backing of the Obama administration.

Throughout the war, the administration pressured Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms as dictated by its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey.

On the other hand, Israel was able to avoid bowing to the US’s pro-Hamas demands because throughout the conflict we enjoyed the open support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In other words, during the war, Israel discovered that Hamas’s military strategy was based entirely on an implicit alliance with the West, which attacked Israel for targeting Hamas’s military infrastructure, which, again, was all based in civilian structures.

It might have been assumed that the IDF senior commanders would have based their post-war deliberations on these lessons. But according to senior IDF sources, that didn’t happen.

At the outset of that postwar meeting, IDF commanders were told that Israel’s best option was to assist in the reconstruction of Gaza – that is, the reconstruction of Hamas’s civilian-based military machine.

The discussion then moved to the question of how best to achieve that goal.

The notion that Israel is best off when Gazans are not living in the streets is certainly a legitimate one.

Perhaps it would have withstood scrutiny if it had been subjected to scrutiny. But it wasn’t.

And in hindsight, it is obvious that it should have been.

In keeping with the decision to support the reconstruction of Gaza, according to the Foreign Ministry, over the past year and a half Israel has permitted 3.4 million tons of building materials to be imported into Gaza. And yet, according to a recent report by the UN, 74% of the civilian buildings that were destroyed in Protective Edge have yet to be rebuilt.

In the meantime, Hamas has replenished its missile stores and rebuilt its military infrastructure, including its subterranean attack tunnels that traverse the border into Israel.

Both the continued suffering of the Gazans, and the sounds of drilling under the homes of Israelis living along the border with Gaza, indicate that at a minimum, the security establishment’s immediate post-war determination that Israel must permit building materials to enter Gaza was a bit hasty.

Then there is Iran.

Iran’s illicit nuclear program was first exposed in 2003. At the time, it probably made sense for Israel to follow the US’s lead in blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But then, the Americans’ continued stumbles in Iraq made clear from as early as 2004 that perhaps the Bush administration wouldn’t be up to the challenge of blocking Iran’s path to the bomb.

The early suspicions that then-president George W. Bush would not block Iran’s nuclear ambitions became an all-but certainty in the wake of the publication of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate.

The NIE made the dubious claim that Iran had abandoned its military nuclear program in 2003.

Despite the fact that the claim was contradicted by the report itself, in light of Bush’s political weakness at the end of his second term, the NIE rendered it politically impossible for Bush to order a military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations. It also made it politically possible for President Barack Obama to initiate his pro-Iranian Middle East policy a year later.

As for Obama, despite his oft-stated claim that “all option remain on the table” for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, any thought that he might be serious became patently absurd after he sided with the regime during the 2009 Green Revolution that followed its falsification of the results of the presidential elections.

None of this, however, made an impression on the security brass. Led by the Mossad, for more than a decade our senior commanders insisted that Israel could trust the US on Iran.

Last week Russia announced that it will sell Sukhoi Su-30 combat fighters to Iran. According to former senior Pentagon official Stephen Bryen, the sale will tip the strategic balance in the Persian Gulf in Iran’s favor and over time, give Iran “an answer to Israel’s air power.”

Iran’s acquisition of the Su-30s is but one of a panoply of weapons deals the regime has signed with suppliers since the sanctions regime was canceled last month. These sales, together with Iran’s clear path to nuclear capabilities mean that Iran’s rise to the position of regional hegemon is unimpeded.

This then brings us to Israel’s options, moving forward. Amazingly, it would seem that Israel continues to take its signals on Iran from the Americans.

After all, at least on the surface, Israel’s security establishment and our political leaders seem most concerned today with concluding a deal for supplemental US military assistance in the wake of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Perhaps a reassessment is overdue.

If Iran’s empowerment is now more or less a done deal, then the nature of the regime becomes the central variable that it may still be possible to change.

In the years that preceded the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, a small group of former Mossad officers joined forces with a small group of American Iran experts in beseeching the government – and first and foremost the Mossad – to support the Iranian opposition in its bid to overthrow the regime. These calls were ratcheted up throughout the months of the Green Revolution in 2009 and early 2010.

These Iran experts argued that all Israel needed to do was provide secure communications to the opposition to enable its members to organize effectively, and to broadcast their messages to the public in Iran through radio, television and Internet servers maintained abroad.

Arming Iran’s many disaffected groups, including the Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Ahwaz Arabs, unions and women, wouldn’t be necessary, they said, (although it certainly would be helpful). They argued further that from Israel’s perspective, helping the opposition made sense even if the opposition failed to overthrow the regime. After all, the more time the regime was forced to devote to fending off challenges from home, the less time it would have to wage its campaigns against Israel directly and through its terrorist proxies.

These calls were dismissed out of hand by the security establishment. Our intelligence services in particular insisted that Israel could trust Washington to deal with Iran. Moreover, they maintained, Israel didn’t have a real dog in the fight over who leads Iran. This despite the fact that Israel is surprisingly popular among Iran’s citizenry, over a million of whom regularly listened to Voice of Israel Farsi broadcasts.

Six years on, there is no doubt that regime opponents are weaker than they were on the eve of the Green Revolution. But even today in the wake of the nuclear deal, they are far from a spent force.

The regime continues to fear the Iranian people – which continues to hate it – more than it fears anything else. This is why the regime rejected some 90% of the candidates running in the national elections later this month. This is why the regime outlawed every direct and indirect reference to Valentine’s Day this week.

This is why politically driven arrests and executions have increased massively since the supposedly reformist president Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013.

THE NEED FOR the IDF to open itself up to unorthodox views manifested itself in a seemingly unrelated incident this week.

On Sunday Channel 2 broadcast footage of IDF Chief Rabbi Brig.-Gen. Rafi Peretz dancing at a wedding with a rabbi identified with the far Right.

Following the report, the IDF Spokesman’s Office announced that Rabbi Peretz had been summoned to the office of OC Manpower Maj.-Gen. Hagai Topolanski for clarifications.

The IDF’s response is alarming for the message it sends the officer corps and through it, to the security community as a whole. That message is that it is unacceptable for officers to have any contacts – let along an intellectual exchanges – with people who stand beyond a narrow spectrum of views.

This is bad enough for the elitist social message it sends. But given the threat environment Israel faces, narrowly defining the boundaries of permitted social and intellectual contacts is dangerous.

Today Israel is facing complex, multifaceted security challenges that exist and grow in an equally complex, multifaceted diplomatic environment. To develop the means of dealing with the challenges, our security establishment needs to cultivate a permissive intellectual climate among our commanders that rewards free thinking and promotes free thinkers.

Perhaps that retired Mossad commander was just a blowhard. Perhaps he was giving an accurate accounting of the intellectual climate in the senior ranks of Israel’s national security establishment. In all likelihood, the truth lays somewhere in the middle.

But what is clear enough is that the time has come to air out the ranks of our national defense establishment.

Our senior commanders need to reassess their operational assumptions in order to develop plans going forward that are based on a broad spectrum of ideas.

www.CarolineGlick.com

Noah and the Flood: Part 1 – The X-Men

Republished from gracethrufaith.com

Monday, June 30th, 2003

• Grace
• Israel
• Old Testament

When men began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Sprit will not contend with Man forever for he is mortal. His days will be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them (Gen. 6:1-4).

Take this literally, as we always do, and it’s one of the scariest verses in the Bible. The Hebrew phrase translated “sons of God” refers to beings who are direct creations of God, normally angels, and distinguishes the origin of the males in the passage from that of the females. Only two human males are ever described this way; Adam (Luke 3:38) and the Lord Jesus. In Psalm 82:6 the rulers of Israel are called children of the Most High but the context refers to their role as judges of the people, responsible for dispensing both justice and mercy. In John 1:12 we who have received the Lord into our hearts are given the authority to become children of God. There the notion is that of being born again as a spiritual child of God, a concept amplified in John 3:3-21.

The Testimony of Two Witnesses

To make sure we get the point of Genesis 6:1-4, the distinction appears twice. The males were direct creations of God while the females were the offspring of human parents. The passage clearly states that fallen angels somehow took on the form of human males and married human females who bore their children. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 mention the fallen angels as having been rounded up and bound in chains awaiting the Judgment Day, and In 1 Cor. 6:3 Paul hinted that the church will judge them for their actions. These children were called Nephilim (gigantes in Greek … origin of our word giant) a Hebrew word that translates “fallen ones.”

But Nephilim also appeared after the flood as foretold in Gen 6:4 (“and also afterward”). Returning from their first view of the Promised Land, the 12 spies reported seeing them among the local people (Numbers 13:33). This is one reason the Lord instructed the Israelites to wipe out the entire population of Caanan (Deut. 20:16-18) including their animals before settling down in their new land. Like Nephilim, the Rephaim were also called giants and are mentioned throughout the Old Testament. Goliath was from the Rephaim. We would call these people aliens today, being of extra-terrestrial origin.

And now research of documented alien encounters shows a consistent interest in and inspection of the human reproductive system. Are aliens using humans to grow and harvest offspring creating a super race among us as some have claimed? Does the apparent increase in alien contact signal another return of the Nephilim? In the KJV translation of Daniel 2:43 there’s an obscure reference to someone from the 4th kingdom “mingling themselves with the seed of men” in the last days. Is the antichrist part alien, or in command of alien forces? In Matt 24:37 the Lord spoke of the Last Days being “as it was in the days of Noah.” Think about it.

Back To Genesis

The mixed marriages of Gen. 6 contaminated the human gene pool. This was an attempt by Satan to thwart the plan of God by preventing the birth of a Redeemer, since a direct descendant of Adam was required, a man without sin. Fossil evidence reveals that Satan was also tinkering with animal genetics before the flood since the various strains of dinosaurs and such couldn’t have been created that way. What little we understand of God’s creative capability tells us He wouldn’t have made an animal with a body too big for its skeleton, and a brain too small to effectively control it. Nor would He have created birds too heavy to fly or fish that couldn’t swim. His creation was perfect and He pronounced it all “very good.” Fossils were formed at one time and one time only, during the Great Flood, and were left as evidence of pre flood disobedience. Man sinned, allowing Evil into the world, and God had to destroy His creation and begin again. It’s a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God (Hebr. 10:31).

But Noah Found Grace In The Eyes Of The Lord.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time (Gen. 6:8-9). The Hebrew here means perfect in his generations, not sinless. Within the above context it’s clear that Noah was chosen for two reasons. First, his genealogy was not contaminated by intermarriage so a direct line to Adam could be preserved, and second, he was faithful. Even in the worst of times the Lord has always preserved a faithful remnant to begin again and Noah, though a sinner, had walked with God all his life.

Genesis 6:5-6 says that every intention of man’s mind was evil and God saw no alternative to destroying them all. Having given mankind 10 generations, great teachers like Enoch, a living reminder in Methuselah (the name means his death shall bring) and a 120 year count down (Gen. 6:3), in the year Methuselah died the Great Flood came, 1656 years after Adam’s creation. And the record shows that not one of the world’s inhabitants joined Noah on the Ark. Just like the people of our time, they didn’t believe God would ever judge them. Like the man said, “The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history.”
More next time.