RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Could you give some examples? I'm against CN, but I find it hard to believe they could be supporting globalist agendas.
WCF and the Antichrist
- Thread starter Jerusalem Blade
- Start date
Could you give some examples? I'm against CN, but I find it hard to believe they could be supporting globalist agendas.
St. Gerdt
Puritan Board Freshman
I was referring to the RCs' globalist ecclesiastical agenda, not any globalist political agenda. I do not save or record examples when I see them, but social media—especially X/Twitter—is full of RCs and EOs blaming the reformation for the current state of affairs.
RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
I see all of that, but I don't see the connection to CN.
PDF here:
The historicist view had to be revised, and idealist recapitulation supplies us with the tools to do that. At the same time I think what Rev. Macleod is lamenting goes deeper than the problem of pessimism. The truth is that idealism itself needs an historical context to ground the interpretation of the text, otherwise you can make it apply to anything you please. I think that is where preterism becomes useful. It gives a concrete historical situation to make sense of the religious context of the visions.
Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Thanks for the pdf link, Matthew.
You had said, "The truth is that idealism itself needs an historical context to ground the interpretation of the text, otherwise you can make it apply to anything you please." I appreciate that!
The issue is, from where do we take the "historical context" needed?
I think the better context is found in the text of Revelation itself, just as the Jews had to look in the earlier prophecies of Daniel to discern that Antiochus Epiphanes would come, defile the temple, and himself be destroyed — as foretold by the LORD. Even so, I believe we also have a better historical context to ground our interpretation.
You had said, "The truth is that idealism itself needs an historical context to ground the interpretation of the text, otherwise you can make it apply to anything you please." I appreciate that!
The issue is, from where do we take the "historical context" needed?
I think the better context is found in the text of Revelation itself, just as the Jews had to look in the earlier prophecies of Daniel to discern that Antiochus Epiphanes would come, defile the temple, and himself be destroyed — as foretold by the LORD. Even so, I believe we also have a better historical context to ground our interpretation.
Steve, No doubt that is true, but grammatico-historical exegesis requires historical context to make sense of the text. Revelation itself gives us numerous internal markers that there is a Jewish background, especially in terms of eschatological expectation on the inheritance of the land. Moreover, the visions related to Antiochus in Daniel are a part of an idealistic framework which merges well into the Messianic future and includes the apostacy of the covenant people. This is pronounced in the New Testament in terms of the sin of the covenanted nation coming to full measure. Once the text is grounded in this context it restrains historical applications so as to eliminate soothsaying. It provides covenantal entities that can be discerned in terms of moral identity and continuity.
Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Re “the better historical context found in the text of Revelation itself” :
I argue that a lack of understanding concerning the word “sorceries” (Greek, pharmakeia, φαρμακεία) and its cognates in The Book of Revelation have led to overlooking key elements in some of its prophecies, and thus inability to appreciate their import and relevance to our times. It is accepted that the “eclectic” or “modified idealist” view (Beale)[1] allows some departure from the idealist, though as to where the line is drawn there is no clear consensus. Beale himself says, “...certainly there are prophecies of the future in Revelation. The crucial yet problematic task of the interpreter is to identify through careful exegesis and against the historical background those texts which pertain respectively to past present and future.” [2]
1] G.K. Beale, New International Greek Testament Commentary: Revelation (Eerdmans 1999), pp 48, 49.
2] Ibid., p 49.
Basically my view is this: the pharmakeia of Revelation 18:23 and 9:21 (a variant in the latter reading φάρμακον pharmakon – drugs – does not affect translation) are the very drugs used and heralded by the sixties and seventies counterculture of the U.S. that were exported into most of the world and which – in retrospect – are seen to constitute a prophesied event clearly depicted in Scripture. The Greek pharmakeia is generally translated “sorceries” in the New Testament.
The explosion of these drugs onto the world scene was an event (the term now used for military-scale biological, chemical, or nuclear events) that befell nations around the globe through the drug-energized sixties generation in America, as this potent counterculture permeated these nations through its music and musicians, literature, art, film, and other culture-bearing media and vehicles, as well as spiritual teachers and gurus (think Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass / Richard Alpert, both Harvard professors). The nations and cultures of the world were leavened from within by the exciting new consciousness of the sixties and the Woodstock spirit exported into them, but it was a Trojan Horse filled with the denizens of Hell. Its impact was, in the psychic realm, the equivalent of a massive nuclear detonation. . . . The damage done is irreversible.
The darkening zeitgeist of the world (“spirit of the age”) that we live in now – 2024 – is the direct result of this massive demonic incursion into our midst beginning over half a century ago. It has been developing an agenda over this period. What they hate most are Christ and God, then humankind, and after that peaceful societal order – domestic tranquility – enforced by law and government, as the holy, human, and orderly go against both their nature and their goal for the planet.
Per the symbolism of Revelation, “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit” – the spiritual significance of the great cloud of smoke was the darkening of the hearts and minds by demonic presence and influence, in all humankind but those who had “the seal of God in their foreheads” (Rev 9:4).
We can look back on this historic event and see a phenomena that has impacted the entire world, and is still going strong, as grass, hash, and the other psychedelics / entheogens are increasingly legalized, a good number being touted as “therapeutic”, i.e., basically good for you! This surely is part of the “strong delusion” spoken of in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, which we can witness in many of its aspects in our days.
In Revelation 9:15, a connector between the 5th and 6th trumpet judgments, we see what commentators consider a distinct time-stamp: demonic activity prepared to be loosed “for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year” – even though they cannot identify what it refers to.
This is “the better historical context found in the text of Revelation itself” I mentioned earlier. It may be new to many, though I have been writing on it for a number of years now.
I prefer my view to yours, Matthew. It makes more sense.
I argue that a lack of understanding concerning the word “sorceries” (Greek, pharmakeia, φαρμακεία) and its cognates in The Book of Revelation have led to overlooking key elements in some of its prophecies, and thus inability to appreciate their import and relevance to our times. It is accepted that the “eclectic” or “modified idealist” view (Beale)[1] allows some departure from the idealist, though as to where the line is drawn there is no clear consensus. Beale himself says, “...certainly there are prophecies of the future in Revelation. The crucial yet problematic task of the interpreter is to identify through careful exegesis and against the historical background those texts which pertain respectively to past present and future.” [2]
1] G.K. Beale, New International Greek Testament Commentary: Revelation (Eerdmans 1999), pp 48, 49.
2] Ibid., p 49.
Basically my view is this: the pharmakeia of Revelation 18:23 and 9:21 (a variant in the latter reading φάρμακον pharmakon – drugs – does not affect translation) are the very drugs used and heralded by the sixties and seventies counterculture of the U.S. that were exported into most of the world and which – in retrospect – are seen to constitute a prophesied event clearly depicted in Scripture. The Greek pharmakeia is generally translated “sorceries” in the New Testament.
The explosion of these drugs onto the world scene was an event (the term now used for military-scale biological, chemical, or nuclear events) that befell nations around the globe through the drug-energized sixties generation in America, as this potent counterculture permeated these nations through its music and musicians, literature, art, film, and other culture-bearing media and vehicles, as well as spiritual teachers and gurus (think Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass / Richard Alpert, both Harvard professors). The nations and cultures of the world were leavened from within by the exciting new consciousness of the sixties and the Woodstock spirit exported into them, but it was a Trojan Horse filled with the denizens of Hell. Its impact was, in the psychic realm, the equivalent of a massive nuclear detonation. . . . The damage done is irreversible.
The darkening zeitgeist of the world (“spirit of the age”) that we live in now – 2024 – is the direct result of this massive demonic incursion into our midst beginning over half a century ago. It has been developing an agenda over this period. What they hate most are Christ and God, then humankind, and after that peaceful societal order – domestic tranquility – enforced by law and government, as the holy, human, and orderly go against both their nature and their goal for the planet.
Per the symbolism of Revelation, “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit” – the spiritual significance of the great cloud of smoke was the darkening of the hearts and minds by demonic presence and influence, in all humankind but those who had “the seal of God in their foreheads” (Rev 9:4).
We can look back on this historic event and see a phenomena that has impacted the entire world, and is still going strong, as grass, hash, and the other psychedelics / entheogens are increasingly legalized, a good number being touted as “therapeutic”, i.e., basically good for you! This surely is part of the “strong delusion” spoken of in 2 Thessalonians 2:11, which we can witness in many of its aspects in our days.
In Revelation 9:15, a connector between the 5th and 6th trumpet judgments, we see what commentators consider a distinct time-stamp: demonic activity prepared to be loosed “for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year” – even though they cannot identify what it refers to.
This is “the better historical context found in the text of Revelation itself” I mentioned earlier. It may be new to many, though I have been writing on it for a number of years now.
I prefer my view to yours, Matthew. It makes more sense.
Steve, I understand your perspective as you have come from that scene, but your view could only appeal to people who have shared your unique experience. This would certainly have been foreign to the Jewish-Christian context of the first century.
A more feasible context is the land of promise. Lev. 26:18 says, "And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins." Josh. 6:4 says, "And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets." The seven trumpets are tied to the land of promise. As the sounding of the trumpets signalled the dispossessing of the Canaanites, so the sounding of the trumpets signals the dispossessing of the covenant-breaking Jews. Meanwhile, when the seventh angel sounds the kingdoms of this world are taken into possession of the Lord and His anointed, even as the seventh sounding of the trumpet once signalled the possession of the land for Israel.
Our Lord has already given the key to the fifth trumpet in Matthew 12, where He teaches on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the men of Nineveh rising to condemn "this generation" in the judgment, and the return of "seven other spirits more wicked than himself."
A more feasible context is the land of promise. Lev. 26:18 says, "And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins." Josh. 6:4 says, "And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets." The seven trumpets are tied to the land of promise. As the sounding of the trumpets signalled the dispossessing of the Canaanites, so the sounding of the trumpets signals the dispossessing of the covenant-breaking Jews. Meanwhile, when the seventh angel sounds the kingdoms of this world are taken into possession of the Lord and His anointed, even as the seventh sounding of the trumpet once signalled the possession of the land for Israel.
Our Lord has already given the key to the fifth trumpet in Matthew 12, where He teaches on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the men of Nineveh rising to condemn "this generation" in the judgment, and the return of "seven other spirits more wicked than himself."
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Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Hello Matthew,
Sorcery / witchcraft was an issue for the children of Israel. In the LXX (Septuagint) Greek pharmakeia (enchantment through the use of drugs of a particular kind) was warned against Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch [sorcerer] to live.". In Chaldean Babylon it was a common thing:
The witchcraft / sorcery of the pagan demon-worshipping nations around Israel was part of their demon-infestation, and they were under severe judgment, as came upon them.
It had come upon the 1960s U.S., not merely as a local "scene" – for multitudes of professional people, politicians, therapists, academics, etc etc all partook of those potions. It was for the U.S. and U.K. exporting this demonic practice – "for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived" (Rev 18:23) – that a like catastrophic judgment shall come upon the latter-day Babylon.
Neither is it today a local scene, but a rampant world-wide phenomena. The devil has come into the human collective consciousness in force, and it remains to be seen what shall emerge from it.
Sorcery / witchcraft was an issue for the children of Israel. In the LXX (Septuagint) Greek pharmakeia (enchantment through the use of drugs of a particular kind) was warned against Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch [sorcerer] to live.". In Chaldean Babylon it was a common thing:
But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day,
the loss of children, and widowhood:
they shall come upon thee in their perfection
for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments (Isa 47:9 KJV)
The witchcraft / sorcery of the pagan demon-worshipping nations around Israel was part of their demon-infestation, and they were under severe judgment, as came upon them.
It had come upon the 1960s U.S., not merely as a local "scene" – for multitudes of professional people, politicians, therapists, academics, etc etc all partook of those potions. It was for the U.S. and U.K. exporting this demonic practice – "for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived" (Rev 18:23) – that a like catastrophic judgment shall come upon the latter-day Babylon.
Neither is it today a local scene, but a rampant world-wide phenomena. The devil has come into the human collective consciousness in force, and it remains to be seen what shall emerge from it.
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It is undoubtedly true that nations once gained freedom from a pagan worldview through the blessed light which Christianity brought to them. For these nations to rebel against Christian teachings and morality will entail a return to paganism and the evils it carries in its bosom. In that respect we can see Providence working in these nations as it did with covenant-breaking Israel and making their last state to be worse than the first. But to understand this application we must carefully observe the original historical context in which God reveals His judgments in Scripture. Providence is not prophecy, and yet the same God speaks in prophecy and works in Providence.
Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Matthew, I deeply appreciate "consistent" Idealism, as it rescued eschatology from the historicism of the reformers. The drawback of that view, as I have maintained previously, is that it completely excises any specific historical events from its symbolic prophecies, save what is written in the 7 letters, and the return of Christ.
As valuable a technique as recapitulated dynamics of Gospel proclamation, persecution, and judgment, as well as the progress of history from the life, death, and resurrection of Christ to the final war between Him and our adversary repeatedly looked at from different vantages – all symbolically portrayed – as crucially valuable as these brilliant techniques are, to, on principle, excise any prophesied historical events meant to be discerned in hindsight, removes any real prophecy from the Final Prophecy (Rev 1:3; Rev 22:18, 19, etc) itself. It has gotten a bad reputation in many circles for that, and has turned many off to the modern Amillennial school, even in its "modified" or "eclectic" position, per Beale et al.
To try to remedy that, I wrote UNCOVERING PROPHETIC DETAILS IN REVELATION: Restoring confidence in the applicability of John’s Apocalypse, the final prophecy.
As valuable a technique as recapitulated dynamics of Gospel proclamation, persecution, and judgment, as well as the progress of history from the life, death, and resurrection of Christ to the final war between Him and our adversary repeatedly looked at from different vantages – all symbolically portrayed – as crucially valuable as these brilliant techniques are, to, on principle, excise any prophesied historical events meant to be discerned in hindsight, removes any real prophecy from the Final Prophecy (Rev 1:3; Rev 22:18, 19, etc) itself. It has gotten a bad reputation in many circles for that, and has turned many off to the modern Amillennial school, even in its "modified" or "eclectic" position, per Beale et al.
To try to remedy that, I wrote UNCOVERING PROPHETIC DETAILS IN REVELATION: Restoring confidence in the applicability of John’s Apocalypse, the final prophecy.
Steve, the reformers' view at least had history on its side. They were well equipped in this respect. This meant they could overleap their own experiences to some extent and look objectively on what the book of Revelation was teaching overall. There are general currents in history to be observed and they are best observed in the light of God's judgments. It is worthwhile looking into the historicist viewpoint to broaden one's outlook to see beyond one's own time and place.
TheInquirer
Puritan Board Junior
It depends on what it is for. If one is looking for something exhaustive Matthew Poole's Synopsis has been translated in "The Exegetical Labors of the Reverend Matthew Poole." He provides the various perspectives on each verse so you are able to compare different views as you go along.
