Kindle Edition
Amazon
willyminnix.com
Category:
Religion
Publisher: Water Moccasin Press
ISBN-10: 1482039567
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 436
Copyright: September 10, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781482039566
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Have a lot of questions about the End Times, but just get more confused as you listen to popular End Times preachers, teachers and writers? Pastor Willy Minnix gives clear easy to understand information about the End Times and what it all means for you.
Have a lot of questions about the End Times, but just get more confused as you listen to popular End Times preachers, teachers and writers? Pastor Willy Minnix gives clear easy to understand information about the End Times and what it all means for you.
The book is presented in a question and answer format making it easy to find questions that you might have had about the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Antichrist, the 2nd Coming and much, much more. Also included are step by step instructions for Bible study and how to logically make sense of prophecy and other difficult passages of the Bible.
Pastor Minnix has boiled down over 20 years of research on the End Times into a very thorough synopsis of what we can expect as Bible prophecy unfolds.
Excerpt
Introduction
Many people are convinced that they will be “raptured out of here” when the horrible things that are mentioned in the Book of Revelation come to pass on this earth. But is that point of view really Biblical?
Other people think that the Great Tribulation happened in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem after the Great Revolt of Judea. But do the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem meet the criteria laid out in the prophecies?
Others believe that the Great Tribulation and the Millennial Reign of Christ are Figurative and are part of the past 2,000 years of Christian history. But shouldn’t events that are happening now, and which seem to be literal fulfillments of End Time prophecies, debunk that theory?
For almost 2,000 years the church was divided between two prominent points of view. The first, and most common was that at the end of time there would be a Great Tribulation, and the church would have to endure it, and after that there would be a 1,000 year reign of Christ physically on the earth. The second, and only slightly less popular was that the church age after the close of the first century had entered into the millennium, a figurative 1,000 year reign of Christ spiritually, and His return would be the complete end of time, and conclude the final portion of testing for the saints known as the Great Tribulation.
In the early 1800’s, people began to question these historical views of eschatology (the study of the End Times), and began to explore other ideas. One of the most popular was set forth by John Nelson Darby, an Anglo-Irish theologian, who believed that the church would not have to endure the Tribulation, based upon a vision received by a Scottish woman named Margaret MacDonald. Taking off from where traditional Post-Trib thinkers stopped, Darby developed the doctrine of different dispensations, giving rise to the term Dispensationalism.
His view was that there were different time periods in God’s calendar, and each one had various events that marked the episodes. Modern Post-Trib, Mid-Trib and Pre-Trib people all seem to be in some form or another influenced by Darby as regards the dispensations of time.
There is also a newer point of view closely related to the Post-Trib doctrine, called by many Pre-Wrath. This view is gaining ground in some circles recently due to the popularity of the book “The Sign,” by Robert Van Kempen. There is also a rebirth of Amillennialism called today Partial-Preterism which teaches that most of the events of prophecy were fulfilled in the first century of the church. Yet the most popular by far has been the Pre-Trib doctrine, focusing on the Pre-Tribulational Rapture of the Church into heaven to be with Jesus.
Instead of dealing with the harsh realities of the Tribulation, in Darby’s opinion, followers of Christ will enjoy instead seven fun filled years of bliss with Jesus, or as one church I visited recently put it, “A big party with Jesus.” Pre-Tribbers debate on just how much time Christians will spend in Heaven; some suggest that the Tribulation is a seven year period, while some point to Daniel and say that the actual Tribulation is only three and a half years.
The three and a half year Pre-Trib position is historically more closely associated with Mid Trib position, but currently there is also a form of the Pre-Wrath position very similar to Mid-Trib. For the layman it can all be a bit confusing and overwhelming, but in the end it all boils down to three basic ideas which encompass both dispensational and amillennial ideology: either Jesus comes back before the Tribulation, sometime in the middle, or at the end of it.
I think it is very important to point out from the outset that both Amillennialists and Post Tribulation Theologians were technically Post Tribulational. The difference being that Post Trib people saw the Tribulation as a short 3.5 year period of intense suffering followed by the millennial reign of Christ on Earth, whereas Amillennialists saw all of history after the Ascension as both the reign of Christ and the Tribulation of the Church. It is also important to point out that Jesus coined the phrase “Post Tribulation” in Matthew 24.
One theologian, who has done a lot of work on the post-trib position (though I must warn that I do not agree with his stance on hell), has an interesting point about the very term “Post Trib.” At Tim Warner’s www.answersinrevelation.org, under an article entitled “Introduction,” which can be downloaded for free, under the heading of “Pre-tribulation or Post-tribulation Rapture,” we find this fact about Matthew 24:
“The post-tribulation view was actually named by Jesus in the above passage. The words, ‘after the tribulation’ (verse 29) in the Latin Bible are literally rendered, ‘post tribulationem.’” (Warner, Introduction, pg 2)
The subtitle of this book is “Common Questions About the End Times,” but there is a very important question that is rarely ever asked: If Jesus was Post Trib, so much that he actually coined the term, then how in the world did a Pre-Trib doctrine ever take hold in the church?
It might surprise you to learn that the rise of the Pre-Trib doctrine is actually a rather short history. The main reason Pre-Trib doctrine took hold in America is because it was spread by the popularity of the Scofield Bible, named after C.I. Scofield, a popular preacher who wrote the best selling commentary Bible that was first published in 1909. One of Scofield’s areas of commentary dealt with the Pre-Trib rapture of the church, and many theologians who followed in Scofield’s footsteps were greatly influenced towards a Pre-Trib ideology. And since most of the mission work of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries originated out of America, the unsound doctrines of Scofield spread like a plague throughout Christendom.
Many people in the church today do not want to argue over the end times, as in the past these discussions have led to church splits, denominational splits, and anger and hurt feelings on many sides of the discussion. However, I believe we may already be living in what many would describe as the End Times, and the popularity of this doctrine has produced some very unfortunate fruit in the church today. These issues need to be addressed in a serious study of the Biblical facts.
I have found that many people who cling to a Pre-Trib view feel they do not need to be concerned with the evils in this world, that are steadily encroaching upon us, because they will not be around to see the culmination of the mechanizations of Satan.
Chances are, if you are a Christian in the United States, you have been taught this teaching because it has been popularized by Christian films, books and preachers. If you are a member of certain denominations you may be totally indoctrinated into this teaching, since some denominations require their pastors to agree with this doctrine to obtain ordination.
I am not convinced that the Pre-Trib doctrine is Biblical, and in fact would go so far as to claim that it should be considered false teaching, as it is not based on Biblical fact, but rather on subjective sources. Furthermore, should this doctrine continue to hold sway in the Church until the time when she will have to endure the Tribulation, I am convinced this doctrine will lead to unnecessary deaths from the catastrophes that are going to happen during that time.
And though I would like to have fellowship with those who hold to these doctrines, as a pastor it is my duty to carefully study and give the most educated and prayerful teaching I can on the doctrines I preach. I would not be a faithful teacher of the Word by not calling this doctrine false teaching.
I hope that you do not shut the book at this point and dismiss what I have to say. Please continue on and see if I am right. Do not take what I have to say as truth, until you have tested it in light of the scriptures yourself. And if you are convinced that the Pre-Trib doctrine is truth, then you have nothing to fear from my conclusions on the matter. Please read on and prove me wrong. However, I believe that if you approach this topic with an open mind, and open Bible, you will find that I have thoroughly debunked many of the Pre-Trib building blocks, and even some that support the Amillennial stance.
I’d like to conclude this introduction with a quote from Dr. Walter Martin the founder of the Christian Research Institute, found in an old radio broadcast uploaded to youtube entitled “The Tribulation of the Church Part 5 of 6,” which I think will demonstrate why it is important to keep on reading, and figure out for yourself what the truth of the matter is.
“The position I gave tonight is a very strong position. It’s a very sound position in English, Greek or Hebrew. It is sustained by all the great minds of the church for nineteen centuries, and it’s not heretical. It’s plain common sense. You cannot invent stages of the first resurrection to get yourself out of your problems. You cannot make differentiations between Greek words in order to get your views across. You have got to go to the text itself and ask the question first, ‘What did Jesus teach? What did Paul understand Jesus to teach? What did John understand him to teach? What did the church fathers understand them to say? What did the reformers and the catholic theologians interpret it to mean?’ And after you get all that evidence together, then you make a decision based upon the facts and not upon emotion.”
|
