Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christianity. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Whats MISSING in the New Bibles?
Brief Sermon Overview:
**WHY HAVENT CHRISTIANS BEEN WARNED**
Learn the dark history behind the NIV,NASB,NKJV and other new Bible translations, and how these new bibles are being used to divide the church and pave the way for the One World Religion by slowly changing Christian doctrine with every new bible version. the changes they have made will shock you..
this is a MUST for ALL CHRISTIANS,
EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE!!! PLEASE DONT AVOID THIS MESSAGE!!!
share this info your pastors, friends, elders, ministers of all kinds.
Comments:
Gregory A. M from Worthington, Ohio (7/20/2008)
“ Great Sermon! ”
Defending new translations is the work of Satan. How sad to see those who profess to love Jesus Christ defending the Satanic corruptions. Learn the truth about WHERE Siniaticus and Vaticanus came from. Your new "bible" came from the POPE. Everyone using a NASB or other new bible should write the Pope a letter of THANKS. Then CC Satan on that same letter.
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Michael Kosman (4/17/2008)
“ AMEN ”
Don't listen to Tom Johnson from LA, CA. He is a wolf in sheep's skin. Gail Riplinger is right on the money, AMEN!
Thank you his message from satan deleted.
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Robert R from Tampa, Florida (1/26/2006)
“ Great Sermon! Amen and Amen!!! ”
The Devil is unrelenting in his attack upon the God's word, and sadly most pastors and churches are cooperating in this by using corrupted versions of the Bible. The NIV, NASB, NKJV, The Message, and other new Bible translations belong in the trash, pure and simple! ANY CHRISTIAN WHO DOES NOT PRAYERFULLY LISTEN TO THIS MESSAGE IS IN GRAVE SPIRITUAL DANGER!
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peterbabu (9/28/2005)
“ Great Sermon! ”
this sermon is really an eye opener.kjv-will keep you in the right track.other new versions-will take anybody away from Exact God"s words.result-very worrying,as it leads to many confusion,lack of focus on where it should be!
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Unknown (7/22/2005)
“ Great Sermon! ”
thank you for the message.. very informative
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Nina from Baltimore, Maryland (3/1/2005)
“ Great Sermon! ”
I stumbled upon this broadcast by accident and I am grateful for Gail's work. Her comments echo many of my own suspicions about various versions of the bible and I'm glad that someone has dealt with the issue. Thanks again.
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Vincent M. C. from Memphis (3/1/2005)
“ Great Sermon! ”
please read the Bible Believer's Bulletin from Bible Baptist Bookstore P.O.Box 7135 Pensacola, FL 32534 1-800-659-1478. Any work by David Otis Fuller, Edward Hills, William p. Grady, Ed Devries, Peter S. Ruckman, Jack Hyles,Barry Burton, Chick Publications (www.chick.com) and www.biblebelievers.com-Real Audio link. There are 74 messages defending the KJV 1611 A.V.!!! Even the Catholic Church knows that the King James Bible IS the Word of God and they are doing everything in their power to put out so many "new versions" that the average Christian won't know what to do. The one question that can never be refuted in regard to the King James Version is, "What Bible has produced the fruit of millions of souls and great soul winning revivals all over this world?" That King James, God-honored, Black-backed 66 caliber Book! Praise God that King James had more sense than to give us a Catholic bible! It was never "communism" that we had to fear, it was, is, and has always been "Catholism"!!! The Jesuits are still at it brothers and sisters. Unless we start making a stand on the Book we will see the dark ages once again in this once great country that we call America! HEED THE WARNING! WANT POWER? GET THE BIBLE! The Bible that God uses and the Devil hates!
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e.s.v.l from London (1/3/2005)
“ Great Sermon! ”
This is a great sermon. You that love the Word of the living God need to hear this.
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Leslie from Ca (11/28/2004)
“ Super Informative ”
eye opening information !!share it with others
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Jim from Va (11/10/2004)
“ Eye Opening !! ”
If you love the Word of God, this is one you must hear and tell your friend about !!
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Billy W. from Carlsbad N.M. (10/11/2004)
“ A little known TRUTH among God's People ”
There is a book by the title God Wrote only one bible;- Have you read it and do you know how to get it/
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Yamil Luciano (10/9/2004)
“ Sola Escritura ”
Every reformed Christian should be aware of the Bible Version Debate. If they trully side with Sola Escritura then I believe they will side with the supremacy of the KJV position.
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Laura from Missouri (10/9/2004)
“ Please, LISTEN to this Broadcast! ”
Thank you for standing up for the truth! We must have a standard or we will fall for anything. When comparing Scripture with the other versions, in a side by side comparison, the truth is clear. The King James Version protects the holiness of God's Word. Why do the other versions take out the word Holy so many times? Why do they omit Jesus Christ's name and God so many times? Does this make things more clear? NO! And why in some of the other versions has the passage in Isaiah, referring to Lucifer and his fall, been changed to where he is now called the Morning Star instead of Lucifer or Satan, when we know that only Jesus Christ is the Bright and Morning Star as stated in Revelation? May God wake up His Church to the craftiness of Satan.
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Laurel from Maryland (10/6/2004)
“ Great Message! ”
much needed message
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Clark from AZ (9/18/2004)
“ Well Spoken ”
well spoken
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Charlotte from Alaska (8/23/2004)
“ Valuable Information ”
Thank you for this audio.
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David from Columbia SC (8/7/2004)
“ Recommend book: God's Word in our Hands ”
Concerning "Whats MISSING in the New Bibles" I would recommended two books: 1. "God's Word in our Hands" - The Bible preserved for us Chapter 7 How much difference do the differences make - Mark Minnick 2. And an earlier book "From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man" - a laymans guide to how we got our bible Both General Editor: James B. Williams Publisher: Ambassador Emrald International. Greenville SC and Northern Ireland www.emerldhouse.com
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Candace Lee from AZ (8/2/2004)
“ I never knew about this ”
Thank you so much for this mesage, It leaves me with much to think about. This message is life changing. I look forward to part 2.
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Phillip from Hazelton PA (7/19/2004)
“ Great Sermon! ”
POWERFUL..if your a Christian you NEED TO HEAR THIS!! dont pass this by. This may be the second most important message you ever hear next to the message that led you to Jesus!!!
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Shiela from Houston Tx (7/15/2004)
“ Powerful.. ”
This is the message to hear, I really didnt know just how much had been removed and changed in the new bible versions, you really need to hear this one!!! and spread the word!!!
Errors In New Bibles
Brief Sermon Overview:
The deepest look into the new translations of the Bible, many have worked hard to keep this information hidden from christians but we think you deserve to know this information. there is a video avaliable for this audio, it is called TRANSPARENT TRANSLATORS it cannot be purchased from the Underground Christian Network but from Ms.Riplingers website
www.avpublications.com
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Rapture {Article}
The Rapture
By James M. Frye
A Grace Bible Church Publication
You can find more articles by James M. Frye at our website: http://www.mydoctrine.com
We pray this information helps you in some way.
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Introduction
There is perhaps no subject today that has aroused more curiosity than that of the rapture. What is it? When will it take place? What is God’s purpose for it? In this booklet we will seek to answer these questions. But be ready, for what the Bible says on this subject may be quite different from what you have been taught.
What is the Rapture?
What is the rapture, and what will happen when it takes place? To answer this question, let us look at 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17. We will examine this passage one verse at a time.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
1 Thessalonians 4:13
This passage begins by talking about those who are asleep. The term "sleep" is often used in the Bible to refer to believers who have died.
... he [Jesus] saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.
John 11:11-14
So, "them which are asleep" is a reference to believers who have died. We must also keep in mind that it is the body that sleeps and not the soul (Matt. 27:52). The Bible teaches that there is conscious existence after death (Luke 16:19-31; Rev. 6:9-10; Luke 23:43 etc.).
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
1 Thessalonians 4:14
When a believer dies, his spirit is separated from his body (James 2:26). The body returns to the dust, but the spirit returns to God (Eccl. 12:7). For a believer, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).
One day Jesus Christ is going to return to earth. When he does, he will bring with him believers (their spirits) who have died and gone to heaven. But not all believers will die before Jesus returns.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [precede] them which are asleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:15
There will be believers still alive on this earth when Jesus Christ returns. So then we have two groups of believers: those who have died (whom Christ will bring with him); and those who are still alive (whom Christ is coming for).
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1 Thessalonians 4:16
As we have said, Jesus will return to earth bringing the spirits of believers who have died with him. But what about their bodies? This verse tells us that he will raise them from the dead. Jesus will reunite believers’ spirits with their bodies. Their bodies shall be raised immortal, never to die again.
But what about the bodies of believers who are still alive when Jesus returns? They have not died yet, so they cannot be resurrected (raised from the dead).
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1 Corinthians 15:51-53
The bodies of believers who are still alive at the second coming of Christ will be changed. Their bodies will be changed from mortal to immortal in a moment.
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [raptured] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Then both groups (those who have been resurrected and those who have been changed) shall be raptured together to meet the Lord in the air at his coming.
When Will the Rapture Take Place?
There is much debate today about the timing of the rapture. Will it take place before the tribulation or after? In this section we will seek to answer this question.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [Raptured] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
From this passage, one thing is clear. The rapture will take place when Jesus comes. So when does Jesus come? Before the tribulation or after?
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31
Jesus will come immediately after the tribulation. It couldn’t be any clearer. What is it called when Jesus comes to gather his elect unto himself? Why, it’s called the rapture, of course. And there it is right in the text immediately after the tribulation. Notice that he comes in the clouds, with angels and with the sound of a trumpet. That is almost the exact wording that we found in 1 Thessalonians 4.
Some people will object at this point and tell us that Jesus will come twice. They say that he will come once before the tribulation, and a second time after the tribulation. That means that there would be both a second and also a third coming of Christ. Now where does the Bible speak of a third coming of Christ? It doesn’t. There is no such thing. When challenged, they will respond to this by saying that both comings are part of the second coming. Now, unless you are extremely bad at math, you cannot have two second comings. Is that the way we count (1, 2, 2, 3)? No, of course not. The second part would instead be a third coming.
To try and get around this obvious difficulty, those who teach a pre-tribulation rapture speak of the first and second phases of the second coming. Again, where does the Bible speak of phases of the second coming?
ORIGIN OF THIS DOCTRINE
Where did this doctrine, of a pre-tribulation rapture and of there being two phases of the Second Coming, come from? It may shock you to learn this, but the fact is that no one in the Christian Church ever heard of or believed in this doctrine prior to the 1800’s. For 1800 years of Church history no one believed that the rapture would take place before the tribulation or that there would be more than one future Coming of Christ. If you doubt this, simply check any of the confessions and creeds of various denominations prior to this time. Check, for example, The Westminster Confession of Faith 1644, The Baptist Confession of Faith 1689, or The New Hampshire Baptist Confession 1833, etc., etc.
How, then, did this doctrine originate? It began in Scotland around 1830 when a 15-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald believed that she had received a new revelation from God. This supposed new "revelation" was then picked up by a pastor named Edward Irving, and later by a pastor from the Plymouth Brethren named John Nelson Darby. Irving, and then Darby began looking at the Bible through the rose-colored glasses of this young woman’s supposed "revelation" and further developed it into an entire system. This system is known today as Dispensationalism. This teaching then spread to the United States by the mid-1800’s, although it was still little known.
The doctrine did not become popularized until it was adopted by a man named C. I. Scofield. This teaching then found its way into the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible. This Bible was spread far and wide, and it wasn’t long before large numbers of people began interpreting the Second Coming according to Scofield’s notes.
This doctrine has gained such wide acceptance and popularity today, that roughly 90% of all books and perhaps 99% of all radio and TV broadcasts on the subject of prophecy promote this teaching. Not all of the main-line denominations hold to this teaching, but those who don’t are largely silent on the subject.
So we see that this doctrine did not come from the Bible but rather was imposed upon the Bible. For 1800 years, no one got this belief from the Bible.
DISPROVING THIS DOCTRINE
There are many passages of scripture that clearly contradict this teaching.
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him [THE RAPTURE], That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand [IMMINENT]. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [THE DAY OF THE RAPTURE] shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-4
This passage warns us not to let anyone deceive us by teaching that the rapture is at hand (imminent). All who teach a pre-tribulation rapture also teach that the rapture is imminent. It is often said that there is nothing that must take place before the rapture. They tell us that it could happen at any moment. This passage warns us not to be deceived by this teaching. It tells us that two things must happen before the rapture can take place.
1) There will be a falling away (apostasy).
2) The man of sin (the antichrist) will be revealed by entering into the temple and claiming to be God (the abomination of desolation - Matthew 24:15).
Now, if there is anything that must take place before the rapture, how can it be imminent (take place at any moment)? And since the rapture is to take place after the antichrist is revealed, how can it be pre-tribulational? How can the rapture take place before the tribulation, when the Bible says that it will take place after an event that all pre-tribulationists agree happens during the tribulation?
Have you ever seen the end-time movies or read fictional books that are based on this teaching? We hear of cars suddenly going out of control as the driver disappears in the rapture. We watch as people who missed the rapture begin looking around to see who the antichrist will be. Is that the picture the Bible gives us?
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
Jesus is coming back for his saints. When he does, he will not only give them rest from their troubles, but he will also be glorified in them and admired by them. But is that all he is going to do? No, read the passage. He will also take vengeance on unbelievers (them that know not God) and cast them into hell punishing them (with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord).
There is no getting around it, unless you just choose to ignore this passage and believe whatever you want regardless of scripture. All of this happens at the one second coming of Christ. Notice that the word when occurs in this passage twice — Both times between statements of what Jesus will do to believers and what he will do to unbelievers, inseparably linking the two together. When will he come for believers? When he comes to judge unbelievers and cast them into hell.
When the rapture takes place, unbelievers lives will not go on as normal. They will stand before Jesus in judgment, and he will cast them into hell. How could there be a tribulation after that?
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
Matthew 13:24-30
Here we have the parable of the wheat and tares. The interpretation of the parable is given a little further on in the chapter.
He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom [believers]; but the tares are the children of the wicked one [unbelievers]; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Matthew 13:37-43
From this passage we see that believers (wheat) and unbelievers (tares) will exist together (and not be separated) until "the end of the world". If the rapture were to take place prior to the tribulation, then believers and unbelievers would have to be separated before the end of the world. But Jesus tells us this is not the case. This passage also says that when Jesus comes to gather (rapture) believers to himself, he will also cast unbelievers into hell. How could the tribulation possibly take place after all unbelievers have been cast into hell? No one would be left to follow the Antichrist? No! The rapture takes place after the tribulation.
THE DAY OF THE LORD
When studying scripture, it is important to study each passage in its context. The subject of the second coming and the rapture does not stop at the end of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It carries on into chapter 5. So let’s look at that section.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [RAPTURED] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-5:2
From reading this passage in context, one thing is immediately clear. The day in which the rapture takes place is called the day of the Lord. Does the day of the Lord take place before the tribulation or after the tribulation? How can we know when it begins?
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
Isaiah 13:9-10
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.
Joel 2:31
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
Joel 3:14-15
From these passages, we see that the day of the Lord begins with cosmic signs in the sun, moon and stars. So, when do these cosmic signs take place? Before the tribulation or after?
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Matthew 24:29
The cosmic signs will take place after the tribulation. So the day of the Lord will take place after the tribulation. And since the rapture takes place on the day of the Lord, we also know that the rapture will also take place after the tribulation. And as we saw earlier, it’s right there in the text.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31
Why is There a Rapture?
If the purpose of the rapture is not to deliver believers from the coming tribulation, what, then, is its purpose? Let’s look at a passage that we looked at earlier.
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
Jesus is coming back to give believers (who have been going through the tribulation) rest from their troubles. At the same time, he will also be coming in flaming fire, taking vengeance on unbelievers (them that know not God). The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
Luke 17:28-30
Just as God sent angels to deliver Lot out of Sodom before he destroyed it with fire, Jesus will also send his angels to deliver believers from the fire to come.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
2 Peter 3:10-13
As we have seen previously, the day of the Lord is the day in which the rapture takes place. When Jesus comes, he will not only rapture believers but will also destroy the heavens and the earth with fire. The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
Common Objections
There are a number of objections that are often raised against the post-trib. rapture position that is set forth in this booklet. In this section we will look at some of the more common ones.
#1) Coming For –vs– With His Saints
"Some passages say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus will come with his saints (believers). Other passages say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus will come for his saints. Now, how can he come with them unless he first comes for them? Therefore, there must be two phases of the Second Coming."
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Human reasoning always does (1 Cor. 3:19, Cols. 2:8). There is no discrepancy here. They do err not knowing the Scriptures (Matt. 22:29).
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus [Christians who have died] will God bring with him. . . .
Here we have the saints that he is coming with.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we [CHRISTIANS] which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep
1 Thessalonians 4:14-15
Here we have the saints that he is coming for.
We have both groups in the same passage at the same time — the second coming (not comings) of Christ.
The saints that he is coming with are Christians who have died and are coming back with him from heaven. The saints that he is coming for are Christians still alive on the earth. No discrepancy! And no excuse for creating two Phases of the second coming.
#2) Kept from the hour
"Jesus promises to keep us "from the hour of temptation (Rev. 3:10). Since the hour of temptation is the tribulation, we must, therefore, be removed from the earth (in the rapture) before the tribulation starts."
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
Revelation 3:10
This verse is often used by those who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture to "prove" their position. But what does the phrase "keep thee from" mean? They say that it means that believers will not even be here during the temptation. Is that what it means? Lets look at another verse of scripture that uses this same phase and see.
I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
John 17:15
Jesus is praying for his disciples. He does not pray for God to take them "out of the world" (as a rapture would) but that the Father will "keep them from" evil. Evidently being kept "from" something does not necessitate ones removal from the earth.
"Keep them from" is used here to mean "protect in the midst of". Was there evil in the world during the days of these disciples? Yes there was, and they were protected from it. The term "keep them from" is used in a spiritual, not a physical sense. It does not mean "protected them from any bad thing happening to them". Remember that the majority of those for whom Christ was praying were eventually martyred.
They were not kept from physical harm but from spiritual harm. "Keep from evil" refers to being protected in the midst of spiritual evil. And, during the Tribulation, true Christians shall be "protected from" being deceived by the Antichrist.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, "if it were possible", [indicating that it is not possible] they shall deceive the very elect.
Matthew 24:24
Believers will be "kept from" this temptation (deception). They will not be deceived by the Antichrist. This is not true, however, of unbelievers.
And then shall that Wicked [the Antichrist] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 2:8-12
#3) Not Appointed unto wrath
"God has not appointed believers unto wrath, therefore, believers must be raptured before the tribulation".
For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
1 Thessalonians 5:9
Pre-tribers falsely assume that the tribulation and the day of God's wrath are one and the same. Their reasoning goes like this:
1) The tribulation is the pouring out of God's wrath.
2) Believers are not appointed to wrath.
3) Therefore, believers must be raptured before
the tribulation.
What is wrong with this reasoning? The Bible clearly teaches that the wrath of God is not poured out until AFTER the tribulation is over!
1) Jesus taught that cosmic signs in the sun, moon, and stars would signal the end of the tribulation.
Immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days shall the SUN be darkened, and the MOON shall not give her light, and the STARS shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Matthew 24:29
2) These cosmic signs (which signal the end of the tribulation) occur at the sixth seal.
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the SUN became black as sackcloth of hair, and the MOON became as blood; And the STARS of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
Revelation 6:12-13
3) God's wrath is not yet poured out until AFTER these cosmic signs have taken place and the tribulation is over.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from THE WRATH of the Lamb: For THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH IS COME [present tense - it just now got there]; and who shall be able to stand?
Revelation 6:15-17
The great day of God's wrath does not come until after the tribulation is over. The pouring out of God's wrath is the 7 vials.
And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels SEVEN GOLDEN VIALS FULL OF THE WRATH OF GOD, who liveth for ever and ever.
Revelation 15:7
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out THE VIALS OF THE WRATH OF GOD upon the earth.
Revelation 16:1
Believers are indeed delivered from the wrath of God, but this wrath is not poured out until AFTER the tribulation is over. So the rapture need not take place until AFTER the tribulation is over. This verse (1 Thess. 5:9) does not disagree with the Post-tribulation rapture position, it actually affirms it.
Summary
At the beginning of this booklet, we set out to answer three questions:
1. What is the rapture, and what will happen when it takes place? We have seen that when Jesus returns to earth he will bring with him the spirits of believers who have died. He will then resurrect their bodies, placing their spirits back into their now resurrected, immortal bodies. Believers who have not yet died, but are still alive when Christ comes, will have their bodies changed from mortal to immortal in a moment. Then both groups will be caught up (raptured) together to meet the Lord in the air at his coming.
2. When will the rapture take place? We have seen that the rapture will take place immediately after the tribulation, on the day of the Lord when the sun, moon and stars turn dark.
3. Why is there a rapture? We have seen that when Jesus comes for believers he is also coming to destroy, not only unbelievers, but also the heavens and the earth in flaming fire. The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
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Our Vision
There are many false doctrines being taught today, both inside and outside of the Christian Church. We at Grace Bible Church have a great desire to see that these false teachings are exposed and refuted by the Word of God. It is our desire to produce articles that may be placed (free of charge) in the hands of God's people - to enable them to share the truth with those who have been misled by false doctrine.
Would you like to have a part in this ministry and help us get this message out to others? If so, you may make as many copies of this article as you need to give to those who have been misled by the false teaching exposed here. To place this article on your webpage in its entirety, write to Grace Bible Church. Permission is usually granted.
May God bless you as you do His work.
By James M. Frye
A Grace Bible Church Publication
You can find more articles by James M. Frye at our website: http://www.mydoctrine.com
We pray this information helps you in some way.
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Introduction
There is perhaps no subject today that has aroused more curiosity than that of the rapture. What is it? When will it take place? What is God’s purpose for it? In this booklet we will seek to answer these questions. But be ready, for what the Bible says on this subject may be quite different from what you have been taught.
What is the Rapture?
What is the rapture, and what will happen when it takes place? To answer this question, let us look at 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17. We will examine this passage one verse at a time.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
1 Thessalonians 4:13
This passage begins by talking about those who are asleep. The term "sleep" is often used in the Bible to refer to believers who have died.
... he [Jesus] saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.
John 11:11-14
So, "them which are asleep" is a reference to believers who have died. We must also keep in mind that it is the body that sleeps and not the soul (Matt. 27:52). The Bible teaches that there is conscious existence after death (Luke 16:19-31; Rev. 6:9-10; Luke 23:43 etc.).
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
1 Thessalonians 4:14
When a believer dies, his spirit is separated from his body (James 2:26). The body returns to the dust, but the spirit returns to God (Eccl. 12:7). For a believer, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).
One day Jesus Christ is going to return to earth. When he does, he will bring with him believers (their spirits) who have died and gone to heaven. But not all believers will die before Jesus returns.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [precede] them which are asleep.
1 Thessalonians 4:15
There will be believers still alive on this earth when Jesus Christ returns. So then we have two groups of believers: those who have died (whom Christ will bring with him); and those who are still alive (whom Christ is coming for).
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1 Thessalonians 4:16
As we have said, Jesus will return to earth bringing the spirits of believers who have died with him. But what about their bodies? This verse tells us that he will raise them from the dead. Jesus will reunite believers’ spirits with their bodies. Their bodies shall be raised immortal, never to die again.
But what about the bodies of believers who are still alive when Jesus returns? They have not died yet, so they cannot be resurrected (raised from the dead).
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1 Corinthians 15:51-53
The bodies of believers who are still alive at the second coming of Christ will be changed. Their bodies will be changed from mortal to immortal in a moment.
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [raptured] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Then both groups (those who have been resurrected and those who have been changed) shall be raptured together to meet the Lord in the air at his coming.
When Will the Rapture Take Place?
There is much debate today about the timing of the rapture. Will it take place before the tribulation or after? In this section we will seek to answer this question.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [Raptured] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
From this passage, one thing is clear. The rapture will take place when Jesus comes. So when does Jesus come? Before the tribulation or after?
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31
Jesus will come immediately after the tribulation. It couldn’t be any clearer. What is it called when Jesus comes to gather his elect unto himself? Why, it’s called the rapture, of course. And there it is right in the text immediately after the tribulation. Notice that he comes in the clouds, with angels and with the sound of a trumpet. That is almost the exact wording that we found in 1 Thessalonians 4.
Some people will object at this point and tell us that Jesus will come twice. They say that he will come once before the tribulation, and a second time after the tribulation. That means that there would be both a second and also a third coming of Christ. Now where does the Bible speak of a third coming of Christ? It doesn’t. There is no such thing. When challenged, they will respond to this by saying that both comings are part of the second coming. Now, unless you are extremely bad at math, you cannot have two second comings. Is that the way we count (1, 2, 2, 3)? No, of course not. The second part would instead be a third coming.
To try and get around this obvious difficulty, those who teach a pre-tribulation rapture speak of the first and second phases of the second coming. Again, where does the Bible speak of phases of the second coming?
ORIGIN OF THIS DOCTRINE
Where did this doctrine, of a pre-tribulation rapture and of there being two phases of the Second Coming, come from? It may shock you to learn this, but the fact is that no one in the Christian Church ever heard of or believed in this doctrine prior to the 1800’s. For 1800 years of Church history no one believed that the rapture would take place before the tribulation or that there would be more than one future Coming of Christ. If you doubt this, simply check any of the confessions and creeds of various denominations prior to this time. Check, for example, The Westminster Confession of Faith 1644, The Baptist Confession of Faith 1689, or The New Hampshire Baptist Confession 1833, etc., etc.
How, then, did this doctrine originate? It began in Scotland around 1830 when a 15-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald believed that she had received a new revelation from God. This supposed new "revelation" was then picked up by a pastor named Edward Irving, and later by a pastor from the Plymouth Brethren named John Nelson Darby. Irving, and then Darby began looking at the Bible through the rose-colored glasses of this young woman’s supposed "revelation" and further developed it into an entire system. This system is known today as Dispensationalism. This teaching then spread to the United States by the mid-1800’s, although it was still little known.
The doctrine did not become popularized until it was adopted by a man named C. I. Scofield. This teaching then found its way into the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible. This Bible was spread far and wide, and it wasn’t long before large numbers of people began interpreting the Second Coming according to Scofield’s notes.
This doctrine has gained such wide acceptance and popularity today, that roughly 90% of all books and perhaps 99% of all radio and TV broadcasts on the subject of prophecy promote this teaching. Not all of the main-line denominations hold to this teaching, but those who don’t are largely silent on the subject.
So we see that this doctrine did not come from the Bible but rather was imposed upon the Bible. For 1800 years, no one got this belief from the Bible.
DISPROVING THIS DOCTRINE
There are many passages of scripture that clearly contradict this teaching.
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him [THE RAPTURE], That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand [IMMINENT]. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [THE DAY OF THE RAPTURE] shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-4
This passage warns us not to let anyone deceive us by teaching that the rapture is at hand (imminent). All who teach a pre-tribulation rapture also teach that the rapture is imminent. It is often said that there is nothing that must take place before the rapture. They tell us that it could happen at any moment. This passage warns us not to be deceived by this teaching. It tells us that two things must happen before the rapture can take place.
1) There will be a falling away (apostasy).
2) The man of sin (the antichrist) will be revealed by entering into the temple and claiming to be God (the abomination of desolation - Matthew 24:15).
Now, if there is anything that must take place before the rapture, how can it be imminent (take place at any moment)? And since the rapture is to take place after the antichrist is revealed, how can it be pre-tribulational? How can the rapture take place before the tribulation, when the Bible says that it will take place after an event that all pre-tribulationists agree happens during the tribulation?
Have you ever seen the end-time movies or read fictional books that are based on this teaching? We hear of cars suddenly going out of control as the driver disappears in the rapture. We watch as people who missed the rapture begin looking around to see who the antichrist will be. Is that the picture the Bible gives us?
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
Jesus is coming back for his saints. When he does, he will not only give them rest from their troubles, but he will also be glorified in them and admired by them. But is that all he is going to do? No, read the passage. He will also take vengeance on unbelievers (them that know not God) and cast them into hell punishing them (with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord).
There is no getting around it, unless you just choose to ignore this passage and believe whatever you want regardless of scripture. All of this happens at the one second coming of Christ. Notice that the word when occurs in this passage twice — Both times between statements of what Jesus will do to believers and what he will do to unbelievers, inseparably linking the two together. When will he come for believers? When he comes to judge unbelievers and cast them into hell.
When the rapture takes place, unbelievers lives will not go on as normal. They will stand before Jesus in judgment, and he will cast them into hell. How could there be a tribulation after that?
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
Matthew 13:24-30
Here we have the parable of the wheat and tares. The interpretation of the parable is given a little further on in the chapter.
He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom [believers]; but the tares are the children of the wicked one [unbelievers]; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Matthew 13:37-43
From this passage we see that believers (wheat) and unbelievers (tares) will exist together (and not be separated) until "the end of the world". If the rapture were to take place prior to the tribulation, then believers and unbelievers would have to be separated before the end of the world. But Jesus tells us this is not the case. This passage also says that when Jesus comes to gather (rapture) believers to himself, he will also cast unbelievers into hell. How could the tribulation possibly take place after all unbelievers have been cast into hell? No one would be left to follow the Antichrist? No! The rapture takes place after the tribulation.
THE DAY OF THE LORD
When studying scripture, it is important to study each passage in its context. The subject of the second coming and the rapture does not stop at the end of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. It carries on into chapter 5. So let’s look at that section.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up [RAPTURED] together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-5:2
From reading this passage in context, one thing is immediately clear. The day in which the rapture takes place is called the day of the Lord. Does the day of the Lord take place before the tribulation or after the tribulation? How can we know when it begins?
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
Isaiah 13:9-10
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.
Joel 2:31
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
Joel 3:14-15
From these passages, we see that the day of the Lord begins with cosmic signs in the sun, moon and stars. So, when do these cosmic signs take place? Before the tribulation or after?
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Matthew 24:29
The cosmic signs will take place after the tribulation. So the day of the Lord will take place after the tribulation. And since the rapture takes place on the day of the Lord, we also know that the rapture will also take place after the tribulation. And as we saw earlier, it’s right there in the text.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Matthew 24:29-31
Why is There a Rapture?
If the purpose of the rapture is not to deliver believers from the coming tribulation, what, then, is its purpose? Let’s look at a passage that we looked at earlier.
And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
Jesus is coming back to give believers (who have been going through the tribulation) rest from their troubles. At the same time, he will also be coming in flaming fire, taking vengeance on unbelievers (them that know not God). The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
Luke 17:28-30
Just as God sent angels to deliver Lot out of Sodom before he destroyed it with fire, Jesus will also send his angels to deliver believers from the fire to come.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
2 Peter 3:10-13
As we have seen previously, the day of the Lord is the day in which the rapture takes place. When Jesus comes, he will not only rapture believers but will also destroy the heavens and the earth with fire. The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
Common Objections
There are a number of objections that are often raised against the post-trib. rapture position that is set forth in this booklet. In this section we will look at some of the more common ones.
#1) Coming For –vs– With His Saints
"Some passages say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus will come with his saints (believers). Other passages say that, at the Second Coming, Jesus will come for his saints. Now, how can he come with them unless he first comes for them? Therefore, there must be two phases of the Second Coming."
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Human reasoning always does (1 Cor. 3:19, Cols. 2:8). There is no discrepancy here. They do err not knowing the Scriptures (Matt. 22:29).
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus [Christians who have died] will God bring with him. . . .
Here we have the saints that he is coming with.
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we [CHRISTIANS] which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep
1 Thessalonians 4:14-15
Here we have the saints that he is coming for.
We have both groups in the same passage at the same time — the second coming (not comings) of Christ.
The saints that he is coming with are Christians who have died and are coming back with him from heaven. The saints that he is coming for are Christians still alive on the earth. No discrepancy! And no excuse for creating two Phases of the second coming.
#2) Kept from the hour
"Jesus promises to keep us "from the hour of temptation (Rev. 3:10). Since the hour of temptation is the tribulation, we must, therefore, be removed from the earth (in the rapture) before the tribulation starts."
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
Revelation 3:10
This verse is often used by those who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture to "prove" their position. But what does the phrase "keep thee from" mean? They say that it means that believers will not even be here during the temptation. Is that what it means? Lets look at another verse of scripture that uses this same phase and see.
I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
John 17:15
Jesus is praying for his disciples. He does not pray for God to take them "out of the world" (as a rapture would) but that the Father will "keep them from" evil. Evidently being kept "from" something does not necessitate ones removal from the earth.
"Keep them from" is used here to mean "protect in the midst of". Was there evil in the world during the days of these disciples? Yes there was, and they were protected from it. The term "keep them from" is used in a spiritual, not a physical sense. It does not mean "protected them from any bad thing happening to them". Remember that the majority of those for whom Christ was praying were eventually martyred.
They were not kept from physical harm but from spiritual harm. "Keep from evil" refers to being protected in the midst of spiritual evil. And, during the Tribulation, true Christians shall be "protected from" being deceived by the Antichrist.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, "if it were possible", [indicating that it is not possible] they shall deceive the very elect.
Matthew 24:24
Believers will be "kept from" this temptation (deception). They will not be deceived by the Antichrist. This is not true, however, of unbelievers.
And then shall that Wicked [the Antichrist] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 2:8-12
#3) Not Appointed unto wrath
"God has not appointed believers unto wrath, therefore, believers must be raptured before the tribulation".
For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
1 Thessalonians 5:9
Pre-tribers falsely assume that the tribulation and the day of God's wrath are one and the same. Their reasoning goes like this:
1) The tribulation is the pouring out of God's wrath.
2) Believers are not appointed to wrath.
3) Therefore, believers must be raptured before
the tribulation.
What is wrong with this reasoning? The Bible clearly teaches that the wrath of God is not poured out until AFTER the tribulation is over!
1) Jesus taught that cosmic signs in the sun, moon, and stars would signal the end of the tribulation.
Immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days shall the SUN be darkened, and the MOON shall not give her light, and the STARS shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Matthew 24:29
2) These cosmic signs (which signal the end of the tribulation) occur at the sixth seal.
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the SUN became black as sackcloth of hair, and the MOON became as blood; And the STARS of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
Revelation 6:12-13
3) God's wrath is not yet poured out until AFTER these cosmic signs have taken place and the tribulation is over.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from THE WRATH of the Lamb: For THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH IS COME [present tense - it just now got there]; and who shall be able to stand?
Revelation 6:15-17
The great day of God's wrath does not come until after the tribulation is over. The pouring out of God's wrath is the 7 vials.
And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels SEVEN GOLDEN VIALS FULL OF THE WRATH OF GOD, who liveth for ever and ever.
Revelation 15:7
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out THE VIALS OF THE WRATH OF GOD upon the earth.
Revelation 16:1
Believers are indeed delivered from the wrath of God, but this wrath is not poured out until AFTER the tribulation is over. So the rapture need not take place until AFTER the tribulation is over. This verse (1 Thess. 5:9) does not disagree with the Post-tribulation rapture position, it actually affirms it.
Summary
At the beginning of this booklet, we set out to answer three questions:
1. What is the rapture, and what will happen when it takes place? We have seen that when Jesus returns to earth he will bring with him the spirits of believers who have died. He will then resurrect their bodies, placing their spirits back into their now resurrected, immortal bodies. Believers who have not yet died, but are still alive when Christ comes, will have their bodies changed from mortal to immortal in a moment. Then both groups will be caught up (raptured) together to meet the Lord in the air at his coming.
2. When will the rapture take place? We have seen that the rapture will take place immediately after the tribulation, on the day of the Lord when the sun, moon and stars turn dark.
3. Why is there a rapture? We have seen that when Jesus comes for believers he is also coming to destroy, not only unbelievers, but also the heavens and the earth in flaming fire. The purpose of the rapture is to get believers out of the way of the fire.
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Our Vision
There are many false doctrines being taught today, both inside and outside of the Christian Church. We at Grace Bible Church have a great desire to see that these false teachings are exposed and refuted by the Word of God. It is our desire to produce articles that may be placed (free of charge) in the hands of God's people - to enable them to share the truth with those who have been misled by false doctrine.
Would you like to have a part in this ministry and help us get this message out to others? If so, you may make as many copies of this article as you need to give to those who have been misled by the false teaching exposed here. To place this article on your webpage in its entirety, write to Grace Bible Church. Permission is usually granted.
May God bless you as you do His work.
Is the NIV the Word of God?
Is the NIV the Word of God?
By James M. Frye
A Grace Bible Church Publication
You can find more articles by James M. Frye at our website: http://www.mydoctrine.com
We pray this information helps you in some way.
COPYRIGHT ©1998 - James M. Frye
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: All scripture quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Bible. Any deviations are not intentional. All underlines, bold and items within parentheses are the author’s.
_______
Getting Started
I would like to begin by saying that I believe that the Bible is the word of God. The question is, however, which Bible? To many of you who are reading this article, the answer to the question "Is the New International Version (NIV) the Word of God?" may appear to be simple. "Of course the NIV is the word of God", you might say. "And so are the New American Standard Version (NASV), the New King James Version (NKJV) and the Living Bible (LB)", along with a host of other new Bible versions that you might name. But is the answer to this question as simple as it might first appear? It is the purpose of this article to answer this question.
It is beyond the scope of this article to examine all of the various new Bible versions available today. For the sake of space, I will limit myself to the NIV. As for the rest, we will reserve them for future articles.
A Look at the Issue
I used to go to a church where it was common practice to quote from a variety of Bible translations. The pastor would often say, "The NIV says ..., the NASV says ... - Who has the King James?", etc. During Sunday School one morning, the teacher was reading John 5:4. The King James Bible (KJB) says:
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
And then the teacher made a statement that caused me to freeze in my tracks (pew). I think my chin must have hit the floor. He said, "For some reason, the NIV has left this verse out". I was shocked. I went and checked a copy of the NIV that I had at home, and sure enough, the verse was missing. This and other similar events caused me to realize that all Bible versions are not the same.
Up until this time, I had believed that the only differences between the NIV and the King James was that the NIV was supposed to be easier to read and to understand. Boy, was I wrong. I knew that I needed to look into the matter further. By the grace of God, I was able to do just that. The information contained in this article represents some of the information that resulted from that study.
They Can’t Both Be Right
It is the purpose of this section to show that the difference between the Authorized King James Bible (KJB) and the NIV are irreconcilable. That is, they both can’t be right. For example, In Isaiah 9:3, the KJB says:
Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy ...
The NIV says:
You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy
You will notice that the main difference, apart from the rewording of the text, is that the KJB has the word not and the NIV doesn’t. So, the KJB says that God has not increased their joy. The NIV says that God has increased their joy.
You might find yourself saying, "Is it really that big of a difference? After all, we are only talking about one word here." I chose this verse to establish a point: They (the KJB and NIV) say the exact opposite. If one is right, then the other one is wrong. We can’t possibly say that they are both correct. Did God increase their joy or not? Which words did God give to the prophet Isaiah? (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20-21)
As I stated in the beginning of this article, many people operate under the false assumption that all Bible versions are the Word of God - despite the fact that they disagree with each other. Are we to suppose that God has written more than one Bible and that he makes statements in one and then disagrees with them in another? Of course not. God only wrote one Bible.
I’ve actually shown the difference in Isaiah 9:3 to people and had them refuse to admit that they both can’t be right. Please understand that we need to have an open mind, absolute humility, and a sincere desire for the truth. People may think, "Well, my church uses the NIV, and if I believe this ...", or "I just don’t want to make waves." But, understand, to avoid conflict at all cost is not to be the attitude of a Christian. We should rather stand for the truth regardless of the conflict that arises from it. (Jude 3; John 15:20; Luke 12:51; 2 Tim. 3:12)
Our attitude toward this matter should be the same as God’s. Revelation 22:18-19 says:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
God is angry with those who change his words. He promises plagues to those who add to them, and loss from one’s part in the Book of Life for those who subtract from them. In case you think it is just the book of Revelation that God is concerned about, God places similar rebukes against changing his words in Deuteronomy 4:2 and Proverbs 30:6. One rebuke is in the beginning of the Bible, one in the middle, and one at the end. It is his words that God is concerned about - not just where they are located. So then, we should have the same attitude about this issue as God has.
1 Peter 1:16 says:
... BE YE HOLY; FOR I AM HOLY.
Surely this applies, not only to our actions, but also to our attitudes. If God takes the changing of his words seriously, so then should we. If it angers God, it should anger us. There is a righteous and an unrighteous anger. (See Mark 3:5 and Eph. 4:26) Sometimes it is wrong (a sin) not to be angry.
Seeing It For Yourself
So far, we have looked at just a few problems with the NIV - a missing word here and a missing verse there. But the problem is much greater than just a word or a verse.
For starters, try finding the following verses in the NIV:
Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14.
Mark 7:16; 9:44; 9:46; 11:26; 15:28.
Luke 17:36; 23:17; John 5:4.
Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29.
Romans 16:24 and 1 John 5:7.
They are not there. They have been removed entirely. Now I ask you, what kind of Bible is it that leaves out entire verses? What did these verses say? Among other things, they say that: Jesus came to save the lost, that hell is a place where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched, and that a person must be a believer in order to be baptized.
In the last verse (1 John 5:7), the NIV is very deceptive, for it does have a verse 7, but it is really part of verse 8. Verse 8 has been split into two verses in the NIV (verses 7 and 8) so that you won’t know that verse 7 is missing. 1 John 5:8 (KJB) says:
And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
The NIV splits this verse into two verses: In verse 7, it says:
For there are three that testify (bear witness)
In verse 8, it says:
the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
The true verse 7 has been removed. In the KJB, verse 7 says:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This is no insignificant verse. This is the clearest statement of the doctrine of the Trinity in the entire Bible. Is this verse unimportant? Would God want it removed?
But the problems with the NIV do not stop there. In addition to the verses that have been omitted entirely, thousands of verses have partial omissions. Many who have studied this issue in much greater detail than I, have stated that the missing words are in excess of 64,000 - not counting the additions. Remember what God said about those who take away from or add to his words. (Rev. 22:18-19)
Let me give you a few examples of verses that contain these kinds of omissions. In the KJB, the Lord’s Prayer reads in Luke 11:2-4 as follows:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
The underlined portions are missing in the NIV. In Matthew 27:35, the KJB says:
And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, THEY PARTED MY GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND UPON MY VESTURE DID THEY CAST LOTS.
Again, the underlined portions are missing in the NIV, hiding the fact that this verse is a fulfillment of Psalm 22:18. A full 26 words have been omitted this time.
Substantial portions have been removed from hundreds of verses in addition to these. Many key words have also been removed. For example, the word "Christ" has been removed dozens of times. (Rom. 1:16; Acts 16:31; etc.) The word "Jesus" has been removed dozens of times. (Matt. 8:29; 2 Cor. 5:18; etc.) The word "Lord" has also been removed in a number of places.
Are There Errors
in God’s Word?
John 17:17 says:
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
In addition to the omissions in the NIV, one of its most disturbing problems is the fact that it contains many outright errors. For example, who killed Goliath? I know that the answer to this question seems obvious. David, right? Well, it’s not so obvious in the NIV. In 2 Samuel 21:19 the NIV says:
In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.
The KJB has the correct reading, for it says that Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother. This is confirmed in 1 Chronicles 20:5. The KJB says:
And there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver’s beam.
Once again, the NIV is in error. It is also seen to conflict with itself, for it says David killed Goliath in 1 Sam. 21:8-9.
One of the most disturbing changes occurs in Isaiah 14:12. The KJB says:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer ...
This passage records Satan’s (Lucifer’s) rebellion against God, and how he was cast out of Heaven.
The NIV says:
How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star ...
In this passage, "Lucifer" has been changed to "Morning Star". This is frightening because the Bible defines the Morning Star as Jesus Christ. Revelation 22:16 says:
I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
In the NIV, it is Jesus Christ (the Morning Star) and not Satan that rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. That is outright blasphemy. Satan has pulled off quite a disappearing act. Not only has he been removed from the text, Jesus Christ has been inserted in his place.
I think, by this point, many of you are beginning to see that there are some very serious problems with the NIV. Let’s look at a few more errors. Matthew 5:22 in the KJB says:
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ..
The phrase, without a cause, has been removed in the NIV. This would make Jesus Christ a sinner in Mark 3:5, where the Bible says that he was angry. The NIV implies that Jesus is a sinner, despite the fact that the Bible says that he never sinned and is without sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15).
We find another error in Mark 1:2. The NIV says:
It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"
This is actually a quotation of Malachi 3:1. The King James has the proper reading, for it says "as it is written in the prophets". Verse 2 is quoting Malachi, and Verse 3 is quoting Isaiah.
Doctrinal Differences
Many of the changes in the NIV, including some that we have already looked at, affect doctrine. For example, the deity of Christ (the fact that Jesus Christ is God) is attacked in a number of places. One example is 1 Timothy 3:16. The KJB says:
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
The NIV has changed "God" to "He". This is a big difference. In this verse, the KJB clearly states that Jesus Christ is God, and in the NIV it does not.
Many times I have heard those who support the NIV say, "No doctrine is affected by the changes in the new Bible versions." We have just seen that it is. What they really mean is that no doctrine has been removed entirely. That is, there is still another verse in the Bible somewhere that teaches the doctrine. So then, they believe it is perfectly OK to remove a doctrine in one place as long as they do not obliterate it entirely.
By this same logic, would it be OK with God if we removed the entire Gospel of Mark? After all, most of the doctrines taught in Mark are also taught in Matthew or Luke. No. This is faulty reasoning, and there is no excuse to remove even one word from God’s words.
In the KJB in Luke 4:4, Jesus says:
... MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD OF GOD.
By the way, "BUT BY EVERY WORD OF GOD" has been removed in the NIV. If you want to have the words of God, EVERY WORD OF GOD, get a copy of the Authorized King James Bible.
Summary
So, is the NIV the Word of God? We have seen omissions ranging from one word to entire verses. We have seen errors ranging from misquoting a prophet, to the removal of Lucifer (Satan) and the insertion of Jesus Christ in his place. We have even seen changes affecting the doctrine of the deity of Christ. After examining the evidence, could you say that the NIV is the Word of God? Could you call the NIV "HOLY BIBLE?"
-------------------------------------------------
Our Vision
There are many false doctrines being taught today, both inside and outside of the Christian Church. We at Grace Bible Church have a great desire to see that these false teachings are exposed and refuted by the Word of God. It is our desire to produce articles that may be placed (free of charge) in the hands of God’s people - to enable them to share the truth with those who have been misled by false doctrine.
Would you like to have a part in this ministry and help us get this message out to others? If so, you may make as many copies of this article as you need to give to those who have been misled by the false teaching exposed here. You may also place this article on your website.
May God bless you as you do His work.
By James M. Frye
A Grace Bible Church Publication
You can find more articles by James M. Frye at our website: http://www.mydoctrine.com
We pray this information helps you in some way.
COPYRIGHT ©1998 - James M. Frye
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: All scripture quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Bible. Any deviations are not intentional. All underlines, bold and items within parentheses are the author’s.
_______
Getting Started
I would like to begin by saying that I believe that the Bible is the word of God. The question is, however, which Bible? To many of you who are reading this article, the answer to the question "Is the New International Version (NIV) the Word of God?" may appear to be simple. "Of course the NIV is the word of God", you might say. "And so are the New American Standard Version (NASV), the New King James Version (NKJV) and the Living Bible (LB)", along with a host of other new Bible versions that you might name. But is the answer to this question as simple as it might first appear? It is the purpose of this article to answer this question.
It is beyond the scope of this article to examine all of the various new Bible versions available today. For the sake of space, I will limit myself to the NIV. As for the rest, we will reserve them for future articles.
A Look at the Issue
I used to go to a church where it was common practice to quote from a variety of Bible translations. The pastor would often say, "The NIV says ..., the NASV says ... - Who has the King James?", etc. During Sunday School one morning, the teacher was reading John 5:4. The King James Bible (KJB) says:
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
And then the teacher made a statement that caused me to freeze in my tracks (pew). I think my chin must have hit the floor. He said, "For some reason, the NIV has left this verse out". I was shocked. I went and checked a copy of the NIV that I had at home, and sure enough, the verse was missing. This and other similar events caused me to realize that all Bible versions are not the same.
Up until this time, I had believed that the only differences between the NIV and the King James was that the NIV was supposed to be easier to read and to understand. Boy, was I wrong. I knew that I needed to look into the matter further. By the grace of God, I was able to do just that. The information contained in this article represents some of the information that resulted from that study.
They Can’t Both Be Right
It is the purpose of this section to show that the difference between the Authorized King James Bible (KJB) and the NIV are irreconcilable. That is, they both can’t be right. For example, In Isaiah 9:3, the KJB says:
Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy ...
The NIV says:
You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy
You will notice that the main difference, apart from the rewording of the text, is that the KJB has the word not and the NIV doesn’t. So, the KJB says that God has not increased their joy. The NIV says that God has increased their joy.
You might find yourself saying, "Is it really that big of a difference? After all, we are only talking about one word here." I chose this verse to establish a point: They (the KJB and NIV) say the exact opposite. If one is right, then the other one is wrong. We can’t possibly say that they are both correct. Did God increase their joy or not? Which words did God give to the prophet Isaiah? (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20-21)
As I stated in the beginning of this article, many people operate under the false assumption that all Bible versions are the Word of God - despite the fact that they disagree with each other. Are we to suppose that God has written more than one Bible and that he makes statements in one and then disagrees with them in another? Of course not. God only wrote one Bible.
I’ve actually shown the difference in Isaiah 9:3 to people and had them refuse to admit that they both can’t be right. Please understand that we need to have an open mind, absolute humility, and a sincere desire for the truth. People may think, "Well, my church uses the NIV, and if I believe this ...", or "I just don’t want to make waves." But, understand, to avoid conflict at all cost is not to be the attitude of a Christian. We should rather stand for the truth regardless of the conflict that arises from it. (Jude 3; John 15:20; Luke 12:51; 2 Tim. 3:12)
Our attitude toward this matter should be the same as God’s. Revelation 22:18-19 says:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
God is angry with those who change his words. He promises plagues to those who add to them, and loss from one’s part in the Book of Life for those who subtract from them. In case you think it is just the book of Revelation that God is concerned about, God places similar rebukes against changing his words in Deuteronomy 4:2 and Proverbs 30:6. One rebuke is in the beginning of the Bible, one in the middle, and one at the end. It is his words that God is concerned about - not just where they are located. So then, we should have the same attitude about this issue as God has.
1 Peter 1:16 says:
... BE YE HOLY; FOR I AM HOLY.
Surely this applies, not only to our actions, but also to our attitudes. If God takes the changing of his words seriously, so then should we. If it angers God, it should anger us. There is a righteous and an unrighteous anger. (See Mark 3:5 and Eph. 4:26) Sometimes it is wrong (a sin) not to be angry.
Seeing It For Yourself
So far, we have looked at just a few problems with the NIV - a missing word here and a missing verse there. But the problem is much greater than just a word or a verse.
For starters, try finding the following verses in the NIV:
Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14.
Mark 7:16; 9:44; 9:46; 11:26; 15:28.
Luke 17:36; 23:17; John 5:4.
Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29.
Romans 16:24 and 1 John 5:7.
They are not there. They have been removed entirely. Now I ask you, what kind of Bible is it that leaves out entire verses? What did these verses say? Among other things, they say that: Jesus came to save the lost, that hell is a place where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched, and that a person must be a believer in order to be baptized.
In the last verse (1 John 5:7), the NIV is very deceptive, for it does have a verse 7, but it is really part of verse 8. Verse 8 has been split into two verses in the NIV (verses 7 and 8) so that you won’t know that verse 7 is missing. 1 John 5:8 (KJB) says:
And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
The NIV splits this verse into two verses: In verse 7, it says:
For there are three that testify (bear witness)
In verse 8, it says:
the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
The true verse 7 has been removed. In the KJB, verse 7 says:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This is no insignificant verse. This is the clearest statement of the doctrine of the Trinity in the entire Bible. Is this verse unimportant? Would God want it removed?
But the problems with the NIV do not stop there. In addition to the verses that have been omitted entirely, thousands of verses have partial omissions. Many who have studied this issue in much greater detail than I, have stated that the missing words are in excess of 64,000 - not counting the additions. Remember what God said about those who take away from or add to his words. (Rev. 22:18-19)
Let me give you a few examples of verses that contain these kinds of omissions. In the KJB, the Lord’s Prayer reads in Luke 11:2-4 as follows:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
The underlined portions are missing in the NIV. In Matthew 27:35, the KJB says:
And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, THEY PARTED MY GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND UPON MY VESTURE DID THEY CAST LOTS.
Again, the underlined portions are missing in the NIV, hiding the fact that this verse is a fulfillment of Psalm 22:18. A full 26 words have been omitted this time.
Substantial portions have been removed from hundreds of verses in addition to these. Many key words have also been removed. For example, the word "Christ" has been removed dozens of times. (Rom. 1:16; Acts 16:31; etc.) The word "Jesus" has been removed dozens of times. (Matt. 8:29; 2 Cor. 5:18; etc.) The word "Lord" has also been removed in a number of places.
Are There Errors
in God’s Word?
John 17:17 says:
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
In addition to the omissions in the NIV, one of its most disturbing problems is the fact that it contains many outright errors. For example, who killed Goliath? I know that the answer to this question seems obvious. David, right? Well, it’s not so obvious in the NIV. In 2 Samuel 21:19 the NIV says:
In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.
The KJB has the correct reading, for it says that Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother. This is confirmed in 1 Chronicles 20:5. The KJB says:
And there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver’s beam.
Once again, the NIV is in error. It is also seen to conflict with itself, for it says David killed Goliath in 1 Sam. 21:8-9.
One of the most disturbing changes occurs in Isaiah 14:12. The KJB says:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer ...
This passage records Satan’s (Lucifer’s) rebellion against God, and how he was cast out of Heaven.
The NIV says:
How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star ...
In this passage, "Lucifer" has been changed to "Morning Star". This is frightening because the Bible defines the Morning Star as Jesus Christ. Revelation 22:16 says:
I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
In the NIV, it is Jesus Christ (the Morning Star) and not Satan that rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. That is outright blasphemy. Satan has pulled off quite a disappearing act. Not only has he been removed from the text, Jesus Christ has been inserted in his place.
I think, by this point, many of you are beginning to see that there are some very serious problems with the NIV. Let’s look at a few more errors. Matthew 5:22 in the KJB says:
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment ..
The phrase, without a cause, has been removed in the NIV. This would make Jesus Christ a sinner in Mark 3:5, where the Bible says that he was angry. The NIV implies that Jesus is a sinner, despite the fact that the Bible says that he never sinned and is without sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15).
We find another error in Mark 1:2. The NIV says:
It is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way"
This is actually a quotation of Malachi 3:1. The King James has the proper reading, for it says "as it is written in the prophets". Verse 2 is quoting Malachi, and Verse 3 is quoting Isaiah.
Doctrinal Differences
Many of the changes in the NIV, including some that we have already looked at, affect doctrine. For example, the deity of Christ (the fact that Jesus Christ is God) is attacked in a number of places. One example is 1 Timothy 3:16. The KJB says:
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
The NIV has changed "God" to "He". This is a big difference. In this verse, the KJB clearly states that Jesus Christ is God, and in the NIV it does not.
Many times I have heard those who support the NIV say, "No doctrine is affected by the changes in the new Bible versions." We have just seen that it is. What they really mean is that no doctrine has been removed entirely. That is, there is still another verse in the Bible somewhere that teaches the doctrine. So then, they believe it is perfectly OK to remove a doctrine in one place as long as they do not obliterate it entirely.
By this same logic, would it be OK with God if we removed the entire Gospel of Mark? After all, most of the doctrines taught in Mark are also taught in Matthew or Luke. No. This is faulty reasoning, and there is no excuse to remove even one word from God’s words.
In the KJB in Luke 4:4, Jesus says:
... MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD OF GOD.
By the way, "BUT BY EVERY WORD OF GOD" has been removed in the NIV. If you want to have the words of God, EVERY WORD OF GOD, get a copy of the Authorized King James Bible.
Summary
So, is the NIV the Word of God? We have seen omissions ranging from one word to entire verses. We have seen errors ranging from misquoting a prophet, to the removal of Lucifer (Satan) and the insertion of Jesus Christ in his place. We have even seen changes affecting the doctrine of the deity of Christ. After examining the evidence, could you say that the NIV is the Word of God? Could you call the NIV "HOLY BIBLE?"
-------------------------------------------------
Our Vision
There are many false doctrines being taught today, both inside and outside of the Christian Church. We at Grace Bible Church have a great desire to see that these false teachings are exposed and refuted by the Word of God. It is our desire to produce articles that may be placed (free of charge) in the hands of God’s people - to enable them to share the truth with those who have been misled by false doctrine.
Would you like to have a part in this ministry and help us get this message out to others? If so, you may make as many copies of this article as you need to give to those who have been misled by the false teaching exposed here. You may also place this article on your website.
May God bless you as you do His work.
The Roman Catholic Church Is not a Christian Church
Brief Sermon Overview:
The history, government, doctrine, and dogma of the Roman Catholic Church proves that the pope's church is not Christ's Church.
If the Pope Wins America, What Will America Be?
Brief Sermon Overview:
Since America's earliest days, she has been a thorn in the pope's side, and he has been her enemy. This nation was settled and founded by Protestants who held a faithfully biblical position regarding, of course, such crucial doctrine as justification but also economics, morality, social policy, the work ethic, criminal law, private property rights, God-ordained spheres of authority, the separation of church and state. Those neo-evangelicals who claim that the Roman Catholic Church is a friend and an ally in the so-called culture wars are strengthening the hand of a tyrant who will destroy our blood-bought liberty and our very nation—spiritually, economically, and morally.
Arminianism:The Road To Rome
Arminianism: The Road to Rome!
by Augustus Toplady
"...that there is no such a thing as preaching Christ and him crucified unless you preach what is now-a-days called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else" (C. H. Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1, 1856).
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13, KJV, emphases added).
Whose Voice Do You Hear?
"My sheep, saith Christ, hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. O, most worthy Scriptures! which ought to compel us to have a faithful remembrance, and to note the tenor thereof; which is, the sheep of Christ shall never perish.
"Doth Christ mean part of his elect, or all, think you? I do hold, and affirm, and also faithfully believe, that he meant all his elect, and not part, as some do full ungodly affirm. I confess and believe assuredly, that there shall never any of them perish: for I have good authority so to say; because Christ is my author, and saith, if it were possible, the very elect should be deceived. Ergo, it is not possible that they can be so deceived, that they shall ever finally perish, or be damned: wherefore, whosoever doth affirm that there may be any (i.e. any of the elect) lost, doth affirm that Christ hath a torn body."1
The above valuable letter of recantation is thus inscribed: "A Letter to the Congregation of Free-willers, by One that had been of that Persuasion, but come off, and now a Prisoner for Religion:" which superscription will hereafter, in its due place, supply us with a remark of more than slight importance.
John Wesley, A Friend of Rome?
To occupy the place of argument, it has been alleged that "Mr. Wesley is an old man;" and the Church of Rome is still older than he. Is that any reason why the enormities, either of the mother or the son, should pass unchastised?
It has also been suggested, that "Mr. Wesley is a very laborious man:" not more laborious, I presume, than a certain active being, who is said to go to and fro in the earth, and walk up and down in it:2 nor yet more laborious, I should imagine, than certain ancient Sectarians, concerning whom it was long ago said, "Woe unto you Scribes, hypocrites; for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte:"3 nor, by any means, so usefully laborious, as a certain diligent member of the community, respecting whose variety of occupations the public have lately received the following intelligence: "The truth of the following instance of industry may be depended on: a poor man with a large family, now cries milk, every morning, in Lothbury, and the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange; at eleven, he wheels about a barrow of potatoes; at one, he cleans shoes at the Change; after dinner, cries milk again; in the evening, sells sprats; and at night, finishes the measure of his labour as a watchman."4
The Quarrel is With the Wolf
Mr. Sellon, moreover, reminds me (p. 128.) that, "while the shepherds are quarrelling, the wolf gets into the sheep fold;" not impossible: but it so happens, that the present quarrel is not among "the shepherds," but with the "wolf" himself; which "quarrel" is warranted by every maxim of pastoral meekness and fidelity.
I am further told, that, while I am "berating the Arminians, Rome and the devil laugh in their sleeves." Admitting that Mr. Sellon might derive this anecdote from the fountain head, the parties themselves, yet, as neither they nor he are very conspicuous for veracity, I construe the intelligence by the rule of reverse, though authenticated by the deposition of their right trusty and well-beloved cousin and counsellor.
Once more: I am charged with "excessive superciliousness, and majesty of pride:" and why not charged with having seven heads and ten horns, and a tail as long as a bell-rope? After all, what has my pride, or my humility, to do with the argument in hand? Whether I am haughty, or meek, is of no more consequence either to that, or to the public, than whether I am tall or short: however, I am, at this very time, giving one proof, that my "majesty of pride" can stoop; that even to ventilate the impertinences of Mr. Sellon.
Arminianism at Home in Rome
But, however frivolous his cavils, the principles for which he contends are of the most pernicious nature and tendency. I must repeat, what already seems to have given him so much offence, that Arminianism "came from Rome, and leads thither again." Julian, bishop of Eclana a contemporary and disciple of Pelagius, was one of those who endeavoured, with much art, to gild the doctrines of that heresiarch, in order to render them more sightly and palatable. The Pelagian system, thus varnished and paliated, soon began to acquire the softer name of Semipelagianism. Let us take a view of it, as drawn to our hands by the celebrated Mr. Bower, who himself, in the main, a professed Pelagian, and therefore less likely to present us with an unfavourable portrait of the system he generally approved. Among the principles of that sect, this learned writer enumerates the following:
"The notion of election and reprobation, independent of our merits or demerits, is maintaining a fatal necessity, is the bane of all virtue, and serves only to render good men remiss in working out their salvation, and to drive sinners to despair.
"The decrees of election and reprobation are posterior to, and in consequence of, our good or evil works, as foreseen by God from all eternity."
Is not this too the very language of modern Arminianism? Do not the partizans of that scheme argue on the same identical terms? Should it be said, "True, this proves that Arminianism is Pelagianism revived; but it does not prove, that the doctrines of Arminianism are originally Popish:" a moment's cool attention will make it plain that they are. Let us again hear Mr. Bower, who, after the passage just quoted, immediately adds, "on these two last propositions, the Jesuits found their whole system of grace and free-will; agreeing therein with the Semipelagians, against the Jansenists and St. Augustine."6 The Jesuits were moulded into a regular body, towards the middle of the sixteenth century: toward the close of the same century, Arminius began to infest the Protestant churches. It needs therefore no great penetration, to discern from what source he drew his poison. His journey to Rome (though Monsicur Bayle affects to make light of the inferences which were at that very time deduced from it) was not for nothing. If, however, any are disposed to believe, that Arminius imbibed his doctrines from the Socinians in Poland, with whom, it is certain, he was on terms of intimate friendship, I have no objection to splitting the difference: he might import some of his tenets from the Racovian brethren, and yet be indebted, for others, to the disciples of Loyola.
+ This article continues (with sections on "Papists and Predestination," "The Jesuits Against Predestination,"The Sovereign Drug Arminianism," & "Arminianism From the Pit of Hell,") at http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/RHNarmin.htm
The Ultimate Conspiracy - Dave Hunt and the Jesuit Attempt to Hijack the Christian Faith
The Ultimate Conspiracy - Dave Hunt and the Jesuit Attempt to Hijack the Christian Faith
By Michael Bunker
"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." -- Ephesians 2:4-7
June 22, 2002 -- Too often we are not willing to ask the questions that cut to the root of the issues of the day. Our attentions are seized by shiny rocks and relics, by petty debates and well concocted mysteries -- so that, in the end, the greatest of all deceptions slides under the door unnoticed.
In the grand debate over whether homosexual, pedophilic priests should be demoted or defrocked, we are loathe to ask the deeper question: Do Catholics go to heaven? Or deeper still, Are YOU Catholic?
While Protestants silently chortle over the convulsions within the world's largest cult, few are willing to recognize that Catholic doctrine has so overwhelmed the "protestant" religion, that there is not a dimes worth of difference between the two. Why should we be shocked that the priests of the papacy are fondling boys behind closed doors, when they have boldly molested Protestant Church doctrine for the last several hundred years?
Excuse me Bishop Pedofili, can we see BOTH of your hands?
Behold, the Ultimate Conspiracy. While "remnant" Christians and patriots pour through the voluminous documentations of a wicked "New World Order", a far more heinous conspiracy marches forward unnoticed. In the confusion caused by the frantic attempt to expose the growing menace of fascistic globalism, the opponents of that antichrist system have willingly embraced the very theology of Antichrist.
We must start with some history, and there we will find the fingerprints of the last days Great Deception. Gather around and we will unveil the web of mystery and deceit that has ensnared the churches of the world.
JESUITS
The Jesuits (or, the Society of Jesus) are a Catholic order founded by the Spanish priest Ignatius Loyola, and ordained by Pope Paul III in September of 1540. Loyola had experienced continuing mystic "visions" beginning in 1523. In the visions, it was revealed to Loyola that he was to be the originator and the master of a grand army that would do battle with what he considered Babylonian hordes. Originally he believed that the enemy he was to battle was the Mohammedans (Muslims), but upon visiting Jerusalem and finding that his enemy was too great to overcome, he came to the conclusion that his enemy MUST be the Protestants. Loyola firmly believed that he had received this vision and this charge from the Blessed Virgin herself, so on the 15th of August in 1534, he, along with his disciples, traveled to the subterranean chapel of the Church of Montmartre, at Paris (which had been consecrated to Mary) where they pledged their services to the Pope, however he might choose to use them. The day was chosen because it was considered by Catholics to be the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin.
Loyola had prepared a book entitled "Spiritual Exercises". This was a rule book by which men could learn to work out their own "conversion". Through a mystic recipe, a penitent could utilize his mind, and by going through successive "exercises" he could be created into a "converted" warrior for the Pope. The Jesuits believed the claims of Loyola that the "exercises" was a book actually written by the finger of God, and delivered to Loyola by the Mother of God. Let us be perfectly clear, the order of Loyola truly believed that "conversion" could be affected upon oneself, and this put them in violent opposition to the doctrines of the Apostles as preached by the Protestant reformers.
The oath of the Jesuits to serve the Pope according to his pleasure, along with Loyola's vitriolic hatred of the doctrines of Grace, inevitably would lead to the Jesuit mission to effect a "counter-reformation" by declaring war on the true Christian faith. This mission is reflected in this excerpt of the Jesuit oath:
"I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus".
And so, by command (they believed) of the co-redemptress Mary, the Jesuits set out to use any and all means to attack and destroy the idea of salvation by Grace. The ultimate conspiracy was born.
The Doctrines of Grace
The centerpiece of the reformers' doctrine was out of the letter to the Ephesians. Paul had written, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." These verses, when read in their proper context, are odious to all those whose pride will not allow them to receive imputed righteousness. The scriptures plainly claim that: a) we are the workmanship, and not co-workers in our salvation, b) that those good works that are done by us, are not ours, but the works of God worked out through us, c) and that our salvation (including our faith) is a gift of God, and cannot be claimed as a "salary" or a reward for our good works.
What was worse for Loyola and his Catholic cohorts was that the people were beginning to receive the Bible in their "vulgar" tongues, and the doctrines of Grace were now being made evident to even the most ignorant of peasants. That the same book of Ephesians claimed (in Chapter 2, verses 5) that God had quickened his elect "Even when we were dead in sins", further complicated things for the Catholics. Because it was evident to even the uneducated ploughboy, that a sovereign God was totally responsible for salvation and redemption, and that those who had gained the inheritance (of salvation), had gained that inheritance by being "predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Ephesians 1:11).
It was in 1536, two years after Loyola and his gang made their oaths in the church in Paris, that William Tyndale was martyred as a heretic for, among other things, denying the freedom of the will and for publishing the New Testament in English.
The Council of Trent, 1545
In 1545, the Council of Trent was convened by Pope Paul III. In this Council, the Catholic Church adopted a stance on Justification that was blatantly contrary to the scriptures. In Canon 9 of the Council, the church declared, "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema." During the Council, the Jesuits were ordered by the Pope to make war, silently and openly against the Reformation.
Planting Poison in the Well -- Jacobus Arminius.
The Counter-Reformation was in full swing. Jesuit spies and agents began to infiltrate Protestant schools, and actually landed on the coast of the United States in the 1530's and the 1540's. In order to defend the Romanist religion, as well as the Pope (who Catholics are taught is actually "Christ on earth"), the Jesuits began their war plan for a battle on many fronts, but a full attack on the Doctrines of Grace would be necessary if Rome was to ever prevail. In 1560, unknown to the Jesuits, one of their greatest proponents was to be born in Holland. His name was James Harmenszoon, but he would come to be known as Jacobus Arminius.
Arminius lost his family during a war with the Spanish in 1575. As a fifteen year old orphan, he entered the University of Leyden, and under scholarship by the government of the City of Amsterdam, he was sent to the Theological school in Geneva for studies at the feet of the great reformers. At Geneva, Arminius studied under a professor named Theodore Beza, the man who had assumed the leadership role of the Protestant movement in Switzerland from John Calvin. For some reason that seems to be lost to history, Arminius did not like Beza, and found his forceful defense of the Doctrines of Grace to be harsh and unyielding.
Here is where our mystery gets increasingly interesting. Back in Amsterdam there was a movement of "counter-reformation" begun supposedly by a rich merchant named Dirck Coornhert. Coornhert was a Dutch humanist who was enamored with the teachings of the Catholic humanist Erasmus and a Spanish Jesuit monk named Luis de Molina. Coornhert disdained the reformation teachings on Grace, and sought to confront them wherever he found them. Coornhert had read with growing affections the teachings of de Molina regarding Free Will and Predestination. The Jesuits had hit on a brilliant way of dismantling the debate, they would preach that BOTH were true, and that a good God who was truly sovereign surely might have given his creations a freedom of the will in order to allow them to choose to be saved. Luis de Molina was creating a doctrine that would eventually be called Media Scientia or "Middle-Knowledge". Eventually this heresy would be called Molinism. In an article on Luis de Molina entitled, Contending for the Faith, Rev. Bernard Woudenberg said of de Molina, "Being a Romanist, he was forced to honor the theology of Thomas Aquinas with its acceptance of divine sovereignty, but at the same time, as a Jesuit, he was committed to defending the papacy against the growing influences of Calvinism. And so de Molina set forth to steer between these by proposing his original and highly influential concept of the media scientia, or "middle- knowledge." In this he proposed that "between God's knowledge of the cause and effect relations which He had implanted in the universe, and that of divine freedom whereby He remains free at any time to do what He wills, there is an area of middle-knowledge which God provides for man in which man is granted freedom to do whatever he chooses without outside necessity or predetermination of any kind." The Hegelian dialectic was in full force. The Catholic lie on justification had been countered by the true doctrine of Salvation by Grace through faith, so an evil "compromise" was now offered to the reformed churches, and by deceit and subterfuge, the compromise would eventually become the predominant teachings in all the churches of the world.
Back in Geneva, Theodore Beza at this time had reason to suspect that his student Jacobus Arminius was not what he proposed to be. Questions were being asked about comments that Arminius was making to fellow students, and there were still questions about his support from the rich, aristocratic merchants of Holland. Apparently Arminius was able to lie well enough to get past Beza's questioning, a skill that would come in handy years later when he would be looking for a teaching job in Amsterdam. Beza then asked Arminius to answer and refute the teachings of Dirck Coornhert. Although Arminius completed the task, he later claimed to be convinced by Coornhert's arguments, and he became ardently opposed to the teachings of the reformers. In 1586, Arminius was released from Geneva, but instead of heading back to Amsterdam where he was under contract to the City to labor in order to pay back his tuition, he headed to Rome for a "vacation".
Generally, most Calvinists believe that it was during this time in Rome that Arminius was recruited by the Jesuits to their point of view. That allegation cannot be proven, and I believe that there is enough other evidence that Arminius was compromised long before his pilgrimage to Rome. By this time, he had become a private student of the writings of de Molina, and in 1588, the same year in which Arminius was ordained a minister (by the endorsement of Beza), de Molina published his treatise on the will entitled A Reconciliation of Free Choice with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation. What the Jesuits were loathe to admit, was that Molinism was nothing more than a rebirth of the ancient Pelagianism heresy, although it actually more easily likened to "Semi-Pelagianism" which contends that man cannot be saved apart from God's grace; however, fallen man must cooperate and assent to God's grace before he will be saved. The Jesuits recognized that the Protestants would never embrace the teachings of a Catholic Spanish monk, so they capitalized on the growing and open debates taking place within Protestantism. Molinism would be recast as Arminianism, and eventually, it would take over the ecclesiastical world. A famous quote from de Molina eerily fortells of the Jesuit lie that proceeds from the mouths of "evangelical" leaders today: "all human beings are endowed with equal and sufficient divine grace without distinction as to their individual merits, and that salvation depends on the sinner's willingness to receive grace". The Catholics say of Molinism: "Molinism is an influential system within Catholic theology for reconciling human free choice with God's grace, providence, foreknowledge and predestination. Originating within the Society of Jesus in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it encountered stiff opposition from Bañezian Thomists and from the self-styled Augustinian disciples of Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansen." - Alfred J. Freddoso, Catholic Professor at Notre Dame
Upon returning to Amsterdam in 1590, Arminius married the daughter of one of Holland's wealthiest aristocrats. To see how far Jacobus had fallen from his original reformed ideals, we note that in 1591, he was hired by his wealthy benefactors to draw up a church order that would subordinate the church to a place of dependence and obedience to the state. That particular belief is now the most prevalent abuse of both Christians and the scriptures taught in "churches" today. The policy of abusing Romans 13 for the purposes of enslaving Christians to tyrannical civil magistrates had found a hero in Jacobus Arminius. The Catholic church, even today, admires Arminius. Here is what it says about him in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "A leader was sure to rise from the Calvinistic ranks who should point out the baneful corollaries of the Genevan creed, and be listened to. Such a leader was Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Hermanzoon), professor at the University of Leyden." -- Catholic Encyclopedia
In the early 1590's, Arminius had become an acquaintance and some would say an admirer of a Jesuit named Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine was engaged in one of the other battlefronts of the war on the Reformation. At the time, one of the biggest battlefields for the Jesuit army was in the area of eschatology. As Christians around the world began to read the Bible for themselves, it became evident to many of them that the Catholic Church figured prominently in prophecy. The teaching that the "Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots" of Revelation 17:5 was actually the papist Church of Rome was gaining steam. In 1590, a Jesuit named Francisco Ribera had begun to write commentaries explaining away those scriptures that plainly taught of the Catholic Church as an element of the Anti-Christ system. Specifically, Ribera wrote a commentary in 1590 that placed a whole new "spin" on Daniel 9:27. Ribera became the first theologian in over 1500 years to teach that the "he" in Daniel 9:27 who confirmed the covenant and put an end to sacrifice was actually "antichrist" and not the Messiah. It had been the uniform teaching of the church since the death of Christ that the "he" who had put an end to all sacrifices on the Cross was Jesus Christ. But the Jesuits needed to create a NEW antichrist, one that was not so easily identified with Rome. By creating the concept of a seven year tribulation, transported way into the future, Ribera was able to divert attention from the most blatant antichrist that had his seat in Rome. Ribera's ideas were taken and expanded by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who blatantly taught that Paul, John and Daniel had prophesied nothing whatsoever concerning Rome. We might point out that Bellarmine had a tendency to be famously wrong. It was Cardinal Bellarmine who, as inquisitor, threatened Galileo so convincingly that the scientist recanted of his findings that the earth actually moved around the sun! Bellarmine was subsequently declared a "saint" by the Roman Church.
Stay with us, because this mystery splits off in various and interesting directions.
In the late 1590's Jacobus Arminius was back in Amsterdam, teaching his Pelagian/Molinist lies. Enough questions had been brought forth concerning his anti-Grace teachings, that a strict Calvinist by the name of Franciscus Gomarus was called upon to interview Arminius to test his orthodoxy. Arminius was applying for a professorship in Theology at the University of Leyden, and the occasion of his job interview would allow his belief system also to be tested. Apparently, Arminius had either become so skilled a liar or his skills in evasion and escape had become so attuned by this point, that he passed the test with flying colors. The question of why Beza and Gomarus, both strict Grace and Election adherents, had both approved of Arminius is unclear, but both were likely blinded by their belief in honor and integrity amongst theologians. During a time when men were willing to die for their faith, the thought that someone would patently lie about his beliefs in order to receive promotions and to avoid detection would have been far from the minds of these two reformers. But lying and deceit were well within the oath and charter of the Jesuits. We will see that these traits are also widely accepted by the intellectual heirs of Jacobus Arminius.
Arminius died in 1609, long before the upheavals caused by his teachings would erupt in full force. In 1610, the disciples of Arminius signed a "Remonstrance" or a petition to the government for protection of their Arminian views. In their Remonstrance, the Arminians put forth their theology finally for the entire world to see. It consisted of five main points:
1. Conditional election. The Remonstrants held to the Molinist view of Middle-Knowledge. Election was conditional on both God's foreknowledge, and the free will of humans.
2. Universal atonement. The Remonstrants held to the Jesuit/Molinist view on the atonement, as pushed by the Catholics in the Council of Trent. The redemptive blood of Jesus Christ was available to all mankind, and God had not applied or given this atonement to any specific "elect".
3. Total depravity. The Remonstrants held on to the view of original sin, but believed that since humans were HUMANS, and not sticks or plants, there was enough human left in them to enable them to believe on Christ, or reject Him. In effect, humans were not TOTALLY depraved.
4. Sufficient but resistible grace. The Remonstrants believed that Grace was sufficient to save, but that this Grace could be resisted by man. Thereby man could thwart the will of God (which evidently was to save ALL men) by refusing to be saved.
5. Uncertainty about the perseverance of the saints. The Remonstrants believed that a truly born-again believer could cast off that Grace by certain behavior and subsequently go to Hell.
I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions.
I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions. I will also tell you that these beliefs, commonly called "Arminian", are cogent, logical and ultimately WRONG. I say that they are cogent and logical in order to tell you that the only thing WORSE than the Arminian viewpoint, is any viewpoint that attempts to COMPROMISE between these points and the Doctrines of Grace as taught in the Bible. Challenges to the Doctrines of Grace are usually predicated by the attempt to label them as "Calvinism", although Calvin AND Arminius were gone by the time this Remonstrance was published. What the enemies of Grace term as "Calvinism" or now the more hated "Hyper-Calvinism" was actually just the Gospel response to the Remonstrance of 1610! It is as if a man named Gomer created a new doctrine called GOMERISM, in which he proposed that we all evolved slowly from dirt particles on the eyelids of gnats. If another man named Goober published a biblical challenge to this stupid doctrine, it is as if folks ran about for another 400 years preaching against Gooberism (or worse, Hyper-Gooberism) as a contrivance of that heretic Goober!
In 1611, the true preachers of the Gospel answered with the Contra-Remonstrance of 1611. Robert Godfrey writes, "It it surely ironic that through the centuries there has been so much talk of the 'five points of Calvinism' when in fact Calvinists did not originate a discussion of five points. Indeed Calvinism has never been summarized in five points. Calvinism has only offered five responses to the five errors of Arminianism."
Let us return to our mystery.
The Jesuits were not done with their work. Although they had planted the seeds of their papal tares in the Lord's ground, they had not yet seen their crop come to fruition. In the 1700's, the doctrine of Arminianism would be fully embraced and rapidly distributed by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley wrote a defense of Arminianism entitled, "What is an Arminian". The folly of Arminianism was also challenged, and rightly so, by that Great Christian thinker Jonathan Edwards, who published his treatise "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741, a sermon that profoundly trounced the foolishness of Arminian doctrine. Edwards became president of Princeton in 1758, but "mysteriously" died of a smallpox vaccine within weeks (see the oath of the Jesuit above).
In 1826 Dr. Samuel Maitland (librarian for the Archbishop of Canterbury) wrote a book attacking the Reformation. In it, he used the Jesuit Francisco Ribera's NEW interpretation of Daniel 9:27 in order to defend the Papacy.
In the 1830's two movements erupted that would play an important part in the unfolding mystery. One was the "Oxford Movement". In 1850 John Henry Newman wrote his "Letter on Anglican Difficulties". In it he revealed that the "Oxford Movement" of which he was a part, had as its goal to finally absorb "the various English denominations and parties" back into the Church of Rome. After publishing a pamphlet endorsing the Jesuit view of Daniel 9:27, Newman joined the Catholic Church and eventually became a Cardinal. The second movement that burgeoned at the time was one led by John Nelson Darby, called the "Plymouth Brethren".
At about the same time, there appeared a Scottish Presbyterian minister named Edward Irving (the acknowledged forerunner of both the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements). Irving was pastoring the huge Chalcedonian Chapel in London. He had readily accepted the Jesuit prophetic teachings on Daniel 9:27 proposed by Maitland, and the Jesuits Bellarmine and Ribera. Irving began to teach the unique idea of a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. It is rumored that Irving received this prophetic "revelation" when it was given in a vision to a young Scottish girl named Margaret McDonald. McDonald's prophetic revelation vision is eerily similar to the way that Ignatius Loyola received his vision of warfare against the Protestants.
One of the leaders of the Plymouth Brethren in Plymouth, England was a lawyer named John Nelson Darby. Darby became the "Father of Dispensationalism", and used the teachings on Daniel 9 by the Jesuits Ribera and Bellarmine as the foundation of his rapture teaching. Darby is a great subject in our study of that poison in the well. Although Darby taught many great things (he insisted on the infallibility of the Bible, and voiced his opposition to the Catholic Church as well as the formalism and manipulation in the Protestant Churches), he had consumed the Jesuit bait, and in turn, he became the bait that would eventually ensnare most of the "Christian" world. Darby visited America 6 times in the late 1800's and by the close of that century, most of the denominations had imbibed from the same poisonous Jesuit well.
SCOFIELD
By 1909, Arminianism and Darbyism had infiltrated most of the denominations in America. That year, Cyrus Scofield published his famous Scofield Bible. That Bible became the predominant Bible used in the seminaries in America. In the margin notes, Scofield readily accepted the dispensationalist teachings of J.N. Darby, and some of the other Jesuit lies discussed here. As can be expected, by the middle of the 1900's, most of the students graduating from America's seminaries were well indoctrinated in both the Jesuit lies of Arminius, and the Dispensationalist hogwash of J.N. Darby. By the end of that century, almost every church in America taught some level of Arminianism and the predominant eschatological view was of a future rapture followed by a seven-year tribulation. Both concepts were openly and clearly Jesuit concepts pushed by the Society of Jesus in order to counter the Doctrines of Grace.
DAVE HUNT
Dave Hunt is an author and Bible commentator who has written about 30 books. Hunt was born in 1926 and was raised in J.N. Darby's "Plymouth Brethren" denomination. Hunt was clearly steeped at an early age in Darby's dispensationalist views, and he would become an avid advocate of the Francisco Ribera teachings regarding Daniel 9:27. According to Hunt, at some point he became disillusioned with the "cessationist" views of his denomination, and, for a time, he became enamored with the more charismatic views on scripture after reading the works of William Law and Andrew Murray. But sometime during the 1980's it seems that Hunt had come full circle to a more traditional Darbyist view on scripture.
As can be expected in any conspiracy/mystery, there are twists and turns. In 1994, Dave Hunt wrote a book entitled A Woman Rides A Beast, which taught the traditional reformed views of the Catholic Church as to the woman in Revelation 17. By the middle of the 1990's, Hunt had become a favorite of both the anti-catholic reformed thinkers, and the Darbyist dispensationalists. Hunt spent most of his time as a "heresy hunter", cementing his position in the minds of most Protestants as a defender of the faith. Once again, the Jesuit ploy was working. The defenses were down, and Loyola's Marian war was about to come to fruition.
WHAT LOVE IS THIS? By Dave Hunt
What Love is This, by Hunt debuted just recently as Hunt's defense of Arminianism. Sub-titled "Calvinism's misrepresentation of God", Hunt pushes the Jesuit agenda to the hilt. In fact, in order to deceive as many Protestants as possible, Hunt uses his Jesuit inspired book to claim that the reformed doctrines of predestination and election are based on Catholic Doctrine! Amazing! But deception wouldn't be deception unless it worked.
To write the forward of the Book, Hunt chose dispensationalist and rapturist author Tim Lahaye. LaHaye is the millionaire best-selling author of the Left Behind series of books. Known for their hokey theology and horrible scriptural gymnastics, the Left Behind series has roped MILLIONS of people into the Jesuit theory of the end times. LaHaye says this about Hunt's book:
"Dave Hunt… proves Calvinism is not a Protestant doctrine, but is based in Greek fatalism brought into the church in the fifth century by Augustine, paving the way for the CATHOLIC DOCTRINE of predestination that all but destroyed Christianity and then was picked up by Calvin and presented as Reformed theology."
Breathtaking. Hunt uses a predictable ploy, and through it he is able to hoodwink most nominal Christians who are too spiritually retarded and lazy to do any research on their own.
Let's lay it out like Hunt does:
1. Augustine was Catholic, therefore he believed in Catholic doctrines like placing tradition on a level with scripture.
2. Since Augustine believed in Predestination too, then anyone who believes in Predestination is really Catholic.
Stupid, but it works on most people. The fact that the Catholic Church in its Catechisms denounces predestination and rejects the doctrine of election does not phase Hunt one bit. The fact that the Catholic Church murdered and imprisoned the reformers for their belief in election doesn't factor in either. The fact that Augustine also believed in the Trinity does not cause Dave Hunt to challenge that Biblical doctrine. Like his theological father Jacobus Arminius, it seems that Dave Hunt is not above lying in order to forward his Jesuit doctrines.
So the trap is sprung and the multitudes will fall prey to it. Hunt writes a book decrying Catholicism as the evil woman of Revelation 17. Then Hunt writes another book turning truth on its head and claiming that the doctrine of election is not a truly Christian doctrine, but was concocted by the Catholic Church. Simple enough, right?
Must be, you ought to read my email. I am attacked from both the Catholics and the so-called "remnant" believers because of my insistence on the Doctrines of Grace. I have received at least 20 letters from people who pompously claim that they are neither Arminians NOR Calvinists, but in fact they are somewhere "in the middle". The Media Scientia (Middle-Knowledge) of that Jesuit monk de Molina has resurfaced from the poison pen of Dave Hunt, and the doctrine has been embraced almost universally.
Not surprisingly, Hunt is also a notable friend and partner with most of those who are deep into the ecumenical movement. His buddy Tim LaHaye, who wrote the forward for his book, is on the board of ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together).
Hunt declares that he is NOT a "five-point" Arminian. He believes in the perseverance of the saints. So we can not only affirm that Dave Hunt is a charlatan and a deceiver, but he is also fundamentally illogical. Apparently Hunt believes that the freewill of man is sovereign over the will of God in salvation, but that subsequent to salvation, God abuses mans freewill by not allowing him to change his mind.
Catholic writer Robert W. Aufill has this to say about Hunt: "Strangely, Hunt… does not realize that his own emphasis on 'deciding for Christ' inescapably implies the possibility of co-operating with the grace of justification -- a possibility the Reformers constantly condemned but upon which the Catholic Church insists."
At least with Arminianism, we had a logical and clearly defined enemy. Today, pride and avarice reign. Too many people aren't willing to study these issues for themselves, so they fall prey to millionaire charlatans with books to peddle.
Loyola's plan has come to fruition. The Jesuit doctrines of anti-Grace have become the dominant teaching of the churches of the world. The Woman that Rides the Beast, that mother of Harlots, has seen her offspring grow up into maturity. The Whore churches that dot every street corner have the stench of their mother.
Those people who are NOT brain-addled and stupefied in the sugar-water Harlot Churches, are busy decrying the evil of the coming New World Order, while in ignorance they embrace the very doctrines of Antichrist.
It is the Ultimate Conspiracy, and if it were possible, it would deceive even the very elect. Do Catholics go to heaven? You better find out, because odds are you are one.
I am your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
By Michael Bunker
"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." -- Ephesians 2:4-7
June 22, 2002 -- Too often we are not willing to ask the questions that cut to the root of the issues of the day. Our attentions are seized by shiny rocks and relics, by petty debates and well concocted mysteries -- so that, in the end, the greatest of all deceptions slides under the door unnoticed.
In the grand debate over whether homosexual, pedophilic priests should be demoted or defrocked, we are loathe to ask the deeper question: Do Catholics go to heaven? Or deeper still, Are YOU Catholic?
While Protestants silently chortle over the convulsions within the world's largest cult, few are willing to recognize that Catholic doctrine has so overwhelmed the "protestant" religion, that there is not a dimes worth of difference between the two. Why should we be shocked that the priests of the papacy are fondling boys behind closed doors, when they have boldly molested Protestant Church doctrine for the last several hundred years?
Excuse me Bishop Pedofili, can we see BOTH of your hands?
Behold, the Ultimate Conspiracy. While "remnant" Christians and patriots pour through the voluminous documentations of a wicked "New World Order", a far more heinous conspiracy marches forward unnoticed. In the confusion caused by the frantic attempt to expose the growing menace of fascistic globalism, the opponents of that antichrist system have willingly embraced the very theology of Antichrist.
We must start with some history, and there we will find the fingerprints of the last days Great Deception. Gather around and we will unveil the web of mystery and deceit that has ensnared the churches of the world.
JESUITS
The Jesuits (or, the Society of Jesus) are a Catholic order founded by the Spanish priest Ignatius Loyola, and ordained by Pope Paul III in September of 1540. Loyola had experienced continuing mystic "visions" beginning in 1523. In the visions, it was revealed to Loyola that he was to be the originator and the master of a grand army that would do battle with what he considered Babylonian hordes. Originally he believed that the enemy he was to battle was the Mohammedans (Muslims), but upon visiting Jerusalem and finding that his enemy was too great to overcome, he came to the conclusion that his enemy MUST be the Protestants. Loyola firmly believed that he had received this vision and this charge from the Blessed Virgin herself, so on the 15th of August in 1534, he, along with his disciples, traveled to the subterranean chapel of the Church of Montmartre, at Paris (which had been consecrated to Mary) where they pledged their services to the Pope, however he might choose to use them. The day was chosen because it was considered by Catholics to be the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin.
Loyola had prepared a book entitled "Spiritual Exercises". This was a rule book by which men could learn to work out their own "conversion". Through a mystic recipe, a penitent could utilize his mind, and by going through successive "exercises" he could be created into a "converted" warrior for the Pope. The Jesuits believed the claims of Loyola that the "exercises" was a book actually written by the finger of God, and delivered to Loyola by the Mother of God. Let us be perfectly clear, the order of Loyola truly believed that "conversion" could be affected upon oneself, and this put them in violent opposition to the doctrines of the Apostles as preached by the Protestant reformers.
The oath of the Jesuits to serve the Pope according to his pleasure, along with Loyola's vitriolic hatred of the doctrines of Grace, inevitably would lead to the Jesuit mission to effect a "counter-reformation" by declaring war on the true Christian faith. This mission is reflected in this excerpt of the Jesuit oath:
"I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus".
And so, by command (they believed) of the co-redemptress Mary, the Jesuits set out to use any and all means to attack and destroy the idea of salvation by Grace. The ultimate conspiracy was born.
The Doctrines of Grace
The centerpiece of the reformers' doctrine was out of the letter to the Ephesians. Paul had written, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." These verses, when read in their proper context, are odious to all those whose pride will not allow them to receive imputed righteousness. The scriptures plainly claim that: a) we are the workmanship, and not co-workers in our salvation, b) that those good works that are done by us, are not ours, but the works of God worked out through us, c) and that our salvation (including our faith) is a gift of God, and cannot be claimed as a "salary" or a reward for our good works.
What was worse for Loyola and his Catholic cohorts was that the people were beginning to receive the Bible in their "vulgar" tongues, and the doctrines of Grace were now being made evident to even the most ignorant of peasants. That the same book of Ephesians claimed (in Chapter 2, verses 5) that God had quickened his elect "Even when we were dead in sins", further complicated things for the Catholics. Because it was evident to even the uneducated ploughboy, that a sovereign God was totally responsible for salvation and redemption, and that those who had gained the inheritance (of salvation), had gained that inheritance by being "predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Ephesians 1:11).
It was in 1536, two years after Loyola and his gang made their oaths in the church in Paris, that William Tyndale was martyred as a heretic for, among other things, denying the freedom of the will and for publishing the New Testament in English.
The Council of Trent, 1545
In 1545, the Council of Trent was convened by Pope Paul III. In this Council, the Catholic Church adopted a stance on Justification that was blatantly contrary to the scriptures. In Canon 9 of the Council, the church declared, "If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema." During the Council, the Jesuits were ordered by the Pope to make war, silently and openly against the Reformation.
Planting Poison in the Well -- Jacobus Arminius.
The Counter-Reformation was in full swing. Jesuit spies and agents began to infiltrate Protestant schools, and actually landed on the coast of the United States in the 1530's and the 1540's. In order to defend the Romanist religion, as well as the Pope (who Catholics are taught is actually "Christ on earth"), the Jesuits began their war plan for a battle on many fronts, but a full attack on the Doctrines of Grace would be necessary if Rome was to ever prevail. In 1560, unknown to the Jesuits, one of their greatest proponents was to be born in Holland. His name was James Harmenszoon, but he would come to be known as Jacobus Arminius.
Arminius lost his family during a war with the Spanish in 1575. As a fifteen year old orphan, he entered the University of Leyden, and under scholarship by the government of the City of Amsterdam, he was sent to the Theological school in Geneva for studies at the feet of the great reformers. At Geneva, Arminius studied under a professor named Theodore Beza, the man who had assumed the leadership role of the Protestant movement in Switzerland from John Calvin. For some reason that seems to be lost to history, Arminius did not like Beza, and found his forceful defense of the Doctrines of Grace to be harsh and unyielding.
Here is where our mystery gets increasingly interesting. Back in Amsterdam there was a movement of "counter-reformation" begun supposedly by a rich merchant named Dirck Coornhert. Coornhert was a Dutch humanist who was enamored with the teachings of the Catholic humanist Erasmus and a Spanish Jesuit monk named Luis de Molina. Coornhert disdained the reformation teachings on Grace, and sought to confront them wherever he found them. Coornhert had read with growing affections the teachings of de Molina regarding Free Will and Predestination. The Jesuits had hit on a brilliant way of dismantling the debate, they would preach that BOTH were true, and that a good God who was truly sovereign surely might have given his creations a freedom of the will in order to allow them to choose to be saved. Luis de Molina was creating a doctrine that would eventually be called Media Scientia or "Middle-Knowledge". Eventually this heresy would be called Molinism. In an article on Luis de Molina entitled, Contending for the Faith, Rev. Bernard Woudenberg said of de Molina, "Being a Romanist, he was forced to honor the theology of Thomas Aquinas with its acceptance of divine sovereignty, but at the same time, as a Jesuit, he was committed to defending the papacy against the growing influences of Calvinism. And so de Molina set forth to steer between these by proposing his original and highly influential concept of the media scientia, or "middle- knowledge." In this he proposed that "between God's knowledge of the cause and effect relations which He had implanted in the universe, and that of divine freedom whereby He remains free at any time to do what He wills, there is an area of middle-knowledge which God provides for man in which man is granted freedom to do whatever he chooses without outside necessity or predetermination of any kind." The Hegelian dialectic was in full force. The Catholic lie on justification had been countered by the true doctrine of Salvation by Grace through faith, so an evil "compromise" was now offered to the reformed churches, and by deceit and subterfuge, the compromise would eventually become the predominant teachings in all the churches of the world.
Back in Geneva, Theodore Beza at this time had reason to suspect that his student Jacobus Arminius was not what he proposed to be. Questions were being asked about comments that Arminius was making to fellow students, and there were still questions about his support from the rich, aristocratic merchants of Holland. Apparently Arminius was able to lie well enough to get past Beza's questioning, a skill that would come in handy years later when he would be looking for a teaching job in Amsterdam. Beza then asked Arminius to answer and refute the teachings of Dirck Coornhert. Although Arminius completed the task, he later claimed to be convinced by Coornhert's arguments, and he became ardently opposed to the teachings of the reformers. In 1586, Arminius was released from Geneva, but instead of heading back to Amsterdam where he was under contract to the City to labor in order to pay back his tuition, he headed to Rome for a "vacation".
Generally, most Calvinists believe that it was during this time in Rome that Arminius was recruited by the Jesuits to their point of view. That allegation cannot be proven, and I believe that there is enough other evidence that Arminius was compromised long before his pilgrimage to Rome. By this time, he had become a private student of the writings of de Molina, and in 1588, the same year in which Arminius was ordained a minister (by the endorsement of Beza), de Molina published his treatise on the will entitled A Reconciliation of Free Choice with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation. What the Jesuits were loathe to admit, was that Molinism was nothing more than a rebirth of the ancient Pelagianism heresy, although it actually more easily likened to "Semi-Pelagianism" which contends that man cannot be saved apart from God's grace; however, fallen man must cooperate and assent to God's grace before he will be saved. The Jesuits recognized that the Protestants would never embrace the teachings of a Catholic Spanish monk, so they capitalized on the growing and open debates taking place within Protestantism. Molinism would be recast as Arminianism, and eventually, it would take over the ecclesiastical world. A famous quote from de Molina eerily fortells of the Jesuit lie that proceeds from the mouths of "evangelical" leaders today: "all human beings are endowed with equal and sufficient divine grace without distinction as to their individual merits, and that salvation depends on the sinner's willingness to receive grace". The Catholics say of Molinism: "Molinism is an influential system within Catholic theology for reconciling human free choice with God's grace, providence, foreknowledge and predestination. Originating within the Society of Jesus in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it encountered stiff opposition from Bañezian Thomists and from the self-styled Augustinian disciples of Michael Baius and Cornelius Jansen." - Alfred J. Freddoso, Catholic Professor at Notre Dame
Upon returning to Amsterdam in 1590, Arminius married the daughter of one of Holland's wealthiest aristocrats. To see how far Jacobus had fallen from his original reformed ideals, we note that in 1591, he was hired by his wealthy benefactors to draw up a church order that would subordinate the church to a place of dependence and obedience to the state. That particular belief is now the most prevalent abuse of both Christians and the scriptures taught in "churches" today. The policy of abusing Romans 13 for the purposes of enslaving Christians to tyrannical civil magistrates had found a hero in Jacobus Arminius. The Catholic church, even today, admires Arminius. Here is what it says about him in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "A leader was sure to rise from the Calvinistic ranks who should point out the baneful corollaries of the Genevan creed, and be listened to. Such a leader was Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Hermanzoon), professor at the University of Leyden." -- Catholic Encyclopedia
In the early 1590's, Arminius had become an acquaintance and some would say an admirer of a Jesuit named Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine was engaged in one of the other battlefronts of the war on the Reformation. At the time, one of the biggest battlefields for the Jesuit army was in the area of eschatology. As Christians around the world began to read the Bible for themselves, it became evident to many of them that the Catholic Church figured prominently in prophecy. The teaching that the "Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots" of Revelation 17:5 was actually the papist Church of Rome was gaining steam. In 1590, a Jesuit named Francisco Ribera had begun to write commentaries explaining away those scriptures that plainly taught of the Catholic Church as an element of the Anti-Christ system. Specifically, Ribera wrote a commentary in 1590 that placed a whole new "spin" on Daniel 9:27. Ribera became the first theologian in over 1500 years to teach that the "he" in Daniel 9:27 who confirmed the covenant and put an end to sacrifice was actually "antichrist" and not the Messiah. It had been the uniform teaching of the church since the death of Christ that the "he" who had put an end to all sacrifices on the Cross was Jesus Christ. But the Jesuits needed to create a NEW antichrist, one that was not so easily identified with Rome. By creating the concept of a seven year tribulation, transported way into the future, Ribera was able to divert attention from the most blatant antichrist that had his seat in Rome. Ribera's ideas were taken and expanded by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine who blatantly taught that Paul, John and Daniel had prophesied nothing whatsoever concerning Rome. We might point out that Bellarmine had a tendency to be famously wrong. It was Cardinal Bellarmine who, as inquisitor, threatened Galileo so convincingly that the scientist recanted of his findings that the earth actually moved around the sun! Bellarmine was subsequently declared a "saint" by the Roman Church.
Stay with us, because this mystery splits off in various and interesting directions.
In the late 1590's Jacobus Arminius was back in Amsterdam, teaching his Pelagian/Molinist lies. Enough questions had been brought forth concerning his anti-Grace teachings, that a strict Calvinist by the name of Franciscus Gomarus was called upon to interview Arminius to test his orthodoxy. Arminius was applying for a professorship in Theology at the University of Leyden, and the occasion of his job interview would allow his belief system also to be tested. Apparently, Arminius had either become so skilled a liar or his skills in evasion and escape had become so attuned by this point, that he passed the test with flying colors. The question of why Beza and Gomarus, both strict Grace and Election adherents, had both approved of Arminius is unclear, but both were likely blinded by their belief in honor and integrity amongst theologians. During a time when men were willing to die for their faith, the thought that someone would patently lie about his beliefs in order to receive promotions and to avoid detection would have been far from the minds of these two reformers. But lying and deceit were well within the oath and charter of the Jesuits. We will see that these traits are also widely accepted by the intellectual heirs of Jacobus Arminius.
Arminius died in 1609, long before the upheavals caused by his teachings would erupt in full force. In 1610, the disciples of Arminius signed a "Remonstrance" or a petition to the government for protection of their Arminian views. In their Remonstrance, the Arminians put forth their theology finally for the entire world to see. It consisted of five main points:
1. Conditional election. The Remonstrants held to the Molinist view of Middle-Knowledge. Election was conditional on both God's foreknowledge, and the free will of humans.
2. Universal atonement. The Remonstrants held to the Jesuit/Molinist view on the atonement, as pushed by the Catholics in the Council of Trent. The redemptive blood of Jesus Christ was available to all mankind, and God had not applied or given this atonement to any specific "elect".
3. Total depravity. The Remonstrants held on to the view of original sin, but believed that since humans were HUMANS, and not sticks or plants, there was enough human left in them to enable them to believe on Christ, or reject Him. In effect, humans were not TOTALLY depraved.
4. Sufficient but resistible grace. The Remonstrants believed that Grace was sufficient to save, but that this Grace could be resisted by man. Thereby man could thwart the will of God (which evidently was to save ALL men) by refusing to be saved.
5. Uncertainty about the perseverance of the saints. The Remonstrants believed that a truly born-again believer could cast off that Grace by certain behavior and subsequently go to Hell.
I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions.
I will tell you that what you have just read is the common teaching of the Protestant churches throughout the world, with very few exceptions. I will also tell you that these beliefs, commonly called "Arminian", are cogent, logical and ultimately WRONG. I say that they are cogent and logical in order to tell you that the only thing WORSE than the Arminian viewpoint, is any viewpoint that attempts to COMPROMISE between these points and the Doctrines of Grace as taught in the Bible. Challenges to the Doctrines of Grace are usually predicated by the attempt to label them as "Calvinism", although Calvin AND Arminius were gone by the time this Remonstrance was published. What the enemies of Grace term as "Calvinism" or now the more hated "Hyper-Calvinism" was actually just the Gospel response to the Remonstrance of 1610! It is as if a man named Gomer created a new doctrine called GOMERISM, in which he proposed that we all evolved slowly from dirt particles on the eyelids of gnats. If another man named Goober published a biblical challenge to this stupid doctrine, it is as if folks ran about for another 400 years preaching against Gooberism (or worse, Hyper-Gooberism) as a contrivance of that heretic Goober!
In 1611, the true preachers of the Gospel answered with the Contra-Remonstrance of 1611. Robert Godfrey writes, "It it surely ironic that through the centuries there has been so much talk of the 'five points of Calvinism' when in fact Calvinists did not originate a discussion of five points. Indeed Calvinism has never been summarized in five points. Calvinism has only offered five responses to the five errors of Arminianism."
Let us return to our mystery.
The Jesuits were not done with their work. Although they had planted the seeds of their papal tares in the Lord's ground, they had not yet seen their crop come to fruition. In the 1700's, the doctrine of Arminianism would be fully embraced and rapidly distributed by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley wrote a defense of Arminianism entitled, "What is an Arminian". The folly of Arminianism was also challenged, and rightly so, by that Great Christian thinker Jonathan Edwards, who published his treatise "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in 1741, a sermon that profoundly trounced the foolishness of Arminian doctrine. Edwards became president of Princeton in 1758, but "mysteriously" died of a smallpox vaccine within weeks (see the oath of the Jesuit above).
In 1826 Dr. Samuel Maitland (librarian for the Archbishop of Canterbury) wrote a book attacking the Reformation. In it, he used the Jesuit Francisco Ribera's NEW interpretation of Daniel 9:27 in order to defend the Papacy.
In the 1830's two movements erupted that would play an important part in the unfolding mystery. One was the "Oxford Movement". In 1850 John Henry Newman wrote his "Letter on Anglican Difficulties". In it he revealed that the "Oxford Movement" of which he was a part, had as its goal to finally absorb "the various English denominations and parties" back into the Church of Rome. After publishing a pamphlet endorsing the Jesuit view of Daniel 9:27, Newman joined the Catholic Church and eventually became a Cardinal. The second movement that burgeoned at the time was one led by John Nelson Darby, called the "Plymouth Brethren".
At about the same time, there appeared a Scottish Presbyterian minister named Edward Irving (the acknowledged forerunner of both the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements). Irving was pastoring the huge Chalcedonian Chapel in London. He had readily accepted the Jesuit prophetic teachings on Daniel 9:27 proposed by Maitland, and the Jesuits Bellarmine and Ribera. Irving began to teach the unique idea of a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. It is rumored that Irving received this prophetic "revelation" when it was given in a vision to a young Scottish girl named Margaret McDonald. McDonald's prophetic revelation vision is eerily similar to the way that Ignatius Loyola received his vision of warfare against the Protestants.
One of the leaders of the Plymouth Brethren in Plymouth, England was a lawyer named John Nelson Darby. Darby became the "Father of Dispensationalism", and used the teachings on Daniel 9 by the Jesuits Ribera and Bellarmine as the foundation of his rapture teaching. Darby is a great subject in our study of that poison in the well. Although Darby taught many great things (he insisted on the infallibility of the Bible, and voiced his opposition to the Catholic Church as well as the formalism and manipulation in the Protestant Churches), he had consumed the Jesuit bait, and in turn, he became the bait that would eventually ensnare most of the "Christian" world. Darby visited America 6 times in the late 1800's and by the close of that century, most of the denominations had imbibed from the same poisonous Jesuit well.
SCOFIELD
By 1909, Arminianism and Darbyism had infiltrated most of the denominations in America. That year, Cyrus Scofield published his famous Scofield Bible. That Bible became the predominant Bible used in the seminaries in America. In the margin notes, Scofield readily accepted the dispensationalist teachings of J.N. Darby, and some of the other Jesuit lies discussed here. As can be expected, by the middle of the 1900's, most of the students graduating from America's seminaries were well indoctrinated in both the Jesuit lies of Arminius, and the Dispensationalist hogwash of J.N. Darby. By the end of that century, almost every church in America taught some level of Arminianism and the predominant eschatological view was of a future rapture followed by a seven-year tribulation. Both concepts were openly and clearly Jesuit concepts pushed by the Society of Jesus in order to counter the Doctrines of Grace.
DAVE HUNT
Dave Hunt is an author and Bible commentator who has written about 30 books. Hunt was born in 1926 and was raised in J.N. Darby's "Plymouth Brethren" denomination. Hunt was clearly steeped at an early age in Darby's dispensationalist views, and he would become an avid advocate of the Francisco Ribera teachings regarding Daniel 9:27. According to Hunt, at some point he became disillusioned with the "cessationist" views of his denomination, and, for a time, he became enamored with the more charismatic views on scripture after reading the works of William Law and Andrew Murray. But sometime during the 1980's it seems that Hunt had come full circle to a more traditional Darbyist view on scripture.
As can be expected in any conspiracy/mystery, there are twists and turns. In 1994, Dave Hunt wrote a book entitled A Woman Rides A Beast, which taught the traditional reformed views of the Catholic Church as to the woman in Revelation 17. By the middle of the 1990's, Hunt had become a favorite of both the anti-catholic reformed thinkers, and the Darbyist dispensationalists. Hunt spent most of his time as a "heresy hunter", cementing his position in the minds of most Protestants as a defender of the faith. Once again, the Jesuit ploy was working. The defenses were down, and Loyola's Marian war was about to come to fruition.
WHAT LOVE IS THIS? By Dave Hunt
What Love is This, by Hunt debuted just recently as Hunt's defense of Arminianism. Sub-titled "Calvinism's misrepresentation of God", Hunt pushes the Jesuit agenda to the hilt. In fact, in order to deceive as many Protestants as possible, Hunt uses his Jesuit inspired book to claim that the reformed doctrines of predestination and election are based on Catholic Doctrine! Amazing! But deception wouldn't be deception unless it worked.
To write the forward of the Book, Hunt chose dispensationalist and rapturist author Tim Lahaye. LaHaye is the millionaire best-selling author of the Left Behind series of books. Known for their hokey theology and horrible scriptural gymnastics, the Left Behind series has roped MILLIONS of people into the Jesuit theory of the end times. LaHaye says this about Hunt's book:
"Dave Hunt… proves Calvinism is not a Protestant doctrine, but is based in Greek fatalism brought into the church in the fifth century by Augustine, paving the way for the CATHOLIC DOCTRINE of predestination that all but destroyed Christianity and then was picked up by Calvin and presented as Reformed theology."
Breathtaking. Hunt uses a predictable ploy, and through it he is able to hoodwink most nominal Christians who are too spiritually retarded and lazy to do any research on their own.
Let's lay it out like Hunt does:
1. Augustine was Catholic, therefore he believed in Catholic doctrines like placing tradition on a level with scripture.
2. Since Augustine believed in Predestination too, then anyone who believes in Predestination is really Catholic.
Stupid, but it works on most people. The fact that the Catholic Church in its Catechisms denounces predestination and rejects the doctrine of election does not phase Hunt one bit. The fact that the Catholic Church murdered and imprisoned the reformers for their belief in election doesn't factor in either. The fact that Augustine also believed in the Trinity does not cause Dave Hunt to challenge that Biblical doctrine. Like his theological father Jacobus Arminius, it seems that Dave Hunt is not above lying in order to forward his Jesuit doctrines.
So the trap is sprung and the multitudes will fall prey to it. Hunt writes a book decrying Catholicism as the evil woman of Revelation 17. Then Hunt writes another book turning truth on its head and claiming that the doctrine of election is not a truly Christian doctrine, but was concocted by the Catholic Church. Simple enough, right?
Must be, you ought to read my email. I am attacked from both the Catholics and the so-called "remnant" believers because of my insistence on the Doctrines of Grace. I have received at least 20 letters from people who pompously claim that they are neither Arminians NOR Calvinists, but in fact they are somewhere "in the middle". The Media Scientia (Middle-Knowledge) of that Jesuit monk de Molina has resurfaced from the poison pen of Dave Hunt, and the doctrine has been embraced almost universally.
Not surprisingly, Hunt is also a notable friend and partner with most of those who are deep into the ecumenical movement. His buddy Tim LaHaye, who wrote the forward for his book, is on the board of ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together).
Hunt declares that he is NOT a "five-point" Arminian. He believes in the perseverance of the saints. So we can not only affirm that Dave Hunt is a charlatan and a deceiver, but he is also fundamentally illogical. Apparently Hunt believes that the freewill of man is sovereign over the will of God in salvation, but that subsequent to salvation, God abuses mans freewill by not allowing him to change his mind.
Catholic writer Robert W. Aufill has this to say about Hunt: "Strangely, Hunt… does not realize that his own emphasis on 'deciding for Christ' inescapably implies the possibility of co-operating with the grace of justification -- a possibility the Reformers constantly condemned but upon which the Catholic Church insists."
At least with Arminianism, we had a logical and clearly defined enemy. Today, pride and avarice reign. Too many people aren't willing to study these issues for themselves, so they fall prey to millionaire charlatans with books to peddle.
Loyola's plan has come to fruition. The Jesuit doctrines of anti-Grace have become the dominant teaching of the churches of the world. The Woman that Rides the Beast, that mother of Harlots, has seen her offspring grow up into maturity. The Whore churches that dot every street corner have the stench of their mother.
Those people who are NOT brain-addled and stupefied in the sugar-water Harlot Churches, are busy decrying the evil of the coming New World Order, while in ignorance they embrace the very doctrines of Antichrist.
It is the Ultimate Conspiracy, and if it were possible, it would deceive even the very elect. Do Catholics go to heaven? You better find out, because odds are you are one.
I am your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
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