Is Hell eternal?

[GeneBalthrop]

Alex…..Good insites.

peace and love to you and yours. …….gene

[kerwin]

Alex,

I tend to agree with you which means I may not be qualified to test what you wrote.

[NickHassan]

Hi Alex,

Before we judge Adam it is worth reading Romans 5.13

“sin is not imputed when there is no law”

The law came later.

[Proclaimer]

I agree Alex. God in his mercy spared Adam and Eve access to the Tree of Life when they fell into sin.

This allowed them or their offspring the merciful act of perishing rather than live eternally as sinners.

[Proclaimer]

[Brian]

Actually, when you look into the translation and history of hell, you’ll find that you’re missing some vital information.

First, you have to consider the Ancient Hebrews, which is where Judaeo-Christian beliefs source from. The Ancient Hebrews were Eastern philosophy. The entire world was Eastern philosophy prior to about the 6th Century B.C. Western philosophy hadn’t been developed until about that point.

Also, researchers in Israel have made revolutionary discoveries in translation in the past 60 years. In fact, they’re about 50 years ahead of us here in America on translation work. They’ve also found the Bedouin tribes, who are descended from Abraham and have stayed nomadic ever since, never settling down in cities so that other religious ideologies got mixed in with theirs. In other words, they hold Abraham’s original beliefs, not the Westernized beliefs of modern Christianity. Western philosophy is much different than Eastern philosophy, so there’s a big difference in beliefs. We’ve learned a whole lot from the Bedouins and the translation work they’ve helped us with, along with other discoveries in the Paleo-Hebrew arena. Jeff Benner is a good resource on this–easily accessible online and in print. He stays up-to-date with the current research in Israel and disseminates both online and in a class he teaches at a college in the north (I forget which college).

The Ancient Hebrews believed hell was strictly to purify people to get them to heaven. We know this from the Bedouin tribes, but we also know it from the Old Testament. There are only two OT passages that discuss hell. They contain the phrases we translate as “eternal punishment” or “everlasting contempt.” But when you take a closer look at the words being used in those passages, you’ll find that they mean something very different.

The word we’re translating as “eternal” actually means something completely different. The word is “owlam” in Hebrew, and its literal translation is “over the horizon.” These were nomads, so their words reflected their lifestyle, as is the way of every language. So over the horizon is how they said “future.” Because over the horizon were things they couldn’t yet see or know. Thus, it was “the future.” Sometimes, we see the word “everlasting” in the OT, and that is a different version of the word owlam which literally means “over the horizon and back again.” In other words, this meant far into the future. So technically, they do not denote “eternity” at all. They are points in the future of unspecified length.

That doesn’t give us quite enough information to go on, so we need to know what “punishment” and “contempt” mean. The word punishment in Hebrew has the root “prune.” All Hebrew words are built around their root’s meaning. Pruning is something we do to help a plant grow, not to destroy it or get vengeance on it. Those are very different words in Hebrew. So we know the word “punishment” means “pruning” to the Hebrews. This fits the Bedouin beliefs, as well as the current Jewish beliefs about hell being for purifying purposes. The Jews have never believed in an eternal hell of torment. They describe it as a kindness that God gives people to purify them to get them to heaven. Contempt, on the other hand, is not a proclamation of punishment, per se, but rather a thing to be detested. So it doesn’t give us any indication of what “everlasting contempt” means, except to say that it is a state of being that will come in the distant future which will be where people are looked upon with contempt. Therefore, we must go with the other verse that says “future pruining” if we’re going to derive some understanding of how the Ancient Hebrews believed hell worked. They believed it was a period in the future where people would be pruned, which is helpful.

Let’s look at one more thing with the OT before we go to the NT. The Ancient Hebrews believed judgment was a good thing, even though it hurt. It meant to find a problem and remove it so the people could grow. So judgment on a nation meant removing the people who were a problem to the rest of the people. Judgment to a person meant removing the parts of them that were harming them so that the rest of them could grow, mature. So judgment, when being used regarding hell, is talking about an individual experience, so it relates to a personal level rather than a national level. And it was corrective, not vengeaful. Let’s see if that holds true in the NT.

In the New Testament, we see verses that talk about “eternal judgment” and “eternal punishment.” So what do those words mean in Greek? The word we translate as “eternal” is “aeon” or “aeonian,” which actually means “age.” An “age” is a period of time, not “timelessness” like eternity means. The only time “aeon/aeonian” means eternal is when it’s paired with something that we know is eternal, like God Himself. So if we see “aeonian God” or “aeonian life,” then we’d know that “aeonian,” in those instances, means “eternal” or “ongoing” or “everlasting.” However, we are never told or given the impression in the Bible that “death” or “punishment” is eternal. We only get that idea from the translations we have today.

So the question becomes, what do the Greek words for “punishment” and “judgment” mean? Well, the word judgment is sourcing from the Ancient Hebrew word for judgment, and we already saw what that meant. It meant a helpful thing, like pruning. The Greek word for “punishment” actually means “correctional punishment,” not “vengeaful punishment.” There’s a different word used for “vengeaful punishment,” and it’s only used once in the NT by Paul to describe what he did to Christians when he hunting them down and killing them (when he was Saul). So it’s clear that hell is for a correctional purpose, not a harmful, vengeaful purpose.

Now, if you go to the Church Fathers and see what they wrote about hell, it gets pretty interesting. The Church Fathers were mostly native Greek speakers, so they understood the language well. They understood the terms “eternal judgment” or “eternal punishment” to mean something very different than what we translate it to mean. They use those two exactly terms from the Bible, and yet in the same sentence say that it’s temporary until the person is purified, at which point they go to heaven. So even many of the Church Fathers believed hell was strictly to purify people in order to get them to heaven. But keep in mind, most of them changed their belief on that as they got much older.

I have a theory on that which is derived from psychology, and supported by the Bible. The Bible, and psychologits generally agree on this, because we’re told to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older, he will not depart from it.” (Pro 22:6) Psychologists have noticed that it’s very common for people to be raised with certain beliefs, walk away from them when they grow up, then return to them when they’re older. The point is that those beliefs get firmly ingrained in our subconscious when we’re kids, and when we get older, if we’ve walked away from them in any way, the tendance is to come back to those beliefs, because they’re just too much a part of us. I won’t go into the details of how it works, though. How does this apply? I’ll explain.

The Church Fathers typically were Pagans who converted to Christianity. It was the Pagans who originated the eternal hell doctrine. They believed that way back in the OT. It comes from the worshippers of Ba’al Molech, the fire god of the underworld. So these Pagans believed that, then became Christians. It was extremely common back in the first few centuries A.D. to bring over many of your religious beliefs into Christianity when you converted. That’s why all the different churches at the time had all kinds of varying beliefs. Half the empire believed in an eternal fiery hell while the other half believed hell was temporary. Constantine didn’t like the Jews, so he stripped out everything Jewish he could from Christianity. And in Augustine’s day, he was friends with the current emperor, who took Augustine’s advice to wipe out the redemptive hell ideology from the church. Augustine was a Pagan for quite some time before he finally converted. He admitted he did not know the Koine Greek of the Bible hardly at all and hated the language. He seems to have brought over his belief in an eternal hell and then forced it upon the empire through the emperor. The Emperor made the redemptive hell doctrine illegal in the 6th century A.D. and had all documentation on it wiped out. Luckily, the Church Fathers were so prolific that it was impossible for the emperor to completely wipe out writings about it. And that’s how we know it was a prominent view back in those days.

One last thing. The Refiner’s Fire is a saying they used back in those days. It was describing the process of refining gold. The gold would be heated up to melt it, then the impurities would float to the top. They’d scoop off the impurities, and let the gold cool. It would then be pure. That’s what the refiner’s fire was. And so the Christians changed it to the Refiner’s Fire (captial letters) meaning that God was the Refiner of people. Jesus said “everyone will be salted with fire.” In other words, we will all be refined by this figurative fire at some point. But hell is the place people go who are in rebellion against God for whatever reason. Since God is unconditionally loving, that means He cannot force our will. That would be against unconditional love’s nature. Thus, He needed a place people could go which would break their resistance to Him so they’d choose, with their own free will, to accept God’s help in order to get out of that place. Once their pride was broken, they were happy to ask for help. You see, sin is caused by our egos, which are repressed emotions we’re scared to feel. Fear, anger, and grief, and any mixture of those, are the negative emotions. Our parents pass down those emotions to us and most people repress them as they grow up. That’s what causes our ego to stay firmly planted in us, and that’s the source of all of our dysfunctional behavior. Our ego is our “hard heart.” It’s the part of our heart that’s not functional. It’s running itself out of fear, and it’s running most of our life. The Bible is trying to get us to run our lives out of the functional part of our heart, the soft part which loves unconditionally and lives out of our true child-of-God spirit deep within us.

Hell is required because we have free will. I won’t go further into it than that for now.

So when you take all of the facts into account, especially the usage of words that mean correctional when describing hell, we see that the Bible is clearly teaching a hell that is temporary and strictly gets people purified so they can go to heaven. There’s really no way around this. If we assume the Bible is 100% accurate, then it’s teaching a temporary hell. A hell where even the demons will one day be purified. But if Christians are correct that hell is eternal, then they’re saying the Bible is wrong, since it clearly shows a redemptive hell. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

[terraricca]

you don’t make sense ,why would bedouin /nomadic been more advance in truth than Jesus ?

the truth of God was followed by Issac and Jacob and latter through his sons that became Israel nation and so until Jesus and us

[Proclaimer]

Thanks for the post Brian. I have read part way through but will read the rest when I have finished some chores and have a coffee in my hand. So far it looks very insightful.

[Brian]

Terraricca,

I think you misunderstood what I was saying about the Bedouins. They aren’t more advanced than Jesus. The purpose they serve is to help us understand Abraham’s beliefs and understand translation better, both of which help us understand the Bible.

By Jesus’ time, the Jews had been in captivity of Western nations, so they had picked up some of the ways of Western philosophy. They’d lost many of their old Eastern ways. So when Jesus came teaching old Ancient Hebrew Eastern philosophy ways, the Jews didn’t understand him. Some understood him, often the non-religious folks because they weren’t saturated with the hybridized-Westernized ways of the Pharasees or Sadusees.

Jesus’ words are teaching a redemptive hell, but because of poor translation work influenced by predetermined doctrines, the Old & New Testaments appear to teach an eternal hell.

Sorry for the confusion.

[terraricca]

Brian

thanks for your clarification ,i welcome it ,but to my understanding of the scriptures “eternal hell” /second death” a condition that does not permit a reinstatement like the first does, is true and to my understanding second death will remain in effect forever,if we consider the long therm of God’s plan
for mankind,

[Brian]

Terraricca,

The first death is physical death. The second death is hell. That’s why the second death is said to have no power over those who are born again. They go straight to heaven rather than having to endure a period after their first death where they are continuing to be dead spiritually. So they’re first dead spiritually while on earth and they die physically, then they go to hell–the place of spiritually dead people–the second death. While there, their pride and its resistance to God will break, and they’ll ask for God’s help.

Also, there are some important factors to consider which I didn’t mention.

1. Why would Jesus have the keys to hell if he weren’t going to let people out?
2. We’re told in the New Testament that Jesus went down to the spirits in prison (hell) from the time of Noah (the people killed in the flood) and made proclamation to them. Farther along in that passage, it says Jesus saved all of them.

So, why would Jesus save all of those people out of hell but leave everyone else in there? What makes them so special? I’ve heard the arguments about them not having the law, but none of the arguments really make sense. What makes the most sense is that the New Testament says Jesus died to save all people, the entire world. There’s a passage in one of Paul’s prophecies where he says that there will be a time in the future where Jesus will hand all things to the Father and all things will be consumated to Him (I can’t remember how it’s worded at the moment). This is probably the point at which every need shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Keep in mind, God doesn’t force anyone to do anything against their free will. Unconditionally love won’t allow that. So every knee is bowing and every tongue confessing because they want to of their own free will. In other words, everyone has been refined by hell at that point and is declaring willingly that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Also, there’s another verse in the New Testament, I forget where it is at the moment, where it says God will restore everyone and everything, all of creation. All of creation means everything that has ever been created. If He’ll restore it all, then no one can be lost to hell.

The first and second deaths don’t pose a problem to hell being for redemptive purposes. And how people suffering in hell eternally has to do with God’s plan in the long term doesn’t make sense to me. What does it benefit God or anyone else to have people burning in hell forever? Remember that the Bible says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” So God would not recruit followers through fear. And people like to quote Proverbs in opposition to that concept, but when Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” that’s a poor translation.

“The fear of the Lord” is written just like “the hand of the Lord” or “the face of the Lord,” etc. It’s written in the possessive, meaning it’s God’s hand, God’s face, and in the Proverb’s passage, God’s fear. However, fear is not translated properly. The word we translate as fear there actually literally means, “The stirrings of the stomach.” It’s talking specifically about the emotions we feel in our gut. So when we’re in awe of someone, we feel a certain feeling in our gut. When we’re scared of someone, we feel fear in our gut. When we’re in love with someone, we feel “butterflies” in our gut. The gut is sometimes called the second brain or the emotional brain because it has the most nerve endings–all the nerves of the body go to the gut. It’s extremely intelligent. And if one wants to understand God, that verse is saying that being intimately connected with our own emotions in our gut will help us connect with God’s emotions so we can begin learning from Him, learning from our emotions. Dysfunctional emotions are the foundation of our sin. So understanding them is the beginning of incredible wisdom, and it helps a person get very close to God. Shame, by the way, usually manifests in the gut. And if you’ll recall, shame was what made Adam and Eve feel separated from God for the first time. Our goal is to conquer our shame. That’s what Jesus does when he saves us–he drops our shame.

That’s exactly what happened to me when he saved me. ALL of my shame dropped in a split second, which caused me to go from rock bottom to cloud nine in the span of half a second. I went from depressed to extremely happy and content, and that lasted for 1-2 years until I’d heaped enough shame on me to drag myself back down again. If someone had taught me how to deal with shame back then, I probably wouldn’t have fallen back into shame, or at least not so easily or so quickly. That was the single greatest moment of my life. Changed me drastically. I was connected with God more strongly back then than ever, and it’s because my shame dropped. I’ve become much closer to Him again since I learned how to process uncomfortable emotions like shame, fear, anger, and grief. That makes all the difference in the world. So God isn’t telling us to fear Him or hell–instead, He’s telling us to love Him and not worry about fear. He tells us so many times in the Bible, “Do not fear. I am with you.” If He were using hell as a deterent, then He failed miserably, because the New Testament really don’t talk much about it. If it were such a scary think because we might end up there forever, Paul would’ve made a big deal out of it. And yet he only mentioned it once. He said, “Oh, death, where is your sting?” So he’s saying that death has no power over us–hell has no power over us. So it’s pretty clear we don’t need to fear hell or worry about it. All we need to do is find God and love Him. If we don’t find Him in this life, we’ll find Him in the next eventually.

I hope that clarifies better. Sorry, again, for any confusion.

[terraricca]

Brian

for now i will address your two points

1)Jesus is the way to the father and to life eternal/this to me is his key, for he said no one comes to the father unless he comes through me.

2)i believe that those along with Sodom and Gomorrah and others, will come back at the second resurrection for unless they will accept Jesus as their lord and God’s anointed none can be saved this is a condition set out by God to bring all to himself at the end of all and final judgement

the great crowed that when through the great tribulation (self faithfulness toward God and his Son );wash their robes into the blood of the lamb meaning walk as Jesus walked,walk by the truth,only preach truth ,for all their remaining live from the time they embraced Jesus improving all of the time,

God did not created man to go to heaven but to live on earth

[Brian]

Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.” Notice that Jesus did not say that a man could only come to him before death. And in fact, we see the people of Noah’s time saved after they died. So Jesus is simply saying that he’s standing at the door of heaven, and everyone has to go through him to get in. It’s pretty simple.

The second resurrection is highly debated. It’s hard to tell what that’s talking about exactly. But if everyone will bow the knee and confess Jesus Christ is Lord, then everyone cones to accept him eventually.

I’m not sure where you get the idea that man was made for the earth not heaven. Maybe you’re saying that we don’t go to heaven in our human form but in our spirit form, so it’s our spirit that’s meant for heaven. But if you’re talking about us existing in the millennial kingdom on earth and never go to heaven, that’s not really what the Bible is saying in that prophecy. And the Millennium is a highly debated subject too. I doubt we really understand it, so it’s probably not wise to make doctrines/beliefs from something so hard to know about for sure. Some believe we’re in the millennial kingdom now and have been since Jesus died on the cross. After looking at their arguments, I tend to think they’re correct. But who knows…

[terraricca]

Brian

now I can see were we are splitting in understanding, to me it is clear that when we die we Go in a resting place for the soul until the resurrection

but not all soul goes at the same place some are in a more favorable place than other depending on their live life,

if you don’t understand the scriptures prophecies it is per ups because you did not receive the holy spirit of truth ,and are not enlighten to understand Jesus words,

I know that anyone that live by the truth John 3;19 and walk as Jesus walked 1John 2;6 and also worship God in spirit and truth John 4;24,will come to the true knowledge of God.

the truth belong to God and his son who give it to those that walk in his word according to the first commandment.

[Brian]

Terraricca,

I’m guessing you believe people are in Abraham’s bosom, in either the happier place or the not-so-happy place. That’d be the way I understand it, too. There’s Paradise and there’s hell, basically. It wasn’t that way in the Old Testament before Jesus. The Ancient Hebrews believed a person’s spirit slept when they died, until the Son of Man came to judge the living and the dead. It would seem they were correct, because when Jesus died on the cross, that very hour, the gospels says that the saints of the Old Testament resurrected, coming up from their graves and going into the city to show themselves to everyone. There’s no way that meant that they bodily resurrected, like their decrepit bodies crawled out of the grave and they lived as humans again because we’d have historical reports of that. But I can understand how we wouldn’t have any extra-biblical historical reports of spirits showing themselves to people. So it means that their spirits came up out of the grave–out of soul sleep–and they went into the city to show themselves to the people there right before they went to Paradise (part of Abraham’s bosom).

It’s hard to say when the first resurrection was or is. Is it future, or did it happen when Jesus died and those people resurrected? Hard to know. But we’ll at least have the white thrown judgment in the future at some point.

Well, you must have a very high opinion of yourself and your walk with God, my friend, because it sounds like you just said that you were living your life like Jesus lived his life, and that you have come to the true knowledge of God. That’s impressive. Even the old Catholic saints and Christian mystics don’t claim such things. They were too humble to ever claim such things. The Bible says that when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead us into all truth…I assume that’s the verse you’re basing your statement on. He doesn’t give us all truth right away. It says he will “lead” us into all truth. And of course he will…eventually. But all truth doesn’t come immediately, and it doesn’t come while we’re alive. The only time we will be aware of all truth is after we die and get to heaven, or in your belief, paradise. You believe paradise is a holding place, I believe it is heaven. We differ a bit there, but that’s fine. Anyway, the point is that when you die, the spirit leads us home to heaven…and there we discover all truth. He leads us there. That’s why it says the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance to come. Our inheritance is heaven and all the truth there.

Also, “knowledge” in the Bible means an “intimate knowing.” Sure, it can mean sexually intimate, but in regard to the knowledge of God, it means a very close relationship with God. But here’s the thing that a lot of Christians don’t understand–especially those who base their faith on their intellect–a relationship with God has little to nothing to do with our intellectual knowing of God and His ways. It has everything to do with how we relate to Him emotionally in a relationship.

I think I defined what “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” means in my original post up above. So clearly, God’s telling us that we need an intimate relationship with Him if we want to be wise. This is why Paul says in 1 Cor 13 that we can have all kinds of spiritual gifts but they’re all worthless if we don’t have love. Love is a relationship thing. It’s not intellectual in nature–it’s emotional in nature. It’s non-judgmental in nature. That’s why true love is unconditional. Unconditional means it isn’t judging anyone and deeming them worth or unworthy of its love. It accepts everyone and everything freely.

If you believe you truly understand prophecy, then you’ll know about the following prophecies I’m about to list out for you.

Daniel’s 1290 Days Prophecy

1290 Day Prophecy (Daniel 12:7) Fulfilled

Dan 12:11 – “From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.

Let’s restate the above verse so it’s understood easier:

From the stopping of the daily sacrifice TO the abomination of desolation will be 1290 days. That’s what the “from” meant in the Old English when this was translated from the King James. Few translations get this correct, though, for some reason.

There are two verses in the Bible that tell how a day, in regard to prophecy, is equal to a year.

Numbers 14:34

34’According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition.

Ezekiel 4:5-6

5″For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6″When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah ; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year.

Hermeneutically, the only way we can stop using the day = year method of interpretation is if the Bible later states that a day no longer equals a year prophetically. Nowhere is this stated in the Bible, so we much assume that God always prophesies days to mean years. Most likely, this is how God sealed prophecy for nearly 2500 years.

History is recorded in solar years (365.24 day year). Daniel was under the 360 day Hebrew/Babylonian calendar. To convert to solar years, we divide 360 by 365.24 which equals .9857. That’s our conversion number.

1290 yrs multiplied by .9857 = 1271.533 solar years

During Daniel’s lifetime, the daily sacrifice was stopped only once, in 583BC, when the Jews were led captive out of Israel to Babylon , because the priests could only make sacrifices on the temple mount according to the law. No temple mount, no sacrifices.

-583BC + 1271.533 solar years = 688.533AD

688.533AD is the year construction of the Muslim Dome of the Rock began on the temple mount in Jerusalem . A memorial to Allah and Muhommad was built on the temple mount in Jerusalem and has plaques inside that say things like, “God forbid that he would have a son,” (a very anti-Christ statement). If Muhommad was the false prophet, and the spirit of anti-Christ is mainly the Muslim religion, prophecy starts to fit into place fairly well.

In 636 AD, a rabbi was told the Muslims were going to build the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount, and that rabbi said that that was the Abomination of Desoluation spoken of by Daniel. What’s interesting is this…we know now where the temple was in Jesus’ time, and we know where the outer courts were. The outer courts were on the wing of the temple mount. Well, it’s interesting to note that the Muslims think they build the Dome of the Rock where the old temple was. But actually, they built it on the wing of the temple. The hole in the temple mount that goes down below is not where the Holy of Holies was, and yet that’s where they built the Dome of the Rock. No offense to Muslims, of course, but whoever built it was an idiot because no one makes their threshing stone in or on a hole. LOL The place where the Holy of Holies was built was on Jesse’s threshing stone. That’s clearly a flat stone, not a hole in the ground. And that flat stone is under the Dome of the Spirits, on the other side of the Temple Mount. How funny is that? The Muslim who built it didn’t even realize that’s why it was called the Dome of the Spirits. That’s too funny. Also, we see the four holes in the temple mount spaced around the Dome of the Spirits quite a ways, but in the exact dimensions of the temple. So we’re certain of where the temple was. Remember when I said the “wing” in the Abomination of Desolation verse would be important? Well, this is why. The Abomination of Desolation was built on the wing of the temple. It was predicted 1,290 Hebrew years before it happened.

So we’ve established the Abomination of Desolation happened in 688.5 AD, so let’s see what other prophecies line up with that date.

John’s 1,260 Days & 42 Months Prophecies

Rev 11:1-2

1Then there was given me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, “Get up and measure the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it.

2”Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.

So, we’re told that the Gentiles (more specifically, the Muslims) will rule the outer court of the temple mount for 42 months. Let’s convert those days to years. 365.24 days per year divided by 12 months = 1278.5 days/years. John was under a 365.24 day solar calendar like we have. So no conversion is necessary from Hebrew to solar years.

688.5 AD + 1278.5 years = 1967 AD (the year the Jews took back the temple mount and Jerusalem in the Six Day War)

Therefore, the Muslims ruled the outer courts of the temple mount with the Dome of the Rock for exactly 1278.5 years, as prophesied, until the Jews took it back in 1967.

Verse three gives another prophecy:

Rev 11:3

3”And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.”

688 AD + 1260 years = 1948 AD (the year the Jews became a nation again)

Now, if we can prove the Jews are one of these two witnesses, then we can prove that the reason they were mourning in sackcloth and ashes for 1,260 years is because they were removed from their Promise Land and temple mount and their daily sacrifices.

Rev 11:4

4These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

Two olive trees and two lampstands. Let’s see what the Bible says about these symbols:

Rev 1:20

…and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Lampstands are churches.

Romans 11:17
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree,

If you read Romans 11 you’ll find that the native olive tree is the Jews, and the wild olive tree is the Gentile church (aka – the Christians). The olive trees are the Jews and the Christians.

Lampstands & Olive Trees represent the Jewish and Christian churches. So those are our two witnesses. Now that we’ve proven this, we can see why the Jews were mourning for 1,260 years. They were run out of their promised land in 688.5 AD by the Muslims after 1 million were slaughtered. According to Jesus, this was the beginning of the Great Tribulation.

Matthew 24 is where Jesus says, “When you see the Abomination of Desolation STANDING in the holy place… let those in Judea (Jerusalem) flee… for then will be Great Tribulation…”

That’s exactly what happened. The Christians had this prophecy, so they all left when they saw the Dome of the Rock being built. The Jews didn’t have this prophecy and they stayed. 1 million were slaughtered and the rest run out of the country, dispersed into the world. And 1,260 years later they are gathered back to their land again, as prophesied.

This was indeed the Great Tribulation. Throughout the next 1,260 years, more Jews were hunted down and killed than any other time in history, starting with the 1 million killed in Israel, and ending with Hilter slaughtering over 6 million Jews during WWII. Even the Catholic church would tell the Jews to give them their belongings for safe storage, and then they’d hide them away so their pursuers could not find them. Then the Catholics would tell the pursuers where they hid the Jews, and the Jews would get slaughtered and the Catholics would keep their belongings. It’s one of the ways the Catholic church got so rich. Many thousands or millions of Christians were hunted down and killed by Muslims and Catholics. The Spanish Inquisition lasted a few hundred years and many Christians were killed at this time by the Catholics. We know when Israel became a nation again, ending that one witnesses’ Great Tribulation, but what about the Christian church? When did they come into their own nation? Next, we’ll look at the prophecy that tells about this event.

Let’s look at the odds of just one of these prophecies being correct by coincidence. A statistician figured up the odds. The odds of Daniel’s 1,290-day prophecy just being a coincidence are 10x27th power to 1. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 odds. So there’s a pretty darn good chance that the prophecy is accurate and not just a coincidence. But let’s not stop there. There are 13 of these numerical prophecies, all of which come out on dates like 1948, 1967, and 1776 (when the U.S. became a nation). Nearly all of them come out on those dates, with the exception of a few that come out on other significant dates in for Jews and Christians. So you’d have to take 10x27th power times itself 13 times. Then you’d have the odds of all of those being coincidence. That number is so huge, I couldn’t even tell you what the number is. In other words, it’s basically a statistical impossibility that these interpretations of those prophecies are inaccurate. I used to believe in the futurist prophecy interpretation, but once I saw these and the odds of them being coincidence, I immediately realized I was wrong in my prophetic view. There was no way I could be right–no possible way. So I dropped that old belief after 6 months of study to make sure it couldn’t be correct in some small way. And you’re a smart guy, so you immediately realize that if those prophecies mean what I just said they mean, that also means that they do not mean what the futurists say they mean. So that just disproved futurist prophecy interpretation.

About the only thing I have in common now with futurists is that I realized Jesus hasn’t returned yet, but He will eventually. However, I’m not so sure we understand exactly what He meant when He said He’d return from the clouds the same way He left. Prophecy is very tricky. It’s written in Hebrew poetry style, which is structured in bifids and chiasms. And if the reader doesn’t understand bifidic and chiasmic structures, they won’t understand how the prophecies are divided up nor why they’re divided up the way they are. So if you really think you have been lead into all truth already and that you understand prophecy completely, then good luck to you, sir. Enjoy your prophecy interpretation. Because I have a feeling you’re not going to believe what I just told you.

Have a good day.

[Brian]

Also, I would never claim that I’m right about anything. I just can’t do that. I think I’m probably correct about several things, but because I know that there’s very little we can know for certain in this life, I can’t in good conscience claim I know anything for certain. That’s the only way to be truly objective and open-minded. If I assume I’m correct about my beliefs, then I won’t see the truth when it’s presented to me, because I’ll assume I already know the truth.

And I also never try to change anyone’s beliefs. Each person has to come to their beliefs on their own. The Bible says the Holy Spirit saves people, not me. If someone changed their beliefs because I convinced them I was right, but then I later found out I was wrong, I’ve done that other person a great disservice. So I like to share information and let people do with it what they like. If it helps them come to better conclusions about their beliefs, that’s great. But the important thing is that they come to their own conclusions rather than just accepting what I’m saying as the truth. If they just believed me at my word, that’d be the very definition brainwashing according to psychologists. It’s when we believe something someone told us rather than going to God for the answer and getting it from Him from inside of our self. The Kingdom of Heaven is inside of us, as is our child-of-God spirit and the Holy Spirit, so that’s where we should seek answers. And those answers will usually line up with the Bible.

 

In fact, that’s how I came to believe in hell being redemptive. One day, I felt as if God were asking me, “Do you really think I–an unconditionally-loving God–would make people suffer in hell for eternity for a mere lifetime of sin?” I immediately answered no. Then I got the feeling He was saying, “Would there be any purpose in Me doing that to people?” I answered no again. Then it seemed like He was saying, “Okay, start there.” Mind you, I’m not saying He spoke to me audibly, of course. I was just voicing in my head what I got the feeling He was trying to tell me. I’d never claim God told me anything. If I ever did I the past, I was an idiot for saying so. Anyway, I sat with that idea He’d given me for a few weeks before I started researching it. And sure enough, there was tons of support for it, including many scholars.

So, I encourage others not to just trust what you’re told or what you were taught growing up, but actually seek this stuff out internally with God. And honestly, that starts with emotional work. If we don’t understand how our emotions are driving us to sin and to believe what we believe, then we’ll have a very hard time truly understanding the deep truths of the Bible and life. We are truly brainwashed more than we realize. The beginning of humbleness is realizing that. I’m not saying I’m humble by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m glad I’m less prideful than I used to be. I’m a lot happier now as a result of that. If anyone wants a great process for learning how to understand and deal with emotions properly so that you’ll stop sinning, get a book called The Presence Process by Michael Brown. That book was a lifesaver. I was saved when I was 16, but I needed someone to teach me about emotions and how to deal with them. That book did that for me a few years ago when I was around 33, I guess. It was the second best thing that ever happened to me.

Good luck.

[terraricca]

Brian

please don’t put words in my mouth ,i never said i know everything but i know for sure what i have to know to be saved and not to be deceived,

there are many question i haven’t ask to God but in time i could ‘

your quote is long ,but i have read it so i am going to ask one question to you about it ,how do you apply John 4;21 to your quote ?

[Brian]

Terraricca,

I didn’t put words in your mouth. I was very careful with my wording. I said it “sounded” like you just said you were living like Jesus lived and God had taught you all truth. You basically said to me that since I don’t understand prophecy the way you do, then perhaps I’m not saved…because if I were, God would reveal the truth about prophecy to me the way He did you. You just worded it in such a way that it could be easily misunderstood, and your logic was off-base, as well, in your implications. But that’s okay. It’s easy to misunderstand things online.

Regarding your question…

“But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers.”

So the verse is saying that Jesus was about to bridge the gap of relationship with God. He died so we’d see that God’s not judging us so we’d stop judging ourselves. That way, our shame would drop, which would cause us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven in our spirit. Paul said he was a citizen of heaven, seated in heaven right now. So he exemplified that principle. In the Garden, when shame came, it meant we were judging ourselves, which disconnected us from our child-of-God self. In near-death experiences, the people get to heaven and God has them relive every instance where they hurt someone else. But this time, they feel how they made the other people feel who they hurt. This causes the person to feel incredible guilt and shame. The peroom says, “What I did was so bad, so wrong.” The God says, “No, no…not good or bad, not right or wrong…just a lesson learned.” The people say they realize at that point that God was never judging them…it was they who were judging themself, and that caused all their shame and sin. So they drop their shame at that point by no longer judging their self. The result is that all their emotional dysfunctions that cause their sinful behavior resolves. That’s the hard part of their heart, their egos. It matures instantly into the rest of their heart and they learn from all of those painful events where they hurt others. All they needed was to love their ego unconditionally so it would grow. The judgment stunts it’s growth.

To an Ancient Hebrew, judgment is a helpful thing. So that’s what God’s judgment is…it’s pruning. It’s not judgmentalness against a standard like we humans do–that’s where shame comes from.

Shame cut off the relationship, so dropping shame reconnects the relationship.

That’s what Jesus was talking about in John 4. Sorry for the lengthy explanation. Understanding the emotions is key to relationship with God. It’s why Paul says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. I’ve done that before. I still do it. I do a lot of emotional work to keep helping my ego mature. It totally changes the way you live life, and the Bible makes a lot more sense, too.

I apologize for misunderstanding you earlier. The Internet is difficult to communicate over sometimes.

[terraricca]

Brian

you have short cut the scripture i quoted so show the scripture and then respond to my question

[Brian]

How about you post the scripture in full because you only said John 4:21. You didn’t actually quote the verse. So I wasn’t sure exactly which passages you were referring to.

[Author]

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