Dr Paul Allen

C.I. Scofield popularized dispensational premillennialism through the Scofield Reference Bible. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Although I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and was regularly exposed to Scripture, I can't recall ever hearing anything about a "millennial" kingdom, much less the variety of theories regarding its meaning and relationship to the second coming of Christ . Like many of my generation, my initial exposure to biblical eschatology was in reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth   during the summer of 1970. Not long thereafter I purchased a Scofield Reference Bible and began to devour its notes and underline them more passionately than I did the biblical text on which they commented. No one, as I recall, ever suggested to me there was a view other than that of the dispensational, pretribulational, premillennialism of Scofield. Anyone who dared call it into question was suspected of not believing in biblical inerrancy. Questioning P...

English: An etching by Jan Luyken illustrating Luke 17:34 in the Bowyer Bible, Bolton, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 is Paul's teaching about what is popularly called the rapture . The rapture is the miraculous transportation of all living Christians to heaven at the return of Jesus . There is a lot of misinformation about this event, but this passage gives us some definite truths about it. Paul made it clear that Jesus' return will not be secret but will be visible; it will be a bodily return; and it will be a triumphant return, for He will not come in lowliness and meekness as He did at His first advent, but in power and glory. The angels told the disciples, "This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). Just as He left visibly on the shekinah cloud, so He will come again visibly on this cloud of glory. There is a view, one that is very widesp...

The Second Coming of Christ window at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC. Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich, Germany represented by the studios of George L. Payne of Patterson, New Jersey 1966. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. . . . Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." ( Matthew 24:42, 44 ) Those who try to predict Christ's return may become skeptical about biblical prophecy . But this would be a sad mistake. Regardless of just when it will happen, Christ will return, for so He promised, and He cannot either lie or fail. He has repeatedly made it plain that no one can determine the date of His coming. Not even He, while in His human limitations, knew that ( Mark 13:32 ). Again and again He urged us to watch and be ready for His return. He did not tell us to watch for the Antichrist or the revival of Rome 's empire or a great apostasy or a...

The Second Coming of Christ window at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC. Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich, Germany represented by the studios of George L. Payne of Patterson, New Jersey 1966. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) All Bible-believing Christians are expecting the rapture; we all just define that event differently. 1) What is the rapture? The word ‘rapture’ comes from the Latin rapturo, meaning, “I seize, I snatch, or I carry away” which is the Vulgate ’s translation of the Greek word harpadzo, meaning “I catch up, I carry away.” As a half- Greek etymology geek I can’t resist mentioning that English sailors sourced their word “harpoon” from the Greek for the implement used to snatch a large fish out the water. “Harpadzo” or “Rapturo” is rendered ”caught up” in 1 Thess 4:16-17 where Paul says, 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the de...

Theologian Jonathan Edwards (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Martin Luther, commemorated on February 18 Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (2006), 15. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Certainly not specifically. Many people have attempted, by a careful (and sometimes a not so careful) examination of the prophetic passages of Scripture to establish a timetable.  Some have even predicted months, days and years— none of which, up to this point, have been correct, but very embarrassed. When Martin Luther was going through the tremendous upheaval and agitation in Europe during the Protestant Reformation , he thought that the great distress coming upon the church in the sixteenth century was a clear sign of the eminent return of Jesus . Luther looked for it in is lifetime, and he was wrong by at least five centuries. In the middle of the eighteenth century, before the Declaration of Independence was signed but more than one hundred years after the Pilgrims had set...