And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
-- Acts 1:7
And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
-- Mark 1:15
Russell Moore safely chooses the Jesus of Acts, not the Jesus of Mark. Almost no one chooses the Jesus of Mark.
Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?
-- I Corinthians 9:1
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
-- I Corinthians 15:8
The salient points in the three accounts of Paul's conversion in Acts are that he could not see who was talking to him because he was blinded by the light, and that he did not recognize who it was that was speaking to him:
And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: ... Who art thou, Lord? ... And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.
-- Acts 9:3, 5, 8f.
And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. ... Who art thou, Lord? ... And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.
-- Acts 22:6, 8, 11
At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. ... Who art thou, Lord?
-- Acts 26:13, 15.
Nevertheless he calls it "seeing" the Lord.
Meanwhile the witnesses in Acts 9 heard only a voice, and saw no one.
In Acts 22 the witnesses saw only the light, and heard nothing.
In Acts 26 Luke has Paul say that he and the witnesses were knocked to the ground after being enveloped by the light.
Most notably there, Luke has Paul summarize the whole experience explicitly as a heavenly vision, which is the experience through which Paul says elsewhere that he received his gospel (II Corinthians 12:1, 7; Galatians 1:12, 16; 2:2; Romans 16:25; Ephesians 3:3, 5), whereupon the governor Festus pronounced Paul a madman.
No one "saw" the Lord in the Acts accounts, but in the final analysis Paul's claims to have seen the Lord are unfalsifiable because they are heavenly and beyond our ken. They are as a result self-insulating and self-authenticating.
How comes it that so many worthy and wise men depend upon so many unworthy and empty headed fools!
-- Walter Raleigh
US commanders tell troops Trump 'anointed by Jesus' to start Iran war...
... Non-commissioned officers (NCO) who attended a briefing Monday told the MRFF that a combat-unit commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
The commander also argued that Trump “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth" and that the Iran war is part of God's plan, the NCO claimed. ...
What matters is that an apocalyptic death cult is prevented from getting nuclear weapons.
And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
-- Isaiah 13:11
Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
-- Galatians 1:3ff.
... A saint isn’t supposed to ask to be martyred. ...
Let's see: Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the Voluntary Martyrs of Asia under the Proconsul Arrius Antoninus, the Martyrs of Palestine, Perpetua, Saturus, and Felicity, Timolaus and his companions . . .
They were a big problem in early Christianity, but the author doesn't seem to know that, either.
Meanwhile, the article feels overwrought and hysterical, erecting a giant straw man of leftists all over the place consciously copying Christianity in thrall to some kind of mad death wish, when what we're really talking about is just liberal Minnesota, which we wouldn't be talking about had the Trump administration not deliberately targeted it and murdered two protestors there, one shot in her left temple through the side window of her car, the other shot multiple times in the back.
The nihilism on display is all the government's, not the people's.
There may be Christian nihilism aplenty in Minneapolis, I don't really know, but this author never establishes the actual Christian bona fides of any of the principal nihilistic actors so that he may legitimately call any of them "Christian nihilists" who self-consciously pattern themselves on the religion in their confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
How anyone could do that though is a mystery, since nihilists reject all religious and moral principles.
Christian nihilism is an oxymoron, coined by a moron.
These orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.
-- Jonathan Swift
Let God be true, but every man a liar.
-- Romans 3:4
I said in my haste, All men are liars.
-- Psalm 116:11
I don't know. Maybe by not reading it?
... It is a common mistake, however, to associate the antichrist exclusively with speculation about the end of the world. When this mysterious figure first appears, it is not in the apocalyptic visions contained in the last book of the Bible. Rather, it is mentioned a few pages earlier, in two short letters traditionally attributed, like Revelation, to the apostle John. The author condemns those who “do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh,” explaining that “any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” ...
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
-- I John 2:18
And he missed it. Oh well!
I don't think the author was too terribly interested in what I John has to say anyway, only in what he has to say, which I did not find terribly compelling. Read it and decide for yourself.
As for I John, it is obviously mistaken that it was the end of the world, no less than Jesus was mistaken about the end of the world, so these antichrists in I John weren't actually a sign of that, but I John unequivocally took antichrists for signs of the end of the world, and himself believed it was the end of the world.
I John notably has not just one antichrist but many, analogous to the false christs and false prophets predicted at the end of the world in the little apocalypses of the gospels (Matthew 24, Mark 13). And I John 4:1 explicitly states that "many false prophets are gone out into the world."
Both of these things are evidence that in I John's mind the antichrist is connected conceptually to those gospel narratives about the end of the world. That they are also false christs in his mind is proved by the fact that he says that they are docetists who deny, to borrow the Fourth Gospel's language, that the word was made flesh in the incarnation.
So I John is nothing if not speculation about the end of the world, and you'd have to not read it to miss it.
It is also notable that I John does not explicitly use the typical word for sign, let alone any word for sign, that we might expect him to use if in fact he is the same author as the author of the Fourth Gospel, who uses the language of signs like water. This is a little puzzling, but it does not detract from the main point that I John knows from the presence of antichrists that it is the last hour.
Be that as it may, Jesus after the flesh unequivocally repudiated such signs, but the new theology's Christ of faith which sprang up after him didn't just embrace signs.
For it, Jesus was the sign.
And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. ... And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;
-- Luke 2:25f., 34
Oddly enough this Jesus grew up to say otherwise:
No sign shall be given to this generation (Mark 8:12).
Sign-seeking and sign-performing were the unequivocal evil business of the devil, this Jesus insisted (Matthew 4:1ff.; 16:1; Mark 1:13; 8:11; Luke 4:1ff.; 11:16).
But the empty tomb swamped that narrative. It only exists side by side in the text which has come down to us in tension with the new narrative which now dominates it in which:
The resurrection became the ultimate sign, the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29), justifying elaborate timetables for a second coming foretold by signs (Matthew 24:3; Mark 13:4; Luke 21:7); Jesus' miracles in the Fourth Gospel themselves become positively described as signs; Wonder-working becomes the sign of an apostle.
Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.
-- II Corinthians 12:12
The message of Jesus in the flesh by contrast was like a bright flash, exposing the world's utter corruption and proclaiming its imminent transformation. But it came suddenly without signs to be observed (Luke 17:20f.), and especially not an antichrist.
The kingdom of God was already there among them, he said, and . . . they missed it.
