Andrew, Thanks again. This is helping me to understand your position much better. Help me a bit more if you would. How do you then interpret other passages and historical references? Do you discuss these verses in your book? If you could at least briefly comment on each of these, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks Andrew.

How do you understand:

The “as lightening flashes across the sky” motif?

2 Peter 3:3-4 “First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

How could they scoff that he hasn’t come yet if the Church was to understand that the “coming” already happened?

“why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

“On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south.”

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

The Apostles Creed: “whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead” And lastly, as I mentioned elsewhere, the Fathers and early Christians undertood Antichrist to be a future tyrant. Thus their understanding of this could not be that it was completed by Nero:

Thessalonians 2:1-4 Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.

Do you ever worry that you may be teaching exactly what Paul warned the Thessalonians against here?

Bless You, Joel