James Arendt
Just because your preacher or Bible teacher tells you something, doesn't make it necessarily so. We must base our faith directly on what the Bible has to say, and not just on what somebody says it says.
Here are some popular doctrines that I used to believe but now think my teachers were misled.
The most commonly held Southern Baptist eschatology is known as "pretribulational premillennialism." In this view, Jesus will return to earth but not stay. He will rapture believers, removing them from Earth. Southern Baptists believe that a seven-year-long tribulation period will follow the rapture. They believe during the tribulation period that the Antichrist will conquer Earth, and they believe that Jesus will return again after the seven years and judge the living and the dead. Finally, they believe a 1,000-year-long Kingdom of God on Earth will follow. (From Southern Baptist Eschatology Beliefs
Where do evangelicals get the idea of a seven-year-long tribulation person after the rapture? Not from the Bible! They got it from a false interpretation of Daniel 9:27 promoted by John Nelson Darby, Clarence Larkin, and C.I. Scofield. And it turns out their eschatology originally came from a Jesuit priest named Francesco Ribera who cooked it up in the 16th century. See The 70th Week of Daniel Fulfilled by Jesus and His Apostles!
The Geneva Bible was published in 1560, which is 51 years before the King James Version. It was translated by men of God in Geneva Switzerland who were not under any political / government pressure that influenced their translation. The translators included footnotes to help make difficult passages clearer. Those footnotes are all based on what all Protestants in general held to be true. King James of England did not like some of those footnotes. He wanted a Bible that didn't include them. Hence we have the King James Version which is very similar to the Geneva Bible but without the footnotes. Let's see how the footnotes interpret certain scriptures.
Daniel 9:27 is probably the most misinterpreted prophecy in the entire Bible! Let's see how the Geneva Bible interprets it:
And how does modern evangelical eschatology interpret it? They replace the "he" which is Christ with Antichrist and say the Antichrist will make a 7-year covenant with the Jews in order that they can rebuild a third Temple of Solomon to renew their animal sacrifices to God. Just ask yourself, would a rebuilt Temple Solomon honor God? Absolutely not! And why? Because it would represent a further rejection of the Blood of the Lamb, the Blood of Jesus Christ for our sins, and substitute animal blood instead! Would such a Temple be therefore the "holy place" of Matthew 24:15? Again, absolutely not for the reason stated above. There is no prophecy anywhere in the Bible of a third Temple of a Solomon. And not only does Daniel 9:27 not talk about a rebuilt Temple, it's a prophecy about the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD! It's only speculation that the Jews need to rebuild the Temple in the Endtime so that the Antichrist can sit in it to proclaim himself to be God! And why did they speculate that? From a false interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)
Any Protestant reading the Geneva Bible footnote of verse 4 would know for certain it is talking about the Popes of Rome. Evangelicals today do not interpret it that way. They say 2 Thess 2:4 is talking about the Endtime Antichrist sitting in a rebuilt Temple of Solomon. What does the New Testament call the Temple?
1 Corinthians 3:16 ¶Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?The Church, the saints of God, is the Temple of God, not a physical temple made with hands. The early Protestants knew that which is why they believed the identity of the Antichrist is the popes of Rome. It was the Pope who set himself above the kings and princes of Europe. It was the Pope who claimed to be the head of the Church and the vicar of Christ. Does Pope Francis today say the same thing? He does.
Here is the crux of the matter and the reason for false Endtime teaching: They were cooked up by Jesuit priests who lead the Counter-Reformation to get the Protestants to get their eyes off the Popes of Roman as the biblical Antichrist! They sure did a bang-up job, didn't they? But thankfully there are Christians today who know the truth, and they are mostly Christians who still remember what Protestants used to teach up to the 18th century. The Baptists do not identify with Protestanism because they claim to be descended from the Anabaptists who predate the Protestant Reformation. This is true. It's just sad that Baptists and other evangelicals such as Pentecostals were influenced by C.I. Scofield's doctrines while the Presbyterians and other mainstream Protestant churches were not.
My name is James Arendt. I was raised in the Hegewisch neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, served in the USAF from 1970 to 1974, and became a full-time missionary for Christ living 40 years in Japan, 3.5 years in Russia, and a few months in other countries such as Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China where I also served the King of Kings, Jesus, as an Ambassador for His Kingdom. My full bio.
On September 24, 2023, I had an accident and broke the bone of the tip of my left elbow. A boy ran in front of my motorbike less than 2 meters from me as I was leaving home. I stopped suddenly and my front tire slid on the sandy concrete road which caused me to fall. I did not hit the boy. On October 18th I had surgery done on my elbow. The doctor put in titanium rods to hold my bones together. The entire procedure including an entire week in the hospital was roughly $4000 USD. This was done in the Philippines where my wife and I have been living since June this year.
It would be a super blessing to us if any of the visitors of this website can help us cover this expense!
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