Orthodox View of Second Coming
I just got done reading one of those Conciliar Press booklets on The Nation of Israel in Prophechy by Fr. Peter Gillquist while getting the little one down to sleep. I've always had some stinking suspicions regarding this issue and all the different views I've been taught about it through mainline modern Christianity. I have heard so many different things, that I wasn't really sure what I thought about Christ's return and what Israel had to do with it. It just kind of irked me when Isreal was sending bombs to Lebanon killing innocent people over a plot of land and my Evangelical friends were practically blind to the fact that some of those innocents were Christians, as if killing innocent non-Christians wasn't bad enought.
Surrounded by these zionist views, one would almost sense that every time something catastrophic happened some where on earth, Evangelicals are rubbing their hands together in anticipation waiting for Jesus to beem them up. They just know this is bringing them one step closer to the rapture, and tribulation where the unsaved would experience hell on earth. And for God's sake, protect the nation of Israel! I honestly never got this. Even in the thick of it, I wasn't sure what I thought would happen if the Jew's were to lose this land? Fr. Gillquist writes, "Ulitmately Darby's (first teacher of modern alteration of understaning of the return of Christ) followers came to believe that before the secret coming of the Lord occurs, before the "rapture," the remnant people of Israel must return to the Holy Land. A huge number of today's evangelical and charismatic Protestant Christians have bought into this innovative speculation."
Learning about the Orthodox teaching of this issue, has once again, made me love Orthodoxy even more. But doesn't it just make sense that the Christian church is the people of God? We have a new Covenant. So much of what I accepted as truth in my faith, I am realizing, are basically new beliefs. Like maybe just a couple hundred years old. But Christianity is 2000 years old. Did all the Christians of the past have so much so wrong. With all our new, modern ideas, are we really getting to a purer form of the faith? All I see is confusion. Well meaning confusion.
Surrounded by these zionist views, one would almost sense that every time something catastrophic happened some where on earth, Evangelicals are rubbing their hands together in anticipation waiting for Jesus to beem them up. They just know this is bringing them one step closer to the rapture, and tribulation where the unsaved would experience hell on earth. And for God's sake, protect the nation of Israel! I honestly never got this. Even in the thick of it, I wasn't sure what I thought would happen if the Jew's were to lose this land? Fr. Gillquist writes, "Ulitmately Darby's (first teacher of modern alteration of understaning of the return of Christ) followers came to believe that before the secret coming of the Lord occurs, before the "rapture," the remnant people of Israel must return to the Holy Land. A huge number of today's evangelical and charismatic Protestant Christians have bought into this innovative speculation."
Learning about the Orthodox teaching of this issue, has once again, made me love Orthodoxy even more. But doesn't it just make sense that the Christian church is the people of God? We have a new Covenant. So much of what I accepted as truth in my faith, I am realizing, are basically new beliefs. Like maybe just a couple hundred years old. But Christianity is 2000 years old. Did all the Christians of the past have so much so wrong. With all our new, modern ideas, are we really getting to a purer form of the faith? All I see is confusion. Well meaning confusion.
posted by Lauren S. at
1:03 PM
2 Comments:
Yes, after Christ... "God's Chosen People" became His Church! There were't His "new Chosen People" and His "old Chosen People." The idea of a Rapture utilizes both old covenant and new covenant... It doesn't make '
Lauren, I am glad that you found me. We are catecumen right now at an OCA church. Are you guys also catecumen? My email is michelle@michellemccallum.com if you want to email me and talk about our experiences. I don't know too many other people right now who are going through what we are, and I would love to talk about it.
I'll add your link to my blogrol.
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