Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," Summer Edition 2003
Mystery Babylon Is About To Fall
We have said repeatedly in this paper over
the past fourteen years that the true biblical end-time will materialize in a
way that is very different than what popular dispensational premillennialism
everywhere teaches. If we grant that it is not going to happen according to the
scenario of popular Darbyism, then what, exactly, is the shape of the true
biblical portrait concerning things to come?
First, we can know with certainty that the following several
negations are very well in order: first, there is no future seven year end-time
prophetic "time frame" that exists with which to start (all that preconception
is based on a profound misinterpretation of Daniel's prophecy of the 70
weeks—please see our books for complete details); second, there is no secret
rapture of the church that will happen before the imagined, aforesaid fabled
seven years; third, there is no Jewish millennial kingdom to be set up after the
drama that we have just mentioned is all over.
Instead of all that "so much fiction," which these Darbyite
notions that we just stated represent, the true biblical end-time involves the
following climatic events in this simple order: first, the ten horns will hate
the whore (Revelation 17:16); second, the ten horns will burn the whore with
fire (Revelation chapter 18); third, immediately after this conflagration, Jesus
will come to resurrect the dead and judge the world.
Friends, we are now in the stage of the hating of the whore.
What's next is the sudden and unexpected, apocalyptic conflagration. God's
method is first to deceive all whom his moral attributes of truth and
righteousness require him to destroy (II Thessalonians 2:11-12). The flooding of
Sodom/Babylon USA with the Darbyite theology of "Left Behind," or antinomianism
revived, as Daniel Steele once put it, ironically, now has everything to do with
this deception!
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The Biblical Alternative To Dispensationalism