Arial
Active member
A great curiosity to be sure, Satan being released a 1000 years after Christ's return and one of the things that has always puzzled me, and scared me a bit, frankly. That scripture, "If you think you stand be careful lest you fall," always comes to mind. Thank heavens I can trust God and not myself in that regard. I don't have time to look into it and post tonight but I am eager to do so in the morning. I think it has something to do with the 1000 year reign of Christ not being literal but representing an undetermined long period of time---this age--- but I haven't put it together yet. Otherwise we have a literal thousand years with Christ ruling and possibly the saved during what is called the Tribulation being the only ones on earth, while the dead in Christ are in heaven---and then after that another time period when Satan is released----and then the new heaven and the new earth. (This is why for a time I stayed out of Revelation. It has to be understood as something other than chronologically as a series of events. It is fascinating, this new look we are taking. P.S. I was just reading Ps 50 in my daily communion with God time. And even that I can connect to some of the principles we see in Revelation.However, scripture does say that AFTER the 1000 years Satan will be released.
So the 1000 years it is speaking of cannot mean "all" of time.
It is speaking of Satan being released after 1000 years, so if it's not a literal 1000 years then how long is it after the reign of Christ does it happen?
I suppose that all depends on how a person is looking at adoption. What I mean when I say it, and what is my understanding of it, it simply means that as Israel was adopted by God, so are we. We are all aliens to His kingdom and His household because of our sin, and cannot dwell with Him. Anyone who comes into His kingdom does so through adoption---a legal term. So when the Bible tells us that the believing Gentile is adopted into Israel it is simply saying that God adopted us as His people and He would be our God, just as He adopted Israel as His people and was their God. He is our God and we are His people. That legal transaction of adoption is accomplished and sealed by the person and work of Jesus.I don't buy into the "adoption" theory, but I leave my options open.
And where I depart from mainstream dispensationalist is that I do not believe Peter, James, and John were teaching another gospel.
Mainly because Paul says that if anyone teaches another gospel than the one he teaches it should be anathema.
I find it very difficult to believe that Paul would say that of the gospel Peter, James, and John were teaching.
I agree. There is only one gospel. The same gospel for Jew and Gentile alike. And I know from scripture that Peter, James and John also preached the gospel to more than just Jews. They preached to whoever was there. Peter went to Cornelius and his household. But they did not travel as Paul did, spreading the gospel to the Gentiles. I think that had to do with what each was most suited to, and not any kind of separation between Jew and Gentile, and of course, by the direction of God. And in Revelation, John is writing to seven churches in Asia, man if not all, that Paul either established or visited on his travels.
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