During the Los Angles riots of the early '90s, Rodney King made an impassioned media appeal in an attempt to quell the violence when he said, "Why can't we all just get along?" A similar sentiment has become an evangelical mantra in the late 1990s. We are frequently told today that unity will bring a much needed revival to the American church, but only if we' ll all "just get along." What does the Bible have to say about unity and ecumenicalism?
God used are a number of Gentiles during the twentieth century who played a crucial role in the founding of the modern state of Israel, but probably none greater than Major General Orde Wingate of the British Army. Wingate is viewed as a founder of the IDF (Israel Defense Force) and is said in Israel to be HaYedid, "the friend," because of his devotion to the Jewish People and Zionism. Why was Wingate so different from the other British officers assigned to Palestine in the 1930s?
Many advocates of preterism, replacement theology and covenant theology often cite Acts 2:16 as support for their interpretation of Scripture. However, I do not believe that Peter's statements furnish a basis for their conclusions. "Preterists . . . generally see these signs as predictive descriptions of the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans." Gary DeMar believes that this passage was fulfilled in the first century. Instead, Peter merely references the Joel passage as support that the Holy Spirit is the cause of the events in Acts 2 just as the Holy Spirit will be the cause of events in Joel 2. Let's look more closely at the details in the passage...
A problem generated by the viewpoint of premillennial, posttribulationism is as follows: "Who will populate the millennium with mortals, if the rapture occurs in association with the second coming?" This is a problem that has never been answered by any posttribulationist. In fact, very few posttribulationists even attempt to answer this problem. Instead, most just ignore it.
Recently on a national Christian radio talk show I was being interviewed about developments in Israel. Toward the end of the interview I fielded questions from callers. A couple of the callers were upset that the program was dealing with events in Israel and both said we should be out there evangelizing the unbelieving Jews instead of getting folks excited about the prophetic implications of current events in Israel. Preterist postmillennialist Gary North, speaking about premillennialists, expresses this view ...