RemnantInWilderness

Harold Camping, head of Family Radio, recently said that the return of
Jesus Christ to earth will not be literal and visible, but will be
spiritual in some way. Camping comes from a different theology than
do many present day false prophets, like John Hagee or Rick Warren,
and other false teachers are all over the landscape. This look at II
Thessalonians 2: 11 in terms of the over-use of broad allegorization of
Scripture is concerned with Harold Camping’s errors and with the
problems of Amillennial theology within the Calvinist churches or in
other theological camps. It seems to me that part of the definition of
Calvinism is rigid conformity to the traditions of the Church, to the
Catholic Church for Amillennialist allegorical end time
interpretations, and to the Reformed Church for the gospel and
morality. John Calvin went against Bible teachings on
usury, which can be seen as part of the moral law, and said its OK so long as the interest rate is not too high.

II Thessalonians 2: 10-12 says: “And with all deceivableness of
unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the
love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God
shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had
pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Strong Delusion is from the Greek “energeian planes.”

Planes, where the ‘e” is a Greek eta, is number Strong’s number 4106,
which means:

“a wandering, a straying about, one led astray from the right way,
roams hither and thither, mental straying, error, wrong opinion
relative to morals or religion,
error which shows itself in action, a wrong mode of acting, error,
that which leads into error, deceit or fraud”

In the New Testament Strong’s number 4106 is translated as error in
seven texts, deceive once and deceit once. Only in II Thessalonians
2: 11 is it translated as delusion.

Energeian is Strong’s number 1753, which means a working, “in the NT
used only of superhuman power, whether of God or of the Devil.”

Those who receive from God this delusion or error are said to be
damned. The implication is that God sends them this “strong delusion”
as judgment.

The text does not say that they cannot come out from this delusion or
error, but we have to assume that if they stay in it they will be
damned. In fact, Zechariah 13: 8-9, in dividing the people of God into
three groups, says “And it shall come to pass, that in all the land,
saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the
third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through
the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them
as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I
will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.”

There must be a reason why God would cut off two thirds of
those claiming to be his people, while bringing the other third
through a fire, or tribulation, to be accepted by him. Since it is
most likely because they are in error, then this text offers hope that
a large number of those in error will come out of it.

This is a fearful Scripture for those God has given over to strong
delusion. But who does it apply to? Catholics? Mormans? Jehovah’s
Witnesses? New Age
Occultists who claim to be Christians? Or could it apply to those
who are following any man made theology that is contrary to
Scripture?

On verse 12 Albert Barnes says “Yet there can be no doubt that the judgment
or condemnation which is referred to, is that which will occur when
the Saviour will appear…but the sense is, that this course of
events would be allowed to occur, so that all who do not love the
truth would be condemned… . That men will be condemned for not
believing the truth, and that it will be right thus to condemn them,
is everywhere the doctrine of the Scriptures…”

Yet Paul is not just talking to those who reject Christ and his
Gospel here, but who claim to be Christians yet do not accept some
important truths of Christ because they do not have a love of the
truth.

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and
doctrines of devils. Speaking lies in hypocrisy…”(I Timothy 4: 1-
2) “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving
and being deceived.” (II Timothy 3: 13). “For the time will come
when they shall not endure sound doctrine: but after their own lusts
shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they
shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto
fables.” II Timothy 4: 3-4)

False doctrines not only can come from Catholics or New Age
Occultists who claim to be Christians, but also from mainstream
Christian evangelists, from several kinds of errors in doctrine
coming out of Jewish Supremacy theology, from a new mixing of
worldly methods and beliefs with Scripture, and also from Reformed theology.

“And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.”
(Matthew 24: 11)

Unless a Christian is grounded in the basic truths of Scripture, he
or she can fall into error from listening to false prophets.

In addition, if Christians do not study end time Bible prophecy
without allegorizing it into broad timeless teachings, they may also
become more vulnerable to false teachings.

The Reformation did not “reform” Catholic end time Bible prophecy
interpretation. Calvinist theology accepted Catholic Amillennialism,
that the millennium was not literal. Later Preterism and Dominionism
developed within Calvinist camps.

Origen’s (185–254 AD) Over Use of Allegorical Bible Interpretation and
the Development of Amillennialism (no millennium)

The use of broad sweeping allegorical interpretations of Scripture is
important in the change from the Historical Premillenialism of the
early church fathers to the Amillennialism of Augustine and the
Catholic Church. This is because the allegorical method of Bible
interpretation originating with the Alexandra, Egypt school,
especially in Origen, allegorized the thousand year reign of Christ on
earth found only in Revelation 20: 1-6. And the same method of
over-allegorizing was applied to almost all end time Bible prophecy,
making it into broad timeless teachings. In the Book of Revelation
there are many specific types which are used that should not be made
into broad, general allegories.

Some of the types in the Book of Revelation appear difficult to
interpret, such as the white, red,black, and pale horses found in
Revelation Chapter Six. The locusts, scorpions and serpents of
Revelation 9, the Trumpet Judgments, may not be as hard to interpret.
For example, the serpents as types of players in the Trumpet Judgments
can be identified by a search under serpents and vipers in Strong’s
Exhaustive Concordance. Serpents and vipers are used as types in other
Scriptures.

In Revelation 12: 1 the woman clothed with the sun is a metaphor,
though not easy to understand. A woman generally stands for religion,
as in Revelation 17: 1-6. There “Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother
of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” is false religion. Even the
outward expression “Mystery Babylon” refers to ancient Babylonian
Mystery religion, which is the basis for many secret societies. Its
appears here as a type of false religion, or false Christianity, in
other words, the apostate Christian Church.

Then in Revelation 13: 1-10 a “beast” from the Greek word Therion, an
evil monster and not a normal animal, who rises out of the sea is a
type. In part because in verse 2 this beast is like a leopard, bear
and lion, from the governments or empires of Daniel 7, this first
beast type appears to be government. The beast type who rises out of
the earth in verse 11 is false religion, and a false prophet. He is
said to be involved in the very difficult set of images that follow -
which are the image to the beast, the mark of the beast and six
hundred threescore and six. Again, these are all specific images or
metaphors which have to be interpreted specifically, not not made into
global allegories teaching some moral lesson.

In Revelation 14 there are more images which are not literal, such as
the name of the Father being written upon the foreheads of the 144,000
who stand with the Lamb, or Christ, on Mount Sion. Using the broad
allegorical method of Origen and Augustine and their later followers,
the 144,000 are allegorized away as being merely the elect Christians
of all ages.

In verse 4 of Revelation 14 the 144,000 are said to be virgins,
another metaphor which requires interpretation.

Revelation 19: 11-21 shows us Christ arriving on a white horse,
followed by the armies of heaven on white horses to do battle with his
enemies and to overthrow the beast and false prophet. This is also a
metaphor, and perhaps is about Christ’s final judgment on the apostate
Christian Church. There may be an action against the apostates here
rather than just a general lesson.

Then in Chapter 20 of Revelation we get to the only prediction of the
thousand year reign of Christ on earth following his appearing and the
resurrection of the saints. I will return to this.

I tried to find examples on the Internet of allegories used by Origen,
especially for end time prophecy. Here is what I found from one
search on Google:

“Results 1 - 10 of about 43,100 for Origen book of Revelation”

Or “Results 1 - 10 of about 48,400 for Origen Apocalypse of John. “

What I found on many sites are just brief abstract summaries about Origen’s
allegorizing, and most seemed to be copies of some other web sites.
There are at least two sites that do have online many English
translations of Origen’s writings, many hundreds of pages. But the
writings are not broken down by topics and its real time consuming to
find anything relevant in Origen’s online stuff to his allegories.
He goes on and on but doesn’t do as much sweeping metaphoric
interpretation as those who present abstract summaries imply. But I
did find a few of his metaphoric interpretations that do suggest he
was interpreting end time prophecy as being merely the presentation of
abstract teachings and not prophecy as prediction of happenings.

For example, for Origen the
seven heads of the dragon of Revelation 17: 7 became the seven deadly sins.

Origen had no interest in identifying the time or the place of the battle
of Armageddon (Revelation 19:11-21), since he claimed that the text dealt
with the triumph of God over sin.

On the 144,000 Origen says “. It is clear,
therefore, that the hundred and forty-four thousand who have not
defiled themselves with women must be made up of those who have come
to the divine word out of the Gentile world. In this way the truth of
the statement may be upheld that the first fruits of each tribe are
its virgins.” Although Origen here does not expound on the Amillennial
idea that the 144,000 are saints from all ages, later Amillennialists
have interpretated Revelation 7: 1-8 and 14: 1-5
in this way, which would see no role for these people during the
Tribulation period.

On the feeding of the multitude in Matthew 14: 1-21: The people who were
refreshed by (= resting in, ) the food that Jesus gave them had to be
in groups of a hundred - which is a sacred number, dedicated to God
because of the monad in it - or in groups of fifty, a number
signifying remission, as you can see from Pentecost and the mystery of
the Jubilee, which took place every fifty years.”

The sitting down of the multitude in companies of fifty is in Luke 9: 14.

Here is a brief summary of the early development of the allegorical
method of Bible interpretation from
http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=1113:

“Christian allegorical interpretation first took hold in the early
third century with the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, a
fellow student with Plotinus who subsequently formalized Neoplatonism.
The result was the emergence of the Alexandrian School, whose views
were opposed for a period of time by the School of Antioch in Syria.
Antioch was noted for its preference for the literal interpretation of
Scripture as practiced by Jewish commentators over the centuries and
followed by the New Testament apostles. The use of the term literal
did not deny the use of allegory or typology in Scripture so much as
it rejected the Alexandrian approach, which was based on the
Neoplatonic worldview. But in Augustine the Alexandrian School found a
new advocate. He boldly added his weight to its interpretative
approach.

Augustine’s most famous contribution was his work The City of God (De
Civitate Dei), in which he subjected all of God’s activity in human
history—past, present and future—to an allegorical interpretation.
Philosophy and Scripture were blended together. The future ethereal
New Jerusalem was where all would be fulfilled, rather than in any
renewed version of this world.”

Not only did Amillennialism say that the thousand year reign of Christ
on earth was not to happen literally, but it also said the same about
much else in end time prophecy.. After centuries of reading about the
broad allegories that Amillennialism made of end time Bible prophecy,
most followers of this
theology just seemed to lose interest
in studying end time Bible prophecy. In strict Amillennialism, nothing
much is predicted and end time prophecy is seen as being just broad
metaphors for basic teachings.

What Augustine (354-430 AD) did was to make Catholic
and later Calvinist doctrine out of his metaphoric interpretation of
Revelation 20: 1-6. He was following Origen and the Alexandarian
School in emphasizing
an allegorical view of prophecy. The organized Church became for
Augustine and later
Catholic leaders the Kingdom of God. The millennium of Revelation
20: 1-6
then became an allegory of the entire period from Pentecost to the
return of Christ.
Some of the theologians like Origen and Augustine after the overthrow
of historical premillennialism of the early fathers may have come
close to allegorizing away the literal return of Christ to earth.

Early fathers who were historical premillennialists included
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Lactanius. The
term “historical premillennialism” is used to distinguish this view
from that of dispensationalist premillennialism which originated in
the 19th century. See
http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/royaltyr/chiliaug.html

Augustine argued “the first
resurrection has already been accomplished by the coming of Christ and
establishment of his Church”. He saw the second resurrection as the
resurrection of the physical body of believers at the end of the
world. But the text of Revelation 20: 4-6 does not suggest a
spiritualizing of the first resurrection, which is that described by
Paul in I Corinthians 15: 51-55 and in I Thessalonians 4: 16-17. The
source for this argument by Augustine is:
http://www.utoronto.ca/stmikes/saeculum/journal-
issues/iss_1_vol1/intellectual-tradition.htmlOne

If this web site is accurately quoting Augustine, what he is doing is
trying to deal with the two resurrections described in Revelation 20:
1-8 while maintaining his allegorical view of the text, that there is
to be no literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth.
He seems to twist Scriptures in saying that the first resurrection
found in Revelation 20: 4-5 was just spiritual and not bodily, and the
second resurrection, he seems to say, is the bodily resurrection found
in I Corinthians 15: 51-55 and I Thessalonians 4: 16-17.

Here is the text of Revelation 20: 1-8: “And I saw an angel come down
from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in
his hand. 2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is
the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, 3 And cast him
into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him,
that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years
should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given
unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the
witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not
worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark
upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned
with Christ a thousand years. 5 But the rest of the dead lived not
again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first
resurrection. 6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first
resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall
be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand
years. 7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be
loosed out of his prison, 8 And shall go out to deceive the nations
which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather
them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the
sea.”

One problem Augustine and his Amillennial followers - including
traditionalist Calvinists - get into is Revelation 20: 5: “But the
rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were
finished. This is the first resurrection.” John just said in verse 4
that he saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of
Jesus and that they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Any interpretation of Revelation 20: 1-8 needs to be harmonized with
other scriptures on the resurrection of the saints and that of the
unsaved.

Daniel 12: 2 says “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting contempt.”

John 5: 29 says “And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto
the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation.”

In Revelation 20: 11- 15 the great white throne judgment is for the
unsaved, and corresponds to the statement of Revelation 20: 5 that the
rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were
finished.

The second resurrection is that for the unsaved, not the bodily
resurrection of the saved following a thousand years interpreted to be
the entire period of the church as the Kingdom of God on earth.
Saying one is certain that there will be no literal reign of Christ on
earth following the Tribulation and the resurrection of the saved gets
into problems with the two resurrections mentioned in Revelation 20.
To get around this problem, one of these resurrections could be
allegorized away, but this does injustice to Scripture.

I Corinthians 15: 51-53 says “51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

Paul is describing here the bodily resurrection of the saved. If this text were to be allegorized into something that is not literal and bodily the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ would be ruined. Likewise, the resurrection of the unsaved for judgment must be taken literally and not allegorically. The two resurrections of Revelation 20 must be literal. Therefore, allegorizing the thousand year reign of Christ on earth following the Tribulation creates a problem for the timing of these two resurrections. One solution would be to change the text and claim that the saved and unsaved are all literally resurrected at the same time when Christ appears. But look at what Revelation 22: 19 says “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Can allegorizing away texts on end time Bible prophecy be
considered under II Thessalonians 2: 11 to an error, in which God
gives those in error over to strong delusion? Allegorizing away the
specific meanings of several important end time Bible prophecies could be
considered a theological approach that is contrary to Scripture and
therefore an error.

The point is that Augustine over-allegorized and should not have been
followed in his end time prophecy interpretations by Christians of
the Reformation. Bernard