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DOMINOES

Part II

In the introductory essay of Dominoes, we likened the falling of a row of Dominoes to sequential revelation, in that a Christian must be prepared to receive truth the Lord has purposed to reveal. With this analogy, believers are faced with obstacles, which we've characterized as Dominoes, which must be knocked down before the next level of understanding can be obtained.

This is not unlike the process of the salvation experience. Believers, who think back to an earlier time, frequently realize that when they first heard the Gospel, they found reasons to reject it.

Eventually, when the circumstances of your life shifted due to the passage of time, what seemed incredulous to you at the time, had somehow come to make perfect sense!

At the risk of mixing metaphors, when first exposed to the Gospel, the ground was still being prepared for the Spritual seed the LORD would plant in your heart – seed that we hope is still growing in the reader so that they may bear fruit, some "an hundredfold, some thirtyfold, some sixty" (Mark 4:20).

As the aforementioned parable of the Sower and the Seed tells us, your "Seed" could be choked by the "thorns" associated with the cares of this world, or from the Dominoes this series has proposed; but we have also learned, the vision of the obstacles in front of you can change with the passage of time.

Your response to the Gospel was not, and should not be, according to the traditions which you were exposed to. As many people are introduced to Christ in a church or a crusade, the emotional dimension of experiencing the fellowship of the Saints, and the desired sense of belonging, frequently play into decisions for Christ.

Others are struck by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the wonderful truth that they've become an integral part of an enormous plan to redeem mankind from the desperate condition in which we find ourselves. Just like the disciples who slowly came to realize the Saviour of all mankind was in their midst, they responded to the amazing truth that God was moving among men.

When Jesus asked Peter the Fisherman who He thought Jesus was, He responded that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ who the prophets had long promised would come and redeem Israel. Jesus blessed Peter because of what had occurred.

"Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed in unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 16:17).

Setting aside the fact that this verse communicates the transition that was occurring from the Old Covenant of the law – which was characterized by the two fold Flesh and Blood conformity to Gods' inflexible Old Testament law – and the Spirit driven New Covenant (the "third part" seen in the phrase "my Father"), we see a "Domino" in the disciples' understanding had just fallen.

It was not until this revelation occurred that Jesus began to reveal to the disciples that His destiny was to be rejected and abused by Israel, and He would be executed, and rise from the dead on the third day.

"From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day" (Matthew 16:21). 

A studied analysis of this progression indicates that previous to the revelation to Peter, God knew the disciples of Christ would not be able to receive the shocking knowledge that the gentle Jesus they had come to love was to be brutally murdered by the very people He had come to save.

There is evidence that even then, it was contrary to their tradition concerning the course of the Christ.

"Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: This shall not be unto thee" (Matthew 16:22).

Of course, Jesus instantly recognized the Spiritual presence of Satan in Peter's revulsion, and commanded the Devil to leave their presence. We then see the next sequential step in the doctrinal development of the New Testament, as Jesus instructs the core of His church concerning the death He had just told them was surely to come.  

"There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28).

It is here that we again see the LORD transmitting His divine foreknowledge of all earthly history, and those who have studied how the prophets who have learned the kingdom of God is the seventh kingdom – after Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome – are in a position to anticipate that JESUS was about to fulfill the promise of the prophets to manifest the kingdom of God to Israel.

"And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up to a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light" (Matthew 17:2).

In the previous installment of Dominoes, we reiterated the epic truth of how the four kingdoms in Daniel Two – Babylon (the head of gold), the Persian Union of the Medes and the Persians (the silver arms), the Grecian dominion of Alexander the Great (the brass torso), and the Roman Empire (the iron legs of Nebuchadnezzar's statue dream), followed the hundreds of Old Testament verses about Pharaoh's Egypt and the Assyrian Conquest of the Northern tribes of Samaria.

In Part I of this series, I recounted how the LORD revealed the Old Testament era foursome of Daniel 2 was recapitulated in the AD timeline foursome of Daniel 7 in the Christian era.

"And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another" (Daniel 7:3).

These four, the Lion, Bear, Leopard, and "Diverse" Beast forecast that England, the Soviet Union, the Third Reich of Germany, and the USA, were to sequentially come to dominion. In what I later recognized was another "Domino," I was not in a position to realize the importance of the fact they came up from "the sea" until I had received the truth that Old Testament prophecy reached well into the "church" age.

The dominant evangelical tradition of our time – albeit a false perspective -- is that the Christian church is invisible in the Old Testament. Utilizing the system referred to as "Dispensationalism" (positing the LORD supposedly "dispenses" salvation differently to Jews and Gentiles) the "Christian" version of the system developed in England in the 19^th century, and a foundational staple of this doctrinal system is the separation of the body of Christ and Israel.

We know it as the Rapture Cult, as the theology falsely teaches that in the end, usually after the fictional event popularized as the "Rapture," all Israel will be miraculously converted to Christianity.

"And so all Israel shall be saved" (Romans 10:13).

As usual, there's far more to Scriptures like this than a single verse plucked out of its context, and this one is no exception. However, when I realized the Lion, Bear, and Leopard prophecies were all about the Christian era, I wasn't yet ready to see through the massive "Domino" of "Dispensational" thought, as I was still trying to see through the much smaller Domino of the Pretribulational Rapture, versus the obvious Scriptural discrepancies found in verses that clearly showed the return of Christ at the end of the prophesied tribulation.

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days…they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Matthew 24:29-31). 

Decades ago, after much study, I found many pretrib discrepancies, and knocked down the Rapture Domino. For example, the "Cloud" coming metioned in the above verse, which was supposedly the "Rapture" (His secret coming when the unbelievers were said to be "Left Behind"), was also in Revelation, only there everybody sees Him.

"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him" (Revelation 1:7).

The False Prophets talk incessantly about the "thief" in the night who comes in the "Rapture," but in Revelation, the very next verse after the "thief" coming is Armageddon, supposedly 7 years later.

"Behold, I come as a thief…And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon" (Revelation 16:15, 16).  

Finally, the famous statement that the Rapture would be as it was in "the days of Noah" (Matthew 24:37), likening the ark being taken to safety before the great cataclysm. The text says they were eating and drinking, marrying, building, etc.

"And knew not until the flood came and took them all away" (Matthew 24:39).

You could not say the occupants of the ark did not know the flood was coming, as they had just spent years preparing the ark. So who "knew not" the flood was coming? The entire world.

"Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken the other left" (Matthew 24:40).

Clearly, the "Domino of Dispensationalism" had to fall before I could learn the truth about the last days. 

-- James Lloyd

To Be Continued