A question was recently submitted to the GK Podcast Network for inclusion on the Ask Dr. Mike live show. Here is a shortened version of the question.
In Matthew, the sick and even the healthy expect the Son of David to be a healer. It’s not clear to me why the 1st century Jews would have expected the Son of David (which I interpret to be the Messiah/Anointed One/Rightful King) to be e healer from reading the OT.
What follows is my response to this question. Continue reading
Olivier Melnick is an internationally known speaker on the world-wide growth of anti-Semitism. Born in Paris, France, to Holocaust survivors, he has equipped thousands to recognize and defeat anti-Semitism with his research, writing, speaking, and teaching. Olivier is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute. He serves as the Northwest Director of Chosen People Ministries, and has served in Messianic Jewish ministry for over 25 years,
He is the author of “They Have Conspired Against You:Responding to the New Anti-Semitism,” and his latest book, which is the subject of our conversation today, “End-Times Anti-Semitism: A New Chapter in the Longest Hatred.”
Olivier’s website here.
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This article is taken from a chapter in the Bill Salus book entitled, The Next Prophecies.
There is a dominant tendency in the prophetic community to place the opening of the seal judgments within the seven-year Tribulation period, a.k.a. Daniel’s Seventieth Week. This article series exposes some of the potential pitfalls with this traditional teaching and introduces an alternative view to the timing of the Seal Judgments.
The alternative view presents the possibility that the first five seal judgments are opened in a mysterious prophetic time-gap that exists between the Rapture and the Tribulation period. Although these five seals are opened in the gap, they find final fulfillment within the Tribulation period.
Before examining the seal judgments it’s important to introduce the Post-Rapture / Pre-Tribulation gap period. This time-gap begins in the immediate aftermath of the Rapture, which positions it in the Post-Rapture period. However, it concludes at the commencement point of the seven-year Tribulation period, making it a Pre-Tribulation interval.
I sat there, on my couch, late at night, watching a giant cockroach gorge on some “red shirt,” splattering the camera with poorly-rendered CGI blood, while the heroes of this B-movie ran for cover down some cavern. I loved those kind of movies. The cheesier and bloodier the science fiction, the better. In this case, the horror and blood was nothing but gratuitous, and I relished in it on that particular night.
My wife and I were going through a marital challenge, and I was unjustly angry at her. I knew putting something like this on television would make her leave the room. It did, and she went to bed.
In the midst of the movie, I recognized I was “numbing out” the anger and pain I felt by watching these monsters feast bloodily on humans, or at least the image of humans, since it was just a movie.
“Why am I enjoying watching the image of humans getting ripped apart?” I suddenly asked myself. “Isn’t this devaluing and degrading to the image of God?” The thoughts came unbidden to my mind.
And then suddenly, almost as clear as you reading this to yourself, came the question, “Why do you enjoy watching the destruction of people, when I love and died for them?”
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, which moves, which produces something a bit different from God’s world because God made us to be creative.” Francis Schaeffer
Understanding the world we live in and how to live an impactful life was the crux of Francis Schaeffer’s life and work. He encouraged his generation of Christians to take their writing, art, and storytelling seriously for the glory of God as well as for the testimony of Christ. This legacy continues to inspire artists of every genre and I am pleased to say that Brian Godawa has taken up the task of exceptional storytelling, using imagination and apologetics to tell the “grandest story ever told.”
In “God Against the gods: Storytelling, Imagination, and Apologetics in the Bible,” Godawa takes aim at several lofty goals, and hits the bull’s-eye of each one. Of primary importance in this writer’s view is that Godawa states that the Bible takes a far different view of historicity than modern people do.
Godawa’s claim is that the Bible uses mythopoeic and figurative language intentionally, but that this usage in no way undermines the truthfulness or the theological accuracy of what is stated. This is an important point for modern readers who have a somewhat different understanding of what constitutes historical accuracy and even truth.
It is an impressive assertion that God never intended to satisfy the rigorous and often ridiculous demands of critics throughout the ages who would point to this passage or that statement as an example of why the Bible cannot be trusted. Instead Godawa argues that God’s inspiration of the biblical texts remains intact, having been providentially guided for His purposes, by intentionally utilizing imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and poetic figurative language much the way Jesus Christ did during His public ministry. In this way Godawa is arguing against the modernist obsession with rational abstraction and empirical observation as the only gate keepers of truth.
To make his case Godawa presents seven chapters based on articles and essays he has written that explore various topics such as:
Readers will find a thorough and thought-provoking examination of such things as the true meaning behind “the host of heaven” and God’s “divine council”; of the penchant of Hollywood filmmakers to use Near Eastern mythopoeia to make blockbuster movies (hat-tip to the 2012 Marvel adaptation, The Avengers); of the necessity of understanding the Bible through a supernatural Near Eastern worldview which by the way, is very different from our own; how biblical cosmology/cosmography is not aimed toward scientific concordism, and it is a mistake to insist on that outcome; and the relationship between metaphor and prophecy especially in the eschatological genre.
In God Against the gods, Brian Godawa has provided a wonderful primer for the Christian apologist, author, and Bible student who is interested in engaging our modern world with powerful information and answers to questions commonly asked by those searching for understanding and truth.
Brian Godawa’s website – www.godawa.com
*A copy of this book was provided to me in PDF format free of charge. I received no remuneration for this review.