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This area of the forum is primarily for Christian theists to discuss orthodox views of Eschatology. Other theist participation is welcome within that framework, but only within orthodoxy. Posts from nontheists that do not promote atheism or seek to undermine the faith of others will be permitted at the Moderator's discretion - such posters should contact the area moderators before posting.


Without turning this forum into a 'hill of foreskins' (Joshua 5:3), I believe we can still have fun with this 'sensitive' topic.

However, don't be misled, dispensationalism has only partly to do with circumcision issues. So, let's not forget about Innocence, Conscience, Promises, Kingdoms and so on.

End time -isms within orthodox Christianity also discussed here. Clearly unorthodox doctrines, such as those advocating "pantelism/full preterism/Neo-Hymenaeanism" or the denial of any essential of the historic Christian faith are not permitted in this section but can be discussed in Comparative Religions 101 without restriction. Any such threads, as well as any that within the moderator's discretions fall outside mainstream evangelical belief, will be moved to the appropriate area.

Millennialism- post-, pre- a-

Futurism, Historicism, Idealism, and Preterism, or just your garden variety Zionism.

From the tribulation to the anichrist. Whether your tastes run from Gary DeMar to Tim LaHaye or anywhere in between, your input is welcome here.

OK folks, let's roll!

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Another win for scriptual literalism

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  • Another win for scriptual literalism

    KJV:
    For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
    God literally altering time?

    I'm sure the anti-literalists will absolutely hate this fact, but futurists can rejoice. In spite how seemingly absurd and impossible it is in our modern natural world to understand, God manages the impossible...


    Days literally being shortened and scientists can't explain it

    The Earth recently completed a rotation faster than ever before at 1.59 millisecond under 24 hours, and the consequences for how we keep time have experts around the world alarmed.

    It could be the first time in world history that global clocks will have to be sped up.

    “This would be required to keep civil time—which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks—in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the Sun across the sky,” Time and Date reported.

    Scientists don’t know what is causing our planet to spin faster than ever before,but some experts fear it could be “devastating,” while others speculate the shorter days could be related to climate change, of course.

    Since the Earth’s rotation has always largely been slowing down throughout time, atomic clocks have thus far only added positive leap seconds to keep up. 27 leap seconds have been needed to keep atomic time accurate since the 1970s.

    However, it just emerged that on June 29, the Earth recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotation, in what was only the latest of speed records set for our planet since 2020. It even came close again more recently on July 26, having completed a rotation in 1.5 milliseconds under 24 hours.

    “A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems,” the Time and Date website warned.

    Meanwhile, Meta warned in a blog post last month that adding a negative leap second could have consequences for smartphones, computers and communications systems.

    Citing Meta’s blog, the Independent reported that the leap second would “mainly benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good.”

    Meta also warned that by adding a negative leap second, clocks will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and that this could have an unintended “devastating effect” on software relying on timers and schedulers.

    “The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,” Meta said.

    This is due in part to the fact that time moving forward is seen as a constant in most technological systems.

    If the internal clocks of these IT systems ever have to be adjusted backwards to account for an abnormally fast rotation of the Earth, widespread disruptions and massive outages are to be expected.

    Time and Date suggests that the diminishing length of the shortest days may be related to Earth’s “inner or outer layers, oceans, tides, or even temperature,” although experts aren’t sure.

    Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov will argue at the upcoming annual meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society this week that the Earth’s rotation speeding up may be related to the ‘Chandler wobble,’ the term given to the small and irregular movement of the geographical poles across the surface of the globe.

    “The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about three to four meters at Earth’s surface,” Zotov told Time and Date, adding: “But from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”

    The International Earth Rotation Service in Paris, which tracks the planet’s rotation, will notify governments six months in advance if and when leap seconds must be added or removed.

    As for whether or not the Earth will keep spinning faster and faster as the days continue to get shorter, nobody knows.

  • #2
    Cute.

    But I'm sure you realize that using that phenomenon as evidence for a literalistic approach to interpreting that prophecy is on the same level as saying, "Well, if man evolved from apes, how come we still have gorillas and chimps? Huh? How come"?
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    • #3
      Originally posted by NorrinRadd View Post
      Cute.

      But I'm sure you realize that using that phenomenon as evidence for a literalistic approach to interpreting that prophecy is on the same level as saying, "Well, if man evolved from apes, how come we still have gorillas and chimps? Huh? How come"?
      I don't agree, nor do I really see the comparisons you're making.

      The other alternative is to assume it's non-literal, and that Jesus was exaggerating to underscore how bad (I suppose) the 70 AD war would be. That might explain v.21, but then how does that explain v.22, the days being shortened by God's intervention? Non-literal makes no sense. What was Jesus expressing through that exaggeration?

      But even literal it's strange, and I've stumbled on that verse myself, though I have heard some futurists actually expressing belief God would alter time somehow. Since I'm not a pre-trib rapture guy, that's about as good of an explanation as I've heard. And now it's backed by science no less!

      It'll be interesting to see if this strange phenomenon progresses in the coming years and gets even faster.

      Comment


      • #4
        Something doesn't sound right about that article. There are two ways to measure a "day" - by the earth's actual rotation, doing a complete 360 degrees on it's axis, called a sidereal day, and the other way is a solar day, the time it takes for the sun to "go around" the earth and appear in the same spot in the sky again.

        A sidereal day is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.0905 seconds. A solar day can vary depending on what time of year our orbit is in:

        When you think of a day, you normally think of one cycle of daytime to nighttime. That is called a solar day. On Earth, a solar day is around 24 hours. However, Earth’s orbit is elliptical, meaning it’s not a perfect circle. That means some solar days on Earth are a few minutes longer than 24 hours and some are a few minutes shorter.
        https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/days/en/


        also see: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essen...sidereal-time/ for some diagrams

        So they are talking about a solar day, which can vary throughout the year. The Earth's sidereal day doesn't change (well it is slowing down but very very slowly). The 24 hours is an average of all of the solar days, measured from the equator. But it can vary throughout the year depending where in it's orbit the earth is, what latitude you are measuring from (earth's tilt), and so on.

        But forgetting all that, trying to associate a shorter measured day with the bible verse is really reaching. All the verse means is that God will end the suffering early by Christ's return rather than letting it continue.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          Something doesn't sound right about that article. There are two ways to measure a "day" - by the earth's actual rotation, doing a complete 360 degrees on it's axis, called a sidereal day, and the other way is a solar day, the time it takes for the sun to "go around" the earth and appear in the same spot in the sky again.

          A sidereal day is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.0905 seconds. A solar day can vary depending on what time of year our orbit is in:

          When you think of a day, you normally think of one cycle of daytime to nighttime. That is called a solar day. On Earth, a solar day is around 24 hours. However, Earth’s orbit is elliptical, meaning it’s not a perfect circle. That means some solar days on Earth are a few minutes longer than 24 hours and some are a few minutes shorter.
          https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/days/en/


          also see: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essen...sidereal-time/ for some diagrams

          So they are talking about a solar day, which can vary throughout the year. The Earth's sidereal day doesn't change (well it is slowing down but very very slowly). The 24 hours is an average of all of the solar days, measured from the equator. But it can vary throughout the year depending where in it's orbit the earth is, what latitude you are measuring from (earth's tilt), and so on.

          But forgetting all that, trying to associate a shorter measured day with the bible verse is really reaching. All the verse means is that God will end the suffering early by Christ's return rather than letting it continue.

          They are talking about a solar day. Taken from one of the source links in the article...

          Irregular rotations create the need for something known as a leap second, a second added to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) that keeps our clocks as close to solar time - the movements of the sun - as possible.

          So far, Earth’s rotation has been largely slowing over time, so only positive leap seconds have been added to atomic clocks to keep up, but it was just revealed that on June 29, the Earths’ rotation was recorded spinning faster than normal.

          “If Earth’s fast rotation continues, it could lead to the introduction of the first-ever negative leap second,” a story published on the timeanddate website warned.

          A negative leap second is a second taken away from atomic clocks.

          “This would be required to keep civil time—which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks—in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the Sun across the sky.

          “A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems,” the timeanddate story said.

          As far as your bottom argument, I don't subscribe to the pre-trib rapture belief.

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          • #6
            The idea that the original audience would have understood Jesus to refer to days shortening by milliseconds is laughable. The obvious meaning of the phrase is that the days would come to an end. Even if one nonetheless took it literally, milliseconds would provide no meaningful relief. This is as plausible as taking "let not your right hand know what your left is doing" literally.
            Last edited by KingsGambit; 08-02-2022, 09:53 PM.
            "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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            • #7
              Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
              The idea that the original audience would have understood Jesus to refer to days shortening by milliseconds is laughable. The obvious meaning of the phrase is that the days would come to an end. Even if one nonetheless took it literally, milliseconds would provide no meaningful relief. This is as plausible as taking "let not your right hand know what your left is doing" literally.
              Well, to address your first point, as a futurist I'm open to double fulfillment or partial fulfillment.

              With that said, your interpretation doesn't even address the whole issue of the passage. First of all, it doesn't take a profound utterance of Jesus to know that a war would eventually end. And who are the elite? And how does ending the 70 AD war affect the elite? If the elite is referring to Christians, Jesus told them to run to the hills (they actually fled to Pella according Eusebius), so why would the war ending sooner than later have any positive effect on them? All the Jews involved were killed, so it definitely had no positive effect on them. So, no, the interpretation isn't so "obvious" as you claim.

              To your second point, we don't know if this will progress, which is why I said earlier it will be interesting to see if and how it does. I find it interesting as a futurist because it at least gives a potential explanation how Matthew 24:22 might occur in a very literal sense. Theoretically, if the earth doubled the speed of it's rotation, not only would it obviously shorten our days by twelve hours, but it would cause some pretty major upheavals in the world, fulfilling some other biblical passages about the last days.

              As a Christian, worse case shouldn't be just to dismiss it outrightly IMO (unless you're a preterist), but a wait and see type of scenario. Since we know the earth is spinning unexpectedly faster, and scientists can't explain why, at least keep the door open to the possibility of a correlation.

              If you're a preterist, then I'd expect an outright rejection, but you can't deny that this is a strange phenomenon and we don't know why it's happening and if it will continue to happen.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by seanD View Post

                Well, to address your first point, as a futurist I'm open to double fulfillment or partial fulfillment.

                With that said, your interpretation doesn't even address the whole issue of the passage. First of all, it doesn't take a profound utterance of Jesus to know that a war would eventually end. And who are the elite? And how does ending the 70 AD war affect the elite? If the elite is referring to Christians, Jesus told them to run to the hills (they actually fled to Pella according Eusebius), so why would the war ending sooner than later have any positive effect on them? All the Jews involved were killed, so it definitely had no positive effect on them. So, no, the interpretation isn't so "obvious" as you claim.

                To your second point, we don't know if this will progress, which is why I said earlier it will be interesting to see if and how it does. I find it interesting as a futurist because it at least gives a potential explanation how Matthew 24:22 might occur in a very literal sense. Theoretically, if the earth doubled the speed of it's rotation, not only would it obviously shorten our days by twelve hours, but it would cause some pretty major upheavals in the world, fulfilling some other biblical passages about the last days.

                As a Christian, worse case shouldn't be just to dismiss it outrightly IMO (unless you're a preterist), but a wait and see type of scenario. Since we know the earth is spinning unexpectedly faster, and scientists can't explain why, at least keep the door open to the possibility of a correlation.

                If you're a preterist, then I'd expect an outright rejection, but you can't deny that this is a strange phenomenon and we don't know why it's happening and if it will continue to happen.
                Dude, I like you, but you're nuts. BTW, I don't think anybody here is a preterist (I think Apologiaphoenix might be).


                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                  The idea that the original audience would have understood Jesus to refer to days shortening by milliseconds is laughable. The obvious meaning of the phrase is that the days would come to an end. Even if one nonetheless took it literally, milliseconds would provide no meaningful relief. This is as plausible as taking "let not your right hand know what your left is doing" literally.
                  Pffft. Obviously you never met my right hand.

                  Really shady character.

                  I'm always still in trouble again

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Sparko View Post

                    Dude, I like you, but you're nuts. BTW, I don't think anybody here is a preterist (I think Apologiaphoenix might be).
                    So you resort to ad hom, nice. If I'm nuts, you're a blowhard know nothing. How's that?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by seanD View Post

                      So you resort to ad hom, nice. If I'm nuts, you're a blowhard know nothing. How's that?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Elect: God, we almost didn't make it!!!

                        God: Hey! I shortened the day by 200 milliseconds, what more do you want?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                          Elect: God, we almost didn't make it!!!

                          God: Hey! I shortened the day by 200 milliseconds, what more do you want?
                          What makes you so sure it won't progress in time?

                          And I presume the idea would be to create a scenario so that all flesh doesn't perish, though this doesn't mean Christians won't die.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by seanD View Post

                            What makes you so sure it won't progress in time?

                            And I presume the idea would be to create a scenario so that all flesh doesn't perish, though this doesn't mean Christians won't die.
                            Because you are being woodenly literal in your reading. The meaning is clear, if God didn't end the tribulation all flesh (all mankind) would be destroyed, so he puts a limit on the tribulation period. He is shortening the NUMBER of days, not the hours of the day.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by seanD View Post

                              What makes you so sure it won't progress in time?

                              And I presume the idea would be to create a scenario so that all flesh doesn't perish, though this doesn't mean Christians won't die.
                              If the tribulation is that bad, days becoming 16 hours isn't going to provide an ounce of help.
                              "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                              Comment

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