David Alley

Month: August 2022

  • Will the Rapture Occur after Everyone has Heard the Gospel?

    Will the Rapture Occur after Everyone has Heard the Gospel?

    I used to think that the rapture could not possibly happen until everyone had a chance to hear the gospel. This was based on two verses:

    Firstly Matthew 24:14 which states “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

    And secondly 2 Peter 3:9 (Message version) “Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change.”

    However I have since learned a few things…

    Matthew 24 (up until about verse 31/32) was not talking about. the end of the world, but the end of the Old Covenant, an the destruction of Jerusalem. The word translated world in verse 14 is ge which is not normally translated as ‘world’, it is better translated as ‘land’. We usually get the word ‘world’ from the greek word cosmos, which is not present here. Because of the assumptions of translators they assume it is about the final end, so they translate world instead of land, and they translate nations instead of tribes. Rather that verse should say somethign like this….. “the gospel will be preached through the whole land as a testimony to all the tribes, and then the end will come.”

    Matthew 24:14 is saying that before Jerusaalem is destrooyed, the gospel emssage was to be preached to aall the tribes of Israel. The needed to know that Christ was teh messiaah, becauase the mosaaic form of Judaism wasa going aaway. The temple would be destroyed and they were being called into following their messiah, Jesus Christ. This was also the precisely the reason why Jesus said earlier to his disciples this in Matthew 10:23 “When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

    I have since come to see that Christ will not return to secretly rapture believers, leaving all the unbelievers alone, and then later return again. There is only one return of Christ, not two.

    What has become more and more apparent is that Christ IS a very patient God, just as 2 Peter says, and he delays his return so that the world can be saved. He isn’t going to come back quickly and send billions of people to Hell. But at the same time, he isn’t coming back twice either – with a secret return, and then a visible return. There is only one second coming of Christ, and “every eye shall see him.”

  • What Happened to the Canaanites when Joshua Invaded?

    What Happened to the Canaanites when Joshua Invaded?

    The people of Canaan represented a number of “tribes” such as the Girgashites, Perizites, Gibeonites and more.

    The book of Joshua shows us that he was commanded by God to completely destroy these nations from the land, and they did so in two southern cities, Jericho (Joshua 6) and Ai, (Joshua 8) and in at least one northern city Hazor. (Joshua 11) All three of these cities were destroyed by fire.

    The Gibeonites mounted a deception – (Joshua 9) pretending to be from a foreign land, and made a treaty by which they preserved themselves, but in theory the other tribes were not safe. However it is pretty clear from the biblical accounts that Joshua and the Israelites failed to complete the task assigned them.

    According to the Bible, the culture of the land was so hideous, violent, and bloodthirsty that it had gone too far to be redeemed and had to be removed. One example is the child sacrifice that was a widespread practice through the land of Canaan. Burning children alive before the idol molech is one example. The situation was significantly evil, or at least that is how I have come to undersand it.

    The book of Psalms describes the outcome using Ephraim as a metaphor for all Israel… “the archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.” (Psalm 78:9). My guess is that didn’t have a stomach for ongoing warfare, and having come out of a history of slavery were also not hugely experienced in warfare. They were just haappy to have somewhere to settle down.

    So in most cases the Canaanites ended up co-existing alongside the Israaelites – in some cases the Israelites destroyed them. The struggle that many people have today is why would God command something that appears to be a genocide. There are good answers to this question, but most significantly, we lack the context of how horrible the situation was on the ground, and how righteous God is.

    The story of Joshua cannot easily be removed from the Bible, and it does need to be understood as a part of the whole. It illustrates how Godo hates evil practices – similar to the Sodom anad Gomorrah story, and the Noah’s ark story, and is a reminder that there is an impending judgement for all people.