A City Set On A Hill

A City Set On a Hill
Surviving the Seventieth Week by Reforming Fundamentalism and Establishing Cities of Refuge

Glossary
Copyright 2010 by Raul E. Lopez, MD, MDiv
Abomination of Desolation
Beginning of Sorrows
Great Tribulation, the
Millennium
Rapture of the Church
Seventieth Week
Six Six Six (666)
Tribulation, the

Abomination of Desolation

This is a term which Daniel and later Jesus use to refer to the desecration of the temple at the midpoint of the seventieth week between the beginning of sorrows and the great tribulation. Daniel uses the term three times. Many Bible scholars identify the abomination of desolation mentioned by Daniel in v. 11:31 to be the erection of a statue of Zeus in the temple by the Greek Seleucid King, Antiochus Epiphanes near the year 167 BC and the offering of a swine to that idol. This is the view held by the Jewish Rabbis before Christ and supported by the book of I Maccabees, a Jewish historical record of the revolt which followed this desecration of the temple. The cleansing of the temple which followed this desecration is celebrated in the Jewish feast of Hanukkah. However, in two of the passages in Daniel the prophet places the abomination of desolation in the midst of a future seven year period. Jesus places the ultimate expression of the abomination of desolation in a point future to His olivet discourse. The most likely explanation of these prophecies is that the actions of Antiochus Epiphanes serve as a short term partial fulfillment of a prophecy with a future climax. The purpose of the short term fulfilment is to illustrate the form which the ultimate climactic fulfillment will take. It is possible that at the midpoint of the seventieth week the Antichrist will set up an image of himself in the rebuilt Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and demand to be worshiped as divine. It is possible that this image is an extremely sophisticated cybernetic (robotic) artificial life form which is connected remotely to the brain of the world leader.

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This term is used by Jesus to refer to the first half of the seventieth week. It is characterized by wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, disease and death. After word government is instituted it fails to eliminate ethnic strife, civil war, and their attendant devastations. Consequently, it has to resort to progressively more draconian measures in order to maintain peace. This, and a general mismanagement of a centralized economy results in economic collapse and the death of one third of the population from starvation, disease and violence. It is symbolized in the book of Revelation by four horses mounted by horsemen. The white horse represents an initial period of enforced peace, the red horse represents resulting civil war, a black horse represents economic collapse and hunger, and a pale horse represents disease and death. The chaos of this period of time is not the direct judgment of God but the natural consequences of the general disobedience of mankind to the principles of conduct which God has spelled out in the Bible. This period ends with an assassination attempt against the world leader and the resulting imposition of universal martial law.

top of page Great Tribulation, the

This term refers to the second half of the seventieth week. It is not the same as the confusing term ‘The Tribulation' which is used synonymously to the term seventieth week (see explanation below). After the world leader survives a mortal wound to his head he imposes universal martial law, declares himself to be the resurrected Messiah and demands to be worshiped as a god. It is because of this false claim to be the christ or messiah that the Bible calls him the Antichrist. Some Jews, some gentile believers, and, possibly, the Roman Catholic Church will then refuse to submit to this universal religion so the Antichrist destroys Rome and persecutes the remaining Jews and Believers, especially the Roman Catholics. This tragic period of intense persecution, apparently comes to an end when it is discovered that an asteroid with the potential of destroying all life on earth is discovered to be on a collision course with the Earth.

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Many Christians believe that after Jesus returns He will be physically present to rule over the Earth for a thousand years. This view is called premillennialism because it teaches that Jesus comes before the millennium. The inhabitants of the Earth will consist of two groups. One group are those who have been raptured or resurrected. These will be in their immortal glorified state. The other group will be those who survived the Seventieth Week but were not believers in Jesus Christ at the time of the rapture. These will be in their mortal biological bodies. This group will marry, work, raise children and carry on their lives like normal human beings. However, disease and poverty will be eliminated and these people will have life spans approaching one thousand years. General peace and prosperity will reign during this time. Some Christians do not believe that Christ will rule physically over natural humans, but believe that the millennium refers either to the church age (postmillennialism) or to the eternal state (amillennialism)

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The Bible teaches that at the same time as the resurrection, true believers in Jesus Christ who are still alive at that point will receive resurrection bodies without ever dying and will be raised to meet Jesus in the clouds. Most Christians believe that the rapture will occur, but there is disagreement as to whether it occurs before or after the Seventieth Week of Daniel. Most Christians believe that Jesus will come before the judgments of the Seventieth Week to remove the church from the world by means of the rapture. This view is called the pretribulational rapture view. It teaches two second comings of Jesus, a secret coming and a public coming, and two first resurrections. The purpose of this book is to show that the Bible teaches that the rapture occurs at the real second coming of Christ at the end of the seventieth week at the same time as the first resurrection.

top of page Seventieth Week

According to many Christians, the Bible predicts that the Christian era will culminate with a seven year period of progressively worsening chaos and judgment during which a majority of mankind will lose their life. Daniel was one of the first prophets to speak about this period. His prophecy covered a period of four hundred and ninety years. This period was divided into seventy shorter periods of seven years each. Since the Hebrew word used for each of these shorter units means both 'seven' and 'week' (since a week is a 'seven' of days) the prophecy is commonly known as Daniel's seventy weeks. A gap of time seems to divide the first sixty nine weeks, which have already been fulfilled, from the seventieth week, which is believed to conclude the Christian era and, consequently, has not yet been fulfilled.. Therefore, the seven year period which concludes the Christian era is often called the seventieth week. The most common term used to refer to this seventieth week is The Tribulation, which is a reference to the judgments and persecutions which occur during this time. Even though used commonly, the term is perhaps somewhat misleading, as we will discuss later.

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This is a number associated with the name of the Beast (a reference to the Antichrist). It is given by the apostle John in the book of Revelation as a clue which the faithful can use to help determine the identity of the Antichrist. John tells his readers "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast" (Revelation 13:8). The word count is the Greek word ‘psefisato' which means to ‘reckon' or ‘figure out'. It implies a clue or hidden message. Early Christians identified this number with the emperor Nero. Ancient people, including the Jews, used letter as numbers, so in Hebrew every letter has a numerical value. When one writes his name and title in Hebrew as NRWN QSR (Nero Ceasar) and adds up the numerical value of the name it adds up to 666. It is interesting that the number six was represented by a letter called variously the stigma, the vaw, or the digamma. It was the ancient Greek 'W'. This letter was no longer used in the time of the New Testament except as a number. Consequently, '666' in Greek could be written 'WWW'. Interestingly enough, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is also the Hebrew ‘W' called the ‘wow' or ‘vav.' Therefore, in Hebrew ‘666' is also ‘WWW'. Anybody familiar with the internet knows that WWW is part of the name for a great many of the pages of information on the World Wide Web. There are some computer scientists, among them Ray Kurzweil, who believe that sometime in this century the computers connected to the internet will surpass the computing power of a human brain. They speculate that at this point the internet will become a hyper intelligent sentient entity which they call the Singularity. They also speculate that this artificial intelligence might be able to merge with a human intelligence to create a hybrid cybernetic intelligence. Perhaps the Beast of Revelation, is the result of such a merging of a human and an artificial intelligence. This merging would occur after the world leader receives a mortal wound in his head around the middle of the seventieth week and might be associated with his apparent resurrection. It is after this point that he demands to be worshiped as a God.

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This is a term which many people use to refer to the seventieth week of Daniel. This is a period of worsening chaos and judgement first prophesied by the prophet Daniel. This term is derived from the term "Great Tribulation" which describes the persecutions of the last half of the seventieth week. However, the Bible itself does not use the term "the Tribulation" but only the term "Great Tribulation". To avoid confusion and to stick to terms that are strictly Biblical it is better to avoid the use of the term tribulation by itself and, instead, use the term seventieth week for the full seven year period. The term tribulation should properly be reserved for the second half of the seventieth week and then be preceded by the adjective ‘great.' Therefore, using strictly Biblical terminology, the Great Tribulation forms the second half of the seventieth week, and there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the tribulation. By calling the whole seventieth week "the Tribulation" an impression has been created that the whole seventieth week represents God's direct judgment upon humanity, but this is not the case. Most of these judgement are indirect, and are the natural result of man's own misguided decisions.

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