The rise and emergence of the Image to the Beast

[Hobie]

The question for me is not whether there will be another stone temple made with human hands, but whether Christ finds faith when He comes.

Luke 18:8 — "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"

The word "week" in Daniel is often understood as a complete period. Seven throughout Scripture is used to represent completeness or the end of a matter.

When Christ came the first time, did He find understanding of the faith hidden in the parables? Or did He begin teaching people how to rightly understand them?

Matthew 13:34 — "All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them."

Many heard the words, but few understood the spiritual meaning. The same was true when Jesus spoke of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Many took the saying literally and missed the parable.

The abomination of desolation is therefore not merely a question of stones and buildings. The greater question is whether men place their trust in things made by human hands rather than in the living testimony of God.

Acts 17:24 — "God that made the world and all things therein... dwelleth not in temples made with hands."

When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith mixed with His Word? Will He find ears that hear the spiritual understanding of the parables? That is the question that concerns me most.

God bless.

We see the 'majority' fighting against the faith of Jesus and sticking with 'tradition' of man, so we shall see...

[dpr]

How did the 'majority' do at the Flood would be the next question. Can't go by that....

I missed your post.

Jesus said the days of His future coming will be just like the days of Noe (Noah). They were eating and drinking, giving and taking in marriage, until the flood came and took them all away.

Genesis 6 declares there was once a giant hybrid race that dwelt on the earth when the angels ("sons of God") saw the daughters of Adam, and took wives. The result was the Nephilim, fallen ones. Daniel 2 says this about the end times...

Dan 2:43
43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
KJV

[Hobie]

I missed your post.

Jesus said the days of His future coming will be just like the days of Noe (Noah). They were eating and drinking, giving and taking in marriage, until the flood came and took them all away.

Genesis 6 declares there was once a giant hybrid race that dwelt on the earth when the angels ("sons of God") saw the daughters of Adam, and took wives. The result was the Nephilim, fallen ones. Daniel 2 says this about the end times...

Dan 2:43
43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
KJV

Noah preached to them for 120 years so they would be saved, and yet only 8 went into the ark.

[Hobie]

Now as for the 'Sons of God', you have a missing component, God is not limited as man is wont to do when it comes to creation, to just one world.
Hebrews 11:3
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

And we see this..
1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

God is Omnipotent and can create an unlimited amount of worlds with created beings, or essentially 'sons of God'. So their coming before God is just a gathering of these 'sons of God' from all the worlds and thus it notes that Satan came as the representative from earth.
Job 2:1
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.

And the 'sons of God' are shown to infer in Job to also be before the world with Adam was Created.
Job 38:6-7
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

So who then are the sons of God, well we have this..
2 Corinthians 6:17-18
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

So I would tend to go with the 'sons of God' referred to in Genesis 6 to represent the godly descendants of Seth, intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain, showing a growing moral corruption rather than supernatural beings gathering daughters of men for wives. One group of descendants followed what Adam had been shown from God and were faithful in the place they built dwellings after coming out of the Garden of Eden, then you had the descendants of Cain and obviously a wife who settled elsewhere, but the daughters from this union then came into contact with the other group, the descendants of Seth. I see no harm to the narrative as they would have been as the third generation, full of the vigor and strength and not degenerated in height, thus the giant mighty men of renown we see in Genesis 6:

Genesis 6:4
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.