JOEL 2 GENERATION

For many years, I called myself a "Panmillennialist" - I still hear people saying this. A funny way for us who didn't want to get caught up in End Times (Eschatology) debates and/or discussions of saying we think things will all work out somehow, or "pan out" in the End and it is a waste of time to worry too much about such a divisive field of theology.  Why did I avoid Eschatology for so long?  I think it was surely because I became a Christian in 1984 in an area where many churches were "obsessed" with the End Times. I still remember listening to cassette tapes by the most well-known pastor giving reasons why Christ will be returning in 1983 or 1985. Thankfully, soon thereafter he stopped with the date-setting.  This, of course, was right after the 1970s when we saw  the publication of  The Late Great Planet Earth  by Hal Linsey and the 1972 movie  A Thief in the Night. Th ere was a popular notion that the End was near, a pre-Tribulation Rapture of t...

One passage that Christians have different viewpoints on is the meaning of Genesis 6:1-4 - here's the passage: 6:1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in  man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The n ephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. First of all, there was a uniform understanding/interpretation by ALL Christians in the early church until another view, called the "Sethite View", was articulated first by Julius Africanus and then popularized by Augustine in the 5th century (the 400s!).  It appears that this view may have first appeared amongst the rabbis in the 2nd century...