EarlyActs
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"The kingdom of God will not come with 'parateresis.'" This in itself should be a wake up call about how we approach this topic. This is found in Lk 17:20 and followed by a warning that deceivers gain support by the opposite: 'see this' and 'see that.'
On an etymological level, para is being added to teresis, which is about custody, guarding, keeping. Para often intensifies, but can also negate. Sometimes both: an intense effort to guard something is actually not guarding it at all!
The kingdom that came in the Pentecost event was not the set up of an office in Jerusalem, but it was the donning of priestly garments on the apostles with an authority (ie, a kingdom of priests, we find later). Acts 1:9. You don't look around for signs of it; you don't ridicule people who believe in it by saying 'but Satan has total control of this world.'
Instead it is an imperative kingdom; the Son deserves to be honored. All people must honor him, lest they be smashed when the Father deals with his enemies.
The best help you can be to your general public is to declare to them that pair of sentences of above, and let it 'clean up the world.' God has proven he will do the smashing 'by raising Jesus from the dead.' Acts 17. It is not to go around with charts and diagrams about all you have figured out about the future, which is usually easily derailed.
The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich literary lexicon writes that the term is 1, has to do with the whole pagan practice of collecting signs that will indicate what the future will be, somewhat like fortune-telling. A minor sidenote to this is the medical collection of symptoms to predict how a person will be in a month, in a year. You can see that in both cases, the prognosticator is tickled to be able to tell his client what is going to happen. BAG also note from other sources, that the subject (kingdom, patient, life) may rise/improve visibly, but when it comes to Lk 17:20, we are told that it rises/improves/impacts without us getting indicator marks to measure it by. 2, in a related meaning, the term is used whenever a festival is attended (we observed Passover, etc). Cp. 1 Cor 7:19 re 'keeping' used contradictory. (don't worry about keeping circumcision; keep God's commands).
On an etymological level, para is being added to teresis, which is about custody, guarding, keeping. Para often intensifies, but can also negate. Sometimes both: an intense effort to guard something is actually not guarding it at all!
The kingdom that came in the Pentecost event was not the set up of an office in Jerusalem, but it was the donning of priestly garments on the apostles with an authority (ie, a kingdom of priests, we find later). Acts 1:9. You don't look around for signs of it; you don't ridicule people who believe in it by saying 'but Satan has total control of this world.'
Instead it is an imperative kingdom; the Son deserves to be honored. All people must honor him, lest they be smashed when the Father deals with his enemies.
The best help you can be to your general public is to declare to them that pair of sentences of above, and let it 'clean up the world.' God has proven he will do the smashing 'by raising Jesus from the dead.' Acts 17. It is not to go around with charts and diagrams about all you have figured out about the future, which is usually easily derailed.
The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich literary lexicon writes that the term is 1, has to do with the whole pagan practice of collecting signs that will indicate what the future will be, somewhat like fortune-telling. A minor sidenote to this is the medical collection of symptoms to predict how a person will be in a month, in a year. You can see that in both cases, the prognosticator is tickled to be able to tell his client what is going to happen. BAG also note from other sources, that the subject (kingdom, patient, life) may rise/improve visibly, but when it comes to Lk 17:20, we are told that it rises/improves/impacts without us getting indicator marks to measure it by. 2, in a related meaning, the term is used whenever a festival is attended (we observed Passover, etc). Cp. 1 Cor 7:19 re 'keeping' used contradictory. (don't worry about keeping circumcision; keep God's commands).
