SOZO, Survival Guide for a Remnant Church

Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening Truth
Review: "He who testivies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming quickly.'" Revelation 22:20

Verses like this in the Bible have plagued me with doubt as long as I can remember. How could the Lord be coming quickly if these words were written 1900 years ago? Throughout the last two millenniums, Christians have always believed the Second Coming was at hand. Doesn't this seem to take away from the validity of the Bible? I struggled with this problem until I read this book.

SOZO by Ellis Skolfield is a must-read to any Bible scholar, skeptic, or student. It is intense reading filled with historical facts backed up by prophetic scripture. From the Islamic mosque, the Dome of the Rock, sitting high on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to the uncanny victory of Israel in the Six-Day War, this book does what no other book on the market does: its shows us how Bible prophecy is real.

Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening Truth
Review: "He who testivies to these things says, 'Yes, I am coming quickly.'" Revelation 22:20

Verses like this in the Bible have plagued me with doubt as long as I can remember. How could the Lord be coming quickly if these words were written 1900 years ago? Throughout the last two millenniums, Christians have always believed the Second Coming was at hand. Doesn't this seem to take away from the validity of the Bible? I struggled with this problem until I read this book.

SOZO by Ellis Skolfield is a must-read to any Bible scholar, skeptic, or student. It is intense reading filled with historical facts backed up by prophetic scripture. From the Islamic mosque, the Dome of the Rock, sitting high on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to the uncanny victory of Israel in the Six-Day War, this book does what no other book on the market does: its shows us how Bible prophecy is real.

Rating:
Summary: Great Chronological Review of Biblical prophecy
Review: This book challenges your beliefs....makes you get into the WORD and question what and why you have been taught the doctrines of your church..... make your minister and friends read it to begin a worthy discussion

Rating:
Summary: Skolfield Too Much Like Scofield
Review: While Skolfield criticizes dispensationalism, he ironically accepts its foundational belief: that Israel is still God's chosen people. This belief, along with the entire system of dispensationalism, was invented in the nineteenth century by J. N. Darby and popularized by C. I. Scofield. Skolfield's assumption that Israel is still God's chosen race leads to his assumption that the historical enmity between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac (i.e., between Islam and national Israel) has eschatological significance. God says his covenant with Israel is "everlasting," and Skolfield understands this to mean "everlasting to national Israel unconditionally."

Nevertheless, the New Testament redefines who Israel is and who Israel is not: "For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel" (Romans 9:6). True Israelites are believers, not necessarily national Israelites, as Paul asserts in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, and heirs according to the promise." In fact, Paul explicitly says that the church is the new "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). And Jesus says that if national Israel continues to rebel, God will take the kingdom away from her: "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing its fruits" (Matthew 21:43). The Jews rejected Christ, so God gave his blessing to another nation (Matthew 21:33-46), a new "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). Moreover, in the New Covenant, Paul says there is neither Jew nor Gentile, for we are all ONE in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). Further, Jesus says that ethnic Israelites are insignificant, for they can easily be raised up out of stones (Luke 3:8). And lastly, Paul writes that true descendants of Abraham are not necessarily bloodline descendants, but rather those who are descendants by faith (Galatians 3:7).

I admit that it is not enough to say that the everlasting promises to Israel have merely been "spiritualized" in the church. To say that they are fulfilled in the church is only a partial answer. It is true, for the Scriptures are clear, but it needs a little more to be satisfying. In other words, there is an element of truth to Skolfield's statement in HIDDEN that "forever means forever." Nevertheless, what Skolfield doesn't recognize is that Christ has fulfilled ALL the everlasting promises to national Israel. Paul tells us that "ALL the promises of God are 'yes' and 'amen' in Christ" (2 Corinthians 1:20). And everlasting promises are included in "all the promises." They have literally and physically been fulfilled in the ultimate Israelite, Jesus Christ, who is a physical son of Abraham (Matthew 1) and heir to David's throne. This explains why all the genealogies of the chosen nation ceased when Jesus came. Jesus was the terminating point of the genealogies. Moreover, not only the Promised Land, but also all of "heaven and earth" have been given to Christ (Matthew 28:18). Additionally, before Christ, Israel was God's chosen son (Hosea 11:1), but now Christ is God's chosen son (Matthew 2:15; 3:17). And if we are in Christ, then we too are sons of God (Romans 8:17, 22-23; Col. 1:15-20), and thus we too share in all the everlasting promises to Israel, which were ultimately intended for Christ and his church. Jesus Christ, who is in heaven, was and is a Jew. He is a bloodline descendant of Abraham. He fulfills all aspects of the Abrahamic covenant, for all nations are blessed through him and all the land has been given to him (see the Great Commission). he fulfills all the promises to David, for he is on a heavenly throne. The whole purpose of God's having a chosen race was to produce a Messiah who would fulfill everything about the law, including "all" of God's promises (2 Corinthians 1:20)--which includes the everlasting promises. And the church, the new holy "nation" (Matthew 21:43), the new "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16), shares in this fulfillment by being united to The Israelite.

Another major weakness in continuing to view Israel as God's chosen nation is that ethnic Israel has been watered down, so to speak, so much that national Israel today probably has little to do with the actual physical descendants of Abraham. The genealogies were meticulously kept until Jesus came. If God still had a special place with Abraham's physical descendants, he would have preserved genealogies to show who they actually are.

Skolfield's conclusion rely on a very skewed interpretation of Daniel's 70th week. Here is the pertinent part from my Amazon.com review of HIDDEN BEAST:

--Skolfield asserts adamantly throughout his book that a day equals a year in prophecy; yet he understands the 70th week of Daniel not to be seven years, but rather 2484 years. His justification for this is the "Levitical code, LEV 25:8" in which "years were divided into one seven, forty-two sevens, and the year of jubilee which was treated as 360 Sabbaths" (p 167). First, I'm not sure what the 70 weeks in Daniel have to do with the Year of Jubilee. Second, the 49 years leading up to the Year of Jubilee are not divided up at all in this verse, much less are they "divided into one seven, forty-two sevens, and the year of jubilee," as Skolfield asserts. This doesn't even add up to 49 in the first place. Where does he get these numbers? There's no mention of "one seven" or "forty-two sevens" at all in the passage. In fact, rather than dividing up the weeks leading to the Year of Jubilee, Leviticus 25:8 is actually a MULTIPLICATION of weeks: the verse simply says that seven times seven equals 49. And it doesn't even resemble the language of the 70 weeks of Daniel.--

Furthermore, in order to make the 70th week work for Skolfield, it doesn't even follow the 69th week; rather, it starts BEFORE the first week even starts! No kidding.