Chuck Missler as I'm discovering him

I'm right now mostly engaged in listening to Chuck Missler on various end times topics at Google Videos. Years ago I read some of his pamphlets but was never very interested in them. I think that's because he has a tendency to get off into applying the Bible to news headlines and current affairs, which is just too iffy for me, and because he enjoys speculating about things like quantum mechanics and the science of walking through walls and that sort of thing, which bores me to distraction.

But when he's talking pretty strictly Biblically, as he (mostly) is in the talks I've been listening to, then I can really appreciate him. I don't mind at all if he gets off into speculations that are Bible-based, as he does when he proposes that "the Assyrian" is a better candidate for the final Man of Sin than others, because in the Bible that term does appear at times to refer to a specific but unidentified individual, unlike the similar phrases "the Egyptian" or "the Chaldean" which either refer to known individuals or stand for Egyptians or Chaldeans in general. I ran these through the Concordance and it is interesting that "the Assyrian" definitely has this specific connotation. (And the most famous Assyrian was Nimrod, and Nimrod is considered to be the prototype for all the false gods that have been worshiped by one civilization after another down to the Roman Empire, and then taken up into the Roman Catholic apostasy, as exposed particularly by Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons. Nimrod is an Antichrist and the Antichrist will have to be in the spirit of Nimrod in any case.)

So I find observations like that to be stimulating possibilities to juggle along with others, and Missler is particularly good at noting such distinctions and patterns in the Bible.

But when he gets off into insisting that "the Lord's day" as used by John in Revelation 1:10 does not refer to John's being in the spirit on a Sunday but to the "Day of the Lord" -- which is where he says John was when "in the Spirit" -- he loses me:

Jamieson Fausset and Brown (JFB) Commentary on Rev 1:10:

on the Lord's day--Though forcibly detained from Church communion with the brethren in the sanctuary on the Lord's day, the weekly commemoration of the resurrection, John was holding spiritual communion with them. This is the earliest mention of the term, "the Lord's day." But the consecration of the day to worship, almsgiving, and the Lord's Supper, is implied in Ac 20:7; 1Co 16:2; compare Joh 20:19-26. The name corresponds to "the Lord's Supper," 1Co 11:20.

IGNATIUS seems to allude to "the Lord's day" [Epistle to the Magnesians, 9], and IRENÆUS [Quæst ad Orthod., 115] (in JUSTIN MARTYR). JUSTIN MARTYR [Apology, 2.98], &c., "On Sunday we all hold our joint meeting; for the first day is that on which God, having removed darkness and chaos, made the world, and Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead. On the day before Saturday they crucified Him; and on the day after Saturday, which is Sunday, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught these things." To the Lord's day PLINY doubtless refers [Epistles, Book X., p. 97], "The Christians on a fixed day before dawn meet and sing a hymn to Christ as God," &c. TERTULLIAN [The Chaplet, 3], "On the Lord's day we deem it wrong to fast." MELITO, bishop of Sardis (second century), wrote a book on the Lord's day [EUSEBIUS 4.26]. Also, DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH, in EUSEBIUS [Ecclesiastical History, 4.23,8]. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA [Miscellanies, 5. and 7.12]; ORIGEN [Against Celsus, 8. 22]. The theory that the day of Christ's second coming is meant, is untenable. "The day of the Lord" is different in the Greek from "the Lord's (an adjective) day," which latter in the ancient Church always designates our Sunday, though it is not impossible that the two shall coincide (at least in some parts of the earth), whence a tradition is mentioned in JEROME [Commentary on Matthew, 25], that the Lord's coming was expected especially on the Paschal Lord's day. The visions of the Apocalypse, the seals, trumpets, and vials, &c., are grouped in sevens, and naturally begin on the first day of the seven, the birthday of the Church, whose future they set forth [WORDSWORTH].

It also doesn't seem to me that John would say it that way if he meant he had been transported in vision to the final Day of the Lord, since he would know that the reader would need a great deal of orientation to grasp such an experience. Other prophets, such as Daniel and Ezekiel, very clearly designate where their visions take them, and are careful to describe even the experience of being taken there; they don't leave us with merely an ambiguous phrase to figure out.

So I reject that idea and would rather not even spend so much time on it, but since it's the sort of thing that is likely to come up again and again it's probably best to get my own answer put down as definitely as possible as soon as possible. (It turns out that Missler's objection to the phrase in Revelation has to do with his strong ideas about the Saturday Sabbath, which he calls by the Jewish word "Shabbat." That's a whole complicated discussion I'm not going to get into here -- except to say I disagree with his view of it, and with his use of Jewish terminology for this and other things).

Otherwise I have to say that Missler is a GREAT Bible expositor on topics related to the end times. His argument for the Rapture is Biblically impressive, and he is as Biblically well grounded on the Antichrist and the Book of Revelation as on the Rapture. His solid Biblical perspective contrasts with some discussions of other eschatalogical positions such as amillennialism, where you can get lost in abstractions and rhetorical or poetic Biblical allusions without finding much of an attempt to prove the system from specific Bible verses. If I have the patience I want to try to deal with some of those discussions too.

Missler is masterful at identifying the interrelationships of elements in the entire Bible, patterns that tie it all together. Even if one ends up with a different understanding of, say, the Book of Revelation, than his understanding, it can only be a huge benefit to have heard his discussion of it. He gives such a coherent and thoroughly Bible-referenced overview you can't help but come away feeling you FINALLY understand at least the STRUCTURE of that book and its place in the context of the rest of the Bible.