I have been reading about the end of the world for 40 years. In 1970 Hal Lindsey published the book "The Late Great Planet Earth". I read it a couple years after it came out. It scared the hell out of me... I mean that literally. Pretty certain that things were going to collapse, come to an end, tribulation, wars, antichrist, beast, mark, rapture.... really a horror show.
It affected me. It's not why I got saved, I got saved because I was lost in this life.
If you were alive then and remember the book..it affected you too. But it's probably NOT why you came to Jesus. In fact most of the people scared by end times things make pretty short term shallow converts.
A spirit was released at that time that had a profound negative impact on the nation, the church, the community in our nation and has manifested in the rise of skeptic rooted atheism we see today.
Much of the frankly foolish parsing of news events twisted into fitting some scriptural paradigm of prophetic meaning based on Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew 24 and Revelation has been going on in churches and books since that time. Even the popular website, Rapture Ready has become a parody of itself by defining the failed attempts to predict the end of the world, the rapture, the tribulation etc ad infinitum.
I have seen an read accounts of how events in Israel, Russia, Europe and the Conflicts in Arab countries are a clear indicator of the end of the world. The coming of the Lord. The one that jolted me into reality regarding these things was one such account .... published in 1895. It took events around that time and structured them into a tapestry that predicted the coming of the Lord with great confidence.
You can still find those books in Christian bookstores... written about events going on right now. Websites are up and running, some very well intentioned that take current events and use them to warn people to expect the skies to part.
If anyone should question these things they are buffeted with all kinds of Bible Bullets that define people as scoffers who question IF such things make any sense at all. If your expectation of Jesus revelation to you is dependant on what you see on TV or hear on the radio surrounding events in the middle east, you are being duped.
What is worse, is you are being poisoned against living your life in the Presence of Jesus. You don't see him active and present in your life. Unbelievers around you think you are crazy. They read these books too and the devil has used them as an inoculation against the TRUTH of the Gospel. It's actually a clever scheme. End times fantasy has crippled evangelism in our world. When people should be invited into a Life WITH Christ here and now, they are told of some time in the future when if they measure up somehow (don't miss the rapture) they will be able to spend real quality time with him. Kind of a spiritual Billy Joel song, "Cat's in the Cradle". We'll have a real good time then...
On this day after Christmas I am more aware of how anticipation can be a trap. How hoping for a future event kills the joy in the moment. How on this day there is a let down. That's what finding all this out is for many, a jolt into reality they didn't know they wanted until they got there. They loved that day before Christmas feeling that futuristic prophetic interpretation gives them. There is also a one upmanship about it all. Kind of like the contest level yard displays I see in some neighborhoods. It's like we decorate out theology with more and brighter outlandish claims of this or that fresh revelation of the coming of the Lord. I will offend some, but the Harbinger was the last one such.
Jesus on the sermon on the mount tried hard to get his followers to understand that living here and now WITH HIM was supposed to be the chief goal of man. Somehow that got all mixed up into causing people to think we should wait for some future event. It only causes disappointment. Like the day after Christmas.
The divisiveness that has been manifested by all this vain speculation (at least that's what the Bible calls such foolishness) divides the body of Christ into pre trib, mid trib, post trib, no trib, millennial, amillennial and a dozen other such iterations. Anything that focuses on some future event is excuse enough for not living what we should here and now in the presence of the True and Living God, the Creator of all the Universe, King of Kings, True God here and now among us.
Darby and Scolfield were wrong... and they know it now. They made heaven, but really know the truth. If they could come back (they can't) they would say STOP... we were wrong.
Godless sects have risen up from this false teaching. Jehovah's Witness is one such. They have been predicting from Watchtower as a publication for instance, the end of the world over and over and over again. They came out of William Miller's preaching about the end times in the middle of the 1800s. Now they devolved into a cult of lost people who no longer believe Jesus is God. That's where this error filled teaching will lead you... to apostasy.
I enjoy having a Jehovah's witness team come to my door. I seldom argue the business about Jesus as God... I start to talk to them about the Presence of the God here and now, His love for them, His action right here and now in their lives, how they can SEE HIM, experience Him, Know Him. Then I gently tell them of the Power of the Holy Spirit and the Presence of Jesus (There's the rebuttal to True God for them) and how wonderful it can be to know Him in that way. More than once a Jehovah's Witness has left my house in tears shaken by the reality of the Presence of Jesus. They came to witness (a verb) I was simply a Witness (a noun). That is the difference and we can't be that if we are living in fear or anticipation of an event that will never come to pass.
The problem with all flawed and error filled theology, Jehovah's witnesses and the whole end times machine (Much of it money driven) is they say "It's not Biblical" to NOT believe as we do. So they fire the Bible bullets and hope you are hit. What they think are Bible Bullets are in fact fiery darts.
When I see Jack Van Impe on TV it saddens me. He has been doing this dance for decades and is more confused today than he was in the 80s. He knows the Bible cold and can stretch and twist events to fit scripture and the other way around week after week after week.
The last thing that impacted me to turn the light on was the historicity of the Bible. I decided to try to prove that many of the things mentioned in Ezekiel, Matthew and Revelation haven't happened yet so they must be unfulfilled prophecy. I failed in my quest. They all proved to have been rooted in historical events. I will ask readers to do their own work. It will tear you up for a while as you discover how far afield you have gone under the influence of false teaching. The Bible is true. It all happened. There are however occasions when history does repeat... knowing which is which is all the trick... just don't be deceived by the devil's scheme.
IF the light comes on for you.... freedom will be the result. Joy, Peace, Patience. In fact, I don't believe it is possible to live in the fullness of the fruit of the spirit without proper understanding in these areas. I hope you find it.. I'll see you in Heaven in any case and then you'll stand with Scofield and say, I was wrong.
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