Episode 21: What Your Pastor May Not Know About Bible Prophecy

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope: Episode 21

It can be surprising the lack of understanding most pastors have about Bible prophecy.

What we are seeing today is the end of a humanistic worldview that cannot sustain itself. God has placed before us a wonderful opportunity. Will we meet the challenge? Charles H. Spurgeon, the great nineteenth-century Baptist preacher, made these comments in his commentary on Psalm 86:9:

David was not a believer in the theory that the world will grow worse and worse, and that the dispensations will wind up with general darkness, and idolatry. Earth’s sun is to go down amid tenfold night if some of our prophetic brethren are to be believed. Not so do we expect, but we look for a day when the dwellers in all lands shall learn righteousness, shall trust in the Saviour, shall worship thee alone, O God, and shall glorify thy name. The modern notion has greatly damped the zeal of the church for missions, and the sooner it is shown to be unscriptural the better for the cause of God. It neither consorts with prophecy, honours God, nor inspires the church with ardour. Far hence be it driven.

You can’t beat something with nothing, and you certainly can’t beat something if you give up on the future. Jacques Barzun, author of numerous books that trace the history of ideas and culture, offers an assessment of how the future is discounted by the perception that the present is bankrupt, near collapse, and hopelessly lost:

Sooner or later, the sophisticated person who reads or hears that Western civilization is in decline reminds himself that to the living ‘the times’ always seem bad. In most eras voices cry out against the visible decadence; for every generation—and especially for the aging—the world is going to the dogs. In 1493—note the date—a learned German named [Hartmann] Schedel [1440-1514] compiled and published with comments the Nuremberg Chronicle. It announced that the sixth of the seven ages was drawing to a close and it supplied several blank pages at the end of the book to record anything of importance that might occur in what was left of history. What was left, hiding around the corner, was the opening up of the New World and a few side effects of that inconsequential event. A glance at history, by showing that life continues and new energies may arise, is bound to inspire skepticism about the recurrent belief in decline.

Even during a time when the end of Israel’s world was taking place and Christians were being persecuted, the church advanced and changed the world at large. What we are seeing today is a collapse of God-denying materialistic worldviews that cannot survive as they become consistent with their unsustainable operating presuppositions. The apostle Paul wrote, they are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth… But they will not make further progress” (2 Tim. 3:7-9).

Wars and Rumors of Wars

A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.

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It can be surprising the lack of understanding most pastors have about Bible prophecy. Congregants assume their pastor to be an expert when it comes to biblical issues, but this is actually seldom the case. This is not meant to demean pastors, but to reveal how many other responsibilities most pastors have on their to-do list. The popular view on Bible prophecy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in how it gets taught and promoted.

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American Vision’s mission is to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation. American Vision (AV) has been at the heart of worldview study since 1978, providing resources to exhort Christian families and individuals to live by a Biblically based worldview. Visit www.AmericanVision.org for more information, content and resources