Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and TA, I got saved during the 70s, and one influence in my life was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. It seemed all the Christians I knew at the time were looking forward to the Rapture of the church. Now, however, I sometimes feel that I am one of the few left still looking for that blessed hope. I thought it rather odd that The Purpose Driven Life never mentions the Rapture, and even seems to thumb its nose at prophecy in general. Doesn’t the Bible actually say that many in the latter days will stop looking for His appearing?”
Dave: Well, of course Peter tells us one of the marks of the last days: “In the last days there will come scoffers saying, Where is the promise of His coming?” Everything just keeps going on the same; there won’t be any coming, in fact. So, I would say that’s one of the marks of the last days, and prophecy is about 28 percent of the Bible, so we can’t leave that out.
Prophecy, as we have mentioned many times, is the great proof God offers that He is God and the Bible is His Word. That is the major subject of the Bible, and prophecies about Israel prove—very important today, because we have a controversy over there in the Middle East between some people who call themselves Palestinians, claim to be descended from the original Palestinians—which there were none.
There never was a land called Palestine, not until the Romans renamed Israel Palestine in 135 A.D. And they also claimed that they are descended from Ishmael, the Arabs. Well, Ishmael’s father was Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and his mother was Hagar, an Egyptian—certainly not Palestinians, okay? So, how can you claim to be Palestinians and yet say, “Well, yeah, but this land belongs to us because we are descended from Ishmael, and he was the one who was offered on the altar and he is the son of promise,” and so forth?
So, prophecy is rather important. God said to Abraham that his seed, the seed that would inherit this land, they would be slaves for 400 years, and then they would be brought into the land, and you know who that happened to—to the Jews! And the Jews keep the Passover today—another prophecy that they would keep it forever—and most of them don’t even believe, and they still keep the Passover. So we know who the promised people are—the promised seed, the chosen seed—so prophecy is very important.
And then the prophecies of the Messiah—how do we know who the Messiah would be? And nothing like that for Buddha or Confucius or Muhammad or anybody—hundreds of prophecies for Jesus, okay?
So The Purpose Driven Life, the book—he talks about leading people to Jesus in there. “If you pray this or you make this decision or whatever,” but it doesn’t really tell them who this Jesus is. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, “This is the gospel that I preached unto you which you believe, by which you are saved, and wherein you stand, and so forth: how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.” Romans chapter 1, Paul says, “I am an apostle separated unto the gospel of God which He promised before by His prophets and the Holy Scriptures.” You can’t really preach the gospel unless you establish from the Bible, from the prophecies, who Jesus really is. Otherwise, I’ve got people believing in somebody named Jesus, but who is He? Why would you believe in Him? Is this just an emotional thing, or a popular thing?
No, Paul always preached the gospel from the Scriptures. Acts 17, he went into the synagogue and he opened their Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, and he said, “Look what the prophets said about the Messiah. You can’t deny it was all fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazarus; therefore He’s the Messiah.”
So, you know, a book that is so popular—what? 23-24 million now probably, selling a million a month—that’s tremendous if it only had the gospel. Why doesn’t it have some proof that Jesus is who He claims to be? Why doesn’t it prove the gospel so that people would have a solid foundation for believing it? So whoever this person was who wrote this, they very perceptively pointed out the big element that is missing in The Purpose Driven Life. And not only in that, but probably in most sermons being preached today. They are kind of popular, emotional appeals to come to Jesus, but who is He?
Tom: Dave, when Jesus returns—I want to go back to the Rapture—when Jesus returns for His bride, for the church, He’s not going to set His feet on the Mount of Olives, right?
Dave: Not at the Rapture.
Tom: Not at the Rapture. He catches us up, so…
Dave: We meet Him in the air.
Tom: If you will remember when we addressed this issue years and years ago with regard to Kingdom Theology and Dominion Theology, even Christian Reconstructionism, you had the idea that the kingdom would be set up on this earth according to their perspective.
Dave: Yeah, “we’re going to take over the world for Christ.”
Tom: Right, right, and that Christ would come and rule over what we have established—where those who were there saying that He can’t return until we build the kingdom, the kingdom and the church.
Dave: Right. So, instead of catching us up to meet Him in the air, no, we’re going to meet Him with our feet planted on planet earth and He just takes over down here. That was their teaching.
Tom: And if we have now the idea that the blessed hope is no longer a reality—you know, it’s not taught as being biblical—but we are setting up the kingdom, isn’t there the potential to fall into the same—not only the same error, but set ourselves up for a false church?
Dave: Well, there’s a kingdom that will be established before Christ establishes His millennial kingdom, and that is Antichrist’s kingdom. So, anybody that’s working to set up a kingdom before the Rapture is working for Antichrist. And some of these people argue, “Well, yeah, you think that you’re going to be taken out of here before the Antichrist comes. When the Antichrist comes you could be deceived by him.” No, I can’t be deceived by Antichrist, because I’m looking for a Christ who is going to catch me up. I’m going to meet Him in the air. So anybody that’s standing on this earth who claims to be Christ and says, “I have come to rule over my kingdom,” he’s not Christ at all. That’s not very difficult to discern that means of identifying the Antichrist.
Tom: You know, again, my concern here is if the focus is on building the church, building community, globalism, the global church and so on, believers could be unwittingly participating in something that’s not true to God’s Word and it could, again, contribute to a false church in the last days.
Dave: Amen.