Posted on 10/07/2008 8:41:53 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
The pages of failed end-of-the-world prophecies could make up a whole new testament. Now there's the Rev. David Jeremiah, an East County mega-pastor and TV evangelist who says the end is coming, in the words of a familiar church song, “soon and very soon.”
In a new book that hit bookstores this week, Jeremiah offers 10 “prophetic clues” he says point to an imminent conclusion many Christians have clung to for 2,000 years – the Rapture (when the faithful will be summoned instantly into Heaven), followed by the Tribulation (a seven-year period of turmoil), Armageddon (the final battle of good versus evil) and the Second Coming of Jesus (to reign on Earth).
Jeremiah doesn't set a date in “What in the World Is Going On?” (Thomas Nelson; $22.99). But his urgency is clear: “His return is close at hand,” he writes, adding that Christians should be motivated “as never before to live in readiness.”
“I have no intention of setting any dates or saying this is when this is going to happen,” Jeremiah says, settling back on a couch in his office at Turning Point, his international television and radio ministry headquartered in Lakeside.
“All I'm saying is some of the things that the word of God prophesied would take place as we near this time are happening in ways you cannot contradict.”
The 67-year-old senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, where he preaches to 7,000 people at weekend services, says he was motivated to write this book after so many people kept questioning him about world events.
He reached out to other biblical prophecy scholars for their thoughts. Among them was Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” series of Christian apocalyptic novels. In 1981, Jeremiah followed LaHaye as senior pastor of Scott Memorial Baptist Church, which later became Shadow Mountain.
The 10 signs Jeremiah settled on range from the emergence of Israel as the dominant country-of-residence for Jews and the rise in power of Russia and Iran to the world's reliance on Middle Eastern oil and the coming together of countries under the European Union.
“I'm not a sensationalist,” says Jeremiah, a grandfather and two-time cancer survivor who is a well-known speaker at evangelical venues like the Billy Graham Training Center.
“I would be the last person in the world to try to draw sensationalist truths from the Scripture,” he adds. “You can get a crowd if you know how to frame your stuff, but I'm past all that. I don't need to do that. But what I do know is this: This is a different day unlike anything that I've ever known, unlike anything the world has ever known. So what does that mean?”
What it means for him is that conversion efforts need to be jump-started like a battery in a long-idled sedan.
“We've forgotten that there's an urgency about what we've been called to do,” he says. He leans forward on the couch, as if to emphasize his impatience. “I think it puts an urgency and a seriousness into our walk.” Jeremiah is particularly tough on Islam in his book. Islamic terrorism is among the signs he says are pointing toward the end times.
“One of the most baffling and unsettling puzzles about Islam is the constant contention on the part of some Muslim leaders that they are a peace-loving people,” he writes. “Yet even as they make the claim, Islamic terrorists continue to brutally murder any person or group with whom they find fault.”
Jeremiah does not believe Allah and God are the same. He also believes that Islam hates Jews and Christians.
“Experts say that 15 to 20 percent of Muslims are radical enough to strap a bomb on their bodies in order to kills Christians and Jews,” he writes. “If this number is accurate, it means about 300 million Muslims are willing to die in order to take you and me down.”
His solution: convert Muslims to Christianity.
Jeremiah says he is not trying to be incendiary; he's just being true to his convictions. “I'm not intolerant,” he insists. “I just believe totally what I believe, and if I have to go along in order to get along, water down what I believe, I'll never do that.”
But Khaleel Mohammed, associate professor of religious studies at San Diego State University and a voice for moderate Islam, says Jeremiah isn't helping matters.
“It's not constructive in any way for the Christian or the Muslim,” Mohammed says. “Everything he is saying is so divisive.”
Mohammed also thinks Jeremiah's portrait is one-sided; after all, thousands of Muslim civilians have died in the American-led invasion of Iraq.
“I'm not denying there are Christians and Muslims agitating against each other, but I don't think it's religious,” Mohammed says. Still, he adds, the future lies in interfaith cooperation, a move the “old guard” on both sides is resisting. “They are just fighting against the tide. ... Among Muslims, you'll find preachers who are as nonsensical as Jeremiah.”
Scholars who study end-times prophecies say Jeremiah's book, and others like it, should be handled with care.
“I would say the odds are enormous, if not overwhelming, that he, like every other Christian prophet over the last 2,000 years, will be wrong,” says Richard Landes, associate professor of history at Boston University and director of the Center for Millennial Studies.
Jews and Muslims also have their doomsday beliefs, Landes says, but apocalypticism has been particularly rampant in Christianity. It was, after all, Jesus himself who forewarned his followers in the New Testament to “keep watch” and “be ready” for his return.
Ever since, Christians have watched for signs of the Second Coming, scanning the Bible for clues and codes, says Jon Stone, a religious studies professor at Cal State Long Beach.
Stone acknowledges there is a built-in audience for books like Jeremiah's. “I think people like to be in on a secret, to know something other people don't know,” he explains. “This is, by far, the biggest secret in terms of religious things.”
Jeremiah is planning a series of sermons at Shadow Mountain this fall on living with confidence in a chaotic world. He plans to tell the congregation, among other things, that this is the time for the faithful to hang together, to focus on the church and the Bible.
Jeremiah says biblical prophecy isn't a popular pulpit topic. “A lot of buddies of mine say they don't ever preach on prophecy because they think it's irrelevant. ... Well, if they read the Bible, they will find out that if you study prophecy, it gives you incredible insight as to how you should live your life today.”
He resists efforts to be coaxed into being more specific about when all this is going to happen. It's not about that, he repeats. “It is about the awareness of what the events that are happening in the world today mean and how we can look at it through the third lens of the Bible and make more sense of it than we would otherwise.”
I don't think that there has been a year since Christ's death where somewhere somebody has not been beheaded or done other atrocious acts. We are no different than our predecessors.
I think this election is bringing me closer to God. Because, I see how the values of the country have changed in the last 30 years. I really see the need to get myself right with the Lord, regardless, of what happens. We could die in our sleep tonight.
You were not arguing. I simply used your line for an elaboration. Your comment about how some folks read the Bible is an interesting one. Sometimes they forget about the forest because of all the trees.
Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.. should have just said “I agree” :->
Try reading 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
LOL!!!
Problem is that the $300B will not go that far. In the Bible it says, "The first shall be last and the last shall be first." You will run the risk of not getting any money because you will be first in line. (How's that for pulling a Bible verse out of context for my own vain use?)
We didn’t hear about it, though.
LOL!!! - Close enough!
What about those who have Acrophobia? /sarc
I can't argue with that! I should have taken your words at literal value.
I only know about it because I am a history buff and read and write an awful lot, especially about the History of Christianity.
Yup we have the Lord descending..... at a "trump" the last one as there are seven. Now the 'dead' will rise first as that is what happens when flesh dies the 'soul' returns to the Maker that sent it.
Now this next verse demonstrates the action described by Paul in ICorinthians 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the *LAST* trump (seventh): for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
Now Paul has already said in verse 51 Behold I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall *ALL* be changed.
This 'catching' up is the referencing when there is no longer flesh but of that spiritual body also called the soul. Now as Christ demonstrated for us even this day as he went through that wall, that spiritual body is NOT held by the same weight as flesh. There is nothing in Thessalonians or anywhere else that instructs that these flesh bodies are going anywhere to meet Christ. His return closes the end of this 'age' as Paul also describes in the majority of his writings. Even Peter says there are three different heaven/earth ages.
http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/428/Caught-Up-in-Rapture.htm
I worry that people who believe in “the rapture” will fall victims to the “signs and wonders” put forth by the antichrist.
He also said “he who endures to the end shall be saved.”
I will see Christ when he returns the -only- second time...not in some “secret” second coming that precedes the real second coming.
What if *this* is the “great delusion” that God said he would send to His people, in the end times?
*If* there is a “rapture”, fine.
I’ll be gone.
If it’s a trick of the false messiah, I won’t be buying it no matter how “miraculous” it may seem.
If I see “Jesus”, pinch myself and it still hurts, He hasn’t come back yet because we will all -instantly- be -transformed-, i.e...unable to suffer, get sick, die or feel pain.
*Most* churches teach the rapture theory.
This is why I do not got to church.
Flame away.
I was struck listening to some Christians Sunday saying things like . . .
Next year we will . . .
When Scripture is clear that we must say
“If the Lord wills, we . . . . “
or
“I plan to . . . God willing . . . “
Not many of us have an absolute guarantee about living through the night or tomorrow or next week in this time/space dimension.
I congratulate you on getting closer to God. No time like the present for that.
May He reward you richly for every effort to draw closer to Him.
One of my favorite songs:
http://www.scriptureandmusic.com/Music/Text_Files/Nearer_Still_Nearer.html
As Radix has posted:
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
ARE NOT SO GLIBLY dismissed in my construction on Reality and Biblical truths.
I happen to believe every word of Scripture—including those verses.
Sounds like a
LOT
of sloppy assumptions, to me.
I think the deception has to do with the counterfeit stuff from Satan in our era . . . which could include some semblance of a counterfeit ‘Rapture’ courtesy of the
fallen angels, nephilium, watchers, ‘ET’s’
etc. as some New Agers pontificate about . . . . as well as
their capacity to hoax ‘historic’ holographic videos purporting to disprove much of the Biblical history in their efforts to convince the world that ET’s created man as well as EVERY religious leader in our history for social engineering purposes.
The “Rapture” is merely a term describing a very Biblical future event or events. . . . just as Trinity is a word describing very Biblical truth.
Of course we must be alert and test the spirits in this era as like no other time in history.
Doesn’t mean we throw out Scriptures with the bath water.
Doesn’t mean we extrapolate sky-scrapers of assumptions built on toot-picks of ‘evidence.’
THOSE FLYING SAUCERS
(Cy Coben-Charlie Green)
You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers,
It may be the coming of the Judgment Day.
It’s a sign, there’s no doubt, of the trouble that’s about,
So I say, my friends, you’d better start to pray.
They’re a terrifying sight as they fly on day and night.
It’s a warning that we’d better mend our ways.
You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers,
It may be the coming of the Judgment Day.
Many people think the saucers might be someone’s foolish dream,
Or maybe they were sent down here from Mars.
If you’ll just stop and think, you’d realize just what it means,
They’re more than atom bombs or falling stars.
And though the war may be through, there’s unrest and trouble brewin,’
And those flying saucers may be just a sign
That if peace doesn’t come it will be the end of some,
So repent today, you’re running out of time.
When you see a saucer fly like a comet through the sky,
You should realize the price you’ll have to pay.
You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers,
It may be the coming of the Judgment Day.
Recorded by The Buchanan Brothers, RCA Victor 20-2385
1947
Paul repeats what was Christ's first warning regarding His return in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 ... Let no man deceive you by any means: for *that day shall not come,* except there come a falling away first. Does NOT say flying out first it says falling away first, welll who are these that will fall and who are they falling to??... Paul continues and that man of sin (the first sinner) be revealed, the son of perdition, verse 4 identifies who this son of perdition is by virtually quoting Ezekiel 28 as that one who opposeth and exalted himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped: so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
You have just been told who the beast or the instead of Jesus is, none other than the devil the first sinner.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.