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Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a

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moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith.

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And today, I want you to think through the important issue of the pagan impulse for prophecy.

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There is indeed beating within the breast of every fallen man,

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a pagan impulse for prophecy ever since the fall. Now, we have touched on this

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for a bit last week, haven't we? As we looked at this same issue, today I want to expand a little

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more upon it with you. We looked at last week just how in the course of history,

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since the fall in particular, there's always been an impulse for prophecy. And it has a pagan root

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because just as our forefather Nimrod, who was the founder of the city of Babylon,

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or Balak summoning Balaam to seek out the future, or poor pathetic King Saul, who consulted the witch

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of Endor, there's always been a pagan notion that we want to be one step ahead of our fellow man,

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and perhaps even one step ahead of God himself. And you might want to stand back if you ever assert

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that, because whoever asserts that deserves to be struck down by lightning. But if we presume that

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we can be one step ahead of God himself by knowing the future, by discerning the future, by having that

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pagan impulse for a prophecy that is ours, why we will find ourselves in the same place as lost men,

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like the poor, pathetic King Saul. Indeed, they used to consult the oracle at Delphi, did they not?

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And instead of consulting the oracle at Delphi, modern Christians consult the oracle on Wi-Fi and try to discern

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the future by listening to the latest Revelation Red Heifer rant by some television preacher who is

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ostensibly one step ahead of his fellow man by knowing when the rapture is going to be, or perhaps

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who the Antichrist might be, or perhaps when and just when and how the Antichrist will come,

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and when the great tribulation will be upon us, all of these things and more, consulting wizards and

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mediums, if you will. Last week, we looked at the Old Testament text where Isaiah warns us against

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seeking a pagan impulse for, following through on a pagan impulse for prophecy, when he says in Isaiah

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chapter 8, verses 19 and 20, should a people consult the mediums and spiritists who chirp and mutter to

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the law and to the testimony? Isaiah says, if they speak not according to this, they have no light of

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dawn. And indeed, many Christians fall prey to the same pagan impulse for prophecy. They do so naively.

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They do so without really thinking through what they're doing when they have their headlines

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along with their scriptures. And this has been the impulse for centuries. I have several books that

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go through the history of the pagan impulse for prophecy that exists in the church. And indeed,

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ever since the book of Revelation was written, there has been this pagan impulse for prophecy

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among Christian circles. Indeed, without really even understanding how they fall prey to this. And we

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looked at one man in particular, the great Isaac Newton, who was perhaps one of the brightest men who ever

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lived, and yet he fell prey to this. And he predicted time and time again when the second coming of Christ

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would be. And of course, they all failed of obtaining, did they not? So this pagan impulse for prophecy

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is rife among, especially those of you who follow the dispensational understanding of the second coming

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of Christ, where you see in every headline a portent of the second coming of Christ, or whether it might be

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the rapture that's supposed to come, which is a fiction in and of itself, the idea of a pre-tribulational rapture

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that somehow we're all going to be miraculously taken out of the world before the great tribulation, and

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cars will be veering off the highways, and husbands will be wondering where their wives went, and suddenly you'll be

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there one minute, and the next minute your clothes will be standing there collapsed on the floor because

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you've been raptured away. These kinds of fictions have obsessed the minds of Christians for decades

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now, ever since Hal Lindsey and his late great Planet of the Apes book, or Tim LaHaye's Left So Blind series

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that has just kept manufacturing volume after volume and filling his coffers, of course, with money, and

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poor sap Christians have been buying and consuming these things as if they are some sort of premonition

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or a fictional account of what things will be like, might be like, and in the meantime, you have been

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left so blind. Instead of being left behind, you have been left so blind.

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Well, there is a pagan impulse for prophets because we have been utterly oblivious to human nature's

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pagan impulse for prophecy, and many of us refuse to go to the full counsel of the Word of God

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to illumine the darkness of false prophecy. Isaiah's exhortation to the teaching and to the testimony,

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that is, go back to the law and the prophets, the scriptures given us by Moses and the prophets

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who follow them. And our task, too, as modern-day Christians must be the same, especially as we

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take up the book of Revelation. We will be doing this at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church

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in the new year. As we begin the new year in January, we'll be taking up the book of Revelation

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and going back to some of the traditional ways of looking at it. We have had a modern distortion of

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the book of Revelation in recent memory, in recent history, but we will be going back to the teaching

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and to the testimony as we take up the book of Revelation, the whole genre of apocalyptic, too.

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First of all, you must know how apocalyptic ticks, how it works if you're really going to understand

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the book of Revelation properly. Now, I'm not saying that Christians who have fallen prey

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to the pagan impulse for prophecy are not biblical Christians, or they're not saved, or that they

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don't know Jesus. I just think that so many have naively fallen prey to this pagan impulse. We want

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to be one step ahead. It's really zingy, isn't it, to think that you know the future, that you know

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what's going to happen next, that, as one commentator put it, that once the so-called

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rapture happens, he can predict the next seven years step by step all the way through. Oh, that's

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great power indeed. The prophets of the oracle at Delphi would make the same kinds of claims,

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and they received money and food and adulation and a sense of mystery, because indeed they were

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prophets and they could foretell the future. Well, there's that same pagan impulse among preachers

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and teachers, some of whose entire ministries consist of prophecy and taking on prophetic ministries,

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they call it, where they interpret the book of Daniel, the book of Ezekiel, and most particularly

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the book of Revelations. Please don't ever call it the book of Revelations in my presence.

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I'll have you bite your tongue, you do something like that. It is indeed the apocalypse, which means

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revelation. It is Jesus Christ revelation to his church, and it takes up more than just something in

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the future, too. We'll be introducing that book in days to come. John did not write his apocalypse,

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however, so that we might sift and sort today's headlines obsessively for hints of the rapture,

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the Antichrist, and the Great Tribulation. No, that's pagan zing and zeal. John's purpose was far

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other, and we'll explore this in greater detail in days to come as well. But you must understand the

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nature of this pagan impulse for prophecy. For example, we go all the way back to Nimrod,

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who was the first of the mighty men. We touched on this earlier. He was one of the earliest pagan

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prophets. He was a Nephilim, offspring of the sons of God, who mated with the daughters of men,

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the reputed founder of the city of Babel. And Nimrod had succumbed completely to the pagan

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impulse for prophets. He built the Tower of Babel in part to avenge himself on God for destroying his

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ancestors, trying to reach. If he could strangle the Lord God of heaven, he would have done so.

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But also, he wanted to ensure that no future flood would destroy he and his descendants again. He

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practiced divination in part to discern when God would send that other great flood to destroy the

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world again, ignoring, of course, the promise, the covenant of the rainbow with the promise to

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mankind that never would God send again, a flood to destroy all of the earth. And of course, we also

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touched on how Balak summoned Balaam to put a curse on Israel. He as well tried to see into the future,

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try to see what the coming future would be, and reverse the curse upon the seed of the serpent,

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which Balak indeed was, and tried to put that curse rather on Noah and on Israel,

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the seed of the seed of the woman who was indeed there to establish redemption and salvation for

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mankind. And Balak had succumbed completely to the pagan impulse for prophets and prophecy, hadn't he?

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And we see this time and time again in our own day as well. Do we not? As

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we see constantly in Christian circles too, how, for example, John Hagee, who is pastor of Cornerstone

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Church, a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, a well-known proponent of end times ministry. He's

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just one example of failed prophecy. His book, Four Blood Moons, Something is About to Change. That's

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ambiguous enough that you can say just about any change in the weather is enough to say that his

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four blood moon prophecies have transpired. But he wasn't even able to do that, was he?

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When nothing significant occurred in 2016, why his book just faded into obscurity on the bookshelves

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went from 1995 a copy to a dollar and a half, and you can find it for less than that now in the used

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bookstores. Tim LaHaye also with his Left Behind series and his other books on prophecy as well,

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failed prophecy, one after the other. Hal Lindsey famously predicted the rapture before 1988 because

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indeed a generation after the founding of Israel, all these things would take place in the generation

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that followed the founding of the state of Israel, so Hal Lindsey said. But of course, when 1988 came and

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went, his failed prophecy of the rapture and the beginning of the Great Tribulation and all of

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the events of Revelation beginning to transpire, when all of that collapsed and failed, Hal Lindsey was

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not held accountable, was he? Time and time again, that's how you tell a prophet whether he's true or

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false. Do his prophecies come true or do they fail of fulfillment? And we've seen this time and time

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again with minister after minister and with a book after book and forecast after forecast that indeed,

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if you are still following this Revelation Red Heifer rapture rant, this Revelation Red Heifer

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rapture ruse that's been foisted upon the church in this generation, wake up, America, wake up,

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O church, because you are being shunted into a silent stall where you are ineffective as a Christian

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because you throw up your hands and you say, oh, God is in control. The rapture's coming soon anyway.

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There's nothing I can do about any of the things I see around me. There's nothing I can do in the

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life of the church to change anything. So I'm just going to sit on my hands and wait for the rapture.

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That is functionally how the church has operated now for the past generation because of this

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eschatology that's been foisted upon us through a variety of means, through a variety of churches,

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through a variety of ministries. And I'm here to tell you, brother and sister, you need to wake up

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from this eschatology that has shunted you into a blindness and into an ineffectiveness.

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Prophecy is indeed one sign that God loves us. He has given Christ as Lord of history.

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Christ is not the astrologer-in-chief of history where we have a secret knowledge and secret insight.

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That is a pagan impulse for prophecy. To try and see into the future, that is astrologer crystal ball

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stuff. The insult that Adam and Eve certainly bet their future on the serpent so instantly their

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future became uncertain, they wanted to see into the future as well. Had they trusted the sovereign

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providential creator who made them, blessing and prosperity would have been theirs and their future

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in perpetuity. They would not have needed to see into the future. There would have been no need to

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inquire into spiritists and into customs that bring us astrology and crystal balls, consulting of the dead,

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the reading of horoscopes, all of these things derived from a pagan impulse for prophecy. And so does

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waiting on your haunches for the next edition of Tim LaHaye's Left So Blind series. You need to wake up

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from this eschatology and come to a true understanding of the eschatology of Jesus, for example. We're

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studying that presently. I would invite you to join us on Wednesday evenings for our study of the

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eschatology of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, throughout his ministry, opened doors and lifted the veil on the

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future as he told us what would transpire in the future, especially his Olivet Discourse, for

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example. The Olivet Discourse we'll be taking up here on Wednesday nights, seven o'clock at New

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Geneva. I would invite you to join us and give me a call if you want to help us unpack the Olivet

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Discourse, for example, in which Jesus told of the destruction of Jerusalem. That would be Matthew 24

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and Mark 13 and Luke 21. These are the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse. Very important

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for understanding how Jesus told us of the eschatology of end times. And throughout his ministry, I also

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told many parables of what would be transpiring at the last day or at the end of the age, several phrases

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that Jesus would use in his ministry. But all of these things our Lord would unpack, and we are unpacking in our

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Wednesday night Bible study at seven o'clock. And you can call me at area code 208-523-0196. And I'll give you some more

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information on where we meet, and particularly where we'll be in our study of the eschatology of Jesus. And it's been

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very illuminating for many of our people. Many of our people have never heard some of these things that the church has taught for

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millennia about the second coming and about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by Titus, beginning in A.D. 66 and running for

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four years, four-year siege of Jerusalem until A.D. 70, when it was finally destroyed, the temple burned. But Jesus

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prophesied about many of these things prior to them. But many people mistake those prophecies for end times

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And we'll illumine how Jesus articulated these things. And then later on, everybody from the Apostle Paul to

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the Apostle John in the book of Revelation also foretold of these things. And we'll be looking at

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the genre of apocalyptic, which is a genre of the Bible that has its own unique features, its own unique

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characteristics. And you have to understand them before you can really understand the book of

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Revelation, period. But most people, what happens when somebody gets saved, right? What's the first book

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they go to? It's not Genesis. It's not Daniel or Ezekiel or the Gospels. Oftentimes, it's the book of

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Revelation because they want some of the zing-bling of Christianity. And I think they want and have to

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have a handle on the future. That's a pagan impulse. That's an old pagan impulse. A lot of people are

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naive about it and don't understand its nature and its function. So we want to do that for you.

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Then in January, we'll be taking up the book of Revelation proper. But we're also going to be

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illuminating that book of Revelation with the whole genre of apocalyptic, too. What does it mean

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when you have beasts rising from the sea or beasts coming from the land or locusts that look like

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what many dispensations, of course, say as our tanks or helicopters? No, there was a completely

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different understanding in the early church in the first century. According to these things,

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there were set pieces, if you will, of understanding of various vivid images. And they're great and

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blinding images. Some of these at times, aren't they? It is very exciting. It is very colorful.

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But it also has a pretty set piece understanding in terms of how you interpret these images.

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And so we'll see how all of these fit. For example, a he-goat was a symbol indeed for Alexander the

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Great in the book of Daniel. And unless you understand the image of the he-goat, you will not understand

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that Daniel is talking through much of chapter 8 of his revelation, of his apocalypse, of the coming

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of Alexander the Great. And so many of these other images will bear out for us as well in days to come.

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So I invite you to come to New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church at our worship service,

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as we'll be preaching on the beauties of Christ as he is revealed for us in the book of Revelation.

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That'll be beginning in the month of January of 2019. We're looking forward to unveiling Christ,

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if you will, in the book of Revelation. That is one thing that he does in the book of Revelation

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is call it an unveiling or a revealing. Much of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed who he is,

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his glory, his power, and his majesty as he sweeps through the world and begins conquering.

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That is the sense of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, for example, that indeed Jesus is

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going out to conquer, to claim his rightful inheritance. That's just one example of how

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apocalypse works. Very colorful language. Rather than just stating, Jesus is taking possession

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of his inheritance. That is the world. We have this colorful language of four horsemen going out

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and sweeping through the world and defeating his enemies, even as Joshua defeated the enemies in the

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land when he went in to take possession of it. Many parallels to the Old Testament we'll see in the

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book of the apocalypse. But you have to understand some of these workings of apocalypse before you

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really understand what the book of Revelation is about. And there is many a false understanding of

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how apocalypse works. And rather than feeding upon the rich teachings and heritage of the church

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in understanding Revelation and the glories of Christ, many rather, to get the bling and zing

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of prophecy, sit down with a cup of coffee in the morning and the headlines in the book of Revelation

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open before them and draw many false conclusions as the church has done for centuries, as they try to

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predict the future, as they try to anticipate the future, as they try to stay one step ahead of their

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fellow man and, God forbid, one step ahead of God himself. That's a pagan impulse for prophecy,

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a pagan impulse for prophets. The radio dials are filled with them. Instead of going to the Oracle of

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Delphi, many go to the Oracle on Wi-Fi and try to get the next Revelation red heifer rapture preacher

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who's going to tell them when things are going to transpire and who the Antichrist might be.

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This is a pagan impulse for prophecy, and it's rife in the church. Wake up, fellow American. Wake up,

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American church in particular, and stop your obsession with determining the next piece of information

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that will tell you the future, the four blood moons, the four blood moons developed by spiritual goons

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that try to charm you and con you into buying their books and into believing their red heifer rapture

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ministries. So please, please consult the church to the testimony and the teaching, as Isaiah says.

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Stop consulting mediums and spiritists. Stop consulting red heifer rapture ranters who try and tell you

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when the world will come to an end. It's been done for centuries. It's been done for millennia in the life

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of the church, and it has been a distortion. But the book of Revelation and the apocalypse,

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the genre of apocalypse, vivid, colorful. I love reading apocalypse. I love reading the books of

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Daniel, the book of Revelation. You can read it over and over again, and it's a complex book.

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It's a beautiful book. It's one that is very elegantly constructed. Our Lord, when he revealed it,

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it has layer upon layer of meaning in it. It's some of the most beautiful and meaning-dense text in all

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of the scriptures. It's meant to be that way. But you have to understand how it works and spend time

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and time again in the book. And as you begin to understand it, it unfolds for you. It doesn't give

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you precise predictions of the future. That's not the intent of apocalypse. The intent of apocalypse

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is not to tickle your fancy. It's rather to edify your heart and your soul and to give you

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greater understanding and greater depth and greater knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we invite

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you, rather than following a pagan impulse for prophecy, to rather find out how this text,

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the scriptures, the genre of apocalypse, which we find all through scripture, the Olivet Discourse

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of our Lord, the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, just beautiful examples of how our Lord

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reveals himself in great power and glory and vision like you see nowhere else in any other kind of

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genre of scripture. But we have to know how to handle it. We have to handle it responsibly.

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And we hope, I don't claim to be the end-all be-all. I really do not. The end-all be-all of

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understanding apocalypse, the book of Revelation, these kinds of things. Far from it. I have much

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to learn yet myself. But we invite you on the journey. We meet, New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian

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Church does. We meet on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

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I invite you to join us on Sundays. And you can call us for more information on when these studies

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will be, our Wednesday night Bible study, for example, or our services, or when we'll be beginning

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various parts of Revelation, these kinds of things. Call me for more information at area code 208-523-0196.

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Maybe you'd like to give me some feedback, too. Maybe you're hot under the collar and you're

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offended at some of the things I've said. Well, that's okay, too. You can give me your

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feedback, positive or negative. I always learn something from our callers. So I would just

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invite you to give me a call for feedback, too, at area code 208-523-0196. But really,

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come and join us. See who we are as we worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on

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the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And once again, for more information, for giving me feedback,

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area code 208-523-0196.