Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want you to think through the important issue of the pagan impulse for prophecy. There is indeed beating within the breast of every fallen man, a pagan impulse for prophecy ever since the fall. Now, we have touched on this for a bit last week, haven't we?

As we looked at this same issue, today I want to expand a little more upon it with you. We looked at last week just how in the course of history, since the fall in particular, there's always been an impulse for prophecy. And it has a pagan root because just as our forefather Nimrod, who was the founder of the city of Babylon, or Balak summoning Balaam to seek out the future, or poor pathetic King Saul, who consulted the witch of Endor, there's always been a pagan notion that we want to be one step ahead of our fellow man, and perhaps even one step ahead of God himself.

And you might want to stand back if you ever assert that, because whoever asserts that deserves to be struck down by lightning. But if we presume that we can be one step ahead of God himself by knowing the future, by discerning the future, by having that pagan impulse for a prophecy that is ours, why we will find ourselves in the same place as lost men, like the poor, pathetic King Saul. Indeed, they used to consult the oracle at Delphi, did they not?

And instead of consulting the oracle at Delphi, modern Christians consult the oracle on Wi-Fi and try to discern the future by listening to the latest Revelation Red Heifer rant by some television preacher who is ostensibly one step ahead of his fellow man by knowing when the rapture is going to be, or perhaps who the Antichrist might be, or perhaps when and just when and how the Antichrist will come, and when the great tribulation will be upon us, all of these things and more, consulting wizards and mediums, if you will.

Last week, we looked at the Old Testament text where Isaiah warns us against seeking a pagan impulse for, following through on a pagan impulse for prophecy, when he says in Isaiah chapter 8, verses 19 and 20, should a people consult the mediums and spiritists who chirp and mutter to the law and to the testimony? Isaiah says, if they speak not according to this, they have no light of dawn. And indeed, many Christians fall prey to the same pagan impulse for prophecy. They do so naively. They do so without really thinking through what they're doing when they have their headlines along with their scriptures.

And this has been the impulse for centuries. I have several books that go through the history of the pagan impulse for prophecy that exists in the church. And indeed, ever since the book of Revelation was written, there has been this pagan impulse for prophecy among Christian circles. Indeed, without really even understanding how they fall prey to this. And we looked at one man in particular, the great Isaac Newton, who was perhaps one of the brightest men who ever lived, and yet he fell prey to this.

And he predicted time and time again when the second coming of Christ would be. And of course, they all failed of obtaining, did they not?

So this pagan impulse for prophecy is rife among, especially those of you who follow the dispensational understanding of the second coming of Christ, where you see in every headline a portent of the second coming of Christ, or whether it might be the rapture that's supposed to come, which is a fiction in and of itself, the idea of a pre-tribulational rapture that somehow we're all going to be miraculously taken out of the world before the great tribulation, and cars will be veering off the highways, and husbands will be wondering where their wives went, and suddenly you'll be there one minute, and the next minute your clothes will be standing there collapsed on the floor because you've been raptured away.

These kinds of fictions have obsessed the minds of Christians for decades now, ever since Hal Lindsey and his late great Planet of the Apes book, or Tim LaHaye's Left So Blind series that has just kept manufacturing volume after volume and filling his coffers, of course, with money, and poor sap Christians have been buying and consuming these things as if they are some sort of premonition or a fictional account of what things will be like, might be like, and in the meantime, you have been left so blind. Instead of being left behind, you have been left so blind.

Well, there is a pagan impulse for prophets because we have been utterly oblivious to human nature's pagan impulse for prophecy, and many of us refuse to go to the full counsel of the Word of God to illumine the darkness of false prophecy. Isaiah's exhortation to the teaching and to the testimony, that is, go back to the law and the prophets, the scriptures given us by Moses and the prophets who follow them. And our task, too, as modern-day Christians must be the same, especially as we take up the book of Revelation. We will be doing this at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the new year.

As we begin the new year in January, we'll be taking up the book of Revelation and going back to some of the traditional ways of looking at it. We have had a modern distortion of the book of Revelation in recent memory, in recent history, but we will be going back to the teaching and to the testimony as we take up the book of Revelation, the whole genre of apocalyptic, too. First of all, you must know how apocalyptic ticks, how it works if you're really going to understand the book of Revelation properly.

Now, I'm not saying that Christians who have fallen prey to the pagan impulse for prophecy are not biblical Christians, or they're not saved, or that they don't know Jesus. I just think that so many have naively fallen prey to this pagan impulse. We want to be one step ahead. It's really zingy, isn't it, to think that you know the future, that you know what's going to happen next, that, as one commentator put it, that once the so-called rapture happens, he can predict the next seven years step by step all the way through. Oh, that's great power indeed.

The prophets of the oracle at Delphi would make the same kinds of claims, and they received money and food and adulation and a sense of mystery, because indeed they were prophets and they could foretell the future. Well, there's that same pagan impulse among preachers and teachers, some of whose entire ministries consist of prophecy and taking on prophetic ministries, they call it, where they interpret the book of Daniel, the book of Ezekiel, and most particularly the book of Revelations. Please don't ever call it the book of Revelations in my presence. I'll have you bite your tongue, you do something like that.

It is indeed the apocalypse, which means revelation. It is Jesus Christ revelation to his church, and it takes up more than just something in the future, too. We'll be introducing that book in days to come. John did not write his apocalypse, however, so that we might sift and sort today's headlines obsessively for hints of the rapture, the Antichrist, and the Great Tribulation. No, that's pagan zing and zeal.

John's purpose was far other, and we'll explore this in greater detail in days to come as well. But you must understand the nature of this pagan impulse for prophecy. For example, we go all the way back to Nimrod, who was the first of the mighty men. We touched on this earlier. He was one of the earliest pagan prophets.

He was a Nephilim, offspring of the sons of God, who mated with the daughters of men, the reputed founder of the city of Babel. And Nimrod had succumbed completely to the pagan impulse for prophets. He built the Tower of Babel in part to avenge himself on God for destroying his ancestors, trying to reach. If he could strangle the Lord God of heaven, he would have done so. But also, he wanted to ensure that no future flood would destroy he and his descendants again.

He practiced divination in part to discern when God would send that other great flood to destroy the world again, ignoring, of course, the promise, the covenant of the rainbow with the promise to mankind that never would God send again, a flood to destroy all of the earth. And of course, we also touched on how Balak summoned Balaam to put a curse on Israel.

He as well tried to see into the future, try to see what the coming future would be, and reverse the curse upon the seed of the serpent, which Balak indeed was, and tried to put that curse rather on Noah and on Israel, the seed of the seed of the woman who was indeed there to establish redemption and salvation for mankind. And Balak had succumbed completely to the pagan impulse for prophets and prophecy, hadn't he? And we see this time and time again in our own day as well. Do we not?

As we see constantly in Christian circles too, how, for example, John Hagee, who is pastor of Cornerstone Church, a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, a well-known proponent of end times ministry. He's just one example of failed prophecy. His book, Four Blood Moons, Something is About to Change. That's ambiguous enough that you can say just about any change in the weather is enough to say that his four blood moon prophecies have transpired. But he wasn't even able to do that, was he?

When nothing significant occurred in 2016, why his book just faded into obscurity on the bookshelves went from 1995 a copy to a dollar and a half, and you can find it for less than that now in the used bookstores. Tim LaHaye also with his Left Behind series and his other books on prophecy as well, failed prophecy, one after the other. Hal Lindsey famously predicted the rapture before 1988 because indeed a generation after the founding of Israel, all these things would take place in the generation that followed the founding of the state of Israel, so Hal Lindsey said.

But of course, when 1988 came and went, his failed prophecy of the rapture and the beginning of the Great Tribulation and all of the events of Revelation beginning to transpire, when all of that collapsed and failed, Hal Lindsey was not held accountable, was he? Time and time again, that's how you tell a prophet whether he's true or false. Do his prophecies come true or do they fail of fulfillment?

And we've seen this time and time again with minister after minister and with a book after book and forecast after forecast that indeed, if you are still following this Revelation Red Heifer rapture rant, this Revelation Red Heifer rapture ruse that's been foisted upon the church in this generation, wake up, America, wake up, O church, because you are being shunted into a silent stall where you are ineffective as a Christian because you throw up your hands and you say, oh, God is in control. The rapture's coming soon anyway. There's nothing I can do about any of the things I see around me.

There's nothing I can do in the life of the church to change anything. So I'm just going to sit on my hands and wait for the rapture. That is functionally how the church has operated now for the past generation because of this eschatology that's been foisted upon us through a variety of means, through a variety of churches, through a variety of ministries. And I'm here to tell you, brother and sister, you need to wake up from this eschatology that has shunted you into a blindness and into an ineffectiveness. Prophecy is indeed one sign that God loves us.

He has given Christ as Lord of history. Christ is not the astrologer-in-chief of history where we have a secret knowledge and secret insight. That is a pagan impulse for prophecy. To try and see into the future, that is astrologer crystal ball stuff. The insult that Adam and Eve certainly bet their future on the serpent so instantly their future became uncertain, they wanted to see into the future as well.

Had they trusted the sovereign providential creator who made them, blessing and prosperity would have been theirs and their future in perpetuity. They would not have needed to see into the future. There would have been no need to inquire into spiritists and into customs that bring us astrology and crystal balls, consulting of the dead, the reading of horoscopes, all of these things derived from a pagan impulse for prophecy. And so does waiting on your haunches for the next edition of Tim LaHaye's Left So Blind series. You need to wake up from this eschatology and come to a true understanding of the eschatology of Jesus, for example.

We're studying that presently. I would invite you to join us on Wednesday evenings for our study of the eschatology of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, throughout his ministry, opened doors and lifted the veil on the future as he told us what would transpire in the future, especially his Olivet Discourse, for example. The Olivet Discourse we'll be taking up here on Wednesday nights, seven o'clock at New Geneva. I would invite you to join us and give me a call if you want to help us unpack the Olivet Discourse, for example, in which Jesus told of the destruction of Jerusalem.

That would be Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and Luke 21. These are the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse. Very important for understanding how Jesus told us of the eschatology of end times. And throughout his ministry, I also told many parables of what would be transpiring at the last day or at the end of the age, several phrases that Jesus would use in his ministry. But all of these things our Lord would unpack, and we are unpacking in our 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 information on where we meet, and particularly where we'll be in our study of the eschatology of Jesus. And it's been very illuminating for many of our people. Many of our people have never heard some of these things that the church has taught for millennia about the second coming and about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by Titus, beginning in A.D. 66 and running for four years, four-year siege of Jerusalem until A.D. 70, when it was finally destroyed, the temple burned. But Jesus prophesied about many of these things prior to them.

But many people mistake those prophecies for end times And we'll illumine how Jesus articulated these things. And then later on, everybody from the Apostle Paul to the Apostle John in the book of Revelation also foretold of these things. And we'll be looking at the genre of apocalyptic, which is a genre of the Bible that has its own unique features, its own unique characteristics. And you have to understand them before you can really understand the book of Revelation, period. But most people, what happens when somebody gets saved, right?

What's the first book they go to? It's not Genesis. It's not Daniel or Ezekiel or the Gospels. Oftentimes, it's the book of Revelation because they want some of the zing-bling of Christianity. And I think they want and have to have a handle on the future.

That's a pagan impulse. That's an old pagan impulse. A lot of people are naive about it and don't understand its nature and its function. So we want to do that for you. Then in January, we'll be taking up the book of Revelation proper.

But we're also going to be illuminating that book of Revelation with the whole genre of apocalyptic, too. What does it mean when you have beasts rising from the sea or beasts coming from the land or locusts that look like what many dispensations, of course, say as our tanks or helicopters? No, there was a completely different understanding in the early church in the first century. According to these things, there were set pieces, if you will, of understanding of various vivid images. And they're great and blinding images.

Some of these at times, aren't they? It is very exciting. It is very colorful. But it also has a pretty set piece understanding in terms of how you interpret these images. And so we'll see how all of these fit.

For example, a he-goat was a symbol indeed for Alexander the Great in the book of Daniel. And unless you understand the image of the he-goat, you will not understand that Daniel is talking through much of chapter 8 of his revelation, of his apocalypse, of the coming of Alexander the Great. And so many of these other images will bear out for us as well in days to come. So I invite you to come to New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church at our worship service, as we'll be preaching on the beauties of Christ as he is revealed for us in the book of Revelation. That'll be beginning in the month of January of 2019.

We're looking forward to unveiling Christ, if you will, in the book of Revelation. That is one thing that he does in the book of Revelation is call it an unveiling or a revealing. Much of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed who he is, his glory, his power, and his majesty as he sweeps through the world and begins conquering. That is the sense of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, for example, that indeed Jesus is going out to conquer, to claim his rightful inheritance. That's just one example of how apocalypse works.

Very colorful language. Rather than just stating, Jesus is taking possession of his inheritance. That is the world. We have this colorful language of four horsemen going out and sweeping through the world and defeating his enemies, even as Joshua defeated the enemies in the land when he went in to take possession of it. Many parallels to the Old Testament we'll see in the book of the apocalypse.

But you have to understand some of these workings of apocalypse before you really understand what the book of Revelation is about. And there is many a false understanding of how apocalypse works.

And rather than feeding upon the rich teachings and heritage of the church in understanding Revelation and the glories of Christ, many rather, to get the bling and zing of prophecy, sit down with a cup of coffee in the morning and the headlines in the book of Revelation open before them and draw many false conclusions as the church has done for centuries, as they try to predict the future, as they try to anticipate the future, as they try to stay one step ahead of their fellow man and, God forbid, one step ahead of God himself. That's a pagan impulse for prophecy, a pagan impulse for prophets. The radio dials are filled with them.

Instead of going to the Oracle of Delphi, many go to the Oracle on Wi-Fi and try to get the next Revelation red heifer rapture preacher who's going to tell them when things are going to transpire and who the Antichrist might be. This is a pagan impulse for prophecy, and it's rife in the church. Wake up, fellow American. Wake up, American church in particular, and stop your obsession with determining the next piece of information that will tell you the future, the four blood moons, the four blood moons developed by spiritual goons that try to charm you and con you into buying their books and into believing their red heifer rapture ministries.

So please, please consult the church to the testimony and the teaching, as Isaiah says. Stop consulting mediums and spiritists. Stop consulting red heifer rapture ranters who try and tell you when the world will come to an end. It's been done for centuries. It's been done for millennia in the life of the church, and it has been a distortion.

But the book of Revelation and the apocalypse, the genre of apocalypse, vivid, colorful. I love reading apocalypse. I love reading the books of Daniel, the book of Revelation. You can read it over and over again, and it's a complex book. It's a beautiful book.

It's one that is very elegantly constructed. Our Lord, when he revealed it, it has layer upon layer of meaning in it. It's some of the most beautiful and meaning-dense text in all of the scriptures. It's meant to be that way. But you have to understand how it works and spend time and time again in the book.

And as you begin to understand it, it unfolds for you. It doesn't give you precise predictions of the future. That's not the intent of apocalypse. The intent of apocalypse is not to tickle your fancy. It's rather to edify your heart and your soul and to give you greater understanding and greater depth and greater knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we invite you, rather than following a pagan impulse for prophecy, to rather find out how this text, the scriptures, the genre of apocalypse, which we find all through scripture, the Olivet Discourse of our Lord, the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, just beautiful examples of how our Lord reveals himself in great power and glory and vision like you see nowhere else in any other kind of genre of scripture. But we have to know how to handle it. We have to handle it responsibly. And we hope, I don't claim to be the end-all be-all. I really do not.

The end-all be-all of understanding apocalypse, the book of Revelation, these kinds of things. Far from it. I have much to learn yet myself. But we invite you on the journey. We meet, New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church does.

We meet on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. I invite you to join us on Sundays. And you can call us for more information on when these studies will be, our Wednesday night Bible study, for example, or our services, or when we'll be beginning various parts of Revelation, these kinds of things. Call me for more information at area code 208-523-0196. Maybe you'd like to give me some feedback, too.

Maybe you're hot under the collar and you're offended at some of the things I've said. Well, that's okay, too. You can give me your feedback, positive or negative. I always learn something from our callers. So I would just invite you to give me a call for feedback, too, at area code 208-523-0196.

But really, come and join us. See who we are as we worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And once again, for more information, for giving me feedback, area code 208-523-0196.