Transcript: Episode 0079
This transcript:
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WEBVTT 00:00:37.432 --> 00:00:39.712Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.712 --> 00:00:40.752 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.752 --> 00:00:41.832 Mahler. 00:00:41.832 --> 00:00:43.692 And I'm still, whoa. 00:00:45.192 --> 00:00:49.872 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing End Times or Eschatology. 00:00:49.872 --> 00:00:56.132 Before we get into the meat of it, Corey has shipped the very last of all the pre-orders, all the pending orders. 00:00:56.132 --> 00:01:04.992 If for some reason your charge was rejected, it's because the machine is set up very strictly to help us from being exploited and banned. 00:01:05.572 --> 00:01:09.232 So please contact Corey if you have any problems with your orders. 00:01:09.232 --> 00:01:14.692 If you like to place an order at shop.stonechoir.com, we have plenty more. 00:01:14.692 --> 00:01:16.072 We'll have a couple of years supply. 00:01:16.072 --> 00:01:22.072 So anyone who's interested in supporting the show and getting a really cool challenge coin, they are all there. 00:01:22.072 --> 00:01:22.652 They're numbered. 00:01:22.692 --> 00:01:26.832 They're basically being issued sequentially, unless you make a particular request. 00:01:26.832 --> 00:01:33.312 You can guess which numbers are probably already gone with several hundred pre-orders out, but you might get lucky if you have a particular number in mind. 00:01:34.372 --> 00:01:36.412 And thank you to everyone who's supported us with that. 00:01:36.412 --> 00:01:38.752 It means a lot to us that you're excited about it. 00:01:38.752 --> 00:01:39.592 We're excited about it. 00:01:39.592 --> 00:01:43.672 I keep it in my left-hand pocket all the time now. 00:01:43.672 --> 00:01:51.832 Today as we're talking about The End Times, the reason that we're doing it is, it's kind of a continuation of the last couple of episodes. 00:01:51.832 --> 00:01:56.172 We were talking about the supernatural and about God's action in the world. 00:01:56.172 --> 00:02:13.832 And we wanted to specifically focus this week on the prophecies, the promises that God has made about The End Times, because they're in there, they're in the Bible, and they are something that has always fascinated men because they're unclear. 00:02:13.832 --> 00:02:20.972 I've talked many times in the past about the fact that for someone to be given a prophecy is a gift from God. 00:02:20.972 --> 00:02:25.692 To be able to interpret prophecy is a gift from God, a separate gift, incidentally. 00:02:25.692 --> 00:02:27.912 To be given a vision is a gift from God. 00:02:28.372 --> 00:02:33.252 To be given the gift of interpreting visions is a separate gift. 00:02:33.252 --> 00:02:45.452 And so, as we look today at a few of the visions in scripture that were in our prophecies of the end times, it's clear from the men who received them, in particular Daniel and John, they didn't understand them. 00:02:45.692 --> 00:02:50.032 When Daniel and John received their visions, they were terrified. 00:02:50.032 --> 00:02:50.812 They were confused. 00:02:50.812 --> 00:02:51.472 They were bothered. 00:02:51.472 --> 00:02:53.092 They were like, I don't know what it is. 00:02:53.092 --> 00:03:03.232 And so, God in both cases had to, or the angel had to lift them up, encourage them, give them heart, and tell them, look, just write this down. 00:03:03.232 --> 00:03:04.332 It's for later. 00:03:04.452 --> 00:03:06.472 You don't need to understand all of it. 00:03:06.472 --> 00:03:12.072 And in both cases, some portions of it were actually interpreted for them within their visions. 00:03:12.072 --> 00:03:22.132 And the reason I highlight that here is that we shouldn't be uncomfortable with the fact that reading this stuff is confusing and uncomfortable. 00:03:22.132 --> 00:03:26.312 If the very man who received the vision is like, I don't know what's going on, it's scary. 00:03:26.312 --> 00:03:28.912 It's okay for us to have the same reaction. 00:03:28.912 --> 00:03:33.532 That doesn't mean that we're bad Christians, that we're there faithless, or that we're ignorant. 00:03:33.532 --> 00:03:37.932 We're having the natural reaction to a supernatural revelation. 00:03:37.932 --> 00:03:45.592 And the reason those promises are given, that these visions of the future are given, is for ratification. 00:03:45.592 --> 00:03:48.132 They're in scripture for a reason. 00:03:48.132 --> 00:03:55.312 And one of the key points that we want to make here today is that Christ is coming twice. 00:03:55.312 --> 00:04:02.972 The Old Testament is filled with prophecies of Christ's first coming, all of which were fulfilled with His coming bodily. 00:04:02.972 --> 00:04:17.032 When Christ, the second person of the Trinity, was incarnate as a man, and He lived, He prophesied, He did miracles, He died, He was resurrected, and He ascended into heaven, that fulfilled all of the prophecies about His first coming. 00:04:17.872 --> 00:04:26.372 And so, what we have in the pages of the New Testament is a bunch of believers who were given prophecies that they couldn't understand. 00:04:26.372 --> 00:04:38.052 They were given things about being healed by stripes, and a virgin giving birth, and all this stuff that you could sort of speculate about what it might actually mean as an allegory. 00:04:38.052 --> 00:04:42.372 You know, does the thing about stripes mean any sort of equidistant pattern? 00:04:42.372 --> 00:04:47.932 And then when it's actually fulfilled, you're like, okay, no, that's, I can see very clearly what happened here. 00:04:47.932 --> 00:04:54.772 So the prophecy in the Old Testament was unclear until it was fulfilled, and that became very clear. 00:04:54.772 --> 00:05:11.612 And so by the time we get into the pages of the New Testament, after the Gospels, after the Ascension and Pentecost, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, they all understood clearly what those prophecies meant and how they were fulfilled because they had been fulfilled. 00:05:11.612 --> 00:05:24.272 And so much of the teaching of the apostles and Acts and beyond is saying, look, all these things in the Old Testament that were pointing to the Christ and the future, here is how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies in very particular ways. 00:05:24.272 --> 00:05:37.392 And much of the New Testament is about saying, look, that which was concealed in a prophetic vision, in a prophetic language that wasn't easily understood, now is made clear by the coming of Christ. 00:05:37.392 --> 00:05:40.072 There's also a second coming of the very same Christ. 00:05:40.072 --> 00:05:46.892 And the prophecies in the New Testament and then some in the Old Testament about the second coming of Christ are the same way. 00:05:46.892 --> 00:05:56.412 And the reason for doing this episode, and the reason for highlighting that there are two comings of Christ, is that the prophecies for the first coming were fulfilled and they were believed. 00:05:56.412 --> 00:06:03.652 And they had to be believed before they were understood, so that when they were fulfilled, those who witnessed them could say, yep, there was. 00:06:03.652 --> 00:06:05.932 I didn't understand before, but I believed it. 00:06:05.932 --> 00:06:06.912 Now I understand it. 00:06:06.912 --> 00:06:09.192 I see it and I believe it, and it all makes sense. 00:06:09.592 --> 00:06:12.732 I know that God has kept his promises. 00:06:12.732 --> 00:06:14.692 The same thing is true of us. 00:06:14.692 --> 00:06:21.872 There are prophecies in the future that have yet to be fulfilled that men will see with their own eyes. 00:06:21.872 --> 00:06:34.352 And things which are inescrutable today, as we're sitting here without a prophet to explain them, without someone to interpret those visions, absent some direct revelation, the best we can do is speculate. 00:06:34.352 --> 00:06:40.672 However, when those events occur, as they are promised by God to occur, that's important. 00:06:40.792 --> 00:06:51.112 The prophecy of the future is not just like we use prophecy, like it's a special term for a thing, but fundamentally it just means God has made a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. 00:06:51.112 --> 00:07:00.712 And a mark of a true prophet is that if someone says, I'm here and I'm a prophet from God, and I have new revelations for you, they can never be wrong or they're a false prophet. 00:07:00.712 --> 00:07:08.912 Can't get a single thing wrong, because to speak in God's voice is to say that you are giving something that is infallible. 00:07:08.912 --> 00:07:14.632 So every false prophet who's ever come along has spread lies because they're not infallible. 00:07:14.632 --> 00:07:15.572 They're evil. 00:07:15.572 --> 00:07:18.512 They're anti-Christ, in fact. 00:07:18.512 --> 00:07:39.052 When these things are actually fulfilled in time, whether it's in our lifetimes or in this century or this millennium or 10,000 years from now, on whatever days the final prophecies occur in real life as they're prophesied to, believers who remember the promises of God will be able to look at those things and say, yep, there it is. 00:07:39.052 --> 00:07:42.612 I didn't know what that meant before, but I can see it with my own eyes. 00:07:42.612 --> 00:07:49.892 And so, the reason for us talking about it today is that it's not that this sort of thing is the meat of the Christian faith. 00:07:49.892 --> 00:07:55.872 And unfortunately, people seem to fall off of one of two sides of this horse either. 00:07:55.872 --> 00:08:05.692 They go nuts by saying, okay, well, there's a bunch of prophecies, and it's really weird and really interesting, and I'm going to concoct this elaborate scheme so I'd say that I understand it clearly. 00:08:05.692 --> 00:08:07.152 We don't understand anything. 00:08:07.152 --> 00:08:07.752 It's a vision. 00:08:07.752 --> 00:08:14.072 It's no less confusing to us than it was to Daniel and to John and to the others who were given these visions. 00:08:15.152 --> 00:08:21.432 But at the same time, they're promises of God, which means that they're true even when they're inexplicable to us. 00:08:21.452 --> 00:08:31.652 Either most people today will look at these things and say, well, yeah, I'm going to narrow this down and say, it's Apache helicopters and on CNN that's the scorpions or whatever. 00:08:31.652 --> 00:08:34.112 I don't remember how they correlate those things. 00:08:34.112 --> 00:08:37.052 There's some wackos you can find that try to do that. 00:08:37.052 --> 00:08:48.832 And although I call them wackos and it's entirely apt to say that because they're making things up, the problem is that there's a part of the spirit of doing that that we shouldn't condemn. 00:08:48.832 --> 00:08:59.352 And that's the other side of the horse that most people fall off of, is that because there are some people who see these prophecies, they're inexplicable, and they say, OK, this is a promise from God. 00:08:59.352 --> 00:09:01.172 Let me try to find it in the newspaper. 00:09:01.172 --> 00:09:06.112 Let me try to find it in my life and make this thing in the Bible about me. 00:09:06.112 --> 00:09:07.412 It's not a great place to be. 00:09:07.412 --> 00:09:13.132 It's not completely wrong, because these are prophecies that are given to the church, that are given to mankind. 00:09:13.132 --> 00:09:14.632 They will be fulfilled someday. 00:09:14.632 --> 00:09:18.732 And we're always to look to see if they're being fulfilled in our day. 00:09:18.732 --> 00:09:21.232 That's one of the very clear admissions from God. 00:09:21.232 --> 00:09:31.112 The other side of the horse that most people fall off of is they will, I can't understand any of this, and a lot of people have made fools of themselves in the past, so I'm just going to not believe any of it. 00:09:31.112 --> 00:09:37.812 And one of the particular modern ways that that has occurred is that people become Judaizing heretics. 00:09:37.812 --> 00:09:42.772 And I say, well, actually, all those prophecies were already fulfilled in the Bible. 00:09:42.772 --> 00:09:48.552 Everything that we read about End Times in the New Testament, that was fulfilled by AD 70, which is false. 00:09:48.552 --> 00:09:51.872 And we'll demonstrate today that that is provably false from the pages of scripture. 00:09:52.652 --> 00:09:56.892 But just as important, that's Judaizing. 00:09:56.892 --> 00:10:01.972 It's taking the New Testament, it's taking our scripture and saying, well, actually, that's about the Jews. 00:10:01.972 --> 00:10:03.772 That's not about us at all. 00:10:03.772 --> 00:10:04.992 What are you left with? 00:10:04.992 --> 00:10:11.052 You're left with pages of scripture that have no promises for us beyond, I guess, the resurrection of the dead and forgiveness of sins. 00:10:11.052 --> 00:10:16.492 You know, like the metaphysical stuff, the conceptual feel good stuff, the important stuff. 00:10:16.492 --> 00:10:20.272 But you're not left with any concrete promises that God's going to do this, that and the other thing. 00:10:20.752 --> 00:10:22.572 That's false. 00:10:22.572 --> 00:10:27.332 Those promises were given for a purpose, and we are included in that purpose. 00:10:27.332 --> 00:10:50.852 And so, while we don't want Eschatology and looking at signs to be something that people spend all the time thinking about, as you're reading through scripture, and you stumble across these prophecies over and over again in numerous books, you can avoid revelation entirely, and you're still constantly going to be coming across End Times prophecies. 00:10:50.852 --> 00:10:52.772 That's because God thinks it's important. 00:10:52.772 --> 00:10:54.592 He's letting us know it's important. 00:10:54.592 --> 00:10:58.932 And so, when you come across those, don't skip past them. 00:10:58.932 --> 00:11:00.352 Don't say, well, this isn't about me. 00:11:00.352 --> 00:11:03.592 That was already taken care of, so I don't need to worry about any of it. 00:11:03.592 --> 00:11:08.512 We should believe, and we should ask God to help us understand. 00:11:08.512 --> 00:11:09.792 And it's going to be in that order. 00:11:10.332 --> 00:11:16.952 And this is one of the places where I think the Lutheran approach to a lot of these things works better than some of the others, because it's a mystery. 00:11:16.952 --> 00:11:18.252 We can't figure it out. 00:11:18.252 --> 00:11:21.492 There's no one to explain it to us, and that's okay. 00:11:21.492 --> 00:11:26.552 We're allowed to, and we're commanded to believe it, even without understanding it. 00:11:26.552 --> 00:11:40.592 And if belief means nothing more than, I'm going to remember that thing, and then later on, if I see something actually happen in the material world that very clearly correlates, I should say, yeah, I think this is that promise of God being fulfilled. 00:11:40.592 --> 00:11:43.292 So that's the fundamental point of this episode. 00:11:43.292 --> 00:11:51.652 Don't skip past and ignore the parts of the scripture that are confusing to us, because they were confusing in the Old Testament, the prophecies of the first coming. 00:11:51.652 --> 00:11:53.912 They didn't understand. 00:11:53.912 --> 00:12:03.052 As you look at how, particularly after Pentecost, the apostles pointed back to all the prophecies of the Old Testament and showed over and over, here's how Christ fulfilled them. 00:12:04.252 --> 00:12:16.412 The only way that that argument worked was because the believers remembered and respected that all of those promises, all those prophecies that didn't make sense before, now could make sense. 00:12:16.412 --> 00:12:21.052 If you don't believe that they matter, then you're not going to be able to receive Christ. 00:12:21.052 --> 00:12:28.912 They would have not received the first coming of Christ, and many of them didn't, and we would not be able to receive the second coming of Christ when He comes. 00:12:28.912 --> 00:12:34.532 Again, it doesn't matter if it's this decade, if it's in our lifetimes, if it's in the next thousand years. 00:12:34.532 --> 00:12:36.752 The point is not precisely when. 00:12:36.752 --> 00:12:41.472 The point is that every Christian has a duty to know these things and to just keep watch. 00:12:41.472 --> 00:12:43.632 That's all God says to do, just keep watch. 00:12:43.652 --> 00:12:52.272 And you can't do that if you don't believe that these promises are true, that they're from God, and that they're intended for us as well. 00:12:53.352 --> 00:13:11.092 A fundamentally important point when dealing with prophecy is that even though prophecy applies to creation generally, in most cases, not in all cases, but in most cases, prophecy is for the church, it is for believers. 00:13:11.092 --> 00:13:21.292 Of course, part of that is not quite tautological, but believers are those who believe in the prophecies and the prophecies are for those who believe. 00:13:21.292 --> 00:13:23.072 But Revelation is a good example of this. 00:13:23.072 --> 00:13:25.952 Revelation is written to and for the church. 00:13:26.552 --> 00:13:31.112 For those outside of the church, the book is going to have very little meaning. 00:13:31.112 --> 00:13:36.292 In fact, it's going to seem quite crazy in some places, some of the descriptions in that book. 00:13:36.292 --> 00:13:42.012 Of course, it's an apocalypse and it is apocalyptic, in both senses in this case. 00:13:43.252 --> 00:13:46.232 But the book is written fundamentally to Christians. 00:13:46.232 --> 00:13:52.852 The same thing is true of various prophecies throughout scripture, particularly with regard to the End Times. 00:13:52.852 --> 00:14:04.032 These things are written to make us aware of what is coming insofar as we can understand them, and also to provide comfort, because these are promises of God. 00:14:04.032 --> 00:14:06.712 And we have to take them with the other promises of God as well. 00:14:06.712 --> 00:14:11.892 He has promised to keep his church until the end, to preserve believers. 00:14:11.892 --> 00:14:26.872 That doesn't mean that the church will be preserved as big as it is today, or as big as it was at its height, for instance, because certainly we have seen a fall of the church from the height of Christendom to where we are today. 00:14:26.872 --> 00:14:29.812 But it does mean that God will preserve the church to the end. 00:14:29.812 --> 00:14:35.672 He in fact says that he will cut short the days of tribulation in order to preserve the elect. 00:14:35.672 --> 00:14:38.592 That's how bad things are going to get. 00:14:38.592 --> 00:14:41.252 Which raises another point. 00:14:41.252 --> 00:14:56.752 Those who would tell you that things are going to just keep getting better, that until the end, we will continue to see sort of an uphill, an upward trend, things will get better, and then Christ will return. 00:14:56.752 --> 00:14:59.032 Those men are liars. 00:14:59.032 --> 00:15:00.452 That should not be sugar-coated. 00:15:00.452 --> 00:15:01.672 It should not be put another way. 00:15:01.672 --> 00:15:06.072 They are liars because that is not what scripture says. 00:15:06.072 --> 00:15:10.952 Scripture very clearly says that things will continue to get worse. 00:15:10.952 --> 00:15:14.432 Now, that does not mean that things will only get worse. 00:15:14.432 --> 00:15:17.692 It means that things will get worse near the end. 00:15:17.692 --> 00:15:20.432 Things today are certainly getting worse. 00:15:20.972 --> 00:15:24.132 So, could this be the beginning of the end? 00:15:24.132 --> 00:15:25.632 Yes. 00:15:25.632 --> 00:15:28.312 Could it be not the beginning of the end? 00:15:28.312 --> 00:15:29.672 Also, yes. 00:15:29.672 --> 00:15:38.872 The reason for that is related to one of the ways in which prophecy is fulfilled, but in a specific way in this case. 00:15:40.152 --> 00:15:43.272 Things are going to get worse at the end. 00:15:43.272 --> 00:15:55.752 Just because things are getting worse today does not mean this is the end because of course things could get worse now and in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years get better and then get worse again at some future point. 00:15:56.832 --> 00:16:00.972 The point to take away is that things at the end will get worse. 00:16:00.972 --> 00:16:04.072 They are not going to get better and then Christ returns. 00:16:04.072 --> 00:16:05.372 They are going to get worse. 00:16:05.372 --> 00:16:09.192 There is a period of tribulation and then Christ returns. 00:16:10.312 --> 00:16:20.032 How that is related to the fulfillment of prophecy throughout scripture, or many prophecies, is that the fulfillment is often cyclical, in a sense. 00:16:20.032 --> 00:16:29.732 There will be a minor fulfillment, and then perhaps another minor fulfillment, and you will see a number of these throughout scripture, and then there is the ultimate fulfillment. 00:16:29.732 --> 00:16:31.772 This is related, of course, to typology. 00:16:31.772 --> 00:16:45.512 We could look at the various types of Christ in the Old Testament, and then, of course, Christ himself, the anti-type, the full fulfillment of all of the prophecies, because David was a type of Christ. 00:16:45.512 --> 00:16:47.152 He delivered his people. 00:16:47.152 --> 00:16:51.392 He fulfilled some of the requirements. 00:16:51.392 --> 00:16:58.732 He performed some of the duties of the ultimate Christ, of Jesus Christ, but not all of them. 00:16:58.732 --> 00:17:07.092 He was not so much an imperfect fulfillment, although, of course, he was an imperfect man, as he was a typological fulfillment. 00:17:07.092 --> 00:17:11.272 And we see that with many scriptures, and we see that with many prophecies, particularly. 00:17:12.492 --> 00:17:33.052 So, when someone points out that, well, this is the fulfillment of that prophecy, that's almost always incorrect, because if you are limiting it, if you mean to limit it by your words, to one fulfillment, that's probably not a correct interpretation of the prophecy, because there are probably multiple fulfillments. 00:17:33.052 --> 00:17:34.992 Yes, there's an ultimate one. 00:17:34.992 --> 00:17:36.712 There's one that is more meaningful. 00:17:36.712 --> 00:17:41.352 It stands above all the others, but it is not the sole fulfillment. 00:17:42.572 --> 00:17:49.372 We see this in particular with regard to the End Times, because there are those who will try to argue for full preterism. 00:17:49.372 --> 00:17:55.652 They'll try to argue that the prophecies have already been fulfilled in the past, and so they no longer apply to us. 00:17:55.652 --> 00:17:56.632 That's irrelevant. 00:17:56.632 --> 00:17:57.992 It's in Scripture. 00:17:57.992 --> 00:17:59.992 It's true, but it already happened. 00:17:59.992 --> 00:18:04.132 So they view it sort of as the historical books of the Pentateuch. 00:18:05.152 --> 00:18:06.532 Those are events that already happened. 00:18:07.212 --> 00:18:07.892 They're true. 00:18:07.892 --> 00:18:09.092 They're historical. 00:18:09.092 --> 00:18:15.152 We're not looking forward to them, except for, of course, some of the prophecies and promises contained in those books. 00:18:15.152 --> 00:18:17.212 But the events themselves already happened. 00:18:17.212 --> 00:18:22.672 Some will try to argue that with regard to the End Times prophecies in various books in Scripture. 00:18:22.672 --> 00:18:24.792 And that's simply not true. 00:18:24.792 --> 00:18:44.172 Just because there was some typological fulfillment, say under Nero, for instance, I don't think that either of us would argue that you didn't have some typological fulfillment of End Times prophecies under certain of the Roman emperors, it does not mean that those were the ultimate fulfillment of those prophecies. 00:18:44.172 --> 00:18:50.572 Many of the prophecies remain unfulfilled because we are not right now at the end of the End Times. 00:18:50.572 --> 00:18:52.412 We can say that for certain. 00:18:52.412 --> 00:19:01.912 We can't say for certain we aren't at the beginning of the End Times, but we can say that there are unfulfilled signs that we have not reached that final end stage. 00:19:01.912 --> 00:19:07.432 And so we can most certainly say that of historical fulfillments of some of those prophecies. 00:19:07.432 --> 00:19:13.132 They were partial, they were typological, but they were not the ultimate fulfillment. 00:19:13.132 --> 00:19:18.752 And so when you look at prophecies, it's important to recognize there may be multiple fulfillments. 00:19:18.752 --> 00:19:24.512 You're not necessarily looking for one single fulfillment, whether in history or in the future. 00:19:24.512 --> 00:19:34.252 And as Wo mentioned, many of these prophecies are going to be outside of the capacity of anyone listening to this to fully understand. 00:19:34.252 --> 00:19:51.452 Because it's very unlikely that God has given anyone listening right now a full enough, a strong enough, a deep enough gift of interpretation to interpret fully and completely, say, Revelation or Daniel or Ezekiel. 00:19:51.452 --> 00:19:56.412 There will be things that we can understand and things that will remain a mystery. 00:19:56.412 --> 00:19:58.372 And that's fine. 00:19:58.372 --> 00:19:59.152 God is infinite. 00:19:59.152 --> 00:19:59.712 We're finite. 00:19:59.812 --> 00:20:03.812 We should be comfortable with the idea that there is going to be mystery. 00:20:03.812 --> 00:20:16.492 There are going to be things we cannot fully understand that shouldn't worry us, that shouldn't concern us in a negative sense, because God promises that all things will work together for the good of the elect. 00:20:16.492 --> 00:20:21.152 Just because we do not understand does not mean that God does not understand. 00:20:21.152 --> 00:20:23.872 Obviously, God understands all things. 00:20:23.872 --> 00:20:25.432 He is the one who's in control. 00:20:25.432 --> 00:20:27.652 He is the one who has written these words to us. 00:20:28.412 --> 00:20:36.572 We read them, understand them as best we can, given the gifts that he has given us, and then the rest of it we just accept. 00:20:36.572 --> 00:20:50.612 I do not have to understand every single verse of scripture in order to believe in the promises of God, in order to believe that God will work all things for the good, in order to believe that scripture is true. 00:20:50.612 --> 00:20:52.492 I understand much of scripture. 00:20:52.492 --> 00:20:53.992 I don't understand all of it. 00:20:53.992 --> 00:20:58.272 There are verses that remain a mystery, but I read them. 00:20:58.272 --> 00:21:04.992 I understand them insofar as I can understand the words I am reading, and I accept them as true. 00:21:04.992 --> 00:21:11.112 At some point, God will explain them to me, or if God never explains them to me, then that doesn't matter. 00:21:11.112 --> 00:21:13.672 Then it's something reserved for him. 00:21:13.672 --> 00:21:18.172 In either case, as a Christian, I am comfortable with that outcome. 00:21:18.172 --> 00:21:23.712 Just because something is in scripture does not mean we have to obsess over understanding it. 00:21:24.452 --> 00:21:30.252 There are things that have been given us to understand and things that have not been given us to understand. 00:21:30.252 --> 00:21:36.392 So we may not understand every single verse in Revelation or every single verse in Daniel. 00:21:36.392 --> 00:21:39.092 Some of the prophecies are difficult to interpret. 00:21:39.092 --> 00:21:43.252 That's fine, and we have to be comfortable with that. 00:21:43.252 --> 00:21:55.672 Quite frankly, one of the dangers in dealing with Eschatology, in dealing with these books and prophecies of the End Times, is that some get obsessed with it. 00:21:55.672 --> 00:21:58.272 This is not the core of the Christian faith. 00:21:58.272 --> 00:22:01.472 This is not something over which to obsess. 00:22:01.472 --> 00:22:04.852 There are more important books in Scripture. 00:22:04.852 --> 00:22:09.792 If you are reading only Revelation, you are making a grave mistake. 00:22:09.792 --> 00:22:17.572 You should be reading other parts of Scripture more and more often than you are reading, say, Daniel or Revelation. 00:22:17.572 --> 00:22:22.952 That's not to say the books are unimportant, because, of course, they flow from the mouth of God. 00:22:22.952 --> 00:22:24.992 They flow from the mind of God. 00:22:24.992 --> 00:22:26.132 All of it is true. 00:22:26.132 --> 00:22:27.932 All of it is important. 00:22:27.932 --> 00:22:32.612 But even Scripture speaks of certain parts of Scripture being more important than others. 00:22:32.612 --> 00:22:34.672 And obviously, that's the case. 00:22:34.672 --> 00:22:42.252 The parts that clearly teach us about Christ and the Gospel are more important than mere recounting of history. 00:22:42.272 --> 00:22:44.312 One is a matter of your eternal soul. 00:22:45.052 --> 00:22:46.712 The other is true. 00:22:46.712 --> 00:22:49.512 And God has included it for edification. 00:22:49.512 --> 00:22:52.212 But it is not as important as the Gospel. 00:22:52.212 --> 00:22:57.452 The same sort of thing is true with regard to End Times prophecies and related matters. 00:22:57.452 --> 00:23:00.172 There are more important things in Scripture. 00:23:00.172 --> 00:23:18.752 We are doing the episode because it's important to understand how these play into the Christian life, the place these things have in the Christian life, and also to refute some of the heresies that have arisen in the Church with regard to abusing these parts of Scripture. 00:23:18.752 --> 00:23:23.052 We are not minimizing their importance, but we are also not going to overstate them. 00:23:23.052 --> 00:23:30.132