a lot this week in the office here we
were talking about revelation and has
booked up definitely a revelation we're
talking eschatology and I just wondered
what your view was of the chronology of
the rapture and I believe it's all gonna
happen ya know not to dodge your
question I'm in historic
premillennialists I believe the most
natural interpretation of scriptures the
millennium is an historical event I
think again it's also tied to the grand
story of the Bible and that you have
Christ reigning with the Saints you know
for that thousand years which is a
period of time in which the rightness of
his reign exists of judgment upon the
wrongness of human rule and misrule I
don't buy into I'm not a
dispensationalists so I have a hard time
imagining two different comings and I
think the Bible is pretty clear about
warning the church about how to live in
a time of tribulation so I don't believe
the churches out of is taken away
now I'm not an anti dispensationalist
because I'm able to teach with them
witness with them the missions with them
and I hire them and so it's just a
matter of trying to figure out exactly
how that's going to work we are not
given and Jesus himself says for
evidently God's own purposes we are not
given the answers to some of these
things that that we might want to lie
out you know the Bible does have a chart
and there's certain things that if we
were kind of editing the Bible we might
wish we're in there and one of them
would be a timeline and a chart same way
the will of God we're not given you know
for our lives a chart instead we've got
to be faithful in every minute believing
that if we're faithful in the minute
that God will lead us in the right way
the next lastly we have to look at
eschatology we are drawn towards the end
because we're yearning for it the most
important thing about biblical
eschatology is that we look at that the
world around us we say this is wrong it
has to be fixed and we're not up to
fixing our justice is so imperfect
CIND we have tumors we have death you
know everything all of creation is
groaning for a completion the judgment
the fulfillment and we should be
yearning for that but as we're hearing
for it day by day
you know we're gonna have to watch the
signs of the times but the church hasn't
been really adept at this I mean one of
the problems is we have the intellectual
embarrassment of the Church of finding
that there are people in the 19th
century they sold everything it sat on
top of the rooftops wearing white robes
believing that Jesus was coming the
Miller writes on a specific day in the
19th century that didn't happen we've
got popular Christian authors riding
today who are still alive and still
writing who wrote books saying Jesus is
coming back in 1974 evidently not so
they're still writing books that's the
thing that gets me I think if I wrote a
book is that Jesus coming in 1974 he
didn't come I don't think I've read a
book in 1975 but nonetheless I think we
have a good intellectual warning here
against trying to be more specific than
the scripture is and instead trust and
they look forward but I do believe that
all those events are going to take place
and they're gonna take place in a way
then in retrospect we're gonna be able
to look at it and say well now that
makes sense I see how that comes
together and that's the way it is for
our lives right and then we look
backward is either look God if I if I
ask you right now what's the will of God
for you a year from now you're not going
to know you can think there's a
trajectory you're being called to in
faithfulness but in reality we only know
God's will in terms of our appreciation
for it knowledge of it looking backwards
and at the end of history
we're going to look back and say oh
that's what that was and writing that in
the midst we just better be found
faithful Jesus actually speaks to that
with a parable of the of the bridesmaids
and
their lamps or candles you know justjust
you better be found being being ready
looking forward to it there's a wedding
coming but we don't know exactly when
it's going to be here and so we better
be trimming our wicks as it says they're
just to make sure that we are ready to
be given time