Posted on 02/28/2016 12:25:03 PM PST by Kaslin
I hear it all the time, and as quickly as I hear it, I reject it.
It is a paralyzing, destructive mentality, and it is unbiblical, plain and simple.
I'm talking about the mindset that says, "Jesus told us everything will get worse, so why bother trying to bring about change?"
Can you imagine what Church history would like if Paul and Peter felt that way in the first century or if Wesley and Wilberforce felt that way in the 18th and 19th centuries?
Why fight against infanticide in the early Church? Jesus said things will only get worse.
Why fight against slavery in Great Britain and America? Jesus said things will only get worse.
Why fight against apartheid in South Africa? Jesus said things will only get worse.
Why even oppose the Nazis? Jesus said things will only get worse.
Do you see how paralyzing this mentality can be?
In response to my video message challenging the Charlotte City Council to vote against an extreme, LGBT activist bill - it was dubbed "the bathroom bill" - someone posted this on my YouTube channel:
"I admire your spirit Dr Brown ... but you know this is fighting the Hand of God. Can you possibly win? Can you possibly even HOPE to win? He said that these days will come. So how is it that you, a man who serves that same God, fights against Him? He says it WILL happen, and you try to STOP it. Is that not fighting against God? No. Instead, praise Him because His Word IS Truth, and preach ENDURANCE and LONG SUFFERING and HOPE. Those are better messages. Trying to stop the Word of God, however, ... is futile."
With all respect to the person who posted the comment, this is absolute rubbish.
Fighting the Hand of God? Fighting against God? Trying to stop the Word of God? Nonsense!
Oh yes, I fully affirm the need to "preach ENDURANCE and LONG SUFFERING and HOPE," and those themes go hand and hand with our actions in Charlotte.
But the idea that we are fighting against the inevitable collapse of society in our day - even fighting against God - is an idea to be resisted and rejected.
If you don't mind my asking, please tell me where Jesus said that from the year 2016 until His return, things will only get worse. Would you be kind enough to provide the chapter and verse?
You might reply, "In Matthew 24, Jesus predicted mass deception and mass apostasy," but it appears you still miss the point.
Aside from asking which portions of Matthew 24 referred more directly to the events leading up to 70 A.D. - in other words, to events that took place almost 2,000 years ago - the obvious question is: How do you know that His words apply to today rather than to 100 years from today? Who gave you the insight that we were in the closing years of the era and that all we could expect was gloom and doom?
If Jonathan Edwards had believed this in the 1700's he never would have called the churches together to pray for awakening.
The same could be said for every revival in history: If the believers in each generation thought that the apostasy and darkness and moral corruption they were witnessing indicated that Jesus was coming any minute and that positive change was impossible, they never would have sought God for revival and the world would be in massively worse shape today.
I came to faith in 1971 when Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth was all the rage, and we knew that any day now, Jesus was coming back. The signs of the times were all there!
I was 16 at that time. Next month, I turn 61. And Jesus still has not returned.
What makes you so sure that you have figured it all out and that we should simply capitulate and cave in? What makes you so sure that it's time to throw in the towel and let the devil and the world take over? Is this even a remotely biblical mentality?
You might say, "But things have never been as bad as they are today."
I suggest you study history more carefully before coming to that conclusion, but even if you're right, that’s what other generations have said about their days as well, and the Lord moved mightily with great outpouring and harvest.
Who's to say He hasn't saved the best for last?
The fact is that a truly biblical mentality is a victorious, faith-filled, overcoming mentality, a mentality of hope and triumph and expectation.
Jesus is risen and Jesus is Lord!
That's all I need to know.
And Jesus told us that: 1) all authority is heaven and earth is His; 2) in His name and authority, we are to go and make disciples of the nations; and 3) He is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).
Where, then, is there room for discouragement? Where, then, is there room for a "throw in the towel" mentality?
And if we are successful in making disciples, won't that meant that positive change will come?
The biblical mentality is expressed by John, who told us that "the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining" (1 John 2:8).
Or, in the words of Paul, "The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light" (Rom. 13:12).
That is how we must live, and that is the attitude we must have as we stand for what is right, regardless of how dire things look and regardless of cost or consequence.
And that means that, until our dying day - or until Jesus returns, whichever comes first - the salt must stay salty and the light must stay bright (Matthew 5:13-16).
How else could a disciple possibly live?
I would find it a lot easier to trash the “End of times” Biblical dynamic, if the Bible hadn’t so perfectly described it.
Paraphrased (loosely):
They will look for peace, and will find nothing but wars and rumors of wars.
Evil is described as becoming accepted.
Christians will come under increasing pressure.
They will be persecuted.
Folks, it’s there if you want to read about it.
Sure is.
Israel
Post-Christian society
A great falling away
“:^)
Right On Dr Brown, preach it.
I so much like this scholars writings...I know he supports Ted Cruz, but we can’t all be perfect..lol
You might try two of Dr Browns Books:
His most recent is “ Outlasting the Gay Revolution-Where Homosexual Activisim is really going and How to Turn the Tide”
And another work on the Hyper grace movement that’s all the rage:
Hyper-Grace-Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Movement”
Freegards
LEX
He paralyzed an entire generation of Christians while the Gramscians consolidated their gains from the 1960s.
It is easier to decide what to do if you know where you are on Yahuah’s calendar.
Those who really believe he is coming want to be found working not sitting around waiting for things to fall apart.
Can't say I've ever heard this. Never heard a Christian just stop trying to make a difference.
I love prophecy in the bible. I love endtimes prophecy as it aligns with modern day events. It is exciting and awesome to see God showing off.
We Christians know full well the endtimes are near. How near? Who knows, but the opportunity to reach out to others and help them see what is coming is what we are called to do. Help folks open their selves to a loving, living savior.
It will get bad, very bad. This is not something to fear. It means that Jesus will be coming back to set right what satan and sin has perverted. Praise to the Lamb of God.
[[I blame it all on Hal Lindsey (sp?) and “The Late Great Planet Earth”
He paralyzed an entire generation of Christians while the Gramscians consolidated their gains from the 1960s. ]]
Not hardly . If you know he is coming you don’t want to be an unprofitable servant , you want to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant”
All the endtime nonsense does is to train anyone who believes in it to stark, unadulterated defeatism. It eats up the spirit of the young. It will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Makes you wonder what would have happened if all the movers and shakers in the West would have had that belief tucked away in their hearts during the 1930s, a decade straight from hell — weather extremes, rise of dictatorships, economic destruction. Why would anyone want to fight God’s will? Aren’t things supposed to get worse?
Sometimes I think the whole thing was dreamed up by the One Worlders to trick Christians into submission. Malichi Martin said that conspiracy was “an ageless society about 400 years old”.
The endtime nonsense is a little less than 200 years old.
What he describes is what I call “bomb shelter Christianity”. Just hide in the figurative bomb shelter and wait to get evacuated during the Rapture. Some even take it so far as the Church Age is over, no point in spreading the Gospel further, just keep the brethren from falling away. Harold Camping espoused that view later in life.
“Things aren’t falling apart, they are falling into place.” J Markel
As you noted... Evil is described as becoming accepted.
People who read that in the Bible don't like to recognize we were never intended to approve that by our silence. The church I walked away from refused to address the evil that is steadily encroaching on that church's right to exist.
The leadership I talked to about it were content to explain it away as 'the will of God'.
Thank you, Dr. Brown.
Any explanation of the end times has to grapple with Daniel 2, where the “stone not cut by human hands,” which Daniel specifically defines as “a kingdom that will never be destroyed,” grows to “fill the whole earth.” My belief is that the iron kingdom in that statue was ancient Rome, which was smashed by the coming of Christ and/or the growing Christian church, and that was the understanding of most Christians well up into the 1800s.
OTOH, the Christian church knew nothing of Dispensational Premillenialism or most of its defeatist concepts until the 1830s. Historic Premillenialism was always a minority view, and has practically ceased to exist since the advent of Dispensational Premillenialism. Darby and Scofield popularized Dispensational Premillenialism, but well into this century a lot of people who praised the Scofield Bible had a much more optimistic view of the church’s chances than the Hal Lindsey fans I knew in the 1970s and ‘80s. Even historic amillenialism was more optimistic than the current strain, probably because of the popularity of dispensationalism.
While I do tend to think the Christian church has “grown into” some Christian concepts (for instance, from the git go there were those who believed slavery was unChristian, but the church as a whole didn’t insist on that understanding for some time), I’m skeptical of major theological theories that Christians never saw nor imagined for a thousand years or more.
Another really modern idea that the historical Church never considered or imagined is that “desire” in Genesis 3:16 should be interpreted as “desire for power over over” in light of the same word in Genesis 4:7, instead of as a sexual or romantic kind of desire. That idea was not proposed or considered until the 1960s (!), and now it’s practically standard, even though a lot of Hebrew scholars say it does violence to the original texts.
Feminists, of course, have come up with half a gazillion new and unique interpretations to explain away headship and male authority; that’s the only one I know of that conservative churches have also embraced.
Having attended only dispensationalist churches I see the subtle defeatist mentality it brings. The bigger concern, in my opinion, is that so many in the US are counting on being raptured before it gets “really bad” that they may not have the fortitude to endure in faith when faced with true persecution.
Christians have faced horrific persecution from the beginning of Christianity until now-just not here. To say that we will get raptured before it gets really bad is an insult to those who have suffered greatly-even now Christians are being beheaded, crucified, sold into sexual slavery; when is it going to get worse for them? If none of them got raptured away from deep suffering, why do we think we will?
I’m not sure what is going to happen (pre trib, mid trib, post trib rapture) but the modern US mentality about just hanging on until we are raptured out of here creates weak and carnal Christians.
As several of you pointed out, we believers are to be working on what the Holy Spirit has identified as our individual path in YHWH Plan (the Word). The overall path and timing is very well identified in The Word, and if you look at the commentaries from a century of more ago it is becoming clear that the spiritualization of the Prophecies was because no one could figure out how YHWH could pull it off, literally.
Now, Israel is back in the Land as one nation bringing Jews from all the nations. We know how to actually implement the Mark of the Beast. We know how to make people’s eyes and skin melt from their bodies, an make a place so radioactive that it will take months to decontaminate it. We know how to make an image of a man that moves and talks and can kill people. The society is rapidly returning to the Days of Noah and Lot. Knowledge is increasing and people are running to and fro! All I can say now is “Do we have a awesome God, or what?”
The world is as it is, and as it will be. Salvation is an individual thing. After you are saved you are supposed to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit on what you are to do, not what someone else is supposed to do.
Look up! Your redemption draws near!
The one timing thing I would add is the Revelation 12:1-2 Great sign in the heavens.
Revelation Chapter 12:
1 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.
2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
Nelson, Thomas (2009-02-18). Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 1193). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Previous Bible commentators have taken this as a symbolic vision about Israel (Mary) giving birth to Jesus, and marking the start of the 3 1/2 year Great Tribulation.
However, since “knowledge had increased”, we can use star charting programs such as Stellarium to see that this could be a literal “great sign” in heaven.
The constellation “Virgo”, the Virgin, has always been identified with Mary the Mother of Jesus. The nine stars of Leo, the Lion (of Judah), form a “garland” above her head.
Jupiter has always been identified as the “King” star. It is striped (by His stripes we are healed) and has a large, red spot (they pierced His side).
Here is the sequence of events regarding the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Virgo, Leo, Mercury, Mars and Venus
Mon, 21 November 2016 = 20th of Cheshvan, 5777
Jupiter enters Virgo (the Virgin’s Womb) crossing line from Spica to Porrima
Sat, 28 January 2017 = 1st of Sh’vat, 5777
Jupiter retrograde motion begins inside Virgo.
Sat, 10 June 2017 = 16th of Sivan, 5777
Jupiter prograde motion resumes inside Virgo
Thu, 17 August 2017 = 25th of Av, 5777
Total Solar eclipse across America (Charleston to Portland)
Sun, 10 September 2017 = 19th of Elul, 5777
Jupiter crosses Heze — Spica line. Virgin gives birth? Conjunction Regulus and Mercury
Wed, 20 September 2017 = 29th of Elul, 5777
New Moon, Venus — Regulus conjunction
Sun, 24 September 2017 = 4th of Tishrei, 5778
Sun at Virgo’s shoulders (clothed), the Moon is at her feet, Mercury, Mars, Venus are added to Leo’s nine stars as Virgo’s 12-star ‘garland’
The great sign in the heaven is complete. This formation has not happened in the past 6000 years and won’t happen again for at least another 2000 years.
Luke 21
25 “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;
26 “men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
27 “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
28 “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”
Nelson, Thomas (2009-02-18). Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 1023). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
See the image at: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_1y_hLqVXf4/maxresdefault.jpg
Graphic says 23 September 2017, as it depends on where you say Virgo’s feet are. Besides, no one knows the day or the hour.
I can find nothing in Stellarium that comes close to matching the verses about the Dragon, so maybe Planet X is lurking on the other side of the Sun. After all the Stereo A and B satellites are looking at the Sun and not behind them.
Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
See tag line...
It is time to fill our lamps with oil for we know not the hour and the day, but He will surely come.
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