Very true, as it applies to an obsession with the rapture and all of the related convoluted dispensational theology. However it is profitable to often contemplate on what has been traditionally called “the Four Last Things” — Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. That’s something that we know for sure will happen to all of us.
“My opinion on ones view of the end times is that it has no bearing upon one’s salvation, so why waste your time thinking about it?”
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. - Revelation 1:3.
I don’t think it is wasting time to read and reflect on it, but I agree that one can obsess too much about it to the detriment of other items.
Contemplation is one thing, and even reading the book of Revelation and others to know Scriptures is profitable, but to weave one’s eschatological beliefs into every singe sermon they do is quite ridiculous.
I talk to people who have no understanding of 99% of the Scriptures, but they sure do have an opinion on when, where, and how the ends going to happen.
I am reminded of a story I heard my older brothers friend told hi. when I was about 14. Mind you, my older brother was like 10 years older than me, so he would have been about 26 at the time.
Well heard his friend tell Mickey about the time Joseph Kennedy was supposedly getting his hair cut at the barbershop. While sitting there he heard a janitor talking to some guy Joseph thought was a wino I guess.
Joseph heard their conversation they were having about the stock market, and what stocks are best to purchase. Well after his haircut was finished, Joseph contacted his broker and told him to sell everything.
When his broker asked why, Joseph told him that when janitors and winos start giving advice on the stock market, its time to sell.
6 Months later the stock market crashed, that was 1929.
True story? Who knows, but when I think of people who never open a Bible telling me about how the end times are going to come about, I realize how it is a tiopic used only to distract people from the Gospel.
A church I went to was averaging about 100 people a week, but then the pastor began the book of Revelation, he was drawing up to 500 or more people a week.
People seem to be more interested in the antichrist, than they are in Christ Jesus.