I was listening o John MacArthur on
Grace to You today (9/22), and I heard him make the same unsubstantiated/unbiblical comments about the alleged activities of the one hundred and forty four thousand during the futurist’s great tribulation. He said,
In that time called Tribulation, God selects 144 thousand Jews, twelve thousand out of every tribe and He knows what tribe they’re in, they don’t, to evangelize the world. They will be converted, they will become evangelists. You can read about them in Revelation 7 and Revelation 14.
It was an almost verbatim recounting of some of the erroneous comments that have been made in this forum. Yes, you can read all about the one hundred and forty four thousand in Revelation 7 and 14, but search hard (as I’m sure you have) and you will find no mention of them evangelizing anything or anyone. It’s a fictional scenario of dispensational futurism. It just plain sounds good to the keepers of The System®. It therefore must be true, and to suggest that it is not true may result in having your faith called into question by the True Believers in All Things Israel®.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Johnny Mac. For the most part he is a solid Bible teacher. But it is painfully obvious that when he delves into the area of eschatology, and especially his views on Israel, that the Bible support for some of his (and futurist’s) pet theories gets very thin. Very thin, indeed.
Which only demonstrates than when the best and brightest of futurist dispensationalist preachers has a tough time making his case from the Bible alone, you know the entire system is in trouble, a house of cards waiting to collapse. And when folks in this forum (and other forums) get a little testy when they are pressed on the biblical basis for their ideas, you have to wonder whether it is just all smoke and mirrors.
