Dark Day (Pt.2)

Welcome back, everyone. Today is Tuesday, May the 2nd. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. If you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028, or you can send us an email at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. That's right, and you guys can help us keep this conversation going by supporting this radio show, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes, Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasting content from. We're going to leave a link in the description so you can do just that.

But first, I want to hear the verse of the day. Add us to your list of podcasts. Yeah.

Your library. Yeah. You see those little tiles of the podcast that you subscribe to, that you follow? Why not add Clearview Today? Why don't you put us up at the top? This is the word of the living Lord.

Add Clearview Today, today. There you go. There you go. Read them the verse of the day. The verse of the day today comes from Acts 2, verse 41. I got a little lilty there. The verse of the day today.

That's a good presentation. Acts 2, verse 41. Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. What would you do if we baptized three thousand people on a Sunday morning? I'm just trying to think about what I would do if three thousand people were here on a Sunday morning. I know, right?

Yeah. Our church is growing, and praise God for the ways that he's moving, but if three thousand people were in one service, that's intense. I think about the things that we just consider too big for God. We read about it in Acts. That's a good point.

We read about it in Acts, and it's like, oh, man, yeah, three thousand people. But then we think, he could do that today. It's like, well, he's not going to.

God did that in that day. Yeah, he's not. He doesn't do stuff like that today. Why not? What's stopping him right now from sending three thousand people to your church and baptizing them in one day? What's stopping him? Is it your belief? Is it your faith in him? You know what I mean? That's not outside the realm of possibility.

We put it outside the realm of possibility in our minds, but it's really not. Yeah. Preach, teach, minister like you are reaching three thousand people, and trust God to bring the numbers. That's right. That's right. Speaking of trust, I'm losing trust rapidly in my oldest son. Oh, no. Oh, the trust is going right out the window. Oh, no. He's doing two things now. He's climbing, and he's lying.

Neither of those are good, but in tandem, that makes for a very stressful situation. Ellie keeps the treats out of his reach. We have this little thing on the back porch, this little patio area where it's like this big black, I don't know what you would call it. What do you call that thing? It's like a big cabinet. It's like shelves of an organizer.

Yeah. There's a stroller. There's a tandem stroller where we can push both kids at the same time.

Gavin is learning now. He's like, okay, this thing is wheels. I can push it where I want it to go. We put it out of the way, but he's like, it's on wheels.

I can push it. Ellie and I were in the kitchen, and we could see out to the back porch. We watched him. We sat there and I was like, Ellie, come here. Come here. Come here.

Look at this. He, without knowing that we were watching him, pushed it over there, climbed up in the stroller, was reaching for a box of Rolos, almost fell. He was like, oh, oh, caught himself, and was like, oh, oh, oh, like steadied himself, put his foot back up there, got the Rolos down. Ellie has them in this container with the little top. He pulled it down, sat down, pulled it at two years old.

He's doing this at two years old. Pulled the top off, got a handful of Rolos, and this is where I was really impressed. He put them down in his lap, put the top back on, put it back the way it was supposed to be, stood up, put the thing back up, the Rolo container back up there, and then turned and had a fistful of Rolos, and then he turned and looked at us.

We watched the whole thing. I was like, he's organized. He moved the stroller, climbed into it, and then put it back so we wouldn't see the evidence. He's thinking it through. So then I was like, okay, we need to see what he's going to do. I'm not going to speak first. I put a hand on Ellie. I was like, don't speak.

Just don't speak. He looked at us for like 10 seconds, and I was like, what is he going to do? He was like, I got treats. I was like, did you get up there and get those treats by yourself? He was like, no. I was like, you didn't move the stroller and get the treats by yourself. Then he was like, I did. I did. I was like, all right, give me the treats.

You were honest on your second try, so I'm going to give you that. I'm not going to put you in timeout, but you can't climb up there on the stroller. The climbing phase, I wasn't ready for. Yeah, oh yeah. The climbing phase is, he's starting to explore. Like you said, he's thinking things through. He's getting a little more agency. He understands, if I move this here and I can do this, I can reach my goal. Just that kind of premeditated planning and organization.

It's fun to see it develop, except in situations where he's getting into things maybe he shouldn't. Who was your worst climber, do you think? Climber, climber. I don't have a ton that would climb.

If I had to pick one, maybe Evie. You would be climbing a couple chairs and stuff. Yeah, she would climb maybe Evie or Noah. They were pretty climby.

By the time that they were, by the time the younger ones were to that stage, they had older siblings to help them reach things. I would say maybe Evie or Noah were probably the worst climbers. Even that was still like, I'm going to push this chair and climb up into this chair.

We did, however, now that I'm talking about this, we did find Evie. She'd pushed a chair over to the counter, climbed up on the chair, climbed up on the counter and was sitting on the counter eating like chips. We're like, I'm glad you're fine, but you absolutely cannot do that. This is a no, ma'am. Yeah. That's going to be a hard no for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Sin, sin, thoughts and prayers. Cause I don't know how I'm going to deal with the climbing aid though. He also, he also just lied. But then, but like Gavin's one where like he doesn't have a lot of fight in him. So if you call him on it, he'll pretty much come clean instantly. I don't know how his brothers, the younger ones going to be on that, but Gavin is like, okay, no, I did.

I did. I don't want to spook you, but typically the younger ones are a little bit more deceitful than the older ones. That's what I'm thinking. The older ones are usually pretty honest.

The younger ones are a little bit more deceitful. We'll see where it goes. We'll see.

I don't know. That's, that's fun to think about. We're good. We've got a great episode for you guys today. We're continuing our discussion on Malachi. So we're going to go get Dr. Shah, but if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028 or visit us online at clearveetodayshow.com.

We'll be back after this. Hey everyone, my name's Ellie and I'm David. We want to take a minute and let you know how we can actually serve you as you're listening to Clearview today. The Bible paints an extraordinary picture of who we are as a church body. The mission of Clearview Church is to lead all people into a life changing, ever-growing relationship with Jesus Christ. A huge part of leading people is praying for them. A big reason that Christians have unanswered prayers in their life is because they're not praying.

You know, 1 John 5 15 says, and if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. If you're listening to the Clearview Today Show, we want to know how we can pray for you as well. There's a number of ways that you can get in touch with us at Clearview and share your prayer request, but the best way is by texting us at 252-582-5028. You can also send us an email at prayer at ClearviewBC.org, or you can download the Clearview app on iTunes or Google Play.

You know, on that app, there's a dedicated prayer wall that helps us to get to know what's going on in your life, how we can pray for you, and how we can take any necessary steps to get you moving in the right direction. Thanks for listening. Now let's get back to the show. Welcome back to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028. That's right. And if you're brand new to the show, if today's your first time ever tuning into the Clearview Today Show, we want to welcome you, let you know who's talking to you today. Dr. Abbadan Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show.

You can find all his work at his website. That's AbbadanShah.com. That's right. And Dr. Shah today is a great day for Clearview Today. Okay.

Why is that? Yeah, I'm waiting for the follow-up. I want to get t-shirts made and bumper stickers and just branded merch, and today is a great day. And then the reverse side is Clearview Today. So I instantly have some notes. You've got the word day in there thrice. Right.

Or that's intentional. How about it's a great day for Clearview Today? Let's workshop it. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. Just throwing it out there. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

But I do like Clearview Today t-shirts. Just working on it. I like that idea. I'm for it.

We have had some requests for Dr. Questions. Yeah. Maybe even some stickers. Yeah. Yes.

Some stickers, some car magnets. Dr. Questions. I like that. Good stuff. Well, on today's episode, we're continuing our conversation through the Book of Malachi, and this is kind of like the capstone, the ending of that conversation, the culmination of what we've been talking about, specifically related to this dark day that God has been describing to his listeners in the Book of Malachi. Do you want to recap for our listeners just kind of what that means, what we've been talking about?

Yeah. And the Book of Malachi, just so beautifully, it ends with a promise, with a prophecy. And the prophecy is of a day that is coming. It's called the day of the Lord. Sometimes it's called the day of tribulation. Other times, the day of judgment, day of wrath, the day of Jacob's trouble, day of the vengeance of the Lord. And so all of those days basically represent the idea of God's many judgments upon the wicked throughout history, but culminating in a final ultimate judgment, a day where this will be the mother of all days. That's D-Day.

I think we said yesterday it was the capital D-Day. Right. Right. And that's what we know in prophecy, you know, if you've studied prophecy and all that, the great tribulation.

This is that day. But this is a promise that he gave specifically to Israel. That's right.

It's given to the Jewish people. They were coming back from exile. Not all of them came back, but many did. And this was a promise after a lot of, you know, reprimands for their behavior, because as much as God blessed them, they were kind of slipping back into the old ways.

So this was the final, almost like, I want to use the word threat, but maybe a better word's out there, but it's almost like, you better listen because I'm not going to speak to you again for a long time. And long time is about 400 years. 400 years, I mean, just think about today would be like, this is 2023. So it's 1523 would make it what, five? 1623, 17, 18, 19, 20. So maybe 1623. 1623 to today. So if you go by 1623, Jamestown colony, you know, 1604 or 7, something like that. And then the Plymouth colony is about what, 1620 somewhere there. Right. So, so this is like Plymouth colony has just been founded.

1620. Right. And this is where God is telling the Jewish people, I'm not going to speak to you again, but stay the course.

I see. So now we come to verse two, but to you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings. And the question that is often asked at this point is where will the church be at this point? Will we be there to see the sun? And it's not S O N sun.

If you're looking at the text, it's S U N. I noticed that yesterday. And I was going to ask you about that. Like, why is it the sun? Cause we were talking about the eclipse when we went to go see the eclipse yesterday. When I say that, I mean, we talked about it yesterday. There was no eclipse yesterday, but you know, someone was checking the calendar like, wait a minute. Did I miss it? Did I miss the eclipse? No, we just talked about it on yesterday's show, but I did notice that it was the S U N son of righteousness. And I was wondering, I mean, I obviously it's not a typo, but what is the significance there?

Right. The imagery for the church is not the sun. The imagery for the church is in Revelation 22 16. I Jesus have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches.

If you want to know what the imagery is of Jesus for the church, here it is. I am the root and the offspring of David. What's the next morning star bright and morning star. Now what comes first, the sun or the bright and morning star, the morning star morning star, right?

If you go by chronology, the morning star comes first and then the morning star sort of disappears as the sun is coming out. So does that mean that we will be raptured? Do you know, is the pre trip rapture of the church in view here? Also keep in mind Revelation 2 26 and he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end to him, I will give power over the nations and I will give him the morning star. So it could be that we may be gone before the day dawns or we may have to overcome and Jesus will guide us as the morning star. Kind of sets up both as possibility. I'm leaving that there. I'm leaning towards the rapture, but I'm going to leave it open a little bit because there are some very strong exegetical arguments made for post trip rapture.

Okay. For the church without, without replacing Israel. It's tough to make that case because then you have to go, well, how is the church working out here? Because if everything is now for Israel, how is the church? And I would say the church is sorta taking the back seat. If you go with the post trip rapture, the church is taking the back street, back seat and Israel is taking the front seat just like right now. Israel is taking the back seat.

The church is taking the front seat. It's going to be flip flopped. Does that make sense? It does. That's, that's an interesting way to think about that. You know, and it reminds us that God, and you said this before, I mean, I think we've even said it on this episode that God is not done with his people. God's not done with the nation of Israel. Ethnic, ethnic Israel still has a place in God's plan. And for people to discredit that is, I mean, you're going against the Bible at that point.

Right. And I will still go back to the Abrahamic promise. You know, those who bless you, I will bless those who curse you, I will curse curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

That principle still applies. You know, how you treat God's people, Jewish people, people of Israel, the Hebrews, you know, you go back to all the titles that they've carried based on the stages they've been in. How you treat them is how God's going to deal with you. You say, well, what if Christ has come and they rejected Christ and they've been set aside?

It doesn't matter. Some of those promises are still standing. I think there's a lot of fear and uncertainty wrapped up in this conversation because not this conversation, but just the tribulation conversation because with other things in the Bible, most everything, we can look backwards and say, hey, listen, here's what we all agree happened because here's what the text says. We may argue about what it means or what it implies or what application to draw, but we can all agree that this happened or something symbolically happened that, you know, but with this, it's like, okay, much of it is symbolic and we'd really don't know what's going to happen. We all have ideas, but until we live it or until we experience it, we can't really know. And so I feel like there's a lot of uncertainty and fear wrapped up in it because we don't want to go through that tribulation. But at the same time, if God says that or if God has decided that that's what's best for the church to go through. Yeah. Like I said, I lean towards a pre-trib rapture, but I'm not like going to be so disappointed if that happens at that point.

It'd be like, well, that's what I was expecting. Yeah. Right. Right. So definitely don't want to suffer, but if I have to, then it is what it is. That's right.

He suffered for me. That's right. So then it says here, and you shall go out again, talking to the Jewish people and you shall go out and grow fat like stall fed calves.

Now what an imagery there. Stall fed means they're not just like out on the range, running everywhere, you know, burning away the fat. No, these will be stall fed, which means they are purposely being raised to be big and fluffy and with lots of meat on them. Yeah. Not necessarily to be eaten up, but it's, it's a sense of saying they'll be like really plump compared to those lean cows running up and down the hills and have to climb the hills and go look for grass and straw, whatever.

No, these will be like stall fed. Like an imagery of being very well provided. Stay in one place. We'll get you all the food. Again, fat.

Well, keep getting fat. It's a fulfillment or it's kind of a kind of a link to the prophecy in Revelation about the 144,000 Jewish people who will be saved right from the get go. And they will go out as powerful missionaries. All of them will be like the apostle Paul or the prophet Jonah or the apostle Peter. They'll be filled with the Holy Spirit, not having to learn any language. And they will go to the uttermost parts of the earth. They will be persecuted. Israel will be attacked, but God will save them.

That's, that's a promise to lean on. Do you think that's that 144,000, will that be apparent and obvious or is that something you think God will just kind of work under his time or do you think it'll be like a worldwide event? Like people will realize? I mean, already, if you look at it, cause you know, these 144,000 are coming from all 12 tribes, right? Now people will say, come on, are you telling me that the Assyrian exile that completely, you know, did away with those 10 tribes, are they coming back? Are you telling me that somehow the tribe of Benjamin will be found and you know, and all that? Yeah. Just look at how many advances have been made in genetic science.

That's very true. You know, not just DNA, but also the genome, right? Genome is the new and the more advanced form of identification. Don't you think they can do that and then go, wait, you are from the tribe of Simeon. You are from the tribe of Manasseh.

You are from the tribe of, you know, Issachar. Like today we'd look at it and go like, they're gone. Well, with all the genome studies being done, I have a feeling they're going to find them. Yeah. And it may, it may not be like pure Issacharites, but maybe it'll be enough to go, yeah, you are one of the lost tribes. There's a trace in there.

You can trace it back. Yeah. Yeah. Do you look at like news today at all of the nations and all of the people rallying against Israel and feel that sort of timeline inching closer or does it, do you feel like it's just pointing to even more harassment to come in the future? I think there'll be more harassment to come.

You know, it's already happening. Like, I mean, just look at the lady who was killed just recently, you know, and I saw the father and the daughters and the son, you know, mourning and on news conferences. It's sad to see that, you know, I'm not here to say God is only for the Jewish people and he hates Arabs or anything like that. Never, never, never would say that God is for all people, but they're his people. And so, you know, some of the hate that we see countries are trying to destroy the Jewish people, you know, ultimately they will win. God's faithfulness to his covenant is going to come through and he's going to see them victorious. That's right. That's right. The question is, which side will you be on?

Right. So now we come to verse four. It says, remember the law of Moses, my servant servants, which I command him in Horeb for all Israel, going back to Deuteronomy with the statues and judgment behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

So very interesting here. You know, I, I preached on this good grief back in 2003, 2004. That's how far back I preached through Malachi. I talked about the generational gap. One major sign of the fulfillment of God's timing is that there will be no generational gap. They will understand each other.

They'll turn the hearts of fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Wow. Now what did we do here at Clearview? I was just about to say, that's our goal. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and even just in just recent days, that's been a heavy topic of conversation. Yep. We've been doing that and I think it's going to spread this, this understanding of generation, better and better is going to spread. Wow.

I did not. I mean, I know that we've read through Malachi before and you've preached through the book of Malachi before, but that, that did not grab me until just now. And it's not without its own opposition because there, there is plenty of evidence of the hearts of the fathers are against the hearts of the children and the hearts of the children are against the hearts of the fathers. So that's going on and we're seeing plenty of eruptions here and there, but there is coming a change. We may not see the change because God's going to be the one bringing that change, but we're already seeing the tremors where people are seeking a better generational understanding.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that people disagree with, with generations and ages, how to worship God, you know, but, and I think of when that woman, that Samaritan woman asked Jesus about how to worship, you know, you say to worship in the temple, but we worship on this mountain and I just don't know which is right, but Jesus kind of gives even another answer here. He's like, there's coming a day when it's not going to matter where you worship.

And that's right. I kind of see that here. Like there's coming a day where no matter how you do your hymns or you do your worship songs or you do your early service or you do your late service, it doesn't matter because one day we're all going to be one generation. Well, that's one of the things that I love so much about the culture that you created here, Dr. Shaw, is that there's, there's lots of opportunities to break down that generational gap. The, the, we are us and you are you like there's not that sense here because we have people of all ages serving in every ministry shoulder to shoulder. And that's how it should be. I mean, going out and doing outreach, serving in children's ministries here, doing things like leading on the worship team in AV.

I mean, you have people who are as young as young teenagers all the way up to people who are senior citizens serving alongside one another. That's right. And this is part of God's plan.

Now, ultimately God's going to do it himself with the coming of Jesus, but he's already using the church. Like what we're doing at Clearview, right? About a month ago we had, or a month and a half ago, we had a big event here. I'm on the board of the executive board of our chamber and being on the executive board, you know, I volunteer, do this and that. And they asked me to teach a seminar on generations, how to get different age groups in a workplace to work together. And I did that back in February and very well attended leading business people, institutions, nonprofits were here. And then next week we're going to have them back here where I'm going to be doing a sort of a panel discussion type thing, or like a game show where we're going to be talking to silent generations, Gen Xers, I'm sorry, millennials and Zs, maybe even sort of the alphas about how they see their world and how best they understand each other's world. So already you see a sign of that here.

That's amazing. It's encouraging because people need to come together. That's God's plan. Like you said, the plan of salvation has always been the same.

The plan of salvation has always been one, but we see things differently. We see the world differently. We see God differently and coming together and seeing those similarities and being strengthened in those similarities.

To me, that's very encouraging. Right. You know, so all that to say is this, that God has given us enough understanding in his word that we know what the future holds and we need to make sure that we're on the right side of history. You know, we're on God's side, biblical side. And if that means standing with Israel, let's do that.

Right. And still proclaiming no matter what generation it is, whether it's pre-cross, cross, post-cross, rapture, no rapture, tribulation, post-tribulation, there's only one name given under heaven by which we can be saved. And that is Jesus Christ. It's only through his cross that we can find hope. We can find forgiveness. You know, Vance Havner used to say, you can give a Bible and a candle to a child of God, then put them in a dungeon.

Even there, he will know more about what is going on in this world than all of Congress and the Pentagon put together. Isn't that true? That's true.

Isn't that true? Yeah. That's a beautiful picture. And so the ending of Malachi then, the great charge to us is, are you ready for that day? Are you sharing the gospel with people?

Are you living out what God has called you to do? Because this day is coming. This comes as a thief in the night, you know, 1 Thessalonians 5, 2.

So you don't know. It could be today. We're not waiting for any prophecy to be fulfilled. It could be today. That's true. Amen.

So good. If you guys enjoyed today's discussion, you enjoyed this series on Malachi, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. You can partner with us financially on that same website. Like we've said, we don't know when that day is coming.

It could be today. Why not partner with us? Join with us.

Be teammates with us as we see to impact the nations with the gospel of Jesus. That's right. I have an email from a user today, or from a listener. It's from Jim G. He's written into the show before, a good friend of ours. He says, I know Dr. Shah is a big cowboy slash western movie fan. Who is your favorite western actor, and what is that actor's best western movie?

I mean, there's so many that I like. I mean, of course, I love John Wayne. I love Clint Eastwood. I know there's spaghetti westerns, but I still like those actors.

Of course, the Maverick series. I just love James Garner. I love James Garner. He's one of my favorite old actors.

Do you all know who I'm talking about? I don't know James Garner. I know John Wayne, and I know Clint Eastwood. And Clint Eastwood. James Garner is just a great actor. He was in Maverick, as well. By this time, Mel Gibson played Maverick in the recent one, I said 20 years ago. James Garner played his dad. He's a great actor. If you ask me for my favorite western character or actor, I would maybe pick James Garner. Nice. Okay.

Very nice. I thought for sure you just said Val Kilmer. Well, Val Kilmer is good playing Doc Holliday in Tombstone, right? But what else do you know about him in westerns?

That's what I was going to say. He played in a western movie, but I don't know that I would classify him as a western actor. That's the only thing. I see. I see. He's a mainstream actor that played in a western.

But did a phenomenal job. For that, I would pick Kurt Russell, all those guys. Kurt Russell. Kirk Russell. Kurt Russell.

Kurt. I'm wrong. By that logic, I guess Will Smith would be a western actor, because he was in Wild West. That's true. Technically. If you want to go that route, technically. Very cool. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on Clear Read Today.