Welcome friends to the Line of Fire broadcast. Does the Bible talk about the days we're living in today, the conflict between Israel and Iran? Is that prophesied, the role of Russia or China or America? Is that prophesied in the Bible?
The Gog Magog War, what exactly is that? What about all this talk about red heifers and the rebuilding of the temple? Is that something we should pay attention to? We got you covered here. We're going to answer all those questions. Right here on the Line of Fire as we do a series on the end times and Bible prophecy all this month. There's a book we're using along with this.
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Thelineoffire.org. All right. Today, I want to take you on my own journey in faith. I mentioned last week that I heard about pre-trib rapture, the second coming, before I really even heard the whole gospel. Because my friends, as we played in a band together, non-believers doing drugs, 14, 15, 16 years old, as we hung out and played in our band and got high, they started to go to a little church hearing the gospel preached. But they were really fascinated by teaching on Bible prophecy.
Remember, we weren't saved at this point. And it sounded like, wow, that's really interesting. The Book of Revelation, kind of fascinating to someone that's used to sitting around doing drugs and hallucinating.
It's like, wow, that stuff is wild, far out. Well, little by little, they're hearing these things. They're not saved yet.
They're telling me about them. So I heard about all this end time scenario and Jesus coming any moment in a rapture. I probably heard that more than I heard the basic gospel message until my friends really started to come to know the Lord and then really preach the gospel to me and my need to be saved. But all that to say, it was just a given to me that I believe this. Because that's what my church taught.
And my church, I understood, had the purest doctrine out there. You know, it reminds me of a story, friends. There was a guy who loved to have burgers. His mom would cook him a burger every single day when he lived at home. And then he got married.
And every day his wife would cook him a burger. And she said, hey, honey, how is it today? He goes, oh, it's good, but it's not like mommy used to make. It was frustrating her a little.
You think as a wife, you know, you don't want to be compared to the mother-in-law all the time. And your cooking's not quite good enough. But she tried every day. She tried to make it better. He goes, oh, and that's real good, but it's not like mommy used to make. Well, one day she got distracted on a phone call, forgot the burger was cooking.
It got like, it was overcooked to the point, it was like a hockey puck. And she said, oh, hon, I got to throw this out. I'll make you another burger.
He goes, no, no, no, it's fine. Just give it to me. Don't worry about it. You work so hard. It's fine. Just give it to me.
All right. So she puts it in a bun and he's like, oh, God, crunch, bite, breaks a piece off. And he goes, mmm, just like mommy used to make. I got saved. I was a brand new believer. You know, it also reminds me of what I grew up with.
My mom and dad, the most amazing, wonderful, loving, affirming parents you could ask for. But my mom was not like a great cook. So when she would make spaghetti and meatballs, remember, I've only had it in my home. She would use tomato soup for the sauce. Yeah. Some of you cooks are like, oh, especially Italian.
You're kind of groaning. She would use tomato soup. For the sauce. That's what I grew up with.
So I'm now about 18, 19 years old. I'm preaching at a church in Pennsylvania and staying with an Italian family. So if you know anything about Italian families, the cooking at home is even better than the cooking in the restaurants. So they serve spaghetti and meat. Oh, I almost gagged on it.
I was trying to figure out how do I get this down without choking on it? Well, in retrospect, I'm sure it was delicious. It was probably highly delectable, but I was used to different cooking. I thought that you had tomato soup and that's what you use for the sauce.
When I had real Italian sauce, I wasn't used to it. All that to say the only cooking I knew was the cooking in my church. So I compared every other church to our church. And I was so glad that I got saved in a church that had the purest doctrine, because that's the doctrine that I knew. Now, all the foundations were good. All the foundations in terms of the word of God and who Jesus was and God's trinitarian nature and other foundations in scripture, salvation only through the cross or need to evangelize, holy living.
All those were rock solid basic foundations. I've never moved from those. But I just assumed the teaching on the end times was true and any books I read about it just reinforced that. So now, by the time I'm saved a year, I'm so hungry for the Lord and the things of God and I have a light high school schedule. I'm spending every day between six and seven hours alone with God in the word and prayer, literally every day without fail for months. I'm reading the word two hours a day. I'm memorizing scripture one hour a day. I used to memorize 20 verses in an hour and they stayed with me. And then I was praying at least three hours a day.
So if you ask me what I believe, what do I believe in this doctrine or that doctrine? I was like a machine gun. And I give you boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, verse after verse, after verse, after verse, chapter verse, exact reference quoted to you perfectly in the King James like a machine gun.
OK, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. One day there was a fellow named Joe. I lived to the Lord in high school and he said, Mike, I'm a little confused about the rapture and the second coming. And I was reading Matthew 24 and I don't really see where it's rapture, where it's second coming.
I'm confused. So I had memorized all of Matthew 24 at that point, but I read it through with him and I thought, well, it is kind of confusing because it looks like the same group of people here. Now, these Jewish disciples, not like Jewish disciples versus the church. So as I understand it today, it's speaking of Jewish disciples in the first century and Jewish disciples at the end of the age, the same group for a century end of the age. But if the rapture preview was right, then there was there was speaking to Jewish believers here, but then the church here and it seemed separate. So I said, boy, I just don't know that much about that subject. I'm going to have to study more because I just assumed that the elders in the church being elders and pastor, that they knew better than I knew.
Now, it struck me as odd, though, I thought, you know, everything else I can tell you why I believe what I believe, everything else. I can give you all the scripture just by reading the Bible on my own. In other words, I didn't get it from a book. I didn't get it from theology textbook. I didn't get it from Sunday school classes. Yes, the church preached these things, but I got these things reading the Bible on my own.
Yes, I believe this, this, this, this, this for the following reasons. When it came to rapture, second coming, I taught what I had been taught, but I didn't get it from the Bible on my own. It raised a question to me.
I thought, isn't that odd? Why is it that I got everything else just reading the Bible on my own, but not this? Nonetheless, because I was sure it was right, I began to buy books. After I was saved a couple of years, I started reading a lot more books.
The church encouraged you first year or two, read the Bible more than anything, which I did. Now I'm starting to read other books too. I remember I got John Walvoord, famous professor from Dallas Theological Seminary, and numerous books that he wrote about the end times. And then J. Dwight Pentecost had a big book about 500 pages, Things to Come, and I devoured that. I was amazed to see these other systems and how wrong they were and how clearly this dispensational view, this pre-trib rapture view was so clearly taught in the Bible. And I mastered the scheme, and I became very dogmatic on it. I remember in college that a minister came in and gave a talk about the end times and gave the different views.
And I went up to him afterwards, I was a young whippersnapper, but I went up to him afterwards and kind of corrected him. Like, no, they're not different views, there's this view. The other views are wrong.
And he was smiling, he was polite to me, I'm sure he was used to my kind, but no, no, this is the view, this is the right view. And I was dogmatic on it. I'd read the books that only reinforced what I believed.
Okay, now someone starts circulating a book, some of us start reading it, some of the young people. It was by a fellow named Dave McPherson. It was like a detective book where he was saying the whole origins of the pre-trib rapture, they don't go back in the Bible.
They don't go back through church history. They started with these two sisters prophesying who claimed to get a revelation in the 1830s in England. And then it was spread by J.N.
Darby and then popularized by the Schofield Reference Bible. And it's not in the Bible, it's some new revelation that people came up with and it got passed on since then. Now, the book, to me, raised a lot of questions, but it didn't make an airtight case. What it reminded me of, though, was the fact that, wait a second, everything else that I believe, I did not have to read another book to explain why I believed it, because just reading the Bible day and night for those months, you know, going through the Bible about five times the first couple of years I was saved, and memorizing maybe four thousand verses, that it was clear to me why I believed what I believed. But this was the one thing where I had to read other books to tell me why I believed this. So I thought, you know, I'm saved now at this point four or five years. I need to reexamine what Scripture says.
All right, we'll be right back and we'll continue on our journey in the end times and my personal journey as well. I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health. I have never met anyone deficient in caffeine or sugar, but I have met many people deficient in energy supporting vitamin B12. Unlike other oral B12 supplements, Alfred Libby's slow dissolve Super B12 is fast acting because the formula is scientifically developed to dissolve under the tongue, bypassing the digestive process, making it immediately available for use in the body. Alfred Libby's slow dissolve Super B12 is also formulated with other natural energy supporting ingredients such as folate, ginseng root and other natural ingredients.
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Call 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com. Okay, welcome back to the broadcast. Michael Brown, delighted to be with you here to equip you and empower you to help you engage in the world in which you live, in the world in which you serve. If you have a question that you'd like me to answer on the air about the end times, about the return of Jesus, about Israel and Bible prophecy. If you have a question, you can shoot us a note through thelineoffire.org.
Just click on contact. You can shoot us a note there, thelineoffire.org. When you do, we'll either respond directly to you with our team or if it's something that's going to be relevant to the broadcast, I'll answer on the air in one of the shows later on in the month.
But now is a great time to get your questions in through thelineoffire.org. So here's what happened. I began to look at versus and they began to raise questions for me. I said to myself, do I believe in a preacher rapture and everything else that unfolds with it because it is clearly written in the Bible or do I believe in it because I was taught this and found it in scripture. So there's some little things that started to come up that got my attention.
So let me let me give you an example. Let's say I say to you, listen, I need you to go to the airport for me tonight at seven o'clock. Uncle Fred is coming in from Cincinnati.
It'll be Delta Flight 941 from Cincinnati. Can you pick up Uncle Fred at the airport? Uncle Fred's about six foot four. Looks like a lumberjack. He's got this big beard. Big guy. You can't miss him. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do you need me to do anything else?
Yeah, I need you then to go back to the airport at 10 at night. Uncle Fred is coming in from Atlanta. He will be on American Airlines Flight number 461.
It's hard to miss Uncle Fred. He's real short. He's like four foot 10. He's bald. His face is kind of red. He'll have some bright shirt on.
You won't miss him. He'll be coming in. Can you pick him up?
And you would say, I'm a little confused. You told me Uncle Fred is coming in at seven. Then you told me Uncle Fred is coming in at 10. Then you told me Uncle Fred is flying Delta. Then you told me Uncle Fred is flying American Airlines. You told me he's coming in from Cincinnati. Then you told me he's coming in from Atlanta. Then you told me he's six foot four with a beard.
Looks like a lumberjack. Then you told me he's four foot 10 and bald and bright clothes. I am confused. You say, what's that got to do with the Second Coming? Well, I began to look at the vocabulary that the New Testament used for the alleged rapture and Second Coming as two separate events separated by seven years or at least three and a half years. And I thought, but it's the same vocabulary. The same words are being used.
How is that? In other words, if I say to you right, first we have the Second Coming followed by the Second Coming. There's the Second Coming, which is a secret event, then the Second Coming, which is a public event. You'd say, I'm confused. Then you have to say there's a rapture, then there's a Second Coming. Except the vocabulary that was used in the New Testament, different nouns that were used about the Second Coming and the rapture, they were all the same. I thought that would be very confusing unless they are part of the same event.
In other words, you have two choices. Jesus comes in the clouds and doesn't actually touch down on earth, right? He comes in the clouds.
It's secret and invisible. At least the world won't see him. And then we are caught up to meet him, dead in Christ, rise first. We're caught up to meet him. And he returns and goes back to heaven where we stay with him for seven years and feast and rejoice while all hell breaks loose on the earth. And then after that time we return with him. So he turns around and goes back. That's one option, right?
Separated by seven years. The other option is he appears for the entire world to see. We are then in full view of everyone, caught up to meet him, dead in Christ, rise. We are caught up to meet him in the air, glorified with him. And now we turn around and come back. Right?
Either he turns around and goes all the way back to heaven with us or we turn around and escort him back to earth. It's one event. That's why there aren't two different words that are used for it. That's why it's not rapture and second coming.
It's because it's one event. So I started to look at the vocabulary. And then as I dug a little deeper, which we'll do in the next broadcast, as I dug a little deeper into the different Greek words that were used concerning his return, I saw they didn't refer to a secret rapture but to a public event where the Lord actually arrived here on the earth. So that began to shift my understanding.
And then there are some other things that I thought about. Matthew 13, 40 to 42. I understand it's a parable, but there are principles in the parable. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age, Jesus says. The son of man will send out his angels and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and then the next verse, then the righteous will shine like the sun. So first the wicked are weeded out. I thought back to the verses that two will be in the field, one will be taken in the other left. What if it means one will be taken in judgment? That's what it means, one will be taken. So the wicked are taken in judgment and then the righteous rejoice as opposed to the righteous being taken first. I thought, well that's interesting. Then I began to think of these verses about the last trumpet.
We know 1 Corinthians 15 verses 51 to 53 say, Listen, I tell you a mystery, we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, the devil be raised imperishable, and we will be changed, for the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality. So when will this happen at the last trumpet? Now would you agree that last means last? Would you agree that if it's trumpet number 3 out of 10 that it's not last? Or trumpet number 6 out of 10 it's not last?
Or trumpet 1 out of 2 it's not the last one? Okay, so Matthew 24, 31, it tells us that at the after, after the tribulation, that Jesus will send his angels, Matthew 24, and that will go in verse 31. He'll send them with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other. So the trumpet call will be after the tribulation of those days. 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 16 and 17, for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so will be with the Lord forever. So when he's coming for us, he's coming with the blast of the trumpet, the last trumpet according to 1 Corinthians 15, but it explicitly says that that's after the tribulation in Matthew 24. And then Revelation 11, the seventh trumpet of seven sounds, and it stated there, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he'll reign forever and ever.
And I said to myself, you know what? The last trumpet really is the last one. There's not going to be the trumpet of the rapture and then a trumpet after that. The trumpet of the rapture is the same trumpet as the trumpet after the tribulation of those days, when everything comes to pass, when all the promises that he's given are worked out now, and we've been preserved in the midst of fire and attack. At the end, after the tribulation of those days, the Lord comes with a loud trumpet.
That's the last trumpet. That's when we're caught up. I thought, it's one and the same event.
It's two sides of the same coin. And that's why I never saw the pre-trib rapture and the whole system reading it on my own because there's only one second coming, not a second coming and a third coming. There's not a second coming that almost reaches the earth and then a third coming where he actually arrives. No, there's one second coming, and it's in front of the whole world when he catches us up to see him and to be with him. And then we escort him back as he destroys the wicked.
Talk about an end time picture of triumph. Wow. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to TheLineOfFire.org, TheLineOfFire.org, and click donate.
