God's Grand Finale - Part 2 (Guest: Jeff Kinley)

Blessings to Israel presents Discerning the Times, a program committed to encouraging you to view current events through the lens of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, please join us for today's program. Welcome to Discerning the Times.

My name is Brian Thomas. So great to be with you as always. This week we are continuing with part two of our discussion with guest Jeff Kinley on his book, God's Grand Finale, in which he so wonderfully writes on the book of Revelation.

So we will bring him in shortly. If you missed last week's program, I encourage you to visit our YouTube channel, Discerning the Times, and just look for God's Grand Finale, part one. Before we bring in my guests, I want to remind you, as we always do, that your eternal state is far more important than your current state.

If you have never received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, life may be going swimmingly for you now, but you are going to have an eternal future separated from God in the lake of fire. So I encourage you today to accept Jesus Christ into your heart, receive the gift, the price that he already paid at Calvary for our sins, and you too can inherit eternal life. So now I want to bring in our guest, Jeff Kinley, back with us again this week, and also my co-host, Dr. Bruce Logan. So, Jeff, so great to have you back with us to discuss God's Grand Finale. Brian and Bruce, it's great to be back with you again. Looking forward to our time.

All right. Thank you so much, and thank you, Dr. Logan, for joining us once again this week as well. Always good to speak with you. Yes, sir. It's a pleasure to be here, and I've been honored to have our special guest on for this week for another episode.

Yeah, it's definitely a privilege to talk with Jeff Kinley. So we're continuing where we left off last week in discussing God's Grand Finale. So, Jeff, to get us going this week, could you speak about the meaning behind the symbols and imagery that is in Revelation, because that's one of the things that trips a lot of people up and I think causes a lot of people to steer clear, because they say they don't understand the symbols and they're afraid of the imagery. So could you speak to that, please?

Absolutely. You know, the thing about some of the symbolic language we see in Revelation is that many times that symbolic language is explained sometimes in the very same verse. And so you'll see, like in Revelation chapter one, he talks about the seven stars that Jesus holds in his hand are the messengers of the seven churches or the pastors of those seven churches. And then there's also figurative language in there that John is using. He doesn't mean to be literal, where he says that I saw that an angel had the face like a lion or the face like a man or like a lamb. He uses that word like dozens of times throughout the book of Revelation. So essentially, the way I approach Revelation is I take everything at face value to be interpreted literally, unless there is a compelling reason for me to say this has to be a symbol. Like, for example, the Bible says that a sword comes out of the mouth of Christ and there may be a symbolic type of sword, but that's really a symbol of his authority, of his speaking and of his judgment that he uses. We go back to other word pictures in the Bible when Jesus said, I am the door.

We know he's not a seven foot piece of wood that swings on a hinge. You know, he's speaking of a way into heaven or the way into heaven. And so there are symbolic words in Revelation, but many, many times throughout the book, that symbolic language is explained for us in the passage.

Yeah. And I remember as a young boy, even before I turned 10 years old, I, I was really fascinated by the book of Revelation. And I remember reading about a beast with seven heads and 10 horns. And I took it as literally that that's what was going to be on the earth. The beast walking around that way. And as I studied and grew in the Lord, I came to realize that, no, it was just symbolism, but I think a lot of people today don't understand when to take it literally and when there is this, this symbolism or imagery. So thank you so much for explaining that so well. Next, I'm going to toss it over to doc to discuss what's really a hot topic is a lot of people want to talk about Antichrist.

So doc, what do you have next? What is the role of the Antichrist in Revelation? And I think this is a very important question, especially in light of our time that we're living in today.

Absolutely. And you know, the Antichrist, we call him the Antichrist. He has many names in Scripture. He's called the man of sin, the son of perdition, the man of lawlessness, the worthless shepherd.

He's called many, many different things. But there are over 100 passages about Antichrist in the Bible. Now, that tells us something that if God would talk that much about him, he must have a primary role in the end times.

And in fact, he does. He's the most talked about figure in the end times narrative, with the exception of Jesus himself. Now, to get an understanding of Antichrist, we have to go back to Daniel, who talks a lot about Antichrist. We see a lot about Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, Revelation Chapter 13. And so kind of get the Google Earth picture first is to see that Satan is the one who's behind all this. Satan was booted out of heaven.

Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. He wanted to be God. He wanted to be worshipped as God. And he has spent the past 6000 plus years trying to accomplish that goal. Well, finally, in the final seven years of Earth's history, he's going to achieve that goal through a man called Antichrist. So essentially, Satan will inhabit and incarnate himself in the Antichrist. He will be a man that will be in charge of a global governance system.

And that kind of gets down to those ten horns and seven heads that Revelation 13 talks about. It's going to be a ten nation confederacy that he's going to rule over the world. And so that's one way Satan is going to get the whole world to worship him. Again, he's the most nefarious human that will ever live on planet Earth. He'll be Adolf Hitler on steroids. He'll be the kind of man that will hate Christians.

He'll hate the Jewish people, hate anyone that names the name of Christ. That's why he's called the Antichrist, which means to be in place of Christ or to be against Christ. And so that's kind of in a nutshell the general portrait we get of Antichrist.

Amen, amen. And I also believe that we are seeing the spirit of that prevalent in our world today when you consider the attacks against traditional biblical Christianity and things of that nature. We can clearly see that there's a spirit of Antichrist that's active in the world right now.

That's so true. In fact, as far back as the first century, in 1 John chapter 2, 1 John chapter 4, John said, look, the spirit of Antichrist is already here. We're already seeing Satan begin to ramp up his efforts in the world.

And if you think about it, any philosophy, belief system, morality, country, cultural practice, group that is against Christ, and by against Christ meaning against the word of Christ, against the character of Christ, against the beliefs that Christ has in his word. All of that is the spirit of Antichrist. So I like to say sometimes that Satan is kind of like a horse in the gate, you know, at the horse race. He wants that gate to open just to be unleashed upon the world. But he's doing a good job right now.

He's alive and he's well on planet Earth. Yeah. Amen. Amen. That is very true, unfortunately.

All right, Jeff. So another area of contention, and I really don't understand why there is so much debate about it, but it relates to the 1000 year reign of Christ. Is there a literal 1000 year reign of Christ mentioned in Revelation?

It is. In fact, it's the first time that we find out that it's 1000 years. I mean, we see throughout the Old Testament the mention of a future reign of Christ. In fact, back in Isaiah Chapter 9, beginning in verse, I believe it's verse 6, that we sing every year for unto us, a child is born, a son is given. But the very next verse says, and the government will rest upon his shoulders and his kingdom will have no end.

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're talking about Jesus' kingdom on the earth, but it's not until Revelation Chapter 20 that we see that it's 1000 years in length. And in fact, six times in seven verses, he uses the number 1000. Now, if God says something one time, it's obviously important. If he says it six times, we ought to take him literally on it.

And so I just believe that if he's going to keep repeating that, he's kind of like the teacher that keeps looking at us and saying, hey, I'm trying to repeat this for a reason here. So that's why it's 1000 years here. Satan is also bound for 1000 years that fits that timeframe as well. So that's where we get the idea that it's 1000 years. And so I just take it as literally there's no compelling reason to take it as some sort of symbolic language. He could have said for a long time or, you know, for an extended period of time, but he didn't.

He used a definite concrete number 1000. Yeah, I think some people get caught up in overthinking and, you know, we try to stress don't overthink it. When you read it, if it can be taken literally, then take it that way. So the next thing I'm going to toss it to Doc to ask a question about the types of Revelation. But before he asked that question, I want to play a clip when you actually touched on this very topic of the types of Revelation.

So I like to say that our universe began with a big God, not a big bang, because God is the one who divinely spoke these things into existence. Now that in Genesis 1 one is what we call revelation. And over the centuries, what God did was he progressively continued to give us his revelation.

I like to think of it like the dimming of the light so that God began turn the lights up so we can see more and more about him. And to the Jewish people and through the Jewish people came the scriptures. That's how we have the scriptures that we have today in our Bible.

And so another reason why Satan hates the Jewish people and hates Israel so much because they gave the world the scriptures. But as God began to continue his revelation, we get to the New Testament and the capstone of that revelation is the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation of Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God to us. Can you explain general revelation, the idea of special revelation and the idea of progressive revelation?

Absolutely. A general revelation would be something that everyone can see. The heavens declare the handiwork of God.

Romans chapter one says that from the created order, we can deduce some things about the creator that he is infinite, that he's all powerful, that he's divine, that he's not us, that he's different from us. And so general revelation is just what it is. It gives us a general idea of who God is. A specific revelation is when God says, all right, now I'm going to fill in the blanks for you.

I mean, like the wheel of fortune, I'm going to fill in all the vowels and tell you who I am. And a specific revelation is what God wrote in the scripture and ultimately what God gave us through Jesus Christ, who is the perfect representation of God. The word became flesh in John 114 and dwelt among us.

Verse 18 says we beheld his glory, glories of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth. So God essentially exegeted or explained himself through the person of Jesus Christ. That's specific revelation. Now, progressive revelation is the idea that God couldn't give all the information about himself in one bite, in one lump sum. So he essentially revealed it over time.

Just like when you read a book or watch a movie, you're getting tidbits of information that add up, that help you know more about the storyline, the character, whatever, by the end of the movie. God did that because he knew that no human being could really swallow and digest all the information he wanted to give us about him in one sitting. So that's what the Bible is all about. The Bible is a book of progressive revelation.

And of course, again, as I said in the clip, the capstone is Jesus Christ. And what's amazing is God ends his revelation of himself to us with a book called Revelation. In fact, the word revelation means to reveal or to unveil. And so rather than hiding himself from us, he ends his Bible by not only tell us what's going to happen in the future, but he says, I want to tell you who I am and don't forget who I am.

So that's why we outline these, you know, outline these 13 attributes of God in the book. So so, yeah, that's a general revelation, specific revelation and then progressive revelation, damming the lights up just a little bit at a time so we can adjust to that knowledge. And I think another area in which that that is the approach of this progressive revelation is when it comes to the mark of the beast, because we know for ages, people have speculated about it and had theories on it. And it's been a lot of talk here over the past few years, especially there's been an uptick in the discussion because of what we've seen recently happening throughout the world. So I want to ask you, Jeff, about the mark of the beast.

But before I do, I want to share another clip of you speaking again at Understanding the Times one night conference in which you touched on this subject. And right now we're living in a time where the kings of the earth are trying to push a mandate of fear upon the populace. We have presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, premiers, popes, you name it.

They want to spread this narrative of fear. And the Bible says in Isaiah 40 that all God has to do is simply blow on them like dust on the scales and they scatter to the wind. All the rulers of this world, my friend, are simply dust in the wind to Jesus Christ.

He is the ruler over the rulers of the king of the world. That's one of the first things that John learns. So, Jeff, we know over the past several years, because of COVID-19, there have been mandates and there have been fear.

Do you see that as something that Antichrist is going to use as a method to usher in his mark of the beast? I think it's pretty clear, to be honest, Brian. When I look at what we've been through, I mean, we began with a crisis.

The crisis created fear. The authorities came in and said, no, here, here, we'll make it all fine. You just need to follow what we do. Do what we tell you to do. Take this. Don't do this.

Wear this. And in the end, it was really all about control. You have to control the masses in order to get what you want and to rule over them. I think that the pattern of that from crisis all the way to control is what Satan's going to use in the last days.

And we've seen that just with the grooming of what's been going on. And there are other crises that I believe are going to come that they're going to try to capitalize on. But if you think about in a post rapture world, we can only imagine the absolute catastrophic chaos that the rapture event is going to create on this planet.

When hundreds of millions of people, of believers in Jesus suddenly vanish from this earth, there's going to be a void that is going to just explode into panic, anxiety, violence, just upheaval in every area of society all over the planet. So someone's going to have to come in and bring a relative sense of peace and calm to that. And how is he going to do that? He's going to promise them they're going to get something in return. You're going to have peace, you're going to have safety, but you have to do this for me.

And so in order to buy, in order to sell, you're going to have to take my mark. And of course, in Scripture's narrative, there's so much more we could talk about this. I wrote a whole book about the Antichrist, but you know, Antichrist is going to suffer a fatal head wound. He's going to die.

He's going to rise from the dead. He's going to claim to be God. He's going to invade the Jewish temple. He's going to go after the Jewish people.

He's going to slaughter Christians by the millions. And Scripture tells us that the mark of the beast will be his way to essentially get the world to worship him and to get the world to participate in his digital economy. The only way the Antichrist can rule the whole world is digitally.

You can't touch people on the planet unless you're somehow connected to them. And virtually every person on the planet has some access to the digital world. And so I believe with the digital economy that's being produced in over 100 countries right now, doing away with paper money and all going to digitally, what that'll mean is that every human transaction that you make, which is everything you do, will be traceable, it'll be trackable, it'll be programmable, and it'll be expirable. In other words, they will control your money. So in essence, if you eat too much meat, your meat allowance will have been spent for the month.

You can't do that. If you use too much gasoline, if you travel more than 10 miles from your home, they'll be able to curtail and control everything about you. And people in that day, because of the crisis and because of the fear, will gladly take the mark of the beast on their right hand, it says in Revelation 13, 16, or on their forehead. So it's a real horrific time to live. Satan will once again deceive the masses.

He'll promise things that he can't deliver on. And in the end, they'll sell their souls to the devil is what will end up happening. Yeah. And just as a follow up to that, we're not here today, of course, to talk about whether someone should have taken the shot or not.

And folks, you know what I mean when I say shot. But do people have to worry, Jeff, as to whether they've taken the mark of the beast? I remember a lot of people were worried saying, is this the mark of the beast? No, and people ask me that, they say, well, is this particular thing the mark of the beast? I said, no, it's not, because in order to have the mark of the beast, you have to first have a beast. In other words, in order to have the mark of Antichrist, you got to first know that Antichrist is here and he's in charge.

Well, he's definitely not. There's not a one world leader in charge right now, but it is coming. It will come during the tribulation. And what's a very interesting kind of as a follow up to that is that Revelation 14, beginning in verse 9, says that every single person who takes the mark of the beast will seal their eternal destiny and they will end up in the lake of fire.

So in other words, no one will take the mark and then feel sorry that they took it and try to come to Christ. They by that point will not want Christ. They'll want the beast. They'll want Satan. They'll want the mark so they can have that economic freedom.

And so all those who take the mark will ultimately end up in the lake of fire. I think that the protocol for the COVID-19 phenomenon was a grooming mechanism for planet Earth. I mean, how easy was it to get billions of people just to do whatever you told them to do? And it wasn't like they were saying, hey, if you don't mind, would you mind wearing a mask on an airplane? No, it was like you can't fly unless you wear the mask.

You can't buy in my store unless you bring a mask in. All these mandates that we were given. And this was just child's play compared to the ultra panic and fear that's going to grip the whole planet Earth after the rapture.

COVID was nothing, but COVID was an easy step to get people to comply with whatever mandates they did. But the Antichrist is going to take it to a whole other level. I think that three things on that.

Number one is that we're we kind of still have that leftover mentality. Many of us do, including Christians, that government knows best. Government will take care of us. Government will come in.

They'll save the day. And we're finding out that there can be good governments. There can be godless governments. There could be governments that embrace godless values.

And those are the kind of governments that are very difficult to trust, obviously. Second thing is, I think that people were really under we talked to our young people about peer pressure, about not going along with the crowd. Well, peer pressure is alive and well in adulthood across the world because people were afraid to speak out against the narrative. In fact, people lost their jobs if they even spoke out or if they even questioned the quote unquote science. The third thing is, is that it does tell us, I think, how undiscerning the body of Christ is. And George Barna did a huge study about Bible reading during the pandemic. He found out that during the pandemic that only 18 percent of Christians read their Bibles once a week. Fourteen percent read them once a day.

But during the very core of the pandemic, he did a follow up study. He found out that that 14 percent dropped to nine percent. So you've got nine percent of professing Christians who are reading their Bibles every day. And then we expect the body of Christ to know how to live, walk and recognize Satan's schemes or worldly philosophies. And they're just not able.

They're children who are taking candy from a stranger because they don't have that discernment because they're not in the word of God. Amen. And Jeff, you know, we've touched on it already, but do you have any more to add? We've already talked about covid-19, but are there any other things that you would add concerning current events and how it is pointing to Revelation? Yeah, there's so much there we could talk about.

I'll just get some of the highlights here. One of them is just the idea of globalism. And during the covid pandemic, there began to be immediate calls for a global governance system.

Everybody from Prince Charles to the former secretary of the United Nations to Klaus Schwab, who heads up the World Economic Forum. They're all saying now is the time for governments to lay aside their differences, to come together in unity. We need one world government. Well, that is exactly what the Bible says is going to happen. And all we need is a big enough crisis for all the countries to say we need each other bad enough.

Let's form one government. So that's something that is ongoing that they're trying to push forward right now. The other thing is just in terms of the digital economy, as I mentioned before, the more we get closer to the digital economy, the more the infrastructure for Antichrist global governance system can be set up. Now, there's nothing wrong with transacting digitally. We already have over 50 percent of our transactions in America happen digitally.

You pay with your credit card, your debit card or whatever, Apple Pay. There's nothing inherently wrong about that. But it's when the government gets in charge of that and they can start mandating what you can do and can't do, that gets more into the spirit of Antichrist. So the digital economy is another one. Another one would be just the Jewish temple. Scripture says there has to be a Jewish temple during those final seven years of the tribulation.

Well, there's not a Jewish temple now, but the Jewish Temple Institute has already put everything together, including training the priests, writing up the blueprints, drawing up all the plans. They're just waiting for that real estate on the Temple Mount to be made available. And there's some prophecies concerning Ezekiel 38 and 39 that I think can make that happen towards the beginning of the tribulation period. And then I just say this, too, finally, is that the scripture prophesies there'll be apostasy in the church, a great falling away from the doctrines of the faith. And Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse three, that before Antichrist can be revealed, there has to be a massive falling away. And we're seeing that with whole denominations embracing homosexuality, homosexual marriage, transgender.

We're having Drag Queen story hour in churches now. And so people, because they're undiscerning, they're allowing everything to kind of flow into the church. And that, too, is a sign of the last days. What is the ultimate message of revelation for Christians today? I'd say the ultimate message from Revelation is that Jesus Christ is coming back.

He's coming back to planet Earth. If you look at the whole Bible, the first part of the Bible, the Old Testament says someone is coming. The New Testament says someone has come. And then Revelation says someone is coming again. Jesus Christ has promised to make a return engagement back to this planet. And it's going to happen during those last days in the book of Revelation. So it behooves all of us if we're Christians to prepare ourselves for the coming bridegroom at the rapture.

If someone is not a believer, they don't want to face Christ at the second coming because he will come back as the judge of the nations. And so that would be the kind of the final message is to wake up, to look at who God is, to engage him. And then I think Revelation 1910 says it best. It says that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. In other words, if you read Revelation and you don't get closer to Jesus, you don't know Jesus better, then you've read it wrong.

You need to make sure that Revelation brings you closer to the person of Jesus Christ. That's why God wrote it. Amen.

Great way to close this out. And Jeff, I echo the words of my co-host that has been such a blessing to have you. How can the listeners get a copy of this book, God's Grand Finale?

Yeah, just go to Amazon.com or your favorite resource, online resource for books and you can find it there. And you find out more about my ministry at Jeffkinley.com. All right. Well, again, it's such a blessing to have you. We thank you for coming on today and we look forward to connecting with you again in the future. I look forward to that as well. Blessings all mine, brothers.

All right. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. Please come back and join us again next week as we continue to encourage you to discern the times by viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel until the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

Amen. Thank you for tuning in to Discerning the Times. Please come back and join us next week as we continue to encourage you to view current events through the lens of the Bible. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God. Discerning the Times is presented by Blessings to Israel.