God's Grand Finale - Part 1 (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. 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.

And Hebrews chapter one tells us that He is the exact radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His nature. And so God began to continue to inspire throughout the New Testament and then we come, here we are, to the book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation, God gives His final written word to the church and ultimately to mankind. It's the last thing He will ever say in print. And I don't know if you know this or not, but last words are lasting words. When Jesus spoke those words on the Mount of Olives, those were some of the last words He gave to His disciples concerning the apocalypse. And so, as we think about last words, we think that God had one final crowning conclusion, one chapter to the right, one grand finale.

Welcome to Discerning the Times. My name is Brian Thomas, always a blessing to be with you. And that voice in the opening clip was of our guest today, Jeff Kinley, and he is here to speak on the book of Revelation and his recent book that he authored concerning that exact book, Revelation, titled God's Grand Finale. But before I bring him in, I want to remind you that your eternal state is far more important than your current state. If you have never received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I encourage you to do so today. He has already paid the price for sin, but you have to accept it.

And if you have never received Him, your eternity will be spent in the lake of fire separated from God. So please, will you come to Jesus Christ on today? All right, folks, so we are again excited and very honored. And it's just a privilege to have Jeff Kinley here with us today to speak on his recent book, again, God's Grand Finale on the book of Revelation. So, Jeff, so great to have you here today. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to speak with us. Brian, Bruce, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

All right. And my co-host, Dr. Bruce Logan, is here to interview Jeff Kinley today as well. And I'll bring him in shortly. But a little bit about Jeff Kinley. He is a pastor, has been a pastor for 30 plus years, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. He hosts a weekly television program, The King is Coming. He also hosts Jeff Kinley live on his channel. He's the host of Prophecy Prose podcast and the Vintage Truth podcast. And he's been on multiple national television shows and radio shows. So he's definitely a very busy man.

So we are so grateful to have him today with us. So we're going to start out with the first question, Jeff, again, as you have written here about Revelation, which is my favorite book in all of the Bible. And I liken men like you and I and Bruce Logan to firefighters. And what I mean by that is when firefighters, what they do is they run to the fire when everybody else is running away from it, they're running to it. And so when everyone is running away from Revelation, we run to it. But that's not the best illustration because, of course, a fire is destructive. It can bring harm. And we know Revelation does not bring harm. It's not destructive.

It's actually a blessing. But to get us started, can you share with us the difference? Explain, if you will, the difference between Satan's wrath and God's wrath when we look at Revelation? Yeah, well, when you really look at the whole Bible, you see this dichotomy of there's times when God unleashes his wrath. There's times when man and Satan unleash their wrath.

Throughout scripture, we're never really promised exemption from man's wrath. I think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They went to the fire. I think of Daniel in the lion's den.

He went into the lion's den. And so there are times when we do suffer under man's wrath. And the church today in over 60 countries is suffering under a man's wrath being persecuted in various forms.

And of course, the early church experienced that as well. So there's never a promise that we won't suffer. In fact, Jesus said in John 16, in the world, you're going to have trouble. You're going to have tribulation.

But I've overcome the world. But we contrast that with God's wrath. When God unleashes his wrath, then we are always spared from that. We think about Noah and the flood. We think about Lot being removed out of Sodom and Gomorrah before God's wrath fell on those cities. We think about Enoch before the flood. He was raptured to heaven.

We think about Elijah being taken up to heaven. So there are many examples in scripture of us being spared God's wrath. And of course, we believe that God's wrath fell on Jesus at the cross and that he said it is finished. And so therefore, Romans 8 one says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that's why we make a distinction between suffering man's wrath, which no Christian is exempt from, and suffering God's wrath, which he has promised to spare us from, according to 1 Thessalonians 1 10 and 1 Thessalonians 5 9.

Yeah. And I will touch more on the different views of the rapture and when they take place. But that is why we all here believe that we do not go through the tribulation for that very purpose, that we are not appointed to God's wrath. And also, what can we learn from Revelation or what can we learn about Revelation from the first 10 words of scripture? Well, it's very interesting when you look at the very beginning of the Bible, you know, people at the Bible look at when people look at the Bible, they see Revelation, they see also the Book of Genesis.

And these are two like great bookends on God's grand bookshelf of those 66 books of the Bible. But there was a man in the 1800s, about 1860 or so, named Herbert Spencer. He was actually an evolutionist. And he said there are five principles by which we can understand everything we need to know about the universe. He said it's time, force, energy, space and matter.

He said those five principles will explain everything you need to know. And yet when you read the first 10 words of scripture, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, that's time. God, that's force. Created, that's energy. Heavens, that's space.

And earth, that's matter. And so unbeknownst to Herbert Spencer, God explained everything we needed to know in the very first verse of the Bible. And he continues that, Brian, all the way to the end of scripture, where we get the great explanation, not about the beginning of the world, but about the end of the world and eternity. So now we will pull in my co-host, Dr. Bruce Logan. Doc, what do you have for your next question for Jeff?

Well, first of all, I just want to just say how honored and privileged I am, just to reiterate what you said, to have Jeff on. One common source of confusion when it comes to Revelation is the use of violent and apocalyptic imagery, such as the plagues and judgments as described in the text. Some readers have a tendency to struggle to reconcile this imagery with the idea of a loving and merciful God.

What would you have to say about that? Well, I think sometimes as human beings, we tend to want to make God in our own image or at least create God the way we think He should be. And typically, Jesus has sort of been characterized as the good guy in the story, and the Father in the Old Testament sort of being characterized as the old mean grandfather kind of thing. And yet, Scripture doesn't paint that portrait at all.

In fact, Scripture paints a portrait of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, having many attributes that are in perfect harmony and alignment with one another. For example, God's love is a holy love. God's grace is a holy grace. God is also righteous. He's compassionate. He's forgiving. He's also wrathful and vengeful. And those things are not contradictory to one another, and I'll put it in human terms. For example, if there was a little girl in the neighborhood who was suddenly kidnapped and taken away by this heinous criminal, and he did horrible things to her, there's a part of us that is the justice part of us that says, hey, he needs to be caught.

He needs to be punished for what he did. That's sort of man's righteousness or what I call a common grace righteousness in effect. In reality, we all do want God to be righteous. We want him to bring justice. We want him to make all the rights, all the wrongs into right.

We want him to put the world, set the world right again. And so that's just an expression of God doing that. Now, where we kind of hold off and we don't want God to go any further is when God starts dealing with our sin and with sins that we may think are okay these days. But God is a holy God.

He has very high standards and the wrath and anger of God really fell on Jesus at the cross. And had that not happened, then we wouldn't be able to be saved. So we ought to be really thankful for the righteousness and the holiness and the wrath of God. And I would just say one more thing is that God is very patient and his wrath, he holds off his wrath for a long time. But there comes a time where God says, my patience has run out. Here comes the wrath. And that's what's going to happen during the last days.

Yeah. And I definitely say God has been patient with me and I'm so grateful for that because I know there are times when I'm sure God is saying, why can't you get it right? But he is again a patient and merciful God. But as you said, the time today is going to come when he's going to say, okay, time's up.

You have to make a decision. So, so we're today discussing Jeff Kinley's book, God's grand finale, looking at the book of Revelation. And so Jeff, you touched on it in your last response, but there's another area of confusion. And that is when God is depicted as vengeful, the vengeful judge, and particularly in the context of final judgment. And there are people who struggle with the idea that God would condemn people to eternal punishment.

I hear people all the time say, how can a loving God seeing people to hail? And there are those who find this portrayal of God to be inconsistent with the teaching of love and forgiveness that is found elsewhere in the Bible. So how should they view the book of Revelation in light of this? Well part of the book of Revelation is part of the story.

If you think about Revelation sort of like a movie, there are different parts of the movie, different parts of the story. And in these chapters, really chapter 6 through 19 in Revelation, it tells the story of God basically saying that it's time for earth to pay for its sins. And so God essentially brings a series of judgments called the seal judgments, the trumpet judgments, and the bowl judgments. And these are each seven judgments each that he unleashes out on the earth. And part of the thing we need to understand is that the Bible clearly describes God as a God of wrath, a God that will make people pay for their sin.

And I've heard it said that all sin will either be paid for at the cross of Jesus Christ or in eternity. And so God is just really giving people really an appetizer about what hell and the lake of fire is going to be like when he unleashes these judgments. So this is who God is and that's a part of his holiness and his wrath.

And we also have to keep in mind too, I think Brian, is that we are the creation. As Paul said in Romans chapter 9, we're the clay and he's the potter. So the clay doesn't get to say to the potter, why do you do the things that you do? He's the potter and he's God. He's sovereign.

He can do whatever he wants to do. And we're simply the clay. And so a smart piece of clay is going to say, hey, I want to put myself into the master's hands and let him use me for good instead of fighting against him. So God is in charge of planet earth. He's going to send climate change on steroids during the tribulation period. It's going to be a horrific time of climate upheaval. There's going to be massive judgments. There's going to be famine and wars and death up to a half of earth population is going to be destroyed.

There's going to be a planetary power outage is going to happen. All these things are going to take place because God is a wrathful God. And the good news is the way to avoid that is to find your shelter in Jesus Christ. And I believe he'll shield you from all that and save you from it.

Yeah. I love the way you put that Jeff, because you're right. God is the creator.

He's the potter and he owes us no explanation for anything. Uh, so that's, that's very well said. Uh, doc, I think you want to talk to him now about the different interpretations when it comes to the, the role of Jesus in revelation.

Yeah. Um, there, there are different interpretations of the role of Jesus in the book of revelations, which can lead to confusion about the character of God. Uh, some see Jesus as a warrior King, uh, the lion of the tribe of Judah, for instance, uh, who will bring judgment upon the earth while others see him as a compassionate and merciful savior who will bring salvation to humanity. Can both of these things be true about our savior?

Well, absolutely. As you look at revelation, again, the portrait, there's a portrait of Christ that emerges throughout the book. In fact, I outlined 13 different attributes of, of our great God throughout the book of revelation. And we see Christ, first of all, being the exalted glorified Christ, uh, in chapter one, it's a, I call it the unfamiliar Jesus, because it's not a Christ that people preach about very much in churches. They're always talking about Christ as meek and mild, and he handed it out fish and bread and all that stuff, you know, in the new Testament, which he did. But John sees a glorified Christ. He sees this Christ who is exalted. Uh, he has a hair as white as wool. His eyes are a flame of fire.

Uh, his feet are burnished bronze. He's this glorified Christ so much so that John falls on his face and absolute trauma at seeing this Christ. And so there's this exalted Christ. And then Jesus turns to his bride in the seven churches and he says, Hey, I've got some, you and I going to talk.

And so he takes the church to the woodshed, if you will, and, uh, and rebukes her and helps her get her life back together again. And then in chapters, uh, it's really six through 19, we have two things. We have God and Jesus as the wrathful God, but also a God of great grace because there's a massive revival that takes place during the tribulation period of people from every tribe, every nation, every tongue, every language group and ethnicity. So it's a beautiful thing of God's grace. Uh, and then at the end of Revelation, we see Jesus coming back at the battle of Armageddon as that warrior king. So if you will, it's not that God wears many hats, it's just that he is expressing his character appropriately to the right audience based upon how that audience relates to him. So you've got the bride, you've got John, you've got those who dwell on the earth, the unbelievers, and you've got those in Armageddon. So that's part of that narrative, part of that story, uh, that God does in revealing himself. Amen.

Amen. I'm often hear about people who or discuss with people who just look at Jesus as this all loving and all kind God and all kinds savior. And then often they tend to forget that he actually chased the money changers out with a whip. So a lot of times, you know, we don't have the exact, uh, perception of him. Um, but the way you outlined it was just wonderful. Um, so I thank you for that.

No, you bet. I mean, you think about John in John chapter five, I believe where Jesus says the father has given all judgment into the hands of the son. So the son of God is the one who actually is going to be acting as judge throughout the book of Revelation.

You go back as far as the flood, if you think about it, there were perhaps billions of people on the planet and every single one of them perished because of their sin, except for eight people. And so, yes, God is, and it should be that way because we have a sin problem in this world. Uh, we're dealing with a holy God. That's why Hebrew says it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

We want to be sure that we are covered in the and cloaked in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which essentially is our ticket to heaven. And that is a gift that God wants to give each of us. Yeah. Amen. Amen. That is very true.

Very true. Unfortunately, Jeff, there is a point of contention that we often see even within the body of Christ concerning the different beliefs on the timing of the rapture. We touched on it earlier, but I want you to explain the differences between the pre tribulation rapture, mid tribulation and post tribulation viewpoints. And even in light of those differences, still how everyone can, can take something away from revelation. But before you answer that, I want to share a clip from your message at Jan Markell's understanding the times one night conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which you actually touched on this topic concerning the timing of things and as it relates to the millennial kingdom. Okay.

So we're going to talk about tonight the primacy of Jesus Christ in the book of revelation and how is Jesus really the central figure of the book of revelation? Not long ago, I was walking through my my dining room and I heard a voice. Now, lest you go to this place where you think Jeff Kinley's lost his marbles and he's hearing voices here. It came from a little counter where we had this little device called Alexa. All right. I know she's listening to everything.

Okay. I get that part, right? So we, we watch what we say around the house, but Alexa said this, she said, and I quote, the millennial kingdom has arrived. And I turned and I said, Alexa, what did you just say? She said, the millennial kingdom has arrived. And I thought, I thought, no, wait a minute. Number one, I didn't know Alexa was in the Bible prophecy. And number two, I didn't know she was an amillennialist. She thinks we're in the kingdom right now.

Okay. You know, and then it dawned on me. I'd ordered a book by John Wahlberg called the millennial kingdom. And sure enough folks, the millennial kingdom had arrived. All right, Jeff. So talk to us, if you will, about the different viewpoints of the rapture and even the different viewpoints when it comes to the millennial kingdom as well.

Yeah. And basically, you know, as you look at scripture, if you, if you believe the Bible, you have to believe a couple of things. You have to believe that Christ is coming back one day at the second coming. And you have to believe he's going to come back for his bride, because that's abundantly clear in scripture, 1 Thess 4, 13 through 18. So it's not really a matter of if the rapture is going to happen.

The question and the debate comes in terms of the timing of the rapture. And this kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about people saying, well, how can, how can we get out of suffering and that type of thing? We don't believe that we're delivered from man's suffering. We do believe we're delivered from God's suffering.

But where do you put that? When does God's wrath begin in the Book of Revelation? Essentially, what is that wrath that he's talking about that we're delivered from that Paul told the Thessalonians? Well, if you believe in a pre-tribulational rapture, pre just means before, meaning that Christ will come back and rescue the church before or pre-trib, before he unleashes his wrath on the planet. So obviously we believe that the wrath of God begins at the beginning of the tribulation.

That would be in Revelation chapter 6. Then the mid-tribulation view believes that the first half of the tribulation is all man's wrath. It's not God's wrath. It's just man's wrath. And that man's wrath doesn't begin until the Antichrist begins to enact the mark of the beast and demand that the world worship him.

And he has this great persecution on the Jews, that type of thing. So that'll be the mid-trib view. So they believe that the rapture will happen at that point. And then the post-trib view believes that we'll go through all of the suffering and the judgments of the tribulation. But somehow they put the wrath of God at the second coming of Christ, with Christ coming back to slaughter his enemies at the battle of Armageddon. And so essentially at the second coming, right before that happens, where rapture, we go up to heaven, mount horses and come straight back down with Jesus.

So those are the kind of the three, the pre, the mid and the post view. And one of the reasons why I fully support the pre-trib rapture view is because in Revelation 6, with the beginning of all the judgments in Revelation, it says that the Lamb of God is the one who breaks open the first seal. So the judgments that come from God happen from Jesus at the beginning of the tribulation. So if we're rescued from God's wrath, then it makes logical sense that we're rescued before he breaks that seal.

And that would be the pre-trib rapture. Yeah, well said. And I agree wholeheartedly. That's one of the things I've stressed as well when speaking with people on that topic is that when it begins with those seals, Christ is the one who's breaking the seal. So all of that wrath is coming from our Lord.

So yeah, I agree with you on that. So, all right, Doc, what do you have next? Well, first, before I give this question, I have to just reiterate that that the millennium has arrived from election. That was, that was precious. The truth is stranger than fiction. You can't make up these things.

I think I might have to steal that one. That was a good one right there. But anyway, well, there's some that would like to know, why did God end his written word with a book on future prophetic events? That's a great question.

Well, you think about it. I've written some 40 books, and every time I come to the end of a book that I'm writing, I always ask the question, how can this last chapter leave a lasting impact on the reader? I mean, I want it to really crescendo at the end. It's one of the reasons why I call the book God's Grand Finale. It's sort of like his final word, his final written word to the church and to mankind. I think that God wanted to do two things with the book of Revelation.

Well, really three things. He wanted to get the church ready for the rapture, get the bride ready for the wedding, make sure she's making sure she's not dating other men and she's got her wedding garments on and that type of thing. But also, he wanted her to calibrate her heart so that she could fall in love with him again before the wedding. But the second thing that God was doing through Revelation is that he wanted to give us a heads up on history. And that essentially is what Bible prophecy is, it's history written in advance. If you'll think about it, really all throughout Scripture, God has done that. That's maybe some of the hidden things that people don't know about their God is that all the way back as far as Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, God promised one day there would be a child born, the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent who would do away with evil. That's the very first prophecy in the whole Bible and all throughout the Old Testament. There's some 1000 prophecies in the Bible, a total about 500 of them have been fulfilled and about 28% of the entire Bible is prophetic. So God ends his written revelation to mankind with a book that is 95% prophecy.

So we have to ask the question why? And I believe one of the reasons why is because God wants us to know what's going to happen. He's been doing that all throughout Scripture and he doesn't change now. So he wants us to know what's going to happen, what's going to happen on the earth, what heaven's going to be like, what the millennial kingdom is going to be like, what we should expect in terms of the timing and chronology of it all. And so he did that I think as a loving gift to us so that we could know what's going to happen. It's kind of like when you used to go on these family vacations, your parents would just say, all right, we're going to this place, this is what it's going to be like.

They've got a swimming pool or they've got a playground or we're going to this destination. God just wants to tell us what the destination is before we get there. And in doing that, it allows us to prepare ourselves for it, but also to tell others about it and to warn them. Amen.

Amen. All right, well, we're going to pause there for this week, but Jeff, we're going to have you back next week to continue discussing this great book, God's Grand Finale. How can our listeners get a copy of this book and how can they follow your ministry, all the great things that you're doing?

Yeah, just go to Amazon and type in my name and the book will come up and you can follow me at jeffkinley.com. Sign up for my newsletter and download the Vintage Truth app on your phone and you can get all this stuff for free every week. All right. And also, too, I'd just like to point out and congratulate you as well as you were recently announced to be the new host of The King is Coming.

You took over for Dr. Ed Hindson in his passing. So we want to congratulate you on that and encourage our listeners to watch that as well. Amen. Great program. Great, great, great program.

All right. Well, once again, Jeff is going to be back with us next week as we continue to discuss this great book again, God's Grand Finale. We strongly encourage you to go out and get a copy of it. You definitely will be blessed by it. So please come back and join us once again next week. Jeff, thank you so much for coming today and we look forward to having you again.

My pleasure. Look forward to it. And to our listening audience, please come back and join us 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 and to 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.