Bible Prophecy - Silence in the Pulpits

Welcome to God First with Brian C. Thomas, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let's join Brian C. Thomas for today's message. Brian C. Thomas, and I thank you for joining me today on the God First program. We are today going to look at the topic of Bible prophecy, and in particular, we're going to look at the fact that there is silence in the pulpits today.

And so we're going to discuss the silence that is happening and why that is and what we as believers in Christ can possibly do to address that. So I have joining me today best-selling author Jeff Kinley, who is passionate about communicating God's vintage truth to this generation. He has been a featured guest on shows such as Fox and Friends, the Glenn Beck Show, the Ben Shapiro Show, and hundreds of national radio and television programs. He's also served for over two decades as student pastor and senior pastor, and he is a graduate of the University of Arkansas and Dallas Theological Seminary.

He's written a ton of books, and just a few of them are The Interview with the Antichrist, as it was in the days of Noah and the end of America. So, Jeff, I want to thank you for coming to join us today and to talk about this topic of Bible prophecy. It's such an honor to have you. Brian, it's great to be with you.

Thanks for having me on. So let me clarify for our listeners before we really get going, when I say Bible prophecy, what we're referring to, because early in ministry, when I would meet people and I would say, well, God has called me to a focus, a passion for Bible prophecy, and people would start to give accounts in which they met someone, and they would begin to speak of how they would move to a certain city and get a certain job and meet a certain person. I'd have to pump the brakes and say, hold on a minute. I'm not talking about that type. I'm not here to prophesy anything to you individually. But instead, we're speaking of the prophecies that God has already given us in the Bible, and in particular, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

So that is what we are here to discuss. And again, we're going to talk about the fact that it is very quiet in a lot of churches today when it comes to this topic of Bible prophecy. So, Jeff, I want to begin by asking you what percentage of the Bible is prophecy? Well, the estimates vary, but kind of conservatively, Brian, it's about 28 percent of the Bible all the way up to sometimes people say 33 percent of the Bible. So roughly around a third of the Bible is prophetic at the time it was written. Of course, when you begin to then kind of break that down, there are about 8,000 verses in the Bible that are prophetic in nature. Twenty-three out of 27 New Testament books mention the second coming of Christ. There are hundreds of prophecies, over 300 prophecies about the coming of Jesus Christ, the first and second coming. And about one out of every 30 verses in the New Testament is prophetic. So if you were to take prophecy out of the Bible, you could really be gutting the Bible. And then, of course, when you look at the last book of the Bible is a book that is 95 percent prophecy. And so prophecy must be something that's important to God, something he wants his children to know about. Yeah, absolutely. And as you talk about that, and I think to myself when you have a marriage and you think about the components of a marriage and let's say you have a component of forgiveness, you have a component of affection, you have a component of sacrifice.

So if you take either one of those three out, your marriage is going to suffer significantly. And so when you look at today with with Christians in the church and when it comes to the Bible with prophecy, that is a huge void that is being left when churches ignore Bible prophecy. And I recently heard a study in which it was revealed that only about 2 percent of churches teach Bible prophecy. So why do you think that is?

Well, I think there are many reasons. And I talk about this in my book, The End of America, and in my book Uncovering the Secrets of Bible Prophecy, the fact that a lot of pastors today, quite frankly, don't feel qualified to teach on the subject. A lot of pastors today are bivocational. Maybe they didn't go to seminary or they haven't had a formal theological education. And so, quite frankly, there is clueless on it that some of the people out there in the pews are sitting in chairs out there. Second thing is, is that a lot of pastors today have really embraced this idea that a pastor is more of a CEO or salesman, or he's kind of a cheerleader on Sunday mornings. And, you know, someone recently said a lot of churches today are nothing more than a light show followed by a TED talk.

You know, and a lot of people are good at doing that. But prophecy, Brian, requires study. And that's why we call it Bible study, because it does require us to get into the word. So sometimes pastors will avoid that because of that reason.

Obviously, not all of them. But other pastors, I think, too, see prophecy as something that is very divisive or controversial. And I think they're afraid to take a stand on a certain view or a certain issue for fear that it might, you know, sort of alienate part of their congregation. Some pastors see prophecy as something that's sort of frightening because, you know, it does talk about a lot of judgment that's in the Bible. Other pastors today really, I heard a pastor tell me one time that he thought prophecy was just a hobby for old people.

And I was just incredulous. He said, give me something practical I can give my people. I thought, well, there is nothing more practical than Bible prophecy because it's relevant to everything that's going on right now. So there are many different reasons why pastors are not doing that. And it's really very sad because right now we are in an age where we're seeing some of this happen.

We'll talk about that a little bit later, I think. But I think right now that pastors today are just simply not stepping up. It's kind of a time for a voice to speak for God out of his word. I think a lot of pastors are missing this opportunity because, quite frankly, people out there in the congregation are asking these questions.

They're wanting to know. Seventy one percent of Americans of evangelicals believe that Christ is going to come back in their lifetime. So they want to be taught. And I find that a lot of people that I talk to are just simply they're uninformed about Bible prophecy. And that's the one thing that the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians in First Thess 4. Verse 13 says, I don't want you to be uninformed because when we're uninformed, that brings up what he talks about. Second Thessalonians chapter two is that it troubles our faith.

It allows false teachers to come in, sensationalists come in and they start teaching things about what's going on in culture and they mislead people. So there's a lot of confusion and stuff. So God made the pastor to be there to equip the saints. And that includes all the word of God. So I think prophecy is an important part of that. Yeah, and I agree with you totally, because if we as the church do not teach the saints, then that leaves the world to do it.

And like you said, that's when you get all into all kinds of wacky things. And we will say that when it comes to Bible prophecy, we both know that there are some some extreme individuals out there that will say some wacky things. And we definitely do not make predictions concerning the return of Christ. We don't do that. But there have been some like Harold Camping and Louis Farrakhan and the Jehovah's Witnesses have done that.

And it's really given Bible prophecy a black eye. And I think sometimes pastors and churches say, well, we don't want to get lumped in with that group. But I say we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We just have to teach it and preach it in the correct manner and not allow those things to to get a sidetracked or to discourage us from from teaching on this topic. So. So those are great points. I agree with you totally on that. One of the other things that I've noticed is when it comes to the different views you touched on that, because there are people out there that they will argue, I mean, they will argue to the death over which view is correct. And one of the most contentious things that we see in that aspect is when it comes to the rapture, the pre tribulation rapture, the mid tribulation rapture, post tribulation rapture and the mid wrath rapture. And and I've seen people get into these heated debates and arguments and their pastors that say, I really just don't want to deal with that. I have too many other things that I need on to focus on. So it seems, though, to me that the further we go in time, that the hostility towards this pre tribulation rapture doctrine, it just seems to be increasing by the day.

Have you observed the same in your ministry? Well, I have. And in fact, my recent book Interview with the Antichrist is is an apocalyptic, futuristic novel that explores the time of the tribulation, as outlined in Revelation six through 19. But but at the end of the book, I talk about one of the Bible.

What does the Bible really say about the Antichrist? So obviously, people go on Amazon. They give reviews for their book and it's getting great reviews.

It was straight to number one. But the other day, I guess there was a guy that came on there and wrote a review of the book. And this is what he said. He said this whole idea of the pre tribulation rapture is nothing more than a complete fairy tale, a complete myth. It's nowhere in the Bible. And this went off on that whole thing.

And I see that, too, as you know, as I've been on different shows, as I've been on radio shows and that type of thing, then challenged on that. But I think one of the reasons, Brian, is because people sometimes and I address this, by the way, in my book, Wake the Bride, I have two chapters on the rapture. But the whole idea is that people think that the rapture is some sort of recent doctrine, that it was invented by theologians in the 17, 18 hundreds.

And and so it's just sort of a recent thing that we believe. And so it obviously can't be from the Bible. And and I show in the book, like the bride, how that's obviously not true. We can trace this all the way back to church history, to the early fathers.

And of course, really, we don't need to. All we need to do is just open the Bible and ask, what does the Bible say? But I think people think the pre trib rapture is a recent doctrine. Sometimes they'll say it's a doctrine of escapism because pre means before tribulation. So it means that God will rescue his bride prior to unleashing his judgments on planet Earth. And as we see in the book Revelation and to that argument of escapism, I just simply say, you know, Jesus has promised to take his bride.

He's promised to bring his bride to the father's house. In John 14, we see in First Thessalonians chapter one and chapter five that we are not destined for God's wrath, that we're destined for deliverance, that we are not prepared for the wrath that is coming. So we see this. And then Revelation chapter three, verse 10, Jesus told the church that started that we're going to be delivered from the hour of testing that is coming upon the whole world. So it's not really a doctrine of escapism any more than Noah in the ark was a doctrine of escapism. He certainly was lifted up above the waters of judgment during that. So, you know, people kind of lobbed those sort of arguments against the pre trib rapture. But I think it really boils down to this is that we are never as believers destined for God's wrath. Now, we are suffering or going to suffer man's wrath through persecution, but God's wrath was satisfied on Jesus Christ at the cross.

So there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans eight one. So it really kind of makes sense that when God now pours out his wrath on the earth like he did through the flood, that he would rescue out of that wrath his beloved or his chosen ones. So I think that's what's going to happen. That's my view. I know there are other people have different views. But as I read the Bible, I see very clearly a pre tribulational deliverance or rapture of the bride of Christ.

Yeah, I agree with you totally. And I recently heard the Bible prophecy commentator that you and I both are familiar with, Amir Sarfati. And he mentioned that when you look at what is happening today in the world and society and in particular in our nation, that you would think that pastors would open and close every sermon with the blessed hope of the rapture. But but there is a silence.

Even if their topic is on something else, you would think that they would keep that in the forefront that, hey, even though folks, things may look bad with the pandemic and with the racial tension, but there's just this silence that we see. But I agree with you. The pre tribulation rapture view is certainly the one that I believe the Bible makes the strongest case for. But we also want to stress that this is not a salvation issue and we do not divide over it. There can be I feel totally confident that there are going to be some pre trib and post trib view people that are going to spend eternity with Jesus Christ.

So we should not divide over these things. But I do believe truly that it does affect your your view and how you live. And I've heard some make the argument, well, the pre trib guys, you you don't just stop living because you say Christ is going to return at any moment. And so you start working for the kingdom. But I say, no, the opposite is what happens, because I have even a greater sense of urgency to warn people that Jesus could come at any moment.

You need to be ready for it. So this is not something to sit on your hands and just say, well, we're just going to wait until he comes. No, we need to be active, trying to win others to the kingdom as well. So on that note, we're going to take a short break, but don't go away, folks. We're going to come back and talk more with Jeff Kinley concerning Bible prophecy, silence in the pulpits.

Don't go away. You are tuned in to the God first program. You are listening to Brian C. Thomas on God first. For more of Brian's teachings, please visit God first dot org to browse our extensive library of material there. You will find devotionals, blogs, articles and audio messages available as MP3 downloads on various topics such as salvation, Bible prophecy, marriage and the significance of Lesson Israel.

Just to name a few. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter and visit our Web store. So please visit us at God first dot org. Now let's return to the conclusion of today's message. Welcome back to God first program. My name is Brian Thomas, and I am being joined today by Bible prophecy commentator and author, speaker Jeff Kinley.

And we are talking about Bible prophecy, the silence in the pulpits. If you're just now joining us, if you would like to get in contact with us to hear this entire message, you can visit our Web site. God first dot org. That's God. The number one is t dot o r g. You can also write us at God first Bible Fellowship P.O.

Box 266 Knightdale, North Carolina, two seven five four five. All right. So Jeff, let's continue looking at this topic again of the silence that we are seeing in the pulpits today concerning Bible prophecy. What do you say to pastors who say that prophecy is a distraction and that they need to focus on what is going on in people's day to day lives? People are having trouble with their their kids and trouble on their jobs, financial matters, whatever it may be. They say they don't have time for prophecy.

They need to focus on those events. What do you say to those pastors? Well, a couple of things I think is a word of encouragement is that pastors are under a lot of stress today. Pastors are have a lot of demands upon them. So they're being they're being pulled in many different ways, especially if you're in a smaller church.

Eighty percent of churches in America are under 200 members. And those pastors work very hard. So there are a lot of things that pastors have to do. But one of the calling of a pastor is to preach the full counsel of God. In other words, from Genesis one one all the way to the end of Revelation, we are called and have been called to tackle every bit of that.

So we don't really get the luxury of being able to pick and choose, you know, topically what we do each week. We have to preach through the Bible. And obviously there are topical sermons that pastors can do. But as we go through the Bible, eventually you get to prophecy in various places throughout the Old and New Testament. And then finally, you know, God ended his book with a book on prophecy, 95 percent prophecy. And, you know, as an author, I've written 35 books. I always think very carefully about how I word my books and how I end my books. I begin because I want them to have the maximum impact on the reader. Well, God's the same way in much, much better way.

Is that right? He knows how to end the book. He knows how to end the story.

He's a great story writer. And so he chose a book on prophecy. He chose to tell us what's going to happen in the last days because he does not want us to be uninformed. So if that was so important for God to do, then certainly it's important enough for us to preach it. In fact, Revelation is the only book in the Bible that promises a special blessing for those who hear it and read it and who obey it.

And so it's very important that we do that. Another reason I think that we need to focus in on that and not just our current life problems is because, you know, Jesus, when he was speaking with the Pharisees in Matthew Chapter 16, he rebuked them because he says, you can you recognize the signs of the weather, but you can't understand the signs of the times. And they were the teachers of Israel. And they're responsible for telling the Jewish people what God says. And Jesus basically said to them, you can discern the sky and the signs of the weather, but you can't discern the signs of the time. You can't even discern the sign of the times, the standing right in front of you right now.

They miss that. And then over in Luke Chapter 24, after the resurrection, Jesus walking down the road to Emmaus with these two disciples, they're prevented from recognizing him and they're like, you know, telling him about what's going on and stuff. And Jesus rebukes them and he says, you don't even understand that all of this was fulfilled prophecy. In other words, Jesus said, this is going to be on the test. I mean, this is expected for Christians to know what Bible prophecy says.

So for those reasons, I think, Brian, it's very important for pastors to prepare the bride of Christ to meet the bridegroom. And in fact, as you look throughout the entire New Testament, what we see is over and over again, the spirit of expectation at the Lord's return. You know, it says looking for the blessed hope and waiting expectantly and knowing that the time is short. And even in the end of First Corinthians Chapter 16, it ends one of the words that ends with is the word Maranatha, which is an Aramaic term meaning may the Lord come. And we believe that's the way Christians greeted one another in the New Testament church and the way they said goodbye to one another.

So instead of just, you know, having coffee and donuts and I'll see you next week, they were saying, Maranatha, may the Lord come between the time that we meet now and the time we meet next week. And so that's how fresh, how top shelf it was on the minds of the early church and believers. And of course, Paul, in Second Corinthians Chapter two, he reminds, excuse me, Second Thessalonians Chapter two. He reminds the Thessalonians, Brian, that this was a part, this prophecy teaching was a part of his curriculum in the church planting. And so I think it's very important that pastors now recalibrate themselves. And I guess the final thing would be this, Brian, as we look around us, we see prophetic signs that are prophesied in the book of Revelation.

We see those in their embryonic and in their developmental forms right now. And so we're living in these past days. So even more so should pastors be preaching on prophecy? Absolutely.

Absolutely. And to the pastors, we don't want to sound like we're piling on you or anything, because, Jeff, you stated earlier, you were a pastor for over two decades. You totally understand what pastors have on their plate.

It's a lot to juggle. But I love the fact that you made mention of preparing ourselves for the bridegroom, because being joined with Jesus Christ is a picture of marriage. The Bible throughout calls the church the bride of Christ. And I think about to myself of the fact that let's say my wife goes on a mission trip. She's going to a missions trip in a place that's very remote.

She can't communicate with me. But she tells me she's she knows she's going to be gone for multiple years, but she can't tell me exactly when. But if she says, well, when you start to hear about certain things happening with that country in the news, know that I'm going to be coming home soon. I'm going to be thinking about that. I'm going to be constantly watching the news headlines to see what are the signs that she said to look for.

Are they happening? And I will be excited about it. I'm going to make sure that I'm ready. I'm not going to be out with other women.

I'm not going to be unkept and ungroomed. I'm going to have myself prepared and excited. And that's what I try to convey to to to pastors. Get get people excited about the fact that we're going to to spend eternity. And when you are not excited about it, it does make me question. Do you really look forward to spending eternity with the one that you say you love, the one that you say is your Messiah? Because certainly my wife, I look forward to her returning to me when she goes away. And the same thing with Jesus Christ. We should be excited about his return.

So we really should. Brian, you know, I've done probably 80 different weddings, performed 80 weddings in my ministry career. And I can tell you that every single one of those weddings, the bride was way more prepared than the group was. In fact, those brides, they spent really months and some of them years thinking about their wedding day as a little girl. You dream of the day that you're going to be married. And then there's all the preparation with the dress and the floral. And, you know, the wedding coordinator and everything else, there's nothing more important to a bride than her wedding day. And I fear that the church today has lost that sense of excitement, that sense of expectation, that sense of saying, come, Lord Jesus. May it be today. And I'll tell you, when he does come, the Bible says we don't want to shrink away at his appearing. We want to be a bride dressed in those fine linens, ready to receive our bridegroom.

It's going to be a great day. Amen. Amen. I love that picture.

I love that analogy. So let's wrap things up with this question. What suggestions do you have for the remnant? Because there is a remnant out there that crave this teaching. There are people that I hear from and they say they want to hear about the second coming of Christ. They see the signs. They know there are things that the Bible said would happen. And when we speak of signs, we're talking about the signs of his coming at the end of the tribulation. There are no signs for the rapture.

So if we already see the signs pointing towards his second coming at the end of the tribulation, we know the rapture is that much nearer. But they say they cannot find a church in their local area that will talk about it. They say they approach their pastors and they refuse to talk about it. What advice do you have for those people? Well, and I'm the same way I get letters, I get emails, people contact me all the time, social media saying, Jeff, I can't find a church that will even touch prophecy of the book of Revelation in any way, shape or form. And this is my counsel to them because I'm not privy to exactly what their home church is like. But I just say to them, look, if your pastor is not going to give it to you, first of all, go to your pastor. Don't attack him.

But be very, you know, very contrived. But just simply say, you know, pastor, we want to learn the book of Revelation. We want to learn about these things and see what he says.

And if he is somehow either not able or unwilling to do that, then what you have to do is you have to supplement that study. You have to listen to podcasts, listen to podcasts like mine or Brian's here or some other prophecy teacher, the prophecy prose I do with Todd Hampson, that podcast or books that maybe somebody has written, Dr. Mark Hitchcock or Ed Hindson, Ron Rhodes, myself, Todd Hampson, others have written books on prophecy. Then you can also use those books and study materials to start your own Bible study. There's no reason why you can't take the book Revelation and a good guidebook with it and just take two or three or four or 10 people through the book of Revelation and through prophecy and start that ministry yourself.

And then the last thing I would say is maybe you could be a part of putting together a group of people that could bring in a prophecy speaker to maybe spend a day just teaching you through the basics of Bible study. So there are things like that. Now, obviously, you have to be careful because there are people out there that that are like you were saying earlier, Ron, they're sensationalists that maybe look at the news a little too much and not enough at the Bible. But we need to be careful about that.

But at the same time, there are many different things that you could do to to supplement that study and to continue to get yourself equipped in Bible prophecy. Yes. Well said. Well said. Well, Jeff, I want to thank you for joining us today. This has been a great discussion and I know that people are going to be blessed for it in the final minute. Can you share with the listeners how they can get in contact with you to to hear your podcast, your website and to receive your books? If you could also give a word of hope and encouragement as we are looking at this pandemic, we look at racial tension. It just seems like things are just going downhill so fast. So give a message of encouragement and hope to our listeners as well.

Absolutely. Well, my website, Jeff Kinley dot com, gives you information about me and purchase books there or that or Amazon. My weekly podcast I do twice a week. It's called the Vintage Truth podcast.

It's now in 80 different countries across the world. God's blessing that. I also do another podcast once a week with a good buddy of mine named Todd Hanson and it's called the Prophecy Pros podcast. And we exclusively talk about prophecy on that podcast so that you can check those resources out. I would just say this to your listeners that, you know, we are living in the most exciting time to be alive as a Christian. I mean, literally, God has placed before us a golden opportunity to be salt and to be light in a very, very bad world that's out there.

And I like to say this, Brian, that the darker the night, the brighter the light. And so just being a disciple of Jesus, being salt and light, you're going to shine the light of Jesus. So make sure that you're connected with other believers, make sure you're in the word of God, make sure you're with Jesus every day. And the stronger you are as this onslaught of persecution and lawlessness that's going to continue to be in our world and our country. As that happens, you can still make an impact. God will use you to make an impact for Jesus Christ. So don't give up.

Persevere to the end. Amen. Well, Jeff, I want to again thank you for coming on and joining us today, giving us the sound doctrine, words of wisdom and to our listeners.

Please come back and join us next week. 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. You've been listening to the Bible teacher Brian C. Thomas, founder and president of God First. Brian and God first reserve all copyright protection under applicable law.

Our copyright policy is available at our Web site. God first dot org. 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.