Best of Broadcast: Enough with the Crazy Rapture Prophecies

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Can we stop already with these crazy rapture prophecies? It's time for the line of fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Joining us on the line of fire, this is Michael Brown. Here's the phone number 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87884. Anything you want to talk to me about, any subject that relates to the line of fire, I will take some calls today. Major news from Israel, even though it's not Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, we'll get to that major news from Israel as well. But first, I want to revisit this idea of prophecies about the rapture.

I recently did an entire show. Well, I did a good part of a show interacting with a video that's been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube, which claimed that from the first word of Genesis, from the word bereshit in Hebrew, beit, reish, shin, yud, taf. So from the five, excuse me, beit, reish, alef, shin, yud, taf. So from the six letters of the first word of Genesis, that from there you could deduce that Jesus was going to return and rapture the church no later than 2023. Of course, the whole thing's bogus. Everything about it was bogus. The use of the Hebrew was bogus. What was deduced from it was bogus.

It was all completely, entirely, 100 percent bogus. If you want to go back a few weeks, just look on our archives at AskDrBrown.org or on our YouTube channel, AskDrBrown, and just search for first word or first word of the Bible and we get into it. We debunk it there. But I want to revisit the larger question. I've got an article I'm just pulling up on my screen. You can find it on our website now, AskDrBrown.org, AskDrBrown.org, or you can find it on the app, Ask Dr. Brown Ministries app.

Just click on latest articles. It's called Enough With These Crazy Rapture Prophecies. I want to hit this historically.

I want to hit this practically. I do not personally believe in a pre-trib rapture, a secret rapture where any second Jesus takes us out of here and then we're with him seven years in heaven, tribulation on the earth, and we return with him after the tribulation. I personally don't believe in a pre-trib rapture, but that's not my big issue here. I have colleagues and friends who believe in a pre-trib rapture. I was saved in the church that believed in a pre-trib rapture. Some of the finest Christians on the earth today believe in a pre-trib rapture. So that's not my issue. I'm happy to talk with you about it.

I'm happy to explain why I believe what I believe. Craig Keener and I, Professor Craig Keener and I wrote a book together, Not Afraid of the Antichrist, Why We Don't Believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. But that's not my big issue here. My big issue is the prophecies, the predictions about the return of Jesus. Like I said, I want to address this historically. Go back and think about this a little bit. And I want to address this practically.

That's my biggest point, practically. Yes, I responded to that one video that was put out and there's an accompanying e-book that came out with it as well. But I'm hearing more people say, oh, yeah, the rapture could be in 2023 or Jesus could be coming by the end of this year. I'm hearing more talk about it in certain circles.

Maybe you're not, but I'm hearing the buzz out there. I just thought, you know, let me just address this head on. If I'm going to be your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity, you better believe we have to tackle subjects like this. OK, so I came to faith end of 1971. And the big best selling book back then was Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. And God did use that book to make people realize that the Bible was God's word, that it spoke in relevant ways to us in this day, that we shouldn't be complacent, that the end of the world was upon us. It was used, I actually know people that came to faith through the book and their believers all these years later.

On the other hand, the date setting, the prophetic fulfillments that were allegedly unfolding, many of them proved to be not true, not accurate as the years went on. So I used to joke in the 1970s, as I began to grow in the Lord and look at some of these things, I used to joke that somebody is going to write a book called Jesus is Coming Back in the 1970s. And then a few years later, they put out the second revised edition, Jesus is Coming Back in the 1980s. And then a few years after that, they put out yet another revised edition, Jesus is Coming Back in the 1990s. I used to joke about that.

OK, so some of you will remember this. January 1st, 1988, Edgar Wasn'tent, who was a former NASA engineer. The one thing I'm not sure about is how to pronounce his name.

Was it Wasn'tent or Wasn'tent? Former NASA engineer. He published January 1st, 1988. Some of you old enough to remember this. 88 reasons why the rapture will be in 1988.

Yes, some of you are nodding at me as you're listening. Dr. Brown, I remember that. Maybe some of you took it very, very seriously. The book sold like hotcakes. It was given away to ministers, hundreds of thousands of books distributed. It's going to happen.

This is it. Eighty eight reasons laid out and churches had rapture practice. I mean, they joked, though, but they jumped up and down to get ready for the rapture. And some people foolishly said, hey, we spent all the money we want. We can fall into all kinds of debt and leave the debt for the Antichrist.

Well, they left the debt for the collection agency is what happened. It was tragic. And someone asked me, Mike, you're going to read that book? A friend of mine, I said on September 13th because he predicted the return of Jesus on September 12th. I thought no one knows the day or the hour. Well, somehow he predicted the return on September 12th. I said, I'll read it September 13th, 1988 with a smile.

In other words, I'm not going to need to read the book because it's not going to come to pass. Well, here's here's the sadder part. Here's the sadder part.

And I kid you not. Some of you remember this as well. What happens January 1st, 1989? So the rapture did not take place in 1988.

All right. We know that because we're all still here. The rapture did not take place in 1988. So what happens January 1st, 1989? He publishes the final shout Rapture Report 1989. He explained why he was off by one year.

He had miscalculated by one year. So now here are the 89 reasons Jesus is coming in 1989. And then in 1990, put out the final shout Rapture Report 1990.

And then 1991. Oh, I'm not making this up. He kept revising the dates and people, obviously, smaller and smaller numbers diminishing returns, right? Smaller and smaller numbers of people believing him. But he continued to put this out for years.

It made my joke a sad reality. Then Harold Camping. He had a large radio network that on the one hand, you could flip it on and hear the Bible being read in King James. But the Bible being read through the day.

That was a nice thing to be able to hear. And he had different teachers on. He himself would answer questions and teach from the Bible. And it was some of the strangest stuff I ever heard. Some really weird doctrines. And then at a certain point, a call to all Christians to leave the churches because the churches were of the wrong system.

So there's some dangerous stuff as well. But he had a big following. Harold Camping predicted, you just check Wikipedia.

This is accurate. He first predicted that the Judgment Day would occur on or about September 6, 1994. When it failed to occur, he revised the date to September 29 and then to October 2nd in 2005. Camping predicted the second coming of Christ would be May 21st, 2011, whereupon the saved would be taken up to heaven in the rapture.

And that, quote, there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21st, 2011, with the final destruction of the world. I remember being in New York City and seeing very, very sincere people. They didn't seem demented.

You could look them in the eyes and talk to them. Very, very sincere people holding signs, handing out literature, explaining this. It came to popular attention. So this became widely reported, this prophecy. And of course, it didn't happen.

Camping at this point was, what, around 90 years old. So, you know, when the whole thing didn't happen, just when it didn't happen, the second coming didn't happen, he would go, I don't know. You had to pity the man.

I don't know what happened and wrong somehow. And then a couple of years after that, he was gone. You think, OK, haven't we learned our lesson by now? Haven't we learned that all this date setting, and I'm just giving a few of the most prominent examples from the last 30, 40 years.

You go back in history, you see it over and over and over. Haven't we realized that all the date setting is vain? Haven't we realized that all the date setting allegedly through hints in the Bible, we're going to decode this.

It's silly. God speaks in plain language. Yes, there are prophecies that are mysterious in their language. But if we need to know what we're supposed to do today, God will not communicate in mysteries, he'll communicate with clarity. If you're in a life and death situation in the service of the Lord and earnestly trying to understand his will and you say, Lord, I need to know, should I go left or right? My family's well-being depends on it.

Would you show me if I need to go left and right? He's not going to give you a prophetic word and the color blue is like the mystical sea, which on a beautiful day seems like the beautiful sun shining down on the water, which glistens in the eyes. I don't know what that means, Lord.

I need something practical. He'll give us practical wisdom, he says in his word, going through trial and test, if we lack wisdom. And Jacob changed the first chapter to ask and he gives it liberally. The point I'm making is, when you look at what the New Testament teaches about the second coming, it's not impractical. It's not abstract.

It's not date setting. The emphasis is on the what more than the when. The emphasis is that we should live a certain way today so that we'll be ready for tomorrow. The emphasis is to recognize the brevity of life and to make it count because of what will happen in eternity and how we will become like him, glorified in eternity, and we will stand before him and give account.

Therefore, how should we live today? That's what the New Testament emphasizes, and to occupy, to be busy doing his work until he comes and to have an urgency to reach this dying world. It's nowhere taught that it's out of the blue for the righteous, for the believer, that out of the blue, we're just gone.

It's gone about our business, but just gone. Whether you believe in a preacher of rapture or not, what's clear, 1 Thessalonians 5, is for those of us who are children of God and live as children of God, we're not asleep in the light. We are children of God living in the day, in the daytime. Therefore, he will not come like a thief in the night because we're not in the night, we're in the day. So I want to address that on the other side of the break, then I'll take some of your calls, 866-342. But please, enough to try to predict the exact date of the Lord's return. Instead the question is Lord, how should we live today?

I think we honor you today. That's the big question, I'll be right back. I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health, and I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the importance of healthy blood flow and how it's enhanced by a miracle molecule known as nitric oxide. You see, blood vessels release nitric oxide, which increases blood flow known as something called vasodilation. At TriVita, we take blood flow seriously for our members, and we've developed a nitric oxide plus supplement that has been formulated with natural ingredients designed to maximize nitric oxide production in our blood vessels, which increases blood flow. You may be wondering why you don't have as much energy as you used to. One study that I came across revealed that by the age of 40, we only produce about 50 percent of the nitric oxide production as compared to our 20s, and by the age of 70, the study showed that we're only producing about 15 to 25 percent.

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for joining us today. You know, on the health end, it's our burden to see a healthy church, spirit, soul, body. That means it starts with a healthy you. And so many times we put all of our emphasis on spiritual health, which is the number one health, but neglect our physical health because of which we can't do everything God calls us to do, things we want to do, things that we would enjoy doing. That's why we've partnered with TriVita with their great wellness supplements. Nancy and I were just chatting about this over the weekend about nitric oxide and about the importance that it has in our bodies, but the older we get, the less of it we manufacture. So I'm telling you my own routine today. Since the show's over, I'm going to mix together nitric oxide and myo health for our TriVita partners. I'm going to drink the water as I go home and a bottle of water, drink it and then get home and hit a nice, intense, heavy workout. Yeah, benefiting by replenishing these things in my system.

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I think you'll be pleased. Plus, one hundred percent of your first order goes to support the line of fire. You can also go to TriVita.com, use the code BROWN25, and all your recurring orders, more than a tithe of that, goes to support the ministry. So help us reach more people and see the church healthy, thriving, strengthened so that we can do everything God has called us to do. All right, I'm going to get your calls in a little while. Eight, six, six, three, four, truth.

Eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four. I want to talk to I want to speak to you practically, not so much theologically and not not so much say, well, as a student of scripture, I can argue this point at that point, which, of course, has its place. And I am a student of scripture, as many of you are. But just practically, as I understand the nature of God, there is there is a progression to what he does. He doesn't just jump from A to Z. He takes his people point by point, step by step over a period of centuries.

He teaches, he trains. Look at the history of Old Testament Israel. So much of what happened, so much of what Israel went through over two thousand year period from the calling of Abraham to the coming of the Messiah. So much of that was in order to have a people ready for the Messiah to come. And he comes in the fullness of time. And also at that time in the world, you've got Greek, such a widely used language. So this message can go widely around the world. More simply, you've got to rule an empire.