The Christ in Prophecy Journal

Tonight Matters: Prophecy Stands on Genesis

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Does teaching about the Creation and the Second Coming go hand-in-hand?

On Wednesday, January 25th I was interviewed by hosts Matt Buff and Jim Fletcher of the Rapture Ready Radio show, broadcast over BlogTalkRadio. During the second hour of their two hour live show we talked about the growing interest in Bible prophecy, the importance of teaching the Creation, Lamb & Lion Ministries’ new ministry initiatives in reaching people for Christ, the top five questions every Christian should know, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and how Christians should respond to non-Christian candidates when it comes time to vote. Matt Buff also simultaneously chatted online with people listening to the show, taking questions from the audience.

Rapture Ready Radio

Standing on Genesis

Jim Fletcher: I find origins such a foundational issue and really believe one lays the groundwork for prophecy by teaching foundational topics like the Creation.

What is your sense of what I will call the Young Earth View, which I don’t mind saying is my view? What is the reaction you get from people? Do you find the Young Earth View is widely accepted or not?

Nathan Jones: No, sadly, a lot of people are really confused by Evolution. They are convinced that since so many scientists agree then the Bible must be wrong. I even remember as a teenager just really struggling with how to reconcile Evolution with the Bible. Like many Christians, I used to ask, “How can all these scientist be saying that the earth is millions of years old?” I learned later they agree because they’re mostly all secular humanists who deny God and must agree with the evolutionary party line or be booted from their field.

Satan’s purpose for undermining one’s faith in Genesis is so that if you can’t believe Genesis then you are likely to conclude that the rest of the Bible must be screwed up. It’s a beautiful tactic by Satan, I hate to say. It’s so effective and we have lost so many young baby Christians to Satan because of his followers attacking the Young Earth View. That’s why we find that it’s so very important to get into the Bible and really teach about the Creation.

I really appreciate Ken Ham’s group and Eric Hovind and Jobe Martin and all those guys out there bringing the faith of people back. Especially Dr. Martin is a good friend of our ministry. I have three elementary aged kids, and I tell you, they will not have any trouble when Evolution is being taught to them, because we have gone through Dr. Martin’s videos Incredible Creatures. His videos show by easy examples with live animals how nature is so complex that it must have had a Creator. It’s an idea that even a child can latch onto so easily. But, we get confused when we get to the college years.

I agree with you, Jim, that it’s so important to establish the Bible as the foundational Word of God without error, otherwise we have no foundation for our faith.

Jim Fletcher: By the way, it was Henry Morris at the Institute for Creation Research who really brought back the modern revival of the Creationist movement. Henry was also very solid on Bible prophecy as well. His commentary on Revelation is as significant as his commentary on Genesis. I really appreciate his legacy and I’m really glad to see that since he passed away a few years ago that fellows like you are carrying that torch. I think this is a very important issue and so I just applaud Lamb & Lion Ministries for really being out there and making the effort to bring these teachings to people’s attention.

Nathan Jones: Dr. Morris was a friend of Dr. Reagan’s and they had a long-term friendship. We even had Dr. Morris’ son who has continued his father’s ministry at our conference last year.

You will find that our current Lamplighter magazine is titled “Our Young Earth.” Dr. Reagan strongly feels that topic if vitally important. Sure, we’ve gotten criticized by some people who wish we would get back to pure 100% Bible prophecy, but I think overwhelmingly most of the people support the fact that we have to step back a bit and establish the Bible as God’s Word and build up from there. Plus, Bible prophecy is the greatest of apologetics, as Bible prophecy and apologetics are very much intertwined.

Jim Fletcher: You made a critical point a few minutes ago when you said that without that foundational teaching you really can’t hope that the Bible prophecy message will stick with people, so again I’m totally in agreement with you here.

Nathan Jones: We can read some of the books by Barna and others who talk about how we are losing the faith of our children. I’ve been to many churches and one in particular that I was a member of for many years the pastor started going Emergent. That means the church has giving up on the Bible and instead going with more of an experiential relationship with the Lord. Soon everything doctrinally falls away. The whole dynamic of the church shifted not to Bible study but to missions. It was going to be a “missional church.” Now, I have a minor in missions, so I have a heart for mission, too, but I could easily see that by going to all missions the leadership wasn’t equipping their people beforehand. They had all these missionaries going out and doing all these wonderful things, but when it came to sharing their faith they were at a loss. The church spent all this money and time and energy to get their folks to the field, but once there they couldn’t answer the basic questions about why they believe what they believe.

The church has a new pastor now and he got them back into Bible study. He understands you’ve got to understand the Bible. You’ve got to understand your faith and be trained to answer the hard questions before you go out there and share with others, in my opinion. This shouldn’t be an excuse that we fill our heads with Bible knowledge so much so that we are about to explode and we never get out there talking with people. We are supposed to go out there, but you can’t send babies in the faith out there to share the Gospel without at least giving them the tools they need to be able to explain why they believe what they believe.

Matt Buff: You couldn’t be more right.

In the next part of this Rapture Ready Radio interview, Matt, Jim and I discuss what we believe is the five most important questions Christians should be able to answer.

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Dr. Nathan E. Jones

As the Internet Evangelist at Lamb & Lion Ministries, Nathan reaches out to the over 4.5 billion people accessible over the Internet with the Good News of Jesus Christ. He also co-hosts the ministry's television program Christ in Prophecy and podcast The Truth Will Set You Free.

7 CommentsLeave a Comment

  • Hello Nathan and all

    I trust you won't mind if I think out loud? It’s about Covenant Theology Posties who insist Israel and the Church are one and the same ‘entity’ with no distinctions. I know I don’t have to convince you here at L&L, I just want to ask Posties a question about the problem that I see with their notion, and how they answer it.

    Working from the C.T. premise that Israel is the Church in the O.T., and the Church is Israel in the N.T. I shall call this ‘Israelichurch’ being just ONE entity, without distinction

    Qa.How can ‘Israelichurch’ be both mortal, and immortal at the same time?
    b.How can ‘Israelichurch’ be saved/justified, yet still possessing the old sin nature, but at one and the same time be sinless like Jesus?
    c.How can Israelichurch, as just one group of people, get married and have babies, yet also be like the angels not giving in marriage and not reproducing?

    Thanks. 🙂
    Sue

  • Sue, I've had some enlightening "discussions" with CT amils and have come to the conclusion that they believe what they believe because they wanna believe it. If Scripture contradicts them then they just spiritualize it. Also it's not just posties – I used to think the prewrath guys took things a little more literally but some stiff opposition from the pretrib camp has forced them to take a rubbery approach to interpretation – even regarding Israel.

    amc (formerly known as rg)

  • Hello amc 🙂

    Agreed!

    It seems to me that when it comes to the Millennium, C.T. have ‘painted themselves’ into a corner concerning ‘Israelichurch’.I have deliberately left out the well known Scriptures to shorten this comment.

    A. In the Mill., the PHYSICAL land of Greater Israel is to be re-populated by physical Jews marrying and reproducing. ALL will be saved by Grace through faith in Jesus, but will still possess their old sin nature, because the ‘sin offering’ for personal sin, is one of three sacrifices that will still be performed in the Temple during the Mill. Before they can minister as Priests, they will have to ritually cleanse themselves from personal sin, before than can minister to the nations.

    B. At the Rapture, the dead in Christ are resurrected to immortality and the living in Christ will be changed as their corruptible flesh is changed to incorruptible. When these see Jesus, they will be like Him, without a sin nature, and like the angels neither marrying or giving in marriage, so no re-production of themselves. These are not physical, they are a spiritual body whose citizenship is in heaven. These do not have a physical land promised to them.

    According to C.T. Israelichurch are one entity without distinction. So how do they reconcile the Scriptural evidence of a physical and a spiritual people being just ONE? Surely they have created an irreconcilable enigma. How do they spiritualise a combined physicalspiritual people existing at the same moment?

    A.These will be mortals, marrying and reproducing, saved but still have the old sin nature to contend with living in a physical land on physical earth.
    At the same time
    B. The same people will be immortal, married to Jesus and not reproducing, being perfect and spiritual like Jesus whose address is the Fathers House in heaven.

    I have been trying to play ‘devils advocate’ for them, thinking HOW this may be done, but frankly, its done my head in and left me feeling schizoid. 😉

  • "I have been trying to play ‘devils advocate’ for them, thinking HOW this may be done, but frankly, its done my head in and left me feeling schizoid. ;)"

    Sue, we can only put it out there and see if it takes root. The Israel-is-the-church error is so ingrained that it has placed a filter over what these people read in Scripture. They argue that everything was fulfilled in Christ (so scrap the OT promises). There is only one people of God and they are "true Israel" – taking Paul way out of context. So no more male and female or Indians and Germans etc. Right? It’s enough to give one a headache.

    Speaking of posties – I read a blog article recently where the postie author and some prewrathers said that pretribbers want to support Israel but when the icky stuff hits the fan they want outa here. Of course, their own position was that they were going to go all the way through thick and thin with Israel. Heroes, the lot of them!

    Except…well there’s this little thing about some of these guys making the tribulation not as bad as pretribbers claim it is and not even a global event. Oh, and of course when the real bad stuff happens (God’s wrath as they see it) they get raptured leaving Israel to handle it alone. All of a sudden there’s a difference between Israel and the church. There’s a tiny scratchy violin playing tribute to this sort of heroism.

    Sarcasm over 😉

    amc

  • Hello amc

    That’s even worse than I thought! It sounds like they are sickening with a bad dose of a common non-sense.

    A gung-ho attitude is faithless folly imo. It could be seen as interfering in God’s disciple of His own people for the sake of their repentance and regeneration. Even defiance against God’s declared intent.

    As for not being a global event; I bet there aren't many Israeli C.T. supporters. 😉

    I shall have to stop trying to second guess them, its scrambling my few remaining little grey cells. :-

    Maranatha!

  • I have very recently read of a one time Pretrib man that rejected it because Dispensationalism makes a distinction between Israel and the Church (two entities.) ‘But’ (they say) ‘there are only one people of God’(Israelichurch.)Biblically, this statement is a ‘non issue’

    Its true there is only one genetically chosen nation/people of God, the Israelites who have been promised an eternal Land (Israel) a Seed (King Jesus and a Blessing (The New Covenant). All of which take place physically here on earth for mortals.

    The Church is NOT a nation/people. The Church is the body of Christ with Jesus as Head. A ‘spiritual man’. She is ‘one flesh’ with her bridegroom as demonstrated in marriage. Her citizenship is in heavenly places, not on earth as she is not promised a Land. At the Rapture the Church/bride will become immortal like Jesus. We partake/share the blessing with Israel for Salvation through the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood, we do not take over from Israel.

    Just as the angels are, these two are distinct, different and incomparable with no competition.

  • This issue of the church and Israel is the primary reason that non dispie academics go after dispensationalism. In fact some of them consider it a heresy.

    Amillennialist Engelsma says this:

    "On the one hand, there is the grievous heresy that bewitches multitudes of supposed evangelicals and fundamentalists so that they expect a carnal kingdom of the Jews in Palestine, preceded by a secret “rapture” of the church. This bizarre teaching involves denial of the oneness of Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church, rejection of the unity of the covenant of grace, opposition to infant baptism, and embrace of the dread doctrine and practice of antinomism (lawlessness of life with appeal to “grace”)."

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