Apologia Church- ESCHATON: Part 1: Eschatology Matters

Join with me in prayer as we get into this first of our series called Eschaton. God, I come before You, Lord, as a pastor, Lord, over these people that You've brought out of the world to Yourself and the ones that You've brought into this room together today, God.

I come to You asking, Lord, that You would entirely get me out of the way. I pray, Lord, that in this whole series, God, that You would guard my heart, my mind, my mouth. Lord, help me to be submitted to You and Your truth.

I pray that You'd guard me from error, guard us from error. I pray, Lord, that You would illuminate Your Word by Your Spirit, that You'd teach us,.

God.

And the most important thing, Lord, is in my own fallible condition, in my own brokenness, God, I just pray that You'd be glorified and Christ would be exalted, Lord, and You would use this series, God, to reshape the way that we think, God, about You, the way that we think about the world, the way that we think about the Messiah and His kingdom.

And Lord, I pray with all my heart, God, that You would use this series as a blessing to Your church, God, both in this room, God, and around the world, Lord, whether it's pulled down on the internet or wherever people get it, God, that You would use this, Lord, as healing for the church, God, to correct us, to get us back on track, Lord, to have a vision, Lord, of Jesus, Father, and His mighty kingdom and His power, Lord, that transforms the world.

In Jesus' name, amen. So the series, Eschaton, there it is, by the way. Pastor Luke is an amazing artist. He's always done our stuff and did a phenomenal job. Pastor Luke, when he was creating this, puts this together, and it's so perfect because there's so many elements of this to perfectly describe the whole point of the series.

I mean, in a visual, in a symbol, that's it right there. The mountain of the Lord, this mustard seed that grows into a large tree, and the birds of the air nest in its branches, I mean, that's what the whole series is about.

Why End-Times Teaching Matters

Some of you guys are thinking, all that just sounded really weird and hooky to me, Pastor Jeff. I don't know what that means. But believe me, you're going to catch it. And it's going to be so significant to you because we're trying to center what we're saying about the end of the world, the climax of history, which is centered around what the Bible teaches about that subject, the climax of history.

What does it look like in history? Why would we do a series like this, Eschaton? Is it just to be popular? Because, you know, in our culture, you can have a series you do on, say, the Trinity, right? You could do like, hey, we're doing a 17-week series on the Trinity.

People are like, hey, right on. Like, how are we going to do that and how exciting is that? And I want to say that's not good and that's not good. John Samson, I saw you had on your list of sermons on monergism .com, it said you have one called I Love the Trinity, right?

I love the Trinity. How many Christians say that today? I love the Trinity. If you don't say that, you need to. You need to learn to love what the Bible says about the triunity of God and it's glorious in God's plan of redemption that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fulfill.

It's awesome. But normally, you can't get Christians today overly excited about a series on the Trinity,.

Right?

Or the nature of Christ as God and man. Like big series, huge conference selling out, maybe, but, but, but, but, but, but. Do a conference on end times. Throw in terms like antichrist, whores riding beasts, drunk with blood, right?

Six, six, six, and you will sell out. You will have shoulder to shoulder. I mean, you will seriously have a line, you have scalpers outside selling tickets to that conference on eschatology. Our culture is enamored by this.

When I say culture, I say Christian culture and that's, that's seen obviously in the success of the series like the Left Behind series. Millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of copies sold.

Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins, the series Left Behind. If you don't know the book series, you may be familiar with the movie that went to the theaters years ago with Kirk Cameron, Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains, the Left Behind series.

And so it's popular. Our culture loves it. If you go to a Christian bookstore, they always have the what section? The prophecy section, right? And you get all the famous guys, Hal Lindsey, right? You got the Tim LaHaye's.

You got all the guys. So what's going on in Israel right now? What's happening in Israel? Is this guy the antichrist? Is this guy the antichrist? And I want to just tell you, that's not a new thing for Christians.

That's as old as dirt. It's as old as dirt. You can look at Christians writing 200 years ago, 300 years ago, and everyone's always trying to look at the newspaper and see who the antichrist is. And for some people before it was the, it was the Pope in Rome.

He was the antichrist.

For a guy I met on Mill Avenue once, it was George Bush. He's the antichrist. We're always looking and people are always trying to do newspaper eschatology, right? Or exegesis. To look at the newspaper and say, what's happening in the world today?

And they go running off to the Bible to see where they could find something that looks like that in the Bible. And so this is just something that interests people. And I'm going to say it should, but I think people have an unhealthy interest at times in eschatology.

Or in eschatology, a pursuit of knowing what does God say about the end that isn't rooted in the scriptures themselves, but it's more rooted in pop culture. What's this famous author say? Or a lot of times we come to the scriptures as Gentiles.

You know what that means? Non-Jews.

Okay?

Yeah, Jews and Gentiles. We don't have the Hebrew worldview. And so with that, we come to the Bible without a Hebrew like mind, without a Hebrew type worldview and symbolism and imagery. And we go to the Bible and someone picks up the Bible with a Gentile understanding, not knowing the scriptures and the redemptive story that God has in the Bible.

And we run to the Bible and we start just molding it into whatever we want. We start guessing instead of reading the Bible biblically. Now I'm going to say that in this whole series, I'm going to say things to you guys a lot, a few things I want you to sort of grab onto and just kind of hold onto and know.

When you're studying the Bible and specifically studying eschatology or the study of last things, you really have two choices fundamentally. Number one, you can guess. You can make it up. You go to the Bible, you could see something like a whore drinking blood, wearing purple and scarlet with Babylon written on her head, riding a seven-headed ten-horned beast.

And you could go looking into the world to find that person, possibly Van Buren, right? That's where you go looking for it now. The idea is, I like to say that because Arizonans know what that means. But the idea is, where do we find this woman?

But you see, you can guess and start looking into a newspaper and saying, who's the Antichrist today? Bin Laden? Saddam Hussein? Who's the Antichrist? The Pope? George Bush? Who's the Antichrist? And you can go running off in a newspaper and try to find the Antichrist.

Or second option, this is what I want to try to encourage us to go to when we study end times. You can either guess first or you can do it biblically. What I mean by that is, you say, well, obviously, Jeff, do it biblically, right?

The idea is, you can actually let the Bible interpret the Bible. You can look at the whole beautiful story of God's plan of redemption in Scripture and you could say, what does this mean in Scripture?

Where else did God say this? And what was God's plan with this? Why is Jesus talking about this? And why do they seem to know this detail? Like what is today? What is today? What's that? Are you guys afraid?

I'm not going to hurt you, okay? It's Palm Sunday. It's Palm Sunday. And interestingly, it's a significant thing for us as Christians because we look back on it and we say, hey, Palm Sunday is where Jesus came riding on that donkey, lowly, humble, coming into Jerusalem.

And they're saying, Hosanna, Hosanna. And they're quoting the Scriptures. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And that was prophecy of the king riding into Jerusalem. They had that worldview.

They knew that this plan of redemption was going on. History was linear. It was going somewhere. It wasn't in flux. It wasn't cycles. It wasn't chaos. It was a line in history. History was going somewhere.

And when they see Jesus coming into Jerusalem, Hosanna, Hosanna. And they see this as fulfillment. The king is coming. And it wasn't like, oh, we get a king now? Oh, that's neat. It was a big deal. It was what they had been anticipating.

Eschatology matters. Now, I'm using these words.

Watch this.

And the cool thing about Apologia that I love is many of you are brand new believers. I like that. I do. I like it because we get a chance now to go to the Scriptures and just pour into the Scriptures and this biblical worldview.

But at the same time, I realized something, and I want you to know this. I am so sensitive to and aware of the fact that many of us are new believers. And I start throwing terms around like eschatology, and you're like, what, what?

You don't know what that means. And I'm going to just say, I'm going to explain these things. I don't want them to go over your head because I don't want to talk over you. I want to communicate with you as a body.

I want you guys to know these things because this is not just about having a series. My heart's desire, I want you to know this, is that through this series, not only will you be changed, but you will be used now as God's people to change and transform the entire.

World.

Is it possible for a little church like this in the corner of Phoenix? Is it possible for God to change the world through a small church like this? Well, I remember about three disciples standing before Jesus as He ascended to heaven.

That was about 2 ,000 years ago in a mostly illiterate part of the world in Palestine. These guys didn't have these fat, awesome college degrees. These were fishermen, some of them, and God used them to change the world, amen?

So I believe that'll do that. But I want to use these terms, and I want you to catch what they mean. Are you ready? So some of this will be like a seminary course in some respects. A lot of times we want preaching to be one way and like seminary instruction to be another.

Way.

But I want to say, I think you're going to see intersections of how this feels. I want to instruct us. So the word eschatology, what's that mean? Well, eschatology is a compound, actually, of two Greek words.

Eschatology is a compound of two Greek words, one eschatos and the other logia, okay? Eschatos and logia. And eschatos essentially means last, okay?

Get it?

It means last. Eschatos, last. And then logia, it means word or discourse. So putting these together, eschatology, what are we talking about? We're talking about, ready? The study of last things, okay?

So eschatology, eschatos, and logia is a compound, and what it means is the study of last things. What are we talking about? We're talking about last things, which is really cool because I want to tell you right now only the biblical worldview can say this.

Only the biblical worldview has a view of history that actually has the last things in them, right? Because you look at the world and if you have a pagan view of history, it's in cycles, it's always in flux, and it's just kind of changing, but it goes secular, it's a pagan worldview.

Or you can have more of a naturalistic worldview today, say an evolutionary worldview where it's all just chaos, there is no governance, there is no personal order, there's no plan of history, it's just kind of happening, and it's just sort of bubbling up, and it's sort of bobbing on the surface of the cosmos.

But we have in a biblical worldview a view that there is such a thing as a last things, that there's a climax to history, that when God starts something, he has a view to where it's going, and he is sovereign over it.

Some of you guys have heard the popular thing that's said a lot in Christian circles, and that is that R .C. Sproul said something, there's not one maverick molecule in the entire universe. The biblical worldview gives us the fact that God is in charge of history and everything in it, your life, my life, the little things, the micro things, and the macro things, the whole plan of history in his hand.

He knows where it's going, he controls where it's going, history is in the hands of an almighty and powerful God, who's spoken into existence, and he's in control of everything, he's in charge. So when we talk about the series name, Eschaton, what's that mean?

Well that is talking about the climax of history, the climax of history. So Eschatology is the study of last things, the name of the series is Eschaton, and what we're trying to figure out is this, seeing as the sovereign God, the only God, the true and living God, none before, none after, the first, the last, that God, who declares the end from the beginning, is in charge of history, we're asking the question, this line of history, where's it going?

What is the view in scripture, what's it gonna look like? Think about this for a moment, if you guys have been in church for a while, or you've been around the church, you've heard things like, well, we're just waiting for things to crash and burn enough, until finally, what's gonna happen?

In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. See that sticker? Right? You see that? Every time I see that sticker, I'm gonna pull a California stop on it, you know what that.

Is?

So you ever seen a California stop? It's when you watch the police chasing the vehicles, and the cops will get right up next to them like this, and then they'll bump the edge of the tire, and it's, sorry, I'm trying to work on sanctification on that one, guys, so.

In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. Or how about this, was it a year ago, when the false prophet, what's his name, what was his name? Yeah, Harold Camping, the false prophet extraordinaire.

All over the world, stole money from Christians, stole money, yes, stole money from people by telling them that Jesus was gonna return at a specific time, a specific hour, Jesus is returning, took money from Christians, millions of dollars in, collected billboards all over the planet, people gave up their jobs, they gave away their savings to be part of this ridiculous eschatology, the belief that Jesus was going to return at a particular time.

And what were the atheists selling? I saw him wearing the t-shirts, I survived the rapture, right? Or proud to be left behind. Or people were actually saying to these Christians, or these people who are professing to be Christians who were engaged in this ridiculous eschatology with Harold Camping, they were saying, well, if Jesus is coming back, do you mind signing a house over to me when you disappear?

Let's go, come on now, put your money where your mouth is, let's go, come on, where's the contract? I'll take your house when you're gone. I mean, just an amazing thing, just the eschatologies matter.

You know, you may be aware of the fact that many people think that there's going to be a seven-year tribulation, that's a popular view today, it's not the only Christian view today. There's going to be a seven-year tribulation, there's going to be a secret rapture where many will be left behind, there'll be an antichrist figure who rises up, who brings a covenant of peace to the people of Israel, then three and a half years later, he breaks this covenant of peace with Israel and all hell breaks out on earth.

And those who are left behind have to endure this great tribulation where ultimately the world goes to hell in a handbasket, two-thirds of the Jews are slaughtered. Finally they have Jesus come back and return to a defeated church and a defeated world where he finally comes back in victory to await now a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth to which at the end of that, Satan is unleashed again where there's another battle that breaks out to where finally Jesus wraps up human history into the eternal state after all of that, ultimately that's the popular view today.

Does it matter? Because here's what I'm going to say to you, listen, listen, I have heroes and you should too, I have heroes, Christian men of God that I look up to that I don't think I'll ever be half as solid a Christian as they are who believe that view of eschatology.

You should know this, ready? These are what we call in Christian circles in-house debates. You should know that. When we talk about end-time stuff, we're talking about an issue that is very, very important.

Very important. I'm not saying it's not important because it's a non-essential issue, it's very important but it's not something that we want to divide as Christians over to say, you don't hold my eschatology so I'm not serving Jesus with you.

We all believe the same God, the same gospel, amen? That's the truth. But know this, that there are Christians that hold different views of end times but should we just say, well, no one seems to get it right so it doesn't really matter.

I want to say this, eschatology matters a great, great deal. The Bible talks a lot about it and I want to say that we can know. The problem is we have to be willing to let go of our traditions. We have to be willing to come to the scriptures and say, you know, what do the scriptures.

Say?

What do they teach? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you guys a few reasons here why do this study. First thing is number one, we are called in scripture to rightly divide the word of truth.

Second Timothy 2 .15, you guys can run there real fast, I'm going to just have you guys read that. Second Timothy 2 .15, New Testament that's to the right of your Bible. If you get to Revelation, you are too far.

Second Timothy 2 .15, once you guys get there, I'd like to hear the turn of the pages and you guys are going to be wanting to bring your Bibles as much as possible through this series because I want you to be able to see the text with your own eyes and to work through this together with me.

Very important that we're in the text in this series, that we're not giving you just charts and a whole system, but we're letting you see in the text of scripture, what does the word of God say? I'm going to read to you, this is a letter of Paul to Timothy.

Second Timothy 2 .15, let me just start one above that so you can read this, 2 .14, remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers, but be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

So first reason why this study is very important is that as Christians, we're called to accurately handle the word of truth, to rightly divide the word of truth. We're called by God to test all things, the Bible says, hold fast to that which is true.

The Bereans and Testing Teaching by Scripture

I want you to consider something, a moment in our own history as the people of God. Now watch this, some of you guys know this, by way of a children's song, be a Berean, look what you see, no one knows, okay I'm sorry, I had that totally planned a different direction, okay so I should have thought something different, obviously no one knows that, okay.

In our history, the kingdom of God in the world, we have in the book of Acts an incident where the apostle Paul goes into a place called Berea. Now what it does is it actually gives a compliment, the scriptures give a compliment to the people in Berea that you need to be aware of and it's a famous scene, there's a bookstore named after it, Berean Christian Bookstores, right, you know the bookstore, okay.

Paul goes to Berea and what it says is a compliment to Christians, you need to hear when you think about issues like eschatology and what does the Bible say about the end of the world and the climax of history and this is what happens, Paul goes into Berea and it says that the people who were in Berea were more noble-minded, more noble-minded than the ones in Thessalonica because when Paul comes into Berea and he's bringing the scriptures, telling them about Jesus, Yeshua the Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah, they're basically doing this, oh that's awesome, where does it say that?

Where Paul? Show me, show me where, they were probably like this, where is it on this scroll, right there, but they were asking the question, where is it at, show me where and it's not a bad thing for Christians to say to somebody even with a reputation, your pastor, your favorite minister, rock star pastors, we've got lots of those today, our favorite theologian, to ask the humble question, the necessary question for Christians and that is this, where does it say that?

Show me in the scriptures and they do that with Paul and Paul gives them the gospel, gives them this Messiah and they're searching the scriptures daily and you know what God says to the Christian who does that?

He says you're more noble-minded than the ones in Thessalonica because they receive the word and they search the scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was so. It's important for us as Christians, why do this study?

Because God calls you to rightly divide the word of truth, the Bible tells us to test all things, hold fast to that which is true, Jesus says thy word is truth, it was clear in scripture from Genesis to Revelation, guys, what's the test of a prophet?

What do we do when we have someone that's professing to be part of God's work in history, they're teaching us about God, they're telling us about God, they're claiming a position of being called by God, what does the Bible tell us to do with people like that?

It's to see if what they say lines up with the word of God as he's revealed it, amen? That's the test of a prophet, Deuteronomy 13, one through four, it says even if someone came and they had signs and wonders, I mean it looks good, they're raising the dead, maybe they can multiply fish and loaves, I mean they're doing crazy signs and wonders, looks like a successful ministry, and Deuteronomy 13, one through four says no matter how successful the ministry is, no matter what it looks like, if they lead you after other gods, gods which you have not known, God says that's how you know they're a false prophet, what does Isaiah.

Say?

Isaiah chapter eight, verse 20 says to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no light in them. The test was always what is what this guy says, how does it look with the scriptures next to it?

What is Paul's test in Romans? When he's bringing the gospel, guys, think about it, when he's bringing the gospel, what does he do as the standard? He asks the question in Romans chapter four, what does it say?

He says, what do the scriptures say? The test is what does the scriptures say? That's always the test. God calls us to be like that. Second reason as to why to do this study, other than wanting to be someone who accurately handles the word of God, is number two, we as Christians, guys, let's think about something.

Christ as Truth and the Call to Think Biblically

Very significant.

Guys, just come with me here for a second. Jesus says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no man comes to the father but by.

Me.

Guys, we say as Christians, it's our MO, it's what we're all about. We say that we're in love with the one who's the very embodiment of truth.

That's Jesus.

And so as Christians, obviously we're fallible. We can all blow it, and we do. But what is that, should we be satisfied with just blowing it, and even coming to the word of God, which is the very words of a living God, should we be satisfied with newspaper exegesis, where we go to the newspaper and we start trying to throw stuff from the newspaper today into the Bible?

Is it okay for us as Christians to not care about accurately handling this issue, going to the scriptures to actually say, what does God say about this? It couldn't be something that we as Christians should ever pursue.

We say we love the one who's the embodiment of truth, guys. And listen, I'm gonna just say this, I'm gonna raise the standard for a second, raise the standard. Christians, we blow it. We're fallible. God is infallible.

He's eternal. He's infinite. We're not. But you know what? Here's the thing. As fallen people now redeemed by God, we should desire to glorify God with our thinking, with the way that we think about him, ourselves, the world.

We shouldn't be content with happy inconsistencies as Christians. We shouldn't be content with something that doesn't make sense. We have a reason as Christians to want something to be logical and reasonable.

We have a reason as Christians to want it to actually work, because we love the truth. Jesus is the embodiment of truth, and we love him. We gotta be Christians that actually show that in our lives. We don't wanna just bite the first thing that comes down the road and say, well, I guess.

That's true.

I'll take that. We wanna search the scriptures and say, what does God say about this? The third thing I'm gonna say is this. This is probably where this is really gonna hook. You guys will catch this now.

It's gonna start tasting like this is making sense now. Number three, a bad eschatology, a bad view of the end of history, a bad view of the climax of history, what does it look like from the scriptures, will have consequences.

It's not like a bad eschatology is no big deal. Let me just share with you some stuff. This is where a lot of this, the first message, as I give you the broad picture, some of this.

Will be autobiographical.

I understand that, and I don't really like doing that, but I have to sort of share with you my experience so you understand why I believe this is really important and how I was sort of corrected myself.

I believed one thing, and I was corrected by the scriptures, and I wanna share that experience with you so you understand, as Christians, we can be one way for a long time, but when you get corrected by God, even if you held something and you cherished it, it's a beautiful thing.

It's not a bad thing. It's a beautiful thing for God to correct you and your thinking, because it's not like it wrecks your life. It only expands and beautifies your intimacy with God when he corrects you.

Okay, so on the issue of eschatologies have consequences. The first thing I wanna say is this, and this is where you guys will probably start grasping some of this, is ready. Many cults in the last 200 years have risen up, even on American soil, as apocalyptic.

Cults.

Oh, I love that word. Don't you?

It's fun to even say that. That's why Christians love it. It's apocalyptic, right? Apocalyptic cults, just on American soil alone. Consider it for a moment. Mormonism was a religion that in many ways was based on a faulty eschatology.

Joseph Smith in the first century predicted the coming of Christ within his generation. As a matter of fact, you can listen to the video I just put up on YouTube of us at the temple this week. Some of the guys were there.

These missionaries walked by me, Mormon missionaries at the temple. They walked by. And just so you know, I'm a little more aggressive with Mormon missionaries because they're every day proclaiming the gospel of death door to door, and so I'm a little more aggressive.

So context is important. But they walked by, and I said, elders, you ever see any of Joseph Smith's false prophecies? He said, oh, we don't look at that. So you don't look at your prophet's teachings?

And they're like, no, we don't look at that stuff. I said, Joseph Smith said that Jesus is gonna return in 56 years. He said, no, he didn't.

I said, yes, he did.

I'll show you right here.

He didn't want to see it. He left within about 30 seconds of that, right? But the idea is the first century, you can see peppered across all Mormon history and documents. Joseph Smith and the early prophets and apostles of Mormonism taught that Jesus was gonna return in their generation before they all died.

It was a religion that sprang out of a bad eschatology. Oh, and ready for this one? The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Jehovah's Witnesses.

What?

7 a .m. knocking at my door.

What?

Jehovah's Witnesses, Brooklyn, New York, Charles Taze Russell. This was a religion that specifically sprung out of a bad eschatology. There are a lot of other things. But the Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the coming of Christ over the last century numbers of times and failed every single time.

As a matter of fact, in the 70s, they lost a great majority of their membership due to a failed prophecy of the coming of Christ. And they continue to go today, this day. David Koresh, famous, everyone knows, Waco, Texas.

Waco just sounds crazy. When you just say Waco, wow. That's where David Koresh belongs. Sorry, if anyone's in Waco, if you're listening to this message and you're in the world, just a joke. Calm down.

Okay.

David Koresh specifically placed himself into the book of Revelation. And his cult sprang out of the idea that he was God. He was essentially the return of Christ. And he used the book of Revelation to delude his followers.

Eschatology matters. It matters greatly. How many people, when Harold Camping gave this false prediction of Christ's coming, how many people lost their life savings? How many people's lives were disrupted because of this false prophet with his bad eschatology?

Does eschatology matter? It matters a great deal. It has consequences. And from my own experience, I want to just share with you that the second thing here as a Christian, a bad eschatology will render you and your witness impotent and your legacy and history impotent.

Consider this for a second. If you were in a battle, you're in a battle, okay? You're overseen by a captain and you're on the battlefield, right? And your captain says to you, guys, are you ready? We're going to fight.

You're like, yeah, right? You're getting loaded up and getting all your stuff and everything ready to go.

Are you ready to go? Ready to go.

We're going to fight. We're going to fight.

You're like, yeah, and everyone's roar. People are beating on their chest and all the men are getting excited. You're getting goosebumps right now, aren't you, dudes, right? Right now, as I speak, you're already getting excited.

You're thinking braveheart, you're painting your face, all that stuff, right?

Yeah.

And he goes, all right, guys, ready?

We're going to go fight.

And there isn't a chance in the world that any of you are making it out alive. As a matter of fact, I offer you a 100 guarantee that as you go to throw your lives into the field right now to fight this battle, 100 guarantee, you're going to fail and it ultimately will have no effect in this moment.

Oh.

People kind of, mm, just a minute, just a second. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you get the point? It matters if you believe that no matter what your efforts are in the world and in history, what you do, ultimately the church is defeated in the end and Christ has to come to a defeated church in the world and that nothing you do ultimately matters in history in the sense of transforming the world in history.

Now, what are we doing?

Does it affect how you view legacies that you leave?

Let me ask you a question.

If you believe that ultimately the witness of the church in the world is going to be defeated and Jesus has to return to a defeated church, will it affect your view of 40 million babies being murdered in your society and the necessary element of you being involved in stopping it?

Will it affect that? It certainly will. Eschatologies matter. It changes your whole perspective of your world, the legacy that you leave, your kids and what's coming for them. It matters. J. Vernon McGee was famous for this.

He's, by the way, an amazing Bible teacher. Love J. Vernon McGee. He was great. He's a little off in this area though because J. Vernon McGee, I love J. Vernon McGee, by the way, he has a famous statement.

He said this, and this comes from him, why polish brass on a sinking ship? That is because his view of the end of the world and the climax of history was that the world is, the church is defeated in history.

It doesn't really matter because we're going to lose. Darkness is going to overwhelm us. The ship is sinking. Why polish brass on a sinking ship? That's what he said. I was in a seminary class, I was in a seminary class, and I'm doing a seminary class with a mixed bag of dudes, okay?

Different eschatologies. And that's great. Again, this is a non-essential issue that doesn't cause Christians to divide. But my professor, great man of God, was of the perspective that is popular today, left behind series, dispensational premillennialism, it's called.

Don't worry about the word, I'll teach you what that means. Basically, secret rapture, seven years of tribulation, Jesus returns, thousand years on earth, ultimately to another releasing of Satan until finally the state to come.

And so I'm talking to him about some verses, and I said, well, professor, how would you answer this? I have more of an optimistic view of the kingdom of Christ in history. And he says, Jeff, I respect your views, and I gave him a few verses.