Last Day's Madness By Gary Demar - God Centered Recommendations

Hello, welcome back to God -Centered Theology. This is Andy Cain. It's a joy to be back with you once again. I've got another

God -Centered recommendation for you today. We've got Last Day's Madness by Gary DeMar and our obsession of the modern church.

Last Day's Madness, you know this stuff kind of creeps up and becomes an issue especially with things that happen and you know people say well,

I mean now we've seen this happen. Oh, we're sure we're in the last of the last of the last of the last days, and it's just revolving door, and you know

I'm sure everybody's got 88 reasons the rapture will happen in 1988. My friends, my eschatology shift when

I realized that the time markers in scripture matter. The original audience in scripture matters and as much as people want to cast

Brother Gary or Uncle Gary as some of us call him as a heretic, he's not.

He's a very good Christian, a very good student of scripture and explains things very well. Now you may not agree with his conclusions.

You may see it differently, but we've got to stop this hatred of partial preterists and full preterists.

They're not heretics. Now they may have a significantly different understanding of scripture, but they don't deny the resurrection of the dead.

They don't deny a future brand new glorified body. They don't deny the fact we'll be in eternity with Christ.

They don't deny that all sin is dealt with and defeated and all these things. They just see things differently.

We've just got to stop the nonsense that goes with this, but this is a great book that really lays out a lot of the issues and some of the things that are constantly brought up and deals with the time markers in scripture and having helps you to start to hopefully begin to have a better understanding of how to properly and consistently handle the text in its proper context with the original audience's understanding and with the original author's intent.

So a great book here by Gary, Last Day's Madness. Pick it up. Give it a good read.

Like I said, even if you don't agree with everything in it, it'll just be a better way for you to come into a deeper understanding of the important, vital topic of eschatology because whether you believe it or not, and I used to be one of these, you know, there's only one way to think and bless

God's way I've been taught my whole life what the King James Bible says is all nonsense. Believe it or not, there are different opinions about eschatology and just because something's different from you doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

It could be, I know this is gonna be hard for a lot of you to handle, but it could be that you're wrong.

Oh, I know. God forbid you'd be wrong about anything, but you know what?

I used to be one of those people and you know, through very good consistent study of scripture,

I had to come to the point one day where I realized, oh, I was wrong.

And you know what I know now? I'd much rather know and seek after what is true instead of what is certain.

You say, well, God, I know I'm certain about what's true. There's a difference.

Seeking what is true. See, I've been in my life very certain of things. I know this is right.

Well, trade the certainty and let's pursue what is true because sometimes what is true will challenge your certainty or maybe what you thought you were certain of.

So, eschatology is one of those areas and you know when you see it, you can't unsee it. And it's nice when you can finally break your mind from that newspaper exegesis that says, oh, we bombed somebody.

Oh, wars are rumors of wars. Let's calm down. We always need to go back to scripture.

If scripture doesn't support it, we need to stop. So, newspaper exegesis, leaving that behind was a big help for me.

So, this book was a big help for me as well. I highly recommend it. Pick up a copy today, read it, and when you get through reading it, if you have a situation or a section you want to discuss, hit me up.

Let's talk about it. We may not agree, but that's okay. The key is even if you and I are in disagreement, are we both pursuing the truth of scripture in a consistent contextual fashion?

And if that's the case, if we don't come to an agreement, that's okay. We can depart as brothers and sisters in Christ and, you know, we can say, well,

I think you're wrong. You'll say you think I'm wrong and that's okay. This idea that full agreement is the only possible end result that is acceptable, that's just not reality, friends.

That's just not the way the world works. Yes, there are some key vital doctrines upon which all

Christians should agree and upon which we would say someone is definitionally a Christian.

You know, the deity of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ's Atonement, two perfectly safe centers,

God created the heavens and the earth, we don't believe in evolution, the Incarnation, the

Trinity, things that are very, very clear and unmistakable. Now, the thing is, some would claim that their eschatology is unmistakable and look, whatever view that you have in eschatology, it's perfectly okay to believe that it's unmistakable to you.

But you have to have a measure of grace because there are many people, including myself, that have had their minds changed and the ones

I tend to listen to, the ones that make the biggest impact on me, are the ones that say, my mind was changed in this area, but not because so -and -so said something or not because I watched a video, but because Scripture changed my mind.

Those are the ones you want to pay attention to, and then as you start to pay attention to them, if you find that they're handling the text consistently, even if it doesn't match up with what you may have been told your whole life, it may be

God's way of showing you that what you had been told was wrong, and that's okay. Or it may be that God reinforces to you what you've always believed.

I want us to be students of Scripture, be Bereans. Go to the Scripture, look at the time markers, and handle it consistently.

We should not have a different set of skills and rules and hermeneutics to interpret eschatological things that we would do for the

Trinity and so on and so forth. We need the same basis of exegesis for all doctrine.

Amen? Well, like I said, great book, pick you up a copy, check it out, and let's be graceful, my friends.