It's a famous line, actually. So, he was aware of lots of people leading Israel astray. Some people thought He was the one leading Israel astray—the people that killed him.
Jon: Isn't the point of that metaphor that it's really hard to tell the wolf that looks like a sheep? And that's why right after that, he says, "You know them by their fruit. Does it lead us toward greater faithfulness to God and His covenant or less? Paul had to deal with this in Corinth. He brings up in chapter 14, where he's talking about prophecy, people talking about dreams and visions that they have in the community.
He makes the short statement of the gospel, that Jesus is Lord a good criteria. He says, "If somebody is claiming to prophesy but they can't say that Jesus is the king of the universe, "Then don't listen to them. They don't have the Spirit," Paul says. And then the most explicit point is in the letter of First John chapter 4, where he says, "Test the spirits. If somebody claims to be representing the voice of the Spirit in dreams or prophecy, use collective community discernment.
Does it lead us towards Jesus? Does it lead us to love God or neighbor? And if it doesn't do those things, then we should probably not Actually, what he doesn't say is, "Don't listen. But I don't know. What do you think, Jon? It's very easy to talk about this. I've been in scenarios where it's much more complex than what I just described. Jon: It gets really complex. We kind of said, "Hey, it's pretty straightforward. If it doesn't happen, then it's not from God.
Because when you're talking about images and vision, there's always a sense of like, "I don't know what this means exactly. Take it as you will. Jon: There's a Kevin Rose listening to this, but someone actually studied a lot of these cults or whatever you want to call it, or just religious groups, where like, "The world is ending and I have a date and I know when it's happening. And you would think this is the moment of like, "I was wrong.
Our faithfulness saved the world. So that's why the world didn't end because Tim: Yeah, totally. Although no more or less murky than any other means by which humans try and understand the world. By nature, humans are limited. We're images of God, but we're also limited and compromised images.
And so, I don't know, anytime I think that we're looking for some kind of answer from God that forces me not to own responsibility and use wisdom and discernment and make a decision, I want God to make the decision for me. And that's just, I guess, not how God tends to operate. At least not in the story of the Bible.
And so it requires discernment and responsibility and ownership. I don't know what else to say except this is just the way that prophecy and dreams have always been in the biblical tradition. It's not a new challenge. That's my biggest point is that there are ways that God's people have guideposts to discern throughout history.
And it's important to look at those as we try and do the same in our own day. Daniel: Hi, this is Daniel from Cambridge, England. In Ephesians 2, Paul talks about how no one can come to faith in Jesus except God Himself making him known.
So does that mean by definition that every single believer in Jesus have had an apocalypse? Thank you so much for everything you do. Tim: It's a great question, Daniel.
There are so many great questions about once you redefine apocalypse in its biblical meaning of just coming to see something about Jesus or God that you couldn't see before, it really opens up all these other parts of the Bible that you start thinking about, "Well, that's kind of like an apocalypse too.
That is one. People memorize it. It was one of the first things I memorized as a new Christian. It begins, "You were dead in your sins and transgressions and that God made you alive with Christ seated you with him in the heavenly realms. It's God who is rich in mercy, by his grace you are saved through faith. What you're asking, Daniel, is that fact of if I'm dead and unable to generate life, cosmic life, life of the new age in and of myself is the fact that God has to give me life so that I can truly see and participate in Jesus, is that an apocalypse?
And I think so. I think that's an appropriate category for talking about it. And, Daniel, I would just encourage you to flip back one page to Ephesians 1.
Paul actually uses the word apocalypse to describe this. In chapter 1 of Ephesians, he finishes his amazing one- sentence poem. It's one sentence in Greek from verses 3 to We've talked about this before, I think.
The classroom, yeah. It's so complex. But in chapter 1, verse 15, he shifts after this poem and he starts praying for the believers that he's writing to. And he says, "I'm giving thanks for you. I mention you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Messiah, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and apocalypse as you come to know him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will come to know And two of them are future-oriented: The hope of this calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance among the believers— actually, all three are present—and His surpassing power that is available to us who believe.
He's writing to a persecuted or at least ostracized religious minority up in Ephesus saying he's praying for an apocalypse to see that actually they are the ones who have the inheritance.
The real inheritance of the future in new creation in God's power is available towards you. That's hard to see on an average day. It takes the eyes of your heart to have an apocalypse. Isn't that cool image? Tim: What's cool is that this isn't apocalypse that happens in a very personal way that fits exactly what Daniel's talking about.
Jon: Does that go to show just how general the term apocalypse is? Or are we beginning to conflate kind of two separate things. Because there is this And then there's these more personal apocalypses. And when we talk about how to read apocalyptic literature, we're not talking about how to read this passage in Ephesians that happens to use the word apocalypse that's talking about someone's personal, you know, their heart being opened up to something that's happening that they couldn't see.
We're all the way back to when we talk about the meaning of the word. The word apocalypse simply means to reveal or to uncover. Many things can be uncovered or revealed. Something that's very personal, like what Paul's describing here or the meaning of the cosmos, like what Enoch sees in the Book of Enoch, or the culmination of history, like what John sees.
So many things can be apocalypse. What we're after for this video was, when you have a whole collection, a whole section of the biblical book or a whole biblical book that is a composition of dreams and visions that are all coordinated and connected together, this is what we call apocalyptic literature.
And that's what we're after. So I guess that's maybe one way to separate it. I'm wondering, is there a relationship between testing and apocalypse? Since testing reveals what is in a person and apocalypse reveals what is hidden, does it follow these ideas are closely linked in the Bible.
I'm thinking specifically of Jesus being tested after the Holy Spirit descends on Him at His baptism. Tim: I thought that was really interesting question. Test stories uncover what's in someone. It reveals something about a person. Whereas apocalypses reveal something about God and God's purposes.
So in a way, they're kind of like the inverse of each other. Jon: And we've talked a lot about test in the tree of life series that we did. Jon: That podcast series about how God put tests in front of His people. And what is interesting is how many testing stories take place accompanied by some kind of apocalyptic moment.
In Genesis 3, there's an ironic twist because the woman sees the tree and she takes from it—the forbidden tree—and we're told her eyes were opened. And you're like, "Oh Tim: Yeah, she had an apocalypse. And what she sees is that she's naked. And that was not a problem before she chose to do what is good in her own eyes, but now it's a weakness and vulnerability in the eyes of also that guy who will define good and evil differently than she might.
What happens then is an apocalypse of God's presence in a little design pattern nugget where it's called God comes to walk about in the garden in the ruach hayom—in the wind of the day. Which is often translated "the breezy time of day. And their response is to be afraid. However, God shows up However, He reveals Himself and they hide. And that starts to lay a pattern for God's fearful appearances right on throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible. For example, when Abraham fulfills his great test on Mount Mariah with Isaac, the binding of Isaac, he's up on the high place by a tree at an altar, and the angel of the Lord appears to him and reveals to him, like, "Stop doing this.
At Mount Sinai, the people are tested. They don't want to go up the mountain because God shows up in the stormy time of day, the wind of the day. Tim: Oh, well, God shows up in the wind. Jon: He shows up in the wind.
Tim: Yeah, He shows up. Jon: Okay. In the ruach. Tim: And in the voice. The voice of the Lord comes in the wind. And those are the same words used. The voice of the Lord was walking in the garden at the wind of the day. The story of David that we mentioned where he blew it by taking a census, and then there's a plague in Jerusalem, and he goes up to offer that sacrifice and he sees the angel of Yahweh with a sword standing in between heaven and earth, such an interesting story.
So, he has an apocalypse, but that story is the testing story of David. Dude, we've never talked about this. I just noticed this. I've been working on Samuel. Dude, in that story, 2 Samuel 24, the hinge of the story is where David says to God, he says, "The sheep of Israel, what have they done? Let your hand be against me. Tim: Just like Moses, except he's on Mount Zion. He's at the foundation spot of what's going to be the temple. Tim: So here's David offering his own life for his own sins in the place of the innocent people.
In Moses, it's switched. It's innocent Moses offering his life in the place of guilty people. David's place is turned over. But together they continue that design pattern of the That's cool. Tim: So apocalypses of God's presence on high places and people's testing stories often accompany each other, which is even so we've taken separate videos. The test. Jon: We haven't talked about "the test" as an upcoming video.
Jon: That is news to anyone listening. Jon: We decided to make a video on this theme of the test. It wasn't originally planned but we realized there's so much good content on the cutting room floor when we did our tree of life video that was focusing more on not on what the tree of life is and represents and following that theme through, but the choice it puts in front of you, which is a test of "will you trust God enough?
Tim: Yeah, it's going to be a cool video. We were just looking at some new visual art today. This is going to be awesome. Anyhow, Katy, your instinct is right. There is a larger interconnected design pattern of tests on high places where God apocalypses Himself to somebody. It's a repeated motif throughout the Hebrew Bible and the story of Jesus' baptism, His transfiguration on the tall mountain.
These are all New Testament echoes of that design pattern. Leo: Hi, Tim and Jon. My name is Leo. I'm an undergrad in Bible Theology with Multnomah. I'm just a bit curious as to how the imagery and language of fire or fiery judgment play out in biblical apocalyptic from the Old into the New Testament.
And what are the implications of this for future realities since the hope is renewal and not cosmic destruction? Thank you guys for all the work you do. Tim: Totally. What one helpful way to think about how you would answer a question like this, Leo, it requires reading your Bible a lot, but you could do this, would just be to read through the Bible in sequence.
Read the Bible. It takes a while. But maybe do a theme study of fire as you go through the whole thing, and you'll find that all every single section of the Bible develops a continuing growing portrait of the meaning of fire. And it's really interesting. So the first story that really features fire introduces also its meaning it's the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Genesis But what's interesting is that itself, that story is a development of the flood design pattern.
So the flood is about cosmic collapse. The waters that God split and separated at creation collapse back in. The cosmos collapsed. And what God promises after He recreates the cosmos for Noah is He promises, "I'm never going to do that again with water on a cosmic level.
It gets even worse. Violence is throughout the land. So as you read throughout the book of Genesis, the next story where you have an event city that has an outcry of the innocent rising up to God just like the flood is the beginning of the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Jon: So it's like you're already like, "Okay, well it's not going to flood. God's not going to flood the earth. Tim: He's not going to flood with water and He's not going to do cosmic collapse. But what about a local flood? The lesson of the Sodom and Gomorrah story is there are moments in human communities where humans have unleashed so much violence and oppression that the only just responses for God to hand over to the destructive power of creation on the local level.
Like many would-be prophets, Camping moved the target each time he was wrong. After the October date passed, he just let it go. Even prophets can get confused. Why are Christians so obsessed with the end of the world? Some Christian denominations are more likely than others to be interested in eschatology. The early church believed that Jesus would return very soon, even during their lifetimes, and Christians have been revising that prediction ever since. Judgmental Christians are easy targets for ridicule and disdain, and, to be sure, Christians have perpetuated some of the worst and silliest ideas about the end of the world.
For many Christians, spreading the word about the Rapture is an act born of genuine concern. Federal University of Dutse reveal di real tori behind viral fotos wey show dia SUG presido dey go class with bodyguards. Dem bin dump dis baby inside black bag troway for farm road. See photos from Malala Yousafzai marriage ceremony with Asser Malik. Police parade 14 suspects dem say invade Justice Mary Odili house for Abuja. It has gone through at least three editions which differ greatly in content.
He just joined their ranks. Whisenant has a date for virtually every Biblical event. He knows the earth was created in B. Adam was born [sic. Christ was conceived! Forcing his own chronological scheme on the Bible, he totally ignores the fact that Herod died on April 4, 4 B. Those who set dates are best refuted by the passing of the predicted day without the even occurring.
Rarely does one fine the belated but honest admission that one was wrong and an asking of forgiveness from those who were led astray. Since the September date passed without the expected Rapture, may we now expect a sequel volume: 99 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 99? Sir Robert Anderson clearly discerns the harm these chronological date-setters cause to themselves, to others and to the cause of Christ:.
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