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The following is an excerpt from an interesting post dated Wednesday, October 8, 2008, by Pastor Zack of Lansing, Michigan. You can (and should) view the complete article here.
Eschatological On-Ramp
So a bunch of global banking bigwigs got together today and agreed to cut interest rates. Our own fed chair ironed this out with his counterparts in England, China, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and some Czar from the European Central Bank. (It hasn't worked yet; the decision to cut the federal funds rate to 1.5% rallied the market for a short time, but the DJI still closed out considerably down. )
That was this morning. Tonight, I taught my Wednesday night Bible class. We've been going through Revelation for a little less than a year. I've been doing my best to slowly, brick by brick, knock down any vestige of Left Behind Rapture cult nonsense that my people may have absorbed and, in its place, teach them the Historic Protestant understanding of the end times.
There are some major differences. Case in point: your average Left Behinder would have jumped into the study of Revelation, using the day's headlines as an interpretive grid. Van Impe makes a living doing this (see yesterday's post). Whether it's 1985 or 2008, we can find prophecy in the headlines. Mikhail Gorbachev is clearly the Antichrist. No, wait! It's Saddam Hussein!... Y2K will mark the beginning of the Great Tribulation! Er...The European Union is clearly the Beast; it has SEVEN STATES after all. Crud, now it has twenty-seven...
The frustrating thing is that these guys never go back and retract what they said about last year's headlines. They plow ahead without a care in the world, effecting as confident a tone and demeanor as they can muster.
Were I a Left Behinder, I'd have spent a good deal of time tonight outlining what had taken place when those seven (oooohhh) nations got together and started acting all one-world-governmenty. One step closer to a world currency. One step closer to the microchip that the Bible predicts! (Greek: pentiumos intelos).
But I didn't do that. I caution students of the Bible against using the Old Testament to interpret the new (it should be vice versa), let alone using the Associated Press to interpret Holy Scripture.
However, there will ultimately be a great crash to the whole thing. And I mean the whole thing. I'm preaching on the Rich Fool in Luke 12 this week. For him, the great market crash was his death, when he found out that he'd been putting all his eggs in the wrong basket and all of his investments in the wrong fund. And that fund didn't pay dividends in the afterlife.
When all is said and done, whether the market is up or down, there's only one place to put your trust that won't crash and burn in the end: in Jesus Christ. If your trust is in Him and you're living for Him, your investments are secure for all of eternity.
That's not quite as sexy as smoke-filled back rooms where one-world currencies are born or tanks rolling into Jerusalem or microchips being injected into people's foreheads. But it's a heck of lot more comforting. And it's actually based in reality and the truths of Scripture.
Eschatological On-Ramp
So a bunch of global banking bigwigs got together today and agreed to cut interest rates. Our own fed chair ironed this out with his counterparts in England, China, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and some Czar from the European Central Bank. (It hasn't worked yet; the decision to cut the federal funds rate to 1.5% rallied the market for a short time, but the DJI still closed out considerably down. )
That was this morning. Tonight, I taught my Wednesday night Bible class. We've been going through Revelation for a little less than a year. I've been doing my best to slowly, brick by brick, knock down any vestige of Left Behind Rapture cult nonsense that my people may have absorbed and, in its place, teach them the Historic Protestant understanding of the end times.
There are some major differences. Case in point: your average Left Behinder would have jumped into the study of Revelation, using the day's headlines as an interpretive grid. Van Impe makes a living doing this (see yesterday's post). Whether it's 1985 or 2008, we can find prophecy in the headlines. Mikhail Gorbachev is clearly the Antichrist. No, wait! It's Saddam Hussein!... Y2K will mark the beginning of the Great Tribulation! Er...The European Union is clearly the Beast; it has SEVEN STATES after all. Crud, now it has twenty-seven...
The frustrating thing is that these guys never go back and retract what they said about last year's headlines. They plow ahead without a care in the world, effecting as confident a tone and demeanor as they can muster.
Were I a Left Behinder, I'd have spent a good deal of time tonight outlining what had taken place when those seven (oooohhh) nations got together and started acting all one-world-governmenty. One step closer to a world currency. One step closer to the microchip that the Bible predicts! (Greek: pentiumos intelos).
But I didn't do that. I caution students of the Bible against using the Old Testament to interpret the new (it should be vice versa), let alone using the Associated Press to interpret Holy Scripture.
However, there will ultimately be a great crash to the whole thing. And I mean the whole thing. I'm preaching on the Rich Fool in Luke 12 this week. For him, the great market crash was his death, when he found out that he'd been putting all his eggs in the wrong basket and all of his investments in the wrong fund. And that fund didn't pay dividends in the afterlife.
When all is said and done, whether the market is up or down, there's only one place to put your trust that won't crash and burn in the end: in Jesus Christ. If your trust is in Him and you're living for Him, your investments are secure for all of eternity.
That's not quite as sexy as smoke-filled back rooms where one-world currencies are born or tanks rolling into Jerusalem or microchips being injected into people's foreheads. But it's a heck of lot more comforting. And it's actually based in reality and the truths of Scripture.
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