{"id":994,"date":"2012-01-26T10:37:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T15:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=994"},"modified":"2012-01-26T10:39:42","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T15:39:42","slug":"embarrassment-and-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/embarrassment-and-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Embarrassment and Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year with the failed predictions of Harold Camping (once again…and again), we have been reminded by many of the failed prophecies of the past.\u00a0 Many come from the cults (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists\/Millerites).\u00a0 Y2K was extremely revealing and financially profitable for some video makers.\u00a0 There were both Christian and secular alarmists on that one.\u00a0 I have been especially curious about the rise of non-Christian doomsday prophecies that seem to proliferate in our culture — all of them NOT coming from a dispensational premillennial outlook on the rapture of the church.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The December 21, 2012 Mayan Calendar doomsday<\/strong> end to the world readily comes to mind.\u00a0 One website I saw that was critical of it mentioned various theories for how the end would come:\u00a0 a celestial body of some kind (asteroid, planet, comet) coming close to earth, solar flares, or my favorite — geomagnetic reversal.\u00a0 I probably will not lose a lot of sleep on this one.\u00a0 When you study the details, all you see is a lot of fluff and fog.\u00a0 Dr. David Mappes, one of my colleagues at Baptist Bible Seminary wrote an article entitled “An Overview and Ananlysis of Apocalyptic Views Relating to the Year 2012 as the End of the World” that was published in our Spring 2011 edition of The Journal of Ministry and Theology<\/em>.\u00a0 It is an interesting read.<\/p>\n

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Environmental zealots<\/strong> often use doomsday language to talk about the future of planet earth if we don’t get our act together.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Global warming advocates, besides using the issue to get grants for educational research for varioius university departments, come across at times as extreme alarmists.\u00a0 Al Gore comes to mind (see http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AwkR3uuZMIM<\/a>).\u00a0 Wasn’t he the one that predicted at some point (2006?) that in ten years we would destroy ourselves if we did not take immediate drastic action?\u00a0 Such predictions are just as fanciful and speculative as any Christian who says he knows the exact day the Lord Jesus will return.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These tendencies in our culture to embrace doomsday scenarios I believe reflect something that God has placed in all of us.\u00a0 There is a dark day coming where there will be accountability.\u00a0 The world will not continue as it always has.\u00a0 However, Christians should face such truth as taught in Scripture about these things without the dread that the world often expresses in these zany movements.\u00a0\u00a0The last thing that the world needs to see is Christians expressing fear.\u00a0 We should face whatever comes with courage.<\/p>\n

That is one reason why Christians should not back down from studying prophetic details in Scripture.\u00a0 Many refuse to do so because it has been so sensationalized.\u00a0 But why is that a good excuse?\u00a0 Do evolutionists back down because so many of their former “proofs” like Piltdown Man have turned out to be hoaxes?\u00a0 Do Global Warming fanatics back down because last winter was a cold one?\u00a0 We should not be embarrassed by any part of the Bible.\u00a0 God’s Word is God’s Word.\u00a0 Study it all and present its statements the best you can.\u00a0 If you do, you will never set dates because that is the teaching of Scripture, although you might long more for the coming of the Lord in your heart.\u00a0 That is far more important than selling videos about what you think will happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year with the failed predictions of Harold Camping (once again…and again), we have been reminded by many of the failed prophecies of the past.\u00a0 Many come from the cults (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists\/Millerites).\u00a0 Y2K was extremely revealing and financially profitable for some video makers.\u00a0 There were both Christian and secular alarmists on that one.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}