Hopeful About Tomorrow (Part 1)

0:00A new heaven and a new earth

Amen. The world seems to be getting worse and worse. Things are more tense, more dangerous. In many ways, they’re getting simply stranger. And we have access to more information than any other time in human history, and yet that information lacks reliability. Today, I want to help start developing a framework for you to develop your own personal theology concerning the end of all things. Today, we’re starting a brand new series called Hopeful About Tomorrow, and I would invite you to join me in Revelation 21. Now, I’m going to skip around a lot today, but I like giving you somewhere to turn in your Bibles.

It just shows me where all the saved people are in the room. The more paper I hear turning, the more I know that revival is on its way. Amen. If you have a Bible that glows, I forgive you. It’s fine. You’ll just get into heaven in the second group. Long as I’m in. Amen. Y’all didn’t know that’s in Revelation, right? I’m just kidding. It’s not. Revelation chapter 21, I want to start in verse 1. Just read this to get us started this morning. It says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

“And I saw a holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things,’ hallelujah, ‘have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’

“Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” That’s a good way to end that little portion there. This moment of Scripture here that we’re in, this is trustworthy and true. There is a time ahead of us where those who serve the Lord Jesus Christ are going to be redeemed, are going to be restored, are for many going to be resurrected, and are going to have glorified bodies to live together with the Lord forever in a glorified earth, a new heaven, new earth. What I’m telling you today is you’ve got something to be hopeful about. We’re hopeful for tomorrow.

Now, really, today is going to be a different type of message. That’s why I have my hands free, is so I can teach. This is when I preach. This is when I teach, amen. And today, it’s going to be a little less of a “go do this, go believe this, go implement this.” Today, I’m going to, hopefully for some of you, kind of open your minds to the idea that there’s a lot more on this topic than we are typically exposed to. The good news about that is that other information gives us reason to be hopeful. It gives us reason to be hopeful.

But I’m going to help you come to a place today, hopefully, where you can start building some of your own personal theology around the end times, okay?

3:34Three questions for building a theology

Now, when it comes to developing a theology, there’s three questions that I ask. This is kind of the three-question process I follow. Is one, what does the Bible say? That’s a good place to start. Might not be the worst place to finish. But what does the Bible say? I’ve said it a few times from the pulpit. The Bible says it. I believe that that settles it. Amen. But sometimes the Bible says stuff that, if we’re all real honest, don’t make the most sense in the world, especially around these issues, right?

And so when we ask the question, what does the Bible say? The next question that we ask if we’re struggling with that is we ask the question, what does this look like throughout church history? Throughout the 2,000 years of the church, how has the church dealt with this issue? If you get something in the Scripture and you go, “I don’t know what to...” Well, what’s the church been doing for 2,000 years? I got good news. There’s people smarter than you and smarter than me that got us to this point. Amen. Saraland Church didn’t pop up out of the ground, but it came here through the work and ministry and faithfulness of those who are now in the great cloud of witnesses.

Amen. So we didn’t just pop up out of... So what does church history say? The third question that I ask when developing a personal theology is, what fruit does it produce? What fruit does it produce? If I’m looking at somebody who believes a certain thing and I have 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, I got a good sample of people that have that particular theology and they have that particular belief system. What is the fruit that that belief system is producing? How are they... What’s their life look like? Jesus actually said you would know about teachers, which I would assume you could also know about teaching, by their fruit.

Look at their fruit. Look what they produce. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Oh, I’m sorry. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 says that... No, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. One of the Corinthians, chapter 3, John Reddy. It’s one of them. Says that when you look at teachers, you’re going to notice that some teachers have teaching that is built out of precious stone and jewels. And then you have others that have wood, hay, and stubble. Some teaching just burns up. The fruit on it just, it ain’t no good. It just doesn’t last. So those are the three questions that I ask.

5:56Why this message: distraught or distracted

Now, why am I preaching this today?

I’m going to preach this because of something that I recognized in the Scripture several years ago. And then I saw it play out very close to home for me. In John chapter 4 — you don’t have to turn there — there’s a story of a woman at the well. And Jesus comes, talked to this woman, and she’s a Samaritan. And so he asked her, or they get to talking, and Jesus starts to unpack some things going on in her life. And it comes out this lady’s working on her sixth husband right now. She’s living with her live-in boyfriend, but she’s working on her sixth husband. She’s signing up for it.

And when this information comes out — let me just tell you, when you’re on husband number six, I’m not trying to judge nobody today. Husband number six, there’s something going on, man. You know, about husband four, you got to start going, “Maybe it’s me,” right? You got to hit some point. And so she’s working on husband number six. And as soon as it comes out, she goes, “I perceive you’re a prophet.” She realized that Jesus is a spiritual man. And immediately she stops the conversation about what’s actually happening in her world. She turns around, looks at a mountain that the Samaritans and the Jews are arguing over.

And she says, “Now, hey, the Jews say we can’t worship on this mountain.” And I got a feeling Jesus is standing there like I have, Pastor John — you have, in pastoral counseling meetings, where all of a sudden she’s off into this deep nonsense that ain’t going to do her no good. We’re talking about something that would really help you, and now you want to talk to me about blood moons. We’re talking about stuff that’ll really help you. Now we’re talking about the colors of horses. We see this in the church over and over again. People who have a dysfunctional point of their life, who mask that dysfunction in a deep theology that does nothing for them.

When my mother passed away a few years ago, my grandmother kept all of her things at the house. And when my grandmother passed away after her, I got boxes and boxes of things from my grandmother and my mother. And so I’m going through them one day just to sort through them, see what’s in there. And just in case you are wondering about the wealth that I inherited, I got me a butter churner, a bunch of pictures. But one of the things in there, it was my mother’s Bible. I had said the sinner’s prayer with my mother years ago. It was probably 2003, 2004, somewhere, maybe earlier than that.

And so I had led my mother to the Lord. We never saw any fruit in her life. This lady — and I’m not trying to be ugly, I’m trying to just tell you my story. By the way, she’s my mama. I can say whatever I want. You can’t. Amen. That’s my mama. Look at your neighbor and say, “Wake up,” or he’ll just preach for the longest time today. I’m up here sharing deep stuff to y’all. Y’all can’t even giggle a little bit. Amen. And so my mother, I had led her to the Lord. I had bought her a Bible. And so in the box was the Bible I had bought for my mother. And so I start looking through.

I just think, let me see what’s in here. Okay. By the way, I didn’t open it up real hopeful, but I thought, let me see what’s in here, because I knew she had been going to an Assemblies of God church and here and there, you know? And so I started looking through. There’s nothing in this Bible. Nothing. There ain’t no church programs. There ain’t no bookmarks. There ain’t no notes, no highlights, until I get to the book of Revelation, and she’s gotten every weird thing you’ve ever heard in the book of Revelation highlighted, underlined, circled. And at some point you have to ask yourself this question.

Here’s a good place to start when it comes to eschatology, which is the theology of ultimate things. It’s the theology of the end times. Eschatology. You have to ask this question when it comes to eschatology. If your life is totally falling apart, if your children won’t talk to you, you’re on your sixth husband, or you can’t break addiction, you can’t get any stability, you haven’t had a job in 30 years because no one will hire you, you’re not trustworthy, the only way you get money is pawning stuff off — or whatever dysfunction you’re dealing with.

At some point you got to go, how helpful is the 144,000? It’s not doing for me what other things could do. That’s the whole reason I’m preaching this today. I’m not trying to change what you believe. I am trying to expand your ability to understand that there’s more in the world than what we typically believe in classical Pentecostal denominations and the Assemblies of God holds firmly. I’m not saying anything’s wrong. What I’m saying is I’ve got hope. I’ve got hope. I’ve got hope. So we’re going to expand our brain a little bit today. Everybody unclog your ears so your brain has somewhere to go.

Amen. My observation is that people who get really invested in this particular world in eschatology — and it could also be said the same for prophecy, people who get invested in prophecy have a similar thing — but people who really get invested in eschatology tend to either get distraught or distracted. They get distraught as in it worries them to death. They’re unsure of what’s going on. They don’t know what’s happening. I have been in rooms with end time teachers that some of y’all probably got 18 books from. I’ve been in the rooms with them where you’d sit in the front row and you’d think the anointing came in the room because you were scared to death.

No, it just turns out when people talk about all hell breaking loose everywhere in America, it’s pretty scary. It’s not the fear of God that got in you. It’s the fear of the unknown. So you have this fear that comes over you. You become distraught. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Am I going to be in that number? Am I going to be saved? Am I going to make it? Are we going to go through this? What’s it going to look like? When’s it going to happen? What are the signs?” And so you become distraught or you become distracted. That’s what happened with the woman at the well.

That’s what happened with my mother. They’re looking to this thing thinking they’re going to get something off of it because there’s some revelation in there. There’s some secret knowledge in there. There’s some answer to what’s going to happen. You don’t need to worry about what’s going to happen, honey. I’m here to tell you, you need to worry about what did happen 2,000 years ago at a cross at Calvary, where Jesus Christ gave his life for you and for me. And now you can live in freedom. Barely touching the notes right now, but I feel like preaching for the next 22 minutes.

Amen. So today I want to give you a solid framework and explain some things that you’ve probably never heard that will hopefully help you keep from becoming either distraught or distracted. Okay. Now, I’m not going to do a ton of Scripture. We’re going to look at some Scripture, but you’re going to get a lot of flyover today. I’m going to talk to y’all like y’all are students of the Bible already. Okay. I’m going to talk to you like you know the Word to some degree already, and we’re going to shift out of doctrine mode into theology mode. Doctrine is an encapsulated set of beliefs that have been established by whatever predetermined body put them together.

They’re encapsulated and given to you so you know what to believe without having to think about it. Theology is a totally different world. Theology is for thinkers. It’s for thinkers. And so today look at your neighbor and say, “You got a big brain.” You got a big brain. You’re going to think today. You’re going to think today. So the next week, by the way, I am going to walk through Matthew chapter 24 pretty piece by piece. So next week will be a good week to bring your Bible to church. So we’re going to do strong Bible next week. This week I’m giving you kind of a flyover.

13:50Four pillars of end time orthodoxy

So let’s start here. There are some pillars when it comes to end time orthodoxy. End time orthodoxy. These are things that every orthodox believer — which we are orthodox. We subscribe to Christian orthodoxy. Every orthodox believer would believe these things about the end times. These are the pillars of eschatological orthodoxy. Number one is the second coming of Christ. Every Bible-believing Christian believes that Jesus is coming again. It will be both bodily and it will be imminent. In other words, Jesus ain’t floating down here in some... No, you’re going to see Jesus, Jesus, Jesus come down.

He’s coming back. He will return. Jesus himself. Not an emissary, not an angel, not a spirit. The physical body of Jesus that went in the grave, that was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven. Guess what? His comeback tour is on. Amen. He’s coming back. It’s also imminent, meaning that it is going to happen. There is nothing that can stop it. And we don’t know when it’s going to happen. Jesus is going to come back when he’s good and well ready to. Amen. So Jesus is coming. That’s the second coming of Christ. The second is the resurrection of the dead.

We believe that the righteous dead and the unrighteous dead will be resurrected. So anybody who served the Lord, they’re going to have toothbrushes ready for them, because dirt is going to be in their teeth. Amen. And you go, “Well, what about people that got cremated?” I don’t know. Don’t look. It might be gross. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but they’re coming back. I don’t care how you went. People in the Titanic, they got the longest trip. Amen. They get to go to the water park at the resurrection. Amen. Hallelujah. So the righteous and the unrighteous will raise from the dead.

Both will be in the next pillar, the final judgment. The final judgment will be when all evil is annihilated. All evil will go away, and you will be judged according to whether or not your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. If you want to know why we are so big on souls here, it’s because I am trying to see if we can get the Lamb’s book of life second edition started in heaven. We’re going to fill the first one up and start on the second one. Amen. Some of these are just good preacher lines. They aren’t theology. Hallelujah. And then we also believe, this is the fourth pillar, in the new heavens and the new earth.

This is where we will spend eternity. God is going to make all things new. Amen. Your body’s going to be new. The ground’s going to be new. The sky’s going to be new. Heaven’s going to be new. All things are going to be made new. We believe in the new heaven and the new earth. Those are the four pillars of orthodox eschatology. Now, there are several views that all hold those four things, but they’re in a little bit of a disagreement on the timing of the events. They’re in a disagreement on the timing of how all of these events are going to come about. And I’m not going to read it to you, but Revelation chapter 20 talks about the 1,000 years that Jesus will reign.

That the enemy is locked away. Satan is locked away. He’s bound. Jesus will reign for 1,000 years. And then the Bible indicates that Satan will be unleashed. Now, that 1,000 years is called the millennial reign of Christ. A lot of questions come up around the millennium. So I’m going to walk you through four different predominant views of the millennium. I’m going to tell you, the last one I’m going to share with you is the one that the Assemblies of God holds, but I want you to be aware of everything out there. And for the most part, this is the point at which people start to determine what the timelines look like.

And the four different views are premillennial — remember, it’s all about the millennial reign of Christ — premillennial, amillennial, postmillennial, and dispensational premillennial. The Assemblies of God holds to a dispensational premillennial view of the end times. Okay? I want everybody to anchor that in your heart this morning, in your brain. That’s what the Assemblies of God subscribes to. So I’m going to explain these four views and then we’ll see where we go from there. I’m kind of watching the time and seeing how much I want to preach to y’all this morning.

18:48Sunglasses at night: seeing in a mirror dimly

Now, a friend of mine told me that y’all would want to know where I land on the views out of the four. He said that your people are going to want to know. And so before I get to these four views, I want to give you my view of the end times. This is my view of how everything is going to go down. Are you ready for it? Okay. First Corinthians chapter 13. I share Paul’s view. First Corinthians chapter 13, verse 9, he says, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child.

“I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things.” This is my view on the end times right here in verse 12. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, and then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” When it comes to the end times, these are my personal views. I’m not speaking to you as an Assemblies of God minister for the next 30 seconds. I’m speaking to you as Jason Mayfield, who spent some time in the Scripture. Okay. My personal view on the end times is that we are looking through a mirror dimly.

Whenever we start to talk about eschatology, whenever we start to talk about the end of all, I don’t care how large of a chart you can print. I don’t care how big, how long, how detailed it is. At the end of the day, when we’re talking about this stuff, we are all wearing sunglasses at night. We just don’t know. And everything is pretty verifiable in our belief system through either testimony, fruit, or history right now. This is the only thing. It’s one of our theologies. There is no way to be certain about any of it. We have some pillars that we know are going to happen. Outside of that, sunglasses at night.

But I also know that when we see him face to face, we will fully know as we’ve been fully known. In other words, that’s a way to say that Jesus is going to fill us in on everything that we need to know. Anchor this in your brain. The second coming of Christ will be the great clarifier. When you see Jesus — I don’t know how it’s going to go down, but I think there’s going to be an angel with a clipboard behind him who’s going to set up an orientation as soon as his feet hit the ground. We’ll all know. At that point, we will fully know. But we’re looking through sunglasses at night.

And I’m actually less interested today in you having a position on any of these issues than I am in you being comfortable holding the tension of the mystery.

21:38Four views of the millennium

So real quickly, I’m just going to share with you some of these views, the four millennial views. The first is the premillennial view. This is the oldest. Let’s be honest. I’m not going to try to spell any of these. Let’s just go ahead and drop all the charade here. So I started getting further in than I normally do. And I went, “Wait, wait, you’re too far.” I did a whole message with “discernment” once. Wednesday night, Jeff comes up to me and he goes, “You know, you left an R out.”

So the premillennial view. The pre. This is the oldest one. This one dates back to the first century, premillennial view. And I’m kind of just catching up to where we are. So all of this will be post the cross. We are currently in the church age. Okay. The premillennial view believes that there will be a tribulation that we kind of ease into. It’s not the tribulation that you’ve heard talked about on TV, man. It’s not super certain, not super predetermined. It’s just things are going to intensify, at which point there will be a resurrection of the dead. Okay.

The righteous dead and believers will be caught up with the Lord. This is what First Thessalonians 4 talks about. Believers will be caught up with the Lord, and Jesus Christ will come back in his second coming with those believers and those resurrected dead to reign on earth. Now, here’s what I want to talk to you about. This, in this view, is all one thing. It’s all kind of happening quick. Believers are resurrected. Believers are caught up in the air. And then they immediately with Christ come back down and reign on earth with Christ for a thousand years, which leads us into the millennial reign of Christ, which in the premillennial view is a literal period of time where the church and Jesus reign over the earth.

Okay. At the end of this, there will be a resurrection of the unrighteous dead. Okay. There will be a final judgment. Then there will be new heavens, new earth, and then we’ll enter the eternal state. Okay. That’s the premillennial view. Right? That’s what the premillennials believe. Then there’s the amillennial view. The amillennial believes — this is from, started popping up around 400, 500 AD, or whatever they call it now. So we’re in the church age. Okay. Now the church age and the tribulation and the millennial reign are all happening at the same time.

So in the amillennial view, these are more symbolic of the times that we live in, and Jesus sits on the throne, which I actually can appreciate. One person said of premillennials and dispensational premillennials is that the one thing that they neglect to realize is that the Jesus they believe will reign for a thousand years reigns right now. He sits on the throne, folks. That’s a good word. So then at some point in the future, when it all happens, there will be a second coming. Jesus will come back. There will be a resurrection of the dead, probably in this view, everyone at once, at which point there will be a final judgment, then new heavens, new earth, and then we enter the eternal state.

Okay. That is the amillennial view. Then there’s another view that came up around the time of the Reformation. So we’re talking 1600s, 1700s. Called the postmillennial view. Postmillennial. The postmillennial, similar to amillennial, we’re in the church age, okay. We’re in the tribulation now, so that this tribulation is an ongoing thing, it’s part of the church age. And at some point, as the gospel is spread, things will get better and better and we kind of just end up in the millennial reign. Okay. So we aren’t there now, but as the gospel spreads, eventually we just — the millennial reign happens.

After that, at some point, Jesus comes back, resurrection of the dead, final judgment, new heavens, new earth, eternal state. Okay. That’s the postmillennial view. Then there is what most of you have probably heard exclusively, which is the dispensational premillennial view. Now, this is the most detailed one, and I’m actually going to leave out quite a bit of detail, and you’re going to see how much this starts to add up. Dispensationalists believe that we are in the church age, okay. At some point, there will be a rapture, similar to premillennialists, but this won’t all happen at once.

This is the catching up, the snatching away, from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. There will be a rapture and a resurrection of the righteous dead. They will rapture and go to be with the Lord for seven years. During that seven years, there will be great tribulation, but believe it or not, that’s actually split in two between the tribulation and the great tribulation. During this time, Israel is going to be restored. There is going to be a temple. The Antichrist is going to rise up, and he is going to be the reason that the temple is restored, and then the temple is going to be destroyed.

There are some questions around, will the temple be built before this time happens, or at the very beginning of this time happens. So there will be seven years. Then, after that seven-year tribulation, Jesus is coming with the church, with the righteous dead. Satan will be bound, and then we enter the millennial reign of Christ for a literal 1,000 years. Then we enter the millennial, and the church and Jesus are reigning over the earth. Satan is bound. No one can be deceived. Then, after the 1,000 years, Satan will be released, and Satan is going to deceive a whole bunch of people.

So at this point, there’s going to be a great falling away. Again, I’m leaving a lot out, but we’re moving quickly. Then after this, there’s going to be a final judgment. Actually, several judgments, but there’s going to be a final judgment in which we will also have the resurrection of the unrighteous dead. The unrighteous dead will be judged in the final judgment. Satan’s going to be judged in the final judgment. Your mama’s going to be judged in the final judgment. Just trying to get something out of y’all, folks. I can tell y’all are like, “Man, he got a dry erase board and went to town.”

Final judgment. After that’s done, we will have the new heavens, new earth. Some dispensationalists actually believe that’s going to happen here. Then we will enter the eternal state. Much more detailed. So what I want you to see — all I want you to see. I’m not telling you to believe any of this. The Assemblies of God tells me I need to tell you to believe this. Hallelujah. What I want you to see, though, is that there are a lot more than one view on this topic. So when the TV preacher scares you to the point that you’re wetting the bed at night, maybe take a beat.

He might be wrong. I don’t care how big his jet is or his chart is. Amen. Okay? So these are the different views. Now, make sure that stays there. As I mentioned — oh, by the way, I didn’t say this, the dispensationalist view. So premillennial has been around since the early church, first hundred years or so. Amillennial, 400 to 500. Postmillennial came out about 1600, 1700. The dispensational belief system popped up about the mid-1800s. It spread wildly because it was printed without any contest in a study Bible that was massively popular, called the Scofield Study Bible.

So it also got picked up in the Ryrie Study Bible. So this stuff spread really fast and nobody knew there was anything else out there. Nobody knew there were other beliefs. Now, I’ll tell you, out of all of these, the postmillennial one, even though it is the one I hope is the right the most — I hope it is. I’m not saying I believe it is. It is the one that is probably the least likely. It’s the least likely of the four.

31:12Owning the problems with dispensationalism

Now, again, the Assemblies of God, we are a dispensationalist denomination. We run from that word, but at the end of the day, all of the beliefs are dispensational beliefs.

There’s no way around that. So we say whatever we want. You know, I can get up here and say that I’m a black man. And if you shut your eyes when I start the service, you might believe it. Amen. But I’m not. I can say it all I want to. I am what I am. We can say we are something other than we are, but we are what we are. And dispensationalism — and this is the issue, because I want to talk to you about this. Dispensationalism is a version of eschatology that is so detailed that it naturally seems right, but it is constantly plagued by failed rapture predictions and strange political involvement.

It gets weird. It’s also treated — and this is not me saying it’s wrong. This is me saying we’ve got to own our own stuff. We treat dispensationalism as the most literal interpretation of biblical eschatology. That’s how it gets portrayed to people. But that’s only true if you ignore all of the inputs and massive assumptions you have to make prior to that literal interpretation. At the end of the day, dispensationalism is so involved that it is a house of cards, and unfortunately, the theology is cascading, meaning if one card goes down, everything is going down.

It all has to be right or none of it can be right. In fact, a lot of y’all argue — because y’all think the tribulation is the only thing that there is to talk about in eschatology — you’ll talk about pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib. Or which one are you? If you’re dispensational, if you believe this stuff, you are pre-trib whether you want to be or not, because if Jesus doesn’t come back prior, or there is not a rapture prior to the tribulation, nothing else can happen. The whole thing depends on the whole thing working. It’s important that every piece happen, but we wear sunglasses at night.

We can’t make no guarantees around here. All I can guarantee is Jesus is coming back. And I do want you to know, the issue with dispensationalism — when we come back to the lady that I talked to you about in the beginning, who’s working on her sixth husband and wants to talk about mountains — the issue with dispensationalism, I have seen it for twenty years or plus, is that we typically have a high view of world events and a low view of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

33:51Daniel's seventy weeks

I think this is best exemplified in Daniel chapter 9, verse 24. I’m going to read this to you real quick, and I’m going to try not to keep you much longer, but I want to share this stuff today.

Daniel chapter 9, verse 24 says, “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people” — this is a prophecy, by the way — “and your holy city, to finish the transgression and put to an end sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint the most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of the anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks.” Now I should back up and tell you that when it started with the seventy weeks, it is widely interpreted amongst multiple views of the end times that these weeks are actually years, that this is a symbolic number, but they are actually years.

And so he says, “To restore and build Jerusalem, the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there will be seven weeks” — seven years. “And for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.” So we have seven and we have sixty-two weeks. That’s sixty-nine years. Remember, we’re talking about seventy sevens, seventy years — or I’m sorry, seventy sevens. Not seventy-seven years. Seventy sevens. So 490 years all total. Verse 26, “And then after the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut off and have nothing.” Who does that sound like to you, by the way? Jesus Christ, right? Sounds like the Lord.

“An anointed one shall be cut off and have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abomination shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” Again, I want to remind you, seventy weeks equals seventy sevens. Seventy weeks is seventy sevens. It’s seventy sevens. Not seventy-seven years. Seventy sevens. So seventy seven-year periods, okay?

If you were to look at this timeline and what it’s talking about in terms of the decrees that it’s mentioning, there are three decrees that you could start this from and end very close to when Jesus comes back. So when you read this, seventy sevens, this is a prophecy about the coming Messiah. The premillennialists, the amillennialists, and the postmillennialists read this passage as ending — because all of them end right at either Palm Sunday, AD 33. Any of this ringing a bell? Or right in that area, where everyone else reads this as, this is the coming of Christ. The 490 weeks that Daniel prophesied is Christological in its nature. It’s pointing towards the finished work of Jesus Christ.

But dispensationalists, what we have a tendency to do — because everything’s got to be deep, and if a lot of stuff’s got to happen, you’ve got to make a lot of stuff happen. This is why it’s a little bit of a house of cards, because nobody would get this reading naturally from it. This is not the natural reading. But at the end of the sixty-nine weeks, we go into an indefinite pause. Some theologians call it the great parentheses — couldn’t come up with a better name than that. Most people just call it a gap. We enter an indefinite gap. We have been in a 2,000-year gap, a little less than that gap.

And at some point, the gap will end. We are stuck at sixty-nine weeks. This is where the seven-year tribulation comes from. When the church is raptured, things shift back to focusing on Israel, and all of a sudden, the seven years, the last seven years, the last week, the seventieth week, the last seven years, they start. Is everybody with me so far? If not, I’m not either. I haven’t thought about eschatology this much until this week. I like the stuff that works today. Amen. In fact, I’ve enjoyed preparing for this message. I’ve had a lot rattling around in my brain all the time.

It’s been good to be clarifying. So the dispensationalist believes that. Here’s the issue, is that while the rest of the views, their whole look of the end times focus on Jesus’ first coming and his second coming, we have a tendency to look past it, to focus on all of these other things. And all of a sudden — this is the moment where it comes on me in the service and I start saying stuff I shouldn’t — all of a sudden, we’ve got Christian pastors of Christian churches with the Star of David as their profile picture. And it makes a ton of sense to focus all your attention on that if Jesus isn’t the center of the whole thing.

That’s number one. And number two, if you tear out the entire book of Hebrews from your Bible. I’m not saying it’s not going to happen. I’m not saying this view is wrong. I belong to an organization that embraces this view. But I’m going to tell you, if you’re going to get into something that’s complex, and you’re going to get into something that anybody with any sense can poke a ton of holes into, or if one thing doesn’t go according to plan — which by the way, no prophecy in the Old Testament is ever treated this way. Go through your Bible and see how many times the phrase seventy is used. Seventy years, seventy this, seventy that.

It’s a number that’s an idea. It doesn’t mean seventy, or else we’d just be working on this perfect clock to seventy years. That’s not what it is. And so we’re focused on all this stuff. If we’re going to hold that, it is our responsibility to make sure that no politician, no policy, no country, no organization, no party, nothing takes the place of Jesus Christ in our eschatology. If you’re going to hold it, hold it. If you’re going to hold something else, hold it. I don’t really care. I care about what you wake up in the morning and you start thinking about. Do you run to the secret place or do you run to Fox News?

Are you trying to see how things have turned around since yesterday and gotten worse? We can’t live our life that way. We are hopeful about tomorrow. I’m not worried about Antichrist. He’s none of my business. If I got anything to do with the Antichrist, y’all’s problems are bigger than you realize. My God. So the dispensationalist looks towards a lot of these events and seems to look past Jesus’ finished work and his second coming. We focus on everything but. Our disposition becomes obsessed with signs and with wonders and with news and with timing, and we look forward when we never look back.

We never get anchored back into what our faith is all about. So if I was to summarize these four views for you this morning, just so you know that there are more views. Why do I want you to know that there are more views? Because we wear sunglasses at night, and you’ve got a bunch of preachers that get on TV and act like they know good and well that something’s going to happen. And I’m going to tell you something. If they had stocks for failed rapture prophecies, buddy, I could be rich right now. I’d invest in that today. I’d call my broker. Okay. So this is the summary of the four views.

I want you to know that you can’t be worried every time you hear something, because there’s a bigger world out there than just what you’ve heard, than just what you’ve been taught, than just what’s been. Some of this stuff we teach it like it’s written in a brochure in the back of our Bible. We just had to jump through hoops to get a seven-year tribulation that everybody in this is worried about. And we had to bend over backwards to find it. We had to go through some prophecy in Daniel that nobody else interprets the same way. So just don’t worry.

Don’t worry. Jesus is high and lifted up. He sits on the throne. These are the four views. The premillennialist believes this. He believes things are going to get worse and worse, and then Jesus comes back. The postmillennialist believes that things are going to get better and better, and then Jesus comes back. The amillennialist believes it doesn’t matter how things get, because Jesus is coming back. But the dispensationalist believes that John Hagee just released a new book and he’s coming back tomorrow at 1:57 PM. Hallelujah. That’s what we tend to believe.

That’s the stuff we look at. That’s the stuff we get excited about. Shame on us. Shame on us for not making Jesus the main thing. I have a tendency to believe that of all of these views, there is one that was written in the 1800s — in 1859, in fact, in Kent, England — that might be the best view of them all. And a man in Kent, England sat down with a quill and he wrote these words. “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” That’s Charles Dickens, from A Tale of Two Cities. That wraps up everything you need to know. To some degree, all of this is probably true.

Things are going to get better and better. They’re going to get worse and worse. Some things are already settled. Some stuff that needs to be done is done, and there’s some things left to still be done. But the good news is Jesus is coming back. We look through a mirror darkly and we try to interpret things that are generally out of our depth. I just mentioned to you Daniel. You have to almost do backflips to get some of the stuff that we subscribe to without any question.

45:19Get a word from God: Daniel 9 and Revelation 1

I want to read to you something real quick before I close, from Daniel, the same chapter, that might be a better instruction for us.

So if you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to join me in Daniel chapter 9. Daniel chapter 9, starting in verse 1. It says, “In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans” — just so you know what that means, that means that Persia has now overthrown Babylon, who had overthrown Judah, and they had overthrown Assyria, who had overthrown Israel. So Persia has come in and they have defeated Babylon after a seventy-year period that was prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah. Verse number 2 says, “In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely seventy years.”

Verse 3 says, “Then I turned my face to the Lord, seeking him by prayer.” When Daniel looked at the times, when Daniel observed what was going on around him, when Daniel got worried about how things were progressing and happening in the culture — whatever he heard on the news, the Babylonian press, whatever he heard, whatever he saw, whatever came to him — he went back and he looked at the word of the Lord. He got into this prophecy from Jeremiah. He got back into the written word. He got into his Bible. He got into his Bible and he started to pray. He got in his Bible and he started to pray.

Verse 20, if you hop down there, it says, “While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel” — the angel Gabriel — “whom I had seen in a vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice.” Verse 22, “He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, ‘O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding.’” My God, if you people only had a pastor who would stand up on a regular basis and look at you and say, “You need to get a word from God.”

So he prays, he reads the Bible, and supernatural insight comes to him. He gets a word from God. Go over to verse 26. Part of the vision that he gets. “And after sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing.” He gets — this is held by all of the views, by the way — he prays, he reads, he receives insight, and he gets a revelation of a coming Messiah. He’s worried about the times, and God takes him through a process where he puts his attention on the one who is to come. Turn with me now to Revelation chapter 1. Revelation chapter 1. This is the book.

This is the — you want to talk about the end of all things? Revelation seems to be the book that’s subtitled that. Revelation chapter 1 and verse 1. The first five words are all you need to know. “The revelation of Jesus Christ.” We keep looking for events and patterns and times and things. And when will this happen? And when does this event happen? And when does this go down? And we get worried, and we buy this guy’s book until it turns out that it was wrong. So we’ll buy the next guy’s book, and then that’s wrong. So we go back — this is what really gets me — to the first guy.

And we buy his next book on the stuff that’s probably going to be wrong again. And we keep going down this rabbit hole, and either we are distraught and we are worried and we’re without peace, or we’re completely distracted from what God wants to do in our life. And what he did with Daniel and what he did with John is when he said, “I want to show you some stuff, you might be worried about what’s going on,” it ended with a revelation of Jesus Christ. I’m telling you, folks, I don’t care how many dragons to expect at my house for Thanksgiving during the tribulation.

I don’t know if that’s a real thing, but I like it. And I don’t care. I need a revelation of Jesus Christ. Because a revelation of Jesus Christ transforms me today. The same one who Revelation, the same one who Daniel says, and the same one who Paul says — Jesus, who makes all things new. I don’t want you distracted. I don’t want you distraught. I want you going after Jesus Christ. I want you to keep your attention where it ought to be. And when it is, guess what? You’ll be hopeful about tomorrow. You won’t be messed up and worried. I’m done with that mess.

I’m done with it. I put my foot down on it. We can be what we are. We can believe what we believe. But I’m tired of having people come through my churches that are getting alerts every time something happens in Israel, because my God, it’s happening every 17 minutes. So every time something happens in Israel, every time something happens in the Middle East, every time some prophet releases a word, every time somebody says something — and we think people are deep because they sound like they know what they’re talking about. And we don’t know. We’re wearing sunglasses at night.

We look through a mirror. We just don’t know. But Jesus is coming. And it could happen at any moment. It could happen at any time. If y’all ever wonder why I do that, my pastor did that. And I just picked it up. He’d get to the end of saying something and just... I don’t know where that comes from. Jesus is coming back. We can trust. We can have confidence. We can have hope. I want you hopeful about tomorrow. This is not just a message. This isn’t just a series. This is going to be a value of our church. I’m not bringing preachers in here to scare you. I’m not going to bring people in here to get you alarmed and worked up.

And next week what I’m going to do is I’m going to walk through all of Matthew chapter 24, at least as much as I can. But I don’t care about the clock apparently, so I can get it all in there. Amen. But I’m going to walk through Matthew chapter 24, and I’m going to show you why I am not worried. And you don’t have to be either. Because the Bible tells me this in Philippians, that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That’s a good place to give the Lord a good praise.