Jan 24, 2005
Greetings From Southwest Asia
As many of you already know, when I’m not maintaining one of the most pervasive prophecy websites on the internet, I work for the US Air Force. Occasionally, Uncle Sam invites me to one of these all-expenses-paid vacations to various parts of the world. From November to December I was his guest at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.
Right now I’m in Southwest Asia. For security reasons, I'm not allowed to tell my specific location. But because there are very few differences between the bases over here, I can tell you this: I’m in an Islamic nation that has a desert environment.
Because it is the middle of winter here, I’ve seen more rain and mud than heat. The daytime high temperature is around 75 degrees. By the time I leave here in mid May, the mercury will rise to around 110 degrees each day.
The global reach of the internet allows me to access and maintain RR from anywhere in the world. It also helps to have a small army of people manning the various functions of the site. Jack and Mark manage the daily news, Becky handles the funds, Christine is the queen of the message board, and Angie is our text editor.
When RR needs to produce a living body, such as for media interviews, Terry will step forward. In fact, he already has given two interviews recently: one with a CBC TV reporter from Canada and another with a Cedar Rapids, Iowa newspaper reporter. You may remember that my last deployment cost us an interview with the CBS program, "60 Minutes."
I’ve already made one local observation worth commenting about. Each morning at around 5:40 A.M., a recorded prayer message blares across the compound. The source is a mosque on the Arab side of the base. I don't hear this commotion only in the mornings; I hear it five times each day.
I’m not sure if calling it a message is correct. The broadcast actually features the voices of two men and both are wailing at the top of their voices. The noise is about as soothing as the sound of fingernails clawing across a blackboard. I think it would be more soothing if we awoke to the sounds of a hog-calling contest.
The lack of fair play is the most irritating aspect of these Islamic holy calls. The leaders of our host nation obviously have the volume set on high because they want to show that this is their country. In the age of tolerance of all faiths, I don’t understand why Christians always seem to be the ones who must accommodate everyone else.
One of first things GIs are told when they arrive in an Arab nation is to keep their religious views to themselves. Of course, that rule doesn’t apply to the Arab nationals. I’m sure there would strong objection if we decided to use our “Giant Voice” system to broadcast daily passages from the News Testament.
Back in the States, our government and the liberal media have long been restricting Christianity because they don’t want to offend minority religions that include Islam.
Now that it is my turn as a minority religious believer, I don’t see why I should have to listen to this racket every few hours. I wonder where the Islamic version of the ACLU is. However, I am under no delusions that fair play will ever happen.
The dictatorial rule of Islam is proof of its demonic origin. Christianity gains its membership by inviting people to freely choose to follow Christ. Followers of Mohammed have no such options. They are slaves of Islam from birth.
While I am in Satan’s domain, I would like to ask that you folks back home pray for my spiritual protection. Whenever I leave the US, I often find that problems seem to materialize out of nowhere. It my belief that the distractions are caused by local demonic forces.
Design Change to the Main Page
It seems like every year I need to make some design changes to the main page. Last year we replaced the main header, added daily quotes, and reworked the structure of the links.
After viewing the site on several different monitors, it has become obvious that we need once again to redesign the main page to fit the higher screen resolutions most people are now using. At home and on my laptop, I use the old standard 800 by 600 pixels. According sites that track web traffic, 1024 by 768 has now become the most popular screen resolution.
Because RR is designed for 800 by 600, the site only takes up about 60 percent of the screen when viewed in higher resolutions. I’m going to employ the services of a firm to rework the code to fill in the wasted space.
We will also be fixing an HTML cache code problem with the site. RR looks all right for the people who access it through a browser. But for some reason, a coding problem is generated when the search engine caches the site to their servers.
I also need input on any other problems that might have escaped my attention. When making changes to the site, I’ve learned that it’s best to proceed cautiously.
-- Todd
False Prophets, False Teachers
A question from a visitor to Raptureready.com sparked my thinking about Jesus’ forewarning that in the time just before He returns there will be great deception. The person’s question and my response–edited for use in this column—follow.
Question: About the false prophets mentioned in the Bible, who are they and what is their message?
Lynn:
The false prophets Jesus forewarned about will appear in the Tribulation era –the last seven years of human history just before Jesus returns to set up His Millennial Kingdom. The Lord was prophesying primarily about that era, not about the Church Age or the Age of Grace, in which we are living now. So, the false prophets of that era will deceive people as have no other false religionists in history.
That said, although Jesus’ prophecy on false prophets and all other prophecies were given for that time of future trouble, I am convinced we already see significant foreshadowings of the rise of false prophets in our day.
God has, in His omniscience, grace, and mercy, let us see the apocalyptic storm front approaching. We aren’t in that prophetic storm yet, but we can see it on the horizon of our time.
False prophets deceive and delude people by telling just enough truth to make them miss the real significance of what God is telling about the future. This is the same trick Satan has always used, as he did in the Garden of Eden when he told Adam and Eve they wouldn’t die if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Lucifer, of course, told a partial truth. God had said that in the day the two ate of that forbidden fruit, they would surely die. They did eat of it, but they didn’t die that very day.
It seems like God might have lied to them, until we consider that, before Adam’s disobedience, they were meant to live forever. The Bible says that a thousand years is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years. Neither Adam nor any of his progeny have ever lived a full day –1000 years—in God’s economy of time for mankind. God cannot lie.
Today, many who claim to have cornered the market on truth about God’s prophetic Word say they believe in Bible prophecy, but that Bible prophecy was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. They are telling a partial truth, not the whole Truth from God’s Word, however. Prophecy WAS fulfilled, but there are still great prophecies to be fulfilled, like the Rapture (which they try to refute with hate-filled arguments).
Of course, they often accuse us who teach the futurist view of prophecy and the pre-trib rapture of being false prophets. I simply ask: Who is right? Is the world getting better and better in preparation for Christ’s coming as King of kings, because the Church will first overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil like they claim? Or is it getting worse and worse, as God’s prophetic Word clearly says it will? They obviously aren’t reading the same headlines I am!
Christians who desire to find out truth in the matter must search it out for themselves. They can do this through reading the Bible for context as well as for the prophetic events in question. They must pray diligently that the Holy Spirit will provide understanding from God, not from their own fallen mind.
If all other areas of the Christian’s life are in obedience to God’s will, the person will be given understanding of things like rapture, as well as in all matters they study.
False teaching is already among us, also. The teachers of error talk about prophecy as being unimportant. They prefer to dwell on do-goodisms and feel-goodisms rather than on salvation issues and Christ’s return.
They look at these salvation and prophetic matters (that sinners must repent or face eternity in hell, and that Jesus is coming again to judge) as gloom and doom. These subjects, you see, are downers in their view of the “new spirituality” they promote. These often-convicting topics inhibit the tremendous church growth movement they desire. They would lose the huge congregations –thus the vast amounts of income for building even bigger churches—if they preached and taught such things.
I’ll bet you’ve got Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life book somewhere close by in your home. I know we have at least one copy in ours, and everyone I know has a copy.
Read pages 285-286 of that book. You will see what I’m referring to when I say they don’t want to talk about prophecy.
Mr. Warren says that every time Jesus' disciples asked Him about future things (prophecy), the Lord always changed the subject. Jesus, Mr. Warren writes, didn’t want His disciples to think about the prophetic future because it distracts from doing things in God’s work now.
Is that true? Well, did Jesus not devote a tremendous sermon and in-depth teaching about things to come, answering His disciples' questions as they sat atop the Mount of Olives? Yes! He thought prophecy so important that He saw to it that the Olivet Discourse was recorded in three Gospel books, encompassing four full chapters: Matthew 24 and 25; Mark 13; and Luke 21. Jesus gave the entire Book of Revelation to John, the apostle and prophet God’s Word calls “most beloved,” putting him in the same category of another great prophet, Daniel!
Revelation is, in addition to the unveiling of the majesty, power, and glory of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, a detailed future history of God’s judgment on incorrigibly rebellious mankind during that future era of tribulation. Jesus told John to write about the great prophetic Book of Revelation:
“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18-19).
For a preacher or teacher to tickle the ears of those who listen by falsely teaching that Jesus doesn’t want His people concerning themselves with what Jesus and the prophets have laid out in Scripture makes those people come dangerously close to becoming false teachers and false prophets, in my view.
To read what God has to say about such false teaching, read all of 2 Peter, chapter 3, and 3: 3-4 in particular. Read 2 Timothy, chapter 4, particularly verses 1-4. That portion says: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 4:1-4).
False prophets, false teachers–they are a sign of our times.
***I’ve postponed my report on the CBC interview until next week’s "Nearing Midnight" Update. I wish instead to recommend here a book I think Christians interested in examining the church growth movement should read.
The book is Who’s Driving the Purpose-Driven Church? by Dr. James Sunquist. It’s an excellent source to put things into scriptural perspective for those concerned about the methodologies employed by mega-church builders under this particular program.
To get a copy of Who’s Driving the Purpose Driven Church? go to swrc.com, or call toll free: 1-800-652-1144.
Or find it on amazon.com
ISBN: 0-9744764-5-5
272 pages ***
--Terry
