I settled upon two important principles for interpreting end times passages:(1) Clear passages must interpret unclear passages(2) Interpretations of prophecy by Jesus or the apostles are finalBoth points come into play with Jesus’ teaching about the tribulation.In Matthew 24.1-2, the disciples are marveling at the Temple and Jesus predicts the destruction of that Temple, accomplished by Rome in AD...  Read More

My last seven blogs laid out why I left the pretribulation rapture behind.  The pretrib rapture is built on Israel and the Church being two separate peoples with two distinct programs that operate separately in history (which arose at the same time), and I don’t think the Bible teaches that.What does the Bible teach about the Church and its relationship to Israel?  Romans 11 gives us a clear pictu...  Read More

The case for the pretribulation rapture depends upon keeping the program for Israel and the program for the Church separate and distinct.  If there is any intertwining between the two peoples or their programs, the necessity for a pretribulation rapture disappears.The covenant that made Israel God’s people at Sinai was broken by the Israelites.  God dispersed the norther tribes in 722 BC and then ...  Read More

If the Bible nowhere says that the rapture occurs before the Tribulation (it doesn’t) and if the pretribulation rapture depends on keeping Israel and the Church and their respective programs separate from each other, then any intertwining of the program for Israel and the program for the Church will remove the central reason for the pretribulation rapture.  In Genesis 12, God makes promises to Abr...  Read More

The only rapture passage in the Bible doesn’t teach a pretribulation rapture, but my senior theology prof wanted me to defend that view from the Bible.  I was at a loss, so I started reading pretribulation scholars to see how they defended their view.  I discovered that it required an entire system of theology (dispensationalism) to make the pretribulation rapture stand.The key idea in dispensatio...  Read More

My senior theology prof challenged us to defend the pretribulation rapture.  But the only Bible passage that mentions the rapture (1 Thessalonians 4.13-18) doesn’t mention the Tribulation.  What my prof was asking seemed impossible.  I decided to start by taking a closer look at 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18.  Here’s the passage from the English Standard Version:[4.13] But we do not want you to be uninf...  Read More

In my senior year of college my theology professor required a paper “exegetically defending the pre-tribulation rapture.”  If you’re new to evangelicalism, terms like “Tribulation” and “Rapture” might be unfamiliar, so in this blog I’ll explain what they mean.  Both are technical terms – names of end-times events.“The Tribulation” refers to a brief period of trouble and persecution near the end of...  Read More

In a theology course my senior year in Bible college we had to write a paper “exegetically defending the pre-tribulation rapture.”  I just threw a lot of technical theological jargon at you that requires explanation.“Exegesis” (i.e. exegetically defending something) is from two Greek words – ex (out of) and ago (to lead).  When you ‘exegete’, you are “leading the meaning out” of the text.  The opp...  Read More

Though I am often asked about my view of the end times, I usually reply only briefly because a proper answer would take too much time.  I rarely preach on the topic for the same reason.  But writing out my thoughts on the matter in several blog installments might be a more workable way to help our congregation understand my perspective on the end times.  So here we go…The first generation or two o...  Read More

When I first came to Mountain View Chapel, I was 21 and the church’s previous pastor, Jim Bates, 72, and eager to retire after many years of serving God.  Jim thought it would be best for me if he and his wife Lucille stopped attending the church, affording the congregation the opportunity to acclimate to me without any interference from him.I was only 21– a complete novice.  I had only been invol...  Read More

When we left Catholicism, the pastor of the Bible church we attended was Bob Stringfellow.  I only sat under his ministry for two years before I headed off to college, but without trying to do so, he left an imprint on my soul about what a preacher should be.The only preaching I really knew – that of our Catholic priests (and I use the term preaching ‘loosely’ there) – was sterile and generic, wit...  Read More

Having been brought up in a home that took religion, morality, and discipline very seriously, I struggled to understand people who didn’t.  Until I read Mark Twain.Twain’s heroes, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, didn’t mind breaking rules or defying the prevailing social order.  Propriety, formal education, and religion were to Mark Twain suffocating strictures on freedom.  I wasn’t brought up to see th...  Read More