Question

I have a brother-in-law who is involved with a church somewhat on the cultic side I believe.  He has given me a couple of verses that their group believes that the Tribulation occurred in 70 A.D. and that "this generation" in Matthew 24:34, "geneautos" (Greek) as he puts it, means "this generation" and that the word "millennium" does not necessarily mean 1,000 years.  Can you give me something to say to him that would turn him back around? 

Answer

I would say to him, "Expose yourself to some other material.  If you really want to know the truth then don't get locked into that situation.  Be willing to study some other sides to that."  Obviously, he is in the wrong place and he doesn't have the wherewithal to make the decision himself so he becomes a victim of whoever teaches it. 

There is nothing that you can say about an isolated thing like that.  You would have to take the guy back and teach him Hermeneutics, in other words--you have got to learn how to interpret the Bible--this is back where we started tonight.  If you don't know the principles to interpret Scripture it is for sure that you are going to come up with the wrong answer--it's for sure, it's a guarantee if you don't know what you are doing. 

It is amazing.  You couldn't fly an airplane without training, and you couldn't operate on someone without training, and you couldn't run a computer system without training, and you couldn't do a lot of things without training, but people think that they can pick up the Bible and tell you everything that it means "off the top of their head."  If they have got any personality or any charm or any dynamics they can get a bunch of people to follow them.  It is the old story in California, "Grow a beard, say you are Moses, and you will have 50 followers in a half an hour."  You can build your own little Kingdom and keep unloading on them as long as you keep them happy and make them think that they are really into the deep stuff--you got them.  Again, it is tragic that people don't know how to interpret Scripture, and the best thing that you can say to someone like that is, "You need to expose yourself to some alternatives--read some things."  Give them some good things to read.  Let them listen to tapes that we preached on that or someone else has.  Say, "If you are really objective and want to know the truth--listen to this."  Find out if he is open.  If he is not open you are stuck, if he is then maybe you can feed him some stuff that will help to see where his error is.