The following "Question" was asked by an attendee at the 2005 Shepherds' Conference (a ministry of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California), and was "Answered" by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from "General Session #10 John MacArthur - Q&A." A copy of the CD, cassette tape, or MP3 can be obtained by going to: www.shepherdsconference.org ©2005. All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church.
Questioner
In today’s times, we know Israel’s a new state as of 1948. We know they’re rebuilding the temple. I worked for the military in Japan and I know, from military websites, there’s actually a city of Babylon standing that our advisors are walking through right now with United Nations representatives and people of the Iraqi government, discussing how to open this place up as a trade center. So, I go back to the book of Daniel, talking about Babylon will be destroyed in the end times. My question is, if this is so important to preach and to be able to teach the truth biblically, why don’t more churches teach about the end times prophecies?
John MacArthur's Answer
I think the answer to that is twofold. I think you can get sort of prophetic-burnout by all the nonsense. You know, I think there’s just a lot of nonsense that keeps coming, where people see prophetic fulfillment everywhere. You preach it and you preach it and you preach it and then it becomes—another problem with it is you fictionalize it. Say what you will, when you fictionalize eschatology, people begin to view it as fiction. I think that’s part of it, and you get sort of burned over. If you’ve read the Left Behind series, an exposition of Daniel seems pretty boring. So, I just think you can have a kind of a burned over area on this issue.
Secondly, I think there has been, in the church, a tolerance of many views. Instead of a really aggressive effort to resolve these things in the Scripture, there’s been a certain contentment with letting them all exist as if that’s okay. It concerns me, and I constantly think of what a disappointment it must be to God that we all battle like crazy to make sure everybody understands the beginning, we battle like mad to make sure they understand the middle—the history of redemption—and we’re just happy to let them be all over the map about the end. Well, it seems to me, if you’re going to write a book, what really matters is the end! I don’t think God just lets the whole thing go up in a puff of confusion. I think what gets you into that confusion is an unwillingness to apply the same principles of interpretation to the literature that you would apply even to prophetic literature in the Old Testament and just keep a consistent hermeneutic. As I think it’s Hamilton wrote years ago, you know, we’ve got to change our hermeneutic or we’re all going to end up premillenialists. And he actually said that! Like, you know, that’s sort of backing into it.Tony Capoccia
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