A few helpful links from Jonathan Lichtenwalter

Q&A: Acts 5 – No One Dared Join Them? | God Made Jesus? | Are Abraham and Moses Myths?

Did the second coming of Jesus occur invisibly in 1914 as the Jehovah Witness claim?

What a Christian Counselor Wishes Every Christian Knew

Greetings to our subscribers:

I taught a class at a teen camp in San Diego last week. A new class, including audio and power point, titled Incredible Evidence is now available at the web site.

I am now working with Carlos Vargas in London on developing a Youtube and a Facebook channel for video materials. BoStay tuned.

In just over a week I will be leaving for a three week missionary teaching trip to Vladivostok, Russia, Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, Ulan Batar, Mongolia and Bishkek, Kyrgistan. Please be praying for the teaching to be a great encouragement to the churches. If you can help defray some of the expenses of this trip, please contact Jan at joakes01@san.rr.com or you can donate through the web site.

Next is an article from a continuing series of essays which will be published in Volume III of my series on church history, The Christian Story, which should be published early this Fall. This one is on the history of millennial/apocalyptic movements in the history of the Church.

John Oakes

Millennialism

If there is any lesson to be learned from church history, surely it is this: seeing our particular movement as the fulfillment of specific prophecies, either in the Old or the New Testament is a recipe for disaster. What is it about humans that we are so likely to think of ourselves and our time as the culmination of history? It is a truism that for many of us it is all about us. We would do well to remember that it is not about us! It is about God and it is about others, but it is not about us. This egocentric tendency is not absent from the history of Christianity. In fact, it seems to pop its ugly head up every time we turn around. We have already seen it in the Hussites and the Melchiorites, and we will see it several more times in the history of the Church.

Concerning mankind’s tendency to see current events as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, no less that Isaac Newton wisely noted in his commentary on Daniel:^[1]

“The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things, by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testaments, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event; and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence.”

One of these days, one of these teachers of present day apocalypse will be right.  They will tell us that Jesus is coming back next year and, sure enough it will happen, just like they said. But when this doomsday prophet gets it right it will be by sheer luck. After all, no less than Jesus himself told us, “But about the day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36-37) If even Jesus, while taking on human form, did not know the day or the hour, it is hubris for one of us to claim to know when Jesus will come back. Neither interpretation of prophecies in Ezekiel, Daniel or Revelation, nor reading the times through earthquake, war or famine will allow anyone to authoritatively predict the second coming of Jesus. This is what we are told by the Son of God himself in Matthew 24. Yet it happens again and again and sincere believers are sucked into ministries such as the Mormons, the Millerites, the Jehovah Witness, Assemblies of God and an uncountable number of other movements, in part because of their end-time predictions.

One can argue that such beliefs are not dangerous to Christianity. There is some truth to this. Because the timing of the return of Jesus is not an essential Christian teaching, a believer can in principle be deceived along these lines without having their salvation come into jeopardy. After all, it is true that the primitive church had a strong sense that the return of Christ was imminent. They had this sense because Jesus wanted it that way. In parables such as the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) Jesus taught his followers to be ready for his return at any time—to keep watch.

But there are at least two reasons we should not simply ignore these false teachers and leave their followers alone. One of these lessons comes directly from church history. First, it is an empirical fact that Christian groups who embrace a specific end-time prediction become distracted from the Christian purpose and mission. As human beings, we have only so much mental space. We have limited resources of time and energy. If we hear repeated messages about end-times, then we hear less about the essentials of the faith. If Satan cannot prevent our being saved, then at least he can limit our effectiveness in accomplishing our mission to win souls. Talk about end times is exciting. It catches our attention. It titillates our senses. We can become so concerned about knowing the times that we have little concern for our own repentance or for meeting the needs of the poor. This is not mere speculation, it is a fact based on experience. Therefore, although this is not a salvation issue, we should help the group we worship with avoid going down this kind of rabbit hole and, if possible, we should steer our believing friends who are not in our group away from these distracting end-time teachings.

There are other reasons that these false eschatologies (end-time teachings) can be dangerous to the Church. The history of Christianity teaches us that when we become overly focused on a particular view of the end-times it can become divisive. The Hussites divided over end-time teaching, as did the Anabaptists and many more. Division is almost always detrimental to the Christian mission. In more than one case, adopting a radical view that one’s group is bringing on the return of Jesus has led groups to revolutionary thinking, bringing discredit on Christianity and leading to persecution which, in some cases, has been justified. This certainly was the case with the Anabaptists and the disaster in Munster. We will see this pattern repeated. This is a significant issue today. Many of those who accept the premillennial doctrine take political positions with regard to the Middle East which are unduly influenced by false ideas about end-times. This can be dangerous, both to people living in the Middle East, and to Christian influence in the world.

So there is the negative side, and there is plenty to be said about the dangers to Christianity of focusing on specific end-time prophecies. On the other side, the fact is that many of us could gain by having a stronger sense of the imminence of Jesus’ return. The fact is that we can learn from the premillennialists. As is the repeated pattern in the series, we can learn from those with whom we do not agree. Jesus made it clear that he wanted his followers to be prepared for his return at any moment. Being prepared for the second coming is being prepared to meet our maker. Properly applied, it creates laser-like focus on keeping our lantern full of oil, keeping our house in order, and being about our master’s business. As Christians, we ought to live our lives with two seemingly contradictory views in mind. On the one hand, we should live as if we have not a moment left before Jesus comes back, and on the other hand, we should be building a spiritual legacy here on the possibility that he may not come back for another thousand years. Biblical Christianity is sometimes a balancing act, is it not?

 Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) Vol. II, Ch. 1