If Isaiah 17 is about Syria today, then America is Babylon or Assyria. If Isaiah 17 is not about al-Assad, Obama and Netanyahu, what is it for us today?

Is prayer an act of worship directed to a particular deity, or is its value psychotherapeutic, to “find solace and healing,” “relief and repose,” and to “cope with the loss of loved ones”?

It is the height of American arrogance to claim that 9/11 was a wake-up call for the church, as if the United States is God’s holy people, and God is only concerned about Americans.

I don’t want to be left behind in all this excitement about the unfolding of prophecy right before our eyes on CNN and CBN, so I say, “Me, too!” Are dispensationalists the only ones who keep revising their prophecies? So here’s an update of two old posts regarding how Biblical prophecy must be interpreted.

Why are dispensationalists so vulnerable to datesetting? I believe that their eschatological system breeds datesetting. They see God’s plan for the world as subservient to his great plan for saving national Israel.

Do not fear when others proclaim the end of the world is near, because of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan and the war in Libya. All of these are part of God’s unshakable plan for the eventual redemption of his elect from sin, death, and Satan. As David says, “I shall not be shaken” because the Lord “gives me counsel … [and] he is at my right hand” (Psa 16:7-8).

Another waste of time and money watching another dumb doomsday delusion by Roland Emmerich, who’s exploiting the gullible Rapture crowd, then laughing all the way to his bank.

Do you think Satan could be literally bound by a chain? Do you think he could be locked up for one thousand years in a “bottomless” pit? Is there really such a thing as an infinitely deep pit? Why not? Read more…

A rapture fan(atic) speculates that if President Obama’s peace timetable is set at 7 years, we might as well flee to the mountains and wait for the Rapture, because he is surely the Antichrist who signs the 7-year peace treaty with Israel.

In Revelation 9:1-11 we read of locusts that come out of the abyss. If we try to over-interpret, we’ll end up saying these are Apache helicopters, with the teeth being .50 caliber machine guns, the hair being the fire out of the exhaust pipe, the breast-plates being the titanium armor, and the tails being tomahawk missiles. This misses the point entirely as this vision had meaning for the first-century believer.

Because they are so used to listening to the latest dispensational prophecy seminars, most evangelicals are disappointed and baffled when they hear that the “last days” and most chapters of Revelation encompass the period between the two comings of Jesus Christ, and not the seven-year tribulation period before the Rapture. Even more baffling to them is the teaching that the “signs of the times” are to continue within the inter-advental period, now over 2,000 years in duration.

The Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matt 25:31-46) gives the clearest evidence of a single, general resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” together with all his angels, he will sit on his judgment throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, the righteous sheep on his right, the cursed goats on his left. Where’s the millennium in this text?