Transcript of Jesus Is Coming Back SOON... But Most Christians Aren't Ready. (ft. John Bevere) | Live Free with Josh Howerton New

Have you put off the Lord's coming in your heart? Do you ever wonder why it's so hard for you to stay away from pornography? Do you ever wonder why it's so hard for you to stay away from that substance? The Lord could want me home tomorrow. He could want me home tonight. Here's what I firmly believe. I live like he's coming back today.

Well, hey, Live Free Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Pointe Church in Dallas, Texas, but the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this. We want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform. And it's more than just watching a service. There are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, Church Online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Pointe. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend. And now enjoy the podcast.

John Bevere, welcome to Live Free.

It's great to be with you, Pastor Josh.

Dude, I know we just said this. I've wanted to meet you for years. Can I give you the backstory on why?

Yes, I'd love to hear why.

Okay, so I'll talk about this in a second. I didn't grow up in sort of charismatic spirit-filled world. That's not what I grew up in. So my buddy Ryan Visconti, that is amazing. Everybody should be listening to Pastor Ryan. I love Ryan. He's amazing. He's one of the best pastors in the state of Arizona. Agreed. So it's probably like, honestly, it's probably like, when did you write Undercover?

The year 2000.

Okay. So actually it was probably that year. Okay. And he was like, hey man, you got to read this book. God just altered some things in my soul. So I read it on vacation. And then when did you start preaching your awe of God sermons?

Okay, that started in 1994, but when I wrote the book was in 2022.

Okay, well, for listeners, what we're getting ready to talk about is your book that just released on the second coming of Christ, which is mind-blowing. Let me just say that. So we're going to go there, but I'm on vacation in— we took our kids to the beach. And I had never heard a Jon Bevere sermon. And Visconti sends me one of your Awe of God sermons. I'm doing a little workout. And dude, you tell this story about, and I'll get the details wrong, where you're preaching in a stadium and essentially you have an awareness that there is little fear of God.

No fear of God.

No fear of God in the room. And what you did to confront that moment, we don't got to go there. But honestly, man, it just reverberated with me so deeply, I put down the weights, walked to a corner of the little workout room. I started sweating and just repented. And ever since then, I've been following you. And so I'm glad you're here.

Wow. I'm so honored to be here. And I absolutely love your program and I have kind of a dad's heart. And so when I see young men like you just blowing it up and staying with truth, but loving people both. It just makes my heart so happy. That's why I was so excited to meet you today. I'm a little fanboying right now.

Stop, man, stop. Well, I'm just happy to be called young again.

That's good. Listen, I turn 67 next month. I know I feel like I'm 35, but I do realize, you know, it's so funny. I'm going to a lot of churches and I'm going to all these churches. I'm like, why am I older than this guy? So I just recently went to a church. The pastor was one year older than me and he's another one, Acts 35, and he's been in ministry for 50 years.

God bless him.

And I said, "It's so nice to stand up on a platform and say that I'm younger than the pastor." And everybody just cracked up. That's awesome, man.

All right, well, here's the deal. I want to talk about this book, The King Is Coming. And this week I just finished preaching on second coming of Christ, a bunch of stuff here. And there's, as you know, there's, you can't fit 100th of what you need to in a sermon. You just can't do it.

No.

All right, so let me just dive right in. And we can take this wherever you want, but I want to start right here.

Okay.

You believe that not only— the Bible kind of differentiates between kind of 3 phrases sometimes: last days, end times, and then sort of end of end times. You believe that we're in the last of the last days.

Absolutely. Without a doubt. Let's start right here.

Tell me why.

Because Jesus said that generation will not pass until all these things come true. You also look at the timelines. God's never late on the timelines. If you look at the book of Hosea, it's remarkable. God talks about what he was going to do to Israel, how he was going to come and tear and rend them, and they were sent to every nation of the world. This happened between 70 AD and 132 AD. I think it was 132. The Bar Kokhba rebellion was the last rebellion of Israel. Rome had basically, I mean, killed all of the Jews or sent them to slavery. And the ones that were smart got out and they went to all the nations of the world. If you look at that, it says after 2 days he will revive us. Us is Israel. Now, a day with the Lord. Peter said there's going to be scoffers, mockers that come up in the last days, going to say, hey, come on, ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same as from creation. Well, first of all, atheists don't call church fathers fathers. And atheists don't call creation creation. They call it evolution.

So Peter is talking about people in the church are actually going to say, "Man, in the 12th century they said he was coming. The 14th century said he was coming." Da da da da da da.

Interesting. Well, wait, I've never thought about that before. You think that Peter passage is referring to Christians scoffing?

I do.

Okay, you keep going. I never thought about that.

Okay, because atheists don't call creation creation.

Interesting.

They don't call church fathers fathers.

All right.

Okay. So it would come to a point where they would say, everything's the same, nothing's changing, I'm the pan-theology, everything will just pan out. That's not the way they were with the first coming, and I'll get to that in a moment if you ask me. But if you look at this, he said, you must not forget this one thing. What is it we're not to forget? A day with the Lord's a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day. Now In my Bible reading this morning, Exodus 19, God said to Moses, "Tell them to go wash their clothes because after 2 days I'm coming down on the mountain." So you see this. Remember Jesus said, "I cast out demons today and tomorrow and third day I'm perfected." So there's a lot in scripture about 2 days. Okay, that's 2,000 years. We know for sure that Jesus was crucified 32 or 33 AD. Now, there is the ancient Jewish calendar, there is the modern-day Jewish calendar, there is the Gregorian calendar. I'm not gonna take the time to explain all of that, but I'm gonna tell you this, we're 2 days after his crucifixion.

Roughly 2,000 years.

2070 to '75 will be 2,000 years that Israel was plummeted. Now, Hosea makes this amazing statement, "After 2 days he'll revive us." Who's us? The Jewish people. Now remember when Paul said the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, all of Israel will be saved. All right, after 2 days he'll revive us, on the 3rd day he'll raise us up to live in his sight. That's the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ. But then he makes this statement in the next verse. He said, let us know and let us pursue the knowledge, knowing God intimately, because his going forth is established as the sunrise. Now, Josh, I know the sun's going to come up at the given time every single morning. Like the sun didn't just say, oh, I'm going to come up at 11:30 AM this morning in Dallas, Texas. It didn't happen. It came up at the exact time. So what God is saying in the book of Hosea is my going forth to revive my people is established as the morning. And so we're looking at this. We live in the generation that Israel has now come back— or excuse me, Jerusalem has now come back under the Jewish leadership in 1967.

So wait, Israel was reestablished as a nation in 1948. Jerusalem didn't come back under their leadership till '67. Yeah, that's okay.

You look at what Jesus said. He said Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. So really, the key indicator is not Israel, it's Jerusalem. Interesting. And when they got that, that was what, almost 50 years ago. So if you look at a generation, Nelson's Bible Dictionary says a generation is a group of people that lived on the earth at a set time. So if you look at today, there's a few World War II vets that are still alive. World War II is 1940 to '45, right? Now they were probably 15 years old when they started. So if you look at it, that was 100 years, they're 100 years old. So you can safely say, 'cause you see generations represented as 40, 70, 100 years in the Bible. You can safely say it's 100 years. If you look at what Jesus says, 67, Jerusalem now is back under the rule of Jewish people. You go 100 years, you're at 2067. So if you also look at the 2-day of Peter, you're also around 2075 when Israel was torn by Titus. So I really safely can say, and I believe me, I avoided this subject for years.

Me too.

I wouldn't talk about it.

Very frankly, me too.

But, and there's a reason for that. But we are in that window. I believe that we can safely say, according to Jesus, that we're in that generation.

But John, the Bible says no one will know the day or the hour.

Correct.

So what would you say?

We know the generation. We would know the season and Here's what I found out, and the reason I stayed away from the second coming and eschatology is because I hated what I saw it produced. It produced people arguing pre, post, mid. It produced laziness. People stopped paying their credit cards because they were so convinced he was coming back on a certain day, right? And what happened was people asked me for 4 decades, don't you preach on the second coming? And I said, no, I'm not called to. That's because I didn't like the fruit I saw, and I didn't want to become I didn't want to lose a group of people that I felt like God had called me to minister to. Well, what happened was in 2021, the Holy Spirit started dealing with me personally. He said, "Son, I want you to start studying this." I didn't spend hundreds, I spent thousands of hours studying the Second Coming. What I discovered was significant. It's the second most talked about subject in the entire Bible. Only salvation is more.

00:10:59

Honestly, let me pause and highlight what John is saying with a verbal highlighter. It is stunning how much ink is spilled in the Bible on the second coming. It's going to take a pair of scissors to get away from that reality. So if we want to have the same emphasis that the Bible has, we got to lean in. I'm sorry, you keep going.

No, no. So first 3 centuries of the church, it was the second most written about subject by the church fathers.

Interesting.

All right. So 1 out of every 30 verses in the New Testament is on the second coming of Jesus. So this is what went through this. This head of mine. Why would God talk about this so much? And why aren't I talking about this? And what I realized, what I feared didn't happen. So I thought it would make me lazy. But think about it, Josh, when you're running a 5K, that's 5,000 meters. When do you run the fastest? The last 100 meters.

That's right.

When you see the finish line.

Oh, bro, that's a great point.

Okay, so here we go. I started realizing when eschatology, which guys, that's a big theological word, it just means study of end times. If it's preached incorrectly or heard incorrectly, it creates apathy, laziness, and argument. If it's preached correctly, it produces urgency.

Fascinating.

And I personally saw this in my own life because I love souls. I have always loved doing altar calls, but I started weeping in my morning prayers. 2023, 2024, I found myself just weeping. One morning I just came home with tears in my eyes. I said, Lisa— because I always pray outside— I said, Lisa, I just want to win souls. I just want to do altar calls. I just want to win souls. And she was like, okay, okay, okay. And, um, my family started saying, Dad, you're— you've changed. And I said, what do you mean? You don't get upset as easily, okay? Because I'm very intense. And so sometimes I was too intense with my boys, and they all love me and they forgive me. And I always say, I'm sorry I said that. I said that— I didn't say that. With the tone I should have said it, you know. Anyway, my wife started calling me my favorite husband. Okay, Lisa started saying, "You're my favorite husband." So finally I just threw up my arms. I said, "What is that supposed to mean?" And she goes, "Well, I like this 2.0 version better than the 1.0 version." And I realized the fruit of this is accurate if it's preached correctly.

And really, the second coming, Josh, isn't about dates and timelines, blood moons and tsunamis. It's more about being ready. And that's the real emphasis of this, because if you look at a wedding, my wife and I were separated for 2 months. She went up to Indiana. I stayed in Dallas. By the way, we lived here in Dallas when we first got married.

What part?

We lived over in Grapevine, Southlake area.

Oh, totally.

Okay. Okay, so, and she went up there to prepare. And I'm telling you, that 2 months was like 2 years. A day seemed like a week. A week seemed like a year, because I was so excited about our wedding, right? But she had to prepare for it. She worked 40 hours a week just to get ready for that one-day event. And so, yes, I had to know where the church was and what the time of the wedding is. That took all of 10 to 30 minutes. What took months was us getting ready for this event. And you see, most people see the second coming as an event. It's not an event. It's the marriage of the ages. It is a bridegroom who's so in love with his bride, just waiting for his dad to say, "Go get your girl." And it's all about us, who's— we're lovesick bridesmaids just waiting for our groom to come and get us. And we want as many people involved as possible. That's why we're so urgent and doing what you're doing and your team is doing, and that is telling people the word of God and getting people to fall in love with Jesus.

Okay, let me—

I know I've said a lot.

No, that's fantastic. That's why I wanted you on. So let me, I'm like you generally, honestly, man, this is a confession. Eschatology has probably been my least favorite of the 8 primary ologies to study. And I just kind of get in, I'm like, man, amill, premill, postmill, all the things, all the things. And then let me toss something at you that has made me generally averse in the past towards really leaning in on trying to understand, especially things like timelines of events. So this is 1 Corinthians, whereas obviously you got first coming, second coming. 1 Corinthians, it's 1 Corinthians 2. It talks about, I'm going to read it. So it talks about, it's referring to the first coming of Christ. No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that's been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 'None of the rulers of this age understood it.' Obviously talking about demonic principalities and powers. 'None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' Now here's how I think about this. It's okay if you disagree with me, is that in some ways the prophecies about the first coming of Jesus, it seems like this passage saying were in some ways intentionally vague Mysteries.

Mysteries. So that at least demonic principalities and powers, they could not have read those prophecies and gone, oh, we know when it's going to happen. We know exactly in what order. And this is the big one. We know the purpose of the events. Right. Because it says if they had, they wouldn't have crucified Jesus.

Correct.

How I think about this sometimes is that some of the prophecies about the second coming are probably similar. Where it's like they're intentionally vague so that demonic principalities and powers don't understand when, how, exactly in what order, because if they did, they wouldn't kind of let the chess pieces get where they needed to get. What do you think about that?

So it's interesting. I felt the Holy Spirit led me back to the first coming of Jesus because was there ambiguity? Yes. Was there mockery? Yes. Was there controversy? Yes. And I felt like he said, go back and find out who got it right and who got it wrong, and then bring that into the second coming. So if you look at who got it wrong, it's so easy. Pharisees. Yeah, they could quote the first 5 of the books of the Bible from memory, right? But they can't recognize the Son of God when he's raising the dead. God manifests in the flesh. But this is something that's interesting. So yes, it was a mystery. The why was a mystery. But there's a group of people that we have discovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Bible doesn't talk about much, and they were called the Essenes.

Essenes, that's right. Yeah.

Now, the Essenes, why did they form? Because they saw the corruption in the spiritual leadership in Israel. So 150 years before Jesus was born, they started the community of Qumran.

Have you been out there?

I wanted to go so bad. Dude, it's awesome out there, but didn't realize what I was— where I was at.

I threw a rock into one of the caves.

It's pretty cool. I wanted to find some more Dead Sea Scrolls. So these guys predicted 150 years before Jesus was born the very week he would ride in Jerusalem on the donkey. What? The very week. Not kidding.

I've never heard that.

And his execution.

Really?

Yes. And they did it through the prophet Daniel, through the prophet Zechariah, and the other church— early church Jewish father— excuse me, the early Jewish fathers' writings. So a lot of people believe that John the Baptist was an Essene. Remember, he was in the deserts? Yes. Okay. They believe Mary was an Essene. They also—

which Mary?

Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Really?

So the Essenes—

I'm curious.

They were out in the desert.

Why do people think that?

I've never heard that. There are some Bible scholars— they've not proven it, but they strongly believe it.

Interesting.

But here's the really cool one. Almost all Bible scholars believe Simeon was an Essene.

Interesting.

So now, remember you said it was a mystery, right? So the why, the understanding of how important the crucifixion was, was hidden, but they were able to know the details.

Yeah.

All right. Does that make sense?

So the why, you're kind of going, hey man, the why was a mystery.

The why is the wisdom.

The what wasn't necessarily as much of a mystery.

Because what you just read is the wisdom. Was kept away. But the Essenes knew he was going to be executed. They knew it. Interesting. Before he was born.

Interesting.

So now, here's— let me set this up. So here's this guy, Simeon. And you got this young couple that's in their late teens, early 20s, Joseph and Mary. They come from another state. So they come from Oklahoma down to Texas. Okay, let me just modernize it. It's Galilee down to Judea. They go into the temple area. Now, what a lot of people people don't realize. They think the temple area is like our modern-day cathedrals. Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. The temple area was not a building, it was buildings. Herod greatly enhanced it. And there were crowds of people in that every single day. Here comes this young couple with a 40-day-old baby. And this guy, Simeon, who's in the scene, does a beeline, holds up the 40-day-old baby, and cries out, "The Messiah!" and blows Mary's mind.

Dude, I'm connecting where you're going. You keep going.

Okay, so here's these guys that can quote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Can you imagine if they made us quote from memory Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Acts before we could become pastors or ministers? I mean, these guys were dedicated, but they can't recognize God manifest in the flesh when he's raising the dead at 30 years of age. Here's a guy who recognizes the Messiah when he's 40 days old as a baby. Geez.

Wow.

Okay, so I said, all right, so the Holy Spirit was like, find out about this guy. Well, there's only one verse, and that's 2:25, Luke 2:25. It says there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon who was righteous, devout, and was eagerly waiting for the coming of Messiah. Okay, now I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna break this down. Can I do it? Okay, dude, this is awesome. Righteous means what? He operated out of constitutionally just character. Means he took obeying God seriously. Devout means to fear God. Devout means one who took the word of God seriously. It carried the reverence of God. But this is the one that's really interesting. He was eagerly waiting for the coming of Messiah. That's the Greek word prostekeo. Prostekeo means to remain, not visit, remain in a state of expectancy. All right, now Simeon, after he's done prophesying over this baby, all right, to the parents, A woman comes up who's been fasting and praying for 80 years named Anna. She picks up the baby and she speaks about the baby to every— not everybody in the temple area, only everyone who is eagerly awaiting the coming of Messiah.

And it's the same Greek word, perspectomi. Now fast forward to Luke 12. Jesus is teaching us how to be ready and recognize his second coming. Do you know what he says to us? It mirrors Simeon. He said, "Stay dressed for service." We know if you're not suited up, you can't go on a football field. So you don't just quick get dressed at the last moment. You stay dressed for service. "Keep your lamps burning." Remember the parable of virgins. "And you be like men who are eagerly waiting for your master to come." Now I put eagerly in, I added that. And the reason is it's the Greek word prosectomi. What I didn't realize until last year, Josh, if my sons were sitting at the table with us right now, And you said, "What's your dad's favorite book?" My oldest son would laugh and say, "The Bible." I mean, I love reading the Bible. I've read the Bible for 46 years and I never noticed how many times we are told to eagerly expect the coming of Jesus until just last year.

Can I just pause for a moment?

Oh, absolutely.

Let me pause for our listeners.

I talk so fast.

I'm going to honor you. And everybody listens to the pod, but I'm a man and so I like to especially speak to our men. One of the reasons I wanted this guy on the podcast is this is who you want to be when you grow up. He loves the Lord. He walks in faithfulness and devotion to the Lord. His children love him and love Jesus, and his wife does too. We were talking about this off air before the pod. It's kind of like the older I get, it's like, I don't really care how big your church is. I'll travel across land and sea to learn from you if you got adult kids that love you and love Jesus, and that's who you are. So let me just pause and say, That's why I wanted you to hear it.

That is the reward of the person who fears God. Psalm 112 says his children will be mighty on the earth. If you look at Max Jukes and you look at Jonathan Edwards, I'm sure you've done that study before.

I just used that German illustration.

Okay. You see Jonathan Edwards, his offspring, they were mighty on the earth. If you look at Max Jukes, they were murderers, they were brothel keepers, they were prostitutes. When you fear God, things fall into place. This is why Jesus delighted in the fear of the Lord. He delighted in it. Think about it. Over wisdom, over knowledge, over might, over counsel, over understanding, his delight was in the fear of God. Paul the Apostle tells us that our salvation is matured through fear and trembling. Not love and kindness. Now don't get me wrong, God doesn't have love. He is love. But I love what Oswald Chambers said. Oswald Chambers said, when we preach the love of God, there is a danger that we forget that God doesn't first of all reveal himself in scripture as a loving God, but as a holy—

that's right—

God. And he reveals his blazing holiness, but in the center of that holiness is his love for us. And so when— what I didn't realize, 'cause this is going back to what— so "Awe of God," the book I wrote, is part 1, but this is part 2. So this is really like—

Interesting.

Okay, so when I go back to "The Awe of God," I stood in front of one of the most well-known ministers on the planet. I sat across the table, just like you and I, in a federal penitentiary. He had the largest ministry in the world in the 1980s. CNN covered his trial every single night.

Is it Swaggart?

No, it was Jim Bakker. That's right. CNN covered his trial every single night. And I was a jerk 'cause I sat there and got, "He deserves this." I mean, I was a jerk. And what happens? He reads the first book that I wrote in prison and he asks, calls his assistant from prison, said, "Would this man come and visit me?" He's 25 years older than me. He walks in and I'm looking at the most famous person on the planet for the wrong reasons, 'cause CNN had him on every night. And—

For my generation and down, that deal was like as big as Epstein.

Yes. I've never met him. And he walks out and he grabs me and hugs me and won't let me go. Josh, he hugs me for like a minute. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders and he said, "Did you really write this book?" I said, "Yes, sir, I did." He said, "We have so much to talk about and we only have 90 minutes." We sit down. I'm looking at him across the table like this. And he looks at me and he goes, "John, this prison isn't God's judgment on my life." I looked at him. He goes, "It's his mercy. If I would've continued to live the way I lived, I would've ended up in the lake of fire forever separated from God." Wow. I'm like, all my— all of a sudden now I want to go in the corner and repent like crazy for all the thoughts I had, right? So he starts telling me his whole story. He said, the first year of prison, God sent a man in here and the man got all the junk out of my life. And he said, John, I was wicked. He got all the wickedness out of me.

He said, we do a Bible study in this prison and we spend 3 hours a day in the word of God. 3 hours. I said, well, you lead it, right? And he goes, never. He said, I was such a manipulator, I was such a controller. I'm not touching it. Another guy does it. So he gets done with the story, 20 minutes into it. I'm this young 35-year-old minister, and I want to know how I don't end up in his position in 25 years. I said, I watched you weep when you did altar calls. You had the largest ministry in the world. When did you fall out of love with Jesus? He goes, I didn't. And I remember all my walls went up and I said, what are you talking about? You committed adultery with blank in 1983. You were prosecuted starting in 1988. You just said you had all this wickedness in you. What do you mean you didn't fall out of love with Jesus? He said, John, I loved him all the way through it. Now he sees confusion. I'm on my face. He looks at me and goes, "John, I didn't fear God." I'm going, "What?" He said, "There are millions of Americans like me.

They love Jesus, but they have no fear of God." Josh, that was the beginning. That is when God started me on the journey. I've got to know what is the fear of the Lord. And what I found out is Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." What knowledge is it the beginning of? It tells us in 2:5, the beginning of knowing him intimately. Psalm 25:14 says, intimate friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear him. With them he shares the secrets. Now I'm understanding this is why Jesus delighted in it, because this— it was the fear of the Lord that caused him to go through Gethsemane, to push through the sweats, the drops of blood, because by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil, not by the love of God.

Wow, that was a, uh, the best parantheatical conversation I've ever had in a podcast. So I will just say my eyes are sweating just hearing you talk about it. That book, Awe of God, rearranged some things inside of me. And for anybody that's listening, we're going to keep talking about second coming. King is coming. That's one that's worth it. So anyway, do you remember even where you were when I interrupted you? Yeah, my bad, dude.

Keep going. No, no, no. Do your thing. First of all, this is your podcast. You have not interrupted me. I'm here to serve you. Okay, so, okay, but the thing that really gets me is the eagerly expecting. So I start going through with the New Testament and I realize it's all over. Paul says the Corinthian church, 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:7, as you eagerly wait for the coming, second coming of Jesus. Uh, he says to Timothy in 2 Timothy, the crown of righteousness is not only for me but for everyone who is eagerly waiting. Hebrews chapter 9 says Christ will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting. Now, I could give more, but I'm not going to. Why is this so important? And first of all, what causes you to be eagerly expecting? Okay, think about your engagement. Okay, why did that 2 months seem like 2 years? Because if you got around me for just 5 minutes and you gave me an opening. I'm talking about my fiancée. I am so in love with that girl and I'm still so in love with her, right?

So I'm talking about her. I'm talking about my wedding day, 'cause I am so excited. When you're a kid, 5 years old, and your parents put up the Christmas decorations, that's all you talk about for 30 days, okay? So why is eager expectation so important? First of all, how do we keep our eager expectation? Paul says it, to set our sights on the realities of heaven, not the things of the earth. I'll show you this. Philippians 3:18-20. You know what Paul said? There are many, and I say it weeping, whose behavior shows— this is New Living Translation— whose behavior shows that their eyes are set on the things of the earth. This is what you have to ask yourself. You know, when my eyes are set on the road, when I was driving here today, "This Roy Hubbard Lake?" "Roy Hubbard, yeah, yeah." "Oh my gosh, what a beautiful lake." I'm just sitting there going like this, but my eyes kept going back to the road where they were set.

Right.

All right? If it's 0 degrees outside and you open up your front door, your house drops 20 degrees, but you close the front door, it goes back to where it's set. So the question you have to ask yourself is when your mind's not required on the task before you, so you're not hitting a pickleball shot, you're not sitting across the table looking at Josh Hart, Where does your thoughts go? They'll go to where they're set. So do your thoughts go to how many clicks did I have on my post yesterday? The World Cup soccer that's coming up or the NBA playoffs that are coming? Just ask yourself, where does your mind go? That's where you're— that's where your mind's set.

That's great.

So why is this so important? Why? Because John the Apostle, who actually saw the whole book of Revelation, writes, Jesus is going to appear. And when he does, we're going to see him as he is. And all who have this eager expectation will purify themselves even as he is pure. When we are eagerly expecting his coming, it gives us a power to walk in holiness that we don't necessarily have when we don't. Because if you remember, Jesus talks in all of Matthew 24, he talks about the wars, the rumors of wars, the famines, the pestilence, right? Then he says this parable. If that servant says in his heart, my master delays his coming, he begins to party, beat his fellow servants, and get drunk. How do you beat your fellow servants? You make ridiculous comments on their post. You gossip about them. You slander them. How do you party and get drunk? You yield to the dictates of the flesh. Now let's go back to what Peter said, what we quoted earlier. He said, "Most importantly." I spent a whole year on 2 Peter, 3 little chapters on my podcast. And I get to chapter 3 and he says, "Most importantly." I'm like, I just spent 9 months talking about the first 2 chapters.

What is most important? Know this, that scoffers are gonna come in the last days saying, where's the promise of his coming? Forever since the Father, right? There's a statement I just dropped out of there that I'm gonna add back in. Scoffers will come walking according to their own desires. In other words, they've put off the coming of the Lord. They don't have the power to purify themselves as he is pure. So I ask, I ask men, do you ever wonder why it's so hard for you to stay away from pornography? Do you ever wonder why it's so hard for you to stay away from that substance? Have you put off the Lord's coming in your heart? See, to be really honest with you, Josh, The Lord could want me home tomorrow. He could want me home tonight. That doesn't mean he's coming in the clouds. But I— here's what I firmly believe. I live like he's coming back today, but I plan like he's not coming back for 200 years. I know what my grandson's going to do. He's going to Oxford. He's going to get a law degree. We are planning for Messenger for generations to come, but I'm living like he's coming back today.

Okay, so I want to emphasize something you said at the beginning and you alluded to it even just now is that when they start beating their fellow servants and that's the kind of deal where it's like you get these Christians who are, they're more interested in fighting with other Christians than they are actually accomplishing a Great Commission. It's demonic. It's not good, man. And very frankly, eschatological views is one of those things that people can do that on. You got Bible-believing Christians, man, faithful Bible-believing Christians can have a couple different views here. You got your, We covered this earlier in the podcast. You kind of got dispensational premill, historic premill, George Ladd. You kind of got especially reform crowd. That's kind of the team I came out of that you got a lot of amillennial views. Every now and then you find a little postmill dude. But I want to hear how you view this. So real quick, would you mind giving me just a quick overview of your timeline from now to the end? What events in one word.

You're gonna really put me on the spot. First of all, that's a 28-chapter book, and 5 chapters are spent because I realized I didn't want to talk about it.

Yeah.

So I make this really clear. Here's my view. My wife doesn't even agree with me, and we joke about it. I love that. I love it.

I love it. That's fine.

And so you'll never, ever, ever get me to argue about this.

Yeah.

But to me, The Scripture shows so clearly that the bride is not going through the wrath of God.

So preacher of rapture, pre-tribulation rapture.

I firmly believe it because there are several reasons. Number one, if you look at Isaiah, a lot of people don't realize Isaiah is the one that really had the revelation first of the resurrection of the dead. Now, this is one of our foundational doctrines. He said, your life-giving light is going to come upon those that are in the dust. And then we— and he uses himself in it. We are gonna be raised up, right? And it says, "Come, my people, enter your chambers because the wrath of God is about to come." This is Isaiah 26, last 3 verses, last 4 verses. "The wrath of God is gonna come and hide in your chambers." And then he talks about how they're gonna be raised from the graves. Now, this took 3 days for the Holy Spirit to get this across to me. I was stuck for 3 days because I'd never heard it before. And all of a sudden I thought, Lord, why can't I shake this verse? Enter your chambers before the wrath comes, and your life-giving light's going to come on the dead, and they're going— and the dead are going to rise, and they're going to enter their chambers before the wrath.

And I'm like, why can't I shake this? Then all of a sudden I realized Paul comes along and says, I'm going to reveal a mystery to you. What's a mystery? A mystery is something that was hidden. That's right, right. There's about 12 or 13 of them in the New Testament that Paul reveals. It was hidden to the ancient prophets. They sought diligently, but they couldn't get it. And Jesus said, you're not going to get it until the Holy Spirit comes. What's the mystery? We're not all going to die. Oh, okay. Behold, the dead in Christ are going to rise. Then we who are alive are going to be caught up together with them.

Thessalonians.

Yeah. Now, now, now all of a sudden I went Oh my gosh, I see it. So is the life-giving light of God going to come on the dead believers? We're talking about Old Testament saints and New Testament saints in the graves, and then they're going to have to hide for 7 years at Petra, in wildernesses, and strongholds?

No.

Think about it. Dead people being raised from the dead so they'd have to hide for 7 years? No. He's going to raise them up before the indignation on the nations. It's right there in Isaiah. And they're going to go to the chambers and the chambers have to be in heaven because these are dead people being raised. But then Paul says, "We at the same moment, we who are alive will be caught up together with them in the air." All of a sudden I go, "Oh my goodness." Now let me ask you a question. When you see the throne of God in Psalms, in Ezekiel, in Hebrews, You have this description, this description of what's, what's at the throne of God. Let's just do Hebrews. There's God the Father, there's Jesus, right? There's innumerable company of angels, and there's the spirits of just men made perfect and the church of the firstborn. Who are these two people, these groups? Spirits of just men made perfect, Old Testament saints, and the church of the firstborn are all the believers that have died. They're at the throne right now. That's great.

Okay, that's great.

Now you come over to Revelation, John's description, and not one seal has been broken. Not one. And he sees these elders, these 24 elders.

I just— it was my Bible reading yesterday.

Okay, now the ESV really messed this up.

Well, dang, that's my Bible reading.

I'm sorry, they messed it up. You got to read the New King James. Okay.

By the way, good translation for listeners. New King James is a good translation.

Thank you. They said, "You," they're worshiping him and he said, "For you have redeemed us." Now I went in.

That's what it says in ESV or NKJV?

ESV says, "You have redeemed them." New King James says, "You have redeemed us." I go to the original and it means we, and it can never mean others. Interesting. And I actually put it in the book. Okay, you have redeemed us. Now, you've redeemed us from every tribe and every nation. So I always used to think, okay, these are 24 special guys and ladies that have these special thrones, these elders, right? Wait a minute, you've redeemed us from every tribe. There's over 5,000 indigenous tribes on the earth. Every nation, there's 254 nations on the earth if you count territories too. Okay, how can they say every tribe and every nation if there's only 24? The other thing that you see is you don't see the spirits of just men made perfect anymore. You don't see— you don't see it. They're gone. Where did they go? I believe the reason it's 24 elders is— could it be? And this is conjecture. This is where I go to conjecture. 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of the Lamb. That's the foundation. The 12 apostles of the Lamb. And these people came out of— we're a part of that tribe.

I'm a part of the tribe of Paul and Peter, and right, because their words that they wrote are what brought me to the Lord. If you look at Jacob's sons, everybody came from those sons. So those elders, I believe, are the ones that actually— they now have their glorified bodies. The Hebrews, when they saw it, they were the spirits of just men made perfect. If you also look at— here's where people really argue. They say, okay, you're just an escape person. First of all, Jesus said pray that you could be worthy to escape all these things, but let's not even go there. Let's not go there. Okay, we'll leave that off the table. That's good. I just— all right, tribulation is the world's wrath against the believer. I mean, Josh, there were so many Christians killed in Nigeria in the last month. That's right. There's been more Christians martyred in our generation than any other time period in history.

By the way, for listeners, let that sink in. That is a verifiable fact. More Christian martyrs in the last century than in every previous century combined.

Yes. All right.

You keep going.

All right. So tribulation is the world's wrath against us. The Tribulation, capital T, is God's wrath against a sinful world. So do we think that he's going to beat up his son's bride and then say, "Okay, let's have dinner together." You know, the wedding, the marriage supper of the Lamb? No, Paul writes before, okay, if the Thessalonians is the description of how we will be, right? Caught up together with the Lord to meet the Lord. He says we have been delivered from God's wrath before that. And he says we have been delivered from God's wrath after that. So here's what I believe. I believe the rapture could happen at any time.

Do you think there is any biblical prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled that has to be fulfilled pre-rapture in your view of eschatology?

No. Somebody may say, well, the temple has to be built so that the Antichrist can come in. No, it doesn't. Because you know what the Bible doesn't say? If there's a gap between the rapture and the start of the tribulation, It doesn't say that. I don't believe personally, I believe it is the kickoff because then you take every Christian out of the United States, out of every construct of society, you'd have no more—

It would be chaos.

Relief organizations. It would be anarchy.

No one can understand how bad things would get as fast as they would get if you unalived or disappeared the salt of the earth from the face of the earth.

So I believe we're the restrainer. Yeah.

People of sin. So hold on real quick because we're just going back and forth. So when you say the restrainer, he's talking about in, it's 2 Thessalonians, right?

The man of sin can't be revealed, the lawless one, until the restrainer is removed.

And when it talks about the restrainer, it says he who is restraining. And I'm assuming you're interpreting, because usually what people do is they'll go, man, that's the work of the— the Holy Spirit is the he, the work of the Holy Spirit through the people of the church, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what you're doing. And honestly, that's one thing that makes a lot of sense to me. It's like, hey dude, you remove the church.

You know that Greek word means he or it or an entity?

Oh, interesting. Okay, that's interesting.

Go ahead.

Okay, well, that's what I'm just pointing out. That makes sense. I don't think anyone anywhere understands the level of evil that is being restrained by the presence of Christians on the face of the earth. No one fully grasps that. You remove that and it is a damn breaking, Unlike anything you have ever imagined.

Correct.

Okay. So you keep going. That's why I just want to hear in your view. And by the way, nobody's going to beat you up on Live Free. We'll delete you and remove you from the comments.

But let them say it. I don't care.

I care. So here's your real quick— you're walking through real quick. You don't think there's a quick view of your timeline of events from now to the end. You don't think no prophecy has to be fulfilled. There's nothing standing between now and a rapture in your mind. And then what? You keep taking it from there.

Well, that's what causes me to live the way I live. Eagerly awaiting. Eagerly awaiting. Because let's say it is a mid-trib. Daniel tells us exactly how many days before he comes back if it's a mid-trib. So he wouldn't come as a thief in the night. It's 1,275 days. And then he says 1,325 days or 35 days. He gives the two things that will happen. If it's at the end, we know exactly when it's going to be. So it's not a catching away. And the ancient Jewish wedding, the groom, once they got betrothed, which is like being married but you're not living together, he would go away and prepare a room off his father's house and come back on an unannounced day and grab her in the middle of the night. Not in the middle of the night, early in the evening or in the middle of the night when his father said, "Go get her." Because he didn't even know, the groom didn't even know until the father said, said, "I approve, go get her." And so you have so much wedding talk that the disciples understood that we don't understand because we have engagement.

Engagement, you can just break it. A betrothal, you gotta get a divorce, right? So if you look at, there's so much that doesn't make sense. And can I please challenge something? 'Cause so many, it's like Paul writes to the Thessalonians and says, "I'm so frustrated these teachers have come in and confused you." there are guys that are out there saying rapture. First of all, rapture is in the Bible, but it's not in the English Bible. It's in the Latin Bible, raptamur. It's the Greek word harpazo. So let's use a scriptural term that people understand: the catching away of the church. Okay, um, where was I going? Oh no, I just lost my train of thought. The catching away of the church is something that he said he's going to come to get his bride.

He's—

I believe he's going to have his wedding garment on. How in the world does he come as a warrior and destroying the nations at the exact same time he's getting his bride?

Okay. Yeah.

Does he have like his wedding dress underneath his armor? Yeah. And the other thing is Zechariah, Jude, Enoch all prophesy about him coming with ten thousands and thousands of his saints. How does that happen? Do we get raptured in the clouds? Because he talks about us getting caught away in the clouds. And then do we just all of a sudden mount on horses and do a U-turn and come down and put his foot on the Mount of Olives? There's so much that doesn't make sense if you look at the post-trib.

So that's why You know, so your timeline of events, just if you concisely bullet them, how's it go?

It goes: catching away the church, the lawless one's revealed, the lawless one confirms a treaty with many. Okay, look at the board of peace right now. You have 35 nations. Okay, he's going to confirm a covenant. He's not going to establish a covenant. He's going to confirm. Go look at Daniel 9. It's pretty interesting. So it was already kind of put in place. He's going to confirm it, going to probably encourage them to build their temple. And in the middle of that, 3 and a half years into it, he's going to come and he's going to cause the sacrifices to stop and he's going to set up a sacrilegious object. And at that point, that is when Jesus said, hey, if you're in Judea, flee to the mountains, because the greatest persecution of Christians— actually, Zechariah tells us that two-thirds of the Jews will be killed by him. And one-third will go through the fire. That next 3.5 years is the most horrific time period of human history. That is when he is going to be persecuting the church, and that is when the great wrath of God is being poured out upon the earth.

And then you have the nations that are rallying together, coming against Jerusalem. Jesus will come back with 10,000s of his saints, and with one stroke of a breath of his mouth, smite everybody of those nations. The birds of the air are going to have a a feast, a feast, because the blood is going to be up to a horse's knee, right? And then Jesus is going to come back and he's going to set up the earth the way it was originally intended to be run. You will then have people in natural bodies and you have people in glorified bodies, just as Jesus interacted with the disciples by eating fish with them, but suddenly appearing.

He was in his glorified body. They were in a natural body, right?

You're going to have that during the millennium. Those are the people that can have babies. They're going to repopulate. God says that when the tribulation is over, people are going to be so— mortal flesh will be so rare, it'll be as rare as fine gold. So a lot of scholars believe it's not millions, it's billions of people that are going to be put to death. And there are some Bible— now these are guys that are smarter than me— believe there's only going to be 40, 50, 100, 150 million people left on the earth when all these plagues are done. I mean, that's 21 pretty intense plagues.

So you go millennium, then you go a thousand-year millennial reign.

Satan is bound that entire thousand years. He is then loosed to tempt, not the people in the glorified bodies, to tempt the people in the natural bodies. Once again, they're going to come against Jerusalem and the fire of God's going to devour them from heaven.

So there's two things I want to do. I want to do one short, and then I want to have you, honestly, I mentioned this the front half of the pod, something that honestly sent a chill through my spine. And I want to run it in front of you and just see how it lands on you.

Okay.

Let me do the short one first. So some of the stuff you're talking about right now is kind of, and we're going to theology nerd here for a second. The terms are preterism and partial preterism. So preterism, that's kind of the view that some of the events of Revelation have actually already taken place because they referred to the destruction of Jerusalem in 80, 70, and some of the, all of that discourse That's Olivet Discourse for listeners. It's in Matthew, primarily Matthew—

is 23 and 24?

Yeah, 23 and 24.

But no, 24, 25.

24, 25. It's Jesus. It's very interesting. It's actually Jesus' longest response to any question he was ever asked.

Yes.

I just want to pause and say that the longest response to any question Jesus was ever asked was about his second coming. That's interesting. And some of that both there, and then it's mirrored obviously in Luke 21. That's what I preached this week. It just, there's no way around it. Some of that is clearly about the destruction of the temple in AD 70, right?

Absolutely. Without a doubt. And it's also this guy coming in and stopping sacrifices is about a Greek emperor who came in and did it about 40 or 50 years before Jesus.

But you view that as like, it's kind of like a precursor.

It's like a preview.

Yeah. Coming attractions.

Yeah. Because Jesus talks about it again, 40, 40, 50. Well, no, 70 years later.

Yeah.

After this Greek ruler came in and did exactly that, I think it was Archelaus or whatever. I'm saying it wrong. I got it wrong. But anyway, he then says it's going to happen in the future.

Got it.

And since then it hasn't happened.

Okay. Yes. Paul, what's the name for that term where it's like a prophecy will have a near-term fulfillment and a far-term fulfillment? Sensus plena. That's it. That's it. So you view that as that. Man, those prophecies are referring to the second coming. They just had almost like a birth pang, almost like a preview. In the destruction of the temple in 87.

Can I give you a clear example that we can all see? That's great. Of what Paul just told you.

Yeah.

All right. Matthew 17. Jesus comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration. All of a sudden—

Oh, this is great.

Peter, James, and John are like, oh my gosh, you're the Messiah. Yeah. So they're confused. They said, hey, all the teachers tell us that Elijah's gotta come first. Now remember, Malachi writes, last couple verses, I'm gonna send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. John goes, Elijah is— excuse me, Jesus goes, oh yeah, Elijah is coming. Wait a minute, is coming is future tense. John's beheaded in Matthew 14. That's great. John's already gone. But then he says Elijah has come already and they didn't know him, but they did. And this, the Bible says, he was referring to John the Baptist. So you have an Elijah before his first coming, you have an Elijah before his second coming.

This is great. I've never thought of this before. Keep going.

Okay, so So when Malachi actually writes about Elijah, he says, "Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Well, John the Baptist was before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. But what— so will this one that's coming, which I don't believe is one individual. I believe it's sons and daughters. I believe it's people you and I are ministering to. They are going to go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah, which means the strength and might of El Yah. And so, so I still believe that's the sons and daughters that Joel saw and the menservants and maidservants. They're going to come before the great and dreadful. The sun will be turned to darkness. None of that happened because if you look at Isaiah 40, it says, right, the voice of one crying, right? It's okay. We all, we all ascribe that. The Bible ascribes that to John the Baptist. Yes. The angel Gabriel said to Zacharias, he will go before Jesus in the spirit and power of Elijah.

That's right.

However, if you read Isaiah 40, it says this voice is going to cry out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, in the desert, in the dry places, prepare the way of the Lord. He said every mountain be lowed. Then what does he say? God's glory will be revealed and all flesh will see it. All flesh did not see the glory of God when Jesus first came. That's right. They saw it if they went to the Mount of Olives. They saw it if they went to the Sermon on the Mount. They saw it. Saw it, but not all flesh saw it together. But when he comes back, as lightning flashes out of the east and the west, when men are going to cry out for the rocks to fall on top of them for the face of him who's coming—

there's no way to view that, it's got to be second.

That's the great and dreadful day.

That's right.

So there's a prophecy that had a fulfillment 2,000 years ago and will have another fulfillment in the, in the days.

Fantastic. Okay, let me get you to respond to this thing, and if you think I'm an idiot, you're not hurting my feelings.

You're not an idiot.

Let me, let me do this, and I want to know how it lands on you. and then I want to rapid-fire some questions from pod listeners that they sent in.

Yep.

Okay. On something coming. So first, dude, in message prep this week, it honestly is a little chilling to me some of the ways that Islam and Islamic eschatology overlays on top of biblical prophecy about our true Christian eschatology. So for listeners, let me run through this real quick. And dude, this is going to take me like 2 minutes here. Let me run through this. And I just want to know how this lands on you. If you think I'm on, off, how you think about this. All right. So first of all, obviously we all know Galatians 1:8, the Apostle Paul prophesied 600 years before the birth of Islam. Hey, even if we or an angel from heaven preaches to you another gospel, let him be accursed. So he's 600 years early saying, hey, watch out someday, There may be— the Bible says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. He's going, hey man, watch out. Someday there may be somebody that comes and acts like they're an angel of light and they're actually Satan or a demonic power, and they're going to reveal to you a different gospel, a new religion, another way. So 600 years later, obviously, Muhammad walks into a cave and he's like, man, this real weird thing happened.

I was in there and there was this angel of light. Now, this is a side note. I didn't know this until I researched this a couple podcasts ago. It is documented, written down. Muhammad originally thought that he encountered a demon, a jinn. There's an Islamic word for a demon. He originally thought that. He was convinced later by the people he reported it to, oh no, that wasn't a demon, that was an angel. Okay. And then that angel, obviously, quote unquote, quote unquote angel, reveals to him a quote, new gospel another way. All right, now fast forward, you get to John 16 and it says this. It says, the time is coming, talking about the end times. It says, the time is coming when they will kill you and think they are offering service to God. Now that tells me something. In America for the last 20, 30 years, what we've been really focused on as Christians is, man, secularism and atheism, big problem. That right there tells me that the final boss is not secularism because it says at the end they will kill you and think they are offering service to God. So the final boss in the end times, last days, it will be some form of religion that thinks killing Christians, quote unquote infidels, is a good thing.

All right, now fast forward to Revelation chapter 20. It says this: the souls of those who had been beheaded, beheaded because they refused to worship the beast. I'll just point this out. There is one religion and one religion only, correct, whose quote-unquote holy book specifically prescribes beheading. The Quran calls it striking necks as the prescribed way to kill an infidel. Let me just point that out. All right, now let me fast forward again. Now you go to 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, and it says this: the coming of the lawless one. And it's talking about the Antichrist. Will be in accordance with how Satan works. I'm reading still. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so to be saved. For this reason— this is what I want to listen real close— for this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion, delusion, so that they will believe the lie And so that all will be condemned and have not believed the truth, but have delighted in wickedness.

Now, here's— I'm going to keep going, but let me pause and say something here. There is a possibility, if you're connecting some dots, that the strong delusion— theologians call it God's passive wrath— there comes a moment where God goes, hey man, you are set in rebellion against me. You want nothing to do with me. And in the end, my judgment is to say to you, Thy will be done. You can do that. I'm going to let you walk away from me. And 2 Thessalonians says that in the end there will come a, quote, strong delusion so that mass amounts of people begin to believe an antichrist lie.

Correct.

Possibility that that could be another religion, something like Islam. In fact, I'll just pause and say this. It's really only in the last few years that I've begun to think about this. It's very odd to me. It seems delusional that, for instance, you see this weird unholy alliance between secular progressivism and Islam where it's secular progressives who are supposedly all about things like women's rights and gay rights and sexual liberation and a free society. And for some reason they love Islam. And it's like there's this weird marriage there. It seems, let me pause for dramatic emphasis, it seems delusional. It's like the people who are for women's rights are partnering with the people who make women wear burkas and beat them if they don't cover their hair. And the people who are supposedly for gay rights are partnering with the people who throw them off the tops of buildings in Gaza. The people who are supposedly for sexual liberation are partnering with the people who literally execute people who commit that sort of thing.

This is all correct.

Okay. I'm going to keep going. The people who are supposedly about just liberation and freedom are partnering with the people who are for oppressive Sharia law. The only way that makes sense to me is two things. One, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Essentially, the unifying principle underneath it is anything but Christianity and anyone but Christ. Correct. It is an antichrist spirit that unites those two movements. Okay. There is, it seems to be because of the discontinuity between the values. Honestly, it seems to me to be a strong delusion. I'll just as a possibility. Now let me land here on one more thing. And this is the thing that honestly sent a chill down my spine message prepping this week. And I want to know how all this lands on you. So if you start studying Islamic eschatology, I don't recommend you spending any time on this, by the way.

No, the Mahdi is unbelievable. That's where you're going.

That's where I'm going.

Okay.

If you start studying Islamic eschatology and their view of the end times. In the end, there is— you just named it— in Islamic eschatology, his name is the Mahdi. He is an end times eschatological, quote unquote, messianic figure. I am going to bullet point for you 10 things that Muslims believe about the Mahdi. If you are a Bible-aware Christian, when I read these things, you're going to be going, wait, that sounds familiar. And I'm going to connect some dots for you here in a second. So in Islamic eschatology, the Mahdi will emerge as a charismatic messianic world leader during global chaos. He will take control of the world and destroy everyone who resists him. He will invade many nations. He will rule and reign for 7 years. He will broker a 7-year peace treaty with the Jews. He will conquer Israel and massacre the Jews. He will establish an Islamic one-world government headquartered in Jerusalem. He will establish Islam as the only acceptable religion. He will come, bro. This is insane. He will come on a white horse. I'm just pausing for drama for a reason. In Islamic eschatology, he will come on a white horse.

First seal with supernatural power, doing signs and wonders. He will be assisted by a powerful prophet. Now, if that sounds familiar, it is because it is a precise description of the Bible's Antichrist.

Correct.

So we know, you and me know, the rider on the white horse in Revelation 6 is the Antichrist. They use that verse to describe their end times messianic Mahdi. Now listen, honestly, man, I also believe Jesus is going to come back too. Exactly. Well, I didn't say this. The prophet that they believe will assist the Mahdi, they believe that's Isa, the Islamic view of Jesus, a demonic, evil, twisted— their view of Jesus is what the New Testament calls another Christ, a false Christ. That's who they believe that's going to be. I'll do one more. I just ran across this literally this morning coming over here. So Ezekiel 38, if you view Ezekiel 38 as an eschatological prophecy, I do.

I do.

If you view Ezekiel 38 as an eschatological prophecy and it says that all these nations— in fact, let me pull it up real quick. It says that all these nations are going to unite against Israel and that they're going to come to attack Israel. And that as they unite against Israel and come to attack Israel, that that will be the moment that Christ, our, the true Jesus returns. And like you said, he just lays waste to the enemies of God. Okay, now I'm going to list so that in Ezekiel 38, It uses the then names of those regions. So it lists, you know this, this is for the listeners. It lists Gog, Magog. I'm going to pronounce some wrong. Meshech, Tubal, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth. Now the modern day geographic correspondence to all of those nations are as follows. Gog and Magog, that could be part of Russia or Central Asia. So you've got that. Meshech and Tubal, that's in Turkey. Persia, that's Iran. Cush is Sudan. Put is modern-day Libya or broader Northern Africa. Gomer is Turkey. Beth Togarmah, I didn't mention that earlier, that's also Turkey. Now, can I just say this?

Let me pause. With the exception of parts of Russia, Every single one of those nations today is a dominantly Islamic nation. Now, honestly, man, like, I don't know how to read this stuff and not go, hey, man, Islam might be the strong delusion that sweeps forward and ushers in these end times things. What do you think?

I think what everything you've just said is absolutely accurate. I think what's mind-blowing is that when Ezekiel wrote that—

Exactly.

Persia was an ally to the people of God. So for him to have any kind of a human input in that just shows again the inspiration of the Word of God. The other thing is, if you look at, there's two major groups of Muslims, the Shiites and the Sunnis. The Sunnis are a little calmer. The Shiites, their version of the Mahdi is there has to be chaos and war to usher in the Mahdi. Now, when you're dealing with Iran currently, you're going to find out if this regime stays in power, they don't care if they get blown up. Not at all.

They do not care one bit.

So let's talk about China. China cares about its future. Let's talk about Russia. They care about their future. The leaders of Iran don't. They want to do whatever it takes to get the Mahdi to come.

That's it. They want global war, some of them. Let me just say that. Some of them, honestly, the ones that have been in power, want global war to trigger Islamic eschatological events.

Yes.

You keep going.

So that's why they are so fanatical about as they are. And that's why there is actually a scholar in China who is very respected on the global scene who believes that America can't win this war because of that very fact. It's an ideology. It's the spirit of Islam behind this, and it's a radical version of it. To where they're not going to give up at all, and they're not going to give up their hold. And so, yes, it's very interesting to me how that delusion is. I think the most interesting thing that you've said that I have pondered, because I'm— Lisa and I, we were walking through Rome last year, and there's all these, these, these college students saying, "Down with Israel and free Palestine." I know. And my wife was so mad, she actually yelled at him. And I was like, "Lisa, I don't think this is—" She said, "I'm American, I'm not Jewish." And so anyway, they started yelling at her and I thought, "This is going to be interesting." But anyway, why are universities like this? It is a delusion. And I do believe there comes a point where a person says, I don't want God.

If you look at Psalm 2 in the New Living, it's very interesting. They cry out, free us, free us from slavery to God. Psalm 2, go look it up, NLT, later. It's amazing. These people, if I was praying about this recently and the Lord said, if I gave them 1,000 years, they wouldn't change. They've set their hearts and they've closed their eyes, they've closed their ears, and they don't want God. And so God says, "I'm gonna turn 'em over." "You can have what you want, guys." Yeah, you can have exactly— Romans 1. So if you go back to the garden, it's really interesting. If you go back to the garden, you got these two main trees, right? The tree of life, what does it represent? God is my creator. He knows what makes me, he knows what breaks me. A good example of this would be when my 4 boys were toddlers, Christmas Day's a work day. Every dad knows what I'm saying right now. They open up all the gifts and guess who's building the toys all day? It's you and me. And I'm your typical dad. I rip open the box, throw the pieces on the floor, throw the box and the instruction manual away, and I start building the toy.

I spend an hour, I'm finished, but there's still 5 pieces on the floor. I hit the switch, it doesn't work. I'm so mad, it's Christmas Day. I can't call the 800 number and say they've given me a defective toy. So what do I do? What do I do? I go get the manual, the guy that designs the toy. I deconstruct it, reconstruct it the way he said it. Now I don't have 5 pieces. I turn the switch and it works. Okay. God's our creator. He knows what breaks me. He knows what makes me. That's the tree of life. What's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? When she saw that it was good. Didn't say when she saw it was evil and it would make her wise. Doesn't say when she saw it would make her wicked. It's when we choose what is good for us outside of what God says. That's great. That's great. Now that is the foundation of everything moving forward. So why does God give the law? To protect ourselves from ourselves. Because the nature we have is I'm going to choose which will actually be detrimental, that which will be detrimental to me in the long run.

That's exactly right, man. Okay, so the law proves we can't do that because we got this nature that will always choose what's bad for me. So he comes along and gives us a new nature when Jesus dies on the cross. That's the thing we got to emphasize. Now I've got the ability to keep the commandments of God because I have the divine nature that he's given me as a gift. All right. So now when you look at it in the New Testament, lawlessness means I don't want anything to do— lawlessness is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I don't want what my creator says is good for me. I want what I say is good for me. When people keep going like that, their heart gets harder and harder and harder till eventually eventually. Now it'll take 1,000 years. And you said it perfectly: your enemy is my enemy. And that is what's uniting these groups. And I do believe that this one world religion that will be in existence in the tribulation will have a very strong Islam or Muslim influence to it. Okay.

Wow. All right, let me— let's finish off. I'm going to rapid fire you some questions that I hope I can answer. These are 5. We're going to rapid fire these real quick. And hang on, let me grab this one. We're going to rapid fire 5. Do your best. I'm not limiting you, but do your best to like rapid fire back 2 to 3 sentences. Okay. These are the 5 most upvoted ones from pod listeners. John Bevere, what is the abomination of desolation mentioned in Daniel and by Jesus?

It is when the Antichrist comes in and stops all sacrifices, breaks that covenant, that treaty that he made, and he He picks up the idol to worship and he says, "I am God." I am God. That's right.

Okay. This is— there is a growing dark opposition to Israel in the world right now, specifically against the Jews. What do you think is behind that? That's the spirit of Antichrist.

Spirit of Antichrist hates anything to do with what God loves. And God still to this day loves Israel.

Even though they've rejected him, you're like, hey, God still, he still has a purpose for them. That's what's in your head. Yeah. I think that's Romans 9 through 11. I think that there's no way to read that. I do not believe in replacement theology.

He still loves the Jewish people.

That's right. We mentioned it, but you will. I don't think there's a way to read Romans 9 through 11 without going, you are going to see a massive turning to Christ among the Jewish people.

And it's going to be awesome to see. And I'm excited about it.

It's going to be awesome to see. Okay. Oh, actually, you already hit that one. Let me go to the next one. If even demons know the word, how do newer Christians identify and weed out false prophets who are really good at disguising themselves?

False prophets are known by not what they— not necessarily what they preach. It's the way they live, first of all. Secondly, the word of God will expose a false prophet. Just like if you look at a counterfeit $20 bill, I don't have to come along and tell you every time that's a counterfeit. I can teach you how to recognize a counterfeit. So I believe one of our responsibilities as leaders is we teach people how to recognize a false prophet. First and foremost, it's how they live. And secondly, it's what they teach. That's great. That's great.

Last one. This was such an honest question and a ton of people voted for it. Okay. I proud of this person for their vulnerability? Am I a bad Christian for fearing or not looking forward to Christ's return? Honestly, it just scares me.

That's because they've been incorrectly taught the word of God. When you understand it to be the wedding of the ages, you're like a, a bride who cannot wait for that day to come. The blessed hope. And he is the blessed hope. And please, please do not— because eschatology, when it's preached incorrectly, will create fear. When it's preached correctly, it— incorrect— when it's If you preach correctly, you'll produce faith.

That's so good. John Bevere, I love you. I'm very grateful for you. Would you pray for us, please?

I would be so honored. Thank you. Heavenly Father, I thank you for every single individual that listens to this podcast, and I thank you for raising up a man of God that will speak your truth with a heart filled with love. Father, I'm asking that this podcast would continue to flourish and prosper. I'm asking it would go to places that would even surprise this team. But I'm praying mostly for this because I know the people that are receiving. I know that they're hearing the Word of God. They're hearing the heart of God. They're hearing it as if Jesus was at the microphone speaking and reaching out to them with his great love. I am asking that as people listen to this podcast, that their eyes will be open to see, their ears will be open to hear, their heart will now perceive and understand our Lord Jesus Christ. Because Holy Spirit, this is what you love to do the most. You love You love to reveal Jesus. You love to glorify Jesus. May this podcast and its listeners continue to do so in the mighty name of Jesus. And Lord, I do pray that what we've talked about today would create excitement, anticipation, and great faith among your people.

In Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Thank you, John. Absolutely. Absolutely.