Ask the Pastors S6 E6: "Are we waiting on a Third Temple before Christ’s Return?”
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Welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host, one of the pastors, and I'm joined by Pastor Thad. Hey everyone, pastor Austin.
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Hello.
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And our lead pastor will, Hey, that's me. We've got a doozy today. It's a big question. It's a big question that I think all of us have been slightly putting off. The question is, will the Jewish nation have to build a new temple in order for the end times to start? What do you guys think?
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Can I just go on record
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Before
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We even start answering and say, Dennis, you win the award. This is officially my least favorite question and ask the pastor history, not because it's the hardest and not that that's why we've procrastinated on answering it for so long, but I just don't like it so much. But I love you and I do when we do love in general, the submitting of questions, but anyway, looking up for it, just getting that out there. When it was submitted, it was back in 20 22, 19 0, 20 19. Oh my gosh. Five December of 2019. No, it's
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2025 now, so
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Six
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Calendar years, five
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Plus
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Wild.
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So yeah, it's been a while.
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It's your patience, Dennis.
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Yeah, but it's good it waiting,
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But it's good. It's good to discuss things that we don't even want to discuss. Sometimes I will say, in even getting real thoughtful about the question itself, one thing that did interest me is considering where Dennis himself might place the emphasis in this sentence that he's asking in this question. I just thought if you read that question, will the Jewish nation have to build a new temple in order for the end times to start? You could read it as will the Jewish nation have to build it as in like I'm assuming that a temple's got to be built and is it going to be the Jews or are we Christians going to build it or we're going to make Mexico pay for order, or will the Jewish nation have to build a new temple in order in contrast to the rebuilding of an old temple?
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And you could probably spin the question that way potentially, or will the Jewish nation have to build a new temple in order for the end times to start, as in is his question, is the temple a prerequisite for the eschaton to commence? Or finally you could read it as will the Jewish nation have to build a new temple in order for the end times to start, as in again, I'm assuming there's going to be a temple built. Does it have to be built as a prerequisite before the end times can start and commence versus maybe it's built at some time during the tribulation period or sometime before the end times can be consummated or finished or something? I don't know. Without having Dennis here, I'm not sure exactly what. I guess maybe I wonder though if a fair recapitulation or rephrasing of his question might be, will the temple be rebuilt or will a temple be built in the end times? I am.
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I guess I'm trying to figure out what the heart of his question is, and I don't know if I'm overthinking it, but maybe that's a fair way to sum it up. That's how I'm going to interpret it anyway, and that research I did is another temple coming, another physical temple. Again, I mean we could, if you want to say a new temple, if we can interpret that metaphorically, symbolically, then that might change our answer to the question as well. So anyway, that's my interpretation of what maybe he's trying to ask us is do we think, are we waiting a physical rebuilding of a material brick and mortar temple before some people again would say even with not just for the end times but before Christ can return. And we know there's a lot of those folks who say their interpretation of scripture is such that Jesus cannot return until another third physical temple has been built in Jerusalem. So anyway, what do y'all think?
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I think that is the thrust of the question is that for, again, a lot of terms need to be sort of defined. I think just in this question, as you've kind of alluded to, and as we do talk about this because this is very much a tomato, tomato as they say, there's disagreements about words and then there's disagreements about things. So I think just to get some terminology out there, new temple would be, in this case of this question I think is what it's referred to as a literal physical third temple. Third temple, of course, implying that there were two previous temples. So for all of our listeners that aren't quite sure on what the original two temples are, the first temple's built by King Solomon, that's detailed in the historical books, it was destroyed when the Babylonians came in around 5 87, 5 86 bc 400 years
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Between mid 10th century bc, early sixth century
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Bc,
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And then the exile happens. All of the southern kingdom is exiled into Babylon. Cyrus the great says, you can come back seven years later, they come back, they rebuild the temple. It's detailed in the books of Ezra Nehemiah. It's basically a project management book, and then you get all the way to the time of Jesus and he prophesies that that temple is going to be destroyed, which it is when Rome sacks Jerusalem in 80 70 and a temple has not been rebuilt since that time. So just in case everybody's wondering what's the current situation on the ground about the temple? There is no temple because it hasn't been here since 80 70. And I think that there's a couple of ways that people get to seeing that for Christ to come back, a physical literal temple has to be rebuilt. One of them won't spend as much time on, but it's kind of a logical inference from Second Thessalonians on the man of lawlessness.
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So they applied the man of lawlessness a certain figure, and they say that because he sits on the throne, that must be a literal throne. And so for that to happen, therefore the temple has to be rebuilt. So they do it kind as a logical, well, if he's going to sit down on something and there's no temple, you got to build a temple. Putting that one aside for a moment because there's just enough debate surrounding on who the man of lawlessness is that I think we kind of run out of runway pretty quickly. I think it's probably more helpful to go back and look in the book of Ezekiel where beginning at Ezekiel 40 through chapter 48, there's a vision that Ezekiel sees of a new temple
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And sorry, real quick, so second because I just checked it. Second Thessalonians two does specifically reference the temple In verse four it says, the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction is revealed he'll exalt himself and then it says he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. So yeah, you're right. That's another
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Reference. The issue when it comes down to Ezekiel specifically because there's a lot of details that are given about a temple, is how does somebody approach the text? And there seems to be four primary ways of approaching it. One is a literal temple where this is a literal prescription of dimensions and configuration for the temple. It's somewhat problematic because there's actually not that many details given. Also, there's some issues as to, for example, how are you going to have this divine river alive come out on the top of the mountain? Another one would be a symbolic Christian one and where it sort of maps out the temple reality across the church. Another one is a dispensationalist view, which sort of blends aspects of a literal and a figurative, and a fourth one would be a so-called apocalyptic approach. That last one, again, a lot of defining terms on this one apocalyptic approach, we tend to think of the word apocalypse and we think of war and carnage and end of time.
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That's how the use and meaning of that word has changed over the history of the church. Apocalypse is a kind of literature that was particularly prevalent from the end of the Old Testament all the way through about the first century. So there's a lot of other apocalyptic literature outside of just what we see in Daniel and Ezekiel, and of course the book of Revelation, which is an apocalypse. But the word apocalypse has the sense of a revealing, an apocalyptic literature is a revealing of some, usually some kind of divine revelation that is drenched in symbolism, rich imagery, a lot of literary devices like repeated patterns of numbers and so forth. I'm of the persuasion that in Ezekiel 40 to 48, the approach to read the text properly is apocalyptic. He's showing a pattern for what it is like for the unification of heaven and earth, which is what the temple has represented throughout the canon of history and coming into Jesus where heaven and earth actually come together and points backwards, looking to Eden as an example where there's a river of life, there's God's presence with his people, and then pointing forward to Jesus himself, who is the one whereby we then have the reunification of heaven and earth.
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And I think Jesus himself picks up on that when he talks about himself as living water. I think he's in part alluding to places like Ezekiel where there is this river of life which then points forward to Pentecost where the water is the spirit that comes and fills his people. That's before we get into any issues about the theological problems about building a temple for a sacrificial system, when we have already decided through the book of Hebrews and the rest of the New Testament that Jesus is the all sufficient sacrifice. So in part there's a little bit I think where some people get their reading on the matter. The other part on the question I'd like to just touch on is about does the end times need to start? And I think that that comes to a more popular reading of the end times that has been more popular in the western world since the 20th century, which viewed the end times as something that's going to be at the end of history.
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I don't think that that's quite the way that the New Testament authors are talking about the end times, and that's in part for us is that we don't always have a fully built out view of Christ's resurrection and what it means. In doing some research for this book, I spent some time in GK Beal's Union with the resurrected Christ. And in that he does a lot of reflection on the theological implications for Christ's resurrection. But he quotes where he says, the very notion that Jesus had been raised from the dead was a highly charged end time idea whose roots lay in the Old Testament hope of the resurrection of the dead. And he quotes Isaiah 25, 26 is equal 37, Daniel 12, Isaiah six, and post biblical Judaism. So it's in second Macabees, it's in one Enoch, it's in second Baruch and so forth. So Christ being risen from the dead indicates that a new era of salvation history has happened. So put another way, if you were to ask the apostle Paul when are the end times, I think he would tell you that he thinks that we are in them now because of the Christ event that the end times have actually begun because his new creation is breaking in,
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Been in them for 2000 years,
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Right? We've been in the end times for 2000 years. But at a popular level is sort of this idea that the end times are this future future where it's all going to come to a climactic fulfillment at the second return of Christ. We of course affirm the second return of Christ, but the end times are something that in the New Testament sense that we've been in since the Christ event. So those are some of my points. My one word answer of does there need to be a third temple built is no for the end times to start also. No, because we actually are in fact in the end times. They've already started. They've already started 2000 years ago.
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Yep. Alright, that's the episode back to you. That's it. We can lock her down. No, I would just to continue on in a couple other places where this idea comes from of a third temple. I think also in part due to think about how to say this, I'll say there's largely two groups of people who are infatuated with the third temple being built. One, it's the Jewish people who are preparing for a temple that they're still waiting the long awaited Messiah and their viewpoint, which gets to why I agree with Austin and don't think that there needs to be their temple built for the end times in that secondly is those who are drawn to prophecy. There is a big rising in sixties, 70 eighties, nineties, two thousands, that period of time where end times prophecies, I have at times attended prophecy conferences before and they were wild.
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Next, ask the pastors,
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What are those like? I'd rather not, I was going to ask, but just looking back, a perhaps unhealthy view of the end times, not perhaps a biblical view of the end times of focusing on something that's going to happen in the future versus something that happened in the past that is much more important. Jesus, life, death, resurrection and ascension and focusing more on, well, what's going to happen in the future? Trying to pinpoint end times, dates, timelines. There's lots of YouTube videos out there. So just two categories of people seeming to focus in on this. As I searched and researched, and even as I checked resources that I regularly go to, I didn't find much on the third temple. I did not also find much on red heifers, which relates to this. And we didn't get as many questions as we should have when we preached through numbers 19,
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Two weeks ago. Numbers 19 is where you get the idea of the red heifer that has to be burned down to the ashes that can be put in the water and used for purification. And then there's this line toward the end of numbers 19 that this will be a perpetual statue for Israel. And so then there's, I guess this whole, now
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There are five red heifers doctrine that's been
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Developed
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From Texas
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From this one obscure passage that yeah, heifers are an integral part of the third temple and the ushering in of the millennial reign and this and that. What I find interesting is you mentioned that all the people writing about the third temple and getting all excited on their podcast, yelling about it, seem to be in that, like you said, that sort of prophetic, charismatic, the Pentecostal camp. And yet this is also all of the third temple stuff is also I think kind of pillar or not a pillar, but an outcropping outworking of this dispensationalism, right? And which is the camp I came from. All of us were, I don't know about Brian, but in thirties and 40 years old. So three decades ago that was sort of really on the tail end left. The left behind series was sort of the last hurrah of dispensationalism before
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I remember that
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Everybody, I think kind of just not every, I won't say everybody, I mean we got people at our church, but in the last 30 years since then, you've seen a lot of folks, I think frankly shift and even our denomination now, EFCA dispensationalism was a hallmark of the EFCA because even just historically, the denomination was born in 1950, right in the middle of the 20th
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Century.
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And we talked about this a lot, but just how much of, again, the 20th century was sort of this battle between theological liberalism and then conservatism and sort of the canary in the coal mine through all that was, or the bellwether of where you stood on that was your eschatology, your end times view, and the people that took the Bible seriously and literally and all that became dispensationalist, I guess, and the people didn't. Anyway, all that to say in the last 30 years we've all, again, not all, I keep saying all, a lot of people have kind of got up and over that and it's kind of like, okay, they're seeing that as that was a reaction against a thing, a trend toward liberalism and maybe, okay, we got to take everything. So literally, and maybe actually you look at the book of Revelation just for a second with the temperature cooled down a little bit, it's okay to say maybe there's some symbolism. So a lot of us now are like, okay, well alright, now that we can say that out loud without getting stoned to death and kicked out of church. Alright, let's think more. And then you have this whole rediscovery of amillennialism I think mostly is the option in the, and I know we're not explicitly here to talk about your eschatology in your view, but I think you can't talk about this whole third temple thing without
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Point. The millennial's going to come in there somewhere
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Else without pointing out the fact that if you're an amillennial, this is a non-starter kind of other than the fact that you still have to interpret Ezekiel 40 to 48 somehow
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You still, okay, so this Ezekiel does get a vision of the temple in the sixth century, so what temple is that and what's going on there? And so our millennials are going to interpret that symbolically, spiritually. The third temple is Christ Jesus himself said in John two, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up, but he spoke of the temple of his body. The apostle Paul said there's this whole thing with Ezekiel's vision of the temple, of the Spirit of God returning to the temple and living there and all this. And yet in the New Testament we have the apostle Paul saying, pointing out the fact that the spirit of God doesn't live in a building made with human hands, but he lives with his people and that's the whole power of Pentecost and the whole power of the idea like one Peter two, that we are the temple, he's building a temple in and amongst and out of his people, we are the living stones and we are now the house of God, the church is. And so this whole idea that there needs to be a temple to me, yeah, I can't get over the fact just that any literal physical material, brick and mortar temple at this point would be so disappointing. The same disappointment. It's interesting to think about because you have that really interesting passage in the book of Ezra where they get done rebuilding the second temple
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Esra and Za leads them and they get done redone and they had this whole kind of celebration party sort of anointed consecration, whatever of the temple. And it's like the people who were old enough to remember Solomon the first temple because it was only 70 years, who the real old Jews who came back and can remember or at least remember the stories that their parents told of the temple, whatever, they cried, they
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Cried
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Because it's so pathetic and paling in comparison, the second symbol that Jesus would've known that stood for 600 years until 78 d paled in comparison to the first. But then again to me, I just think of how much would this alleged third temple that some people I guess are really excited and waiting for have to pale in comparison to what in my interpretation probably is the real third temple is the church
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And how much just cheaper and sadder that would be not to, like you said Austin, and we already started to talk about, but what does this do to your whole theology of Christ from Hebrews nine and 10 being the once and for all time sacrifice? Because again, it is very clear in Ezekiel 40 through 48 that a lot of the details there frankly are teaching you how to make sacrifices again and here's the sacrifices. And so people that are waiting on this temple are going to have to understandably interpret that as well. They're memorial offerings sort of pointing back to Christ and it's kind of like, I don't know, the whole thing seems bizarre to me. I can't really get my head around, let's all go grab our animals again and our knives and somehow that's going to be pleasing to God and not be anything other than a reversion back. The whole thrust of Hebrews is the old is gone, the new has come, we're not going backwards.
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And that's actually much of the argument to Galatians. I was thinking about this, about just the notion of salvation history when he starts the letter to Galatians, he says, Paul an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the father who raised him from the dead right out of the gate in the first verse, he's already known this church, he's already told them that Christ has been written from the dead. So why sat in verse one? It almost seems like a non-sequitur or just a total repetition. It's because I think in much of his letter to the Galatians, he's saying by trying to go back to Moses, you're trying to rewind the clock so to speak. And so this would be the same idea you're trying, you're taking the clock back on salvation history and we don't want to go back in salvation history. And
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There's some specific, again, examples of that in those, for instance, in Ezekiel 44 verse nine, it clearly says, well, lemme just pull it up in read that verse in particular 44 verse nine. It says, thus says the Lord God, no foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel shall enter my sanctuary.
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So this third temple that y'all are waiting on literally to be rebuilt is only open again to the Jews and to the uncircumcised. So just think about, throw out the whole book of Galatians. Now Paul's whole thing about we're all one in Christ, and if you want to get circumcised, go ahead and cut the whole thing off. You might as well. All that's out the window. I mean all of Ephesians and the whole point again of us being the church, being the body of Christ and the house of the living God, the dwelling place of God. So I don't know. Go ahead.
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I was going to say that gets to why it is of the two groups of people who are talking about this one, the Jewish people, because they're still waiting for a messiah to come. They still need those sacrifices.
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That makes sense.
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And so that's one and then the unhelpful, and I found Sam storms helpful and strong worded in his thoughts of a third temple being necessary, that it would be an egregious expression of the worst imaginable, redemptive or regression to suggest that God would ever sanction the rebuilding of a temple, that it would be a denial of the word became flesh and dwelt among us that Christ and his church would be the final
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Temple.
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And just to reiterate what you all have said about the book of Hebrews and Galatians and Ephesians, that what's the point if we're just going to focus in on this third temple needing to be built if Jesus has already paid the sacrifice, the temple was meant for sacrifice. It's meant to be with God. And so I think it's again, a perhaps unhelpful, maybe even unhealthy focus on a specific view of how we think about even Israel as we talked about in the other podcasts about in the New Testament and the church and that where you get some of these ideas from
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With a lot of this, even when you're with your broader view of the eska and stuff. I go back and maybe I'm hinging too much on one, but it seems like a really important verse to me that second Corinthians one 20 where Paul says all of the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ.
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And I just think I want to say to some of those folks who are waiting on this promise and this promise and this promise and this prophecy, like read second Corinthians one 20, they're all yes and amen. And maybe they'd say that, well, yeah, but some of the promises are yes and amen already with his first coming, but a lot of 'em were still waiting on to be the yes and amen with Christ with his second coming and they put the temple in that category. I don't know. I started to say, and then I got sidetracked myself. But what I was saying, it's interesting to me, to your point tha about the two camps of people who get all excited about this, but that second camp of folks really into the prophetic stuff, it's strange bedfellows it seems, because on the one hand, again, you've got a lot of the signs and wonders and prophetic and Pentecostal ish type folks in there. But then you also have, again, the more classic, I don't know, classical dispensational, but the John MacArthur camp of folks,
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Fundamentalists
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Fundamentalist who a lot of them are hardcore cessationists when it comes to the spiritual gift stuff, when it comes to the tongues and healings and prophecies and signs and things like that. So I just think that's really, I don't know, that's just a side point.
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It's internally inconsistent.
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It's just a very interesting camp of people to be in. If you were going to go to a third temple conference, it would probably end in a lot of shouting and fistfights I would imagine, because you'd have half the people there speaking in tongues. Half the people, a third of the people don't even believe in Jesus. A third of 'em are trying to speak in tongues and say, I've got a word from the Lord. And then a third of the people think you're making stuff up and you're crazy.
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And
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Yet we all think we're all raising the red heifers and we're all waiting to bring our red heifers to this project. So it it's a weird camp to be in. Maybe that's part of the appeal too, is
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It's enter. I know
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It is entertainment. I mean it'll sell tickets, it'll keep you busy. Is it rapture? Watch
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Rap fashion belt rapture Ready? Fa knows about that
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One. The Temple Institute showed it to
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Me.
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I mean if you need something to do, raisin Red Heifers gives you something and let's all pull our resources to pitch in for the new golden Menorah that's going to go in the new temple when it gets ready. And you said there's,
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It's already built.
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It's already made a $2 million Menorah gold lamp stand.
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Yeah, 10.
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They're ready to go. Ready? Yeah. When it gets So I don't know. And just on that, I guess for their sake, we should hope they're right. That would be real disappointing, wouldn't it? I mean, whatcha do you going to be real embarrassed when Jesus comes back? He's like, how did y'all get this so wrong? I don't need your temple. I don't live in temples anymore. Didn't you get the memo Physical temples?
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I do think it's a helpful question just to go back a few minutes ago, when Will, you were talking about dispensationalism that we grew up in the thirties and forties and that Daniel Hummel's guy wrote a book, came out a couple of years ago called The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, and he kind of points out how 1830 and John Nelson Darby and he kind of comes over from the UK and Ci Scofield writes his reference Bible in 1907 and they set hot cakes and this really captures the Western imagination. And so then you had whole seminaries like Dallas Theological Seminary and Moody that were built around. And what seemed to happen is it went through a sharp scholarly incline and then it went back down again. And so out of the scholarly level, there is still a dispensational dis dispensationalism up to today guys like Darrel Bach, really great New Testament scholars, even Daniel Wallace, but it's not the same type as it was in the fifties, sixties, seventies. But I say all that at the scholarly level at the popular meaning like Joe Pedestrian, that is still present
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And you can still get thrown out of churches. I mean fortunately, I don't think there's enough a contingency here to get me thrown out us, any of us thrown out. I mean, I don't know where you are.
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Well see when we
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Post the podcast, you'd be pastor us. I guess, and I want to go on record too just to say I'm still a very devoted pan millennialist trusting that God's going to make sure it all pans out in the end the way he wants and needs it to. So I just don't care enough to put my foot in any camp but respect people that do. I just feel that we have more important fish to fry and I believe that the secret things belong to the Lord and the things that are supposed to be clear, he's clearly revealed to us. And I think there's enough that's clear that is incredibly important that we all agree on that we can actually actionably do something about evangelism and discipleship and that's where we ought to be. That's why this is my least favorite podcast topic because now we've spent 40 minutes that I'll never get back discussing something that we're no closer really to an answer about.
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And because I don't think we're supposed to be, I don't we're supposed to know exactly. Certainly when I mean Jesus said, you're not going to know when, even I don't know when the millennium, so whoever writes the next book saying the late great planet Earth, let's all get together on this mountain the year 2032 in January 14th, and I've calculated it, that's when Christ, so we know that that's all crazy. Jesus said, even I don't know when, but I just think even how and how it all fits together. It's a big puzzle. Again, if that's your thing, if you like puzzles and you want to sit around and speculate, then as long as you're humble about it again, I can watch Amillennial and a premillennial few different flavors of pre and
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Post-millennial,
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Whatever, all kind of debate and watch them get passionate about it. And I guess that could be inspiring on some level that you care this much about this. I'm still just not at the point where it's really motivated me to pick up a book and want to figure it out that much, that badly. Yeah. Anyway, that's where I'm at on it. But I do think that some of these things that we've named about are our, and I do share the amillennial issues with theological issues with, and some of which again, biblical just interpretive issues with. But I think the bigger one for me is really, yeah, the theological issues with this whole idea of that we would even need something different or better than Christ himself, his body, the temple, and then now the body of Christ, the church being God's temple, his dwelling place with man here on earth.
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Now, how could you possibly go back to a very limited finite brick and mortar thing? What's even the point? I mean, so the sacrifices do nothing, obviously we know that because Jesus, once in all, for all time sacrifice, and even the whole idea of, again, heaven meeting Earth and this is God's dwelling place with man, that means nothing because that's already here. We now, we enjoy that now in the church. We're two more gathered in my name. I'm there with it. I mean, we already got 'em. We're not waiting for something to, so we got a mercy seat again. Now God can return, his spirit can return. What's even the point? I don't know. And maybe again, we just need to invite Dennis or I don't want to assume anything. Maybe Dennis is just, he's really trying to figure this stuff out. But we've got some folks at the church who could sit here in that open chair and yell at us and tell us what the point is. I don't know. Maybe I should one of these days I'll care enough and I'll sit down with them and they can tell me why I'm wrong about all this and we're wrong, and why this third temple is so important. And
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Yeah, I think we will hear more, not on this podcast, but in general about this third temple. Oh yeah, it was
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Mentioned briefly. They're day now with Trump's buying the Gaza Strip.
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Right?
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So
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Gaza strip and red heifers and Passover. The year is supposedly when some of that will begin that I've seen from, it's a big
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Year, the my past
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Research on the interwebs.
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Yeah, man, just imagine. Yeah, once we is, I mean of course a lot of these people too, same camp. It's like America is the new Israel and yeah, now that we're going to have the Gaza Strip, I mean that's only what, 30 miles from Jerusalem and yeah, the opportunities are endless for us getting that temple built and making Mexico pay for it.
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So on the final word of exhortation, what do you got? Matthew 24, the olive discourse. So this is verse three. As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when will these things be and we'll be the sign of your coming and at the end of the age. So they're asking two questions, when will this happen and how will we know? And Jesus spends the next two chapters not answering their question. The call to the Christian is to be hopeful and to be ready. That's the whole thing with the oil and then the lambs. And so to your point, basically, yeah, it's fun in the puzzles, but as long as you go beyond the reality of Christ coming again, final judgment, the new heavens, the new earth, everything after that, let's take a gigantic gulp of humility before we do any kind of shouting.
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Hey, I'll say one last, the one thing that I still will go on record as saying until somebody shows me I'm wrong scripturally about it, and I've said this many times in sermons, and we'll continue to when I get the opportunity. The one thing that I'm clear on from Matthew 24 14 and from the timeline of when all this stuff's going to go down is that it's not yet. So you can have the heifers ready and do your whole thing in your golden menorah, but it's not happening yet because Jesus says very clearly in 24 14, this gospel of the kingdom must go to the ends of the earth and then
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The end will come,
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And then the end will come and you can track. I mean, as much as you're tracking rapture ready, I track regularly Joshua Project who keeps stabs on how many ethnic people, groups, language groups there are in the world, and how many of 'em have been reached with the gospel? How many of 'em
(40:28):
Have had a chance to even have a chance to know Jesus? And so as long as at this point it's 40 plus percent of the world still doesn't know the name of Jesus, then I'm not holding my breath. So at the same time, like Austin, like you said, we're called to be ready to be on alert, to be awake. So when I say I'm not holding my breath, I'm not saying, I'm not saying, we're also called to pray. Come Lord Jesus, we should want. And second Peter three says, hasten his coming, being ready and desiring to, it's going to be a glorious day for those of us who belong to him when he comes back. But unless I've just badly misread what he was trying to say in Matthew 24 14, I don't think it's anytime soon unless, I mean, hey, technology's crazy.
(41:36):
And a lot of, obviously the folks who haven't, where the gospel hasn't gone, they don't have the technology. But I don't know. I mean, we live in a crazy day and age where maybe, but I say that to say that that's where we should be focusing. I think our efforts where God, Jesus made it very clear to us, what I want you to do in the meantime, you don't know when I'm coming back. You don't need to know. That's a need to know basis. God knows. I don't even know. I'll know when he says, Hey, it's time, go back. But in the meantime, lemme tell you what, you do need to know what you're supposed to stay busy with, what you're supposed to stay alert with and be how you make sure you're ready. The oil and the lamp, all of it, it's spreading the news and making disciples of all nations. So you know what? As long as all your rapture ready stuff fuels you for that fuels your fervency for evangelism and discipleship. Yeah, go crazy with your menorahs and your heifers.
(42:38):
And if I can't compliment, that was one of the good benefits that came out of much of the dispensationalism in the 20th century was an emphasis on evangelism and just defense of the authority. And the answer here of scripture, although we might disagree on interpretation and certain outcomes, they do, I think get really high marks, and they did inject a level of like, we got to get out in there and tell them the news that sometimes that may not have that fasten your seat belts, rapture radio.com view sometimes hold. So there's, I think a lot to be said for that in the way that it motivated them to share the gospel.
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And I just can't say, I just speak for myself. I'm not going on record as an non-millennial yet.
(43:27):
I'm still like, I want to at some point sit down, do all the homework, read the books when I can stomach that. But until then, the only reason I just sort of as a placeholder tend to agree, there are some of these theological, when we zoom in on something like the third temple and start to unpack it, it's like, okay, yeah, that gives me more confirmation that they're probably right. That's probably the right view. But it really is, goes back to what you said Austin is like, I think if we were sitting here 50 years ago, this church would be dispensational.
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We
(44:03):
Probably have it in our statement of faith.
(44:05):
Certainly the denomination we're now a part of EFCA would've mandated that we had it in our statement of faith. It was explicitly dispensational denomination. And so that's where I'd be, and that's where all, like you said, the smartest evangelicals 50 years ago were dispensationalist and frankly, the smartest evangelicals today are not. There's a couple just like there's always going to be a couple outliers in any view of anything. But that's where, to me, I value scholarship. I value intelligence. And so when I see, okay, all these guys that I follow and respect and all, they're all have moved into this camp and they haven't been stoned for it, and they still have jobs, then I'm like, okay, that's safe to go there. Anyway.
(45:01):
Good. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by submitting them online through our website at www dot westhillstl.org, and join us next week where we address the question, what is the wise response to give to a person who counteracts Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions? Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.