All roads do not lead to Rome
On 15 March 2019, 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand while at
Friday prayers were gunned down by a white supremacist. Around the
world, vigils were held at innumerable mosques, and I attended one at a
mosque in my city.
I went there not in a spirit of 'fraternity',
but in a spirit of solidarity and being a good neighbor. God expects us
to be good neighbors, and I felt it important to be there.
The
Muslims I met that day are not the enemy. And it will be Muslims like
those who will be among the billions who will reject the radical-Muslim
Antichrist.
When we talk about Islam, the use of the term
'radical' is critical, and I wish all prophecy teachers would
always use that qualifier. If the Muslim world were Ismaali or Sufi,
there would no fear on the part of anyone regarding that faith. It
would
still be a false religion, but were the whole of the Muslim world of
the peaceful ilk of Ismaalis, Sufis, and those I met that day, the Twin
Towers would still be standing.
I do not hate the fanatics, but
anyone of any degree of decency must hate and despise what those
fanatics are doing as well as fanatics of any religion on earth. When a
Muslim comes to the Lord, Heaven rejoices and Satan wails. From the
sweet people I met that day at the mosque-vigil to the most hardened of
living members of Daesh, may all Muslims come to faith, and may we all
see Christ all the clearer.
My mother's mother's parents were
both sincere believers in Christ who were into their faith such Grandpa
Arch read his Bible every day while living his faith out in the world
and my Grandma Belle was said to have had 'a hotline to God'. I can
remember Grandpa Arch mentioning to my grandmother something ending in
'...split hoof'. A layman-farmer from rural Indiana ruminating on the
book of Leviticus!
Both were spirit-filled, and their children
were as well, including the Grandmother who helped to teach me right
from wrong. This was the same grandmother who correctly predicted the
outcome of the Six-Day War. My house growing up loved the Jewish people
and loved Israel.
In 1945, Zondervan published Seven Simple Sermons on the Second Coming
by W. Herschell Ford, a former President of the Southern Baptist
Convention. This book was in my grandmother's book-collection and was
my introduction to end-times Bible prophecy - a classic of
pre-modern-Israel/Pre-Tribulation Rapture doctrine which clearly lays
out American Protestant mainstream teaching of that period. That book
was a great source of comfort to me, and to this day, I revere Dr. Ford
as my first prophecy teacher whose book, in turn, was based on his
sincere interpretation of holy scripture.
Thus, scripture has
always been my primary teacher. Unfortunately, like so many people, I
trusted too much in my human teachers instead of searching the
scriptures on my own, as I always should have done. My church growing
up always expected us to search the scriptures for myself, but again, I
did too little of that.
I first read Dr. Ford's work when I was
about anywhere from third through sixth grades, though perhaps I read
that book for the first time later than that. I cannot remember. A few
years after she gave me Seven Simple Sermons on the Second Coming, grandmother gave me her copy of a later classic, Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth,
first published in 1970 and which for as many as four generations, was
the book which brought end-times Bible prophecy to the world, bringing
many to the Lord.
In about 1990, my house started watching the
Trinity Broadcasting Network. This meant having ample opportunity to
see plenty of Hal Lindsey, Jack van Impe, Grant Jeffrey, and even a
little Joseph Good, whose teachings on the Holy Temple I wish I had paid
more attention to back then. Stuart McBernie also had a show, but it
came on at an inconvenient time, and we never glommed onto it as we did
Hal, Jack, and Grant, the sighting of any of which glued us to the TV
set. May Jack's and Grant's memories be forever a blessing.
Following
1997 and my graduation from college, I stopped watching TBN and entered
a somewhat dark period of my life. After that was done, I went on with
my life as a musician, which I still lead. But my prophecy 'studies'
stagnated completely. I thought I had known enough to go on, even after
2014 when Daesh broke out onto the world stage and my 'prophecy alarms'
started going off the charts. How wrong I was...
On 18 May
2018, eight students and two teachers at Santa Fe High School were
murdered in a school shooting. The youngest student, a
fourteen-year-old, was among the dead, and her mother is a good friend
of mine.
It hit me to my foundation and broke my heart. As much
as I would like for the shooter to have not ever gone to school again
before that day (not due to death!), the best any of us can do is make
the best of what continues for that family to be a situation beyond
imagining. For me, it was introspection and catharsis. I have never
looked at the world the same way again.
The difficulty with
checking my internet history on Firefox is the system only records the
latest visit to any given web page and not the first time a site was
visited. Because of this, I cannot be sure of exactly when my interest
in Bible prophecy was reignited. But in either late July or early
August 2019, it was, and I believe it was on a lark: let's look up stuff
on the Holy Temple acting what might have been a random thought of
Joseph Good from my TBN-watching days. Again, I cannot be sure, and my
browser history does not help.
One of the videos was a very good
two-hour 'tour' of the City of David and other places by Jim Bakker
(yes, that Jim Bakker). Bakker is visually unrecognizable from 'back in
the day', and I hope he continues to be well. Of course, Tammy Faye
passed away some time ago. May she have found peace.
Bakker's
video was interesting and it led me to a video by one Bob Cornuke.
Evangelicals will know who I am talking about. For about twenty-four
hours, I, too, was entranced and captivated over the theory of the City
of David being the location of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
And here's a lesson for all people: never cease to use your critical faculties.
Cornuke's theory (based on work by Ernest L. Martin who died in 2002)
already had a powerful emotional hold on me. It was so simple - so easy
- the perfect resolution to the conflict over the Temple Mount. If the
Mount was not the place where the Temples were to begin with, then so
much else could be easily addressed: peace in the Middle East!
But
that solitary perfectionist and analytical part of me wanted to be sure
- a nagging something in a fog of...something... Matthew 10: 16 is
apropos here, but I was not at that time familiar with that verse, and
for me at that moment, it was the conscious decision to do the difficult
thing and act on that part of me which still doubted Cornuke and his
new theory. The gentle and beautiful picture of the Holy Temple in the
City of David surrounded by lush greenery was powerful. Dopamine (not
the addictive kind) was in full-force.
I did the search for
videos debunking Cornuke and Martin and came across one by Joseph Good
(again, that Joseph Good), and after watching it was immensely
disappointed to realize Cornuke may not have been correct after all.
Brother Joseph's reasoning was convincing, but I was fully under
Cornuke's spell.
However, the hard edifice of the Spell of
Cornuke was too powerful for that one video to dissipate. But Good's
presentation was enough to convince me to keep looking further.
breaking enough for me to find a second Cornuke-debunking video.
Brother Joseph's, Dr. Richman's, and Mr. Cornuke's videos may be had
below in the order in which I found them. This little essay is turning
into a novella. Thank you for reading this far.
With the video
by Hillel Richman, Cornuke's fog was banished, and I knew that for
twenty-four hours I had been had. I wanted truth more than narrative,
and it was which saved me from going down a rather stupid path.
I
am Gentile, always have been, and always will be. Yet, for ten years I
had a rabbi. He was the senior clergy at a large Reform schul in my
city where I along with several others sang in that temple's
professional choir every Friday evening until 2010 when the slow process
to us becoming a High Holy Days-only choir began with its conclusion in
2017. This particlar rabbi loved the professional choir, and we
revered him along with all the clergy we ever served under (and 'with'
if that word is appropriate).
When I began singing there in 2001,
I prayed to God to let me know if my being there in that choir and at a
place which did not believe in Christ was something he wanted me to
do. In a personal way I will not get into here, the Lord said 'yes',
and again, I've sung there ever since, that place giving me a Jewish
context most Gentiles are not privileged to see. I love those people,
and a part of my heart will always dwell there. May they all come to
Y'shua's salvation!
That Jewish context is a large part of the
reason I have even a concept of an understanding of the Old Testament.
It taught me Christ's Jewishness and the Jewish centrality of our
faith. The prayers we sing there are the same or similar to those Jesus
himself might have sung in the Temple and elsewhere.
The other
reason I have a concept of the Old Testament is the church where I grew
up revered this Jewish context, but even that education is not the same
as being among the Jewish people week after week in their synagogue,
knowing them on a personal basis and in a very limited way being a part
of their lives and they being a part of mine and of all of us who sang
there.
This context also made me realize had I checked more into
Messianic Judiasm way back when, it might have turned me into a
legalist. I know myself too well. My Baptist-Episcopal life may not be
'Torah-observant', but for me, it is authentic and directly reflects
where I am.
Besides, Jesus perfected the wheel. Therefore, I
do not believe God has called me to reinvent it. No 'Torah-observant'
life for me save in following the two greatest commandements, the Ten
Commandments, and others like them which affect the heart, which is
where God truly works.
In last July and August 2019 and without
knowing it, I began a journey which continues to this day. In the final
quarter of that year, it led me to the work of Nelson Walters. I
cannot remember the exact video, but with one video, he gave me a bitter
pill: the Pre-Tribulation / Revived Roman Empire point of view so
mainstream in the English-speaking Protestant tradition was probably not
correct.
That pill was bitter in two respects. I realized I was
emotionally attached to a prophetic point of view taught to me by W.
Herschell Ford, Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Grant Jeffrey, and others.
They in that order were my first teachers of Bible prophecy concerning
the end-times, and though I never met any of them in this world, I
revered them all.
But in terms of prophetic outlook, I had to
leave them and go on a new path. In the wake of Santa Fe, my mind was
open to new ideas, and Nelson's reasonings seemed convincing, and I
immediately added him to my roster of prophecy teachers - the first of
the people I follow (though not blindly!) who are
Mid-Trib/Pre-Wrath/Post-Trib as well as adherents to something I had
never before considered: a radical Islamic Antichrist.
Not a
Revived Roman Empire, but a revived Islamic Caliphate. I soon found
Joel Richardson and his work as well as what I would eventually discover
to be the community of Endtime.Church, 'attending' its online services
starting in June 2020. I found Sonia Azam soon thereafter as well as
Chadwick Harvey and others I cannot right now recall.
There are,
though, Pre-Tribulation prophecy gurus who I don't follow, but have an
interest in seeing what they are up to. They are popular. Therefore in
a way, they are important: Amir Tsarfati (whose IDF perspective is
always interesting), Tom Hughes, Jack Hibbs, J. D. Farag (when he is not
turning into a puddle of water), Don Stewart, James Kaddis, Jan
Markell, Lisa Boyce, Barry Scarborough, Chad Thomas, 'Bro Chooch', and
that oddball of oddballs, Jacob Prasch (with his truly horrible speaking
style) who is Pre-Wrath/Post-Trib and Revived Roman Empire. There are
others as well.
The video-work and legacy of the late Nabeel
Quereshi is stunning and required-watching for all Christians, in my
opinion. I also watch Al Fadi and Sam Shamoun, though they do not get
into prophecy. Only an ex-Muslim can truly speak about Islam, and
Sonia's voice seems to be a powerful one.
I could go on, but if
one is still Revived Roman Empire, it is easy to deal with: look to the
twin legs in Nebuchanezzar's statue in Daniel and ask yourself:
historically, are there any candidates which could fit this picture
better than Rome?
The answer, of course, is 'yes'.
Jeff Ragsdale
22 June 2021
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