If you had a doctor whose diagnosis was wrong as often as the predictions of some Bible prophecy experts, would you trust him or take the medication he prescribed? One ‘expert’ sold millions of books in which he predicted the rapture of the church would take place by 1988. Then without apology or explanation, wrote a second book pointing us to the year 2007. Another television preacher offered ‘rapture deadlines’ starting in 1975. He said that the Soviet flag would probably fly over Independence Hall in Philadelphia by 1976. Then he fixed the date of the rapture at 1992. Undaunted, his next book changed the year to 2012. (Interestingly, he also refers to Nostradamus, the 16th-century occult seer, as ‘a great Bible student’.) The Bible tells us to avoid ‘foolish…speculations’ (2 Timothy 2:23 NASB).
Why? Because they make us look ‘foolish’ in the eyes of the world! Who’s going to listen to a church that repeatedly sets wrong dates, when Jesus Himself told us not to set dates at all? ‘As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate…drank…married…until the day…Noah entered the ark; and the flood came and destroyed them all’ (Luke 17:26-27 NKJV). God didn’t give Noah a date, He gave him a job. And the end didn’t come until the job was done. Jesus said, ‘But the exact day and hour? No one knows…Only the Father’ (Matthew 24:36 MSG). The whole world has yet to be reached with the gospel, so instead of ‘date setting’, let’s roll up our sleeves and get busy.
Daniel 1-2, 2 peter 2
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