Man’s
Beliefs Have No Impact on Reality
page l 1 l 2 l
- 1 -
Shortly before His
death, Jesus had a private talk with
His disciples. They wanted to know
about the end of the world and the
establishment of the kingdom of God.
The discussion is recorded in Matthew
24 and 25 (portions are also found in
Mark 13 and Luke 21). Please
examine four statements given by
Jesus as He discussed this topic:
First:
“So you must also be ready,
because the Son of Man will come in
an hour when
you do not expect him.” (Matthew
24:44)
Second: “No
one knows about that day or hour, not
even the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew
24:36)
Third:
“Now learn the lesson from
the fig tree: As soon as its twigs
get tender and its leaves come out,
you know that summer is near. Even
so, when you see all these things,
you know that it is near, right at
your door. I tell you the truth; this
generation will certainly not pass
away until all these things have
happened.” (Matthew
24:32-34)
Fourth: “As
it was in the days of Noah, so it
will be at the coming of the Son of
Man. For in the days before the
flood, people were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage, up to the day Noah entered
the ark; and they knew nothing about
what would happen until the flood
came and took them all away. That is
how it will be at the coming of the
Son of Man.” (Matthew
24: 37-39)
When Matthew 24 and 25
are carefully examined as one
presentation, Jesus appears to
be making conflicting statements. For
example, in the third text, Jesus
speaks about the lesson of the fig
tree, indicating there will be signs
revealing that His coming is at
the door, but in the next text,
Jesus says in the second text that no
one, including Himself, knows when He
will return. Only the Father knows.
Will the Father announce the timing
of the Second Coming a few hours
before it occurs? Why would the
Father hide this information from
Jesus? The final text suggests that
people will be attending weddings and
going about their usual routines of
life on the day that Jesus returns.
Given that Jesus made these
statements directly, we know they are
true, but how do we reconcile them
with all that is said in the Bible
about the Second Coming? For example,
the Bible indicates in Revelation
16:12-21 that Armageddon will be
underway (sixth bowl), a great
earthquake will move the islands and
mountains, and huge hailstones will
fall at the Second Coming (seventh
bowl). How can Jesus’ appearing
come as a surprise when Armageddon is
occurring and when the islands and
mountains are moving out of their
places?
There is a solution to
the apparent contradictions given in
Matthew 24 and 25. Of course, every
word Jesus spoke is true, but the
truth may not be immediately obvious.
I have found a solution that resolves
these apparent conflicts for me and I
hope you will consider the following
explanation. When Jesus spoke
to the disciples, He did not speak on
His own. The Father put words in His
mouth in much the same way that God
puts words in the mouths of prophets.
(Compare John 14:10, 24; 17 with
Ezekiel 2 & 3, and Isaiah 6.)
When Jesus lived on Earth, He lived
within the parameters and limitations
which the Father imposed on Him.
(Hebrews 5:7-10, Psalm 2:7-12) Jesus
laid aside His powers of divinity
before He became a man. When He
walked on Earth, He could not use His
powers of divinity and remain within
the Father’s will. This
explains why His first temptation in
the wilderness (turning stones into
bread) was to use His powers of
divinity. (Matthew 4:3) To redeem
mankind, Jesus could not exercise His
own will or His powers of divinity.
“For I have come down from
heaven not to do my will but to do
the will of him who sent me.” (John
6:38)
When Jesus spoke to
the disciples in Matthew 24 and 25,
the New Testament did not exist.
Jesus had not died on the cross and
the book of Revelation did not exist.
This means that Jesus did not know
many parts of the plan of redemption
when He was on Earth. Later
on, after He returned to Heaven, the
Father revealed more about the plan
of redemption to Jesus. (Revelation
1:1) Today, human beings can
read and understand concepts that
Jesus could not see or understand
when He was on Earth. The
Father’s plan to resolve the
problem of sin has unfolded over time
and it is not shallow, simple, or
brief. It is intricate and completely
perfect. This also means that the
return of Jesus is not a simple
matter. The book of Daniel was
sealed up (Daniel 12: 4, 9) and many
of redemption’s mysteries had
not been made known when Jesus lived
on Earth. (Romans 16: 25-27)
It is important to understand this
perspective because words always live
within a context. Therefore, truth
and context cannot be separated from
each other and remain true.
Man’s knowledge
of the plan of redemption has
increased over the past 2,000 years,
and consequently, many Bible
mysteries have been resolved. We
should study the Father’s words,
spoken through Jesus in Matthew 24
and 25 from the larger point of
reference. Let us review the
four statements mentioned above in
light of what we understand today
from the Bible:
First, “So
you must be ready, because the Son of
Man will come at an hour when you do
not expect him.” (Matthew
24:44) The Father is not
speaking about the physical appearing
of Jesus on the 1,335th
day of the Great Tribulation, but
instead, He is talking about the
first day, Day One, when the Great
Tribulation begins. That day
will come as an overwhelming
surprise! Today people are confused
about this because they do not know
that the coming of Jesus consists of
a series of events that will occur
over 1,335 days, and they will begin
without any warning or announcement.
Suddenly, the censer used at the
Altar of Incense in Heaven’s
temple will be cast down (Revelation
8:5) and the world’s activities
will literally come to a stop –
“at an hour when you do not
expect Him.”
Second, “no
one knows about that day or hour, not
even the angels, nor the Son, but
only the Father.” (Matthew
24:36) When Jesus spoke these
words, the date for Christ’s
return had not been revealed yet
because plan A was still in effect.
However, Plan A was later abandoned,
and as a result, the Father set fixed
dates for several future events.
(Acts 1:7) For example, the day,
hour, month, and year for the sixth
trumpet has been set. (Revelation
9:15) Daniel reveals that the
Great Tribulation is limited to 1,335
days; therefore, the date of the
Second Coming will not be a secret to
anyone living on Earth during the
Great Tribulation!
Third, “Now
learn this lesson from the fig tree:
As soon as its twigs get tender and
its leaves come out, you know that
summer is near. Even so, when you see
all these things, you know that it is
near, right at the door. I tell you
the truth; this generation will
certainly not pass away until all
these things have happened.” (Matthew
24:32-34) When the Father spoke
these words through Jesus, the Father
was talking to His future disciples,
not the disciples sitting at
Jesus’ feet. The Father was
speaking about those people who will
see the series of events that will
lead up to the Second Coming. There
will be a definite sequence of
events, and many survivors will live
through the Great Tribulation and be
taken to Heaven without seeing death.
Fourth, “As it
was in the days of Noah, so it will
be at the coming of the Son of Man.
For in the days before the flood,
people were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, up
to the day Noah entered the ark; and
they knew nothing about what would
happen until the flood came and took
them all away. That is how it will be
at the coming of the Son of
Man.” (Matthew 24:37-39)
Through Noah, the antediluvians knew
the year of the flood – long
before it happened. (Genesis 6:3)
There was no surprise in terms of
timing. God had clearly demonstrated
that giving people a date for the end
of the world is meaningless. There
are several reasons why the
antediluvians did not listen and
subsequently drowned: Some of
the people did not believe that Noah
had received a message from God.
Others were procrastinators who
simply put off preparation
indefinitely. Some did not want their
dreams and plans crippled by
predictions of doomsday. As so many
people today, some did not want to be
associated with crazy Noah. I
am sure there are other reasons, but
ultimately, the antediluvians were
caught by complete surprise because
they did not know what to watch for.
In fact, I believe that after 120
years, no one even traveled into the
countryside to see Noah’s folly
anymore. When the time came, God told
Noah and his family to enter the ark.
The animals arrived and the great
door of the ark was closed. Seven
days later, the antediluvians
drowned.
When Jesus’ words
are aligned with all that the Bible
has to say about His return, they
make perfect sense. When
Jesus’ words are taken out of
context, a huge problem arises
because words cannot be separated
from their context and remains true!
Pastor Harold
Camping
As you know, May 21,
2011 has come and gone without a
rapture, and many people (including
Christians) are ridiculing Pastor
Harold Camping who boldly predicted
and expected to be taken to Heaven on
that day. It has been reported
that Family Radio (Camping’s
media organization) spent about $100
million notifying the world that a
pre-tribulation rapture would occur
on May 21. Now that the
predicted date has passed and the
money has been spent, Camping and his
followers have been widely ridiculed
in the media. Because the
passage of time has proven Camping
wrong, he has attempted to deflect
some of the criticism by saying that
May21 was “a spiritual
date.” Camping now says
believers will be raptured on October
21, 2011. Skeptics, of course,
view Camping’s new date as a
stall tactic – “kicking the
can further down the road.”
I feel sad for those
who sold their homes, cars,
possessions in anticipation of a May
21 rapture. I also feel sad for
Mr. Camping and those who put their
faith in his prediction. Yet, at the
same time, I have to admire the faith
and courage of those people who sold
their homes, cars, and possessions
because they fully believed that life
on Earth was over! That’s right,
they firmly believed there would be a
rapture and their actions confirm
their belief. History proves over and
over again that man’s spiritual
beliefs have no bearing on reality.
When it came time to enter the ark,
all but eight people believed Noah
was wrong. What effect did their
belief have on reality? About 100,000
people believed Jesus would return in
1844. What effect did their
belief have on reality! Perhaps as
many as 100,000,000 Christians
believe there will be a
pre-tribulation rapture. What
effect will this have on reality?
Our beliefs, faith,
hope, and sincerity have no effect on
God’s plans, and this can be a
hard pill to swallow. God will
do all that He has promised to do
when the fullness of time is
reviewed, but only when the
fullness of time is reached. Therefore,
sincerely believing that something
will or will not happen (and setting
a date for it) is a matter of
intellectual assent and intellectual
assent is not to be confused with
faith. The Holy Spirit knows
each of our hearts. He is pleased
when we love God and one another and
live up to all that we know to be
right and true.
God always rewards
those who live by faith. (Hebrews
11:6) The Bible speaks clearly: “The
righteous shall live by faith!” (Romans
1:17) Therefore, we should not
ridicule those who were deeply
disappointed on May 21. We should
pray that they will NOT abandon their
faith in God, but instead that they
will abandon their prophetic paradigm
– their intellectual assent to a
pre-tribulation rapture. Camping’s
prediction was built on faulty rules
of interpretation (hermeneutics) and
instead of letting go of God, he and
his followers need to let go of
faulty rules and conclusions.
Whenever faith brings
us to a dead end street, there is a
painful, but wonderful opportunity to
spiritually mature. This process
enables growth in grace and faith.
When it becomes clear that faith and
reality do not align, it is time to
restudy and rethink God’s Word.
Human beings cannot and do not know
the future. Only God knows with
certainty how the future will unfold.
He has given us certain clues in the
books of Daniel and Revelation, but
prophetic faith (events awaiting
fulfillment) is not to be confused
with prophetic fact (events that have
taken place).
After many years,
Abraham and Sarah grew tired of
waiting on the Lord for the promised
son. When the reality of what God
promised did not appear, their faith
in God faded. Rather than
restudy and rethink God’s Word.
Sarah set out to fulfill the
Lord’s promise herself and
Abraham agreed. You know the
dismal result. There is a
significance difference between faith
and presumption. Faith waits on
God, believing that when the fullness
of time is right, God Himself will
produce the evidence – faith is
the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things unseen. On the
other hand, impatience leads to
presumption. Millions of
Christians have become impatient. We
want to see our prophetic faith
fulfilled “right now.”
There is a ground swell of desire
among Christians for a
pre-tribulation rapture or the return
of Jesus; however, no matter how
sincere the desire, man cannot
produce either event.
Mr. Camping became a
victim of his own creation. He
produced a time line from Bible texts
that made perfect sense to him and
then he convinced others that his
paradigm (actually, a private
interpretation) was valid. Today,
everyone knows that camping’s
paradigm and God’s Word d/o not
align. Could Mr. Camping and
his followers have been dissuaded
from their conviction prior to May
21? Probably not. When
intellectual assent and faith are
mixed together, nothing but bitter
disappointment can force a person
into another way of thinking. So, it
is better to mix faith and
intellectual assent and risk
disappointment, or should we take the
safe road and avoid the risk of
having our faith tested?
Based on what I have
observed, Mr. Camping is a man of
considerable faith (as was Abraham).
Camping and many followers acted
according to their faith. I
have read how one follower cashed out
his retirement savings to buy
$140,000 in newspaper ads. What
faith! Perhaps a good summary
for those actions would be,
“Right heart – wrong
head.” I have heard it
said that “genuine
Christians” would never do such
a thing – sell their possessions
or give everything they have to help
others hear about the return of
Jesus. What nonsense. Christians
who are unwilling to live by faith
are worse off in many ways than those
who are willing to live by faith and
fail. It is better to exercise
faith and fail, than to walk by sight
and do nothing for God. God
knows that the human race is full of
people having right hearts and wrong
heads and He also knows that millions
of people would be happy to do His
will if only they actually knew His
will! When our beliefs are
shattered, two options usually
surface: We can either abandon the
Lord like Peter did in Pilate’s
judgment hall, or we can get out the
Word of God to see where we went
wrong.
God’s Word is
truth, but our understanding of
God’s Word is always incomplete.
Harold Camping’s public failure
and humiliation should be a present
reminder of this fact. Instead of
condemning Mr. Camping and his
followers, we need to encourage them
to restudy and rethink the elements
of their faith. We should
commend them for their faith. Their
failure may be fodder for skeptics
and critical Christians, but Camping
and his followers have given us a
prophetic sample of what faith in God
actually does. Think about
this: Where there is no possibility
for failure, faith is impossible.
Faith involves risk; otherwise there
is no need for faith.
page l 1 l 2 l
- 1 -
