Thursday, February 29, 2024

Markell: We Can Only Tolerate Looking Around If We Also Look Up


Markell: We Can Only Tolerate Looking Around If We Also Look Up




Our times can be trying. One hesitates to even tune into the latest Internet or cable news program and watch the updated saga of suffering.

Sure, we were warned. Those last days were to be “perilous times.” But who knew? Who could have warned us about the blood-soaked details? Then modern technology brings it all home to us in real time.

A weariness has set in as the weight of the world’s sin presses down so heavily that it is harder and harder to keep going. We feel like we are climbing a steep mountain with a heavy load. Up is down, black is white, evil is good. Political correctness will eventually destroy the planet. We’re tired of the Keystone Kops running the show in nearly every capital of the world.

Those of us anticipating Christ’s return have a great advantage. We listen for a trumpet in the midst of the carnage. If we listen carefully, we think we hear the hoof beats of the four horsemen in the distance. The end is near is not a saying on a sandwich board worn by some homeless person marching down Main Street. Rather, it is the hope of the believer. Most people call it the Rapture. And no, it’s not an escape hatch.

But if you believe this, one Christian outfit calls us “zombie Christians.” Christian Today magazine is not secular, it is Christian but with a Leftist bent. It has more of an ecological agenda than a spiritual agenda, and their version of the world ending is because we’re killing the planet. The apocalypse to them is climate change. I’m quoting a few paragraphs from an article they published in 2015:


Noted author and co-founder of the Rapture Ready website, Terry James, writes in an article titled, Pastors, Be Forewarned, “When one gently probes one or the other of the Bible-believing/preaching pastors with the question, ‘Do you preach prophecy?’ the answers are along the same line. It’s my experience, and that of others who ask the question, that 95% of those asked say something like the following.”

  • Prophecy is just too hard for people to understand.
  • I just don’t know enough about the subject because we barely touched on it in seminary.
  • Teaching people how to live as a Christian is more pressing.
  • It scares people, so I just don’t want to worry them unnecessarily.
  • People have been talking about this for years and we’re still here. We need to deal with the here and now.

Terry James continues, “Despite the fact that there are those who are overly speculative in their views of Bible prophecy, the following must be said. To the pastors of America who claim the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of the Living God but callously ignore its prophetic content–be forewarned.

“Your excuses/arguments won’t stand the test of the Bema...

More...






No comments: