Discussing Revelation | Kenneth Tanner and John MacMurray

so i'm here with kenneth tanner for those of you who don't know who this white bearded man is but kenneth was part of our panel for the john gospel john discussion that we did last year into this year and he'll also be again part of our panel as we do the book of revelation or we like to call it the apocalypse of jesus um starting september 9th on thursday september 9th so kenneth it's great to have you and i'm really looking forward to this just wanted to ask you a couple questions um one of them is tell me a little bit about your journey with the book of revelation i i've heard bits and pieces um but you know what kind of background did you come up with when it came to this book because revelation is uh yeah it people come out of the woodwork for revelation and it's uh it's controversial at best right oh yeah so i'm just curious like what what your background is with it your journey well you know i i mean i i grew up in the south um in a pentecostal context um which you know i mean people would come through and you know uh teach on something like revelation was a you know a major book um and uh people wanted the guide it comes through with all the charts and you know kind of dispensational run through of things um but you know i mean just really really bizarre things like um when i was i mean literally a child um you know uh they you know on a week night i weekend i don't remember but it was at night and we went to the church and watched a film called thief of the night um which you know is no child has any business watching um and they would you know i mean that the church is full of adults and children and basically the whole point of the film is to scare the living hell out of you um you know so that you'll convert you know um to christ on the spot usually in that meeting with an altar call and so forth because the basic you know narrative is you know um life is going on normally and then all sudden you know millions of people disappear um and uh of course the christians and this thing called the rapture and um you know there's you know it's depicted you know in comical ways it's like you know the outline of a person by their clothes laying across the sidewalk or a lawn there's a electric razor that's sort of you know vibrating in the sink because you know the person who was holding it you know it goes away and so forth and you know the whole idea is that you know people who you know who ask jesus in their heart are all you know taken away and the rest of the people um you know are left to endure this kind of you know uh one world government that takes over you know the entire world and uh you know there's these vans that come along and you know take you to concentration camps where you get your head cut off you know and uh so there's guillotines and you know blood and and all this kind of stuff so one day i come home from school and we had this this house that had burned down was an awful thing um a block over with the wife the mother single mother and the children in the house and all they all perished because the mother was smoking on the bed and so my mother had you know very kind of she's supposed to be very careful when we had this kitchen fire that had wiped out like the cabinetry above our like a grease fire you know and uh the kitchen had to be renovated and so forth well i walk in from you know it's like fourth or fifth grade or something i come home and there is a you know pot of water on the stove boiling but no sign of my mother which is an unusual thing as i say because of these fires that we've experienced both in the neighborhood in our house and uh so i you know um i initially i'm just kind of like mom hey mom where are you so forth and i'm walking through the house but you know as i got to each room you know and no sign of her she's not answering me and so forth this didn't make sense to me that she wouldn't be in the house especially with something on the stove and so i looked at you know out in the garage the cars are there you know and all of a sudden you know this and and this is not the only moment this happened to me but sense that you know oh god this thing has happened and you know me and my i don't know um maybe i read too many comic books or you know i cheat you know i you know i cheated on the spelling test or whatever man i'm done you know i i i'm out you know and uh everybody's gone and i'm left behind i were you listening to larry at the time running running you know yeah you hear larry norman in the background you know you've been left behind and i you know i i went out the neighborhood started like mom mom you know and i you know running i i did find her finally talking to a neighbor in the backyard of you know one of the other neighbors houses um you know and but i literally began to fear you know for my soul and my life and everything else i had been raptured you know everyone has been raptured and i was still left behind so as a kid you know i mean i i didn't have a consciousness of you know being a fairly particularly bad kid but who knows you know this you know they they makes god seem so cavalier you know who knows why you might you know be left behind or kept and you wouldn't even know what it was that you had done so wow and you know there's comic books and you know a various thing jack chick comic books about all this kind of stuff and jack trick shacks uh you know tracks about these things and uh you know david wilkins wilkerson you know late great planet earth and all this kind of stuff this was before you know all the left behind novels i was you know i was an adult came along but as a child it was some scary it was some scary stuff yeah hal lindsey yeah yeah so and that's what you're saying it's i it's fascinating to me everyone that i've talked to so far this is a common theme all of our community you know was all you know they would go they would you know they would go into revelation and say you know um you know the you know the the different creatures with you know kind of like you know guitar electric guitars with the you know wires going down into the you know whatever it was that was considered to be dark or evil or bad or whatever you know was interpreted you know um manson did stuff like this with the book of revelation and the beatles and stuff like that and just you know i don't know it was weird you know some some of these tent preachers and revival preachers and people that come through would just pick up from whatever source they could find you know well i yeah what i was going to say was that what's a common theme is that our all of our journeys have started in this fear-based narrative that we were given yeah you know and um that's that's fascinating to me um i got a more sophisticated version because the church that i grew up in we had uh a bunch of the faculty of dallas seminary come and do prophecy conferences on sunday night at our church you know and they're the guys who were writing all the books you know the walvards and pentecost and ryrie and all those guys and um so i was i was deeply versed in the dispensational doubt of revelation so yeah daniel and all of that and you know his visions the statue you know no no so uh let me ask you one more question real quick uh because you because you were a panelist on the gospel of john um because of that experience as we're getting ready to do uh the apocalypse here in about six weeks or so um what are what are you looking forward to about this time well i mean you know the book of revelation and this goes back from me to um eugene peterson's wonderful book um on monopolation um where he sees john as as pastor and poet um and um you know just seeing for the first time really through his eyes the story is a story of the beauty and the wonder and the glory of jesus christ and um and um how he was present in the world to encourage everyone you know made in the image of god to to his way of being human and participation in his way of being gog um and and so the text is really you know about that and um so it really you know these other ways that we were raised are diametrically really opposed to the purpose of of of john of you know and the holy spirit as he inspired the apostle to you know unveil um you know jesus as he does by you know reading the old testament really and also reading the ancient world you know um and uh all of its philosophies and political entities and everything else um you know special interest to me is is uh you know revelation um and the you know heavenly vision of the birth of christ that is contained there the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and giving birth to the child who will rule the nations with a rod of iron and so forth and they have a lot of fun with this at you know at christmas and you know teaching the children to put a dragon you know in the um in the crash along with you know everything else um but you know it's just that heavenly vision of um you know christ is born you know yes um and you know perhaps 84 whenever it was um you know in real time and you know palestine in bethlehem judea and um you know at a moment in history but also because this one is god he's you know we say and can say christ was born today i mean you know this is eternal now in which christ is being born and revelation and particularly in that chapter gives us that sort of how christ the one who's born and you know that and laid in the feed trough in bethlehem in the cave or the stall or whatever it was um you know no room in the end and everything um you know is born in every moment of the world you know also born in us and um how there's a cosmic dimension uh to this uh human who's also god and that's just one of the moments you know um of the unveiling um in this wonderful beautiful mysterious and bizarre um at times um story that's being told there that's awesome well thanks kenneth i'm looking forward to it i think it's going to be an awesome time it's just fun to get together everybody and discuss these things i just appreciate the spirit and attitude and it's just it's really it's really awesome

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Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021