Is This the End Time? | Episode 311 | Closer To Truth

[Music] [Music] in every generation in virtually every religion on earth some believers have imagined their time to be the end time they expected or hoped for the transformation of society the intervention of god the return or advent of the messiah or equivalent and some saw signs of apocalypse just over the horizon each generation has thought itself unique our generation it seems particularly so in our time end times abound what drives such zealotry i'm robert lawrence kuhn and closer to truth is my journey to find out [Music] there is no one with whom i would rather start than james tabor a leading scholar of early christianity and a careful observer of apocalyptic movements and messianic thinking jim is chairman of religious studies at the university of north carolina at charlotte and the author of the jesus dynasty jim most religions have an eschatological and end time wish or fear or dealing with it what is it about religion that that that has this end time energy that end time emphasis is really coming mainly right out of the bible as the bible talks about god and the universe and humankind and history it begins to focus particularly in the hebrew prophets of the old testament on this ideal time of the future you get the sense as time goes on particularly into the time of jesus when you have christianity forming that the movements that arise are saying not only is the end time coming but we will likely live to see it i often tell my students apocalypticism is a very interesting idea but i want to remind you i tell them it has a hundred percent failure rate so far now how could jesus be wrong christians have all sorts of circumlocutions but we've got very clear attacks when paul talks about jesus returning he says we who are alive will see the lord he tells people not to get married he tells slaves not to even try to be free because very soon it'll all be over it's hard to sustain that kind of fervor as another generation comes and another and another because the predictions that were made don't come true and people have to adjust so you'd think it would long ago be over and people would just forget it i've studied apocalypticism a lot it has to do with the fit between predictions primarily in prophecies the old and new testament for christians and jews and a real lived situation in the world i think what fueled the kind of apocalyptic fervor that we find among the fundamentalist christians it's very strong just flip your tv channels you still hear it today in the 21st century is the establishment of the state of israel the six-day war where jews occupied jerusalem or regained it depending on your point of view for the first time in 2000 years so that you can now open the book of revelation or the book of daniel and you can read events in a very literal way that you haven't been able to do for 2 000 years but there's one more factor and that is things like global warming and the environmental crisis and just what we're told about the possibility of asteroids hitting some of that sounds very modern and scientific until you open the prophetic books and they do talk about in some imagined way events that could be correlated with those kind of expectations so this type of of current day science you're saying helps fuel or at least reinforces the book of revelation talks about the earth becoming seven times warmer it talks about an asteroid falling from heaven and poisoning a third of the waters you see and so people read that sort of thing and they've got the political history of israel and the middle east to play with and the different enemies and players of that game when they do polls of the public opinion particularly in the united states large percentages way over half will say that they think we're probably living in the end time and prophecies are being fulfilled so this is not some backwater insignificant idea in our culture as crazy as it sounds i think to many educated people [Music] the end times is a compelling even intoxicating idea [Music] it reaches deeply into human longing and extends the meaning of religion but with its history of 100 failure rate why do some scholarly believers still take it seriously robert saucy is professor of theology at biola university in los angeles he takes the end times seriously not as sociological substrate but as prophetic reality [Music] key to his understanding which is widespread is the notion of dispensationalism different periods in biblical history and the anticipation of the literal fulfillment of prophecies in the end time period bob in looking at the biblical view of the end of times the issue of what's called dispensationalism is a critical issue what does the bible mean by dispensationalism uh dispensationalism as an understanding of biblical interpretation is known and for those that take the bible fairly at face value and that includes restoration of the state of israel and since that's happened in our time that of course stimulates an interest in prophecy non-dispensationalism tends to believe that the church has replaced israel and therefore one reinterprets the old testament prophecies in light of the church and not the nation of israel among the nations and israel then is left out of the picture and the re-establishment of the state of israel would not have really biblical significance so if i would look at an overview to a a dispensationalist uh theological position i would point to two elements as as distinguishing characteristics see if i got this right one is the state of israel the second is the nature and timing of the rapture that would be generally true although i think most dispensationalists are more sure of the issue of israel than they are of the time of the rapture jesus gives some things are going to happen paul gives some things that are happening for example jesus says there will be wars rumors of wars famines earthquakes got all those god i looked up in the world almanac once to look at earthquakes and they definitely have uh increased some within the last hundred years and then war seemed to be the same way and then of course paul describes uh a decaying of morality in scoffers against religion and also world evangelism i don't want to leave that out because that's the only one that actually the bible that i'm to my knowledge that's not part of the abomination is it no no no that's it that's gonna get us straight he says this gospel shall go to all the nations and then the end shall come i don't know anything else in the bible where it says this must happen and then the end will come so you in a very serious cerebral way uh take uh very seriously uh that whole concept of the termination of this time of human history and looking forward to a a literal millennium i do and and the one that probably is in my mind the most is israel when you think about it that's a unique phenomena a nation to be scattered like the jews have and then be restored after 2 000 years someone wouldn't ask carl bart what evidence he had for god he said the existence of the jew and one can't be sure that this is the fulfillment but i don't think they're going to be run out of there again and so that would seem to indicate that and as you look at the near east that fits very well with a dispensational understanding what prophecy says is going to take place yeah many evangelical christians believe that the existence of the state of israel heralds the end time and that the end time may be imminent bizarre as this may sound end time prophecy is intoxicating because if true it would prove the veracity of the bible and the existence of its god but there are other understandings of christian prophecy nancy murphy is professor of christian philosophy at fuller theological seminary a committed and devoted christian nancy is not concerned with prophecy and i want to understand why nancy are you and i living in the end time there's no way to know i grew up in the catholic tradition and the emphasis there was jesus saying that even he didn't know when the end of the world was coming but a lot of people seem to yes and there are particularly interesting historical precedents for that there is a bible that was published and widely read called the scofield reference bible it was loaded with study notes and the study notes provided a millennialist theology that interpreted all sorts of passages in the bible as pointing toward a particular view of when and how the end of the world was going to come and a remarkable number of christians have been influenced either directly or indirectly by that and your view of that is that's not biblical that's right the more sophisticated biblical scholars would deny almost all of the predictions about when the end of the world is going to come but let's be more fundamental do you believe there will be an end to this physical world in some god-directed way yes i do and do you see that in a very long period of time a cosmological period of time like five billion years when the sun burns out or you know maybe a hundred years when x and y happens uh what's your time frame again order of magnitude give me an order okay here's uh not terribly serious order of magnitude the earth is four and a half billion years old the sun is going to expand and burn us all up in four and a half billion years from now jesus came right smack dab in the middle of that give or take 2 000 years so i think we're right in the middle so can i interpret that to mean that you think the end of the world in a theological sense will coincide not coincidentally with the astronomical sense i'm really being silly with that particular point i think it depends on the question of whether there's extraterrestrial life and for all we know there are other planets with lifespans that will last beyond that so there just really isn't any way to extrapolate from physical theories about the end of the planet or the end of the universe to the end of the world in theological terms this is a point where theological discourse and scientific discourse simply have no points of convergence but to take a biblical world view you do not think that any of the conversation in the bible or statements regarding an end time related to prophecy or world events or who knows what calamities are anchored in in literal future projections no i don't that's clear [Music] nancy is clear she believes in god the bible jesus and the ultimate transformation of the heavens and earth but not in the near-term prophecies that many of her co-religionists propound and preach having once felt personally the addictive allure of prophecy i must go further although prophecy today is largely the province of christians there is also a long jewish tradition i see rabbi arthur hyman professor at yeshiva university he is a leading authority on jewish eschatology which is what is prophesied to happen in the end time arthur the concept of prophecy and a sequence of events leading to some cataclysmic transformation return of the messiah or the appearance of the messiah is a very important aspect of christianity as as we know what about in judaism let me begin with part of your question namely the christian version of the messiah here there are two claims first of all there is a belief in the messiah and secondly the claim is that messianic times have happened with the advent of jesus now on the jewish end first of all there are conditions that have to be fulfilled and the jewish claim against christianity that jesus cannot be the messiah because the conditions of the coming of the messiah have not been fulfilled now on the jewish end there is a kind of a big cataclysmic war and the tradition here teacher said before the coming of the messiah there must be this this kind of of war between gog and mountain between gog and magog these were biblical characters and that sort of projected into the future and then after this war the messiah will come and then certain conditions have to be fulfilled peace on earth no sickness no death and so on and the jewish claim in evaluating christianity is whatever else christianity might be these conditions of the coming of the messiah have not been fulfilled now if you will look at jewish history you will find that they're messianic pretenders almost in every generation let's focus on the beginning the first part this war between gog and magog what what more can we say about it well i'm fully aware that there are people who think of the conflict uh in the in the east or or the near east as the beginning of messianic times their people are very verbal about that but i think the basic jewish attitude here would be that the whole series of events would have to be fulfilled and if they're not fulfilled then the messiah hasn't come and and i think what somebody from a normative jewish position would say that we really don't know whether these are the eschatological event until it happens at the end the specific events which some jews claim will lead to the messiah's first coming are similar to those which many christians claim will lead to the messiah's second coming though they disagree on what number coming it will be the first or the second fundamental judaism and christianity agree that these events will constitute the advent of the end times [Music] but end time thinking has minimal importance in mainstream judaism what about in christianity i'm not sure i agree with that i ask greg boyd pastor of the woodland hills church in minnesota who has a doctorate from princeton theological seminary an innovative thinker not afraid to take risks greg says what he believes greg the end time is featured in the judeo-christian tradition certainly it's in the new testament significantly how do you see the end time as part of your theology well yeah there's the promise that the present situation that we're in the present state of the world this present epic isn't eternal it comes to an end it's like a chapter of a book that's going to come to an end we don't know when we don't know the details of how there are plenty of people out there who say they know when and say they know how but they don't know what they're talking about they do damage by ranting like that though they usually make a lot of money uh we don't know when we don't know how but but it will come to an end and the the bible describes that as the coming of the kingdom of god when god's gonna now make right all that is wrong so you see that as a literal kingdom not just something spiritual in your heart that some people have talked about no i i as as depicted in the new testament uh it is um god bringing the kingdom to earth it's on this earth it's it's a perfect version of what there is now all right so this is going to happen in the future i i believe so yes and do you have any senses is like in the next 100 years or the next 20 million years so you have no idea if there's anything we should learn from history is that we shouldn't try to guess at that uh throughout history people have been you know thinking that it's going to be today or next year or whatever um and there's plenty of people today who are doing that very same thing but uh all that does is it sets up for people for disappointment it sometimes gets them to do crazy things and we should leave that to god god will know when to wrap it up our job is to live every day like it's our last speculating about the details of these sorts of things is i think equivalent to trying to you know go to a tarot card reader and trying to find out exactly how you're going to die it's morbid didn't jesus talk about watching things and watching for these signs and all sorts of things yeah you ignore all that no of course i don't there's nothing in the bible that i ignore i i pay attention to all of it uh yeah in matthew 24 and and several other places jesus talks about the sign of the times now there's a lot of discussion about what that means uh whether it's referring to the destruction of jerusalem in 70 a.d whether it's referring to the end of the world but whatever you make of that discussion at the end of the day everyone's got to admit that they don't know wars and rumors of wars jesus says well when hasn't there been those there'll be earthquakes well yes there's always you know earthquakes the the thrust of the teaching in the new testament is is this we're to live with the anticipation and the expectation that the lord is going to come back and set up his kingdom and that could happen any time so live every day like it's your last and don't sweat the details do you pay attention to world news and the sense of maybe this is something to do with bible prophecy no i really don't i i i it's so speculative that uh that i don't see any good fruit coming of that at all i really don't think that god so loved the world he gave us a jigsaw puzzle that we could figure out what's going to happen the last seven years of world history uh he what he when he wants to be clear he's clear what i think is important is this from a christian perspective that end is not a doomsday report it's rather good news it is the bringing to the world of of his god's love and justice and peace and the world will finally be what the world was always supposed to be so the end of the world as we know it now is not bad news from a christian perspective it's something we look for and hope for and pray for throughout its history christianity has had groups and sects preaching end time imagining prophecies about to be fulfilled [Music] this was true in the early church and it is true today the vision of a culmination of human events cuts across cultures which anthropologists take as shared transmissions or common thinking but which believers take as common truth [Music] the hope is natural [Music] if one is a believer one would wish the advent of a new age and the presence of god glorious rewards all wrongs made right all doubters convicted notwithstanding all that i know about history and psychology i've had times of wonder about the end time that perhaps our generation as opposed to all other generations really was special nuclear proliferation global warming escalating religious conflict confrontation in the middle east wars and rumors of wars in the oft-quoted warning could our generation be it an unlikely way to get closer to truth for complete interviews and for further information please visit closer to truth.com [Music] you

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 152,029

Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn, James Tabor, Robert Saucy, Nancey Murphy, Arthur Hyman, Gregory Boyd, the end times, end times explained, end times philosophy, Eschatology, what is doomsday, is doomsday coming, what happens after death, will the world end, is the world ending, is the end near, day of judgement, eschatology discussion

Id: pWVCuVlE3A0

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021