Hearing Man's Voice

How long will people keep looking to and believing all the false prophets out there instead of following Jesus? The Israelites being delivered out of bondage in Egypt, and witnessing the mighty power of God wanted to listen to a man rather than their loving deliverer. (Ex. 20:19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.) It is no different today. Man would rather listen to their favorite preachers, authors, or TV evangelists than to “be still” and listen to the Father, seeking Him with all their heart. The world thinks one cannot find, worship, or hear from God apart from a “man”. Thank God for Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, king David, the prophets, John the Baptist, the disciples, Paul, and others, who all heard the living “Word of God”.

The following is a quote from something I read many years ago:

“In the days of my youth, one of the first books I seriously studied on prophetic subjects was one setting forth "indisputable proof" that Mussolini was the antichrist! The only problem was that book came into my hands in the year 1949, and lo, Mussolini had already died a violent death in the streets of Milan, his name was held in disrepute throughout Italy and the world, and his "empire" was dissolved. Sixty-eight years ago (from 1982) preachers were telling how the Kaiser was the antichrist and was going to upset the world. Then when that failed to materialize, they frittered away much time and wasted much good paper and printer's ink telling us that Mussolini was the one. Then the false prophets declared that Hitler was surely the man of sin who would come riding into world power on the back of a ten horned revived Roman Empire. But Hitler's day ended too, a suicide in his bunker beneath the ruins of Berlin. Of course some of these teachers, too ashamed to admit their error, invented all kinds of ingenuous tales to keep the delusion alive, saying that Hitler's death was a "hoax", he was still alive somewhere in South America, and in due time would reappear on the scene to the astonishment of the whole world. One thing is certain. He never did reappear, and if he did not die in Berlin in 1945, and if he is still alive, he is now a very aged man of (over 100) years! A number of people even thought Roosevelt was the antichrist.

Through the years I have ministered the Word in Bible studies, seminars, and church services of various types. When there has been a question and answer session, or when opportunity was granted for people to request teaching along a particular line, the most often requested subject has been — THE BOOK OF REVELATION! I have met people who were babes in Christ, carnal Christians whose lives were a mess, they had incredible problems and needs, including deliverance, and instead of prayer or counsel or messages that would help them overcome and grow up in Christ, they wanted me to teach them the book of Revelation! "Yeah, brother, that’s for me, lay it on me, I want the book of Revelation!

Today, many Christians are confused. They are tossed too and fro with every new book that hits the market or every new fad end-time scheme introduced by some celebrity preacher. The popularity of the Revelation today is due to man’s insatiable curiosity regarding the future, the interest in the unknown tomorrow, which characterizes the restless human soul. To claim that in the pages of the Revelation we can see the signs of the present times and thus predict the tomorrows; to pull back the veil and claim to lay bare the future is to attract an audience, for that is the nature of man — fascination with the future! And that is the thrust of the scores of books always appearing, almost all of them claiming to be able to unravel and accurately predict the great world events about to unfold. Man reveres the past, but he is intoxicated by the heady wine of prophecy. The very claim, then, of these many books — that they can reveal to us things which are soon to come — helps to explain the popularity of those books on the Revelation.

The most popular of the apocalyptic entrepreneurs undoubtedly is Hal Lindsey, the author of the sensationalist book The Late Great Planet Earth and other more recent titles. His combination of literalist biblical interpretation and outright scare tactics have resulted in gaining him an extremely wide readership. But — his predictions have continually needed readjustment in the light of deadlines which have come and gone without fulfillment! Also, according to the February/March 1980 "special report to the members of the 700 Club," entitled "Pat Robertson’s Perspective," the beast of Revelation was to have been the Soviet Union, which he believed was about to attack Israel "to gain unrestricted access to Middle East oil plus a land bridge to the mineral wealth of Africa." The economy of Western Europe would be doomed by this and the world would then see the rise of a "counterfeit Messiah," a satanic figure "more malevolent than Adolph Hitler," who in 1980 was "approximately twenty-seven years old" and was being groomed for his sinister task. His nightmarish seven-year reign is the time of the "Great Tribulation," which supposedly will come to an end with the second coming of Christ, who will destroy the Antichrist at the battle of Armageddon. I do not hesitate to tell you that all such speculation, which purports to unravel the immediate future of world events out of the prophecies of the book of Revelation, are doomed to failure. None of them will come to pass! Church history is full of these schemes. Every generation, from the early church to the present, has been impacted by prophecies of that sort. I could write page after page, and go on and on, about all the end-time predictions that have been taught out of the book of Revelation that weren’t worth the paper they were written on, and often times were proven wrong almost before the ink was dry on the paper!” end quote