Jesus and Paul’s prophesied cultural collapse indicating the last days are happening right now. In this episode, we discuss characteristics of Noah’s generation on display in our society and what it means for Christians to have hope that everything is going to be okay.
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Transcript
Todd:
A few years ago, one of the most popular names that popped up was Noah. And that hadn’t been seen for a long time. So, what in the world does Noah have to do with Bible prophecy? Stay tuned. That’s what we’re going to talk about next.
Todd:
Welcome to the Prophecy Pros podcast with Jeff Kinley and Todd Hampson. And today, we’re talking about the days of Noah. So, stay tuned. This is going to be really cool.
Todd:
So, Jeff, I just want to kick it off talking about the opening words of Jesus’ biggest talk on the end time. It’s the second longest teaching in scripture and it was specifically on the end times. And we find… Probably the primary area we can find it is in Matthew 24. And I’ll just read a couple verses there. It says, “Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ‘Do you see all these things?’ he asked? ‘I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down.’ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, the destruction of the temple? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'” And then Jesus gave them a whole list of signs to look for, but he opened with this. “Jesus answered, ‘Watch out that no one deceives you.'” That’s a pretty powerful opening to that whole section.
Jeff:
Yeah, it really is because there’s a lot of deception today, Todd, about the end times. And I find it very interesting that when they asked Jesus that question, he didn’t rebuke them. He didn’t say, “No, we don’t need to be talking about prophecy. Let’s talk about loving one another,” or, “Let’s go over here. Let’s have some fellowship together. Let’s go bowling,” or something like that. No. He launches into this apocalyptic vision that we read about in the Book of Revelation.
Jeff:
And then he ends up, he goes all the way to verse 37, he says, “For the coming of the Son of Man… To answer your question, gentlemen,” he says, “The coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah.” “Whoa, what are you talking about, Jesus?” Well, he goes on to say, “For in those days, of which were before the flood, they were eating and drinking and they were marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. And they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Jeff:
Those are really sobering words, Todd. I mean, these are not just fun little precious promises we put on our mantle at home kind of thing. I mean, these are predictions and prophecies about the end of time. And Jesus says it’s going to be like it was in the days of Noah.
Jeff:
Now, you have to understand the context here. A couple things is, one is that when Jesus mentions the days of Noah, that’s not a happy rainbow kind of time for those guys. These Jewish males understood the days of Noah. They understood what was going on there. They understood that people were just living their lives, going about their business. But what kind of business? What kind of lives?
Todd:
Yeah. What characterized those times?
Jeff:
Yeah, exactly. What’s going on during those times. And as we sort of rewind back to Genesis chapter 6, we see, sort of emerging out of the waters of history, these four characteristics that I think characterize the days of Noah that I think we’re going to see, we actually do see during the tribulation period, during the Book of Revelation. So, we look back at Noah’s day, we look forward to the days of the tribulation, then we look around to our day and we go, “Whoa, how are we mirroring those days?”
Jeff:
So, if we go back to Genesis chapter 6, the Bible says in verse 5, it says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Now, keep in mind, this is from God’s perspective, not necessarily from man’s perspective. But God’s looking at humanity. He’s going, “All you guys do is sin. That’s all you think about. You’re just thinking about me, me, me.” And you just look around our world today. There are characteristics of that as well.
Jeff:
But let’s see more specifically what’s going on here. It says in verse 6, “And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth. And he was grieved in his heart.” Those are synonymous phrases there, Todd. It just means that God had sorrow in his heart. “Well, gosh, can we make God sad?” Yeah, God can grieve. The Holy Spirit can be grieved, Ephesians chapter 4 tells us. It says, “And the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man, whom I have created, from the face of the land, from the animals to creeping things to birds of the sky for I am sorry I have made them.'” Think about how sinful, how wicked we have to get that God finally looks down and says, “You know what? I can’t do this anymore. I mean, this is enough.” And so, it says, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He was a righteous man.” It says in verse 9, “Blameless in his time.” He wasn’t a perfect person, but he was blameless in his time. But here’s the key phrase though, it says, “And Noah walked with God.”
Jeff:
So, what do we see that’s going on during the days of Noah? I mean, what marked this? Well, we already saw one of them. It’s just a complete lack of God in people’s lives. It was just godlessness. It was just pandemic godlessness. And the way I think we’re seeing that happen today, Todd, is that we, in our culture, we want to get God out of every aspect of our culture, out of our society. We don’t want God in our schools.
Todd:
Kicking him out of everything, yeah.
Jeff:
Get out God. We don’t want God in our education, higher education. We don’t want God in science. We want to create our own truth, our own reality. I mean, Romans 1 talks about the fact that when we look at the heavens and we see the clear evidence of God’s handiwork. And when we reject that, the Bible says that our foolish hearts are darkened.
Todd:
You and I talked briefly about that yesterday. We had dinner with my son. And we were talking about the sense of awe when you stop and think about space and stars and outer space and inner space, like biology. You should be in just utter awe of what God has created. How people can become so coarse and callous. Like you said, Romans 1 shows that whole trajectory, how they reject God and just they don’t even see him in that.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, if you think about it, no one looks up anymore. I mean, in these days, I mean, they looked up at the sky at night. There weren’t street lights and skyscrapers and things like that. But they were looking at the heavens. And God, in Psalm 19, says that the heavens declare the handiwork of God. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said that the stars are God’s traveling preachers.
Todd:
That’s awesome.
Jeff:
They go across the sky at night. And I think that’s one of the things that we lack in our world today, is that we’re not looking up and contemplating the world and the earth and the sky and the heavens that God has made. And even when we do, we’ve been brainwashed and inundated with secular philosophies that tell us, “No, God didn’t make that.”
Todd:
It’s all an accident.
Jeff:
It just happened. “Now, where the materials came from, we can’t tell you. We have to have faith in that.” Oh, so it’s a religion kind of thing for them too.
Todd:
And here’s the wild thing, is that blindness and that deception like we talked about Jesus said, “Do not be deceived.” By and large, most people are deceived and believe we’re here by accident, evolution’s true, whole nine yards. So, we’ve lost that awe and wonder for God. And what that naturally does… Then we wonder why society’s falling apart.
Todd:
Paul picks up on the… He doesn’t mention Noah, but he also reiterates that whole phenomena. In 2nd Timothy 3, he says, “But mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days. People… ” And as I read this, think about recent news articles or things you’ve seen in the press. This should line up perfectly with what you see. “But Mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” and this last one really seals the deal, “Having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
Jeff:
That’s so true. And really, it does really mirror the Romans chapter 1 there. And as you look at that passage, as I said earlier, he says that their foolish hearts were darkened.
Jeff:
And people think that they can just simply deny God’s existence or deny God’s work and just go on with their lives, but the Bible says no, there is a consequence to that. And this is kind of a hard topic to talk about, Todd, just real quickly. But in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2, the Bible says in the end times, God himself is going to send a diluting influence upon those who refuse to believe in his gospel and in his truth. And we see that same thing happening in Romans chapter 1, where it says their foolish heart was darkened. And they become foolish in their speculations, are futile in their speculations. So, it’s like if you don’t have God to explain the universe, you have to think, “Well, I guess I can come up with my own idea.”
Todd:
Come up with some crazy stuff.
Jeff:
Yeah, some crazy stuff. And here, scripture calls those speculations futile. And what’s really amazing is that, again, back to Genesis, that when we remove God from the picture and we’re left to ourselves, it’s like a blind man in the dark walking around trying to describe the room. And God says, “You’re just going to be making up stuff.” And that’s what they do. And what’s crazy is at the end of chapter 1, verse 22, it says, after they come up with these foolish speculations, it says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools.” So, what’s really amazing is that we think that we’re smarter than God. When we get God out of the picture, we think that we’re really the point. But that word, “fool” there is a Greek word, “moros,” which we get our word, “moron” from.
Todd:
That would be fitting.
Jeff:
I didn’t make that up. That’s actually the word. And, really, speaking just honestly is that we are morons when we take God out of the picture.
Todd:
Apart from God.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Todd:
That’s right.
Jeff:
And we try to replace him with ourselves. And so, I think that’s one of the things we see back in the days of Noah that obviously they were thinking only of themselves. So, you think, “Well, what does that lead to?” Well, Genesis tells us what it leads to. In the next verse, it says, “The whole earth was corrupt in the sight of God and the earth was filled with violence.” And so, if you think about a culture, think about cities in the United States, you think about areas in the United States that are full of violence, those are areas where there is no God presence. You think about places in the Middle East where there’s no Christian God presence, a Judeo-Christian God, I mean, it’s full of violence.
Jeff:
And the reason we have violence, and people say, “Well, I think most of the wars in the world were fought by religious Christians.” Oh, no. Less than 2% of the world’s wars were fought because of Christianity. And those were just people that were corrupt. And, of course, there are just wars and that type of thing, but that’s another topic. The point is, is that a man or a woman left to themselves eventually will become violent because “I want what you have. I want to take by force.” So, if you can imagine the millions, perhaps billions of people living in a pre-flood earth. And they’re living without God. It’s a pagan, corrupt, a demonic culture, we know also from chapter 6, with the sons of God marrying the daughters of men. And so, you’ve got rampant violence. There’s bloodshed. Mankind bled the ground red during the days of Noah. And God didn’t like that. God does not like us just to go off killing each other.
Todd:
That’s right. Not a good thing.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s a violent culture. So, you don’t really have to jump in your imagination to imagine the robberies, the murders, the rapes, the assaults that went on. And it was global. It was happening everywhere and on a great scale. So, violence was one of the things that marks the days of Noah.
Todd:
And along with Jesus’ words about the days of Noah, he reiterated there or added to it, talking about the fact that it would just be business as usual. People would continue in business and marriage and giving in marriage and all this stuff. So, it’d be kind of life as normal, even though all this violence and immorality was happening all around them. Kind of like we’re seeing today.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like when you ignore God, you just go about life as normal. I mean, there’s nothing you know… You just-
Todd:
Yeah. Even though people are getting killed left and right and there’s so much bad stuff happening.
Jeff:
And we, those who aren’t involved in that, try to ignore it and to buffer themselves from it. But eventually, it’s like the seeping floodwaters of a typhoon or a hurricane, it’s going to eventually break that levee and come into our lives. So, we see that violence.
Jeff:
Another thing that we see, I believe, is unrestrained immorality. We see that in verse 11. It says, “The earth was corrupt in the sight of God.” It’s a very interesting word that he uses there. And it’s a word that the same author, Moses, uses later in Exodus to describe the sexual immorality that was going on at the base of Mount Sinai. When Moses went up to receive the 10 commandments and Aaron melted down the gold, made the golden calf, it says that the children of Israel were rising up to play. And it’s that whole phrase that means to be corrupted.
Todd:
So, there’s a little more going on there than just making a golden calf.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. When it says, “They rose up to play,” it doesn’t mean they were going to play chess or monopoly or something. I mean, they were engaged in gross-
Todd:
Immorality.
Jeff:
… sexual immorality. And, of course, we can just imagine everything that went on with that, everything from adultery to fornication to rape and to incest, to homosexuality, lesbianism, all the things that are involved in sexual immorality, which is another thing that Romans chapter 1 addresses in depth in detail, is the stages of a culture or of a nation that are being handed over to themselves. And God specifically says it is because of sexual immorality, homosexuality, lesbianism, and all the consequences that go along with that. But all that begins, Todd, with that godlessness that begins in Genesis chapter 6.
Todd:
And we should point out that anybody who’s caught up in any of that can be redeemed, can turn to the Lord, can be healed. There’s… I’m trying to remember where it is. One of Paul’s letters, he said, “Such were some of you,” and listed the worst of the worst and said, “Such were some of you.”
Todd:
So, I think that’s a big lie that’s being pushed on the church of today, is that “You can’t change. You are who you are. God doesn’t really have standards.” No, he has very clear standards. And we need to speak to truth and love and accept people. He loves us too much to leave us the way we are. He wants to change us from the inside out. We can’t force that from the outside in. But I want to mention that because I know that’s a question that people have, is like, “Well, what about that issue? How can people change?” And absolutely, people can.
Todd:
We all have to keep our thought process in check and our actions in check, especially in these last days because there’s a lot of temptation coming at everybody in every form. So…
Jeff:
Well, that’s very true. That 1st Corinthians 6 passage that you mentioned to me, he mentioned several different types of sin. I think it’s important for the church to know that a lot of people in the Christian church have sort of pendulum-swung from the, “Oh, we shouldn’t condemn sin,” all the way over to accepting the sin. And really, the key thing I think we have to understand, Todd, is that God is not telling people just, “Hey, you people down there sinning, stop it! Just stop it right now!” That’s not his point; his point is he wants to redeem us and change us-
Todd:
He loves us.
Jeff:
… from the inside out. Yeah, because he loves us. And so, for example, homosexuality. God’s not saying, “Just stop being gay.” No, he wants to save that person, to give them a brand new heart, a brand new mind. And that’s quote, unquote “the cure.” I mean, that’s what they need, is not to just stop sending, but to become a brand new person. As Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5:17, “New creature in Christ: old things have passed away; new things have come.” And that’s the message.
Jeff:
The Bible says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And what’s significant about that? We think, “Noah, well, hell, he was just a great carpenter. Him and eventually his sons, they just hammered and sawed all day long.” But it was more than that. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Enoch was another man living during that time, as well as Methuselah. And people say, “Methuselah. He lived 969 years.” What’s very interesting about Methuselah is his name. The name, Methuselah, means when he is gone, it will come.
Todd:
Yeah. That’s powerful.
Jeff:
And the Bible then tells us, “In the year that Methuselah died, the flood came.” So, it’s like his very name was preaching to the world. And I’m sure it wasn’t just the fact that… I’m sure there was preaching along with that. But Enoch was a preacher of righteousness as well. And, in fact, he walked with God so closely that God raptured him before the flood came, which is another evidence of…
Todd:
And I’ve heard a lot of teachers say that that’s a picture of the end times too, that Enoch represents the church being raptured; and then Noah and his family represent the Jews being carried through the tribulation or the judgment and then being saved at the end. That’s pretty powerful typology right there.
Jeff:
It really is. And consider when we look at ourselves, and there’s another aspect we’re going to bring up here in a minute, but we look at ourselves and our world, the world around us and we go, “Wow, things are getting so bad.” And it’s like it seems like the floodwaters of evil are just creeping in and depravity is on parade. And people are not just accepting their sin; they’re celebrating their sin.
Todd:
And wanting everyone else to celebrate. You’re not doing good unless you’re celebrating everything bad I’m doing.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s right. And, Todd, we’re living in a country where legislation is being made, where we not only legalize certain sins, but in certain parts of the country Christians are being forced to accept certain lifestyles. We’re being sued because of our refusal to take part in certain type of sinful activities.
Jeff:
And Noah lived in a similar time. And every time he hammered with his hammer, he was saying to the world, “Listen, I’m preparing this ark. God is demanding that you repent.” But what’s tragic about Noah’s day is that no one repented.
Jeff:
And what does that tell us about the deception of sin in a world, in a culture, when you love your sin so much that you look at the preacher of righteousness and you demonize him instead of looking in the mirror and comparing yourself to God’s standard? So-
Todd:
I was going to say, I imagine during that time, because it was a long period of time he was building the ark, I’m sure he was made fun of, he was mocked. He had opportunities to witness and be a preacher of righteousness. So, he’s really a snapshot of what… it’s kind of like the closer we get to the Lord’s return, what it’s going to be like for believers. So, we should talk about that too, the practical side. So, how do we live in a time like this?
Jeff:
Yeah. I think that’s a great point because I think, as you said, I talk about in my book, As It Was in the Days of Noah, how they must have looked at Noah’s ark and called it Noah’s folly. It’s like, “Hey, it’s never rained before and you’re building a boat.”
Todd:
“You’re crazy.”
Jeff:
Yes, exactly. It’s like, “Noah, you’ve been in the sun too long here, bud.” But we live in a world today where Christian beliefs and scriptural principles are mocked. They’re ridiculed. And it’s very interesting that when we talk about Jesus coming back and that type of thing, how people want to make fun of that. But what I find just fascinating, as I look at what Peter wrote to those believers that were scattered across Asia Minor, listen to this. He says in 2nd Peter chapter 3, he says, “Know this. Know this.” So, there’s some clarity for us. He says, “First of all, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after,” what? “Their own lusts.” Whoa. Does that sound like the days of Noah? Does that sound like our day?
Todd:
Yep.
Jeff:
Yes, it does. And then what are they saying to us? They’re saying, “Where is the promise of your Lord’s coming? I mean, come on, dude. You guys have been crying wolf for 2,000 years. He’s not coming back yet.” [inaudible 00:20:02] “For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues as it was from the beginning.” And then it says, “They deny the fact that the world was once flooded with water.” So, you’ve got Noah’s day mocking Noah. You’ve got the end-times generation mocking Noah.
Todd:
“The flood never happened.”
Jeff:
[crosstalk 00:20:21] mocking our belief.
Todd:
“The Grand Canyon’s not concrete evidence that there was a flood.”
Jeff:
Rights, right. And all these fossils we find at the top of mountains and sea creatures and that kind of thing, you know?
Todd:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jeff:
But it’s very interesting to me that today, it’s not just standing up and saying, “Jesus is God,” or, “The Bible is the word of God,” and being mocked for that. Although we are. It’s just saying something simple like, “Man was made for woman,” or, “A man is a man and can’t be a woman.” Just simple. Or, “He’s not supposed to have intercourse with another man.” I mean, those are kind of elementary moral principles. They’re not really deep things; they’re just elementary things. And yet, the world doesn’t just mock us; they get livid. They become unhinged. There’s protests. There’s violence. There’s threats of killing people type thing all because we’re simply saying the elementary things of scripture.
Jeff:
So, how do we then respond to that? Well, in verse 8 of 2nd Peter 3, it says, “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is 1,000 years and 1,000 years is one day.” What’s he saying there? He’s saying that God is beyond time and that he understands. He has a lot of patience for people, which is what the next verse says. “The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” So, here’s a couple of things that I get-
Todd:
Love that.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s so beautiful. Now, think, this gives us hope, Todd, in the world that we live in. Number one, you and I cannot change culture. In and of ourselves, we don’t have the power to go in and just change people’s lives, change culture.
Jeff:
And it’s important for us to stand for what’s right. And there are times when we need to declare the truth of God to the culture, much like the Old Testament prophets did to Israel. But we can’t just curse the darkness; we have to light a candle. And Jesus says, “We are that candle.” The light of Jesus Christ in us is the candle in the darkness.
Jeff:
And so, on the one hand, yes, we need to stand for truth and to call out culture when it’s appropriate to do that and to stand for morality and what’s right. But on the other hand, we need to give the solution. And in Noah’s day, he wasn’t just saying, “Hey, stop killing each other. Stop sleeping with each other,” all this stuff. But he said, “Hey, but here’s an ark,” kind of thing. And so, there is a positive aspect to that.
Jeff:
And I think obviously, the first thing that we need to understand is that we, ourselves need to keep ourselves clean, you know?
Todd:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jeff:
We need to make sure that we are not indulging in the flesh, as Peter talks about in 2nd Peter chapter 2, but to remember that Christ has given us a way and given us answers to give to them.
Todd:
That’s right. I love what Ephesians 4:15 says, just simply, “Instead speaking the truth in love.” So, we need both ends of that pendulum. The true loving thing is to speak truth because truth is reality. It’s like spiritual laws that you can’t change, but we need to do it in a loving way where we’re building relationships with people and we love them enough to tell them the truth.
Todd:
I mean, we, those of us who have kids, we don’t see our kids heading for danger and not warn them. We don’t see kids going to grab a hot stove and not tell them that it’s hot. We want to see them in safety. We want to see them in the ark. And that’s what God invites everyone to do, is to come into that ark of safety, which is who?
Jeff:
Yeah. Jesus Christ.
Todd:
Jesus Christ.
Jeff:
Exactly. Yeah, if we see our child put a fork into an outlet there, we don’t go, “You know, he’ll learn.” We don’t want him to really learn that way, you know?
Todd:
Right, exactly.
Jeff:
We want to help him and save him. And my eyes just went over here to 1st Peter chapter 4. And this is incredible. This tells us how to live in the end times and how to relate to people. He says, “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,” he’s talking just about purifying ourselves, “So as to live the rest of the time in the flesh, in our bodies, no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For the time has already passed that is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousals, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.” He said, “Guys, your time to do that is gone. I mean, you’ve already spent that time in your life.”
Jeff:
But he says, “And in all this,” he says, “They… ” Who is they? Well, those are those people that are still involved in these things, those people that are still in the days of Noah in our day. He says, “In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them in the same excess of dissipation or of sin and of just worthless living, and they malign you.” They criticize you for not doing the things that they’re doing in their lives. But then he concludes by just saying, “But keep this in mind, they shall give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.” And so, what that tells me is that…
Jeff:
People talk about, “You’re judging them,” kind of. No, no, we’re not judging. We’re not the judge. We’re just simply proclaiming the truth, as you said; they’re the ones who will give an account. So, our job is to help them find the ark so that they don’t have to give an account to God for their sin. So, really, the greatest loving thing to do is, as Jesus said, in John chapter 15, he says, “If I hadn’t come, they wouldn’t have sin.” In other words, “If I hadn’t come and declared what right and wrong was, they wouldn’t even not even know.”
Todd:
They wouldn’t even know, yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. and they wouldn’t even care. But now, they have no excuse for that. And so, as we think about living in the days of Noah, which I do believe that we’re mirroring the days of Noah, that we are ramping up to revelation in this regards.
Jeff:
And one final thing that he mentions there, or that we observe rather from Genesis chapter 6, is we go from Adam all the way to Noah. As you trace that, what you find is is that evil and wickedness and lack of faith and lack of belief in God grows, and a purity of following God narrows to the point where it’s down to really one family on the whole earth. And I think that’s what Paul says in 2nd Timothy, where he says, “In the last days,” 2nd Timothy 3, “That many will fall away from the faith.” And I think we’re seeing that too, not just on a cultural standpoint but also in the church as well. And we see that in the days of Noah. So, I think God would have the church be purified. I think our own individual lives, he wants us to really have our garments on, our wedding garments on to purify ourselves, to prepare for his return.
Jeff:
So, I think, Todd, as we look at the days of Noah, we kind of look back because Jesus pointed this back in Matthew 24. We look back. And then we look ahead at the prophetic Book of Revelation. We see how depraved humanity’s going to be during that time. And it’s going to be full, Revelation says, of immoralities, of sorceries, of all these things.
Todd:
Drug use, whole nine yards.
Jeff:
Absolutely. And then we look around at our world and go, “Wow, we’re getting there.” And we haven’t always been there. We’ve always been a sinful planet.
Todd:
There have been pockets.
Jeff:
Yeah, there have been pockets and there have been times, but-
Todd:
Now, it’s like-
Jeff:
… in recent days, it’s like 50 years ago, your grandparents, my grandparents’ generation-
Todd:
They wouldn’t believe what we’re seeing right now.
Jeff:
No concept of what we’re seeing now. But now, we’re seeing just gross perversions being celebrated and sin being promoted in our culture. And we’re really living in those latter days of Noah again.
Todd:
Yeah. And I think where we find hope in that, because again we’re speaking the truth and love. The truth is these are dark times. These are scary times. But the love part is, and where we can draw hope is, knowing that it’s God’s hand is still on the steering wheel. He’s in control. This is heading somewhere.
Todd:
And that’s why you and I beat this drum beat so hard, that you got to study Bible prophecy because that’s where you find the hope. That’s where you find the answers. That’s where you find the clarity to understand how we’re supposed to be like the men of the Issachar that you talked about in the last episode. All the answers are tied to Bible prophecy and a respect for God’s word.
Jeff:
It’s so true because even secular people are seeing what’s going on in the world around us. And even if they don’t buy into biblical morality, they’re still seeing the planet deteriorating, they’re still seeing nations come against nation, they’re still seeing our world on the edge of World War III, all these things, but they have no answer.
Todd:
Nope. And they want to blame people for it. They want to blame anybody else. They want to find some excuse that it’s somebody’s fault. And that’s why we’re seeing the division and the further violence and confusion and all that, when the answers are found in scripture.
Jeff:
It’s so true. The only answers they have is just to imagine utopia one day. Imagine peace. Imagine a world of peace. Well, you can imagine all day long-
Todd:
Yeah, not going to happen.
Jeff:
Someone needs to make that happen. And it’s very interesting. When my book, As It Was in the Days of Noah, came out, I had the privilege to be on the Ben Shapiro Show and talk with Ben Shapiro about the days of Noah. He was in complete agreement, as an Orthodox Jew, as to what’s going on around us. And, of course, I brought in the answer being Christ.
Jeff:
I had the chance to be on Fox and Friends and was talking to them about the book and about the movie, Noah, and how it didn’t match up with the Bible kind of thing. But the last question that was asked me on that interview, Todd, was very interesting. Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that. She said, “Jeff, what should we do? Should we be building boats, ready for the second judgment of God? I mean, is there any hope?” And I thought, “Whoa.”
Todd:
She set you up.
Jeff:
“She just asked me to share the gospel with millions of people.” And this is what I said. I just said, “You know what, Elisabeth? There is nothing but hope for those who put their trust in Jesus Christ. He is the ark of salvation. And the door is open right now. And we’re living in an age of grace. And God has opened that door so wide and he’s shouting to the world, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and you will have rest and have salvation. Whoever believes in the name of the Lord, doesn’t matter where you’ve come from, what your past is, you can be saved. You can be on that ark and be saved from the wrath that is coming.'”
Todd:
Amen. Wow. I could not think of a better way to end this podcast, man. So, we’re going to drop the mic right there. That was beautifully put. That’s where the hope is, in the ark, in Jesus Christ.
Todd:
If you have questions that you want to ask us about regarding this or any other topic, please go to prophecyprospodcast.com. Leave us a question. And you can also find out information about Jeff’s ministry and mine. And we would love to hear from you.
Todd:
Hey, thank you so much for listening. We’re really excited you found us. Make sure to subscribe if you have not done so already. And if you liked what you heard, please let us know by leaving a review. That does us a huge favor and helps us out a lot. For more resources or to ask questions or find more about our ministries, go to prophecyprospodcast.com. And a major thank you, major shout out to Harvest House Publishers for helping us with this podcast.