bible_study/Podcasts/Prophecy Pros/Season 1/S1E1: Who Are the “Prophecy Pros?”.md

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Todd: Welcome to the Prophecy Pros podcast, episode one. Who in the world are we and what is this all about? I’m Todd Hampson and I’m with Jeff Kinley.

Jeff: That’s right. And we’re the Prophecy Pros and we’re here to help you understand Bible prophecy to make sense for you, but most of all to help you in your life and living for Jesus Christ. So let’s get started.

Jeff: All right, Todd, so let’s talk about why we’re here. I mean, why the Prophecy Pros? And I think before we even get into that is how each of us kind of got into prophecy and maybe a little bit about our background and that might help people get to know us a little better. Why don’t you begin?

Todd: Absolutely. I’m primarily a lay leader. I’ve never been on staff at a church, but I’ve always had a love for Bible prophecy. And really that stemmed back to my salvation, when I was 13 was the first time I heard the gospel. And through a series of crazy situations, God led me to a private school when I first heard the gospel and had all these questions. I thought evolution was true, I thought the Bible was a book of fairy tales. And then one gentleman showed me that fulfilled Bible prophecy is the number one apologetic that proves the Bible’s from God. So that got my attention and that really is the thing that unlocked it. It led me to the Lord. And since then I’ve just always had a love for Bible prophecy. And once I started studying it, naturally just fell in love with eschatology.

Todd: And about five years ago, looking at the crazy stuff going on in the world, it just seemed like a lot of stuff was lining up with scripture. So I just rolled my sleeves up and dove in and really figured this thing out. How about yourself?

Jeff: Well, our stories are very similar in that neither one of us kind of grew up in a Christian home. So we didn’t have a whole lot of background in the Bible and that type of thing. For me, I was your basic drug-dealing hippie in high school, kind of thing. And then the Lord saved me through a friend in high school, and one of the first things that I got exposed to just other than the Bible itself was Bible prophecy. And it really got my attention and made me want to dig deeper into the Bible because a lot of people talk about prophecy in the end times and you think, “Hey, is this true? I mean, is this a sensational topic? And what are they really peddling here?”

Jeff: So I really wanted to know the truth for myself, but I became a pastor and went to seminary, in Dallas seminary, and became a pastor and then became a youth pastor for many, many years, about 20 something years. And over that time, students would often come to me, “Jeff, teach us the Revelation. Take us through Bible prophecies.” So that got me to begin to teach that to them. And what I found was is that when people are presented with what the Bible says, they’re actually really interested in it. And like you said, today, more than ever, people are looking around the world. They’re going, “Man, something is wrong with our world.” I mean we’re the Titanic man. What’s going on here? We struck this iceberg and how do we as Christians live in this postmodern, post-Christian age?

Jeff: And I think Bible prophecy has a lot to say about that.

Todd: It really does. And in the next episode, we’re going to talk a lot about some of the benefits to studying Bible prophecy, but I just want to acknowledge the elephant in the room in that it is a weird topic. I own that. Yes, if it weren’t for fulfilled Bible prophecy and all the things that prove the Bible’s from God. To think that Jesus is going to crack the sky and rapture us and all this end times events stuff’s going to happen is absolutely insane if it were not for fulfilled Bible prophecy and other evidences that the Bible’s from God. And of course our conversions. The fact that we became Christians the way we did and that internal witness that we know it’s true. There’s one question I get a lot is like why focus on Bible prophecy? Why is that such a key focus of yours? Why not just talk about just the Bible in general or more broad topics?

Todd: What I usually tell people is, well, different people have different interests. God gives people different spiritual gifts. He positions people in different places. Some pastors really focus on family ministry or finding and healing addicts and people that are really broken and bringing them to the cross. All those are good things, but you and I kind of specialize in Bible prophecy and it’s almost like a weird hobby that we can’t really explain, but it’s just something that God put in us. What can you share more about that?

Jeff: I think a lot of times when people think about Bible prophecy, they think these guys are in the room with tinfoil hats on and they’re kind of channeling some signal from outer space or whatever. But really, we’re grounded in the scripture. We want to help people be grounded in the scripture. That’s really part of what our ministries are really all about. And so we want to help people kind of take away some of that facade that’s in front of Bible prophecy. Some of the myths of Bible prophecy. Some of the obstacles that I think keep people from wanting to study Bible prophecy.

Jeff: I get a lot of Christians, a lot of people in their twenties and thirties who’ll say to me, “Jeff, I want to study Revelation, but it scares me. I don’t know how to approach it.” That kind of thing. So one of the things that I think we want to do in the Prophecy Pros is help really bring those walls down and tear away those obstacles and just say, “Hey, you can do this.” We’re calling ourselves the Prophecy Pros only because this is what we’re doing. But you can be a Prophecy Pro if you’re listening at home.

Jeff: And this is something that with a Bible and with just a little bit of coaching, you can understand these things. It’s not rocket science. And God wrote the Bible for us to understand. A lot of people forget that, don’t they?

Todd: Absolutely. And Jeff breezed past one little detail and that’s, he went to Dallas Theological Seminary, which, some of the people he learned under were big hitters in Bible prophecy. And I think, honestly, that’s another reason God teamed us up is because I have no seminary background, just elbow grease. And you’ve got a ton of elbow grease and seminary background. But both of us are professional authors, professional speakers. We actually do know this. We have gotten paid to do it. So we’re technically professionals. And we don’t say that to brag or tout it, but we do want you to know we’re not fly by the night Bible prophecy guys, making this podcast in our mama’s basement. We really have paid our dues. We really know what we’re talking about.

Todd: And throughout this, this is our promise to you, throughout these episodes, we will try to be really clear where the Bible is crystal clear on elements of Bible prophecy and areas where it’s a little bit more subjective or good Bible prophecy teachers may disagree slightly on certain things. So we’ll try to point those things out. But I just wanted to mention that, and reiterate what Jeff said is that you can figure this out. So Jeff, let me ask you this. Who do you think is behind the fact that so many people think revelation and eschatology and Bible prophecy is confusing, scary and irrelevant?

Jeff: Yeah. Well, you go back to the very first book of the Bible and there’s a character in there named Satan. And he’s there-

Todd: I’ve heard of him.

Jeff: Yeah, heard of him. And the first thing that he does to mankind is to tell them a lie about what God has said. In other words, he lied about God’s word. He gave them misinformation about what God says. And I think today Satan could do one or two things with the Bible. He would, A, he’d try to keep you from the Bible. And B, if you’re getting into the Bible, he would try to mislead you in some way. And I think there’s a lot of white noise, if you will, in the world of Bible prophecy and so there’s a lot of books out there. I mean, go to Amazon, just type in prophecy, boom, here comes this hundreds of books.

Jeff: So you got to know, how do I know which ones are kind of legit, which ones are predicting blood moons are going to fall on the earth and that kind of stuff? And so we need to have some clarity. And I think that clarity is in scripture. I mean, we have some really great guidelines in the Bible. And part of what the Prophecy Pros podcast wants to do is we want to equip people, encourage them. We want to give them inspiration really to live. It’s really where it boils down to. I mean, prophecy is not just for information, it’s for transformation. It’s there to drive away fear and to replace it with faith and to give people hope and confidence in these perilous times that we’re living in. So that’s really part of the impetus, really part of the boost that we want to communicate to people, and even broadcasting this to them.

Todd: Absolutely. Personally, I’ve noticed that studying the Bible through the lens and through the backbone of scripture of Bible prophecy, it’s almost like you have a pair of infrared goggles on that you can see things you never saw before. You see how intricately connected the Bible is from cover to cover and that’s the beauty of Bible prophecy. It touches on every area of theology, every key person or figure in the Bible ties back to Bible prophecy. Actually, this year I’m going through my Bible. I’m in Genesis and Exodus now, highlighting original prophecy and when it’s fulfilled with different colors, and literally every single page, there’s prophecy all throughout scripture. So it’s not a fringe topic, I guess is what I’m saying.

Jeff: It’s not. In fact, it’s very interesting that when Paul wrote his letter to the Thessalonians, in verse Thess two, he wrote to them because some of the false teachers were entering in to the church and teaching them things about the end times that were not true. And so Paul came in and said, “Hey, I don’t want you to be disturbed in your faith. I don’t want you to have anxiety about the future,” that kind of thing. A lot of Christians do when it comes to Bible prophecy, they have this anxiety about themselves. And yet he says, “I don’t want anyone to deceive you.” In fact, it’s very interesting because he says over in verse five of chapter two, he says, “Do you not remember that while I was with you, I was telling you these things?” Which tells us that Bible prophecy was a part of Paul’s curriculum that he did and church planting.

Todd: For new believers.

Jeff: For brand new believers. Yeah, because I mean it’s just a part of everything has eschatology, which is a study of the end times is part of understanding who God is and what God wants us to do. And he had previously written to the Thessalonians in chapter four verse Thess four, he says, “I don’t want you to be uninformed about these things.” And I find Todd is, as I travel around, I know you do too. A lot of Christians will come up and say, “I’ve never heard any of this before.” Because either my pastor hasn’t preached on it or, I haven’t read anything about it. And so there’s a lot of not just misinformed information but lack of information about Bible prophecy and so part as we go on in the months and years as we do this thing, we want to give a lot of information. Like I said before, in a way that you can take, there are tools that we’ll be giving you, you can take these tools and your life can be transformed. So I think that’s one of the things that the Prophecy Pros podcast is going to do.

Jeff: Keep you from misinformation, give us information, keep you from being misled and to give you hope and confidence.

Todd: Absolutely. Beautifully put and I’m really glad you brought up first and second Thessalonians because I would challenge our listeners to read that now because like you said, that was Paul’s believers one on one class. He was only with them three or four weeks when he planted the church. But he explained the rapture. He explained the second coming. And really what he teaches there is that the second coming or our rapture are our bodies being saved and resurrected is part of our salvation. So a lot of times in churches we’ll teach about salvation spiritually, which is important. Being born again, that’s where we you cross that line of faith, but also part of our salvation is our physical salvation and our future hope that all of this is going somewhere.

Todd: And I think in the past maybe 40 or 50 years, there’s been a lot of people obviously from the Jesus movement in the 70s people saying the Lord is going to return soon. And of course left behind series in the 90s all amazing things, and I should mention Late, Great Planet Earth in the 70s was what the bestselling book for like 10 years or something like that.

Jeff: It was.

Todd: So a lot of Christians have said, “All right, they’ve been saying that forever.” But really it’s been 40 or 50 years. God is trying to get people’s attention that we’re in the last days and we’ll talk about reasons why that is, biblical reasons why we believe we’re in the waning era of the church age, but for today we really just wanted to encourage them to kind of getting the overview of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and know that they can understand Bible prophecy and it’s not a fringe topic.

Todd: It’s something that every believer, I believe should study. And it brings your faith to life like never before.

Jeff: It really does Todd. And, the Bible is written in such a way to give us that kind of awakening as it were. I mean, you talk about it’s been 40-50 years, but sometimes someone who’s in a deep sleep takes a little while to wake up. I got sometimes even with our own lives or my own life, he has to tap me on the shoulder. Sometimes he has to shake me by the shoulders to get my attention. If you think about this, people, you think about someone’s last words for they die or for they go off, whatever, are the most important words sometimes and you’re thinking about God could’ve ended the Bible any way he wanted to.

Jeff: He could’ve just said, “Hey guys, love each other. It’s all good. See you later.” But God ended his written revelation to mankind or specifically to the church with a book about prophecy. And so that must be something that is important. It’s kind of like, these are your marching orders until I come again, here’s what I want you to end on. And so that’s a whole book there. And so I think that tells us something about the priority of prophecy, about just the importance of it in our daily Christian lives. And again, to make sure that we don’t avoid it. I growing up, I went to my grandmother’s house often, there was this one room of the house where she would never let anybody go into. And I never really understood why, but there were tons of grandkids around.

Jeff: So now I know why her China was in there and all of a sudden, “Stay out of that room.” But I think a lot of Christians look at Bible prophecy and specifically revelation, like that room, it’s like it’s locked, it’s only for grandma.

Todd: it’s off limits.

Jeff: It’s off limits, man. You don’t touch it, and we want to help people touch it. We want to help people open that door, walk into that room, explore, see what’s going on and enjoy what God has for us there.

Todd: Amen. The analogy I like to use is that not reading the book of revelation is like go into your favorite action movie and leaving before the ending and you don’t even know how it ends. And God is a story teller. I mean, he loves story.

Todd: He uses it all throughout scripture. So the whole Bible is written as this one mega story. So we can’t skip out on the, you know, why we pay our money at the movies and then walk out before the endings.

Jeff: Absolutely. And also just to consider some 28% of the Bible, was prophetic when it was written. So I mean that’s a fourth of the Bible. You take that away and you’re gutting the scripture there.

Todd: Absolutely.

Jeff: And it’s throughout the entire Bible. It’s not just one book of the Bible. So we’re going to discuss all those topics. We’re going to get into that and we want to answer people’s questions as well. Sending your questions and we’re going to get some responses to those things. And because there are things that you’re interested in, people come to me, they send us emails saying, “Hey, what about this?”

Jeff: “What does this mean?” And that’s why we’re here to help answer those questions, dispel those fears so we can move forward with faith and confidence.

Todd: Absolutely. And a passion that you and I both have and have had for a long time is reaching the next generation with this message. A lot of people, especially the younger generations, millennials, Gen Z, whole nine yards, even Gen X’s, our generation have not heard this message. So we’re really trying to package it, so to speak, in a way like missionaries that go on the field and speak the language of the people that they’re trying to reach. We’re trying to, that’s what we do with our books. That’s what we’re doing this podcast. So I would just say to our listeners, if you know anybody who you think would not be interested in Bible prophecy, but this might get their attention, please share the information about this and, and we’d love for them to listen as well.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Todd: Well, I think that’s about all we got for this episode, man. Is there anything else you want to share, Jeff?

Jeff: No, I’m just really excited. I mean, that’s really the main point. I’m so pumped about what God’s going to do through this and the people that it’s going to be reached through it. Just from us having this conversation and really bringing you into the conversation and helping our listeners understand, hey, you’re a part of this and we do want to hear from you, but most of all, we want to be here to serve you, to help you, and to cheer you on in your faith with some great stuff from Bible prophecy.

Todd: That’s right.

Jeff: Okay, Todd, so how can people find us? Contact us? What’s the info?

Todd: All right. The simplest way to find that information about us is just to go to prophecyprospodcast.com and there you can find all the information about Jeff’s ministry, my ministry, our books, podcasts, everything else you want to know will all be stored at prophecyprospodcast.com.

Jeff: Awesome.

Jeff: Hey, for more resources and show notes, how to contact us, how to ask questions, go to prophecyprospodcast.com. Hey, we’ll see you next episode or maybe not, maybe we’ll see you in the air.