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![[S1E1 - Who Are the “Prophecy Pros”.mp3]]
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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?”
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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?
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Jeff: And I think Bible prophecy has a lot to say about that.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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-
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Todd: I’ve heard of him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Todd: For new believers.
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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.
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Jeff: Keep you from misinformation, give us information, keep you from being misled and to give you hope and confidence.
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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.
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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.
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Jeff: It was.
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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.
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Todd: It’s something that every believer, I believe should study. And it brings your faith to life like never before.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Todd: it’s off limits.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Todd: Absolutely.
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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?”
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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.
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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.
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Jeff: Absolutely.
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Todd: Well, I think that’s about all we got for this episode, man. Is there anything else you want to share, Jeff?
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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.
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Todd: That’s right.
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Jeff: Okay, Todd, so how can people find us? Contact us? What’s the info?
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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.
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Jeff: Awesome.
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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.
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URL: https://prophecyprospodcast.com/s1e2/
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![[S1E2 - The Relevancy of Bible Prophecy.mp3]]
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Jeff: I’m Jeff Kinley of the Prophecy Pros Podcast, along with Todd Hampson, and Todd, hey, why are we doing this? I mean, what’s the so-what of the Prophecy Pros Podcast?
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Todd: Yeah, that’s what most people want to know, is what’s the practical relevance of it. So what? What’s the big deal? And that’s what we’re going to talk about with you for a few minutes today.
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Jeff: Todd, what I found, and I know you see this too as you travel around, is that people avoid Bible prophecy for a lot of different reasons, and some of them you can really understand why they do it. And some of the reasons that I have encountered as I’ve traveled around is that people just don’t even know about Bible … They don’t even know it’s a thing.
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Jeff: They don’t even know it’s in the Bible, it’s kind of like they don’t know that they don’t know. And so, part of what we want to do is to help kind of dispel some of those … Not ignorance, but just some of that lack of information that’s out there.
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Jeff: The other thing is that a lot of people don’t really hear it taught in their churches, and so, for that reason, they’re not getting it when they go to church, and that type of thing. But I think too, is people have said to me, “Isn’t prophecy just for really learned people? Don’t you have to go to Seminary to understand prophecy?”
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Jeff: So what I like to say is that prophecy is not just for PhDs or what I call PnTs, the Prophecy Nerd Types, you know? Those kind of people who just-
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Todd: That would be us.
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Jeff: That would be us a little bit, yeah, okay. We’re nerds, we’re geeks, we admit it. But that’s kind of the whole thing, it’s that it’s not just for those people, but it’s written for … The Bible’s written for the average person, the average Christian. But I think a lot of times too, people avoid Bible prophecies because, I mean, it does require a little bit of study.
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Jeff: Think about it, they call it bible study for a reason. But to understand really anything in depth in the Bible, you have to do a little bit of research, a little bit of study, you have to get into the Scripture a little bit more … And it’s not HTML code. You’re not writing this hidden Hammurabi’s code kind of thing from the Egyptians or whatever.
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Jeff: But I think too, people have said to me, “Jeff, Revelation’s scary to me. I don’t want to face that.” Maybe they’ve seen apocalyptic movies and that kind of stuff, which we’re going to a whole episode, by the way, on just Hollywood’s obsession-
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Todd: Absolutely.
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Jeff: I can’t wait to talk about that with you. But there are a lot of difficult truths, obviously, when you face the End Times and that type of thing. But God didn’t write prophecy to scare us, He wrote is to comfort us, to let us know that He’s in charge, He’s got a plan, He’s got this thing. But many other reasons why people don’t study Bible prophecy, another thing too, is that people, “Well, there’s some conflicting views on Bible prophecy.”
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Jeff: We’re going to talk about those views, and one of the things that I’m looking forward to, Todd, is to lay out some of the different interpretations that people have on the End Times, and talk about some strengths of different views, but to let people really make up their own minds, and study the Scripture for yourself.
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Jeff: And a couple of other quick reasons is that I think people seeing … seeing that prophecy is sort of foggy, it’s far-off, it’s Sci-fi, and I like to say it’s sort of a mishmash of Interstellar, The Book of Eli, Mad Max, and The Walking Dead. It’s like all of those kind of put together, whoa. It’s a little bit intense there.
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Todd: That’s right.
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Jeff: But again, it’s something that we can handle. And I think finally, the thing that people really want to know more than anything else is, so what? What difference does it make to my life?
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Todd: Right.
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Jeff: Because in the end, we’re people on this earth, we’re Christians, we’re following Jesus. We want to live for God. So how does prophecy help me live better for God? And that’s one of the payoffs that we really want to present with the Prophecy Pros Podcast.
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Todd: Absolutely man, beautifully put. I mean, it’s not a pie in the sky, we’re up in our ivory tower just studying random obscure bits of Scripture. And I think for our generation, or for most Christians that I talk to, their connotation of Bible prophecy is a dude on the corner with a sandwich board and a bullhorn screaming at you that the end is coming.
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Jeff: Yeah.
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Todd: And like you said, there’s different views, there’s fights and arguments, and all this stuff muddies the waters a little bit. And I believe, and we talked about this a little bit in Episode One, that the enemy’s done a great job of getting … of muddying the water and getting people’s eyes off of Scripture.
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Todd: And like you said, it does take study, but it’s a study that’s worth doing. It’s interesting to me that the Bible, like a child can understand salvation. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you’ll be saved.” Most of my kids came to the Lord when they were really young. First grade, second grade, that kind of thing.
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Todd: But when it comes to deeper things of theology, or especially eschatology in the End Times and Bible prophecy, like you said, you got to roll your sleeves up a little bit. But it’s an amazing journey, and that’s what we’re trying to show people, is it’s not a boring, dry study. It is something that is extremely relevant to how you live day-to-day.
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Todd: It impacts how you feel, it impacts how you think, it impacts how you look at the world. It impacts what you live for. It really gets your mind off of the things of the world, and onto Christ. And we also talked in Episode One about how Paul introduced the whole concept of the Second Coming to early believers, as part of their Believers 101 class.
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Todd: But also, First and Second Testaments and he talked a lot about basically working hard while you’re here, and being a witness every which way you can, but at the same, anticipating and looking forward to the Lord’s return. And we’ve kind of lost that art. We’re so focused on things today and what we’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis, that we’re forgetting to look for the Lord.
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Todd: And what you and I want to show in this podcast today is that there are practical, really so what things that have to do with studying Bible prophecy, things that affect us in a very real way. What are one or two of the key ways you see a study of Bible prophecy impacting us in a practical way?
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Jeff: Well, I find it very interesting, Todd, that in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, which is the Paul book about prophecy, that he begins the whole book, in Verse 3, he says, “Blessed are those who hear these words and who heed them.” And in fact, that’s the only book in the entire Bible that promises a specific blessing to people who engage the words of God in this thing.
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Jeff: Of course, the word of God gives us blessings all over, but God wanted us to do that. He wants us to get into the words of the prophecy, and so, when we do that, there’s a practical benefit that comes to us from doing that, and I think one of them is, it lets us know what’s going to happen in the world. That’s kind of like, if you know something is going to happen, you can prepare for it, or you can avoid it, or whatever.
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Jeff: And I think one of the things that God does with prophecy is that He kind of lays the map out. In fact, think about this Todd, God did that in the Old Testament, when He laid out the map for the Messiah and all the prophecies concerning Jesus’ First Coming, they knew what to expect. And of course, they were … A lot of them missed it, because they were misinterpreting or focusing on the wrong things.
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Jeff: But that’s why, all the more reason why we should make sure that we know what God says about the future, so that we, when things come into our world, we can go, “Hey, how does that jive with Scripture? How does that mix up with that?”
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Todd: Yeah, it gives you a blueprint. I mean, it really does give you kind of a roadmap of what to expect, so that when you see things happening in the world, and we’ll talk about some very specific things in future podcasts, but when you see things happening in the world, you can see how it’s lining up with Bible prophecy. And I love that you pointed out Revelations 1:3, or Revelation 1:3. It’s the only promise, like you said, in Scripture, that, “If you read this, you will be blessed.”
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Todd: And it’s the one book that Satan seems to be able to get people’s eyes off of. And also, just naturally as humans, we have an innate need to understand our origins and where we’re going, and Genesis and Revelation give us the answer to both of those things. I mean, if you knew anybody who was adopted, a child, or anything like that, adopted children still want to know about their natural roots.
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Todd: “Where did I come from?” They want to know who their natural parents were and all that kind of stuff. And just like that, we want to know where we came from, so there’s a direct connection between Genesis and Revelation, and there’s a thread of prophecy that connects those two.
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Todd: And one thing we should point out too that just hit me is that the Bible is the only book that has fulfilled Bible prophecy as a proof for-
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Jeff: Yes.
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Todd: And that claims to be the word of God. The Quran doesn’t claim to be the word of God, no Hindu or Buddhist writing claims to be the word of God, it’s just philosophy, or in the case of Islam, they say it’s the words of a prophet, and then they have some teaching materials. But Scripture is alone in any book of the world that claims to be the word of God, and backs it up with very specific, 100% fulfillment track record of fulfilled Bible prophecy, so that should get everyone’s attention.
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Todd: And I found there are multiple practical ways that Bible prophecy impacts our lives. The three that stand out to me the most, that are kind of … There’s several within these three, but discipleship, Evangelism, and developing a biblical worldview.
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Todd: Personally, I have grown probably more than any other time in my life from studying Bible prophecy, because when you get God’s word into you, you can’t help but change. And also, when you sense the relevance of God’s word and the fact that the Lord is returning at some point, it gives us a sense of urgency and a sense of, “I want to live with more purity, I want to live with more purpose and passion and intensity, and I want to make sure I’m doing what God’s called me to do. I don’t want to waste any time.”
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Todd: And then, on the Evangelism side, the more we get our mind off of the world and onto the fact that the Lord’s returning at some point, and that all this is heading somewhere, it lights a fire under us to evangelize, to tell other people about Jesus. We want them to be with us, and it lights a fire there, and then developing a biblical worldview.
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Todd: When you study Bible prophecy, it touches on all aspects of Scripture. We talked about that a little bit in the last episode, but it really gives you a biblical worldview. So when you see crazy stuff going on in the news, and screaming talking heads at each other, you can make sense of it. “Okay, this is what’s going on here.” There’s a biblical worldview that we can look, it’s a grid we can look at the world with, that makes sense of a lot of things and gives us a lot of clarity.
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Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about just the Bible’s accuracy through prophecy, I think prophecy is an incredible apologetic for our time today, because people want to know real answers. They want to know, “Give me something solid, don’t just tell me to have faith. Give me something solid.” And that’s what the Bible does.
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Jeff: If we look at all the prophecies, I mean, the over 300 prophecies fulfilled in Jesus, from just His messianic prophecies and the chances of that happening is like one in 48 …
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Todd: Yeah.
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Jeff: A hundred thousand degrees. It’s like so incredibly ridiculous that it’s an unmistakable proof that He is the Son of God. Well, Bible prophecy is just like that too, and every single prophecy about Christ’s First Coming was fulfilled literally and exactly the way God said it would.
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Jeff: And I think of it this way, I kind of think in terms of sports or whatever. It’s like if you had a guy who was batting 1,000, like every time he got at the plate, he got a hit, get a home run, so like … That guy’s getting drafted, okay?
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Todd: That’s right.
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Jeff: Or some guy who just nails three-pointers from La La Land.
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Todd: Yeah.
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Jeff: It’s like, “Dude, you’re going to play NBA, guarantee, all the time.” So, that’s the way the Bible is, it has proved itself time and time again from an archeological standpoint, from a prophetic standpoint, from a literary standpoint. I mean, the Scripture stands. So now, here we are, in the days in which we live, with all these prophecies about what’s going to happen.
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Jeff: And some of them have already happened in our age, some of them are in the process of coming together. We’re going to talk about all those prophecies on this podcast. But what are some of the prophecies that we see coming together? So those are the kind of things that I think even a skeptic has to go …
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Todd: Exactly.
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Jeff: “I don’t know that I believe yet, but that’s very interesting.”
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Todd: Yeah.
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Jeff: That is like these nine prophecies have all come true, and there’s a 10th one. So why should I not believe the 10th one’s going to happen? So those are some of the things that we want to point out in terms of the benefits. And I have to say one more thing too, is that for someone who loves God and loves Jesus and loves His word, engaging in prophecy just really makes you delight more in the Bible.
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Jeff: I tell you, I have underlined so much of my Bible, and I always have done that, but it’s just the idea of, “Man, God, your word is just, I mean, it’s jumping off the page.” I mean, it’s just in full HD, 4K, everything, because of what we’re seeing happening in our world right now. So there are tons and tons of more benefits to Bible prophecy, those are just some of them off the top of our heads.
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Jeff: And that’s probably what we want more than anything else for this podcast, is for people to say, “Man, you’ve impacted me in such a way that I feel like I can know, and I can live.” And we say that, “Learn it, live it.” Right?
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Todd: That’s right. Learn it, live it. And you’re exactly right. I mean, God wants us to love His word in that way, and be impacted in that way. In one of my books, I use the analogy of a couple of parents who’re about to have a baby and somebody gives them a baby book, and in the baby book is every key detail of that baby’s life from birth to college, all the key milestones, the high points, the low points.
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Todd: And at first, they just think it’s kind of a gag gift, but after the first couple years and every single thing that they said was going to happen to that baby in the first two years happens, it starts to get their attention. Then, by the time they get to high school and college, and they’re like, “Okay, he’s going to college exactly where they said,” and all these details, it starts to get your attention, it starts to really … You start to respect it and understand it more.
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Todd: and that’s another thing we really want to challenge people to do, like you said, it’s just to know that fulfilled Bible prophecy should be such an attention-getter, even if someone’s … And I pray that there are people listening to this podcast who don’t know the Lord, who think that the Bible’s a book of fairy tales. Please, test it for yourself.
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Todd: Look at some of these prophecies, like Jeff said, over 300 of just the first birth of Christ, First Coming. There’s even things on our day, Israel becoming a nation again in 1948, every Old Testament prophet, except for Jonah, predicted that Israel would become a nation again in the last days, in the End Times, so … And we’ll talk about that a lot as time goes on, but there are several things like that, kingdoms that Daniel talked about, and four successive kingdoms that Daniel predicted before they happened that came to pass exactly like they did, and so many other things.
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Todd: In other words, it’s not just like self-fulfilling prophecies or prophecies that were fulfilled a year later. These are, we’re talking 15, 2,000, 2600 years later, very specific, very detailed prophecies being fulfilled. And again, that shouldn’t give us a dry passion to read the Word, but as we get into it, like you said, you just bump into hidden gems, and you …
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Todd: The Bible says that God’s word is alive and active. It does something to us when we engage with it, so the more we engage with it, the better.
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Jeff: Amen. And those kind of questions that we’ve just kind of brought up right now, there are going to be questions that our listeners will want answers to. And one of the ways that they can get those answers is to contact us. So how do people contact us and ask us questions about Bible prophecy?
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Todd: Yes. We definitely want to hear from you, because we don’t want to just shoot in the dark. We think we know what questions you might have, but we want to know for sure, so we see this as a conversation, and we invite you to submit your questions. And you can find out all the information you need about us on prophecyprospodcast.com. And there, you can post questions, you can find information about Jeff’s ministry, my ministry, anything you’d want to know about this podcast and what we do.
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Jeff: And I’d say one more thing. We’re taking this Prophecy Pros Podcast thing on the road, man.
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Todd: Yes.
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Jeff: Yeah. So we’re coming to a town near you, hopefully, doing what we call the Daniel Project. And just in a nutshell, Todd, what is the Daniel Project, and what do we hope to accomplish with people?
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Todd: So the Daniel Project is kind of a one-day event geared towards Millennials and Gen Z, but of course, everybody’s welcome, but we’re trying to really talk about Bible prophecy in a way that helps them know how to live in a post-Christian culture, just like Daniel did. He lived in a pagan culture, but he still lived for the Lord, and also, there’s a ton of Bible prophecy in the Book of Daniel.
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Todd: So we’re going to talk about practical ways to live in today’s world, and study Bible prophecy in a way that makes it relevant and real to you.
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Jeff: Absolutely. Daniel did … He lived in some challenging times, right? And so are we. We’re in some really challenging times, much like Daniel, much like the early Church, and a lot of Christians are like, “Man, I’m being swept out to sea. What’s going on here? So how do I do it?” Daniel Project is going to do that, and in fact, we’re getting ready to do that with about 600 high school students here soon.
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Jeff: And so, this is going to kind of be our test market. It’s going to be exciting to see what happens, but yeah, the Daniel Project, you can get all the information on the podcast’s website.
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Todd: Yeah, so stay tuned, and go to prophecyprospodcast.com for everything about us.
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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.
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