Prophecy conferences? Where are they? Biblical teaching on prophecy? Why aren't we hearing it? The whole field of eschatology, where'd it go? Better yet, why did it leave the building?
Listen to one pastor when he's asked about why he doesn't say anything about prophecy: "People ask me why I don't preach more on prophecy.
I say, 'Why? Nobody knows. I
could get up here and make some good guesses but they'd all be speculation.
Jesus said, 'Nobody knows when it's going to happen.'” (Rick Warren)
But prophecy doesn't have
to be speculation. One quarter to one-third of the pages of the Bible are on
prophecy; teaching prophecy is part of preaching the whole counsel of God. People who are asking about prophecy are asking about the rapture, God's future for Israel, the Great Tribulation, the anti-Christ, and the aspects of the millennial kingdom. Those knowledgable aren't asking him to set a day, month, and year for any of those.
The truth is that he, like a host of other pastors, avoid prophecy. The cause of that avoidance appears to lie deeper. Let's examine why.
To teach prophecy would mean that their sermons wouldn't lead to touchy-feely-all-is going-to-come- up-roses-presentations. That's because prophecy tells us that world conditions are going to get worse, much worse (II Tim. 3:13). Prophecy tells us that the world is going to grow progressively more and more hostile to the faith and those who hold it, hostile to the point of "If they hated Me (Christ), they will hate you." Prophecy tells us that the church will not emerge triumphant.
And to teach those things would be the death knell of what Warren has proposed in his "PEACE plan." The PEACE plan is his call for a billion people from the churches to unite to bring an end to various "giants," those problems so complex and ingrained that "even the United Nations can't solve them, but the church united can." Really?
Two of those giants the UN can't solve are poverty and ignorance. But, to borrow the words of a famous politician, "Yes, we [in this case the untied church with the PEACE plan] can!" Under the PEACE plan, the church can do eliminate those giants from the face of the earth with its billion slingshots. But check out Matthew 26:11.
But biblical prophecy says, "No you can't." Prophecy tells us that the church will sink into apostasy. Prophecy says that only the Second Advent of Jesus Christ will bring about that kind of environment, it also tells us that no human government, no election, and certainly not the church will do so.
Warren and others like him are presenting the church as the answer to solve the world's problems; the Bible tells us that without Jesus Christ's coming back to
the earth there will be no answer to these problems, they'll only increase.
In spite of all the pep rallies to whip up the troops by well-known pastors, the church has no command to transform the world or even to try to transform the world Such pep rallies calling on believers to get there and change the world may get the troops all fired up for an hour or two but then, when the pulsating music and the sermons are over and the Christian is facing the fallen world, the reality hits: we're not going to reverse the curse. There's no way for the church or a government to get us back to Eden.
Now we can see why any pastor who falls in line with the PEACE plan won't teach prophecy: it doesn't fit with the plan, in fact, it's diametrically opposed to the plan. Prophecy doesn't jive with rah-rah-feel-good-and-get-out-there-and-change-the-world-sermons. One thing is for certain: if they won't listen to the Bible, they will one day have to listen to the impact of reality hitting them in the face and the PEACE plan will wither and die. And within a short time, people will be asking, "The PEACE plan, what was that?"
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