Are These the End Times?: A Conversation with W. Robert Godfrey, Burk Parsons, and Cornelis Venema
The 69-minute discussion was excerpted; the final 27 minutes are posted below. Topics in that portion include:
- Believers who have ‘fallen asleep’ in the Lord
- The rapture
- Millennial views
- Should believers study the book of Revelation?
Are These the End Times?: A Conversation with W. Robert Godfrey, Burk Parsons, and Cornelis Venema:
HIGHLIGHTS points; more like an overview to provide a glimpse of contents of message:
- Where are those saints now, who have ‘fallen asleep’ (died) in the Lord? Cornelis Venema explained
- A ‘soul-sleep’ doctrine is not biblical; it is described as like a night’s sleep, wherein one does not have awareness of what transpired
- 2 Cor. 5, when Paul speaks of the believer who dies, departs from this body and ‘goes home’ to be with the Lord; similar to Philippians 1, ‘to live is Christ…’
- Then, from Revelation 6, the believers crying from under the altar, “How long…”
- The classic view of the church has been that the believer will have a conscience awareness of the Lord, but he/she will be incomplete until the day of resurrection
- “Sleep” is euphemistic language as in the following verse:
- Rev 14:13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”
- NOT annihilation, or the ceasing to be – such teaching is not biblical: consider:
- Luke 23:42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
- Luke 23:46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”
- That is, there is an intermediate state of being, better than life in the body, but not as good as life in a new resurrection body…
- Burk Parsons explains ‘going home to be with the Lord;’ …the great hope…
- Eschatology, RAPTURE:
- What is it? [discussion began around the 8-minute point of excerpt]
- 1 Thessalonians 4: identified by Dr Venema as the chief passage on the rapture
- He stated that like rapture described by the philosophy of dispensationalism [these men hold to the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation]
- Dispensationalism’s interpretation of Daniel 9 passage…
- Dr Venema challenges readers to carefully consider 1 Thes 4 passage – Paul is answering a question that concerned the Thessalonians about believers who had fallen asleep before the coming of the Lord
- He looked at the underscored words in the following passage, explained them and noted what Dispensationalists say about those chief points:
- 1 Thessalonians 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
- Meeting the Lord: like in the book of Acts, when one they met a guest who was approaching the city and gave them the keys to the city
- Christ is coming to the earth. Paul says in verse 17 above, that after MEETING the Lord, they will be forever with Him
- Forever is not a 7-year period; or such a period prior to a 1000 year period…
- Also, the rapture will not be a silent event, see above scriptures about the sound of the trumpet of God; and the voice of the archangel
- Old Testament reference to how God called His people with the sounding of the ram’s horn
- The assembly of God’s people in the above passage is at the threshold of the final state
- Burk Parsons added some remarks about the rapture
- There will be an anti-Christ
- Robert Godfrey: commented on how Dispensationalist interpretation of scripture was seen to be the only biblical interpretation…
- Read cited scriptures by Dispensationalists in context…
- Eschatological views: beginning at 16-minute mark
- Different schools of thought on Millennial views explained by Godfrey: Pre, post, A-millennial
Link to full discussion (14 minutes of music on front of video with 69 minutes of discussion):
Link to Ligonier panel discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUdHKK-QlTo