Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Tommy Ice: Imminency, Urgency, The Rapture & Eternal Perspective

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Tommy Ice: Imminency, Urgency, The Rapture & Eternal Perspective · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic, off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Fiorazo.
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  Hey friends, family and Christ, brothers and sisters, thank you so much for tuning
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  in.
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  For sharing the podcast, you are in for a treat today.
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  We've got Tommy Ice from the pre-trib research center.
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  He is the executive director of the pre-trib research center.
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  And he founded the center in 1994 with Dr. Tim Lahey to research, teach and defend the
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  pre-tribulational rapture and related Bible prophecy doctrines.
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  Tommy Ice is authored or co-authored over 30 books.
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  He's written hundreds of articles.
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  He's a frequent conference speaker.
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  In fact, I signed just recently about a year ago or less at a conference.
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  I think it was in the spring of this year in Appleton, Wisconsin.
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  He's served as a pastor for 17 years and Dr. Ice has a BA from Howard Payne University.
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  And I also, he graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary, a PhD from Tindale Theological
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  Seminary and has done post-doctoral work at the University of Wales in the UK.
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  He lives in Texas with his wife, actually Illinois, sorry, Illinois with his wife, Janice,
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  and they have three grown sons and nine grandchildren.
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  Brother, I know you've been busy.
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  You've been at this since the 90s and we're going to talk about that on World View Matters.
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  Welcome.
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  Good to see you, Tommy.
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  Thank you.
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  Great to be with you.
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  So what a blessing it is.
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  I'm looking at the what is or the about page on pre-trib.org and what is the pre-trib research
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  center about?
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  And it says in 1991, Dr. Tim Lahabie came concerned about a perceived swaying from the
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  pre-tribulational doctrine and some things never change, Tommy Ice, right?
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  I mean, the swaying has continued to sway.
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  Your thoughts on what has happened really in the church and what you and Dr. Lahabie have
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  been battling all these years?
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  Yeah, I think that within academia, there's been a steep decline in pre-tribulationism and
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  that's one of the main reasons we started our conference, which as I believe it's been
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  noted is our 33rd year coming up and you have with, if I might say this, with the decline
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  of Dallas Seminary, for example, support of pre-tribulationism and the change of that school,
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  which was founded 100 years ago, you have a, as I say, a decline and a move away from
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  pre-tribulationism.
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  And it used to be, for example, every Bible college, first of all, Mr. Moody founded the
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  first one in Chicago in the 1880s and every Bible college in the United States and every
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  major metropolitan area had a Bible college, was dispensational, pre-millennial, pre-tribbed.
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  And many of those have moved away from it and things.
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  And as a result, you know, it's had an impact, especially among trained people, however,
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  I think among laypeople, every church, conservative, liberal, whatever has a pocket of people within
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  that church who believe in the pre-trib rapture and who believe in Bible prophecy and believe
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  in this kind of stuff.
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  And so I don't know that there's been a big decline among the average person in interest
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  in this, but nevertheless, that's why we have the pre-trib research center is to advocate
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  for our position.
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  And we estimate that about 100 books or so have been inspired by people who attend the
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  pre-tribbed study group every year and are involved in our movement.
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  Well, it's interesting that the words sway or swaying away from this doctrine is used
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  there on the website.
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  I think that's a good word.
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  Do you see this as an issue of people just not hearing Bible prophecy at their own
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  churches, pastors not teaching Bible prophecy in the whole council of God?
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  Is that part of the problem?
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  Well, that is part of the problem, but most denominations historically have not taught
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  Bible prophecy.
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  Actually, people might be surprised to know that back after the Civil War in the 1870s,
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  the number one, the largest denomination in America were Presbyterians and our movement
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  developed out of Presbyterianism in the words almost all of dispensational pre-trib people
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  were from a Presbyterian, especially a Calvinistic background.
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  And today, it's almost totally shifted away from that, and so you had in the 1920s moves within
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  the, for example, at Dallas Seminary, which was founded in 1922, 1924 rather, 85% of its graduates
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  went into the Presbyterian church, and at that time, three of the four largest Presbyterian
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  churches in the United States were bastard by dispensationalists, and you've seen them get
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  a got upset, and in the 1940s, they had a study of whether or not dispensationalism
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  comported with the Westminster Confession. Now, no one takes a strict view of Westminster
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  Confession today anymore because of some things that have changed, but the committee didn't say it
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  didn't say it didn't, but it had the effect of saying it didn't, and they started banning Dallas
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  graduates from the Presbyterian church. So you had the most of them then started what's called
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  Bible churches, which you already had that movement going on, like up in Chicago, land in various
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  places, and so many of them took basically their Presbyterian Calvinistic, pre-mill,
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  pre-tribulational views into what's called Bible churches, and even many Bible churches today
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  are starting to go liberal. And so, you know, always like to say water runs down the hill,
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  and you're real hard to keep people on the straightening arrow, and there's been a tremendous
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  decline in academia in the last decade, especially against pre-tribulational teachings.
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  So, why else is this, Tommy? I mean, there are some doctrines that at face on their face,
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  you could read it 1st Thessalonians 4, John 14, other doctrines, other scriptures that you look at,
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  and it seems like you've got to do some theological gymnastics to come against the pre-trib
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  view of the rapture, don't you think? Yeah, well, I think with the rise of the church growth movement,
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  and that began, well, let me back up, you had the Jesus, which I was involved from 68 to 75,
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  and you had approximately, according to historians, 30% of North American hippies got saved
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  during that time, and I wasn't a hippie, but that was pretty much true across the board in the
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  United States, and I took a course at a seminary called History of Revivals in America, and
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  starting in 1609, you had the first revival in the colonies, and pretty much every generation
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  has had some kind of revival, and the last revival was the Jesus movement, and we've gone the longest
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  now without a revival, and as a result, and the Jesus movement, new list to say, was very strong
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  on the preacher's rapture, that it could happen at any moment, and so you have now the longest
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  we've gone without a actual revival in the United States, and it's caused many of us to wonder if
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  this isn't a forte, so the fact that the Lord could come at any moment. Now, globally,
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  you've had tremendous revivals in places that have never had them before, like in certain Islamic
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  countries, and things like this, and so we see the gospel has spread globally like never before,
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  but at the same time in the United States, which was founded definitely as a Christian nation,
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  and has been for hundreds of years, we see us going the same way as Europe. Europe at one time
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  for a thousand years was very strong Christian, and it declined, and so everywhere you've had
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  Christianity dominate a culture, it's always had a period of apostasy and decline, and we appear
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  to be going that way as well. You see it happening in the United States, it's happened where first
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  the Puritans were, and many people believe that the American Puritans were some of the strongest
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  Christians that ever existed, and yet New England, for example, is one of the most apostate places
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  on the planet, and so it's moving westward, and now we see the fact that it's been almost
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  were nine years away from Christ's death in AD 33 of being almost 2000 years ago,
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  and a lot of people believe that history's broken up into 2000 year periods,
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  Abraham's called in the year, about 2000 years after creation, Christ came 4000 years after creation
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  roughly, and so now we're on the verge of the church age being almost 2000 years, and so for a
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  lot of us that, you know, I'm not a date center, although I've written many articles against date
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  setting, because the whole idea is the rapture could happen at any moment. When you have passages
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  that talk about the rapture, every one of those talks about how we're waiting for his son from heaven,
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  for example, passages that talk about the second coming for people that are in the tribulation,
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  they're watching, so passages that talk about the rapture are waiting because there's nothing to look
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  for, we're waiting for his son from heaven, and so now it's been, as I say, nine years short of 2000
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  years, and if you include the tribulation in that, and maybe an interval of time, you know, it's very
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  possible not saying absolutely, you know, that the rapture could happen at any moment.
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  Well, we talked a little bit before we got on the podcast day about the word eminency, and some people,
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  I mean, like the rapture is likely to occur at any moment, or it's impending for 2000 years, as you
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  just explained, it's still imminent, it's still going to happen, but it's just we're not guaranteeing
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  it's going to happen today, tomorrow, we just have to be ready, and waiting. Can you talk to us a little
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  bit about that, and how it's easy to lose a sense of urgency when it seems like on our time frame,
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  in our, according to our clocks, it's been so long, and we're waiting and waiting and waiting, right?
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  Yeah, I've been waiting, you know, I'm in my 70s now, and I thought the rapture's going to happen
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  at any moment. I think I have been married about 52 years, and we thought the rapture would happen
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  before we got married, you know? So obviously it has it, but nevertheless, eminence is the idea
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  that the rapture could happen at any moment. People say Jesus is coming soon, probably, but we don't
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  know that. There's a difference between Jesus is coming soon, which would mean he's got to come say
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  within a certain time frame, whereas eminence means he could come at any moment. And so that term
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  is not really used in the New Testament, but it's a theological term that's derived from a study
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  of passages that talk about how the rapture could happen at any moment, and so they assigned a
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  theological term called eminence to that, that it's eminent, meaning that there are no signs or
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  events that have to happen before the rapture could happen. And so it's been that way since the early
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  church that the rapture is eminent, and it's been eminent for a long time, but you don't have people
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  focusing on the rapture generally down through church history, although we have scholars in our
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  preacher study group that are finding preacher rapture statements all the way back to the 100s.
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  And when we started the organization, you know, one of the, this was the number one claim against
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  preacher Galatialism, that Jay and Darby around the late 18-witties was the first to articulate a
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  preacher rapture. Well, it's up to 60 now. And we had what people forget is there, there are like
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  300, 400 volumes of Greek and Latin writings of the church fathers that have never been translated
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  into English. And we've got scholars studying those, and like I say, we keep coming up, especially
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  in the 1600s and the 1700s. You begin to find among, and that's just English writers, and we
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  really haven't studied other like French or German or stuff like that, of people teaching something
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  very close or similar to a preacher rapture that it could happen at any moment. But we found this
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  in the early church fathers as well. Interesting. We're going to talk a little bit more about this when
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  we come back after we take a brief pause, but Tommy is going to be in Casco, Wisconsin on October 12.
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  We'll talk about that event. When we come back also, we'll tell you when this next
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  pre-trib study group conference is going to be, I'll tell you, it's in December, but we'll give you
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• 16:07
  Friends, if you want to follow us on rumble, we encourage you to do so. It's growing like crazy
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  thanks to, of course, we praise God, of course, but for you for sharing the podcast. So follow us
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  on rumble and also download the free Freedom Project Media app on your iPhone. Our guest today,
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  Tommy Isis with us, and he's the executive director of pre-trib.org, the pre-trib research center.
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  So the event coming up, let's work backwards. Let's go to December and talk about the one in Dallas.
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  You said at first it used to be a closed group. Tommy, when it first started,
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  invitation only and now it's growing and growing and growing. Two things, give us details on the
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  actual conference, but do you think it's because more people are becoming interested in the pre-tribulational
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  doctrine? I do. And many, probably two thirds of the scholars and people like that that came
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  originally have died, you know, because, you know, we've been going over 33 years and we used to
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  have all the great scholars that would come like Ryrie Pentecost. That's why we met in the Dallas
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  Fort Worth area is because we had a tremendous participation from the great scholars from Dallas
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  Seminary. Well, they're all gone pretty much. We did have a few Dallas professors that do come.
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  But nevertheless, this will be December 9 through 11 and this is the lightest on the calendar
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  when it happens because we have to have a weekend between Thanksgiving because otherwise, if you
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  have it right after Thanksgiving, the airfares are doubled. So usually it could be as early as
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  like December 2nd or 3rd depending on the year, but this year it's December 11 through 9 through
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  11th and it starts at 8 in the morning on that Monday, December 9th and it ends at noon on December 11th
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  and that's two and a half days. In each presentation, we have different presenters, is an hour and a half
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  and usually about a little over an hour and then question answers where we interact with what
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  the person was saying. And on Monday night, we have a banquet. In this year's banquet speaker is
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  Carl Brodie, who's pastor of a very large church and satellite churches as well, down in
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  Buford South Carolina and he is a Dallas grad and an amazing guy and he's going to be our banquet speaker.
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  Well, one of our friends of the podcast, a frequent guest and brother Andy Woods. I love him,
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  love his work, his ministry. He's going to be there. I mentioned a few other people and then
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  people can download the brochure at pretrib.org. It's right on the homepage.
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  mention a few other speakers, Tommy. Got Jeff Kenley, Andy Woods. We also have
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  Randall Price, Paul Wilkinson from England, Mike Vlock, Mark Kitchcock. And Mark Kitchcock,
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  nobody's going to talk about yet because he's he's going to be our last speaker and he's waiting
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  to see what the situation is. You mean with the election or what? Well, with whatever is happening,
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  he's going to talk, whatever he thinks is most significant as our last speaker. And so
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  this is two months away. A lot can happen in two months, right? December 9 through 11.
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  Especially with an American election. And you know, about the curve, which is easily the most
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  pivotal election in history, our great country. Wow. I'm thankful that God is in control. We
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  need to do our part, friends, pray, discern, be students with the Bible and vote biblically,
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  but God is in control and his timing is perfect. Tommy, we are also going to be a part of an event
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  coming up in October, October 12th Country Bible Church. It's in Casco, Wisconsin. Jeff,
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  you can go ahead and bring up that flyer for that. There's a phone number on there and you can
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  look up Casco, Wisconsin Country Bible Church. Tommy's going to be talking about Bible prophecy.
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  The Blessed Hope is one of the themes on Bible prophecy, looking for the Blessed Hope, which we
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  all are. Praise God. We have such an amazing, that hope as Hebrews 6, 19 says, it's an anchor
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  to our souls in this crazy, uncertain, unshaken, or un, really, it's a crazy world with a lot
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  of uncertainty. And it is just a bizarre time for people, some are losing hope, but not believers
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  that are anchored to the truth. Tell us a little bit about what you're going to be talking about
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  at the conference. Good. I each have two sessions of 50 minutes each. And I'm going to be,
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  they want me to talk about it, and I will be talking about the all that discourse, Matthew 24
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  and 25. And then that Sunday, I'm going to talk about the preacher of rapture, why the Bible
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  the preacher of rapture, and you're going to be talking about.
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  Yeah, I get to talk about why we still need to just continue to trust God, no matter what happens
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  with the election coming up in November, that he's still in control, but there are signs that we
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  are really, either in the end times or getting close to the end times, that we think of 2nd Peter 3.
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  I'll talk a little bit about that. 2nd Peter's 3 Romans 1, you know, fun places to go. 2nd Timothy,
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  also. It's going to be just an interesting time as we just continue to trust the Lord no matter
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  what happens, but a lot of believers, Tommy are losing heart. And I think in part, I think that's
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  because they maybe lose sight of what the Bible is encouraging them to believe and do. And they're
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  looking at circumstances, maybe they're looking at culture, maybe they're looking at personalities,
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  politics, just give some encouragement to people that might be maybe disheartened by what's going
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  on either around the world or in America. Well, as a believer, we do have the blessed hope,
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  but even if the rapture does not happen in our lifetime, the fact is that this is the worst
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  it's ever going to be for believers, very turn it. And when you get an eternal perspective,
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  you know, 60, 70, 80 years is no big deal from that perspective. Now we're going through,
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  you know, the difficult part, but this is why so much of the Bible talks about future prophecy
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  and probably 55% of that future prophecy, which is a little less than a third of the Bible,
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  hasn't been fulfilled yet. And so just like the book of Daniel, for example, has a lot of future
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  stuff in it, obviously, in the book of Revelation and verses 2 Thessalonians is full of future
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  prophecy events and things like this to give us hope that no matter what we endure now,
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  in the nasty now and now as I like to call it, we have a tremendous future in Christ. And God
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  has to let the age that we're living in the church age end in apostasy. Otherwise,
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  it wouldn't lead to the 70th week of Daniel, the tribulation period, or the rise of the
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  Antichrist. And so we're seeing that Christ, that the God, first of all, Christendom
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  is the largest religion in the world. Christendom means anything related to Christianity,
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  includes the cults, Roman Catholicism and all this kind of stuff, by over half a billion.
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  And so the gospel has spread basically all around the world and is available during the time.
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  It's going to be even greater time after the rapture where you're going to have the spread of
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  the gospel through the 144,000 Jewish witnesses. An angel at the midpoint is going to preach the
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  gospel that says to every person on the planet. And that's why during the second half of the
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  tribulation, the antichrist is going to turn against Israel, which will have been protected
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  during the first half of the tribulation. And that's why she's going to flee to Petra
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  and God's going to supernatural protector. And the nation will be converted to Christ
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  beginning three days before the second coming. And a requirement for the second coming is
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  we see at the end of Matthew 23 where they says, you will not see me again until these
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  same blessed as who comes in the name of the Lord. And that is the condition for the second
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  coming. And so two thirds of the Jews, according to Zachariah 13 are going to be wiped out the
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  unbelieving element. So that by the time you get to right before the second coming, the entire
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  nation will be saved as Romans 11 says, and all Israel will be saved. And they will call the Lord
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  and he will come and rescue them and end the seven year tribulation period and have a 75 day
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  interval that sets up the Millennial Kingdom, which is a warm up for the eternal state. And
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  as the song, amazing grace that when we've been there 10,000 years, we've only just begun.
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  So and that's why knowing prophecy gives you stability to stand up for the Lord in the presence.
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  Amen. As a time because we have a tremendous future.
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  Yes. Yes. Praise God. Tommy, I just want to mention over on your website, the store page,
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  there's some great books available. One of them is the case for Zionism. Why Christians should
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  support Israel. Another one at the pretrib.org store, the truth behind left behind a biblical
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  view of the end times. So many more books at a wealth of knowledge and research and great
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  teaching over there at the store at pretrib.org. Tommy, we'll see you very, very soon, brother.
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  Thanks so much for coming on World of View Matters. It's been a blessing.
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  Sure. Let me just point out they can go and download the videos sessions of our last 19
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  pretrib, Stony Group conferences. Oh my goodness. Tell them what's going to happen here in a
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  few months. Okay. All right. Now that's, where's that on the website, the videos?
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  Okay. Awesome. All right, friends. Just what a blessing. Tommy, we'll see you soon. Thank you
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  for all your work, brother. Thanks. Thanks for your time. Thank you. All right. You're most
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  welcome. All right, friends. Got to move on. But again, it's a December event, December 9 through 11.
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  That's the 2024 pretrib study group conference. Andy Woods, Tommy Ice, Mark Hitchcock,
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  Jeff Kinley, and many more. And then the one in Wisconsin, if you missed that country,
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  Bible church, in Casco, Wisconsin, country, Bible church, that's a October 12th. It's a Saturday
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  all day conference. God bless you. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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  You