Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Brad Reaves: End Times Deceptions & Understanding The Last Days

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Brad Reaves: End Times Deceptions & Understanding The Last Days · 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 Firazzo.
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  Friends, family and Christ, thank you so much for tuning in.
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  God bless you.
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  We've got a new guest coming up.
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  Can't wait to introduce him and he's got a brand new book on deception.
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  We'll get to that in a minute, but I want to mention good news about the World View Matters
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  conference.
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  It's coming up May 1st and 2nd in Green Bay at the Delta Hotel.
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  We are past the 50% mark as far as the registration, the ticket sales.
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  So it's going very, very well.
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  Just thank you for your presence, support on that.
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  And if you have any questions at all, go to WorldviewMattersConference.com.
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  If you have still more questions, just get a hold of us here.
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  So friends, I'm excited to bring in a new guest, Brad Reeves.
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  Dr. Brad Reeves.
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  He's a pastor.
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  An author, a missionary, and prophetic teacher dedicated to equipping the church to stand
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  firm in an age of deception.
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  That's why we love him already.
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  He's the founder of Coming Soon Ministries.
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  And he serves as a senior pastor of Crossway Christian Fellowship in Hagerstown, Maryland.
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  That's crossmycrossway.org.
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  Brad also leads mission work in West Africa.
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  And he worked in law enforcement as a Maryland state trooper.
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  I'd love to get his perspective on a future show on what's going on in America with
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  law and order, immigration, ICE.
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  But that's for a future podcast.
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  He's the author of a great book called The Beast System Unleashed, AI, the anti-Christ
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  and the end times in his brand new book.
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  It's called End Times Deceptions using biblical truth to understand the last days.
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  And that's what we're going to talk about today with Dr. Brad Reeves.
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  Brother, thank you so much for your time.
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  Good to have you on.
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  Well, David, thank you so much for having me on.
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  And I just want to say how much I respect the work you do.
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  And please, keep it up.
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  We need voices like you out there.
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  Thank you, sir.
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  Lord willing, we'll keep it up as long as there's breath in my lungs and, you know, free speech in America.
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  Even if there weren't free speech in America, we must obey God, not man, and keep speaking about
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  the things we have seen and heard, like the Apostles said.
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  But, brother, before we get into your new book, I find your previous book, and we were going
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  to talk about that, talk to us about The Beast System Unleashed.
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  This is fascinating, and I know it's doing very well on Amazon.
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  So talk to us a little bit about that, and then we'll move on to the new one.
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  Well, I wrote The Beast System Unleashed kind of, well, just out of a whim, I just started
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  to have a conversation with AI, chat GPT about what is the connections between artificial
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  intelligence and the emerging coming of artificial intelligence, especially with quantum computing
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  on the verge of being rolled out into a commercial or a setting for public use.
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  What were the implications of this in the forming of the Antichrist system as far as surveillance
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  and the The Beast System that would come about, that Revelation 13 talks about?
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  And it turned into this huge conversation where I was astounded at the level of connectivity
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  that chat GPT was making with Revelation 13, and in some aspects of it, it was gleeful.
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  It was excited about what AI could be doing to bring about The Beast System, the Mark of
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  The Beast, global surveillance, all of this, and it rolls it out just so quickly.
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  And so a lot of some of the book contains that conversation that I had with chat GPT as
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  far as what it was saying, and it goes into a lot of detail about how AI will eventually,
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  according to what it says, be used by a single global dictator to control the masses.
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  And so I decided, hey, this has got to be rolled out even more deeply than just me writing
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  an article or something about it, and it turned into this book.
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  And really David, when I wrote the book, I wrote that book, my first book may I say,
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  and probably a little more than a month, which is pretty remarkable.
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  You know, I've done a lot of writing.
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  It's amazing.
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  My doctorate, I have my doctorate and stuff.
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  So I mean, I've done a lot of writing, but this came so easily.
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  And so I give credit to the Holy Spirit on that and the guidance of the Lord.
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  And he's just blessed the work and it's gotten the attention of a lot of people.
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  It's doing well on Amazon.
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  It's been in the top brackets of some categories at times.
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  You know, how Amazon goes, you're up one day and down the other.
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  But, you know, for a guy that's just, I'm just a pastor.
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  I'm just a guy in a small town in Maryland.
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  And God's taken it and used it and blessed it.
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  And I've received a lot of feedback, a lot of good feedback from people who have appreciated the work.
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  Well, please don't minimize your role as a pastor because there are a lot of pastors
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  and there are way too many pastors of Christian churches who do not uphold the biblical worldview
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  or inarrency or so many other things that are essentials of the faith.
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  And you are part of the remnant in America.
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  And so praise God for your voice and what you're doing.
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  So let's transition out to the new book and deception is rampant.
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  And in fact, at the beginning of this year, and this is not a word from God,
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  but I always sensed this is going to be one of the words for the year for the body of Christ discernment.
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  And I've been saying that since our first show in January this year.
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  So end times deceptions using biblical truth to understand the last days.
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  One of the things you say, you argue that the greatest danger in the last days is not persecution,
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  but deception as biblical discernment is abandoned.
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  Let's just start there, Brad, and your concerns as we move into the book.
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  Well, David, it's not just my argument.
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  It's what the Bible says the end days are going to be like, right?
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  Because in Jesus warns us about this and in the amount all of it this course
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  and in his teachings and parables, he repeats many times throughout his teachings.
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  See to it, you are not deceived.
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  Let no one deceive you.
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  Paul talks about this in his letters to Timothy.
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  He talks about that one of the characteristics of the end times isn't going to be a great revival,
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  but an apostate church, a church that is deceived, heresies.
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  And as you and I both are observing happening in the church, and as you just mentioned,
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  there are so many pastors out there who don't know scripture, who don't understand what prophecy is,
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  what the Bible talks about as the end times.
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  I think you just had David Bowen on your show a couple of weeks go super, super interview.
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  And he outlines this.
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  Two percent of churches are even talking about prophetic events and an age
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  where we are seeing prophecy unfold before us and ways we have never imagined before.
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  You know, 10 years ago, if you had had a describe today's world, no one would believe us.
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  And here we are.
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  We're watching anti-Semitism as our friend Olivier Melnik likes to point out it's
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  on the days of when it was in prior to War War II, we have wars, we have rumors of wars,
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  we have immorality that seems to take charge of morality.
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  There's been this inversion that has happened in our society, and at the same time,
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  the church is ignorant to the very basics of scripture.
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  And one of the things that came out of the B system unleashed was the lack of understanding
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  among people about what the end times are, the very basics of the B system, the mark of the
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  beast. And the realization came to me, David, that a lot of believers don't know scripture.
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  They don't understand these basics. And they're tuning to what I call YouTube,
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  prophets, and so on and so forth that are looking at the world around us and discerning the days,
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  not through the lens of scripture, but through the lens of their own beliefs or their own preferences.
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  By the way, for those of you listening on audio, we're using air quotes on prophets,
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  YouTube prophets. I think I've used air quotes three times already, pastors, Christian churches,
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  prophets. Okay, so we've got video, we've got audio platforms, I have to explain the air quotes,
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  but isn't that sad? And by the way, Barna, Pew, Gallup, all the research, and the surveys,
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  they say the same thing. And here's where we are, the biblical illiteracy, not just of Americans.
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  We can't expect people have never read the Bible to know the essentials or the biblical worldview,
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  but in the church. So, Brad, I know this is slightly off topic, but I want to go there. You're a pastor,
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  you're writing about these things. How do you think we got here? I know it was gradual,
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  where the churches are not up to speed on. I don't want to say the essentials, but things like
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  Bible prophecy and some of the most controversial issues, is it because pastors don't want to
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  address them? Is it because seminaries have changed and they don't teach inerrancy and things
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  like that? Go ahead, your thoughts real quick. Well, yes to both of those. We've watched our
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  seminaries really become dismantled as far as teaching good hermeneutics, good biblical theology,
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  eschatology. I say, and I'm going to lay the blame more so on the seeker sensitive movement.
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  Yes. And admittedly, I'm a pastor that came out of the seeker sensitive movement. I was in
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  a lot of circles. I'm not going to sit here and name names or point fingers, but I was
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  associated with a lot of those guys who in all reality have good intentions, but they're not
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  divinely led. And so the most important thing was build a empire, build a business model.
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  And so what became more important was branding or the bottom line numbers, how many people
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  nickels and noses kind of thing? How many people do you have in your seats? How do you keep them
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  systems? This became more prevalent in the church than teaching scripture. I teach every week
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  verse by verse through the Bible. We're going through the book of Luke right now. And Jesus says
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  some things that in today's world could be pretty inflammatory. But I'm not to apologize for Jesus
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  on to teach what Jesus taught. Amen. And that's not seeker sensitive. And David, I have people that
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  have left my church because I support Israel. I've had people leave my church because I speak
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  on current events and in times. And that hurts. As a pastor, I care for people. I care for the
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  well-being of people. And so when someone says, well, I'm leaving your church because you have a flag
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  an Israeli flag in your sanctuary, that hurts. And Olivia and I have a running tally right now.
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  Kind of sobering, but I'll text Olivia and I'll say, lost another one today.
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  And it's a sad testament that replacement theology has become one of the prevalent
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  theologies in the modern church. That has come out of the seeker sensitive movement because we
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  want to stay neutral. And Jesus never established the church to be neutral. He established the church
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  to be to change the culture, to be salt and light in the world, not to let the world be salt and
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  light in the church. Amen to all that you said, they're Brad. And give me the book chapter in verse
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  on how Christians should be neutral. Or what did you say? How many people
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  did we attract? Or how do we keep them in our churches? Things you will not find in the Bible,
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  right? It's Matthew's, I think it's Matthew 7.7. The most misquoted verse in all the Bible,
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  judge not, let's not be judged, right? And that's what the Christian mantra is supposed to be.
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  And there are people who know no other scripture in the Bible, but they can quote Matthew 7.7 very well.
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  Not in context though, but not in context. Correct. That's part of the problem. That's part of
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  the deception. So that falls in line of what you're writing about. So you do talk about replacement
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  theology and dominion theology, distorting prophecy. You do talk about that in the new book.
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  Before we go on to the next question, do you want to touch on those briefly? You already mentioned
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  replacement theology. Just sad that we've got here, but it's not surprising what the biblical illiteracy
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  is it? It's not. And you know, replacement theology is one of the sad chapters of our church today.
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  And I know that not every church is subscribing than that. And so, you know, I'm not throwing
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  darts. I'm sounding an alarm, so to speak, to say replacement theology is not biblical. You can't
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  read the Bible and come to the conclusion that God has replaced Israel with God has replaced the
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  church. God has replaced Israel with the church. You can't reach that conclusion. You reach,
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  you read a love story of God's covenant with his people and how through his people, the church
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  was born and that love story continues. But the covenant that God made is everlasting.
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  And I also address preterism, which again distorts eschatology in a way that you can't align
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  Bible. You have to take so much allegory and so much license with scripture to reach the
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  conclusions that preterism brings. But there are convincing arguments that if you don't know
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  scripture, you will you will you can come to that conclusion. And this is where I say, you know,
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  there are end time deceptions. People that are very convincing, YouTube profits again,
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  YouTube profits that are very convincing. But at the end of the day, they're not bringing things
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  from a biblical standpoint. They're bringing things from a preferential standpoint, something that
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  sounds like something that connects dots, but these dots were never meant to be connected.
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  And so I wrote this book as an answer to common questions. And I started out with that, but then
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  it turned into, well, let's bring out the biblical outline of what scripture is, what eschatology is,
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  what does the Bible actually say about end times? These aren't my preferences. These aren't my assertions.
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  These are sound biblical doctrines that arose from directly from scripture. And there are so many
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  misconceptions like, you know, the pre millennialism or the rapture arose from a man named Darby.
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  That's not true. And people don't understand this. But someone came along who was very popular
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  that said Darby invented the rapture. And all of a sudden, everybody believes that.
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  It's really sad. We've got to keep things moving for the sake of time, Brad. Is the best place
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  Amazon? Is there a link on your website at coming soon ministries to get the book or do you
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  want to just send people directly to Amazon? What would you like? The best place to go is to
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  look up end times deceptions on Amazon. You can also put my name in Brad Reeves. And I have,
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  you know, that the B system unleashed and a book about the sermon on the mount that came out
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  of a series that we did on the sermon on the mount. And we converted that into a book that's
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  called the greatest sermon ever told. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to move fast here. The book addresses
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  the redefinition of truth in modern evangelicalism. Touch on that briefly, please.
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  Well, you know, truth has become a relative term. And we live in a postmodern society, which means
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  that truth can be held by whoever wants to hold the truth. And that's a far departure from what
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  scripture talks about. Scripture is truth. Jesus said, sanctify them with your truth. Your word
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  is truth and his high priestly prayer. And so what I want is to take people back to the root of
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  all things that that we hold as true as believers. Because if we if we make truth relative,
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  if we make scripture relative, well, then what do we have to hold on to? Because when I open up
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  the word and I look in the word, I find hope, I find healing, I find strength. I'm reminded that
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  there's a God out there that loves us, that sent his son to die for us on our behalf so that we could
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  have our sins forgiven and reconciliation with him. And when when the church departs from standing
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  on the truth of God and standing on the scripture of God is truth, well, then we've tear we've
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  watered down the gospel to to to the point where we have nothing to hold on to.
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  Sad to hear those words, we watered down the gospel that it's not the gospel anymore. It's
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  weakened. It's watered. So talk to us, Brad, about cultural conformity within the church. I mean,
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  this to me, this should be a no brainer, I think of Romans 12 to do not conform to the pattern of
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  this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. But yet, you can see Christians are
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  human. We live in this place called America and there are just a lot of lures and temptations
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  and a lot of believers and some professing believers, but some true believers, it's not difficult to conform
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  to the world, is it? It's not, but, uh, take conforming, not conforming to the world requires taking
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  a stance. And that stance is costly. And Jesus talks about the fact that our following him will
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  cost us something. It was eutric Bonhoeffer, I think, that wrote about the cost of discipleship
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  and costly discipleship. And it's easy to form a religious movement. And this ties back a lot to
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  the secret sensitive movement, doesn't it? Where, you know, we can put on an entertainment show,
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  I can get a guy in skinny jeans to give a 20 minute motivational speech on seven ways to be a
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  better you and send you out the door to beat the Chinese buffet rush. But that's not costly.
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  That's not transformative. That may motivate you. That may get you excited. That may, you know,
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  in getting a little Jesus sprinkled on you may, may, may make you feel good. But to be transformative
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  means that we're going to have to be willing to be counter-cultural. And this is where
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  deception comes into play. Because if, if we're not willing to be counter-cultural, then we're
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  going to be willing to be deceived. And especially in these days, look, we've got, we've got
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  Iran right now, as you and I are talking, that is being overridden thankfully, I would say,
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  by the US military and the Israeli military. Meanwhile, they're sending ballistic missiles by the
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  hundreds every day into Israel, but also their neighbors. This is prophetic news. Yes.
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  And it may not be popular news. It may not be people, you know, no one's cheering for war.
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  But we have to be able to discern and understand this has some things of prophetic significance
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  that we need to be aware of. As I said earlier in the show, Jesus called us to be aware of what's
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  going on. Not to panic. He said, don't be alarmed in Matthew 24, 44. See to it that you're not alarmed.
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  But look at what's going on and be aware. And this is, if you don't know the scriptures,
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  if you don't know the very basics of eschatology and the end times theology as I outline in the book,
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  end times deceptions, then you're going to not be able to recognize when God is moving his
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  prophetic hand and God is shaping the nations. Because, you know, the hope in all this, David,
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  is that the world isn't falling apart. God isn't shaking the nations right now to cause
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  harm. He's putting things together so that the kingdom of Christ can come and be realized. He's
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  coming. All this is happening really because Jesus said to Israel, you'll see me again when you
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  say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. What an amazing thought that one day we're going
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  we the church are going to be riding behind him. He's going to be on a white horse coming through
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  the clouds. And he's going to show up in Jerusalem. And the and all of Israel is going to proclaim
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  Jesus as their Messiah. That thought alone, David, that thought alone brings so much joy and hope
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  into my heart because that's the plan of God. And all these things happening today are God's
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  reminders to us that he has a plan. And he is on the throne. And the world isn't flying apart
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  in pieces. It's coming together so that that day happens. And that should be the hope and prayer
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  and the the expectant love of every believer that Amen. We see that happen. Amen. I love the
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  subtitle of your book using biblical truth to understand the last days. We're in the last days. How
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  many more of them will there be? We don't know. But we are definitely getting towards the end.
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  We are in the last day. So Brad, before we run out of time, I wanted to ask you this question
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  because a lot of people feel overwhelmed by world events. And it's hard for them to keep up or
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  or just look at what's happening even in terms of Bible prophecy, maybe some. But how can believers
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  grow in discernment? And on the foundation of the word of God without becoming cynical or
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  jaded because of all that's going on? Well, again, we put our hope. It's where our hope is
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  placed. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, our hope is in the fulfillment of God's covenants. It began
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  with with with Abraham and Moses and David and those covenants are eternal everlasting covenants
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  that will not be changed. And the same God who made those promises to those people also made a
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  promise to the church. And he said to the church, I will be with you always, even until what the
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  end of the age, right? So it can be scary to look at the world and read the news and see the
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  missiles. And you know, I've got friends in Israel that are being bombarded every day with these
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  missiles and having to run to their bomb shelters. And you know, I tell them all the time I have
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  the red alert app on my phone. And so that goes off whenever there's a missile warning in
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  Israel, I tell them every time I see that app go off, I pray for you because they are there. And
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  if you've ever I've been in Israel during the war, I've been to Gaza. I've been with the IDF
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  troops. I've been there when the the Osirons are going off and you have to run for a shelter.
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  It's scary. Yes. But to go there and you know, my hope is in Jesus Christ. My hope is that in this
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  place called Israel, he has a plan. He is coming back again soon. He is coming back as as the
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  Jewish Messiah to sit on the Jewish throne of David. And the Bible says he that watches over Israel
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  neither slumbers or sleep. God's eternal promises are always for us. And we have so much hope in that
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  David. Yes. It's it's an amazing time to live in. If you look, if you understand the Bible and
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  you look at the world around you, you can't help it. Say, wow, Jesus, he describes these days as
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  the days with birthing pains, right? Pains that birthing pains are paying increase with frequency
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  and intensity. But out of that pain comes something beautiful and new. And that beautiful and new
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  thing is going to be the kingdom of heaven. Amen. Thank you for ending on that note, Brad,
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  our hope as Hebrews paints the picture. This hope is an anchor to our soul. And I just thank you
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  for all that you do. I do want to mention your websites again for people coming soon ministries.substac.com. Also,
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  he's on Facebook. You can look up Brad Reeves and also on YouTube and his church. My crossway.org
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  crossway Christian fellowship in Maryland. Brother Lord willing, we will do this again. Maybe we will
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  talk about law and order and maybe from a biblical perspective. Lord willing, we'll see. But thanks
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  for your time. Thanks for all you do. And kudos on the book. I pray that it continues to do well.
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  Well, David, thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure. And I do look forward to
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  that opportunity to talk about law and order in this world of law and disorder. And I just
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  encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. Your ministry is so appreciated. And it's an honor
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  to sit with you today. Oh, praise God. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your brother. Thank you guys
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  for watching and sharing the podcast. And thanks for your prayers and support. God bless you.
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  And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter. We'll see you next time.