Soon, Near and At Hand...Day 20

As I continued to research further into this method of interpretation that was new to me the more I realized that this was nothing new at all. The more time I spent researching the fulfilled view of eschatology, the more I realized that I had quite simply missed the boat regarding this view as I had been studying the end times over the last couple of years. I had heard the term preterism before and simply laughed it off as absurd but now, somehow, something had changed. Why was it that this understanding that was new to me was now ringing through my head as true? Maybe it was because of many many hours of study that left me frustrated. Maybe it was because of someone like Hank Hanegraaff, whom I respected highly for his work on the radio, that had accepted some form of preterism that helped me see past my own desires of upholding the futurist view that I had been holding to so tightly. Then again, maybe it was something as simple as God's will and His timing. Either way a new season in my life had begun and my life would never be the same.

And so with each and every passing morning that I was working at the radio station I began to look deeper and further into the preterist view of eschatology. Although I must say...I almost felt kind of funny doing this research while working at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. The reason why is because of some recent changes that they had made to their network at the church. You see...CCCM is a huge church. And when you add up all of the hundreds of different people that work there in all of the different ministries that have access to their computer network and the internet it was pretty clear why they had just recently added Websense to the network. Websense is a security and monitoring software that tracks where everyone that has permission to be on the network has been. That and block certain things that most churches don't want their staff looking at.

And so here I was full of excitement for this new path that I was traveling down and wanting to search every corner of the world wide web, scooping up every morsel of knowledge on the subject that I could find...And now they would be keeping track of every step I took. Doh!!! 8)

At first I was a little apprehensive. I didn't want them to see that I was spending so much time looking at websites about something that was so fundamentally different from what Calvary Chapel taught. Now mind you...I wasn't by any means letting this research keep me from doing my job. If you remember being on-air leaves you with a lot of spare time. Although I must say...my studies for the school of ministry did take a slight turn for the worse. Not to much though. I had already gotten so far ahead on so much of my work that I was able to coast for a while.

And so after a few days I got over my Websense related apprehension. And I was off doing tons of research on the topic of preterism and of course like most people I've spoken to, that had come to a preterist view of the end-times, I was pretty excited and wanted to tell everyone. And so I did. Kind of quietly at first. I started printing out pages here and there. Asking pointed questions related to the time statements found in the opening and closing chapters of Revelation. But most of the people I was talking to...Other School of Ministry students, had a lot on their plates and didn't really have the time to dedicate to this kind of thing or they really just didn't care. Eschatology was not their gig...They'd say things like, "I'm not worried about it too much...It's all gonna pan out in the end."

Needless to say I was really kind of surprised how little interest most people had. And those that would listen to me almost always had a question that I wasn't ready for at this point in my journey. And that's about the time when I came across an article online by a guy named David A. Green. It was called "101 Preterist Time-Indicators for the Second Coming of Christ - From Preterism: 101."

When I finished reading this article I had to pick my jaw up off of the cold, laminated counter top in the studio and wipe up copious amounts of drool. <---A little too descriptive...Maybe??? Anyhow...I was absolutely shocked to see just how many time statements there were indicating that the last days events found in the New Testament were nothing other than soon, near and at hand. I had thought that surely with all of this fine evidence printed out and in hand that someone would see what I was seeing. And so what was the first response I got from one of my School of Ministry brothers. "Well of course the end was near...And it still is. 2 Peter 3:8 'But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It's only been a couple of days to God."

Clearly at this point my zeal was much stronger than my understanding of a fulfilled view of prophecy. And so I decided that I just needed to keep my mouth shut and study more.

The future was looking much brighter...Day 19

The future was looking much brighter. The doom and gloom of the futurist views that I had once held on to were now being replaced by a renewed sense of excitement in understanding the last days prophecies found in scripture as fulfilled quite victoriously within the time frame in which they were promised to take place.

Although...There I was...An employee of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. A church that holds to a very literal interpretation of the scriptures...That is literal, unless it leads to absurdity. And all of a sudden I am faced with the reality that my very literal view that I had been holding to was no longer holding the water that it once used to. Sigh...<---Long drawn out sigh. 8)

One of the best things about working the overnight shift at the radio station is that it gave me ample time to study. If you remember, this was the primary reason that I was able to work full time and go to the School of Ministry. That following night I got into the station a little early to get some of my nightly duties wrapped up before my on-air shift started. I then proceeded to get all of my required studying done for school so that I could get to work on studying this new found way of understanding the scriptures from a fulfilled perspective.

And so with a few quick keystrokes I was on my way to my favorite internet search engine...Google. I typed in the word preterism. Holy mackerel...Ten's of thousands of hits. And then I typed in preterist. There were even more hits than the previous search. How could I have missed this for so long. 8) Anyhow...One of the first pages that I came across was www.preterism.us. A website that no longer exists aside from that wonderful online utility known as "The Wayback Machine." On this website there were 19 articles by a guy named David B. Curtis, who serves as the pastor of Berean Bible Church, in Chesapeake, Virginia. And one by a guy named Don K. Preston. Don is a speaker, radio host, and author of many books.

And so I started reading the articles one after the other. I was barely able to tear my self away to take care of my on-air duties at the station. Everything I was reading was making complete sense and I was becoming more and more excited with each and every paragraph. All of the problems that I had reconciling different issues within the futurist framework of eschatology were quickly fading away. Mind you, these articles weren't small by any means. It probably took me three days to get through them all with everything else that I was doing.

That morning when Lee Davis came in he found me full of excitement and with eyes as bright as a red red rose from having spent all night staring into a computer monitor in a dimly lit studio, having probably blinked no more than 7 times. 8) While I was in school he too had read a number of the articles and had found himself just as intrigued as I had. The lively discussions that Lee and I had each morning as we went through all of the articles on the website made up for the many months of animosity that had been created by the fruitless arguments over the futurist views that we once held. The both of us were now experiencing a renewed sense of excitement for a study of the scriptures. We were both greeting each other every morning with new things that we were now seeing that we had somehow missed before.

Where the Bible had once been quite simply printed words in black and white, we were now seeing a new, vibrant and living narrative that was reconciling issues that had once caused much confusion.

The changing tide of a world and life view...Day 15

Having charted out the end times was an arduous task to say the least. Along with this there was a book that we were required to read by Chuck Smith that I had actually read that previous summer. It was called, "The Tribulation and The Church." A very easy read. We also had a weekly lecture that was a general overview of all the differing views of eschatology. I was hoping for something a little more indepth regarding each view but our time was limited.

An example of this was, "And then there is the preterist view which understands the last days as something that took place in the first century. That the book of Revelation was speaking of the fall of Jerusalem in 70ad. Yet this could not be the case because it was written some 30 years later...And just look around...Clearly we're not in the new heavens and earth." <--Room fills with laughter.

So...It's not as though all or most of the different views weren't presented. They were. However in my opinion the presentation of the views that were different from that of Calvary Chapel's weren't presented in a very fair light. They weren't even necessarily demonstrated to be wrong as much as they were just summarily dismissed. But of course I just nodded my head as we moved on to the next topic. After the class was over there was the typical sporatic conversations going on around the room as you would find any other day. I was putting my books away when I heard one of my brothers say that he had heard something about Hank Hanegraaff. That he had changed his views on eschatology to some form of Amillenialism. This of course caught my ear. But I was in a hurry that day to grab my surfboard and hit the beach for a little wave action.

I guess no matter how important eschatology is to me, surfing will always take first billing. 8)

That following night as I was wrapping up my studies, I had remembered what my friend Al Abdulla said in class. Something about Hank Hanegraaff's view of eschatology having changed. This triggered another memory. Probably about a year earlier, sometime in 2004, my friend Chandler Haynie who worked the evening shift at Kwave while engineering "The Bible Answerman," during the day, had told me that Hank had been re-examining his views on eschatology for 9 years now. Starting in about 1995. And that he was going to be coming out with a new book explaining his new view. But he was hesitant to tell me much more.

So...On that early morning in March 2005 I went onto google and did a search on, "Hank Hanegraaff + eschatology." And the first three results I read were the following three articles. And in this order.

Article #1

Article #2

Article #3

The third article takes a few minutes to read but well worth every minute of it. It is a transcript from a call Hank received on "The Bible Answerman," back in 1995. Right about the time Hank began re-examining his understanding of the end-times that led him to author and co-author a number of books that have got the authors of the Left Behind series in such an uproar. Which is dealt with in the first and second article posted above.

And so...It was these three articles that were the final straw that broke the camel's back. My world and life view would be forever changed from this moment forward...

Hindsight is normally 20/20...Day 7

It was the fall of 2003, and I had just begun attending the School of Ministry at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. It was a very surreal time in my life. Not only had I begun working what I considered at that time to be my dream job, but I was beginning a course of studies that I was pretty sure would result in my being a Calvary Chapel Pastor.

If you remember, I had mentioned on Day 6 that the School of Ministry was pretty much a full-time job. We attended classes Monday through Friday from 7-10a.m. We also had to spend an hour or two each week in the front office of the church answering the prayer lines. The homework and reading requirements typically meant that we would have to put in a minimum of three hours of study a day. And then there were the Chuck blocks. You're probably scratching your heads asking, "What's a Chuck block?" Chuck blocks were pages filled with questions that were directly related to Chuck Smith's, Thru the Bible teaching series that we had to listen to. The purpose of these questions were to verify that we had listened to all of the teachings, although they never really did check our answers. 8) Gotta love the honor system.

If you've ever listened to any of Chuck Smith's teaching you know that his pace is pretty deliberate. Some people might even say slow. 8) But fortunately for us they had a special series that were at 1.5 times the original speed. The best part of the whole series was when Pastor Chuck would tell a joke. Listening to people laugh at 1.5 times the normal speed was enough to almost make you fall out of your chair the first time you hear it. And then finally by the end of the series you can pretty much finish any sentence that Pastor Chuck starts when he's in the pulpit or on the radio.

So between the hours of school, the reading and homework, working the prayer lines and doing our, "Chuck block's," the School of Ministry was a full-time job. Which pretty much meant that there was no way you could have a full-time job as well. That is unless God decided to work out those details for you like He did with me. You see...God provided me with a job working in the same building as the School of Ministry. It also was a job that allowed me all the time I needed to do my homework and reading while on-air, between breaks. He also worked things out so that my work hours were from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Which left me just enough time to gather my books...Run down three flights of stairs and grab a seat.

Oh...And did I forget to say that working for the church meant that all of my tuition was paid for by the church?

I don't know about you...But as far as I am concerned God's hands were all over this, inside and out. There is just no way I could have planned this all out much less worked out all the finer points and details.