Four openings

From the Introduction

Younger than the steam engine

The more I studied, the more I realized that the answers I had inherited did not come from the Bible itself. They came from a theological system that was constructed in the 1830s by a man named John Nelson Darby, a system popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909, and cemented into the evangelical imagination by the Left Behind novels in the 1990s. Prior to the 1830s, there was no systematized, fully developed theological framework for a pretribulation rapture in eighteen centuries of church history. While earlier attempts to introduce elements of this system appeared across centuries, from Cerinthus, John’s own contemporary, through the Jesuit Lacunza in the 1790s, none took root in mainstream Christian thought. Darby was the first to succeed in assembling the pieces into a comprehensive framework that spread globally and embedded itself in the church. Before Scofield, no study Bible included the elaborate dispensational charts that millions of believers now treat as Scripture itself. The framework I had been taught as ancient truth was, in historical terms, younger than the steam engine.

From Chapter 1

The man in the purple glasses

Walk with me and let historical facts uncover truth. Chapter 1: I Begin Questioning In the early 2000s, while feeding the homeless on the streets of Westwood in Los Angeles, I met a man who would quietly reshape the trajectory of my life. Sharp and distinguished, probably in his mid to late seventies, he wore a fine paisley vest and a pair of large, colorful purple glasses with no lenses, and he could recite Scripture with a fluency that would humble most pastors. He was not on the streets because of addiction or mental illness; he was there on purpose.

He had been a successful, educated family man. A professor of theology, if I’m not mistaken, and over the course of time a thought took root that he could not shake and had the unmistakable dread that the Great Tribulation was coming soon. With a big, broad smile, he shared with me that the Rapture was imminent, and his calling was to live among the homeless and learn how to survive on the streets so he could guide those left behind after the rapture. In the grip of that conviction, he gave up his wife, his children, and every comfort of his former life to wait for an event that will never happen. I came to call him my Westwood V.P.P. During my brief encounter with him, he shared something that has shaped my life. Everyone, he said, should have a V.P.P. explaining in simple terms that everyone should have a Vision, a Purpose, and a Plan for their life. By all accounts, all three were present in his life. And every one of them was built on a theology that was not yet two hundred years old.

From Chapter 3

I cannot wear that label

If you have been following the evidence of the first two chapters, you can probably already guess. The time-indicator verses of Chapter 1 and the reorientation of Chapter 2 push a reader very close to full preterism on the matter of fulfillment. That is where the evidence took me. The prophecies said they would be fulfilled, and they were fulfilled, in the generation they named, in the city they named, at the time they named.

But I cannot wear that label.

Here is the reason I flagged above: full preterism, as it is actually taught and written down in the books that define the school, almost always carries cessationism with it. The kingdom came, the argument goes, and then the power of the kingdom was withdrawn; the gifts ended, the signs ceased, and healing, prophecy, deliverance, and encounter became artifacts of a finished age.

I do not believe that for a moment, and I cannot, because I have seen the opposite with my own eyes.

Over the course of my walk with Christ, I have been personally and directly involved in more than sixty events I can only call miracles, extraordinary healings, deliverances, prophetic words that landed with precision, visions, encounters, and answered prayers of a kind that cannot be explained by coincidence or psychology. An inoperable brain tumor, gone, in a neurosurgeon who lived across the street. My best friend’s broken leg healed many weeks before it should have been possible. A pastor’s knee that was restored. An employee’s leg healed too, and he still talks about it, with everyone. The lady bound to a wheelchair who was miraculously healed and rededicated her life to Christ. Many can be corroborated by others who were present.

From Chapter 23

What happened to the village

If the kingdom has been here for two thousand years, and if the church has been given the authority and the power to advance it, then the obvious question is: why does the world still look the way it does?

It is a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer. The answer is not that the kingdom failed. The answer is that the people of the kingdom were told to sit down, be quiet, and wait for a rescue that was never coming. While we waited, the village collapsed. And without the village, the kingdom has no hands.

And the question presses in harder, in forms no honest author can avoid. Why do children starve while the King sits on His throne? Why do tyrants flourish? Why does the church itself so often resemble a fractured, exhausted institution rather than the conquering body of a reigning sovereign?

This book does not pretend the question is easy, because it is not.