What if the end times that many Christians are anxiously

waiting for already happened?

What if the prophecies of Jesus, Paul and John weren't about our future, but

about their present and their near future?

If you've lived with fear, confusion, or dread about Revelation and the end.

This episode might change everything.

The purpose of this I'll be upfront, it's to reveal how understanding

the historical fulfillment of New Testament prophecy shifts our posture

from fear to confidence, and allows us to live fully in the kingdom.

Now welcome to Seat Go Create.

This is Tim Winders, your host.

This is episode five of the season.

Why The Bible Doesn't Make Sense yet, and we've been rolling along with a

lot of cool topics and we are going to put maybe not a finish on it, but at

least an exclamation point on what we've been talking about in this episode.

And I'll go ahead and if I had the red light and could start, you know, swirling

around with all types of things, this is something that in Christian world, in

church world is extremely controversial.

Probably more controversial than just about.

Anything.

I found out about a year or so back when I interviewed someone that talked

about end times, antichrist, rapture and those kind of things, and I just

thought we were having a conversation.

Well, if you go back and read those comments, some of the comments from I.

Well, we'll call 'em Christians are some of the most vile, ugly, hate-filled

comments that you will ever see.

Don't mess with people's rapture and don't mess with.

Somebody's gonna come and take me away from all this mess.

But I'm guessing that if some folks are gonna be listening to this and you feel

really strongly that we're gonna be raptured outta here and there's gonna

be an escape hatch to break away pre tribulation and avoid the antichrist and

Israel's being reestablished and all that, we're about to, kind of shake that up.

But hang with me.

Because we could walk through it with scripture and talk about how it

fits with the Bible, and that's one of the reasons we've been talking

about how the Bible, the story of the Bible, the narrative, if so important.

Because if you pull out some of these scriptures and try to make it fit with

news items or headlines that we see today, you know, you can start trying

to convince people that maybe, maybe.

The end times that Jesus prophesied what happened within a, within a

generation 40 years of, of his death, maybe you could start convincing people.

If you twist the scriptures around that it still.

Fulfilling or about to happen 2000 years later.

That's not the case though.

Let's talk about it.

Let's break it down and let's look at the story of the Bible that we've been

looking at for the last four episodes.

There is, in modern Christianity, and maybe it's mostly in our country of

America, but probably in the first world I've noticed it in other countries,

there's this lingering anxiety in modern Christianity about the end of the world.

Many believers live in fear that there's gonna be this thing of rapture and what

if I'm raptured out, or what if I'm not?

And there's a tribulation, there's antichrist, all of those things.

Those things that we've been discussing that many people have been saying,

and I believed a lot of this up until recently, those things are

actually not scriptural and they're not part of the biblical story.

They were part of a story that occurred 2000 years ago, and they

may still have some relevance, but they are not part of some future.

I am more convinced of that than I ever have been, and for many years.

I just wanted to avoid the topic and I'll talk more about that in just a moment.

This has been fueled by sensationalism movies.

I. And out of context teaching.

I still remember, I've mentioned this before in some episodes that on my

parents' shelf when I was growing up, and we didn't go to church that much.

We were not real church going people.

We grew up in the deep south, so we had a lot of religion around us, but not a lot

of, I guess, spiritual depth necessarily.

But we had the book.

The late Great Planet Earth, that was one of the biggest sellers around, and

it basically predicted that the world would end in 19 88, 40 years after the

Nation of Israel was established in 1948.

Well, here we are in 2025 and he wrote an updated book.

That said, it was actually a few years later and then a few years

later and a few years later.

Bottom line is he has sold a boatload of books predicting that the end is

near and none of them have come true.

In the nineties.

I read a bunch of fiction books.

That were the left behind series that were written as fiction, but they were written

with scriptural foundation air quotes for those that might be listening in.

And I read them and they were great stories, and they

had some scripture in 'em.

But truthfully, they twisted scripture and they told a story that wasn't accurate.

And a lot of people believe that I did.

I mean, it was probably baked into my theology.

It was, I was a fairly new Christian and I was thinking, man,

this is some kind of stuff here.

And what that does is it creates kind of a spiritual panic, a doom that

things are gonna get bad or that they're always getting worse when in actuality.

Most things are getting better, but we believe spiritually

that they're getting worse.

And if we are people of Christian faith and we have this thought that

we're going through life, that things are really getting worse when they're

actually in many ways getting better.

I'm in, I'm sitting here in an office in air conditioning.

I'm in Georgia.

It's hot outside, but I'm cool on the inside.

I've got cameras, lights, all this kind of stuff here.

Things are getting better.

Are there some things that don't look great?

Of course there are.

I'm not fooling myself.

there's still good and bad in the world.

There's evil, there's explanations for that.

But people are in a spiritual panic and it's rooted in misunderstanding.

And as we've been talking about in previous episodes of this

season, not understanding the full narrative and the story of.

What the Bible is all about.

The words of Jesus I think are what we really need to go to to understand this.

They were urgent and they were time sensitive.

In Matthew 24, Jesus said, this generation will not pass before these events

occur, and then went on to state some.

End of times language.

That was the end of times that would occur 40 years later.

A generation, by the way, with the events that occurred in 80 70.

Now, I wanna say this, and I wanna say this strongly.

If you are one that says, Jesus really didn't mean 40 years, or that he

really didn't mean a generation, or you start parsing what a generation means.

Then in my opinion, you're messing with the words of Jesus and you're belittling

the prophetic nature of what Jesus said.

You're gonna have to start doing that with a lot of other things he said,

and that is dangerous territory.

I truly believe that when Jesus said, this generation will not pass.

Jesus meant it and it was true and it became true, and Jesus also

said it was in the same, what some call the vet discourse that some

standing here will not taste death.

He was speaking to his apostles.

And one of those apostles that we believe did not taste death before 80 70 was John.

and so the others did, they were martyred, but he said that I believe that.

And historically we can back that up.

Jesus also said when you see Jerusalem surrounded, and we've tried to take

that and talk about all these events occurring in the 2010s in the 2020s.

That occurred in 80 70.

It is historical.

It is a fact that the armies of Rome surrounded Jerusalem before

destroying Jerusalem and the temple.

And then it said, you will see the son of man coming.

And that coming was the ending of the old covenant that occurred in 80 70.

It was the day of the Lord.

These were real warnings to real people.

In the first century, not scare tactics for people that are of our

day that are combing the headlines.

Trying to find how these things that were written in the first

century to audiences in the first century, and it applied to them.

It doesn't apply to us now.

we can learn things from it.

They mean things.

There's, there are things there that we can glean and gain from, but all

I'm saying is let's don't try to twist it and make it apply to things that

are going on today and make things up when it actually already happened.

The New Testament writers outside of Jesus also.

Echoed this immediacy in Acts two 17, the statement in the last days.

In fact, if you do a search on, the end or last days, it is all throughout the New

Testament and in almost every situation, it is specifically being addressed to

the audience that it was written to.

So think about this, if someone came to your door.

And said, by the way, I want to tell you some things about the

last days or the end or something that's coming and it's coming soon.

and you found out, it was thousands of years later.

That would make no sense.

In fact, I believe it would belittle the messages that were being written

and sent to the audience of that day.

So, also in one Corinthians 10 11, the end of the age has come upon us.

Not 2000 years later, the end of the ages come upon them.

Those people in Corinth that received this letter in Hebrews in these last

days, he had spoken to us by his son.

And then James five three.

James message.

You have Hoarded Wealth in the last day speaking to them.

Then current present, it is the last hour.

That was something that John said in one John 2 18, 1 Peter four seven.

The end of all things is at hand.

Therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers.

I just think it's really arrogant of us to really believe that all of those

things that were written to the audiences of those days, it's arrogant of us to

pluck those things out and try to say that that's what's going on today.

I just had someone I interact with on Facebook that they were posting that the

end is near, obviously look at what's going on, and they said something about.

you, you know, they, something from a headline that was going on.

and listen, there is a final end that will occur.

We are moving towards a new Jerusalem.

That was at the very end of Revelation, but it wasn't all

of the events of Revelation that were the tribulation events.

Nope.

that already occurred.

That happened.

The fulfillment of all of those things.

In fact, I would even say the first 1920 chapters of Revelation occurred.

In 80, 70 in or around 87 70, the temple was destroyed.

Jerusalem was judged, and the nation of Israel was devastated,

just as Moses warned his people.

That was all in Deuteronomy 28 through 30.

it said this is what was said in Deuteronomy 28.

Now it shall come to pass if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord

your God, to observe carefully all his commandments that the Lord your God

will set you high above all the nations.

But it goes on to say.

That if you do not obey the voice of the Lord, there are cursings that will occur.

Now, being a guy that came from Prosperity Gospel roots, when I was

first saved in a first early Christian, I really loved those blessings.

Boy, I tell you what, I hung out and spent time with those blessings.

And I think many people in First World Church, we do the same.

But one, one of the things that you have to look at is what are those curses?

And if you look at those curses.

And you compare those with what occurred in the first 19 chapters of Revelation,

then you'll see that that was the judgment that was warned about in

Deuteronomy 28, some in 29 and 30, that it occurred all the way in Revelation in

the, in the early parts of Revelation.

So it was warned that judgment came, the nation of Israel did not obey.

They were judged for that, and they were also judged for not honoring

and recognizing the Messiah.

When the Messiah came, Jesus was sent for Israel first to call

them to repentance, then for the Gentiles and to bring judgment.

That judgment that we hear about in Deuteronomy 28 through 30.

And to continue drawing all things to him, to God, after that period of time.

And that was the purpose, not, not to just kind of set the stage for some

future ending event that they discussed and talked about in Revelation.

And this was not an episode to go into all the gory details of

Revelation, but I did want to.

Talk about kind of revelation as a warning and a warning for the people of that

day, not necessarily for the future.

In fact, the chapters that address beyond what happened in 80 70

are incredibly, incredibly, I, you know, They are optimistic.

the Revelation 20 and 21 and 22 are extremely optimistic and talks of

there's no death There will be no chaos.

There will be no sickness, there will be no tears.

and that's where we're headed.

We're not headed towards that first part of Revelation that's already occurred.

That was just a warning to those people.

It wasn't a cryptic roadmap for our time where we start trying to take

all these pieces and make them apply.

It was pastoral and prophetic, and it was full of symbols that

were known to first century.

Jews, and let me give you the perspective here.

There are Old Testament references in the book of Revelation that the audience

of that day would have understood.

Than we would ever understand.

I mean, it is full of Old Testament references that in, in my opinion, is

probably written not in a direct format, but in somewhat of a code so that the

audience that received these letters from John would know what he was talking about.

And I just think about this for a moment, just put yourself in their shoes.

Let's just say that we're in the timeframe of 80, 65, 64, 65, 66.

We believe that the Apostle Paul was beheaded.

In Rome at around that time, somewhere in that timeframe.

So think about today, if a prominent figure, a world leader or a ministry

leader, someone that you knew, you found out that they were beheaded for

their beliefs around that same time.

Peter was also, he was also martyred.

He was crucified.

He refused to be crucified like Jesus Christ was crucified

and was crucified upside down.

What if you got word that that was going on?

What if you were one of these small groups, this, these groups

or ecclesias, these small churches that were sort of huddled together?

You had the Jewish structure that was coming against you because they believed

you were heretics and did not understand this Messiah that you believed in, and

they were fairly violent themselves.

They're the ones that actually, Martyred.

James threw him off the temple, in fact.

and they were also the ones that sent Paul to Rome.

And, that actually was how Paul was beheaded, was while

he was in Rome, but just.

Think about, put yourself in their shoes.

You're sitting there and you believe this Messiah, this Jesus, and maybe

you are of a Jewish background.

Maybe you are a Gentile, but you believe this and you've got the Roman Empire.

That's coming against that belief system and you've got the Nation of Israel, the

Jewish people that are coming against it.

You've got two forces squeezing you and you've got a letter or

something that comes from John.

I don't think that John's going to be clear and say, by the way.

The Roman government is going to attack Jerusalem, and Jerusalem

is going to be destroyed.

I just don't see him saying it that way.

I believe he has to write in code.

He has to use numbers like 6, 6, 6 that they understood what it meant and he has

to write in a way that isn't exactly.

Understood by all it's understood by people that knew the Old Testament, that

knew how to read some of those things and then apply it to what was going on Then.

So when you receive that letter from John, I. In AD 66 or 67, it gave you a

warning of what was about to happen over the next three and a half years leading up

to a 70 in the destruction of the temple.

It was pastoral, it was prophetic, it was a warning, and it was full of symbols

that they knew in the first century.

It's one of the reasons why we don't know it well, because

we haven't studied all that.

And we try to make a lot of things up to try to make it fit our

world and it just doesn't fit.

It described persecution of Rome, Rome's corruption.

That's another reason why he wouldn't put it in a letter necessarily

and sign the bottom of it.

He needed to kind write it in, code it.

It described the coming end of the old Covenant SE system.

The old covenant system would end when the temple was destroyed.

The temple is where sacrifices occurred.

Sacrifice was required in the old covenant, was also required

in the new covenant, but that.

Occurred with Jesus.

It was a one-time sacrifice that was all that needed to be done.

But in the old covenant, they needed to do sacrifices constantly and systemically.

When the temple was destroyed, there was no more sacrifice.

With no more sacrifice, no more covenant.

The old covenant ended.

The only covenant remaining is the new covenant, the Messiah

covenant, the covenant that we live and operate under today.

John wrote to warn and he wrote it in Old Testament code for a reason.

It was really about victory.

Not doom.

That was the point.

Those who overcome.

Now what does that mean for us now?

Because some of you might be going now, hold on a second.

I've been operating and living as if we're doomed.

The end is near and I am just hopeful that I've made the right

decision so that when people get plucked out of here and raptured

away before things get really bad.

I'll be okay, and I'm just looking to punch my ticket to heaven.

That's not the story of the Bible by the way.

That's not our goal, is to punch our ticket to heaven.

So what does that mean for me?

You might be asking yourself the question.

That's what I did, is I was going through this process Of clearing this paradigm

out, of getting this junk that I had believed for so long that I realized

it was just baked into my mindset.

I was baked into the way I thought it was baked, into the way I read the Bible.

It was one of the reasons that I read it wrong.

It's why we've been talking about that over the last few episodes.

I just read it wrong.

I understood things differently when I was reading about what.

Peter said what Paul said about what John said.

I was trying to totally apply it to me instead of understanding the

audience that they wrote it to.

If the judgment that Jesus foretold already happened, we are not

waiting for that judgment anymore.

There will be a final judgment.

I'm not saying that all things are the way they are going to be.

Final judgment, but it doesn't have all of that other junk we've

been trying to incorporate into it.

we are, we are moving towards another Eden.

We're moving towards a new Jerusalem.

We are operating currently in the kingdom of God that Jesus brought,

and we're moving toward the.

Final time of being new Jerusalem people, the sons and daughters of

God, not awaiting or hoping for some escape because things are so bad.

But we are here expanding and building the kingdom of God

while we are here on this earth.

God's presence is here.

His kingdom has come.

We have the authority to operate in that.

All we do is live it and share it and experience it with others.

We don't have to scare people with something bad that's gonna happen.

If something on this earth happens to remove us from the earth or remove us

from this realm before the new Jerusalem occurs, We're good because we are still

in a realm that's moving towards new Jerusalem, the new heaven and earth,

the resurrected bodies that we will be in that are, that is what is told in

the last few chapters of Revelation.

The mission is not survival.

It's restoration.

It's being restored into God's kingdom, into his family, and

being sons and daughters of God.

The Bible ends where it began, presence, peace, and a garden city.

It.

It really is.

The Eden that we see in Revelation is the new Jerusalem description

that we're moving towards.

It's the marriage that we hear about, the marriage of the lamb, the restoration.

We live as kingdom citizens, co-laboring with Christ, as his

ambassadors here on this earth.

We have seen so many scriptures.

I mean, I've already mentioned Matthew 24 34.

This generation will not pass.

When you see Jerusalem surrounded, you will see the son of man coming.

The dwelling place of God is with man.

He is with us.

He is in us.

The Bible.

Listen, let me just wrap up with this.

The Bible's not about fear.

It's about.

Fulfillment.

Is there a lot of scary stuff in the Bible?

Yeah, there absolutely is.

But the story, the narrative, the thing that I've been talking about

is the good news, the gospel, the fulfillment of living in God's kingdom.

Those of us that have accepted Christ and are operating in living with Christ

and in Christ, we are fulfilling.

We are fulfilling.

The, the living in God's kingdom, it's not a countdown to destruction.

It's an invitation to live.

It's an invitation to life.

It's an invitation to expand his kingdom.

While we are here, the whole season, this whole episode, all these five

episodes has been about helping you.

Move from confusion to context.

It's all about the journey that I've been on moving from, you know,

what, what is, what is this bible?

What is this all about?

What are these scriptures?

And I mean, listen, I had some stuff baked in.

I hung out in Bible school with a lot of people that were good folks.

They were trying their best, but didn't really understand

the story, and I didn't either.

For whatever reason, the Lord's led me on a journey the last few

years to understand it better.

Do I understand everything?

No, I don't.

There's still things I'm trying to understand, but I will tell you that

that paradigm shift, that click when it has occurred, I now read these

scriptures, especially in the New Testament with a whole new light, with

a whole new hope, with an excitement of.

Wow, I understand how these things fit together.

Instead of trying to read them and pull things forward into the news stories

of today, trying to make it fit with the politics and the events of our day.

I do think things apply, but we are just expanding God's kingdom.

We don't have fear, we have faith.

We've gone from striving.

And trying and trying and trying and being fearful to that

is what the real message is.

We are abiding.

The kingdom is here.

The new covenant is real, and the invitation as it has been for 2000 years.

Has always been open, and it's open right now.

And if you're hearing this and you're going, wow, you know, you

might be listening, going, you know, I, I disagree with a lot of that.

That's fine.

I'd love to hear your comments.

I'd love to engage with you.

But if you're hearing this and going, that's what I've needed to

hear, that's the message that I've needed to hear about that is actual.

Good news then.

Hallelujah.

Welcome in.

That's the kingdom of God.

You're welcome to join in and you can now with the proper

mindset, start reading scripture and expanding the kingdom of God.

I wanna remind us back to episode one.

When we talked about the new man from CS Lewis, the real transformation

that happens is when we stop striving, stop living in fear, and we start

abiding and living as that new man that CS Lewis spoke about and that

we talked about in episode one.

Of this season.

This wasn't just personal, it was prophetic.

The old system is gone.

The new man lives in the new covenant, and the kingdom is here, and those

of us that have accepted Christ live and operate in the kingdom of God.

I hope this has been good for you.

This may be the end of the series, but it's just the beginning of the journey.

Many of you are going to be really perplexed by this.

All I ask you to do is go back and read the New Testament with some of

the things I've talked about in mind.

Read it, thinking about what.

The audience was thinking, what were they going through?

Instead of read reading Revelation as if it's some kind of future thing, read it

as if it was a message to those that were being warned about a destruction that was

about to happen just a few years later.

Part of my journey of learning more has been to meditate on what it was like in

the first century, what was going on in Galatia when Paul's first letter, his

scroll arrived, and what I've done, I just wanna give you a little glimpse into

some projects that I've been working on.

I think many of you know that I've written some fiction.

I guess over my right shoulder here is my book, my novel that I wrote, which

was a modern day story, A modern day parable, but the Lord has really led me

over the last few years into spending time in the first century thinking

about the audience and the writers.

What was going on during those 40 years, between 80 30 and 80 70?

And so one of the things that I've been doing is immersing

myself in that timeframe.

And what it's led to are some ideas and some stories that are

fictional, but they're based on truth.

They're based on scriptural things, they're based on actual historical events.

And I have been working on some of those.

So there's actually going to be some novels, I'll call 'em mini novels

and stories about that timeframe.

I've actually written the first one that occurs right around that

timeframe of 80, 70, and, um.

Got some work to do on it, but I'm really liking the way it's coming together.

And then another project I'm working on, and this one actually might be sooner

and I think it'll be valuable if you have interest in really going deeper into this.

And what I've done is, is I've taken each book of the New Testament, and I'm

going through it in order historically, we believe the book of James was written

first around 15 years after the cross in AD 45, and I started with James

and I took a look at what James was doing when he wrote the book of James,

the audience that he was directing it to and what was going on with that.

Audience and what I've done, I've already kind of created

my first few drafts of this.

I created the scenario to kind of put us, to put me in the place that James wrote

it with, the audience that he wrote it to, and then I write, it's fictional,

but it's based on those truths and those historical things that we know, and

it's about a one to two pager short.

Short story or short synopsis that prepares us to then read the book of

James and then, and so I've written that and I've also written one for Galatians,

which was written just a few years later.

It was Paul's first letter that he wrote to the church in Galatia,

and I've actually written that so.

I plan to do that for all 27 books of the New Testament.

Put it together in a Bible study that will look like a 90 day reading plan

for the New Testament, and it will be in the order that the books were written.

So it starts with James then goes to Galacia.

Thessalonians, I believe are next and et cetera, and it has those stories

in the background for you to read.

I'm excited about it.

I hope people are too.

I'll probably put some up on my social media.

I'll probably make some initial downloads available, and I may put it together

in some form of a Bible study or book.

But anyway, I believe it will be helpful to immerse ourselves more into that first.

Century because here's what I believe.

I believe if we understand who the New Testament was written

to more, then we also understand the message of the New Testament.

And if we understand the message of the New Testament, we understand

more how it applies to us.

And if we understand more how it applies to us, we can fully walk out.

Our call to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness that Jesus stated in

the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 33.

I hope that this has been helpful for you.

It has been helpful for me to put it together.

I've learned a lot just trying to focus this into five episodes

to kinda share the journey that I've been on, and so I am hopeful.

Full that this will help you live out the kingdom of God that we are called to

be living in and expanding here and now.

Thank you for joining us here on Seek Go Create.

Until next time, keep becoming and living what you were created to be.