This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on June 5, 2020. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer: Well, hello and welcome to Stand in the Gap Today, this Friday edition. I’m Sam Rohrer and I’m going to be joined again as normal by Dr. Gary Dull, and in just a moment, Brent Miller, a very special first-time guest to this program. It’s possible that this person is someone who has perhaps influenced your life in a good way, but from behind the scenes and perhaps someone that you’ve never heard of.
You know, there are so many topics that we could pursue today, such as for instance, tomorrow, the 76th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, that’s tomorrow. Think about that in terms of a turning event in the defense of freedom, against the aggression of Nazism and how that may have application even to what we’re seeing as there are many trying to take down freedom from within in our country today. We could go there, but we’re not.
So many topics we pursue here on this program, you know we focus on headline news where we try to analyze it from a biblical and constitutional perspective. But today I’ve decided to go again on more of the theme of an emphasis on foundational issues of how we as God-fearing citizens and Christians specifically should be thinking about the unraveling events that we see around us.
As someone who’s been in office, public office for 18 years here in Pennsylvania and running statewide a couple of times, that is a part of my life, but I’ll tell you, first and foremost, I’m a Christian and I have a heavenly citizenship. I hope that that is for all of you who are listening is a reality as well, because that is an unchanging thing.
Long ago, I came to understand that we must in all cases, when we’re talking about the events of the days and so forth, the events we see, we’ve got to go to root causes, root problems. It’s not so nearly important I’ve learned to know the what because that does become evident, but the why, the why things are happening is what’s really critical.
Listeners of Stand in the Gap Today, our weekend program Stand in the Gap TV, you know that we regularly emphasize this need to address root problems and root causes rather than the normal approach, which we see all about us, which in effect is more shaping of symptoms. The uncontrolled media, as what I term them to be, the humanistic God rejecting system around us, they follow the satanic strategy, in my opinion, of creating events, staging events, and planting ideas and thoughts and narratives, all designed to distract, confuse and to deceive people.
These are the days I think, because we’ve talked about much in this program, prophesied by Christ himself as days of deception, and he warns us not to be deceived. So it’s in this vein I want to focus again today on the bigger picture of what’s happening from God’s perspective.
Now, Wednesday of this week, we focused on the return of Christ and the end of days with Michael Snyder. We looked at headline news, which screamed the end of days and we identified many headlines which align exactly with what Jesus was prophesized to his disciples in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, but the importance of the Second Coming of Christ preceded by the Rapture of the church is critical for people to understand lest we become part of the people Christ described as, “Without faith and not ready.”
So our theme today is this, Before the Wrath: Time to Look Up and Speak Up, and it’s the very instruction Christ taught his disciples. With us today right now is Brent Miller. He is the founder and the president of Ingenuity Films and producer of the latest and best selling film entitled, Before the Wrath. And with that, let me welcome you to the program for the first time, Brent, thank you for being with us.
Brent Miller: Thank you so much, Sam and Gary, it’s an absolute blessing to be on.
Sam Rohrer: Well, a blessing to have you on. Before we get into the substance of this film, I think it’s going to be tremendously exciting for our listeners. You didn’t grow up as a Christian, but you told me earlier, you were motivated as a New York City resident by the wake-up event of 9/11 to seek for truth. Would you share just briefly your journey to the truth and how that has led you to begin Ingenuity Films, which then has led into this one here, Before the Wrath?
Brent Miller: Right. Absolutely. Like so many that grow up, especially here in the West is I would probably label myself as more of an agnostic through my educational journey and then heading into a career in Manhattan. Then worked for MTV networks in New York City and some other large Fortune 100s at the time. I was an individual again, like so many that has a desire to find truth, a desire to seek truth, to want to know the meaning of life, et cetera, et cetera, but had never came face to face with it.
Never actually came across very many evangelists in my lifetime, which is shocking. But I think like so many Americans where evangelism is just really being … it’s falling off the cliff, it’s not reaching nearly as many people as it used to decades ago. That is also not surprising. But it was on the morning of 9/11, on the horrific terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan, I was about two blocks away, or a couple of blocks away coming out of the Battery Tunnel when the first plane hit the Twin Tower, and really in my life, that was a moment where kind of all of your foundational beliefs about the pursuit of success and just the foundational religious ideals, et cetera, were really shaken at the core to kind of a wake-up call, the world isn’t what I thought it was.
That really began me on a journey to pursue some of the things, for the first time of my life I’m hearing about religious conflict between Islam and Christianity, and a lot of chatter about various things in Bible prophecy and eschatology. Obviously, mostly sensationalized due to the event that was occurring. But nevertheless, beginning to come up more and more in mainstream news.
As one who desired truth, it sent me on that path to seek what is it about this religious conflict that makes it such a dire situation that people are dying over this, et cetera? Through years of this pursuit, it led me to study eschatology, ancient anthropology. Of course, looking through the eyes of apologetics, to the statistics and evidence, and real history and biblical history, you come to the only conclusion that one that’s sincerely seeking truth can come to you and that’s Jesus Christ was the true Messiah, the one and only God and the Bible is entirely valid.
And so, it’s really how I came to that conclusion that resulted in the birth of Ingenuity Films, which is why we do call it an apologetic spaced film production company. Because we come from a viewpoint where we understand the nonbeliever. Many of us within Ingenuity Films came from a state of non-belief. And so, now we’re simply trying to share the avenue of how the spirit worked in our lives to draw us to the Lord, to draw us that truth, to share with millions of countless others.
Sam Rohrer: Brent, fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, isn’t it interesting? If you know, the Lord is your savior, you have an individual story unique, but it’s the same, isn’t it for all? And that is Brent’s story and what God has directed him to do as we’re now going to talk about this latest film, Before the Wrath. We’ll get into that in the next perspective and how understanding the context of which Jesus presented all of this to his disciples in Galilee is so critical to understanding. We’ll be back in just a moment.
Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. I’m Sam Rohrer and accompanied by Dr. Gary Dull today and our special guest Brent Miller. He is an award-winning film, producer, writer and director with a theological background, which you’ll find come out as we go further here, founded in eschatological apologetics. That’s a big word, but we’ll explain more of that as it comes out.
He’s produced a number one bestseller called, The Coming Convergence, and now a recent film called, Before the Wrath, which is what we’re talking about here today. They have a website@ingenuityfilms.com. You can find it there. This particular film, which I’m going to play a short clip from in a moment, is available literally everywhere from Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Christian book distributors, nearly anywhere you can find that now. It’s a pretty amazing thing. But one of the most critical elements of biblical prophecy, which is a part of understanding scripture was fulfilled in Christ’s first coming.
The balance of biblical prophecy is yet to be fulfilled. And in this final piece that’s yet to be fulfilled, it does revolve, not all of it, but it revolves around a coming day of tribulation. A time of great wrath of God, where God pours out his judgment against a world, the world in which we live this world right here is going to experience God’s judgment in a remarkable way.
The people who will be alive at that time will see things that have never been seen before. It’s going to be a literally horrible time with great pain, death, unimaginable suffering. Of course, the purpose is to fulfill the justice of a holy God against a devil and his fallen angels, and all people who continue to reject the mercy and the grace of God as offered in love by God the Father through Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life. That is the plan of salvation. That’s the good news.
For those who reject that they don’t have a lot to look forward to, a matter of fact, a terrible time, and this time of wrath is coming. By all evidence, given as we talked about a few days ago on this program, likely coming very soon because of what we see. So the return of Christ, there’s the Second Coming. There’s the Rapture that comes before. The what of the Rapture can be described fairly well, but the why, as to why it’s important and why it’s important to understand that, that’s not very much known, and we’re going to talk about that right now.
Brent, in the film, Before the Wrath, you based the presentation around the specifics of a wedding in Galilee. I’ve watched the program twice. It’s powerful. Before you share some unique aspects of a Galilean wedding, which Jesus and his disciples all knew so well, and in this context, talked to them about the Rapture and the events that we’re seeing today. If I could, let me just play a 30-second audio clip from the film to help set this up as we get into it. So Tim, if you would play that for us,
Audio: There will be many that choose to be separated from him for all of eternity. Those that will be left behind.
You not only had to be ready, you had to have enough oil. You had to get in. You had to get into that wedding. Then the door was shut. By the way, once the door was shut, it was shut.
And in ancient Galilee, if you were locked out there was no getting in.
Sam Rohrer: All right, that’s just a short 30-second clip. Brent, let’s go right directly here now. Why is understanding the uniqueness of a Galilean wedding, why is that so important to understanding Jesus’ teaching about his return and what we’re talking about today?
Brent Miller: Right. Well, this really addresses such an important fundamental issue when it comes to understanding the return of Christ, is that when Jesus spoke, he used stories and parables and examples to explain the nature of God to those around him. He used examples from culture, for example, telling his disciples, “Be fisher of men.” I mean, exactly how would that make sense unless he was speaking to fishermen? And so, he related very directly to his audience.
And so, with that foundation, it’s important for us to understand that Jesus wasn’t simply a Jew, he was a Galilean and it was a subculture, there’s differences. Even in the New Testament, we see that in the Book of Acts and in the Book of Luke to confirm that there were cultural differences between the Jewish epicenter in Jerusalem and to the North in Galilee where the majority of Jesus’ ministry took place in this tiny, little area, is crucial.
The majority, minus Judas, of course, all of his disciples were Galileans and lived with that Galilean cultural subset. In the Book of Acts, we see it in Act 27, it states when they were all amazed and marveled saying to one another, “Behold are not all these which speak, Galileans? Referring to the spirit, the day of Pentecost, which we just had on Sunday.
Of course, in Luke 22:59, as Peter was denying Christ three times, and he was sitting there amongst the crowd, someone came up to him and said, in about the space of one hour after another confidently affirms saying, “The truth, this fellow also was with him, for he is a Galilean.” Now he’s surrounded by mostly Jews. And so, the Jews in Jerusalem are looking at these individuals almost as outsiders, they’re set apart somehow.
It’s important to understand that because in the book of Matthew, when, when his disciples came to Christ and said, “Tell us about your return,” about the events that would occur essentially at the end of days, at the end of the world, Jesus answered them in shocking detail, the terrifying detail describing the events that would unfold, except what we’ve missed for so long with research and various theologians today is that he was speaking to them on a much deeper level than we initially understood.
He was speaking to them with a Galilean vernacular. We now know that the majority of what Christ actually told his disciples about his return actually did relate to not just a Jewish wedding, but specifically a Galilean wedding, and there were huge differences. In fact, through new discoveries that have been discovered through ancient anthropology, we’ve discovered that the entire Galilean wedding process, which took about a solid year to unfold, it took a very long time, that it essentially reveals a prophetic timeline from the first coming of Christ through the Rapture to the Second Coming, and it’s absolutely shocking.
Sam Rohrer: You know, these are great facts to take into consideration, Brent. I want to jump in here because there’s something else very significant in the film that I think is important for our people to understand and that is that at one particular point in the film you depict the significance of a Galilean wedding, where an agreement is made at the gate of the city, between the groom and the would-be bride in front of many witnesses. If you can, in just a few minutes left in this segment, briefly describe the essential elements of this special time and compare it to Christ and the church as the bride of Christ.
Brent Miller: Right. Yeah. This is towards the beginning of the Galilean process. It’s shocking, just the similarities that we do see. After the agreement was made with the bride, essentially an agreement that we would like this young lady to become your bride, what’s surprising, what we’ve now discovered is that it’s a misconception that in the 1st century women didn’t have any authority, that the Jews looked at them as simply property in some sort of Middle Eastern culture. That really couldn’t be further from the truth.
During the betrothal process in Galilee, the groom would actually hand the bride a cup of wine to solidify the covenant, to finish the betrothal. At that time it was the bride, all the authority was in her hands. She had ultimate authority and power to actually reject the cup and push it back. If she decided to do that, the wedding was off, period. It all laid in her hands to do that. But if she accepted the cup, then she was agreeing that she wants this groom. Then that this new agreement, this new covenant was solidified.
What’s shocking is that in the 1st century, after she sipped from the cup, she would pass it back to the groom and the groom would then drink from the cup. Then he would conclude the betrothal by stating, “I will not drink again from this cup until I do it with you in my father’s house.” Now, obviously, I’m sure a bunch of people right now, a bunch of light bulbs are going off because that is shockingly similar to what Christ stated at the Last Supper with his Galileans, when he handed them, presented them the cup of wine to establish a new covenant with them.
Also, he said something very similar, that he says, “But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father’s kingdom.” So the similarities are undeniably speaking to their Galilean wedding culture.
Sam Rohrer: Brent, boy I tell you, and we could go from there, we’ve only about 30 seconds left, but that’s why you were saying the understanding of the Galilean wedding is so critically important for us to understand all Christ was saying. You’ve just put together a few things at that point. I really didn’t know, for instance, as you’re saying that the bride had an ability to actually reject at that point, or in the Galilean tradition, it started a process that went a lengthy period of time, about a year. All of that, again, sets up perfectly for the understanding what Christ told his disciples.
Ladies and gentlemen, when we come back, we’re going to go further into this and explaining, and all of this is right off the pages of scripture, but it’s in this film, Before the Wrath, as we talk about the why, right? This is a real question. Why is it important that Jesus returns? Why is it so critical that the groom comes back with a bride?
Well, we’re now at our mid-point of this program today, Stand in the Gap Today. Our theme for today is this, Before the Wrath: Time to Look Up and to Speak Up. Again, we’re talking about the wrath, meaning the tribulation period, and we’re focusing on what comes before that. We refer to that as the Rapture. Jesus told his disciples about it. We’re learning today as now pictured in a film that is available for you entitled, Before the Wrath. You can find it literally everywhere, Amazon, Walmart, Target, almost any place, you can find this, Before the Wrath.
The producer, the one whom God put on his heart, this theme and the putting together of this film is Brent Miller. He is our special guest here today. We’re talking about the uniqueness of a Galilean wedding and the uniqueness of the fact that Jesus and all of his disciples, except for Judas, were Galileans and that meant something in those days.
We have to take the uniqueness of the Galilean culture into mind and how it really does portray and apply to this issue we’re talking about today. Now the issue is the why of it, why the Rapture? Interpreting it and understanding scripture is essential to understanding the culture, and understanding the culture, let’s put this way, is necessary for interpreting, understanding the scripture.
With nearly the entirety of the gospels taking place in that area of Galilee, the disciples being Galilean, it’s distinctive. In fact, as I think we’ve already referenced, Jesus’ first public miracle was in Galilee and it was at a wedding. So it’s not surprising that Jesus in the description to the disciples about his return, the Rapture, is in terms of a wedding, and a Galilean wedding. We think why that reference to the 10 virgins, five wise, five foolish, and why they’re looking for a groom and why the bride ought to be ready. It all fits together. As it looks forward to the groom, Jesus Christ returning for us, the bride of Christ. What happens after that? The marriage supper of the lamb. Isn’t that amazing. It all works together so well.
But anyways, Brent, let’s get back into this so we can give our listeners as much understanding as possible on this. Talking about the why of the Rapture and why it must be before the wrath. Let’s go here first. Why is it essential for Jesus Christ, the bridegroom, to come back for the church, the bride of Christ, and before the time of wrath or the tribulation, why is that so important?
Brent Miller: Yeah, I mean, really so many things that are part of God’s plan within the scriptures and within our lives, they are meant to reflect God’s nature, the things that are of heaven. When we look at marriage itself, that marriage is created by God. When we look at the structure of God’s plan for marriage is that we see that marriage is specifically a microcosm of the things that come. It kind of represents the depth of love and sacrifice we are to have for one another, just as Christ was sacrificial in his agape love for us.
And so, they’re all ways for us to understand the nature of God and his love for us. Why the Rapture must occur is ultimately one of the greatest expressions of God’s love for us, that we are his bride and he has to come back for us. He doesn’t desire for us to go through the wrath. Wrath is for those that are to be judged upon the face of the Earth.
But this kind of leads into something that’s really a crisis that’s been occurring here in the West, is that when people, especially pastors and people within the body of Christ, discuss the Rapture, the debate is always when? When will the Rapture occur, pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, or what have you?
When we began this production, we began working with LifeWay Research on some of the trends occurring with the church here in the West. We’ve discovered that only 36% of the church believes in a pre-trib Rapture. So that means that the vast majority of people within the body of Christ do not believe in a pre-trib Rapture. There are a whole smorgasbord of many other beliefs, but that’s not really the most shocking things we came across.
Surprisingly, and this is a growing statistic, that 25% of all pastors here in the United States no longer believe in the Rapture at all, no literal Rapture, that Christ is not coming back for us at all. I mean, that’s one out of four and that’s absolutely shocking. I think that’s a direct result of again, something that the film kind of foundationally addresses as a crisis in the United States and that’s the result of prophecy being marginalized within the church.
To prove that that’s occurring, again, working with LifeWay Research, we found out that … well, first of all, a quarter to a third of the Bible is prophetic. A lot of theologians kind of agree on that. It’s intertwined from the beginning to the end, and it’s the only religious text in the world that actually has this. And so, from a sample of hundreds of random sermons from different denominations across the United States, we’ve discovered that only 2% of sermons on any given Sunday contain anything prophetic or is taught from a prophetic book of the Bible.
But if almost a third of the Bible contains something prophetic, well, I mean, just statistically, you would think about a third of the sermons would at least touch on something prophetic, either past or the future, but they’re not. So that proves that it’s being directly and overwhelmingly marginalized from the church. As I’ve said, you can’t remove prophecy from the Bible without also removing the return of Christ, they’re synonymous. So it’s no wonder why we have this terrifying statistic that even pastors are also rejecting the idea that Christ is coming back for his bride.
Dr. Gary Dull: You know, Brent, when I started out in the pastoral ministry, 46 years ago, there were many churches and they did this consistently, that held prophetic conferences. Sometimes they were what we called round-robin conferences, and there was a strong emphasis on prophecy that certainly is not there today. And so, these statistics that you’re sharing with our audience today, though they are sad and sorrowful, in some sense, it doesn’t surprise me because I realize the lack of emphasis that is on prophecy.
You talk about that 36% of the pastors only who believe in the pretribulation Rapture. The reason for that is, is that they don’t take the Bible literally. I once knew of a man, and I won’t give the name right now, he was a commonly known amillennialist. He said, “If I took the Bible literally I would have to believe in a pretribulation Rapture.” So my response to that is, “Well, take the Bible literally.” So these are great points that you’re bringing up. But getting back your film, in the Galilean wedding, after the agreement with the bride and the bride’s father, he left to prepare a place to live, compare this step to the process of Jesus now, what he’s doing for us now, as it relates to his return, please.
Brent Miller: Right. Yeah. That event in the 1st century follows exactly the event that unfolded with Christ’s first coming, that in Galilean culture and even to this day in the Middle East, we see this. Even in the Islamic culture, because it carries from the 1st century, is that when a bride and groom are betrothed, the groom would not live with the bride. The marriage wasn’t sealed, if you will, wasn’t finalized. The groom would have to leave to prepare a place and where? In his father’s house, they would often build a new …
To this day, they build a new level onto the home. And so, each level that’s built up, represents a new generation, a new family. And so, each home is a multigenerational home. And so, this was, again, something that Jesus’ disciples clearly understood. They understood it too, exactly what Jesus was saying every step of the way. So after the Last Supper, when Christ said, “I need to go away to prepare a place for you,” Again, they understood, there was no guesswork. There was no prophetic mystery here. They completely understood that they were now betrothed to Christ and he had to leave to prepare a place for them in his father’s kingdom. And so, again, it was completely related to their Galilean wedding experience.
Sam Rohrer: And that leads right to hear it because he said he would come back. But Jesus also said to the disciples, “No man knows the day or the hour,” They must have understood something that he was saying relative to that because in the Galilean context, how was that decision made and was Jesus telling them that they couldn’t know even the approximate time? What was the meaning of that statement?
Brent Miller: Right. They understood that too. That’s something that is a profound discovery for us today and one of those gasp moments in the film where everything really begins to click and make sense is that. Also, specifically how the Galileans were set apart from even the Jewish wedding culture and the Jewish epicenter is that when Christ left they understood that nobody would know the day or the hour of his return.
Why? It’s because in ancient Galilean culture, their weddings were a little different. The bride would have to be prepared and waiting all the time, occupying, always being waiting and waiting and ready with oil, enough oil lamps lit. We see this again, as you previously mentioned with the example of the 10 virgins. Why is this a theme? Why is that something they would have understood? Well, it’s because in the Galilean culture, the groom would actually come for the bride, get this, in the middle of the night.
It was a surprise wedding that the Galileans did. The bride, nor the groom actually knew when the day or the hour would take place. They kind of had a rough idea based on the preparations being made, “I think we’re close. Here comes the food for the feast they’re fixing.” The signs of the times. You know it’s close, you know it’s coming.
Sam Rohrer: Brett, I’m going to have you stop right there because ladies and gentlemen, the preparation and the general time can be known, but there was a decision. Somebody had to make a decision as to when that groom came back. I’m going to have Brent, answer that question next, as we go into, how should all of this knowledge impact our lives now?
Brent, on the other side of the break, you were about to answer the question that I posed to you relative to the groom’s decision, to return for the bride and that the general time, Jesus said, “The hour or the day, you do not know,” but something was communicated in that to those disciples. I want you to complete that because who ultimately makes the decision in the Galilean wedding relative to the groom going for the waiting bride and by comparison Jesus coming for hopefully the waiting bride, those who know Jesus Christ alive today.
Brent Miller: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. As if it wasn’t shocking enough, knowing that the Galileans had a surprise wedding in the middle of the night. So the bride had to always be ready. She even slept in her wedding gown when she felt that the time was close, to be prepared, but the one person that could send the groom, and the only person to go get the bride in the middle of the night was the father of the groom.
The disciples knew this. They lived it, they understood it. And so, when Christ said that, “Nobody knows the day or the hour, not the angels in heaven,” but who? “only the father.” Yeah, he was speaking directly to them. They understood that this cultural wedding that they’d been practicing for generations was a prophetic timeline to the return of the Messiah at the end of days. And so, no wonder why we’re told that Jesus will return as a thief in the night to those that are unprepared.
Sam Rohrer: Interesting. And with that comes this, as we kind of move in now to the impacting of our lives, because this reality, actually, I find it extraordinarily motivating. I mean, it’s just as exciting as can be, but yet that’s what a wedding is and that’s the way I bride should be. Now, in this case, the coming of the groom for the bride, as you explained, in a Galilean wedding, and as you said, “Understood by the disciples,” it helps to perfectly understand the word, Rapture, that we use to describe this as a taking away of the bride of Christ when Jesus returns.
So understanding why the bridegroom, Jesus Christ said he will return, why it will be before the wrath because he doesn’t want his bride to go through this judgment on Earth, and why every Christian and every person who has not accepted God the father’s free gift of salvation and invitation to the wedding supper of the lambs, so many parallels here, should be very concerned about this reality and about, I think these misleading events that we see all around us today, for those who are looking, what we’re seeing should make a difference. But I want to ask you here, because in the film, you actually pictured a part of the event that depicted how the bridegroom would come and would take away the bride that relates so picturesquely to the Rapture. Explain that.
Brent Miller: Right. Yeah. As the groom would come for the bride in the middle of the night, he would be blowing a shofar, a trumpet, to wake up the bride if she wasn’t already up, to grab her oil lamps, which would be burning throughout the night with trimmed wicks and to be out there and be ready, but also the wake up everyone else who was invited to the wedding. So if you didn’t wake up, well, you missed it. You had a very short window of time here.
But what’s absolutely shocking, again, when it comes to the event of the Rapture itself, is that we’ve discovered that when the groom would come for his bride in the middle of the night, all she had to do was be prepared to occupy and be ready, sincerely waiting for him in purity. Because everything from that point on was now in the groom’s hands, when they would actually meet face to face to retrieve the bride, she was actually lifted off the ground in a chair, in a litter, if you will, and carried to the father’s house, that’s how they would do it.
And so, when the disciples heard about the catching away to meet Christ in the air, to be caught up again, they understood that vernacular from the Galilean culture. That is just a shocking discovery that knowing that Jesus uses parables, uses examples of culture, things that we do in our daily life to connect with us, to explain to us the realities in heaven and the nature of God, that even the act of lifting the bride off the ground to carry her to the father’s house, again, is a picture of the actual Rapture.
Sam Rohrer: It’s exciting beyond measure when I saw that pictured, but Brent, we only have a couple of minutes left, I need to go here in now application now because from Christ’s perspective, his promise to return for his bride impacts all of those, of us, who we believe as we’re looking now, right before us, who call themselves Christians today. I see there’s two groups of people.
In America, we have about 73% of people who say they’re Christians, but the numbers would indicate that probably maybe 10%, six, seven, eight, nine, 10%, a far less, wise virgins, perhaps foolish virgins. Apply this fantastic truth to those who are the wise virgins, what should they be doing and thinking now in light of all that we’re seeing? What about those who are the five who then go and say, “Please give us of your lamps,” and so forth, but they were too late. Apply this to him.
Brent Miller: I mean, really the takeaway from this film is for those that are sincerely waiting for the return of Christ, watching the signs of the time. You’re right, it is a shockingly low percentage, even based on the data we have from LifeWay Research. It’s a terrifying trend that’s only getting worse every single year. This does come from prophecy being marginalized in the church because you can’t remove prophecy without also removing the return of Christ and he’s been removed from the church, most of them.
And so, the time has come with the state of the world is for those that are prepared and waiting for his return to take this message to their pastors, to take it into the church, to bring prophecy and the return of Christ as a topic, the Rapture, back into the church, because there are so many people that no longer believe in the Rapture, that no longer believe that Christ is coming back.
In fact, 83% of the entire world right off the bat rejects even the notion that Jesus was the Messiah, never mind, he’s coming back. You’re right, also a very high percentage of Christians themselves reject that biblical truth. This comes down to this film. It is a message of love with the things that we’ve been talking about. It provides an incredible amount of hope to believers, but it’s also a dire warning.
There is an element in here that is a pretty terrifying warning and it’s a warning from Christ himself. It does reflect back to that example of the 10 bridesmaids, and the five foolish ones that didn’t have enough oil to carry on until the end. That’s because what we’re seeing is incredible apostasy within the church because the reason why prophecy exists in the Bible is for God to prove that he is God to those that live in unbelief.
There’s nothing like biblical eschatology that exists anywhere else in the world. So if you remove prophecy from the Bible, well, in the eyes of the nonbeliever, you just placed the Bible equally on par with any other religious system in the world. So take your pick. You know, you’re now religious by culture. If that’s the case, what do you have? Apostasy.
Even amongst within the church itself, you have this incredible falling away because they don’t know why they should believe in the Rapture. Why they should actually be prepared and waiting for Christ’s return. And so, explaining the why and showing the proof of the incredible falling away that’s occurring in the church right now, it really can be the wake-up call that we need here in America to get back to talking about the Lord’s return.
Sam Rohrer: And with that, Brent, thank you for being on the program today. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope and I trust that this has been an encouragement to you as we consider again, why for sharing what we’re talking about today, the Lord’s return, the Rapture. It is because the Lord himself talked about it and he is returning and it should make a difference in the way we view all that is about us.
Brent, thank you for being with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, you can find that film that we’re talking about that depicts the Rapture, Before the Wrath, by going literally anywhere, Amazon, anywhere, you can find it. I encourage you to do that. It will benefit you greatly.
Thank you for being with us today, ladies and gentlemen on this program. Gary, again, Brent, and Tim, thanks for working the controls so well today. We pray ladies and gentlemen, you’ll have a great weekend. Stand in the gap for truth where you are.
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