You see it all the time.. someone preaching and talking about their visions and special knowledge about Christ’s Second Coming. And we should always start with skepticism because there will be many, many more false teachers than true.

You must always have your Bible in hand and referencing it when listening to this persons’ story..

But there is one thing that is a slam dunk for me when it comes to determining whether someone has been blessed with the Spirit of God, of Truth.. and is teaching that Truth reflecting the source of all Truth - God.. and whether this person is teaching from a very real, blessed place.

That’s misguided, illogical and overpowering anger.

Anger comes from Satan himself. It is not Christ-like and never will be; yes, the Lord has been angry at His people, but that is not what we are called to be in any circumstance. No teacher of the Word of God should lash out with anger… even if they are not believed or misunderstood.

A teacher is patient and kind. A teacher doesn’t try to persuade and seduce people to follow him or her.. they teach. That’s it. They tell their story and leave it to those listening what they will do with what they hear. Whether they follow them or not.

There’s no force or anger. Just teaching, instructing and telling their story.

So if you want a solid sign someone is false — ask yourself, are they kind? Do they reflect Christ and what a Christian is called to be? Or are they a reflection of all that’s evil in the human spirit?

-Brother Matt

You probably don’t know this.. or maybe you do if you’ve been hanging around this site for a long time. But I have a Lutheran background. I was Baptized and Raised in the Lutheran Church.

A number of years ago the Lord took me on a journey.. I felt ‘called’. I came very close to pursuing the road of becoming a Pastor; I was an Elder in my Church for a while..

And my faith grew deeper and I felt called to bury myself in the Scriptures more so then in the past.

I was eventually drawn to one specific area of Scriptures - the Last Days - Prophecy - The End Times - Eschatology. And there was certainly a plethora of information on the Internet regarding it.. books everywhere about it! I read and read..

And I started this site to help me explore this area… I wanted to learn about others views (and what an educational journey it’s been!).

But the odd thing was even though I spent many years studying the Bible, going to Church every week, Bible Studies… even Bible Camp when I was younger. Much of what I was reading about the End Times was VERY foreign to me.

The Lutheran Church seemed to sort of skim over the entire subject. And that was where I left it for a while. I thought, well, they just don’t deal with the subject matter.

But then my eyes were opened one day! No, it turns out, that wasn’t the whole story; it wasn’t that the Lutheran Church was just not talking about it. The whole story is they believe in a shade of something called Amillennialism - a very different view from many that frequent this website.

Amillennialism is a widely held belief by many Christian denominations (more popular then many of you might immediately think). It’s popularity might surprise you because of the attention other lines of Doctrine (i.e., pre-millennialism) get through the media, movies and the many very popular books over the years - you’ve probably heard of the Left Behind books?

It is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church and is held by many Lutherans and others in the Reformed tradition.

For fun the other day I did a search through our End Times Forum.. now we have over 30,000 posts by members over the last couple years.

I did a search for Amillennialism or Amillennialist (it might have been talked about since I wrote this) and nothing came up. Nothing! Did I mention above it’s widely held? Lutherans? You’ve heard of them right? Catholics? Yep, I bet you’ve heard of them! Some of you reading this are even going to belong to one of those..

There isn’t much love for this view in our community..

I’m not going to go into great detail in this post (although expect me to talk more about this doctrine view in the future!).

Just a few high points..

The biggest difference that affects many things is that those that believe in this view do not believe that there will be a literal one thousand year reign of Christ on earth to come. Amillennialism: If you break the word itself down, ‘A’ is a prefix in Greek meaning not - no. So it literally means ‘no millennium’.

Actually that’s not really accurate though.. because they do believe in a millennial reign of Christ. The difference is it’s a spiritual reign through His church and not an earthly reign in the future. And we’re in it.

Have you read the Left Behind books? Do you spend every waking hour trying to connect current events to the Bible? What’s going on with Israel? How’s the U.S. fit in the Bible? Who’s the Anti-Christ? Are you waiting for the secret Rapture?

Well, if you are an Amillennialist.. you won’t be.

That’s why it’s all foreign to us (Lutherans, Catholics etc..) when we go outside what we are taught in the Church and by our Pastors. It’s taught as a very simple scenario. And many things in the Bible are not taken literally (another important difference)..

Take a look at this one person’s writing from a number of years ago.. still relevant today:

• Questioning Amillennialism

It’s a great, passionate, personal read… You can hear the frustration in her words!!

When you have a Church you love and people you trust indoctrinating you.. it’s a tough pill to swallow when you start to ask questions and you can’t get satisfactory answers.

Again, I’ll chat more about this because it is something that has and does influence me considerably. I just wanted to put it out there.. It’s never been discussed directly in the forum here.. and I think it deserves to be looked at and discussed.

-Brother Matt

An interview with John Hagee..

See Also: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

What do you think of his views of the last days?

-Brother Matt