← Prophecy Watchers
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome everybody to the Truth daily news in 15 minutes or less through the lens of the Bible. Joining me right now is Mondo Gonzalez from Prophecy Watchers. Mondo, thank you for joining me.
- [00:17]
B
Tom it's always good to be with you.
- [00:19]
A
And this is the first time on this program the Truth. And it's just great to have you on here. But let me, let's just dive right into it as we look at Bible prophecy. You've been doing this a long time. What is it that you would say? MONDO we look at the news. So much is driven by the news, even in prophecy circles. Sometimes the news tends to interpret the Bible for people instead of the Bible interpreting the news or world events and how we should live the news motivates people. So let's start off here. What prophecy stood students, what would you say? They often get wrong in that sense or sometimes get wrong. And I want to go into both camps, those who study Bible prophecy or are intrigued by it and those who make fun of people like us. So with that common misconceptions, let's start there in prophecy circles.
- [01:21]
B
Yes, I think so. Like you said, I've been watching for 30 some years now, and I can share with you the mistakes that I made right right through through the years. And so I can I I have some personal, you know, repentance in my own mind. And one of them I've see and I still to this day, as you said, is we we tend to look at the news or we look around and we say, oh, wow, look at all these things. It must then then for it must therefore be this particular way. The other thing that I see often and is, you know, Tom, we're Americans, so we are the center of the world in our own mind. And so what that means is is and I imagine maybe everybody, maybe if you're not living in like Zimbabwe or something, but because America has been so influential in the world as we know, for the past, you know, century at least, we tend to think America has to be in Bible prophecy. And so we, we naturally ask the question, well, where's America at? Where's America? And so then we go to the book of Obadiah and we see an eagle in the stars and that us and I think the big mistake often that people make, and I just heard this recently at the conference, was that we tend to look at, for example, in Daniel chapter seven, you have a bear. And we go, oh, that bear must be Russia then, because Russia's mascot is a bear. And so what that does is that Removes things out of context. And so we look for correlations in the Bible to our own world or own location or even our own time. And then we forced that back on an exegetical approach to Scripture, which clearly is not the case. And so I think that is very unfortunate.
- [03:06]
A
Yeah, it's a great point. Many years ago, I went and watched a documentary, the Late Great Planet Earth, and I was not yet saved. I think it was probably 1978, somewhere in there. And I was really intrigued by it. And again, I wasn't a believer yet. I was still going to Catholic church and I was just starting to do drugs. So put all of this together. So what I did after I watched the Late Great Planet Earth, totally captivated by it, I went home and I pulled out the Encyclopedia Britannica and I started looking for flags that matched the symbols that were, from what I remember, that were in the Bible that Hal Lindsay was referring to. And I said. And I did exactly that. And I said, well, this must be Russia. Well, this must be this. And granted, it was a while after that before I got saved, but still it is that. And this drives a lot of thinking, even within prophecy circles. Okay, I got to ask you this because you had a post recently, I thought it was great, you had quoted a teacher, Michael Brown, Dr. Michael Brown, and it was about date setting. And I agreed with you. There's a real danger in going there or saying it's got to be this year or whatever it may be. You got a lot of pushback on it, but you were just stating some obvious facts as we look at this. Another problem in there. Well, there's two different things. We'll get into the Michael Brown thing in a minute because I know people want to hear about that, but I see date setting as also being problematic within Bible prophecy circles.
- [04:50]
B
Yeah. And it comes in. It comes in kind of subtle anymore because again, for those that have been around a long time, you know, we remember, you know, 88 reasons in 88 and in 1994 and Harold camping in 2011 and all these other things. And it has really harmed the entire movement of those that are waiting and looking at prophetic events. I think the things that have happened recently is, you know, some people are wise enough that they, they aren't setting dates. Others just simply set dates. I have a file in. I have a folder in my email date setters. And so I get them, I get them constantly. But I think the other subtlety is that, well, it goes to high watch times. And so. And I remember I Did the same thing. I always thought, well, the Rapture is supposed to happen on the Feast of Trumpets, which is in the fall. And so therefore I would get extra excited during the fall. And then it's like, well, I guess it didn't happen this year, so I guess I can kind of just wait until next year. And so they describe in these ways, and what's interesting is some. Some believers, they. They. It doesn't bother them. They're like, well, I got excited and I got let down. That's fine. It doesn't bother my faith, is what they would say. And so they get. They get a little upset if you criticize the idea of High Watch times, because for them, they do it. But what the problem is, is as a pastor, you and I know this, that on the other side, people who maybe aren't as strong in their faith, they get discouraged by all this date setting or the High Watch times, and then they begin. I've had friends say, you know, oh, I stopped watching years ago because it was always supposed to be on this, this event, that event. And so now I don't even worry about it all together. And I'm all millennial now. I don't even believe in a rapture anymore. So the people that promote the High Watch times or the date setting, again, regardless of whether they mean well and regardless of whether their tenacity is unhinged or undiminished, it does harm people. Because I've seen it.
- [06:50]
A
I have, too, in every year, we roll around to July and August and we start to. Dates are set again, and Rosh Hashanah is coming, Trumpets is coming. And I. And it's troubling to me because it takes away the imminency of the Rapture, because suddenly, well, it doesn't mean the Lord is going to call us home at any time, at any moment, we should be ready. It means only within this particular time frame, at the time of these Jewish holidays, by the way, because they are Jewish feast days. They're feasts of the Lord for the Jews. And when Jesus came the first time, he fulfilled four of the feasts. And I think related to a second coming for the people of Israel is when these feasts will be fulfilled. But I think when you go into the High Watch times, when you say the Rapture's got to happen within this time frame, I think it eliminates the always, always be ready and the imminency of the return of Christ or the calling home of Christ. And I think it's a dangerous place to be. Anxiety kicks up. Okay. You quoted Dr. Michael Brown and you got a lot of heat for quoting Dr. Michael Brown. I've read a lot of the comments and I've had similar ones for other guests that I've had on or that I've quoted. I just simply have quoted them. And why do you think that? Because you quote certain people like Dr. Michael Brown. I can think of a few others I've had on within the last few months, and people just get really unhinged by that. Why do you think that is?
- [08:38]
B
Well, I think for the most part, again, I would give our brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt in the sense that they desire to, they desire to have pure doctrine. And so they, they, they come up with other passages that say, you know, mark certain people and this and that. And usually the, the passages that they're referring to are primarily for complete, absolute heretics, like somebody that's outside of the faith, somebody that is, is, is unsaved and like a Joseph Smith or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna quote Joseph Smith probably for any reason at all. Okay, for sure. But I think that they, they, they misconstrue those things. They conflate that together. Where we know in the New Testament, Romans 14 and others, that it's to, it's a serious thing to be called a heretic. That puts you again, outside of salvation or teaching a false gospel where we know so again, their motives are. Right. But you know, the other thing that I mentioned in my response to some of that is that Michael Brown is probably one of the best messianic Jew apologists that has ever existed. His work, his, his, his four volume set on the objections to Jesus by Jews. It's unparalleled. He's, he's the Hebrew scholar. Now people have brought up, you know, some of his immoral accusations that were brought against him. And I'm not defending any of that. I'm not defending he's a post trip guy. I'm not defending that. But what he specifically was saying about date setting, I resonated, I said, this is very well said. And it's interesting to me that people responded and said, you know, I don't, I want to associate with him at all because he has immoral issues. You're like, I guess I can't read Psalm 8, I can't read Psalm 19. Both of those are written by David, who's a complete adulterer, proven adulterer and a murderer and a liar. So it's as if Somebody who has been guilty of those things cannot speak this level of truth. Now, if they don't like Michael Brown, that's fine. I was just simply saying we have to have the ability in our, in our this current age to speak something without having to qualify every time. Oh, by the way, I disassociate from all those other things. Heck, we couldn't be able to read the Bible again in many of the Psalms of David in that regard. And that's why I shared that Paul quoted, He quoted cretins, he quoted the Hymn to Zeus, he. He quoted several other secular works that certainly had a false understanding of the gospel. And he didn't say, oh, by the way, make sure you understand, I'm not endorsing them. I'm only using this thing. So we have to have a little bit of, I think, maturity here and wisdom in that we can quote people without having to worry about the accusation that I'm endorsing everything.
- [11:17]
A
So thank you very much. I look at it and think we need to be able to be critically thinking, but if. And be able to understand. Look, this is a, this is something that we do need to hear, we do need to understand, but it doesn't mean you support everything that that person does. I mean, you and I both know we've both been pastors for a long time. We have sets of Bible study books, of commentaries. I have 3000 books in my library. There is no way I'm going to look at my library and say, I agree with everything that's in here. Absolutely not. In fact, I remember as Warren Wiersbe who said years ago, he has commentaries from people he knows he disagrees with, and he reads them because it helps him to challenge his thinking on understanding why he believes what he believes. And he goes, sometimes they challenge me in a direction I wasn't yet thinking, and they were correct in that area. But I mean, you look, you go, no, I'm not going to agree with every single thing that's on there. And I do think it's healthy to have a disagreement. I was on a program just the other night with James Cadiz, and he definitely had a disagreement with David Tal, and it got rather explosive in the middle of it. But there is that place to go back and forth and understand I don't have to agree with them on every single thing. The core essentials are real and true for Christianity. But even at that, I'll still interview a person that I just had a rabbi on, that he's not a believer. And I just had him on. And he was great because he was explaining things going on in Israel. Well, we should be able to hear these different things that are happening. All right. We only have about a minute left. I got to ask you about the red heifer. I see your book behind you. That's been all over the news lately. Another red heifer has been birthed. We'll get into this in more detail in another program. But Mondo, what's going on with the red heifer?
- [13:15]
B
Yeah, this was, it was born recently. And the fascinating thing, it was born by artificial insemination. And the amazing thing about it is it was born from the, the basically the gen genetics of two black Angus cows, heifers. So the fact that it came out red, perfectly red. There's some other things to go with it. But this is interesting. They're super excited because this one was born in Galilee. Not from Texas.
- [13:41]
A
Not from Texas.
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B
From Texas. So their, their, their mentality is really, really excited right now.
- [13:47]
A
Well, that's interesting. So we're going to get into that in a lot more detail coming up on a future program here real soon with Mondo. But Mondo, thank you for joining me on the Truth today. And remember, everybody, we're not looking for dates, but we do look up and lift up our head because redemption draws near and we can be called home at any moment. So let's always be ready. Thank you again for joining me today, Mondo, and we'll see you guys tomorrow.