Sunday, September 25, 2011

Current Events in Biblical Preaching

Joel 1:4 KJV
That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.

Scofield remarks that Joel's prophecy is occasioned by the real time event of a destroying swarm of locusts. Joel used what was on everyone's mind to cast their thoughts forward into the day of the Lord. This legitimizes using current events in preaching to illustrate the truths of God's word. A preacher may properly use great events such as earthquakes, hurricanes and fires as a reminder to his listeners that God has foretold great destruction in the final days.

Whether those natural disasters of our day are a part of the actual destruction is, I think, questionable. We, who are saved today, will be removed from the earth when they begin in earnest and any disasters today, while reminders of those, could as easily be cyclical and we could be a thousand years from the end. It is premature and dangerous to our credibility to call them end time judgments when we are not given the same authority in preaching as Old Testament prophets.

The preacher is wise to cite the events of his day as illustrative of spiritual things. But he has taken his authority too far to proclaim them as fulfillment.

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