Join us for a thought-provoking journey through biblical prophecy with Ronald L. Dart, where we explore the crucial lessons of the past to inform our present actions. Dart challenges the notion that understanding prophecy equates to predicting fate, proposing instead that its true purpose is to motivate real change in our lives. Dive deep into stories of biblical figures such as Jonah and Lot, learning how their lives and responses to prophecy provide timeless lessons on righteousness and redemption. Discover why Jesus’ teachings implore us to prioritize compassionate action over deciphering the unpredictable timeline of end-time events. The episode
00:00:01 Introduction to Ronald L. Dart and Fascination with Prophecy
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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We have an incurable fascination with the future, don’t we? We want to know what’s going to happen. We want to know when it’s going to happen. And we want to know why it’s going to happen. It’s small wonder that when Jesus told his disciples, boys, I’m going to tell you the truth. There’s coming a time when there’s not going to be one stone upon another that’s not thrown down of this magnificent temple you’re looking at. Small wonder his disciples wanted to know. Inquiring minds always want to know. And so the disciples’ first question was, when will these things be? and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? They knew that a prophecy of the destruction of the temple was critical, and that it had to be in a critical end-time sequence of events. After all, these men knew the Old Testament. In synagogue school, they had to memorize significant portions of it. They knew the temple had been destroyed once before, and they knew the prophecies of that destruction had messianic implications. Here was the Messiah standing in front of them, telling them the temple was going to be destroyed one more time. So they wanted to know. Now, Jesus’ answer to this is fairly detailed. It has a lot of information about the end time. But I can summarize it in two points. Their question was, What’s the sign of your coming in the end of the age? When will these things be? Jesus answered, first, it’s not for you to know the time. And second, get on with life and get on with the work you’ve been given to do. Oh, he told them the general signs of the approaching event. But for the most part, they were of very little predictive value. There’s not much in there you can really use. Oh, sure, there are earthquakes, and sure, there are famines and wars and pestilences in various places. But, folks, those have been going on for 2,000 years. You haven’t been able to use them for prediction up to now. What makes us think they’ll be of a lot of value in prediction even in this day and age? These things that Jesus told them were more action points than they were predictions. When you see Jerusalem surrounded, flee into the mountains. When you see the abomination of desolation set up, get out of here. In other words, they were things, signs, so that as they happened, the disciples would know what was going on. And between now and then, he said, you’ve got some things you have to be doing. What are those things? As a Bible teacher for many years, I’ve often had occasion to look over the prophetic studies of a lot of students and other teachers. Almost all of them have been consumed with questions of timing and events. They like to correlate events and the dates and numbers of days in some of the prophecies. There are prophecies that deal with periods of time like 1260 days and 1335 days or 42 months or three and a half years. These are benchmarks that men try to connect along a timeline. They’ll give you the number of days and they’ll tell you this event takes place. It’s almost as if we assume that working out the details of these prophets and these prophecies have some practical value. I think there is a practical value in knowing what the prophecies say. But I doubt seriously that there’s very much to be gained by attempts to predict the course of events. The only value in knowing what the course of events is going to be is if there’s something you can do about it. Not many people stop to ask this little simple question. Why should God tell me what’s going to happen in the future? Why do I need to know? What point is there in it? Well, if you do stop and ask the question, I can suggest two important reasons why God might tell us the future. One is so we can do something about it. Actually, maybe he tells us what the future holds so we can change it. And that sounds far-fetched to you? Well, let me give you an example. There was a prophet named Jonah. God sent him to a city named Nineveh. And he said, I want you to go to that city, and I want you to tell them, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So Joshua, after a small detour through the belly of a whale, went to Nineveh and marched into the city, saying, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Now this is not stated as a conditional prophecy. There aren’t any ifs, ands, or buts about it. Forty days. Get your affairs in order. The city is coming down. Well, the king of Nineveh heard it, and he commanded that everybody fast and pray and wear sackcloth. And he had them put sackcloth on the animals and don’t give the animals any food or water. I guess they even threw some ashes and dust on the animals probably to be sure that they were properly mourning. And God looked down upon a city that had said, hey, we’re sorry. We’ve been doing wrong. We’re going to turn this thing around. We repent. And God looked at Nineveh and said, well, do you look at that? Would you look at that? Here’s a people who got a prophecy and repented. I will not destroy them because of that. So 40 days came and 40 days went and Nineveh was still standing and Jonah was not very happy about that because his credibility had gone down the drain. But if you want to know why God might tell us the future, it’s so we can change the future. We can repent. We can do something about it. If it says we’re going to die if we stay in this city, well, we don’t stay in this city. We get out. There’s a second reason, though, why God tells us the future. And in some ways, it’s more important than the first one. No, it can’t be more important than repentance. But it is very important. It is so that we will understand events as they take place. In other words, if we know what the prophecies say, and then we begin to see events take place around us, we will know. that God’s hand is in it, that this is not just bad luck. It’s not just one of those things. This is real. This is God acting in history. And Jesus made it absolutely clear. that prophecy was not given so men could work out a timeline, which seems to be one of the greatest efforts of would-be interpreters of prophecy. Jesus said, no, no, I’m not giving you this so you can work out a timeline. No man knows the day or the hour of my return. Only my Father knows that. Well, Jesus’ answer to his disciples of their broad question ran to two complete chapters in Matthew 24 and 25. And at the end of the segment, he let his disciples know what it was he considered important for them relative to his coming. I am coming back, and you need to be ready for my return at any time and at all times. And here is the thing that is probably the most important thing of all for you to know about my coming. It’s found in Matthew 25, beginning in verse 31. And be sure and bear in mind now as we look at this to remember this is an allegory. When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he shall sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another like a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on the left. The picture’s clear. It’s not hard to understand at all what is going on here so far. Remember, it’s just an allegory. And out of this allegory, a truth is supposed to emerge. Then shall the king say to them on his right hand, that’s where he put the sheep, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For. Now, this little for or because that comes in here I think is critical. Because I don’t know how it is that we get some of the ideas we get about salvation. I believe in salvation by grace. I do not believe in salvation by works. And yet here I come smack up against this particular statement. Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world because… Now the righteous answered and said, Lord, I don’t understand what you’re saying. In fact, reading it or just read it and you stop there, I think I would wonder what he was driving at. The righteous said, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? I don’t remember that. When did we see you thirsty and not give you a drink or give you a drink? And when did we see you a stranger and take you in or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? We don’t remember any of these things. And the king shall answer, I’ll tell you the truth. Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me. So here we are, learning the most important thing for us to know about the return of Christ. And it is that when Christ comes back, he will separate us and he will judge us based upon how we have treated one another. How many things are there more important to know than that? The value of study of prophecy, the value of the study of timelines and dates and all that is really marginal because there’s not much you can do about that. But there is something you can do about a man who’s hungry. And there is something you can do about a man who doesn’t have any clothes. There is something you can do about someone you know who is sick. And Jesus suggests that You know, boys, you really ought to be busy doing the things you can do something about and not worrying so much about the rest. Then he’ll say to them on the left hand, Get away from me, you cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. I was hungry, and you didn’t give me a bite. I was thirsty. You gave me no drink. I was a stranger. You did not take me in. Naked, and you clothed me. Sick and in prison. You never visited me. And they will say, Lord? When did we see you hungry? I never knew. If I had known, I would have given you something. I didn’t know you were thirsty or I would have given you a drink. When did we do any of these things? When did it happen and we did not minister to you? And he shall say, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you kept it away from me. Oh, you can study prophecy all you want. You can study all these things. You can work out timelines. You can work out your doctrines and your beliefs and work out. There are just millions of things you can study in the Bible to make yourself different from everybody else and maybe better than anyone else. But those aren’t the things. Apparently, he’s going to judge you by. He’s going to judge you by how you treat one another. These, he said, will go away into everlasting punishment, the righteous into life eternal. It seems highly unlikely that sitting around trying to figure out prophecy is going to save many lives. More likely, people will be saved who are applying themselves day by day to the teachings of Jesus. You want to be concerned about saving yourself? Well, there’s a very good example I can give you on that, and I’ll tell you what it is when I come back after these words.
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Everyone knows the Bible is filled with prophecies about the future. But did you know that prophecy can be written in such a way that it reveals and conceals at the same time? Write or call for a free program, Understanding Prophecy. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Now, there is no question that the Bible foretells calamitous events, and there’s a great temptation to think that if I just know what the sequence is, if I have the secret, if I have the key about these calamitous events, that I can figure it out and I can escape it all. I say that’s tempting. The problem is that, biblically speaking, it doesn’t work that way. The names Sodom and Gomorrah, I’m sure, are familiar to you. These are two cities that God destroyed because they had become so rotten. They had come to the place to where they were irredeemably wicked. However, there lived a man in Sodom whose name was Lot, and he was a righteous man. He lived the life. Lot did not have a clue what was about to happen to his city when two angels showed up on his doorstep. These two individuals had said they’d come to see what the city was like, and having seen they were going to destroy it, and he had to get himself out of there. Now, this is interesting because Lot didn’t figure this out. There was no dream in the night. There was no study of Scripture. There was no Scripture, I suppose. And so consequently, none of this was available to him. What he had was two people who showed up at his doorstep and said, get your family together and get out of here. All right. Well, Lot sent word to his two sons. He was really worried about them that they might, his sons-in-law, I think, that they were not going to get out of town. He had family in the town. He and his wife, his daughters, he could take them and he could go. But he was worried about other family. And so he delayed and he dithered and he waited. And finally the angel said, I’m sorry, you got to go. And they grabbed him by the hand and dragged him away. and led his wife and his daughters out of the city and sent them up the hillside and said, Don’t look back. What’s significant about this? Well, it is that it wasn’t Lot’s understanding that saved him. It was the angels. And the reasons the angels came down and saved him was because Abraham had prayed and begged God that if there were any righteous people in the city to save the city. Well, there weren’t, but one or two. And so he grabbed them and drug them out. The answer? You don’t have to figure it out, folks. You have to live the life. What saved Lot was that he was righteous, not that he understood prophecy. What a difference. I don’t think there are very many things, frankly, more important for you to understand than that. It isn’t a question when you come to biblical prophecy of figuring it out. It’s a question of living the life. This prophecy was given only a few days before the Last Supper and the crucifixion. Mark, in the 14th chapter, tells us about this time. He said, “…after two days was the feast of Passover and unleavened bread, and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft and put him to death. But they said, Not on the feast day. We don’t dare do it on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people.” Now, this series of programs is really about the words of Jesus, not so much about the events that we have to harmonize in the gospel accounts. But let me just stop to explain one small thing here. That there is and was a – I don’t know if the word confusion is what I’m looking for, but a confusion between – the idea of Passover and unleavened bread. In their origins, the 14th day of the first month of the Jewish calendar was the Passover, and the 15th day of the first month was the first day of unleavened bread, which lasted for seven days. In the process of time, the whole festival came to be called the Passover, which is not the least bit surprising that it should be so. But the Passover was comprised of a day in which the Passover lamb was killed, And then there were the seven days of eating unleavened bread that followed it. Now, they did not want to kill Jesus on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread because, well, you’re not supposed to be killing people on those days. And so consequently, they wanted him to be dead before that day took place. So they killed him, not on the 15th day of the month, but on the 14th day of the month. Well, Jesus was in Bethany, the house of Simon the leper. And as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment, very precious. And she broke it open, broke the seal, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves. Why was this waste of the ointment made? It could have been sold for more than 300 pence and given to the poor. And they murmured against the woman. And Jesus said, Leave this woman alone. What are you bothering her for? She has wrought a good work on me. You’ve got the poor with you always, and ain’t that the truth? And whensoever you will, you can do them good. Well, maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. But me, you don’t always have with you. She has done what she could. She has come ahead of time to anoint my body to the burying. I don’t have any idea what the apostles who heard that thought he meant, because they still had not grappled with the idea that he was going to die. He said, she’s come to anoint my body preparatory to burying. So I tell you, wherever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she has done shall be spoken for a memorial of her. And Judas, one of the twelve, went to the chief priest to betray him unto them. Now this is one of the tragedies of the Bible. And there is so much that could be said about the man Judas, but I think it’s fascinating that his decision to go to the chief priest to betray Jesus was immediately on the heels of a rebuke. He came up with this idea, well, she shouldn’t have done that. This should have been given to the treasury. And, of course, we know that Judas was a thief and carried the bag, and he didn’t really care about the poor. But nevertheless, he made this issue, and Jesus, well, he smacked him for it. He said, leave her alone. And throughout all generations, wherever the word goes, wherever the gospel is preached, this deed will be mentioned. And so it is, because Mark put it in his gospel. Well, Judas went out to the chief priest to betray him, and when they heard it, they were glad. And they promised to give him money. And he tried to figure out how he could conveniently betray him. Because the truth of the matter is he didn’t really want to be seen to be the betrayer. He wanted to do it conveniently where he would not be known, where it could be sneaky. What follows next is the Last Supper. And we’ll talk about that when I come back.
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For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, The Words of Jesus, Number 40. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Luke tells us that then came the day of unleavened bread when the Passover was killed. And that’s a matter of usage, actually, because technically the first day of unleavened bread was on the 15th. The Passover was killed on the 14th. But you have to understand that by usage, the Jews all had leavening out of their homes by the time the Passover was killed. And so it kind of was a day of unleavened bread and was spoken of that way. The day came, and he sent Peter and John saying, Go prepare us the Passover that we may eat it. And they said to him, Well, where do you want us to do this? He said, Behold, when you enter into the city, you’ll meet a man with a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house where he enters in. And you shall say to the good man of the house, The Master says to you, Where is the guest chamber where I can keep the Passover with my disciples? Now, this sounds like a little bit of a mystic, a mysterious and mystic type of thing. But in fact, it was very common for people to cater to Passover observers. There were hundreds of thousands, millions of people who came to Jerusalem to observe the Passover. And an awful lot of them did not themselves go up to the temple to sacrifice their animals. Others did it for them. And the entire thing was a, you know, well, it wasn’t a commercial thing necessarily, but it was an awful lot of commercial opportunity for people. And so people catered Passover services. Now, this particular man, whether Jesus had prearranged with him, whether it was a miracle, the Scripture simply does not say. That man bearing a pitcher of water was really unusual. I will tell you that because men didn’t do that. Women did that. And it may well be that Jesus had set this up ahead of time and said, You be out there with a pitcher of water you’re carrying, and the disciples will know who you are. So this was all done. He’ll show you a large upper room furnished. I want you to go there and get everything ready. And so they went and found what he had said, and they made ready the Passover. And when the hour was come, he sat down with the twelve apostles with him. And he said to them, I have really wanted to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. because this is the last one, it’s the last supper. I will not eat any more of it until it’s fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Mind you, what they were doing that night didn’t really fulfill things. They would not be utterly and completely fulfilled until the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and he gave thanks, and he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God has come. Now, we’ve switched to John’s account at this point because there’s a confusion that sometimes arises about the course or the sequence of events that took place at the Last Supper. I won’t bore you with a discussion of what the commentaries and the harmonies of the Gospels do with all of this because what we’re mostly concerned about is what Jesus had to say relative to the Passover. And we’re going to switch to John, the 13th chapter. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come— that he was going to depart this world to the Father. And having loved his own that were in the world, he loved them to the end. That’s why he wanted to particularly eat this Passover with them. The Passover was very special to these men and to Jesus. It wasn’t any Jewish family. It was a very highly special occasion. And all these things tell us of the love he had for his disciples and how he really desired to do this with them before his death. Well, when they had eaten supper, now supper is the meal that has to do with the Passover. They eat that actually as the first part. When they finished eating the meal, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot Simon’s son to betray him, and Jesus knowing that the Father had given everything into his hands and he was come from God and he was going to God. Now, all this is given to us by John to emphasize that Jesus fully knew who he was, what he was, how great he was, where he came from, and where he was going. He got up from supper, he laid aside his outer garments, he took a towel and wrapped it around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, and he began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with a towel wherewith he was girded. Now mind you, what he is doing here, this is the Lord of the entire universe, who came from the Father, is going back to the Father, and he has taken upon himself the job of the lowliest servant in the household. Now this bothered Simon Peter because he said, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And Jesus said, I know you don’t understand this now, but you shall understand it later. And Peter says, You shall never wash my feet. And Jesus answered and said, If I don’t, you have no part with me. Well, said Peter, then don’t just wash my feet, my hands, my head. And Jesus said, Relax, he that’s washed need not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. And you are clean. In other words, they had already washed before they came to the table. Washing was not the point. He said, but not all. He knew who should betray him. So he said, you’re not all clean. So after he had washed their feet and after he had taken his garments and sat down again, he looked around and said, do you know what I’ve done to you? You call me master and Lord and you say, well, for so I am. If I then your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord, neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If you know these things, happy are you if you do them. Now remember, this was not merely a matter of these men being dirty coming into supper. The washing of their feet was a symbolic act because they had all washed before they came. There are Christian groups today that practice foot washing. When they come together to take communion, they stop first, they separate into men’s and women’s groups usually, and they wash one another’s feet. They don’t do this because their feet are dirty. They do it because Jesus said, if you know these things… Happy are you if you do them. It’s a symbolic act, and it has everything to do with how we treat one another. It’s fascinating, frankly, as you come to the end of Jesus’ life, as there are days before his crucifixion, that the dominant thing on his mind is that once he is gone, how will his disciples treat one another? Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1
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1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net
