The Grands Letter

Dear Grands,

2 Timothy 3:10-15, “Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance,
11 persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me!
12 Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
13 But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
14 You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them,
15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

How well do you know the Holy Scriptures? Do you know how many “testaments” there are? Do you know how many “books” each testament contains? Are you able to discern the writing of Paul from, let us say, that of Solomon? Do you know the difference between the fine points of theology? Let us all be careful not to brag too loudly about what we know–or what we think we know.

Word this week from Australia tells of the killing of two Queensland police officers that has become a pretext for an attack on premillennial teaching and the branding of it as incitive of terrorism. TV Channel 9 reports, “What we’ve been able to glean from (the) information is that Gareth Nathaniel and Stacy Train (Train family members) subscribe to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism.”

According to this report, advice was received from Mr. Josh Roose, an associate professor of politics and so-called expert on far right and religious extremism at Deakin University. Roose said the two shooters would have believed the world was “corrupt” and fast imploding. He is reported as saying, “…premillennialism is a Christian belief that in effect, the world is so corrupt, so evil , so beyond repair that at some point, in the near future, we’re facing the implosion of the world effectively…an apocalyptic event and that Jesus will return to Earth.”

Roose is truly accurate when he speaks about the world being corrupt and Jesus returning, but his attempt to link premillennial Christians with terrorism belies a gross ignorance of both history and Scripture. He describes premillennialism as “poorly understood and really, there’s not a lot known about to what extent (premillennialists) are present.”

Yes, Mr. Roose, we premillennialists are here, and we do advocate the return of our
LORD Jesus Christ. We’re not experts on everything; but, we do believe the Bible and that salvation resides only in our LORD Jesus Christ. We will pray for you, for the families of the Queensland police officers, who were killed, and for those who killed them. We all need Jesus! And we need to be ready for His soon Return.

Heartily in Christ Jesus,

(Dado III)

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.
Springdale, Arkansas 72764
United States of America

“We never know that Christ is all we need until He becomes all that we have.” – Corrie ten Boom