John Bevere Reveals the Biggest End Times Deception (EP 204)

The Bryce Crawford Podcast - Bryce Crawford

John Bevere discusses end times deception, emphasizing that the second coming is not an event but a wedding, urging believers to prepare spiritually. He shares insights from years of study and personal transformation.

Key takeaways

• End times are about spiritual readiness, not fear

Transcript preview

Holy Spirit told me 50% of the church is not ready for the return of Jesus. Most people see it incorrectly. They see it as an event. It's not an event. It's the wedding of the land has come and his bride has made herself ready. The scariest thing about deception is being achieved. Because the person who's deceit believes with all their heart they're right when in reality they're wrong. Why, Paul? Because they didn't love the truth. It's not that they didn't have the truth. It's that they didn't love the truth. We must play very close attention to the word we've heard lest we drift away. You never drift knowing you're drifting. We need to go to that clean air environment. We're in a corrupt atmosphere. So we gotta go to a clean air room every morning and get into the word. If we never tell people in order to receive Jesus, you have to break up with everything that drove the nails through his hands. We're gonna think, I can still look at pornography and love Jesus. Jesus is not asking for you to be perfect and behavior. He is just saying, he is just saying, he is just saying, he is just saying, he is just saying, he is just saying, he is just saying, he wants to be all yours. Hey, before we get into today's episode, I want to share two quick things with you. First, if these videos have meant anything to you, if they've encouraged your faith or helped you see the gospel a little bit more clearly, I just want to ask you to subscribe. A lot of people tune in every single week and haven't hit the button yet. It only takes two seconds and it helps us keep putting these conversations in front of people who need them. And the second thing, this one I've honestly, I've honestly been really been really been really excited to say, at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas. This is going to be a night centered around worship, faith, real conversations and genuine community. I believe God is going to move in a powerful way and I would love for you to be in the room. Tickets are on sale right now. You can head to Bryce Crawford.org slash tour or just click the link in the description below. And please only get your tickets through my official site or that link below. I recommend not buying from random resellers online. I believe this is going to be a really special night and I hope to see you there. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right, And today I'm with a very special guest. We have John Bavier with this. How are you doing? Bryce, it's so good to be with you. I'm doing very well. I'm so glad you're here. I admire a lot of the stuff that you do online and I think your podcast is awesome. You just had a new book come out, which we're going to talk a lot about. I mean the subject of the book is something that I think people have been talking about for a long time. Oh yeah. And so I'm really excited, especially now, especially now more now more than now more than now, and the return of Christ has become so popular. So I'm really looking for... Well before you go, can I just say how proud I am of you? Thank you for the way you are representing Jesus so well, especially to the young generation. I'm just so... I want to say this as a 66 year old man, I am so proud of you. Thanks for saying that. I'm honored to be with you. Thank you for saying that. That was really sweet. You know this is so random. Last year I remember... It was really popular online where people were talking about how they thought Jesus was going to return in September Yeah, and I I remember watching this one guy in particular I think he was from Australia No, he's South Africa And you know exactly what I'm talking about? He was selling his belongings online Oh no no I thought the guy that said it was gonna be started the the date No, so this this young kid he's probably about my age started selling? He documented every day him selling everything that he had for this day in September that Jesus was going to return. Then the day comes and then he woke up the next day. And he went online and he said, guys I'm sorry. I was wrong. I was wrong. And I was like, wow, like a lot of respect, you know, you went hard and you own up to it and not even kidding a week later. He was like, Jesus is going to come next year. Oh no. And I'm like, oh my goodness what's going on. So I'm excited to get some clarity on in time on end time stuff and hear You know this is exactly what kept me from it. So I've been in ministry 43 years, right? And for four decades, now think about this, this is two times older than you are, okay? Four decades, people are coming up to me. Do you pretend the end times? I'm like, no, no, uh-uh, uh-uh. And I said I'm not called to. And it's because of this very thing. I saw people, this was my idea of speaking about the second coming of Jesus. I think it's going to make people, I think it's going to make people, I think it's going to make people, either lazy, have escape mentality, or argumentative. Like they're gonna argue pre, mid, post, tribulation, catching away, or rapture, whatever they wanna call it. And so I just avoided it. I was more interested in making disciples than talking about this. Well, in 2021, Bryce, in prayer, the Holy Spirit starts drawing me. And so I didn't dive in for hundreds of hours. I dove in for thousands of hours. I dove in for thousands of hours. And I never thought I'd write a book on this. Like I thought I'm just being obedient for me personally. Well what I started noticing actually was really good. I started becoming more passionate about ministry than I had ever been before. Now you got to remember I'm in ministry now four decades. Yeah. I was literally weeping like there's there's a couple tennis courts by my house and I go there at five in the morning and that's where I pray and I find myself weeping. Lord just please let me win souls to you. And my family started saying, hey dad, you're getting a little bit, you know, calmer you don't get so uptight about things as quickly as you used to. And then my wife, get ready for this, starts calling me your favorite husband. I said, what in the world does that mean, Lisa? Favorite husband? And she goes, I like this 2.0 version better than 1.0. So all of a sudden I realize I'm completely wrong on the way I see end times affecting people. I find out that the second coming of Jesus, now this is mind-bloring what I'm about to say, is the second most talked about subject in the entire Bible. I found out that the early church fathers of the first three centuries wrote about it more than anything else other than salvation. I found out there were 318 scriptures in the New Testament on the second coming, that's one out of every 30 verses. There are 300 prophecies about his first coming. about a second coming. The seven-year tribulation is the most written about time period in the whole Bible, even more than the three and a half years Jesus first walked in the earth. So I, so now here's what goes through my head. Ready? Okay, it takes a little bit to get through here. I go, why does God talk about this so much? Number two, why aren't I talking about this so much? And most importantly, number three, what is the wisdom? what I had to find the answers on. So you spent, like you said, thousands of hours studying the second coming. Man, I love that. 40 years avoiding talking about it. And then just a burden God put on your heart and now it's become this alarm that you've been sounding in writing and sermons on the podcast, everything you name it, which honestly, something that I've really been encouraged by is, I feel like a lot of stuff over the years, granted, you know, a lot of ground for end time stuff in years past and so you have you know I remember him having like a super long series on it years ago but you know and then pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell he talks about it a lot but you know the depth that you go into it is mind-blowing and that just comes from the burden that you have well first of all most people see it incorrectly they see it as an event it's not an event it's the wedding of the ages is all about a groom who adores his bride, who gave his life and suffered what we can't even imagine because he loves his bride so much. And he's just waiting for his dad to say, go get your girl. And it's about a bride who's love sick for her groom. So it's really more about a wedding. And so when people hear about end times, unfortunately, so many teachers have made it into fear. They've made it ambiguous. They have created uncertainty with people. that it's more about a wedding and when you think about a wedding I wasn't fearful of my wedding I was actually quite excited yeah about my wedding and so I think that paradigm shift and the other thing I found out is this why why well the other thing I've the last 100 meters when you see the finish line. So this might be some of the wisdom behind why God has it spoken about so much by leaders in the early church as well as in scripture is to always create an urgency within us. Out of the thousands of hours and the commentaries and the scriptures that you read, what was the most shocking Bible verse about the end times that you read? I think revelation 19-7 and 8. The wedding of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. Doesn't say God made her ready. It said she made herself ready. How did she do it? To her it was granted to be a raid in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous axe of the Saints. So we're talking about our obedient actions. They literally create the material. wedding dress out of. Now think about this. Because what was the number one thing a girl did to get ready for her wedding up to 200 years ago? There was no Vogue magazine, there was no bridal magazine, there were no bridal shops, she made her wedding dress. So when I look at my own wedding, I remember walking into that church. Now Lisa had to leave me to go up to Indiana her hometown and get ready for the wedding months before we got married. And she was working like 40 hours a week. I was amazed. I'd call her and she would be like so many things going on. I'm like, man. And when I got up in that church, I was like blown away. The flowers, the runner, the beautiful arch that was there. I mean, I realized, oh gosh, she's been working so hard. The beautiful bridesmaids dresses, everything like that. But nothing, nothing caught my attention. I at the back door with her dad. I mean that dress beautiful beautiful I mean I had never seen anything so gorgeous in my entire life and I lost it. Can you imagine if when I flew up there she had an old wrinkled dress on her hair was uncapped and she showed up at that back door that way? What would that say to me? right now, but it wasn't two months ago. We're preparing for a wedding. Now if you're a unbeliever and you never want to serve Jesus, you're preparing for a war. Because he's going to come back as a warrior and he's going to come back with ten thousands and thousands of his saints on white horses. That's one aspect of the second coming. But believers don't need to fear that. Who is coming, when he comes back for us believers, love him with all of our heart, mind, soul, body, and strength who have been victorious, who have laid our life down to serve him. It's a wedding. Wow. And I wasn't dreading my wedding. I was excited about my wedding. Wow, that's beautiful. When you know, I guess something that I really have a hard time with when it comes to the return of Christ is every generation always believes that they're the generation. And that's the way God wanted it. Interesting. Yes. So do you think that our generation now, will see the return of Christ? I absolutely do without a shadow of it out and the reason is Jesus said assuredly I say to you that generation will not pass until all these things are fulfilled and talking about all the signs of a second coming one of the big signs that no other generation has had is Israel came back and took back their land and they became a nation May 14th 1948. says, hey, you didn't recognize the time of your visitation. And he said, Jerusalem, you will be torn down and you will be ruled or trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. Now if you look at all the history, the last 1800 years, Jerusalem has been ruled by Gentile nations. But in 1967, the Jewish people got it back. Now that's a super sign right there. That is the biggest sign. No generation has ever seen that before. And so if you look at that Jesus said the generation will not pass away now what's a generation I I went to the one I really like is Nelson's Bible dictionary it says it's a given space of time that people live on earth together because you see generation in the Bible is sometimes it's 40 years sometimes it's sometimes it's actually 20 years sometimes 40 times sometimes 70 sometimes a hundred I believe what Jesus is talking about is a generation of a hundred years sometimes And the reason is of what that word, how that word is defined in the Bible Dictionary. So if you think about it, today we still have one or we have a handful of people that served in World War II. So World War II was 1945, right? They had to be at least 15, 20, 20, 20-20 years old to serve in it. So that would have brought it back to 1925. They were born. Well, it's 2026. So you see it's a hundred years. They're pushing 99, a hundred years. few veterans that are left. So when I look at Jerusalem coming under Jewish rule, I take it a hundred years and I come to 2067. Now I'm not going to make that my only, I'm not going to make that my only reference point. I want to look at other reference points. You want me to go deep? Because this is a little geek out here. I want you to go deep. Okay. If you look at Adam was created roughly, we actually. know the years. There are some people, Bible scholars that say it's 3925. But anyway, roughly 4,000 years before Jesus was born. Let's go with one of the figures that a Bible scholar, brilliant Bible scholar, he said 3925. If you add 2,000 years you come to Abraham. You add 2,000 years you come to Jesus. All right, the early church fathers wrote this regularly. You see it in the book of Enic. You see Job writing about it in the Bible. that mankind had 7,000 years on the earth. It was broken up into four ages. The first one is the age of chaos or the age of creation. That's Adam to Abraham 2,000 years. Abraham to Jesus is 2,000 years. That's the age of the law. If you take 1925 at 2,9, 3,925 at 2,000 years, you're at 1925, at another 2,000 years, you're at 75, 75, Now what's interesting is the Essenes who were the people that actually saw the corruption in the Jewish leadership pulled away and started their own community 150 years before Jesus was born. The Essenes predicted to the week that Jesus would ride in Jerusalem on a donkey because they valued the word of God and from the prophecies of Zakaria and Daniel they were able to figure it out because they had the accurate ancient Jewish calendar. They predicted to the week. But these A seeing people always said they were so skillful with the word of God. They're the ones that hid the scrolls in the caves of Kumron. Okay. So when we discovered the scrolls in 1948, we now start discovering about this community. Well, they said that the last 50 years of an age is when most prophecies are fulfilled. So let's just look at Jesus's the last 50 years of the age of the law would have been from 25 a.d. to 75 a.d. Correct. All right Jesus is crucified in 32 or 33 a.D. Right in there. We know that for sure, right? But when is the temple destroyed 70 a.d. All right. The second temple's destroyed in 72 a. since. Are you seeing where I'm going right now? So 3925, 1925, 75, last 50 years you have the the crucifixion, the resurrection, then you have the destruction of the temples. Okay? Now you go another 2,000 years where are you at? 2075. 2075. That corresponds with our 1967 plus 100 years. You're in the same ballpark. And I can't emphasize enough, know the day or the hour. Now, why is 2075 so important? Because if you go to Hosea chapter 5 and 6, you see the most remarkable thing. Hosea said that God was going to rend and tear the Jewish people. That happened in 70 AD when Titus came in. Almost a some historians say 600,000 Jewish people were killed in Jerusalem when Titus destroyed its walls in 70 AD. Others say a million. Not only did they destroy the Jewish people, they were hiding their valuables, their coins, by swallowing them. When the Roman soldiers found out they started disemboweling them. It was a slaughter. Oh my gosh. They tore every single brick down. They tore every single block down on the wall because they heard the Jewish people were hiding valuable things inside the wall. So it's a massacre. And as a result of what the Romans did, and that went from 70 AD to 135 AD, the last stronghold in Jerusalem was the Bar-Cobara rebellion in 135. Every single Jewish person had been cast out of the land, either by murder, by selling into slavery, or they got out before the Romans came. And eventually they were in every nation of the world. Now stop and think about it. They're in every nation of the world for 18, over 1800 years. right? They keep the same language. They're speaking Hebrew today in Israel. They keep their traditions. They keep their religion. I mean it is a miracle and God said this. I'm gonna gather in Isaiah 11. I'm gonna gather my people back from the nations of the world for the second time. First time he gathered him back from Persia. Remember when Israel, am I getting too geeky? No no no. Keep going. Okay. So now we look at this. They've been away from their nation. So God says in Hossiah, chapter 5, I'm going to tear and rend the Jewish people, all right? And then I'm going to return back to where I came from. Now this is God speaking. Last two verses of Hossa, 5, I'm going to return back to where I came from. Well, wait a minute, to return back to where you came from, mean you had to leave, go somewhere and then you go back. Jesus left the Father, came to this earth, provided our salvation by his love, and went back to the Father. Then God says, after two days, I will revive you. Now who's the you, he's talking about? The Jewish people. Now, what does Peter tell us never to forget? Because scoffers are going to come up in the last days, they're going to mock, where's the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same as from the beginning of creation. Atheists don't call church fathers. Atheists don't call creation creation. They call it evolution. He's saying you're actually going to have people. in the church that are going to be scoffing about the second coming of Jesus. They're going to say every generation has talked about it. Talking about it in the 12th century, people set dates. They're like I was. Okay? I wasn't an all-out mocker or scoffer, but I didn't want anything to do with it. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. So now, Peter said, but you cannot forget this one thing. A day with the Lord's a thousand years and a thousand years is a day. In. In other words, years. So if you apply that to Jose and you go 2,000 years from the 70, remember when he rendered them in 70, right? You're at 2070. Okay, so this perfectly correlates. Now listen to what he says, after two days he'll revive us, the Jewish people. Do you know when the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, Paul writes in Genesis 9, or excuse me, what am I saying in Romans chapter 9, 10, 11, when the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, all of Israel will be saved. now is one of the most corrupt nations in the Western world. I mean seriously they're having the LGBT big world conference there because they want to be the LGBT capital of the world. I mean they are so far away from God right now in a lot of respects. But Paul said they're all going to be saved and that excites me but he said the time of the Gentiles is going to be fulfilled which means the time in which God turned his heart, his passion, his passion. to predominantly the Gentiles will be fulfilled, then all of Israel is going to be saved. If you look at the book of Oseia, it says they're going to look at the one that they pierced and they're going to realize they're his Messiah. But the Antichrist will rise up and he will kill two-thirds of the Jews. One-third will go through the