A Story Still Being Written

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Joel Richardson · January 5, 2025

Scripture Referenced

Recap

Guest speaker Joel opened the new year with a message on biblical prophecy, framing the whole of Scripture as one continuous story building toward its fulfillment in Christ. Drawing on Hebrews’ call to endurance, he spoke candidly about walking through some of the hardest years of his life and ministry: his wife’s serious illness, and having to fire a close ministry associate and friend of a decade, an underground pastor in Iran, after discovering he had been unfaithful to his wife, on top of a wave of other ministry scandals. He said the instinct after a season like that is to check out emotionally, but that watching events unfold around Israel convinced him this is exactly the wrong moment to disengage, and that the church should instead press in and pay close attention.

Joel then traced how the biblical prophets used Israel’s historical victories over its enemies as prophetic pictures pointing toward a final, ultimate fulfillment. In Zechariah, he highlighted the prophecy that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah, described as a cornerstone, a tent peg, and a “skull crusher”, titles he connected directly to Jesus. Turning to Isaiah 14 and Daniel 11’s account of the wars between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties after Alexander the Great, Joel argued that history is full of individual tyrants who function as “types” foreshadowing the final Antichrist, and named Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, killed by Israel in October 2024, as the latest example of that pattern: “not the final guy, but the final one is coming.” Discussing the October 7 attack, Joel used harshly dehumanizing language toward what he called “radical Islam,” at one point describing its adherents as “inhuman animals,” and quoted the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir’s line that peace will come “when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Jewish children.”

Joel closed with an extended, emotional appeal built around the church’s historical failure during the Holocaust: recalling how, in his words, most Christians “politely closed their curtains” while neighbors were dragged from their homes, and a personal vow he made as a third-grader that he would speak up if he ever saw that kind of evil rise again. He challenged the congregation to decide now, before a crisis, whether they would be silent or vocal, tied the moment to Jesus’s Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and the “birth pains” preceding his return, and closed the service in prayer over the church’s tithes and offerings for the new year.

Touch Points

1. Joel shared openly about his wife’s illness and having to fire a close friend over unfaithfulness, and said the instinct in seasons like that is to check out. Where do you find yourself wanting to disengage instead of stay spiritually alert after a hard season?
2. Joel named a specific, recently killed political figure as a “type” of the Antichrist and used harsh language describing radical Islamist violence. How do you personally sort out where prophetic interpretation ends and current political commentary begins?
3. Joel’s central charge was that the church’s silence during the Holocaust is a mistake it cannot afford to repeat today. Do you agree with how directly he applied that history to current events, and why or why not?
4. Zechariah’s prophecy of the cornerstone and tent peg pointed forward centuries before Jesus arrived. Does seeing that kind of long-range fulfillment strengthen your trust in what God says he’ll still do?

Read the full transcript · Leer esto en espanol