Full-Preterism is Dangerous, Orthodox Eschatological Views, and Israel w/ Anthony Rogers PT.1

The Apologetic Dog

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liberals have had a field day attacking the Christian faith, saying that Jesus and the apostles predicted that his coming was near, and yet it's been 2 ,000 years.

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And what they're pointing to are texts that are about Jerusalem's coming destruction, which was near. And so I think that what's happened, and in fact,

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I could pull up quote after quote, where you get full preterists, hyper preterists, basically getting momentum from this, saying, if you don't recognize that this is what the

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New Testament is talking about, well, then you have no argument against these people who say that Christ and the apostles were wrong in predicting a soon coming.

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♪ In the beginning was the Word ♪ ♪ And the Word was with God, the

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Word was God ♪ ♪ In the beginning was the

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Word ♪ ♪ And the Word was with God, the Word was God ♪ ♪

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And the Word was with God, he was in the beginning with God ♪

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Post -Tenebrous Lux, After Darkness Light. Well, it is good to be back with you all to talk about everybody's favorite topic, apparently, you all know this has not been a commonplace for me, not because I don't think the

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Bible speaks to the issue, not because I don't think it's important, not because I don't have definite convictions on the matter, but for various reasons

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I may or may not mention, I haven't spent a lot of time on this channel discussing it.

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Some of you have asked me to do so, and I kind of pushed it off until a friend of mine,

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Jeremiah Nortier, otherwise known as the Apologetic Dog, he has a

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YouTube channel, if you haven't seen it, go check it out, but Jeremiah approached me, he's been dealing with a particular group, you see it in the title of the video,

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Full Preterism, I tend to refer to it as Pantelism, I think it's a better term because it distinguishes it from what is otherwise an orthodox approach to eschatology known as Preterism, but in any case,

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Jeremiah approached me to discuss this because a lot of different things have been happening lately, some of you have probably paid more attention to it than I have, but before I bring

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Jeremiah on, let me tell you a little bit about him, I've already mentioned that he runs a YouTube page called the

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Apologetic Dog, it's linked, I think, in the title of the video, but Jeremiah was born and hails from Jonesboro, Arkansas, which if I'm not mistaken, is actually a hotbed for Full Preterism, at least to some degree, he can tell us more about that, but Jeremiah has been in ministry for about seven years now, he serves as a pastor at 12 .5

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Church, he loves the Lord, otherwise I wouldn't have him on the channel, he also loves theology, apologetics, he's done many debates, but he also has, which is essential if somebody is going to be a pastor and do all these things well, a love for Christ's people, and that I think is behind much of his motivation in wanting to talk about this topic, which we've called the dangers of Hyperpreterism or Full Preterism, so because it's a system that presents a number of dangers, he has taken up an interest in it, and that's why he's on the show with me today, he also is married, he has a wife named

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Allie, they've been married since 2015, they were blessed to have a child last year,

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J .J. Nortier, whom I am told has been called the apologetic puppy, because of course,

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Jeremiah is the apologetic dog, so his newborn son is the apologetic puppy, in any case, that is my guest, and here he is, so good to have you on,

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Jeremiah. Thanks so much for having me, Anthony, this is round two, that I've been on. Yes it is, yes it is,

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I think you were my first official guest, I might have had a few people come on, like very briefly at one point, but in terms of doing an interview or addressing a topic, you and I did something on justification by faith alone, another topic that's very relevant to your neck of the woods, where you're situated over there.

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Yeah, that's so true, I think you had a debate one evening on, I think Marlon's channel,

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The Gospel Truth, and was that what it was? You were debating Seraphim? Yes, yes.

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On the topic of justification by faith alone, and I was on Donnie's channel, I think you know Donnie Brzezinski, I could be saying his last name wrong, at Standing for Truth, and I was debating contending for justification by faith alone against a church of Christ, like you were saying, that's kind of, in my area, that's where I evangelize the most,

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I've often said this is my Nineveh, outreaching the church of Christ, because baptism is kind of preeminent in their mind, your sins get washed away in the waters of baptism.

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So what would you say was your whale experience, where you spewed forth on the... My whale experience was, last year,

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I actually engaged in a debate at ASU, the university... Where you spewed forth on the steps of ASU?

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Yes, I was, and I debated a church of Christ preacher, and this was how I felt like Jonah, like it was over 200 people in attendance, and all the front few rows were church of Christ, giving me the beaming eyes.

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I wanted to give that short sermon like Jonah did. So you know, interesting, so you heard me say that I haven't talked much about the subject of eschatology, and I think some people will assume from that, that I haven't spent much time in the area, and that would be far from the truth.

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Part of it might just be that, I kind of got wore out on the whole thing. In my Christian experience,

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I knew a lot of people that, as soon as they became Christians, assumed they were experts in eschatology or should be, and they neglected weightier matters, not that there aren't exceedingly important issues in eschatology, but they weren't focusing per se on those things, they were looking at some of the more debatable issues that Christians can well debate about.

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But I did study the topic, I was an avid reader, and in fact, so I have to point this out to you,

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I got this, I don't know if it was like, something like almost 30 years ago. Okay, this is, and it looks pretty worn, if you look at it, it's got coffee stains,

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I don't remember how that happened. Max King. This is written by Max King, I'm sure you know who that is.

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Max King is a Church of Christ guy, the work is called the

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Abrahamic Covenant. Here's what it says on the first page, just one little quote, it says, there is nothing more explicit in the

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New Testament than the imminency of Christ's second appearing. And so the whole thing is written with an eye to demonstrating that.

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And so this is something that has been found in Church of Christ, and not now only in the

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Church of Christ, but it is certainly something that is part of that movement. So why are you uniquely positioned?

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Isn't that weird? I was gonna say, starting out, contending with the Church of Christ for the gospel of grace, ironically, full preterism has its origins in the same place.

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So there's a weird convergence there. And so like you said, it's been a hotbed in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

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It's been wild, Anthony. I've spoken on this on other shows, but there have been two churches in Jonesboro that are full preterist.

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One came into an SBC church, Southern Baptist Church, that essentially was, they've left the

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SBC now, they've left the local convention, the state convention, they still call themselves Baptist.

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And the other one, by God's grace, has shut down. They spent a year preaching the Olivet discourse.

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And then I guess it was time to close shop because where do you go from there? So yeah, anyway, a bunch of those people just went to the other church.

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And so that's just right in my backyard. And so I have a lot of people in my area. Other pastors have sought me out and said,

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Jeremiah, what is full preterism? And why is it dangerous? So I've had many sit down conversations with pastors explaining kind of the redefining of our blessed hope.

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And Anthony, we love homeschool here in Jonesboro, and I've had the privilege of getting to speak to a board of directors of the homeschool group because these families were wanting to infiltrate.

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And I basically told them, this is a different Jesus that leads to that, a different Jesus. This is a different gospel.

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This is a different blessed hope and should be warned against. And so I've had a lot of unique opportunities being able to talk on this subject.

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Yeah, so one other thing, just to sort of get us into some of this, and I know there are several things that you mentioned were on your mind that you'd like to discuss and bring up, and I'm sure will range well beyond all of that.

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But one of the ways that I was introduced to all of this, so in my context,

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I became a Christian in a context where I was surrounded by a lot of different groups.

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And among them were a number of groups that came out of Restorationism, like the

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Church of Christ, right? The Church of Christ is a quintessential Restorationist movement. So for those that don't know, in the 1800s, there were a number of groups that originated out of the idea that the church ceased to exist and it needed to be restored.

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And of course it was being restored by every Tom, Dick and Harry that got the wild idea that he was

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God's man of the hour, right? So Charles Tate Russell, who started the Millennial Dawnists or otherwise known as the

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Jehovah's Witnesses was one such character. And in these movements, one of the things that you see is a fervor for eschatology.

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They expected the final coming of Christ to come upon them. That's why the

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Jehovah's Witnesses were originally called the Millennial Dawnists. They expected the millennium to dawn in their lifetime.

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And in the Jehovah's Witness movement, there were a number of predictions that were made, which of course didn't come to pass.

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Well, the movement leaders got so tired of kicking the ball down the road further and saying, oh no, no, we meant next year.

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Yeah, we meant 10 years from now. We meant, you know, they got tired of doing that. And so in the case of the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, rather than kick the ball further down the road after their last prediction failed, they decided to redefine

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Christ's coming. So instead of Christ's coming being a visible, audible, spectacular event, right?

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Instead of it being that sort of thing, which Christians had believed for 2000 years, they decided to say that Christ's coming was invisible.

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And one of the things that this did, there are a number of different ways you can try and go with this sort of thing.

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But in their case, what they did was they had to redefine the nature of Christ.

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If Christ returned and it was invisible, then what do you say about Christ as the resurrected

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Lord? And so as many people know, Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe that Jesus currently is the incarnate one.

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They don't believe that he's both God and man. They don't believe that he's man. They believe that he was an angel, stopped being an angel, became a man, and then stopped being a man and became an angel again.

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So the resurrection, that's just a term they use in their system that means something entirely different.

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So here's the point of all this. So I used to deal with a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I would talk about different things with them, including their redefinition of Christ's resurrection.

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And of course, if consistent, it would mean a redefinition of our resurrection. But one day I ran into somebody who was a hyper -preterist, and I had never heard of such a creature.

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And as I was talking to this person, they said, and what was interesting is it was in the context of a study that an elder at our church was doing on Revelation.

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The elder was not teaching hyper -preterism, but there was a person in the class that I was talking to afterwards.

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And as this person was talking to me, they mentioned that they think everything happened in AD 70.

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And I immediately thought of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and I said, so what do you think about Christ?

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What do you think about nature of Christ's resurrected, glorified existence?

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And the person said without hesitating, they don't think that Christ is physically raised from the dead.

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They think that Jesus is just a spiritual being. And in keeping with that, they think that our resurrection is also to be explained in a similar fashion.

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And I noticed - Those go together, his resurrection and our resurrection. Right. You wanna throw something in on that?

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Yeah, one thing that people have came to me to say, well, Jeremiah, this is -

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Your mic, for some reason, cut out. I think you hit mute. For some reason, it's still muted.

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The end of all things is here. Well, I don't know what happened.

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I don't think it's on my end. But while Jeremiah works on that microphone issue...

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Okay, so it says it's not muted on my side. But I'll just say this as you're working on that mic, and as soon as I hear you, then

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I will say I hear you. But one of the things that I said to the person, because I had a background engaging

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Jehovah's Witnesses on this matter, and so here we're dealing with like things.

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This person didn't deny the deity of Christ, didn't deny - Testing, testing. Oh, there you are. Oh, there you are.

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I have no idea what happened. Okay, go ahead. As I was saying, a lot of people...

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I won't touch the mic this time. People have said, Jeremiah, this is just a different eschatological position.

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Why are you being so mean? And what I say is this is not just a different eschatology.

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This is a overhaul of redefining Christianity as a whole. And something that you mentioned is it actually touches on Christology.

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Because there's a tight connection with Jesus' resurrection, with His ascension and His return.

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And so when I talk to a lot of full preterists, they acknowledge that Jesus did resurrect bodily because most aren't gonna go try to say it's not.

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I mean, I get that you've met people that did take that view, but it's kind of the ascension is where it all kind of goes wild in my experience is because I think it's

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Acts 1 .11 that just the angels telling the apostles the way that you see Him ascend essentially is the way that He will return.

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And they redefine this as, well, He's kind of ascending authoritatively, right?

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Ignore the fact that He's ascending bodily because their particular interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15 is flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, meaning a tangible physical body.

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Don't look at the sin -cursed aspect and the rest of the context, 1 Corinthians 15, but Jesus' body somehow didn't make it into the heavenlies.

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And so you have a huge problem because now Jesus no longer is our perfect high priest who intercedes on our behalf because He's our federal head.

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And so at some point, Jesus lost the body. And so when He returned in 70

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AD, well, that's spiritual, right? And so when He goes back to heaven, there's not a bodily aspect.

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But some, Don Preston is kind of a leader in this movement, says that He was reabsorbed as the eternal

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Logos back into the Godhead. And He has memories. Reabsorbed? Yeah. There's some

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Trinitarian confusion going on there too. Oh, yeah. So let me just add some things here real quickly.

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So you point out a number of important points, right? Christ's present session representing us before the

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Father or at His right hand. Christ is representing us as our federal head, our high priest, our mediator.

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In addition to that, and in connection with that, there are explicit statements, there are explicit statements in Scripture about Christ's currently embodied existence, right?

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So for example, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul says, there is, he uses the present tense, there is one mediator between God and man, the man,

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Christ Jesus. So it's important to note both aspects here, one that he calls

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Christ a man, the other that he uses the present tense. This is obviously post -resurrection, post -ascension, post -session.

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He's in session at the right hand of God. And Paul says that he, as a man, is mediating between us and God.

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So that would already blow at least that way of trying to deal with this out of the water. But here's another thing, a couple of other passages, there's really a smorgasbord of these, but in Colossians 2 .9,

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Paul says, in Christ dwells, it's present tense, in Christ right now dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form.

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Now, Don Preston, how does this mesh with your view of Christ as the Logos being reabsorbed into the, first of all, there's nothing to be reabsorbed.

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Christ never ceased to be fully God. All the fullness of deity is embodied in Christ. But notice, embodied in Christ.

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Christ is still the incarnate Lord. But then finally, Acts 17 .31.

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And this is, it's irrelevant whether the hyper -preterist wants to say this refers to AD 70, maybe we'll talk more about this text.

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It's not about AD 70, but in Acts 17 .31, Paul says that God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has appointed.

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And he's given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. So notice, it's the resurrected man, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who's going to conduct the final judgment. And so again, whether you think that's

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AD 70 or later, it's referring to Christ as a real man, but this does, there's more problems in the passage, but this does throw out of gear the whole hyper -preterist project, because it means that the judgment is being carried out by a man.

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He's embodied. And if that's not what happened in AD 70, well, then

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AD 70 is not the event that they think it is, and it's not the event in view in that passage. One other passage to kind of piggyback on what you're saying is 1

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John 4. Same idea with the present tense. John says, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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Verse two, by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come, present tense, is basically from God, that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God.

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And so Jesus coming in the flesh is continual, and it goes into the doctrine that you're bringing up is because he perfectly represents us, and he's our judge.

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And so there's that human aspect. So yeah, I don't know their response to the perfect tense other than, well, it found its totality in 70

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AD, and that's the continual aspect. Okay, yeah, so how about, so we've sort of broached the issue a little bit.

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We're not yet there to the major direction that we're moving in in this, but I just wanted to give people a little idea up front of kind of what we're working towards.

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But we're talking about the dangers of full preterism, and you already said, you know, some people ask you, why are you making a big deal out of this?

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There are differences among Christians, aren't there? There are different eschatological views. Maybe you wanna kind of summarize some of them or.

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Absolutely. Historically, there's kind of three major views of premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism.

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And, you know, there's differences within each one of those umbrellas, but a lot of this is talking about the timing of Jesus's coming in relation to the millennial reign.

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And so I used eight years, I held to a premillennial dispensational eschatology, and I came out of it, but this is orthodox.

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And so premillennialism says that Jesus comes pre before a thousand -year reign, and then you have the eternal.

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I wanna underscore something really quickly. So you're saying premillennialism, though that's not your particular viewpoint, you're saying that is an orthodox position for people to hold.

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Yes, yes. Because what we're gonna get into, these three views differ on non -essentials of eschatology, but we all hold firmly the essentials of eschatology.

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So we'll kind of touch on those here in a second too. So premillennialism just sees Jesus's second return before the thousand -year reign.

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And typically, premillennialists see the millennial reign as a literal thousand years. I know that you got historic premillennialism.

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I don't think they make a hard stance on it being a thousand years. But anyway, Jesus comes before the millennium.

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And so all millennialism and post -millennialism see kind of the millennial reign from Jesus's first coming all the way to his second coming with the overlap of the ages, this age and the age to come.

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The coming age was inaugurated at Jesus's first coming. And we still live in this already, not yet, this temporal age until the end of this age, which will be met with the consummation of the age to come.

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And so there's differences between all mill and post -mill in terms of kind of the marching orders. As we've said, both all mill and post -mill would look at the

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Great Commission as our marching orders. But I think perhaps in the effect of how it's going to impact the world, post -mill says the world will be like the kingdom of God expanding, right?

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Like a little leaven rises when it comes to bread. And a lot of post -millennialists, which you may speak to this a little bit later, but you look at the 12 apostles, right?

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And now look at the world of Christianity today. There's been massive expansion. And so I would imagine the all millennials kind of just kind of see the rule of Christ's reign as where the throne is, which is kind of above and ruling and reigning through the hearts of Christians in the church.

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And I think post -mill is really close in that. But like you were saying, these are the three kind of orthodox positions that unite closely around the essentials of eschatology, which this is how

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I would classify these, Anthony, I'd love your thoughts. Number one, the second coming of Jesus is in our future.

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And when he returns, it will be bodily. This is so important. And it's unfortunate almost that I have to qualify that a lot, but full preterists deny that Jesus' second coming is in our future, but in our past.

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They'll say it was audience relevance in the first century. It was in their future, right? And so his coming was invisible, spiritual.

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And another key essential in eschatology is the resurrection of the dead, right?

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This is when all believers will be resurrected bodily, given bodies fit to rule and reign with Christ for all eternity.

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And there's a general resurrection of the dead where even those outside of Christ will be raised bodily, but they will be judged eternally, right?

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And so, and then kind of lastly, at Jesus' return, his parrhesia, he's going to judge the world in righteousness and restore all things at this apocalypsis, this unveiling of his coming.

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And it's gonna be a new heavens and new earth. All of creation has been tainted and touched by sin.

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And so those are the essentials and full preterism redefines each one of them because the resurrection of the dead, that's back at 70

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AD. Most take this corporate body resurrection that Old Testament Israel is who resurrected at 70

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AD. We can touch on that. And so, and the new heavens and the new earth, well, this is just simply coming to faith in Jesus.

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And they say that there's no future, not yet. It's already, and check this out,

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Anthony, everything that we observe now continues on into infinity. Right, right.

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So let me just summarize some of that. Sometimes it helps hearing two people say the same thing, but also

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I wanted to underscore a couple of things. So you have these three major positions with respect, you've defined eschatology in relation to the millennium and the return of Christ.

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And so those three positions all have various ways of relating these two things. But even within these camps, there are differences.

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So for example, you briefly mentioned dispensational premillennialism, but there's also classic or historic premillennialism.

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So you have a distinction, even within premillennialism, a different way of approaching things.

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And then of course, within that, you've got a variety of views with respect to things like the rapture and that in relation to the final coming of Christ and so forth, various other issues.

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But the same thing is true within post -millennialism. Some post -millennialists have viewed the millennium to refer to a period of future glory, not yet presently experienced by Christians, whereas others have defined the millennium as the interadvental age, just like most amillennialists do.

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And they just view this in terms of the progress of the gospel, so that even though at the beginning, it may not look significantly different from the world that Christ entered into, at the end, it will have reached full flowering and so forth.

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So there are shades of differences within these views, but where they don't differ is on the fact that Christ is going to return, that it will be visible and audible.

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In fact, it reminded me when you were talking, you emphasized the physical nature of this. Years ago,

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I remember hearing a Baptist pastor named Ken Jones. He was a pastor in Compton, California.

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I grew up in Southern California. And Ken Jones was reflecting on 1

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Thessalonians 4, where it talks about Christ himself, that's critically important,

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Christ himself descending from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God.

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And he said that some people in their eschatology reduced the trumpet call of God to a cosmic dog whistle, right?

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In other words, nobody heard this thing that supposedly happened for some in 80, 70, and then others have their own way of, you know, reducing the noise of that trumpet.

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But in any case, he was just emphasizing the fact that this is a very loud, noisy, spectacular event, as it's described in scripture, and not at all the sort of thing that the hyper -preterist talks about.

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So the return of Christ is essential to any biblical eschatology, which is why pre -millennialists, amillennialists, post -millennialists, all still get to wear the name of Orthodox Christian, even though they differ in other respects.

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As well, the general resurrection, that there's going to be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust, scripture's clear on that.

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And it will be just like Christ's resurrection. It's not a spiritual event. There will also be a final judgment in which

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Christ separates the righteous from the wicked, the sheep from the goats, consigning them to their eternal lots, right?

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The righteous will be told, enter into the joy of the Lord, and the wicked will be told, depart from me, you accursed, into everlasting torment, right?

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And then, as you mentioned, there'll be a consummation of the present system, the present order.

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Christ will deliver it from its bondage to decay, and it will, along with the sons of God, enjoy the liberty, right, from the curse and everything that we otherwise don't like, right?

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Death, tears, suffering, right? So those are the essentials. And all of those are denied by hyper -preterism.

29:44

Yeah, and so sometimes I pour a little gas on the fire, and I tell full preterists, your position denies

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Christianity in three ways, historically, logically, and exegetically.

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They don't like it when I say any of those things, but it's pushing the point that this is a redefining and overhaul of all of Christianity.

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Last week, I was able to interview Doug Wilson, and he presses a really good point of saying, you know, when we quote from the

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Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 2 about Hymenaeus and Philetus, he's like, is

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Paul just mad because they got their math wrong, right? They just thought the resurrection was just, you know, just a handful of, you know, years just before.

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And it's like, no, no, no. To put the resurrection and the implication, it's the resurrection of the dead in the past, midway in the determining, or the midway of history versus the end, this is a redefining of an entire worldview.

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And so it's not just a small disagreement, but Anthony, I would say there's logical problems with full preterism because of how they understand this world going on and on and on and on.

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In fact, last year, last summer, I reached out to Dr. Sam Frost. He was a lead speaker advocate in the full preterist movement and came out of it after 10 years.

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Incredible testimony has written books on the subject. And so one of his articles that really intrigued me was the problem of infinity, because he made an interesting distinction between saying that which is eternal is not identical with infinity, but infinity is more our inability to comprehend that which is eternal.

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And infinity kind of rests within a sequences of time events.

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And so his point is when you have, you know, procreation of humanity going on and on, because you gotta think, they see sin existing for infinity, all the evil, all the things that we see continues on as is into infinity.

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So when you have, you know, the elect being open -ended, an infinite number, we see, okay, well, this actually is gonna touch on necessary attributes of who

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God is, like his omniscience. Because as you know, the Westminster talks about, there's a set number of the elect.

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God knows all who are his. That's just simple, you know, Bible understanding. And so in full preterism,

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God couldn't consistently and logically be omniscient because the moment you say he knows all of his own, well, all entails a set because you could always add one more.

32:23

Well, now he knows. Well, then you can add one more. And then you have verses that say, all will come under judgment. Well, not all, because you could always add one more.

32:31

And so this is just one of those things that pumps out the other end of full preterism. You kind of have these logical absurdities.

32:38

Yeah, so what would you say gives impetus to the hyper -preterist position?

32:45

I have my own thoughts here. I suspect, I'd agree with yours. You might agree with mine.

32:51

They might be the same exact things. But what would you say? What is it that really fuels this? Where do they get their momentum from?

32:59

This is a great question. And there could be various reasons. I mean, they will tell you, we're just convinced by scripture and scripture alone.

33:06

And so they'll do it under the banner of sola scriptura, regardless of what history has said, what the saints of old have said and passed down.

33:16

And so I think it's firstly an abuse of sola scriptura. They're really redefining it into sola scriptura, kind of like my

33:23

Bible, me under the tree, no creed but Christ. I mean, that's what it kind of turns into. That's a line right out of the

33:29

Church of Christ. Well, we know they touch, right? This full preterist and Church of Christ, they come from the same place.

33:36

For those that don't know, let me just throw this in real quick. So Thomas and Alexander Campbell, the

33:43

Campbellites who inaugurated the Church of Christ movement, they separated from their former

33:51

Presbyterian roots and started their own group. They restored the church and they were trying to do away with everything that had come before.

34:02

And so one of the things they said was no creed but Christ. Now, obviously those who advocate creeds are not saying that the creeds have absolute authority or are infallible, but it's quite another thing to just say they're flat wrong and don't have any authority.

34:18

Parents aren't infallible, right? But I'd like to see anybody here with children just pretending like their word means nothing and their kids can just flippantly dismiss it, right?

34:29

Nobody actually functions that way. So we believe the Bible is the ultimate authority and we believe that the church has a role in interpreting scripture, though it's submissive to scripture.

34:42

Its authority is ministerial, not magisterial as the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox think.

34:48

But these groups are basically saying we don't need anything but our own thoughts and we can come up with all these things on our own.

35:00

Yeah, something Pastor Doug Wilson said, I laughed. He's a hilarious individual. But when we say the creeds don't have ultimate authority, that's scripture, but the creeds have more authority than you.

35:12

And I thought that's so good. It's like, it's a red flag if someone comes up with a brand new idea in the last 50 years or 100 years.

35:20

And Max King, I believe he kind of coined this transmillennialism, it's under different names, covenant eschatology.

35:27

I mean, it's about 30 years old. I mean, I think, was that work that you held up, was that kind of from the 90s around there?

35:33

So that's when I got it. And I mean, I can't say how, I don't see a date on it. It's not very old.

35:39

So I'm just saying, the whole preterists understand this. So they really dig their heels in and say, it doesn't matter, right?

35:47

It's not the ultimate authority. Therefore, there's a chance that it could be right. So that's kind of the mentality that gets them in the door, if that makes sense.

35:58

Here's what I was thinking, and you can key off of this as well, but it is the fact or it is a fact that Scripture speaks to AD 70.

36:11

There are things in Scripture that speak to this. One of the things when you were talking about different eschatological systems,

36:17

I meant to say this before, but you were speaking of it in relation to the millennium, but even within these different groups, millennial views, you have different approaches to certain texts of Scripture, certain sections of Scripture, even certain books of Scripture.

36:37

And here you have four different approaches. And this can be held pretty much by any of these different millennial views, but I'd say it neatly fits more with certain ones than others.

36:48

But you have, for example, with respect to the Olivet Discourse. So for those that don't know, the

36:54

Olivet Discourse is that discourse that Christ gave when the disciples approached him on the

36:59

Mount of Olives after he quit the temple, right? There's this dramatic scene that takes place.

37:06

Matthew's Gospel gives us the full background to it. In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces a series of seven woes upon the religious leaders for voting their doom, right?

37:15

They were going to be judged for rejecting him. And it says that Jesus left the temple.

37:22

And you're supposed to read that as a decisive leaving of the temple along the lines of God departing from the temple in the

37:30

Old Testament, right? When you get the statement, Ichabod, the glory has departed, which signals that the temple is going to be destroyed as it was under the

37:38

Babylonians, right? So here you have Jesus leaving the temple after he's been rejected by them.

37:44

And so the disciples come to him and they point out to him all the buildings and how beautiful they are, especially the temple.

37:53

And the kind of the idea, just sort of reading between the lines is, yeah, you spoke so harshly about the temple, but look how, you know,

38:01

I mean, this is gonna last forever, right? It's sort of like, if you look at the prophets, one of the things

38:07

Jeremiah says to the people is quit saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, because what people were doing when

38:13

Jeremiah was predicting coming destruction is they were basically saying that can't happen. The temple of the

38:19

Lord is in our midst. We can't possibly be conquered. And Jeremiah was saying, that's not going to help you, right?

38:25

God has vacated the premises. That temple is going to be destroyed. And so the disciples come up to Jesus, point out the brilliance of everything.

38:34

And then Jesus said, I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left standing on top of another.

38:41

And that was literally fulfilled in AD 70, right? There should be no question in any

38:48

Christian's mind, although there are some Christians who still question that. And you'll see why

38:54

I think this is relevant in a moment, but historically, I mean, first of all, all anybody has to do is get on Google Earth and look over there and see if there's a temple, okay?

39:04

There was a temple when Jesus said to those disciples, not one stone here will be left on top of another.

39:10

There is not now a temple over there. And in fact, not one stone was left on top of another.

39:17

We know from Josephus, for example, that the Romans literally pried apart the bricks one after another in order to get the gold that had seeped into the cracks from the conflagration.

39:29

Originally, they weren't supposed to destroy the temple because the emperor wanted the gold, but something happened,

39:34

Jews barricaded themselves within the temple precincts. And in order to get them out, somebody set fire to it.

39:40

And that caused the whole thing to go up in smoke. It was burned to the ground. And so the gold seeped into the cracks.

39:47

And to get it then, you can't go back to Rome without the gold. So they had to literally pry it apart brick by brick.

39:54

That happened in 80, 70. Far too many Christians are unaware of that being what

40:00

Jesus predicted. And so they push this sort of thing into the future. And what this has done,

40:07

I mean, all you have to do is pick up some liberal critical literature against the

40:13

New Testament. Liberals have had a field day attacking the Christian faith, saying that Jesus and the apostles predicted that his coming was near.

40:23

And yet it's been 2000 years. And what they're pointing to are texts that are about Jerusalem's coming destruction, which was near.

40:30

And so I think that what's happened, and in fact, I could pull up quote after quote, where you get full preterists, hyper preterists, basically getting momentum from this, saying, if you don't recognize that this is what the

40:48

New Testament is talking about, well, then you have no argument against these people who say that Christ and the apostles were wrong in predicting a soon coming.

40:56

C .S. Lewis, for example, otherwise widely regarded, he referred to Matthew 24, 34 as the most embarrassing verse of the

41:03

Bible, right? That's often quoted by liberal skeptics. He was embarrassed by it because he didn't know what to do with it.

41:10

There Jesus said, all these things shall come upon this generation. Well, if it's referring to 80, 70, there's no problem.

41:15

It all happened within that generation. If it's not the conflagration of Jerusalem, then it still hasn't happened, in which case, how do you fit that there?

41:26

And that's where you get a lot of people trying to redefine the word generation in the Bible. In fact, it's not just the word generation, the whole phrase, it uses the near demonstrative there, this generation.

41:36

I did that for eight years. I tried to really kind of monkey with this generation to make my eschatology work.

41:46

Yeah, so my point is this, so that the hyper -preterist has recognized that there are passages in the

41:52

Bible that talk about 80, 70, this refutes the charge of the liberal critic that the

41:57

Bible was wrong. It got its timetable wrong, but they're like kids getting a hammer and then everything appears to them like a nail, right?

42:08

So instead of just seeing that there are certain texts that do speak about Jerusalem's destruction, they look at every text talking about anything that's future and they say 80, 70, right?

42:18

Thessalonians 4, 80, 70, Matthew 25, 80, 70, Revelation 20, 80, 70, right?

42:23

Like a kid with a hammer, he thinks everything's a nail. He goes around hitting everything, right? And he loses the hammer once he gets to the fine

42:30

China. Yeah, so what's an entry point? You know, we're talking a little bit about motives too.

42:37

I think this kind of relates, but the selling point of 70 AD eschatology is the timing indicators, this is near, this is soon, all these things they press into the timing indicators like you said.

42:52

And so everything, so this is a different hermeneutic, Anthony, because everything is reinterpreted in light of scripture in light of 70

42:59

AD. It doesn't, you know, we don't see it unfolding progressively, you know, Christocentric with reading

43:06

Christ into the Old Testament, everything is reinterpreted into 70 AD. So it's kind of like a backwards hermeneutic.

43:11

And so that's the selling point is the timing indicators. And earlier you were saying like, what's the draw?

43:17

I think it could be a number of things, but I think for many of us are flesh saying that, hey,

43:24

I've discovered something new, right? And so you gotta come to me if you wanna have this deeper insight to what the scriptures teach that, oh, by the way, has been wrong for 2000 years because we have a historic faith.

43:38

This is why I tell the full predators their arguments not only philologically and exegetically, but historically, this is the one they care the least about because they just don't care, right?

43:50

No creed, but Christ. But we have to understand that this is a hands -on deck.

43:57

This is a faith that we just didn't make up on our own. So Christ has been building a church for 2000 years. He has given us the

44:02

Holy Spirit guiding us into truth and he's given us his word. So I think there's an appeal to certain people that you gotta come to them with this kind of new insight, almost this

44:14

Gnostic spiritual understanding that has been given to us. What do you think? Yeah, yeah.

44:20

I wanted to point out my friend, Raymond Lund. He pointed out that he went to a Church of Christ Bible college and I know

44:28

Raymond well. So it's important. I should have clarified when I said this that this isn't necessarily a view held by all

44:36

Church of Christ, right? It's just that there were certain Church of Christ figures who have been at the forefront of some of this.

44:43

And of course, it's not limited to Church of Christ now. There are other people and other groups.

44:49

I wanted to actually bring up - What was that gentleman's name? His name is Ray. Ray, please go check out the

44:56

Apologetic Dog. I do a lot of work dealing with the Church of Christ. Yeah, so I'm just saying, he's pointing out that it wasn't the only view that people held, which of course is true.

45:08

And it's relevant to mention lest people think that that's just true of everybody in that movement.

45:15

And of course, there are different spinoffs of the Church of Christ. So there's a lot of variation in other respects too.

45:22

But here's a statement from Binet where he's talking about Matthew 16, 28.

45:28

And I think that Binet is a full preterist. So this would be an example of kind of what

45:34

I was talking about, how the hyper -preterist believes that because a passage does or could refer to AD 70, then that just speaks to every text in the

45:47

Bible, right? It's what I meant when I said that, if you give a child a hammer, then everything becomes a nail.

45:56

So here is a text, Matthew 16, 28. It says, truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom.

46:09

Now, I would agree, first of all, that this text is not talking about an event that is still in our future.

46:19

However, even saying that doesn't necessarily mean that it refers to AD 70.

46:25

Now that is my view, but I'll tell you why it's not relevant to full preterist. I'm sure you've got something to say too, but the reason it's not talking about our future is

46:37

I think already evident or should be. Jesus said, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death.

46:44

So the event that Jesus is talking about that he refers to as the son of man coming in his kingdom can't be so far in the future that everybody standing there would be dead, right?

46:56

Because he doesn't say all, right? He says some. There are some who are standing here who will not taste death.

47:02

So there are at least, usually the term some means a smaller portion of the whole, right?

47:08

It's not the whole, and it's usually a negligible portion of the whole. So it suggests an event that is far enough in the future that many of them were dead, but it can't be so far in the future that all of them are dead, right?

47:21

Because he says some of those who are standing here will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom. And so this event,

47:28

I do think, is not about something in our future. Now, there are those who would argue for a different view than AD 70.

47:36

Some would say that it refers to the transfiguration, which of course, Matthew mentions in Matthew 17.

47:43

And then you have the parallel account in Mark and in Luke. And then you have Peter's reference to the transfiguration in one of his epistles where he mentions the power and coming of our

47:54

Lord Jesus Christ, right? We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He's talking about the holy mountain. And so for those reasons, many people would see the transfiguration as the event that Jesus was talking about.

48:04

Others would try, I don't think this is as common a view, but some would relate it to the resurrection.

48:10

Still others, this is more common than the resurrection of Christ view, but would relate it to Pentecost. That was the coming of Christ in his kingdom.

48:17

Now, the reason I don't think those events are what Jesus is talking about, though I think those are foretastes of it, is because he's talking about an event, again, that's far enough in the future that many would be dead, but not so far in the future that they would all be dead.

48:32

And AD 70, I think, fits the bill. But the problem that I've already mentioned is thinking that because this text could be talking about AD 70, therefore every text that mentions

48:45

Christ coming is talking about AD 70. Now, here's one of a hundred problems with doing that.

48:53

Just because it talks about Christ coming doesn't mean it's talking about his world -ending coming and judgment.

49:01

The Bible uses the phrase coming of the Lord myriad times where it's not talking about AD 70, right?

49:09

Look at Isaiah 13, for example, or Isaiah 19, where it refers to a coming judgment, a judgment that was coming after the time the prophet announced it, right?

49:23

But that coming was something that eventuated before AD 70, right?

49:29

Isaiah 13 and Isaiah 19 is referring to judgments that occurred on nations, right, on nations in the past.

49:39

Even hyper -preterists would agree. If you look at Isaiah 13, Isaiah 19, God is predicting a coming judgment upon Gentile nations.

49:49

And that clearly is not talking about AD 70. In the book of Revelation, you have various statements to the seven churches where Jesus says, if they don't repent of the things that he's rebuking them for, then he's going to come to them and remove their candlestick.

50:05

That coming to them is not talking about AD 70 or the final coming of Christ at the greatest size, right?

50:13

It's talking about a temporal judgment in history on churches that refuse to repent.

50:22

And so, for example, I mean, if you look at those churches, there were churches that were uprooted, but their uprooting was not in AD 70, right?

50:31

In fact, think of the church in Thessalonica. There's still a church there in Thessalonica, but there are other churches there like Sardis.

50:39

It didn't experience a temporal uprooting, if you will, until after AD 70.

50:45

So the coming of Christ in those passages just isn't talking about AD 70. So you can't just assume that every time it uses the phrase coming, that it's referring to Christ's final coming.

50:55

It very may well refer to, in fact, think about this. Pentecost is referred to as a coming of Christ, right?

51:02

In Acts chapter two, we're told about the descent of the spirit poured out by Christ.

51:08

But if you go back to John 14 through 16, Jesus refers to this as his coming, his returning to the church in the spirit.

51:18

This wasn't AD 70. Here you have an event that long preceded AD 70. So I've given examples of events from the

51:25

Old Testament, Isaiah 13 and 19 that happened centuries before AD 70. There's Pentecost, which happened a generation before AD 70.

51:34

There's the destruction of Sardis, which happened centuries after AD 70, right? You can't just assume that if one text talks about Jesus coming and it does refer to AD 70, therefore every event talking about the return of Christ is talking about the same thing.

51:50

Hi, you hit all the high points because my initial thought is the context matters. And there was a definite judgment on Israel in 70

51:59

AD, like we see all throughout the Old Testaments that we're telescoping or showing us the foreshadowing of the great and awful day of the

52:07

Lord, where he will judge all those who are fallen Adam and are enemies to the gospel.

52:14

So, yeah, I mean, I think one thing we can just highlight again is saying 70

52:19

AD is important. And I think a lot of the futurist positions really kind of jump over that kind of as an afterthought, like, yeah, that happened, but it doesn't really pertain to us in any way.

52:31

And so, you have a hermeneutic where the temple has to be rebuilt, okay?

52:37

Now, I think a rebuilt temple goes a lot against what the writer of Hebrews was trying to convey.

52:45

What Jesus did was once and done for all, right? He's the fulfillment of the types and shadows that we see under the old covenant.

52:55

And so I do wanna also encourage Christians that are looking for a rebuilt temple, no, Jesus fulfilled all of that and we are the temples of God with the indwelling

53:05

Holy Spirit. Yeah, so, oh, that's your department right there.

53:14

Yeah, yeah, I'll come to that in a bit. I just wanted to flash it on the screen real quick. I'll try and pull up something for Binet here.

53:23

First of all, I mean, that's just not true. I mean, one of the things that any person can know when it comes to something like a historical claim of this sort, when we talk about, we talked earlier about the essentials and non -essentials of eschatology, the essentials that all

53:40

Christians must and do affirm, the non -essentials on which Christians don't agree on and do debate about.

53:47

The things they haven't debated on are things like the return of Christ, the final judgment, the resurrection, and the consummated new heavens and new earth.

54:00

And we can know that even if you're not well familiar with the early church fathers, because these are essentials, this is just the sort of thing they all agreed on.

54:11

And the creeds, all the creeds, for example, if you look at the

54:16

Apostles' Creed, which long preceded Christendom, if you look at the Apostles' Creed or the

54:22

Nicene Creed, the Niceno -Constantinopolitan Creed, they all make explicit reference to Christ's final world -ending coming in judgment and the resurrection of the dead, right, and the life of the age to come.

54:37

And Chrysostom, as a elder, a presbyter, a early leader in the

54:47

Christian church, necessarily had to affirm this. And this would have been part of the catechetical instruction that was being done, right, in Antioch and so forth, wherever he was serving.

55:00

He was in different places, but you could be sure that that claim is just wildly false, right?

55:06

It's as false as the Bible teaching that. Chrysostom most certainly affirmed this point of orthodoxy, or these points of orthodoxy.

55:14

But what would you say is, why don't you give us one of their favorite arguments?

55:20

Maybe there's some texts we can go through. Maybe we can help them out a little bit and bring up some texts and see what sort of things are supposed to prove hyper -preterism.

55:30

Yeah, so, well, let's go back to the Olivet Discourse, because this is, I think this is the entry point, because I noticed a shared feature with dispensational thought and for preterists.

55:42

Now, they conclude differently, and one, I mean, it's the difference of being orthodox versus outside of orthodoxy.

55:49

But they see the whole Olivet Discourse as one unified event, for preterists put it in the past and dispensationalists put it in the future.

55:59

And so if we do want to pull up the Olivet Discourse or talk more about it, I really enjoyed

56:05

Ken Gentry's book on Have We Missed the Second Coming? Because he essentially talked about Jesus is being asked two questions, right?

56:13

And we could read it verbatim, but the first question is, when will these things be, talking about the destruction of the temple?

56:19

And then the second question is, what's the sign of your coming at the end of the age? And so Gentry's point was, we should expect

56:26

Jesus to be answering two different questions. All of these things, all of these wars, these destruction, all of these things will take place and this generation is going to see it and it's gonna result with the destruction of the temple.

56:42

And even within there, he says, and this will be the end. And when these things start, it's just the beginning, but there's a terminus and Gentry, kind of highlights verse 34 of saying, this generation is gonna feel all of that.

56:55

And then we see him in verse 36, kind of a transition, but on that day, right?

57:02

Period A in the Greek, kind of you see Matthew's argument adding to it. So we see a shift in language.

57:07

We can see that earlier in Matthew 22, but concerning that day, the day of judgment, there's no timing indicators, right?

57:16

No one knows the day or the hour. This is something that's privy to God, right?

57:21

And he even emphasizes the father there. And so I think that's super important, Anthony, and looking at the

57:27

Olivet discourse, because I don't think, and I think a good historic

57:33

Preterist understanding says, yes, there's multiple things being talked about here.

57:40

Yeah, so I didn't mention this before, but I went to Christ College in 2003, and at the time,

57:51

Dr. Gentry was teaching the eschatology courses. So when

57:56

I went there, he was doing modular courses, so he wasn't there all the time, but he would come in and do these crash courses, and we would be there for eight hours a day, and we had to do heap loads of reading before he came, and also afterwards.

58:15

So I had a full dose from him, but also I moved to Greenville, South Carolina when

58:22

I went to seminary many years later, and he happened to live here and was pastoring a church, and he lived like 10 minutes from me, so I would go and see him occasionally.

58:32

So yeah, I've benefited from him as well, but so here's the text that you're talking about, and you mentioned the two questions that are put to Jesus, tell us when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

58:48

And so, as you've mentioned, there seems to be more than one question in view here. Now, when you come down to verse 34, you have the statement, that's the one that C .S.

59:00

Lewis called the most embarrassing verse of the Bible. Jesus said, now notice this, he says, truly I say to you, this generation, so it's not just the word generation, but this generation, do a study, look at all the occurrences of the phrase, this generation in Matthew's gospel, it always refers to the generation to whom

59:17

Jesus is speaking. He calls it an adulterous generation, a wicked generation, a perverse generation.

59:23

He says things like, no sign will be given to this generation, but he's talking to his contemporaries, it's because that generation rejected him, that upon them, we're going to fall all of the things that he's talking about here.

59:38

But again, he uses the near demonstrative, you'll see why this is significant in a moment.

59:43

He says, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. And of course, 40 years later, exactly what

59:52

Jesus spoke about in the prior context did happen, the temple was destroyed, not one stone was left on top of another.

59:58

All of this was preceded by false messiahs arising, go read Josephus, he mentions numerous false messiahs, even the book of Acts mentions false claimants to our messianic pretenders, right?

01:00:10

You have the mention in the book of Acts where Paul was confused with a person who was a false prophet, a false messiah, who was leading people out into the wilderness.

01:00:19

You have Simon Magus who pretended to be the power, right? There are numerous references to messianic pretenders, even in the book of Acts, not to mention in Josephus.

01:00:30

But notice the transition. In verse 36, Jesus says, of that day, first of all, he says, but, okay, this is a strong adversative in Greek.

01:00:41

By the way, I have to put this up here because I think it's relevant. Mojo dude, this was our first ad hominem, so it should get put up there, right?

01:00:51

Mojo dude said, why are dudes with sophisticated beards always autistical in their exegesis?

01:00:57

Now, I don't know if that means that I am a better claimant of exegetical prowess than you are because my beard is suffering at the moment, but he has taken issue with your exegetical skills because of the beard.

01:01:14

Okay, so, but yeah, it reminds me. So I've had a lot of good use of the beard, right?

01:01:20

But I used to watch Muslims argue with each other and the coup de grace was always whose beard was bigger, right?

01:01:30

So I remember one Muslim, Abu Musab Wajdi Akari, taking issue with another

01:01:35

Muslim because his beard was too short. He says, who's this guy with his itty bitty little beard, right?

01:01:40

So they were having sort of a Muslim version of a pissing contest, right? So apparently the beard is not only relevant in Islamic circles, it's also relevant in Christian circles, but it's negative in Christian circles apparently.

01:01:58

In Muslim circles, it gives you authority, but for some, at least maybe hyper -preterist types, it's supposed to detract from your authority.

01:02:06

But the reason I mentioned it is because, calling into question exegetical ability here, let me just make some hard exegetical facts obvious to people, okay?

01:02:16

When Jesus says in verse 34, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away, and then moves in verse 36 to say, but he uses here a strong adversative that shows that he's shifting topics.

01:02:31

He was talking about one thing, now he's talking about something else, okay?

01:02:36

So already you have an indication of what you were talking about based on the questions put to Jesus by the disciples, right?

01:02:44

First pertaining to the destruction of Jerusalem, which we say admittedly happened in 80, 70, but then about the end of the world, right?

01:02:53

The end of the age or Christ's final coming. Here you have a transition as clear as could be in the

01:03:00

Greek, but of that day and hour, no one knows. Now notice further that Jesus switches here from using the near demonstrative, this generation, to using the far demonstrative.

01:03:13

He doesn't say this day as though it's something in the immediate vicinity, but that day.

01:03:19

So this generation that's going to see the destruction of the temple, it's referring to that immediate generation, but the day that Jesus is talking about in this part, where he's transitioned to talking about something else, that's a yet future day.

01:03:33

He uses, again, the far demonstrative. Moreover, if you look in the preceding context relating to the events of Israel's destruction in 80, 70, it's very clear that Jesus is giving them clear indicators of what will precipitate and eventuate in that judgment, right?

01:03:55

For example, I mean, he mentions many things that will lead up to it. Notice in verse 29, he says, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

01:04:10

This is classic apocalyptic imagery. Look at Isaiah 13, Isaiah 19. This is language referring to judgment coming, the destruction of nations, in this case,

01:04:20

Israel. But notice it's immediately after the tribulation that Jesus was speaking about in the preceding verses.

01:04:29

It's evident that Jesus has a very definite idea of when this is going to be, and he's announcing it.

01:04:35

He's telling them what will be the harbingers of this. If they see these things happening, then they know the event is upon them.

01:04:42

But does he speak that way after this transition verse in verse 36? No, he begins to speak altogether differently.

01:04:48

Of that day, nobody knows, right? This day is altogether outside the range of anybody's anticipation or expectation, right?

01:04:55

Nobody knows when that day is going to happen. And I think the way he's using the word no here is in a declarative sense, that nobody has the prerogative to declare it but the father, which is the basic idea in a

01:05:07

Jewish wedding, right? A son would be betrothed, but it would be the father who would announce the day when he would go get his bride.

01:05:14

And so what's interesting is, while everything speaks to nearness in the verses prior to verse 34 and leading up to it, including it, everything after verse 36 begins to be projected into the far distant future.

01:05:26

And so, for example, Jesus tells a number of parables after this, one of which is about, right, certain...

01:05:36

In fact, I have to... Actually, let me just point this out before I go to the next chapter, but he says, he talks about somebody going away, a master going away and putting people in charge of the household.

01:05:47

Then notice what he says, "'Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge "'of all his possessions. "'But if that evil slave says in his heart, "'my master is not coming for a long time "'and begins to beat his fellow slaves "'and eat and drink with drunkards, "'the master of that slave will come on the day "'when he does not expect him "'and at an hour which he does not know.'"

01:06:05

So notice that this coming is now something that's a long time off, such that the slave now begins to presume upon the master's absence and thinks he can start slacking off and mistreating those under his charge.

01:06:21

But notice you have after that a parable of 10 virgins where five of the virgins don't prepare for the long haul.

01:06:29

You might say some of them were expecting a coming of the end of the world in AD 70, but they end up being wrong.

01:06:36

They don't have enough oil in their lamps and they go back and when they go back, the master comes and they find themselves in trouble, right?

01:06:46

And the same thing is true as you continue on. You have very clear indicators that this coming that Jesus is talking about subsequently is a long time off, right?

01:06:58

So Scripture can talk about Christ's coming in various ways. You can speak of him coming in judgment, even as God has spoken of his coming in judgment in the

01:07:06

Old Testament, that doesn't involve a visible appearing. But that doesn't mean that every time

01:07:13

Scripture talks about a coming of the Lord, it's referring to the same event. It couldn't possibly refer to the same event because there have been numerous comings of the

01:07:21

Lord throughout Scripture, right? Yeah, one full preterist retort will say, well, the marriage, since it's

01:07:29

Jewish, this is talking about Levite marriage and things. And I'm like, but it said like those things in the time of Noah.

01:07:37

And so you could tell because what they're really pouring into is the audience relevance of the

01:07:43

Jewish mindset. And so they're not too far off with that, but there's so much more that the Scripture talks about where it branches outside of, especially a perversion of second temple

01:07:54

Judaism. So I just, I liked you keying in on the Olivet discourse, it kind of continues into these parables.

01:08:00

And at the end of the parable of the 10 virgins, watch therefore, for you know, neither the day nor the hour.

01:08:07

So it's this idea that we are to be ready. And I think corresponding with your point about, it's the father's prerogative to declare this day.

01:08:15

Jesus kind of mentions that in part in Acts chapter one, he just says that there's times and seasons fixed for the kingdom, all these things to be consummated.

01:08:24

Don't worry about that, right? You've been given marching orders and Jesus talks about the spirit will come upon you soon to, you know, go preach the gospel with the power of the

01:08:35

Holy Spirit. And so this, so full preterism has its hands in so many doctrines because Anthony, guess what?

01:08:42

For the full preterist, the great commission is already fulfilled. And, you know, and I hate to say this, but Gary DeMar has kind of gotten, you know, interwoven with all these things too, and won't affirm those essential things of eschatology like the future coming of Jesus bodily, the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of all things.

01:09:03

He has simply done what the full preterist does and says, show me which verses you would ground those thoughts in.

01:09:09

And every one that gets thrown at him, he kind of undoes and say, it doesn't prove that. And so these things are really important, yeah.

01:09:17

So again, so I mentioned, people would be surprised what background

01:09:24

I have with some of this since I never talk about it. And I mentioned at the beginning, how

01:09:29

I ran into a preterist back in the nineties and this started for me, my forays into that whole thing.

01:09:36

And I've had numerous opportunities since then, but then you brought up Gentry and I mentioned,

01:09:42

I studied at Christ College under Gentry. He's an Orthodox preterist. So he doesn't believe in Pantelism or full preterism, whatever term it goes by.

01:09:50

But I also had all sorts of interactions with Gary DeMar in the past, in the distant past.

01:09:57

So I actually wrote, I used to write for Biblical Worldview Magazine, which was a periodical published by American Vision of which

01:10:06

Gary DeMar is the president. And so I read Gary DeMar's book, Last Day's Madness, again, back in the nineties.

01:10:13

I got it. Yeah, I mean, I've read all sorts of things written by him, even stuff, not on eschatology, his stuff on God and government and other things and so forth.

01:10:25

So yeah, it's interesting. I think what I saw, and maybe you can speak to this. So I haven't paid as much attention to the current stuff that's going on, but it's kind of impossible to completely miss it.

01:10:37

So I did see that one of the things that was coming up is a discussion of the Greek word mellow.

01:10:43

The Greek word mellow, I'll leave it to you to talk about that, but that's kind of what

01:10:49

I saw that was, I mean, again, it may not even be the main thing that was talked about, but it was the thing that was said and when

01:10:58

I did notice what people were saying and what Gary was saying in response and so forth.

01:11:03

So maybe you could explain the argument there. Yeah, so the word mellow, you kind of have a couple options on the table.

01:11:11

It's about to be with imminence and the full predecessor is really gonna pour into that paradigm or certainty, right?

01:11:18

And so that's where God has fixed a day. Mellow, it's starting to take place.

01:11:25

Sorry about that. Did you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so yeah, mellow is just kind of getting into how you interpret this particular word.

01:11:33

And this is going to have features, not, I mean, obviously in the immediate context, but it's gonna involve an entire full scope of how you understand the

01:11:42

Bible holistically. And so I'm pretty sure Gary DeMar has just lock, stock and barrel said mellow is in term of imminence.

01:11:50

And so he's kind of boxed himself into a corner where he doesn't want to identify as a full preterist, but he makes the same arguments.

01:11:58

He speaks at all their conferences and you're probably up to date. He's kind of been disbarred from a lot of the associations that he's had over the past number of years.

01:12:09

Yeah, so for those that may not have caught some of that. So the claim is that there's a

01:12:15

Greek word, mellow, used in, I don't know, something over 20 times in the

01:12:21

New Testament. And the argument of the hyper -preterist is, in some cases, the argument is that it simply means about to, right?

01:12:30

Something is about to happen. Some might grant that it could have a secondary meaning, but will insist that because it could have this other meaning than a lot of these passages that you would otherwise associate with a future coming is legitimate for them to interpret as having happened already.

01:12:50

And so, for example, when Acts 17 31, a passage I already mentioned, says that God has fixed a day in which he'll judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he's appointed and has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

01:13:02

The claim is that because it uses mellow there, that it should be translated as God has fixed a day in which he's about to judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he's appointed and he's given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

01:13:19

Now, Jeremiah has pointed out that about to, or about to be, is not the only way that the term is used.

01:13:28

And that's borne out in all the lexical sources. And believe me, I've got them all,

01:13:34

I've got them at my fingertips. In fact, before the show, I was thinking this issue might come up.

01:13:41

And this is just one of many, but this is a exegetical dictionary of the New Testament. Mojo dude would probably assume, because this guy's not gonna agree with him, that he has a big beard.

01:13:52

But it's the exegetical dictionary of the New Testament by Bolson Schneider. And by the way, again,

01:13:58

I mean, this is true across the board all the beards that write lexicon say this, right?

01:14:04

So this is actually funny. He talks about the different meanings of the term.

01:14:10

And one of course is that it can mean about to, but another meaning is that it's, whatever's in view here is certain, right?

01:14:20

It's been decreed, it's been determined. But while this is true, you get this across the board, if you look at Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and their

01:14:30

Greek English lexicon of the New Testament, if you look at Thayer's, if you look at Vines, if you look at A .T.

01:14:38

Roberts, then any standard reference work in Greek grammar, they're all gonna make that distinction. But here's why

01:14:43

I picked this one. I thought it was funny because in the treatment of this, where he's talking about how the term has these two different meanings, he says, in Acts, mellow contains no suggestion of a near future.

01:14:59

Okay, so he's saying that while this word does have that meaning in some cases, it doesn't have that meaning in Acts.

01:15:06

None of its usages in Acts, according to Balch and Snyder, actually bear that meaning out.

01:15:12

Now, here's what's really interesting to me about the Acts 17 thing, or further interesting. In Acts 17, think about this,

01:15:19

Jeremiah. Okay. Paul is addressing Gentiles, right?

01:15:26

Not just any Gentiles, Greeks. This is Mars Hill. He's on the Areopagus.

01:15:32

He's challenged paganism, which by the way, doesn't believe in a physical resurrection.

01:15:38

Across the board, all forms of Greek pagan philosophy didn't believe in a resurrection.

01:15:44

That was the antithesis of their worldview, right? This is the context out of which Gnosticism eventually comes.

01:15:50

There was never a happy relationship in the full biblical sense between spirit and matter.

01:15:57

Not that they were full -blown Gnostics, but Gnosticism eventually hardens into this out of this kind of background where you've got the -

01:16:05

Epicurus said, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die because there's no judgment. There's no resurrection of the dead, so just live your best life now.

01:16:12

And the Stoics, the whole idea of a future resurrection was like the antithesis of everything they believed.

01:16:21

In fact, for them, it would have been, there's this great conflagration at the end and everything gets reabsorbed into, sorry,

01:16:30

I had to use that term here, but reabsorbed into the great everything, right? Well, but here's the point.

01:16:36

In this context, Paul is preaching to them, Jesus and what? The resurrection.

01:16:43

So he's speaking to a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers to whom the whole idea of future resurrected glory was anathema, not in their purview and altogether off the table of considerations.

01:16:58

It says when Paul spoke to them about the resurrection, many, they began to mock him, right?

01:17:05

If Paul was talking about some spiritual, ethereal, esoteric thing, they would have been like, hey, you're too late,

01:17:13

Paul. We already came up with that idea, right? You're a little late here, right? This is just classic eschatology for us, right?

01:17:21

But instead, what do they say? You're introducing new things to our ears, right? That's why they, you know. So you have in this context a statement where it says that a man is going to conduct the final judgment.

01:17:34

It's that man whom God raised from the dead, which was a physical resurrection. And he's talking about this happening at the resurrection, a future resurrection.

01:17:45

And so when you have a word like mellow, which can and often does mean certainty rather than about to, well, then there's no good reason to interpret it in a way that really caters to the positions that Paul's opposing.

01:18:00

And by the way, I mean, I have a passage here. This is a example in the book of Acts.

01:18:09

Where this word is used. It says, so having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place, that the

01:18:24

Christ was to suffer and that by reason of his resurrection from the dead, he would be the first to proclaim light both to the

01:18:30

Jewish people and to the Gentiles. Now here is how the relevant phrase is translated, right?

01:18:38

It was going to take place. Now, according to hyper -preterist understanding, since it uses the

01:18:45

Greek word mellow, here a form of the word, it should be translated was about to take place.

01:18:53

So notice what this would mean if we plug that meaning into the passage. So having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was about to take place, that the

01:19:07

Christ was to suffer and that by reason of his resurrection from the dead, he would be the first to proclaim light. Now, I think it's a no -brainer.

01:19:16

Oops, I'm trying to remove, oops, I'm removing the wrong thing from the screen there. I think it's a no -brainer that Jesus was not about to suffer and rise from the dead at the time of Moses, right?

01:19:30

That event was roughly 1500 years in the future, right? So there's an example in the book of Acts of the word just not meaning about to, and couldn't mean that.

01:19:42

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Damar doubles down on that. And the

01:19:47

Greek word for world, cosmos, and all these things were, the

01:19:54

Great Commission was fulfilled because it went out into the known world, the Roman world.

01:20:00

So everything is imminent and culminating and terminating at 70 AD. And so, how would you look at those words?

01:20:08

Well, you gotta look at context, but as we continue to talk about this, it's a whole different worldview. And so when you're talking about problem text,

01:20:15

I loved how we went back to the Areopagus, these

01:20:20

Greek philosophers, they're struggling with the bodily nature of the resurrection, which

01:20:26

I believe is a part of the corruption in 1 Corinthians, that they were starting to doubt that resurrection was even possible, probably because Epicurean philosophy was starting to taint their mind.

01:20:40

And Paul is just like, 1 Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter. He's like, look, you received

01:20:45

Christ in truth, believed in him unless you believed in vain, that he raised from the dead the third day according to the scripture.

01:20:54

And then he kind of goes into verse 12 of just saying, but you're starting to doubt all of these things, right? Jesus not only proved that it's possible, but it is a reality.

01:21:03

And so if you want another, I think the death nail to full preterism is 1 Corinthians 15, because it actually addresses all three of those major essentials in eschatology in one passage together.

01:21:16

And so there's no getting around what kind of death Paul has in mind. It's related to Jesus being the first fruits at his coming, all those that belong to him, there's gonna be a resurrection.

01:21:27

And so it talks about the nature of what Paul's understanding of eschatology.

01:21:32

He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. So it's really important. We're getting all of the essentials of eschatology rolled into one chapter.

01:21:40

And so we can kind of begin anywhere that you want here, but I recently preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 verses 20 through 26, because,

01:21:49

I mean, there's obviously so much context revolving around there, but that's the core of this.

01:21:55

And as we're gonna get into it, I've encouraged people when the full preterists talk about the timing indicators, we have an even better timing indicator to prove that Jesus has not returned because there's still death, there's still suffering, there's still hurts, there's still pains, there's still evil spiritual warfare.

01:22:13

And when Jesus comes at his Pharisee, he's going to destroy all enemies, all authorities, he's gonna put them under his feet and the last enemy is death.

01:22:22

And so a natural conversation is, well, Jeremiah, what kind of death is Paul really talking about here?

01:22:30

Yeah, so here in 1 Corinthians 15, this is really, and you've said it already, but it's the locus classicus, right?

01:22:38

So when it comes to various doctrines of the faith, it's always the case that we need to look at the whole

01:22:46

Bible, right, and cull things from it, but there's often a chapter where that topic is especially in view.

01:22:55

It's not always the case, but you often get chapters where it'll especially focus on that. And that text then should have a major relevance to your overall theology on that point, right?

01:23:06

So for example, if somebody wanted to talk about, let's say,

01:23:14

I don't know, think of an issue. If the question is, well, the resurrection, it's 1

01:23:20

Corinthians 15, right? If it's some other topic like the virgin birth, well, you'd go to Matthew 1 and Luke 2.

01:23:28

Those are the locus classicus for that topic. You wanna talk about the deity of Christ.

01:23:34

Again, obviously it's dealt with throughout scripture, but John 1 would be a very prominent text. Anybody who ignores that in their treatment of the topic of Christ's deity is ignoring a verse that is especially focused on it.

01:23:48

Well, so here you have, in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul's treating the resurrection, when you go back, notice how

01:23:56

Paul says, this is what I deliver to you as a first importance. He says, I deliver to you as a first importance what

01:24:02

I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That was a physical death, right?

01:24:07

He died for our sins according to the scriptures. It's clear from scripture that this was a physical event.

01:24:14

It draws it out. In fact, the Old Testament is especially clear on this point, but the

01:24:21

New Testament is not without clear indications that this was not a visionary experience.

01:24:28

It wasn't God making people think that Jesus was being crucified as Muslims would say.

01:24:33

It was a real physical suffering. It was an event that terminated in death.

01:24:38

But, you know, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, speak to this all the more graphically than any of the gospel accounts.

01:24:45

So it was a real physical death. When it goes on after that to speak of him being buried, again, the whole idea of this as a physical reality is inescapable.

01:24:57

And the reason this is significant is because when it then goes on to say raised on the third day, you're not supposed to suddenly shift in your thinking and suddenly began to think this is something other than a physical event, right?

01:25:10

He was put to death in the flesh, right? He was buried, his body was buried, and it was his body that was raised, no doubt glorified so that we could speak of it as spiritual, not in the sense of being immaterial.

01:25:24

That's not how Paul uses the term spiritual, by the way, just not the case. In 1 Corinthians 2, for example,

01:25:29

Paul says the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit of God for their foolishness to him.

01:25:36

But then he goes on to say that the spiritual man, meaning the Christian rightly appraises things, right? He is fit to judge, he has the mind of Christ.

01:25:43

So Paul was obviously not saying that the Corinthians didn't have physical bodies, but he was calling them spiritual, right?

01:25:49

And I remember Gentry making the example when we refer to a steam engine, we're not talking about an engine made of steam, right?

01:25:56

It's fueled by steam, it's able to function. And so later in 1

01:26:01

Corinthians 15, we have spiritual bodies. And so, I mean, that seems paradoxical a little bit, but I mean, it's gonna be a body completely controlled by the spirit at the resurrection.

01:26:13

Yeah, now notice this. So earlier you mentioned that in your experience, it's common, my initial experience was with somebody who didn't think of Christ as raised.

01:26:23

You said it's common in your experience for full preterists to say that after the ascension is where things go haywire.

01:26:34

So notice this, when it says in verse five, he appeared to Cephas then to the 12.

01:26:39

So on that accounting for things, the hyper preterist would say, okay, at this point, he's still appearing in a body, right?

01:26:47

But now follow the train here, right? Follow the steam engine here. He appeared to Cephas then to the 12.

01:26:53

This was a embodied appearance. After that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

01:27:03

Okay, all of this would have happened prior to the ascension, right? Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles also prior to the ascension.

01:27:11

But then Paul says, verse eight, last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

01:27:17

So are we supposed to understand from the flow of Paul's thought here that he's shifting from a appearance of one sort to something radically different, right?

01:27:28

Because all of these other occurrences of Christ appearing are Christ appearing to them in his resurrected glorified body.

01:27:35

There's no indication in Paul's mind that he's now talking about something fundamentally different. That's good because you're emphasizing the bodily aspect.

01:27:46

And so as we get into understanding death later in 1 Corinthians 15, all the context is bodily, physical death.

01:27:54

Like in verse six, you talk about, but some have fallen asleep. This is a reference to dead, physically dead saints, right?

01:28:02

Jesus referred to Lazarus as fallen asleep and the disciples were confused.

01:28:08

But as the King James said, he stinketh much, right? He was actually dead. And this is actually a term that the full preterists, they advocate, a lot of them do for a corporate body resurrection, that this is what this chapter is talking about, that Old Testament Israel are those that kind of spiritually and covenantally are being resurrected.

01:28:30

And they'll kind of appeal to those who have fallen asleep as those saints. The problem is that verse that you just read, that's talking about Christians after the resurrection.

01:28:40

So it's both. I mean, I'm just saying like that actually won't work and it works against them because it's emphasizing what kind of death the apostle

01:28:48

Paul has in mind when we continue in this context. So it's really important to land in this conversation if you wanna look at kind of verse 20, we can read a few verses.

01:29:02

I'll read kind of six here because this to me is the sweet spot. And I wanna tell you some of the questions and objections that get raised out of this.

01:29:11

And I think it's so easy. I mean, cause like I said, they're gonna wanna get out of 1 Corinthians 15 really, really fast. And when

01:29:17

Paul says, death, where is your sting? And that's being quoted from Hosea, they wanna leave 1

01:29:23

Corinthians and go figure out that context and superimpose it, not allow Paul to apply it in a very particular way.

01:29:31

And so here starting in verse 20, Paul says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits, really important term of those who have fallen asleep, that term again.

01:29:41

For as by a man came death, the question mark, what kind of death? By a man has also come the resurrection of the dead.

01:29:47

For as an Adam all die, what kind of death? We'll figure it out. So also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order.

01:29:54

Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming, parousia, those who belong to Christ.

01:29:59

Then comes the end, question mark. What does that mean? Does that mean 70, 80? When he delivers the kingdom to God, the father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

01:30:14

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. And so - So does the fact that you're reading a different translation indicate that you don't like my new

01:30:22

American standard? Oh, my bad. So in my Bible, I have certain highlights and underlines. So you are reading the

01:30:29

NAS 95, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry to confuse the people out there.

01:30:34

No, that's fine. I like it, I like it. Yeah, yeah. So hopefully - When I go to churches and preach,

01:30:40

I usually try to ask them at a time, what's the pew Bible, right? Or what's the pulpit Bible that you guys are used to using?

01:30:46

I try and make it easy so that if I have to make a point, I know where I have to make the point, right?

01:30:52

If it says something in their translation, and I think the nuance is better put differently, then it pays off to know what they're using.

01:31:00

But yeah, I was just pulling your chain there. That's good.

01:31:06

I'm using the elect center version. So this is a really important passage because this is kind of at the heart of the context.

01:31:14

Now, Paul later expounds upon what kind of resurrection, but that's already entailed with Jesus being the firstfruits, right?

01:31:22

When we're understanding of the Jewish understanding of firstfruits of a crop, the first of its kind.

01:31:29

So whatever the firstfruits is like, that's what the rest of the crop for the rest of the season will be like the firstfruits.

01:31:35

And so when Jesus resurrected bodily, that is a promise for those that belong to him, those that are in Christ by faith, we too will be resurrected like his.

01:31:46

Jesus is not the exception, he's the paradigm. He is the principle, right? He is a picture of what we long for in our blessed hope.

01:31:55

And so that's the context is showing what kind of death, what kind of death. So here's the first objection, Anthony, okay. Well, so I just want to throw in here, we sort of covered this a bit, but when scripture speaks to the resurrection of Christ, right, it's not ambiguous, right?

01:32:14

It's not unclear. You have very clearly in all the gospels an indication or several indications, in fact, what

01:32:25

Luke calls infallible proofs that Jesus rose from the dead, actually, right?

01:32:31

Not as a phantasm, in fact, in Luke's account, Jesus explicitly says, touch me and see, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as I have, right?

01:32:42

He even tells Thomas in John's account to touch him, put his hand into the wounds, right, of his hands where the nail prints were.

01:32:51

You have Jesus eating with the disciples after his resurrection. There are all sorts of things that are happening to show the real physical nature of this.

01:33:01

It's all tactile, it's intentionally tactile because, well, there are a lot of groups that are going to try and redefine this or explain it away.

01:33:09

So it's exceedingly tactile. Plus you have all those passages I already mentioned and more that talk about Jesus right now being a real human being, right?

01:33:19

You have Jesus appearing to people, Jesus being called a man post -resurrection, post -ascension in his current situation as seated at the right hand and interceding.

01:33:28

He's in all these places identified as a man. And you also have him coming in judgment as a man, right?

01:33:37

The God -man to be sure, but it's the God -man. He's not somehow disunited from his body since the resurrection or since the ascension or since anything, right?

01:33:49

After he became incarnate, he is permanently the God -man. And so the reason for bringing this up is when you say that Christ has been raised from the dead and he's the first fruits of those who are asleep, and then you say this language is being used to speak of Christ as the forerunner and as the very paradigm, you can't then turn around and identify the resurrection as anything other than something that's really physical.

01:34:15

Right, that's the flow of the context. And so one of the first objections is when we read in verse 21, for as by a man,

01:34:25

Adam, came death, by another man, Jesus, has also come the resurrection of the dead.

01:34:32

And so they'll pump on the brakes and say, well, when Adam sinned that day that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

01:34:40

God said, you will surely die. And he didn't die physically, Anthony.

01:34:46

So that must mean that he died spiritually and covenantally only. And so that's a point we have to be able to account for.

01:34:57

And really, you can sit in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 and realize, oh, wait a second, what is death?

01:35:04

Well, death touches all of who man is. Man is both bodily and spirit, right?

01:35:13

God took the dust of the ground, physical, and breathed into him the breath of life. Man is at least dichotomous.

01:35:20

And Genesis 1 tells us that God made us in his image, right, for relationship and all these things. And so when

01:35:26

Adam sinned, God is telling Adam, the day that you sin against me, there will be justice, right, the wages of sin is death.

01:35:32

Like there will be a reckoning. And so death has to involve all of who man is, and that is definitely covenantal.

01:35:40

But notice in Genesis 3, when Adam does sin against God, we see

01:35:46

God being gracious and merciful, demonstrating his love in making a substitute on Adam's behalf.

01:35:54

So physical death did happen, but as a substitute. Animals had to die and God had animal coverings for Adam and Eve's shame, their guilty sin, and God is making a substitute for that.

01:36:07

Here's another kicker. And this actually pertains later in the context of 1 Corinthians 15. As a result of Adam's sin, man will return to dust.

01:36:17

And this is one of the best definitions of thanatos, the termination of physical life.

01:36:22

Looks like Psalm 90 talks about all the posterity of Adam. Our days, our lifespan are 70 by some strength to 80, but we will return to dust because of sin.

01:36:36

And so when this gets brought out by the first, for as in Adam all die, well, this is talking about a physical, a spiritual separation from God, right?

01:36:48

This is very covenantal, but it completely bypasses the context of Genesis 2 and 3 to say, well, that doesn't have a physical aspect.

01:36:58

So there's more. We can keep going with that, but I don't know if you wanna chime in real quick. Yeah, I mean, so first of all, when

01:37:04

Paul says here, since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. I agree with you that death is more full -orbed or comprehensive than simply physical death.

01:37:15

However, it's simply exegetically illicit to jump to chapter three and limit it to what's specifically in view there, because one of the things that's true in the ensuing narrative is the emphasis on physical death that happens as a result of Adam's sin, right?

01:37:37

When verse 21 says, since by man came death, it doesn't limit it to what would have been true of Adam immediately upon sinning.

01:37:46

I think it includes that, but notice the verse doesn't limit it to that. But when you read Genesis, the point

01:37:52

I'm driving at is there's a clear emphasis on physical death that results from Adam's fall.

01:37:59

So immediately after Genesis three, when God curses the ground, by the way, another thing that's dealt with in Christ's death, that's ultimately why creation will be delivered from its bondage and corruption, right?

01:38:13

Which it connects with the resurrection of the sons of God in Romans eight. These are things that coincide.

01:38:20

But in Genesis, after the fall, you have the genealogy given of Cain.

01:38:28

And then in five, you have the genealogy of Seth. And the thing that is emphasized in these genealogies is the fact that all of Adam's descendants die.

01:38:38

And it's not there accidentally, right? In Genesis five, verse five, speaking of Adam, it says, and he died.

01:38:46

In verse eight, speaking of Seth, it says, and he died. In verse 11, speaking of Enosh, it says, and he died.

01:38:53

Speaking of Kenan, verse 14, he died. Mahalalel, verse 17, he died.

01:39:00

Jared. Adam didn't die until 900 plus years later. See, he died spiritually that day.

01:39:06

But where does Paul say that that's specifically what he's talking about, is what I'm getting at. And again,

01:39:11

I do agree that it's more holistic, but I'm saying that there's no grounds for limiting this to what would have been true of Adam at the moment he sinned because what does

01:39:24

Paul say? He says, death came by man. Did Adam physically die? And was that a result of Adam sinning?

01:39:30

Who would say no? Maybe a hyper -preterist would, but, right? I mean, so my point is just that it's clear that physical death is a penal consequence of Adam sinning.

01:39:44

I think an important point to emphasize is saying Adam should have died that day. If God wanted to implement justice and take

01:39:52

Adam's physical life, he had every right to do so. But God, God was gracious, he was merciful, loving, and provided a physical substitute that had to die.

01:40:05

We later are gonna see in Leviticus that life is in the blood, like a payment had to be made. God wasn't just gracious and merciful on a whim.

01:40:13

There was payment, and it was a physical payment. And so we're getting these glimpses to how this offspring of the woman is gonna be the savior of the world and crush the head of the serpent.

01:40:23

He's gonna be our sacrifice. So simply appealing to Adam, like you're saying, is holistic, it's man died, right?

01:40:32

Who is at least dichotomous, both material and immaterial. And we see that he's going to return to the dust.

01:40:40

And so Adam is the covenant federal head of all of his posterity, right?

01:40:48

We're gonna eventually see both the Jew and Gentile. Now this is important, because I wanna introduce to you another objection that I hear.

01:40:55

I hear a full predator saying, if you don't quote Hosea chapter 13, when talking about 1

01:41:01

Corinthians 15, you have no idea what you're talking about. Any idea of why they're trying to stack the deck like that?

01:41:11

It's not one I've come across. Yeah, so it's interesting. So it'll be fun. Yeah, well, if you don't mind,

01:41:16

I don't wanna read out of my version, but if you'll go down to verse 54. Oh, verse 54 in 1

01:41:22

Corinthians, okay. Yeah. All right. Right, so you see the quotation marks going on.

01:41:28

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

01:41:34

So this is a quotation from Hosea chapter 13. And it is interesting, because Hosea 13 begins, now this is talking about the

01:41:44

Lord's relentless judgment on Israel. And so all I need is verse one, is what they wanna do.

01:41:49

You're gonna see that it's the same kind of subtleness that they do with Genesis chapter two, when

01:41:57

Adam will die. So verse one, when Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.

01:42:02

He was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died.

01:42:10

And so this verse just goes on to say that, well, Israel sinned, but they kept living.

01:42:17

So this is talking about a covenantal Adamic death, not a physical one.

01:42:24

And so, yes, man is in covenant with God, but we're born covenant breakers, right?

01:42:30

In our federal head, Adam. And so what's interesting is because the way that Paul is applying, because later in Hosea 13 has those quotes, death, where's your sting?

01:42:40

Where's your victory? All these things. And so what they're saying is, look, Hosea already gave the strict definition that this isn't talking about physical death.

01:42:48

And so I think what they're doing is not allowing the apostle Paul to apply that quotation in a grander way, right?

01:42:57

Because in Hosea 13, yes, it is talking about the context of Ephraim, Israel sinning against God, and for all intents and purposes that you're dead, right?

01:43:08

They're walking away covenantally as it were. But Paul in 1

01:43:14

Corinthians 15, he's applying this on a global spectrum because all died in Adam and Jesus reverses the curse.

01:43:24

And so Adam or Paul is applying this broader to say, the very existence of death will be defeated at Jesus's Parasea.

01:43:35

And so Paul is making a very systematic approach when he's talking about 1

01:43:40

Corinthians 15. So just so we can't be accused of not knowing what we're talking about, not quoting

01:43:46

Hosea, that's what's going on is they are bypassing the covenant federal headship of Adam that permeates not just Israel, but also the

01:43:56

Gentile world, right? And so death is being applied in the sense that its very existence will be defeated one day in victory at Jesus's second coming.

01:44:09

Any thoughts there, Anthony? No. That was a new one for you? Yeah, that was, like I said,

01:44:17

I haven't paid as much attention to certain developments in hyper -preterism.

01:44:22

So that's interesting. Yes, but we can always point back to Jesus as the first fruits.

01:44:31

And so we know Paul's not going to leave that train of thought. And so when

01:44:36

Paul quotes from Hosea 13, he's applying it in a broader scope.

01:44:42

To me, it reminds me of the Arminians, when, which I have many

01:44:47

Arminian friends, when Romans nine talks about Jacob whom I've loved and Esau have hated, their mind is go back to the

01:44:56

Old Testament, strictly have a view of the nations only. And we can't let

01:45:01

Paul apply that in some soteriological context, right? It has to be about nations.

01:45:07

I like to remind them, individuals make up the nations and so forth. But does that make sense? So there's an abuse of going to the

01:45:15

Old Testament, having a strict definition and not allowing Paul to apply it in a broader context. Within the context of Adam being the federal head of all of mankind by birth.

01:45:27

So when we go back to verses 20 through 26, so interesting, but each in his, so for as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order,

01:45:39

Christ the first fruits, so what happens of Jesus is going to happen of us, then at his coming.

01:45:46

So do you have any idea of when the full preterist views this coming of Jesus?

01:45:52

70 AD, surprise of course. And so verse 24 is interesting, because then it says,

01:45:58

I'm gonna read, then comes the end, right? He hands over the kingdom to God, the father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power.

01:46:08

So they're kind of in an odd spot because they have, their whole claim is, nowhere in scripture does it talk about the end of history.

01:46:16

It just talks about the time of the end, right? The end of the Jewish aeon. And I believe in 1

01:46:23

Corinthians 10, we kind of get a peek into that phrase, the end of the ages, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

01:46:32

And so Paul's invoking kind of that, the two age paradigm, right? This age and the age to come.

01:46:39

And so at this context, right? The end, Paul would have in mind of this temporal age, whom, you know, in 1

01:46:47

Corinthians 1, he warns about the false teaching of Greeks, right?

01:46:52

That seek wisdom. And then he talks about second temple Judaism, that seek a sign, you know, abandon the wisdom of God.

01:46:59

And then that chapter two that you talked about, all the teachers of this age will perish.

01:47:05

And I believe it's 1 Corinthians 7, where he's saying, not only is the teacher is going to pass away, but this world, right?

01:47:12

Is perishing, right? And there's common ground between all mill and post mill and that of saying, yeah, the things as we know it is fading away.

01:47:19

And so there's coming a terminus, an end of this age, which will be met at Jesus's parrhesia, the consummation and restoration of all things.

01:47:30

In the key verse here, I mean, 25, he must reign until he's put all of his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death.

01:47:39

And so this is, you can't escape the fact that the context is talking about physical death, something that Jesus is reversing what

01:47:48

Adam kickstarted from the garden. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that this touches on.

01:47:57

I'm sure other people have thought about the ramifications even ahead of us, but Psalm 110, it's glorious prophetic text in the

01:48:07

Old Testament, right? This is what Paul has in view here. In Psalm 110, it says, the

01:48:13

Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool, right? The picture that is presented there is obviously in New Testament said to have been fulfilled in Christ when he was raised or exalted to the

01:48:28

Father's right hand. And from that exalted position, Christ is now bringing everything in subjection under his feet.

01:48:36

If what that passage is talking about was all fulfilled in AD 70, it loses much of its gusto, right?

01:48:44

I mean, the whole thing ends up being less than impressive.

01:48:52

But when you look at the ensuing context of that, it actually goes on to talk about this one who's seated at God's right hand, eventually coming and destroying the wicked.

01:49:05

And the way it describes that coming and that coming one is in clearly physical terms, right?

01:49:13

Now, I grant it's poetic. It wouldn't be my go -to text for some of this, but still, it mentions him lifting up his head beside the way, right, as he takes a drink from a brook.

01:49:24

Doesn't sound like the hyper -preterist coming in any case. And just the thought that comes to mind as you mentioned this.

01:49:31

But yeah, I mean, the last enemy that will be abolished is death. So how do they understand all this in terms of AD 70?

01:49:42

Spiritual death, right? Because we're talking about the Adamic death, Anthony. So Adam didn't die physically that day, so it's spiritual.

01:49:49

Hosea later doesn't mean a physical death, right? It's just merely covenantal. Yeah, this is just another example of, you know, get a hammer, everything's a nail.

01:49:57

Just because death can be used in one way, then it has to be used that way every other time. And you gotta understand, because if this is talking about physical death, this completely shatters their whole worldview.

01:50:11

Because as we look about in the world as we know it now, we see death everywhere. We see hurts, we see pains, we see evil and the effects of evil leading to death.

01:50:21

And if Jesus is saying at his coming, he's gonna put an end to all that. Well, that is the best timing indicator to know that Jesus has not returned, that the resurrection of the dead has not happened, and that Jesus has not restored all things, but this is a part of our blessed hope.

01:50:37

That's why this passage is so powerful, because we can always point back to Jesus's resurrection.

01:50:42

That's what everything is being grounded in. It's talking about physical death, and Jesus reverses the curse.

01:50:48

And so something else I wanted to bring out is because this is a different worldview. I used to have a really good friend, went into pastoral ministry, would call me all the time.

01:50:58

And I'm not kidding, Anthony, eight months into him studying eschatology, he said, Jeremiah, I think I'm a heretic.

01:51:04

I said, hold on, what? He's just like, man, you remember that full preterism stuff

01:51:09

I started talking about? I was like, yeah, the crazy stuff? And he said, yeah, I can't disprove it. And I just said, well, please, by all things that are holy, don't preach it from your pulpit.

01:51:18

It's okay to struggle with things. And so, I mean, it was just a little bit while later, he fully embraced it and started preaching it from his pulpit.

01:51:26

But I would ask him simple questions, because when we would bring up this passage, I was like, how does this not entail universalism if all this happened at 70

01:51:35

AD? Well, surprise, surprise, the big full preterist groups out there, or they're universalist, right?

01:51:42

Because everything happened 70 AD. And so other practical questions, I just said, okay, in terms of apologetics, why does physical death happen?

01:51:52

Because when you look back at Genesis 2, in their mind, that's only spiritual. When you look at Genesis, or Romans 3, 23, for the wages of sin is death, that's spiritual.

01:52:01

Ezekiel 18, the soul that sins will die, well, that's spiritual. And so his answer was,

01:52:07

I don't know. I don't know why we physically died. That was just a part of the design since from the beginning. And so you lose some apologetic value there when you're not allowing all of what

01:52:22

Adam was made, which is at least dichotomous, both physical, material, and immaterial. So, and then obviously they have to bypass

01:52:31

Jesus. He's more of an exception in 1 Corinthians 15, but then you're redefining what first fruits mean.