The Book of ACTS | The Ascension

Hello and welcome to the Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desires to contend for the gospel of grace.

And so hopefully you see in the Apologetic Dog logo, hopefully you see 1 Timothy 6, verse 20.

I quote this verse all the time because this is kind of the heart behind the ministry where Paul is saying, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you.

Do this by avoiding contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. Do this by avoiding irreverent babble or pagan philosophy.

And so actually verse 21, the very last verse of 1 Timothy 6, is for by professing it, this vain and empty pagan philosophy, it says for by it some have swerved from the faith.

And so I believe there's some apologetic value there to say we must be on guard for the gospel of grace. We must contend for the truths that contained in God's word.

Thy word is truth. And so thank you so much for tuning in to the Apologetic Dog, whether you're watching this live or you see it down the pipeline.

If you don't mind, if you've ever benefited from the Apologetic Dog ministry at all, please like, share, and subscribe.

And if you wanna be notified of these random live streams that I've been doing that I don't really give people much of a heads up, hit the notification bell.

And so a little bit about me. I'm also a pastor at 12 .5 Church, a pastor and elder at 12 .5

Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. What's really cool is we are a Reformed Baptist church and we're the only one, the only one in sight.

And we love our Reformed PCA, Presbyterian Brothers, CREC. And so we sharpen one another about the covenants and so on and we fill each other's pulpits.

And so we just have a big heart there. Speaking of my Presbyterian brethren,

I had one here in the side chat moments ago. He may still be here, but Anthony Rogers, he said, hey,

I preached on the Ascension today. And I'm like, oh no, that's what I'm doing the live stream this evening about.

And so I know Anthony, if you're out there, he's going to be able to chime in and say, Jeremiah, you left so much on the table.

But perhaps that's a good segue to what I want to accomplish here in a little bit.

I got some announcements I want to share with y 'all, but we are going through the book of Acts on doing live streams.

And I am trying to model after Anthony, the pace in which we do live streams.

And so it's very slow, but that's okay. That allows us to really meditate in the God's word and to take time doing that.

And so Anthony, you're still in the side chat. Thank you so much for tuning in. So with that,

I have some announcements I want to make y 'all aware of. I believe it is

August 23rd, where Trey Fisher and I, The Fishbone, we will be doing a debate with two

Church of Christ advocates and kind of the floating question is, is water baptism necessary?

Necessary for what? You will have to tune in and find out. Just want to take pause and thank you, everyone that is live.

I got to give some shout out to Sparky, one of our mods in the side chat.

Sparky, she hates missing the live streams. And so sometimes Sparky will tune in a little bit late, but she's early this time.

And so thank you so much, Sparky, for tuning in and sharing this live stream on the discords out there.

Also, big shout out to Georgia. Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in and joining us as we go through our passage and acts this evening.

If you have any questions, if you have any comments that you'd like for me to show, I definitely do that in the side chat.

Sparky, you know where the side chat is. That's how we're communicating. Also, this is a chance since the

Apologetic Dog has over 2000 subscribers. One way to show support to the ministry is being able to do super chats and things like that.

I want to be careful by telling people to give financially to the ministry. There are ways you can do that if God lays down your heart.

I'm going to the Apologetic Dog website. There's ways that you can support financially, which helps me out so much.

Thank you all for those who have done that. But you can also list the Apologetic Dog up in prayer.

I just want to emphasize so much how I covet your prayers and how meaningful that is. In fact, this morning at 12

Five Church, where I serve as one of the elders and pastors at, we just wrapped up a mini sermon series,

The Armor of God. We summed it up with how prayer is essentially the oil that allows the machinery, the armor pieces to function well.

So prayer is assumed in the life of a Christian in all endeavors of life.

And so if you are a supporter of the Apologetic Dog and you like the content, please, just please, please, please keep me in prayer.

Also keep me in prayer as the Fishbone and I get ready to debate.

Hello, Nine Degree. Am I saying your YouTube name right? Hello, thank you for tuning in.

And so I do want to make another comment about this debate. Well, for one, Marlon Wilson at The Gospel Truth, such a dear brother, moderating some intense debates,

I have to say. And so thank you for your work. I know that this is something you do on the side.

And so the fact that you're able to schedule so many debates and keep those rolling is incredible.

And so Marlon has, and I have teamed up. We've talked a lot on the phone and we've talked about so many heresies and how to identify them.

And we've talked about so many important theological issues. And so I remember years ago now, maybe three years ago,

Marlon let me have my first debate on The Gospel Truth where I debated a Mormon.

And actually it was multifaceted, but I remember messaging Marlon on Facebook and I was kind of nervous because like, oh, it's the

Marlon Wilson. And I said, hey, I'd love for you to moderate a debate on is water baptism necessary for salvation?

And I remember he messaged me back saying, hey, that's a good idea. I will think about that. Oh, by the way, would you like to debate a

Mormon? And I said, sure. So that's what began our friendship.

And then I believe it's been two years now. We actually flew Marlon out to Jonesboro, Arkansas to host

The Gospel Truth's first live debate between me,

Brock Kendall, a Church of Christ advocate just right outside my hometown. So anyway,

I just really want to plug Marlon's channel at The Gospel Truth. So be on the lookout for our debate coming up with me and Trey Fisher.

Is water baptism, is it necessary? And what I have to just mention is, is it necessary for all of our sins to be forgiven?

Because I believe our interlocutors, Zachary and Andrew, they're gonna actually defend that baptism washes all of a person's sin, past, present, and future.

So don't know how they're gonna defend that. I'll be interested to see if they'll be singing that same tune at the end of the debate, but it should be good.

Thank you, Sparky, for plugging Marlon's channel, The Gospel Truth. So I have another announcement.

Oh, I'm excited to tell y 'all some details about this. Coming up in February 2025,

I believe in Tullahoma, Tennessee, the Open Air Theology is going to be hosting another conference.

Last year, it was called Why Calvinism? I had a blast. I was able to speak at the pre -conference with Dr.

Sam Frost, warning people of the dangers of hyperpreterism. I was able to give a sermon lecture in the conference about the sovereignty of God in suffering.

So please go check that out. And then Dr. James White was the highlight of the conference, the last event where he debated

Jason Breda, and they debated essentially over particular redemption or limited atonement.

Fantastic debate. Gotta go check that out. And so this year, we are, the theme of the conference is war, the battle between the flesh and the spirit.

We have the gang, people that you may know is like Keith Foskey. He'll be speaking again this year.

Can't wait to see him, and Sam Waldron, and a number of the guys. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody again.

I believe Austin Keeler, if I'm saying his last name right, I started following his page,

The Holy Nope. So he's gonna be speaking again. Can't wait to do that. And then obviously,

Claude Ramsey, one of the most passionate preachers I've ever heard. Can't wait to see that brother again.

But if you notice, next to my name, just right underneath it, you see debate.

So what I've been tasked with, Jeffrey Rice was saying, hey, Dr. White, he is, may or may not, can make it to this conference and speak.

And so would you like to replace him for a debate at the end of the conference? And I'm just thinking, yes, definitely would love to be able to step in there.

And so Jeff was like, yeah, hey, awesome. I have a favor to ask. Find a Church of Christ advocate and y 'all figure out what to debate.

And so that's been proving to be a little bit challenging because I have sent out a number of debate challenges and people have immediately turned me down.

I actually have one that is in the works. This gentleman, I'm not gonna tell you who because oh, it's gonna kill me if it doesn't work out.

But it's okay. We trust God with that. But this gentleman, if he accepts, he said to give him just a little bit of time to think on it.

It's gonna be a showdown. And so essentially we want our debate to be over something related to if a believer can lose their salvation.

Does God necessarily complete sanctification in the life of believer? You better believe it.

And a proposition along those lines kind of relates to the theme of the conference.

So I'm just super pumped about this. And obviously what you see there in the middle of the graphic is Marlon Wilson.

He will actually be a speaker at the conference as well. So I'll be on the lookout for that.

Just like I said, super pumped. And Justin Stasny.

Justin Stasny is a member and a deacon at 12 Five Church. And you're right, we did sing about the ascension today.

You know, I was so moved by that song that you let us in as I had to do a live stream about it.

Thanks so much for tuning in, Justin. Justin, if you have any questions about the ascension coming up, let me know in the side chat.

I will look at Facebook. I think we're live on Facebook too. But just for the life of me, cannot figure out how to get those comments posted on live stream.

Thanks, Sparky. If you've heard me reference Anthony Rogers' channel, please check that out.

There's a link in the side chat to check him out. Okay. With that being said, let us continue onward in our live stream this evening.

Let's see. Oh, bam, I'm back. Trying to move this off the screen.

There we go. So what I've been doing, and we've kind of alluded to this already, is

I want to do live streams where I don't have content planned to interview scholars on their books or me and the fishbone.

We don't have anything. I've actually got a number of things lined up soon. But I also want to do live streams with just me.

And I want to show how the Apologetic Dog is not just a negative apologetics ministry against the

Church of Christ and other cult groups like hyper -preterism or full -preterism. I also want this ministry to edify the saints, to be a blessing to you.

And one way I want to do that is to be able to show you certain passages that teach us that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, all to the glory of God alone.

And so I've done debates with Roman Catholics over sola scriptura. And so my hope and prayer is to show you that our wheelhouse will be exegeting the scripture, developing context, proving these doctrines are axiomatic.

Some of those are transcendental, meaning the Word of God is truth. And so, yes, that is the

Protestant's epistemology. This is our theory of knowledge and therefore of truth. And it doesn't work to appeal to an infallible magisterium or tradition.

No, God's Word is perspicuous, it is clear. And so we better be able to cash in against the

Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox and those that say, oh, well, you don't even know what books of the

Bible are inspired. This is where church history is relative or important and definitely relative to the question.

But church history is not infallible. That is something that belongs to God and Him alone.

So my point is, I just want our ministry to be able to vindicate these truths. Randy, let's see here.

What's up, bro? Thanks for tuning in. Yeah, I launched it on the live streams on Facebook, mainly so people can watch it while they're driving, so forth, but when people say things on Facebook, I don't have a way of bringing it up necessarily.

But yeah, Randy, I see you said the fishbone out there in Facebook world. And yes,

Justice Dasney, I started just because of you showing up. So thank you for tuning in,

Randy. Okay, so with me talking about vindicating, doctrine, vindicating truth from the word of God, something

I was praying about was what book of the Bible? Anthony Rogers likes to tiptoe word by word, phrase by phrase, verb by verb through Galatians.

And the more I reflect upon the apologetic dog and my outreach towards the church of Christ, everything goes back to Acts 238,

Acts 2216. And I thought, well, I wanna help people understand you develop context leading up to these proof texts.

And so the more I prayed about it, I really wanted to say, okay, let's just do live streams walking through the book of Acts and drink some coffee.

And so what I wanna do is walk through the book of Acts. And so the past number of live streams,

I've went through the prologue of Acts. We've talked about O Theophilus, who is that? Who the writer of the book of Acts is, who that is and who they're referring to when they speak to O Theophilus.

Go check out the first live stream. Then I believe I talked about John's baptism because here in the prologue, that is a necessary backdrop to understanding the book of Acts.

That foreshadowed the baptism of the Holy Spirit that's going to be in Acts chapter two at Pentecost.

And so I believe the last live stream was so incredible for me to be able to talk about the kingdom of God.

You see there in verse three that Jesus presented himself alive to the apostles after his sufferings by many proofs, appearing to them 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

I just wanna tell you, that's been my favorite live stream so far is we talked about the who, what, when, where, and why of the kingdom of God.

And so I'm definitely going to be piggybacking off of the kingdom of God with our next passage of scripture here in Acts starting in verse six.

And you see even kind of the heading here in the ESV is the ascension. And the more

I started studying past week or so on the ascension, I thought I cannot exhaustively cover everything that the

Old Testament laid the foundation for the ascension and all the things that the ascension is wrapped around in the

New Testament. We're gonna definitely give it a shot. But here in Acts chapter one, there are three major points.

So the ascension is tethered to the great commission as we're gonna see here in verse eight is kind of a summary of the great commission, but we'll definitely go look at Matthew chapter 28 here as well.

But the ascension is also tethered to the second coming of Christ. So if you're just tuning in, those are the three major points that I want us to cover this evening is

I wanna talk about the ascension and we can't exhaust it, but I do want to talk about how that relates to Jesus being prophet, priest, and king.

And the ascension is also connected to the great commission and the second coming of Christ. So before we dive in, gotta get another sip of coffee.

And as we begin, if you have any questions, comments, snarky rebukes, put them in the side chat.

I teach the students a lot at 12 .5. When I say snarky rebukes, all those hands just go up.

I'm like, thanks a lot. Okay, here in Acts chapter one, starting in verse six, we read, so when they had come together, the apostles, they asked

Jesus, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?

Bare question. And Jesus said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all

Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And when he said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up.

And so I do want to take a moment and say, this is the ascension. When Jesus was lifted up, ascended on high, a cloud took him out of their sight.

And while they were gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus who was taken from you into heaven will come again or will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

Okay, so, so many beautiful truths, but that's what we're gonna center around is the ascension.

I believe when we look in the opening verses of Acts chapter one, this is something that the prologue says that what

Luke is addressing to Theophilus, all the things that Jesus taught in his earthly ministry until the day when he was taken up, until he ascended on high.

Okay, so a little bit of context, backing up, is the writer

Luke is who we said that we can deduce by looking at the entirety of the

New Testament. Luke wrote Acts and since Luke wrote Acts, then he is the writer of the gospel that's addressed to Theophilus.

And so the gospel of Luke is volume one and the book of Acts is volume two. And what

I wanted to kind of share with y 'all what's really neat is the very end of Luke's gospel ended on the ascension.

And so Acts chapter one begins with the ascension. So the writer Luke wanted to overlap these truths.

And so there are some principles here that we read about the end of Luke's gospel that we don't necessarily get in the book of Acts, but we get some details there that we don't necessarily see here in Luke chapter 24.

And so when we look at these two accounts together, we get more details about the ascension and what it should provoke in our hearts.

And so something else I want to emphasize is as we go through doctrines like the kingdom of God or the ascension here,

I don't want it to just merely be facts that we can recall, because I got a ton of scripture I can't wait to take us down in a moment, but I want it to renew our hearts.

I want it to exhort our hearts to give all reverence and worship to King Jesus who ascended on high.

And that was a marker that he is coming back. That is a marker that said, yes, all of his earthly ministry is completed, but Jesus is an ascended

King that is enthroned on high, and he is still interceding for us today.

And so the ascension in Luke's gospel says, and when Jesus led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.

While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.

And so once again, this is the ascension. And notice what happens when they witnessed

Jesus ascending here, they worshiped him. They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

And so as we unpack the doctrine of the ascension, this should cause worship in our hearts.

This should cause our life to be a sweet -smelling aroma that ascends to God and pleases him because he sees the righteousness of Christ covering us by faith.

And then we live out that faith to the glory of God. It should cause us to worship and it should cause great joy in our hearts.

So that's the aim, is that as we live to worship God and joy about this doctrine of the ascension, verse 53 says, and they were continually in the temple, blessing

God. You wanna bless God? Worship him. If you wanna worship him, find your rest and amen in King Jesus.

So let's back up. That'll help us fill in the details a little bit. I wanna check y 'all in the side chat.

Randy, thanks for telling us. Yes, we love the book of Acts. Sometimes it's a little bit,

I don't wanna say cryptic, but it raises a lot of good questions, right? Because the book of Acts contains things like the baptism of the

Holy Spirit, where it's poured out in Acts chapter two and everybody started speaking in tongues. What does that mean?

Should we build an entire denomination of Pentecost looking for these Pentecostal experiences every time somebody gets baptized?

Well, if someone is committed to the thinking of speaking where the Bible speaks and we must do the things that the early

Christians did in order to become Christians, well, that's a broken hermeneutic because the book of Acts is a narrative book.

Perhaps one of the biggest hermeneutical principles of studying the book of Acts that I could impress upon you is

I want us to understand the difference between that which is descriptive and that which is prescriptive.

The book of Acts is a narrative book. It's describing a story of the early church.

And how we glean principles from the book of Acts that applies to us is we must interpret the book of Acts in light of the letters written to the churches.

Paul writes didactic, clear teachings to the church, gives us direct imperatives, commands of what we shall do.

And so when we have the letters written to the churches in the background of our mind, well, that allows us to read the book of Acts and say, oh, that was true for them back in the birth of the early church, and that's still true for us today.

And then we'll be able to say, oh, that was foundational to the early church. Things like where we see sign gifts of the

Holy Spirit that were judgments to the nation of Israel. And this is foundational to how the early church was building on the teachings of the apostles and the prophets and Christ being the cornerstone.

And so the only way to interpret the book of Acts is as a narrative book. And we also interpret that in light of the didactic teachings that are written to the early church.

Okay, so take another sip of coffee on that because we're talking about the ascension.

And this is inevitably going to lead us back to the Great Commission and how the angels, with a slight rebuke, were telling the apostles, the men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

And what I love about this is these two angelic beings that had white robes on.

No doubt that's a description of angels that we see appearing in Luke's gospel. It's saying, hey, get to work.

You seeing Jesus ascend on high, this is to encourage you to continue the work that Christ has commissioned you to do.

And oh, by the way, you'll have the Holy Spirit. Okay, so with that being said, I want us to start with the ascension.

So obviously we read this here when Christ ascended on high.

So I want us to talk about the ascension. I want us to look at the Great Commission and I want us to talk about the second coming of Jesus.

When they said these things, they were looking on and he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

So all throughout scripture, we see cloud kind of being associated with the glory of God. And as I was doing a deep dive into reading about the ascension, this quickly got me looking back into the

Old Testament. This wasn't something just arbitrarily talked about here in Acts chapter one at the end of the gospel of Luke.

No, this has deep roots in the Old Testament and there's so much, I boiled it down to three things

I want to talk about with Christ's ascension and how it relates to the Old Testament, showing us that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king.

And so, didn't hear Anthony's sermon today, but perhaps he talked about that a little bit.

And so I say that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. All the New Testament tells us about that.

But I want to perhaps explain how that's relevant to his ascension and I'm gonna give us a few scriptures to think about.

Don't really have the whole account of Elijah in the Old Testament, but Elijah, remember, he didn't technically die here on earth, but he ascended into heaven on this fiery chariot, right?

And what was interesting is Elisha witnessed these things.

And so Elijah is essentially the embodiment of all the prophets in the

Old Testament. The reason why we say that is essentially because remember Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elijah were there to bear witness.

This is the law and the prophets bearing witness that Jesus is the culmination of everything that they pointed to.

And so you have Elijah kind of representing the prophets and he ascended, and I hate to break it to my dispensational pre -millennial brothers out there, but that was not a foreshadowing of a pre -trib rapture.

Rather, this was a pre -figure of the ascension of Jesus. Think about this,

Elijah, he represented the prophets and he ascended and Elisha, right, his protege, he was, since he saw

Elijah ascending on high, he received a double portion blessing of seeing his ascension and kind of that bestowing on that ministerial work.

Now, I think this has huge implications for us today, especially as we study the book of Acts because the apostles, they gazed upon Jesus' ascension into heaven and what kind of blessing are they going to receive?

Right here in verse eight, Jesus says that you will receive power on high from the

Holy Spirit. And when Jesus said, you know, back in, I believe it was John's Gospel, he said to the apostles, you're going to do greater works than me.

And so I want you to see the close connection between the prophet Elijah when he ascended, this meant double portion of blessings and power to Elisha that was coming after him.

And so this is setting the stage for Jesus who did so many miraculous signs and wonders as the prophet that Deuteronomy 18 prophesied about.

He is telling the apostles, when I ascend, I'm sending you the Holy Spirit and he will give you power.

You will perform more miracles than me because you will not be bound to one location.

You're going to be dispersed starting in Jerusalem, going to all

Judea and Samaria and this is going to relate to the Great Commission and to the ends of all the earth.

And so the ascension finds kind of firstly, the backdrop with the prophets

Elijah, he ascended and Jesus is a greater prophet, if you will. Oh, we have someone new in the side chat.

This is the babe of all babes, mama dog and the pup are watching.

What's up, babe? Thank you for getting me this coffee that has this caramel flavor.

It is very, very nice. So thank you for that recommendation.

Gotta give shout out to the babe of all babes there. Okay, so next

I wanna touch on, we may fly through these, but you gotta think, we're doing a live stream. We're already 40 minutes in and I got a lot of ground to cover and we can only barely scratch the surface of just the ascension because I do wanna talk about the importance of understanding this in relation to the

Great Commission and the second coming of Jesus because I wanna show you apologetically how to defend against hyper -preterism with the ascension, the

Great Commission and the second coming as well. And so I do wanna perhaps bring up a passage because we see how the ascension relates to Jesus being a prophet.

Well, he ascended, he is the prophet and we saw that kind of alluded to in the

Old Testament. Now, the ascension also relates to Jesus being a high priest, okay?

And in the Old Testament, the priest would go into the holies of holies, right?

They would have to do ceremonial cleansings. They would have to offer sacrifices. They had to go through these ceremonial rituals to become clean.

Now, like I said, that wasn't arbitrary. That wasn't just random rules in the Old Testament. That was teaching the nation of Israel many things about Jesus, the perfect high priest who intercedes on our behalf.

Even though we see primarily the account of the ascension at the end of Luke's gospel and at the beginning of Acts, so we see that overlap.

The ascension is actually mentioned a lot in the New Testament in 1

Peter, for example. We don't have time to necessarily go there. 1 Peter 3. But another place that the ascension is mentioned, it's here in Hebrews 4, in connection to Jesus being the great high priest.

So look with me, starting in verse 14. Since then, we as Christians, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, which is the ascension.

Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. So what you see here is the writer of Hebrews is tethering the ascension to Jesus being our high priest.

So this kind of goes back to the Old Testament. Of all the things that those high priests, the

Levitical high priests, those were pictures and types and shadows of Jesus being our great high priest, right?

So Jesus passed through the heavens. That is meaningful for Jesus being prophet, priest, and then we'll get into king.

So look how the writer of Hebrews continues to tie this. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So good. So Jesus is our high priest. He ascended into the holy of holies.

And so like the priests of the Old Testament, they had to go through a ceremonial cleansing process, right?

And they had to leave, right? They had to present a sacrifice and leave because they are imperfect high priests.

And what's beautiful about Jesus ascending into the clouds, into the holy of holies, into the presence of God the

Father, well, he doesn't leave. He sits down at the right hand of God almighty.

So this shows that Jesus is not only a lamb slain as the book of Revelation talks about, but he also is a lamb standing, resurrected, who ascended on high, who shows us that he sacrificed for his people.

As Romans 8, he intercedes perfectly on our behalf. I guess some people say, Jeremiah, you can't show me one verse where it says that Jesus paid for the sins of the elect.

I'm gonna go rogue a little bit here in my notes. I guess I'm gonna just do it on this tab. It's because Romans 8 actually tells us explicitly that Jesus pays the sins for the elect.

But what's interesting is he not only died for the elect, but he does something so much more than that.

So, like I said, this is a little bit unscripted. The Holy Spirit not only intercedes for us, but Jesus is our high priest who intercedes for us perfectly.

So I wanna share this passage with you. Like I said, I'm going a little bit, going a little bit rogue here in my notes.

So, God, who did not spare his own son, we're talking about Jesus, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

So here's the context of the elect. Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

So this tells us a little bit of the context. It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died.

Died for who? The elect, but much more than that, who was resurrected.

For who? The elect. And then here's the point I'm tying, I'm wanting us to tie back in our passage here.

Who is at the right hand of God who intercedes for us?

Who's the S? It's the elect. It's those who are justified by faith. And so my point here is

Jesus' ascension was not arbitrary for, well, he just went up in heaven.

No, he is our high priest that, let's see if I can get back to, yeah. He is our high priest who not only sympathize with us, but he intercedes on our behalf.

He is a high priest who went into the holy of holies and sat down. So this is huge for the ongoing life of the believer.

And so when Jesus said to Telestai, it is finished, yes, he completed his earthly ministry when he died on Calvary, when he resurrected and he fulfilled the covenant of works, sorry,

Anthony Rogers, when he fulfilled the old covenant, the old covenant that condemned and was a ministry of death.

Yes, he completed his earthly ministry, but he is a ruling and reigning king right now on the throne.

But before we move on to his kingship, he is a high priest who sympathize with us in our weaknesses because he was tempted in every way as we are, yet he was without sin.

And so the fact that Jesus sits at the right hand of the father, we have confidence that we can go to the throne of grace, that we can pray to God the father, knowing that our intercessor, our advocate continually intercedes on our behalf.

And so this is beautiful. I just wanted to say that Jesus' ascension is what placed him in this exalted position.

So good, so good. Y 'all can see where I'm just wanting to touch on principles. Sparky Weighin' In says, how amazing is that too, we couldn't ask for anyone better than Yahweh himself.

Amen, sister. What a good point. So good, I need to take a sip of coffee. So kind of the points that I'm wanting to drive home here is that Jesus' ascension is tethered to so many things, especially what we're gonna get into, more of the great commission and Jesus' second coming.

But there's an Old Testament backdrop that the ascension is tethered to Jesus being a prophet, priest, and king.

So if you have any more questions about the high priestly intercession, like I said, could talk about this so much, but I kind of just wanna hit the highlights.

So notice, I talked about how prophet, priest, and king.

And so Jesus being the great high priest, we get a clue here about that's also a kingship.

And I say that because the writer of Hebrews says, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne.

Okay, and so who is seated on a throne? A king, okay, so the throne of grace.

Jesus, remember in John chapter one, through Moses came law, right?

Let's just see, I wanna contrast the Mosaic law, a covenant of works.

Anthony, let's see here. Jesus is being contrasted with Moses.

See if I can find it relatively quick. Yeah, so hopefully y 'all can see on your end.

Verse 17, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through a better mediator, a better covenant, a covenant of grace who has a perfect mediator who cannot fail and saves to the uttermost, as Dr.

James White would say, Pentelos, Jesus Christ. So I'm wanting to say now there is a kingship that I want us to understand when it comes to Jesus's ascension, okay?

So one place I want us to talk about that, I actually did not have it in my notes, but so many

Psalms talk about the kind of this theme of ascension, ascending on high in terms of the enthronement and installment of kingship.

Maybe we just look at one, but in my side notes, see if I can pull it up fairly quick. Ones I have in my notes is

Psalm 24, Psalm 47, Psalm 68, and then as we're gonna look at here,

Psalm 110 in the opening verses. Like I said, this idea of ascension is connected with enthronement and an installation, the installation of a royal king.

And so this is what I've heard, the New Testament's favorite Old Testament verse. Yahweh, the

Lord says to my Lord, Yahweh says to Adonai, very Trinitarian language, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

And so the idea of ascension here is because all the enemies of King Jesus is at his footstool.

So you see kind of this idea that the king is ascended and all the enemies, his entire rule is above the enemies, right?

They are his footstool. And so like I said, this is all throughout the

Psalms. And I read a number of articles kind of in preparation for this live stream. I hope to put a number of the resources that I read and studied in the show notes after the live stream, so maybe you can go back and get a more in -depth analysis.

But I'm wanting you to see that this ascension is connected to kingship. And so we see it in the

Old Testament and prophetically this has Messianic implications for Christ.

And so the Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter, okay?

This is kingship language to rule in the midst of your enemies.

And so perhaps that is a good place to just say, hopefully you see how ascending on high shows lordship, kingship, and a rule and a power that subdues enemies.

And so in order for the enemies to be on a footstool, you must be ascended to that lofty position.

Can we get down with that? That's going to kind of kickstart us with showing that the ascension presupposes

Old Testament categories of how ascension was connected to prophet, priest, and king.

And oh yeah, all of that points to Jesus Christ perfectly in how he is a prophet, priest, and king that is better.

In the Old Covenant were types and shadows of that. Thank you Paul out there in Facebook world.

Says he can sympathize, amen. He sure can, he is a perfect high priest. And Samuel Harris, 13 minutes ago, said what's up brother?

What's up out there? I wanted to tell you that we got a church of Christ advocate that is contemplating the debate.

I will tell you more about that in the near future. What you got for me

Sparky? Thank you by the way for interacting, giving me some good comments to interact with.

This nicely ties into my studies, Sparky says. I'm starting the kingdom parables.

Yes, well, the last live stream that we did on the kingdom of God, you're so right.

The parables in Matthew's gospel and especially Luke, and I guess you're gonna see it in Mark, the synoptics, is it's all rooted about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, so you may benefit from going back to that past live stream.

So since Jesus is a king, and we see that he essentially was installed when he ascended and sat down at the right hand of the father, something you may or may not know is that Jesus' ascension was directly prophesied in the

Old Testament, and it relates to his kingship, and it relates to the

Great Commission. And so in Daniel chapter seven, we see that the son of man is given a dominion, meaning that he is a king that exercises a rule.

And so this is so important because Jesus' favorite title for himself is son of man, and it relates to his ascension.

It relates to the kingdom of God establishing an eternal dominion, an eternal kingdom that cannot fail.

And so Daniel chapter seven, starting verse 13, says, I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, right?

So we're already thinking about when Jesus ascended into the clouds. With the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man.

He came to the ancient days. Now this is key because Jesus, it's not referring to his second coming where he descended from the ancient of days who is

God Almighty, God the Father, but this is when he came to the ancient of days.

So this is a direct point about Jesus' ascension. He came to the ancient of days and was presented before him as a spotless lamb, as the great high priest who saves to the uttermost.

And so this is important because this relates to kingship, and then we're gonna relate this to the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

And to him was given dominion and glory, a kingdom. Ah, beautiful.

That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, one that shall not pass away, one that will not perish, and one that cannot fail.

And his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. So I gotta refrain from preaching a sermon on this, but I'm wanting you to see that the ascension, and where is that?

When he came to the ancient of days, he was presented before God the

Father and was given dominion. All authority has been given to King Jesus.

This is the move of why we now go to Matthew chapter 28. But before we do,

I want us to see that, obviously, these are all principles of him being a king. If he's given a kingdom, this assumes that he is king.

A dominion, an everlasting kingdom that cannot pass away. And so you have to check out the last livestream because we exhaustively talked about how this

Davidic kingdom was inaugurated at Jesus' first coming, but when he ascended, this tells us that, oh, he's coming back to consummate that.

And so as we kind of bounce back to Acts chapter one, remember what the angels on high said.

This is why Jesus' ascension directly relates to the second coming of Jesus. The angels said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus who was taken from you into heaven will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

Oh goodness, I just want to warn you, full preterism will bully and hijack this passage and really try to read into this in the same way.

I've heard so many canards, I've heard so many fallacious arguments that try to say, well, in the same way,

Jeremiah, doesn't really mean that. It just means that he ascended in authority, with power, and oh, back in 70

AD, he returned in power and authority.

That's the only continuity that's meant to be here. Yeah, right. Jesus bodily lived, this is the whole thing, as a human, as our federal head, as our representative for those that are trusting him by faith.

The incarnation is the divine son, the eternal Logos adding humanity to his personhood.

So the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Logos, Jesus, added humanity to his divinity.

Hypostatic union, Jesus is truly God, truly man. And so Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us, the doctrine of the incarnation shows us that Jesus intercedes for us because he's a high priest that can empathize with us, right?

And so Jesus died a physical death and died physically.

He resurrected physically, 1 Corinthians 15 really hammers this point. We see that in Acts chapter one, he ascended bodily, and now he's glorified, seated at the right hand of the

Father, and you cannot damage the doctrine of the incarnation, and the federal headship, and Jesus being our great high priest, who is seated as the

God -man. First Timothy chapter two would tell us that the God -man, who is our intercessor, he perfectly intercedes on our behalf.

Let me go rogue a little bit here again. Oh no, don't you love technical difficulties?

All right, grandma, I will call you later. Second Timothy chapter two,

I just wanted to highlight, I believe it's verse four and five Jesus, who is our

God and savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, for there is one

God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man,

Christ Jesus. And so my whole point with quoting that passage is to say that Jesus, in order to be a high priest to empathize with us in our weaknesses and our infirmities, when we go through temptations, we must be able to pray in the present tense to Jesus, who is still and forever will be our high priest, the

God -man, who is able to intercede on our behalf. And so my whole point is full preterists will try their best to talk about Jesus' ascension and return in the same way as, it's just in power, it's just in terms of authority, and you cannot lose the physicality of Jesus' second return.

In doing so, you ruin the doctrine of the incarnation, Jesus being our perfect high priest who intercedes and saves to the uttermost.

Thanks, Sparky. She was reminding me of how

Jesus is the God -man, the mediator in 1 John chapter two.

Okay, continuing onward. Like I said, when we look at Daniel chapter seven,

I want us to see that it is prophesying that he came to the ancient of days, right?

And then when we read, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him, this, you can't get any more direct than what is said in Matthew chapter 28.

And so this is the fulfillment, if you will, of Daniel chapter seven, verses 13 and 14 of the ascension and what

Jesus commissioned the apostles right before he was assumed into heaven.

And so I'll read the Great Commission, but I also want us to keep in mind Acts one, verse eight, which summarizes this.

So this is the Great Commission. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which

Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted, and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, okay?

So this is the Daniel seven language. And just to kind of recap that, right?

The son of man who has eternal origins, if we can use that paradoxical language, meaning that Jesus who ascends to the ancient of days,

Micah five two also says that is where he comes from, eternally face to face with the father, the ancient of days.

And so when he was presented before him as a perfect high priest, no doubt, who is also king, it was given him dominion, all authority, right?

So that's what Jesus is saying here. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, okay?

So ascension shows his kingship, how he is a prophet, priest, and king.

And so since all authority in heaven on earth has been given to Christ, here's our marching orders.

Firstly, with the apostles and equally Christians today. Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age, okay?

So this is our next talking point, to the end of the age. And before we do that, like I said, the

Great Commission is summed up in Acts chapter one because you gotta think Luke chapter 24 is an overlap with Acts chapter one.

And Luke 24 in many ways is Luke's account of Jesus's departure and Great Commission.

And so this is the Great Commission in Acts chapter one verse eight. Jesus says, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses. You will be my sent out ones to preach of the gospel of grace, to tell people to repent and believe the gospel because the kingdom of God is here.

Okay, and so I love this. I just wanted to make the connection with Acts one eight in Matthew, the

Great Commission in Matthew chapter 28. Okay, so why am I wanting us to now lock onto to the end of the age?

So one thing I wanted to help equip us with was being able to combat hyper -preterism.

I may need to send in the request to the wifey for round two of coffee. Let me do that real quick.

Hey, coffee, please. Because like I said, kind of my two major cult groups that I've been kind of explaining people how you can combat in context is full preterism.

And this is super important as we see with the ascension of Jesus, him being prophet, priest, and king.

And this commission, he is saying I am with you always to the end of the age.

She's at Sonic. So the coffee will be sparse. That's okay.

So full preterism says that the end of the age terminated at 70

AD. Surprise, surprise. And so the more I studied the doctrine of the incarnation,

I thought, you know, this will be a good segue. The ascension is not only tethered to the great commission and the second coming of Jesus, but also

Jesus being prophet, priest, and king. And so when we get to our king's marching orders to go into all the world, making disciples, preaching the gospel, baptizing them, right, in light of what

Christ has done. And then ironically, the other ordinance, sacrament given to the church of the

Lord's Supper, we do this until he comes again, until he returns. And so notice,

Jesus says, I am with you always to the end of the age, all the days.

And so I wanna kinda help us understand, well, how do we know the end of the age didn't just simply end at 70

AD? Now, I have some good post -millennial brothers that would try to make this case. I wanna warn people, you give almost 90 % of the argument to the full preterist when you start going this direction.

I want to show you that the end of the age is the end of history.

This age is this perishing evil age that we currently are living in.

This began when Adam sinned. He plunged the entire world, the entire cosmos that was given him dominion into a new yom, a new day that is cursed by sin.

And so the moment that he sinned, it was a new day. He died in that day in the sense that he brought death upon all.

And in the regressed sense, Adam surely died. He not only opened up a new day of death, he began to die that day.

And I believe it's Genesis chapter five said it took over 900 years. And then he physically terminated, died returning to the dust of the ground.

Those are all things that full preterists do not want to look at closely because death is merely spiritual.

Even though Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection and ascension was physical, his return's not gonna be physical.

And so like I said, the end of the age here, I want to make a case within Matthew's gospel and dipping into the gospel of Luke of saying this age is temporal.

And since it's temporal, that assumes a last day of history and it's that last day, the end, the last day that John six says that he will resurrect the dead.

And so one way that you can start looking into the end of the age is by looking more into the gospel writer himself.

And so I believe it begins in maybe Matthew chapter 12, where you will look at it in a second when you have this age and the age to come.

A lot of theologians have referred to this as the two age model. And so I want to take us to Matthew chapter 13, where we get a parable of the weeds explained.

We're gonna see a lot about the kingdom because remember Jesus' ascension is important for him being prophet, priest, and king.

But I also want us to see that the end of the age goes way past 70

AD. It's to the end of history, but it definitely includes 70 AD when

God judged the nation of Israel. So I want to kind of build that case and us think through this a little bit.

The parable of the weeds explained. Then he left the crowds, Jesus left the crowds and went into a house.

And his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.

And Jesus answered, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man.

Now, I just want to pause because remember this is Jesus' favorite title that he's given to himself. That son of man goes to, ascends to the ancient of days and he is given a kingdom.

He is exalted and established as a conquering king.

The field we read is the world and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom.

And the seeds are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sows them is the devil.

Spiritual warfare, which we may touch on here momentarily is the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age, right?

So this is kind of what we read at the end of the great commission, the end of the age, where the son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers and throw them into a fiery furnace.

In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

He who has ears, let him hear. Okay, let me pull up some notes

I got that y 'all can't see. Actually, that would have been good to touch on later.

Because there's a number of points that I wanna make sure we don't go through quickly before I do what things perhaps are being said in the side chat.

Appreciate it, Sparky. Sparky says, such an interesting in -depth study calling

Jesus when he called himself son of man. Yeah, so when you start looking at titles that Jesus is the son of man and son of God, I've heard some people make the point, well, he is the

God man, he is the son of man, he is man, he is son of God, he is God, and that is true. Son of man definitely carries a human nature, a humanness.

But Daniel chapter seven, notice that son of man already entails divinity because he comes too ancient of days, something that only

God himself can accomplish. And we see that Psalm 110 verse one,

Yahweh says to Adonai, right? So you have a Trinitarian conversation that Jesus brings us up in Matthew chapter 22 saying, how is it that David can pray to Adonai in the present, and then also

Adonai is going to be a descendant and son of David? Well, this presupposes

Trinitarian categories and it presupposes the incarnation. So Sparky, to your point, absolute great study, studying the son of man, it's gonna lead you down the path of the incarnation in Trinitarian theology.

Anybody else out there? Major Victory, thank you for joining us.

How much did you miss? Not too bad, about an hour's worth. You have to back it up later and crank it up on times two speed.

Anthony Rogers, that's the secret. I usually don't catch your live streams, but I'll go back and listen to them on times two.

All right, we got Paula D out there, thank you for joining. For anybody that's just now tuning in, please like, share and subscribe, you know what to do.

And I'm happy to say I've not had any thumbs down yet. Some live streams, as soon as I hit go,

I just see the thumbs down coming through and it must be some Church of Christ and hyperpreterist.

But we all do such a great job of counteracting those thumbs down with the thumbs up.

So if you're just tuning in, please do that. If you've not already, hit that like button. Is my

Q &A question still out there? I like to have little reminders to let y 'all know it really helps out the

Apologetic Dog Ministry when you like, share, subscribe, even hit the notification bell. It lets

YouTube know, say, oh, this is worthy content of recommending to people elsewhere.

Oh no, I think it's just one more drink. And the wifey is at Sonic and she can't make the next cup of coffee until another 10 minutes or so, that's okay.

So if you're also tuning in, what we are doing is we're going through the

Book of Acts, as you see here on the screen. And today we're talking about the Ascension. And some of my scatteredness is,

I want us to talk about the Ascension and how it relates to the Great Commission and the second coming of Jesus.

And so as we've kind of tiptoed into that, the Ascension is taught in the Old Testament about the prophets, the priests, and kings, and how

Jesus' Ascension is showing that he is the true prophet, how he is our great high priest who sits down in the most holies, in the holy of holies, and he will return as a ruling, conquering king.

So thank you for tuning in. Oh, oh, yes, this must be

Adam Carmichael, the tatted theologian. And I wanna give a channel plug to Thinking Theology.

Two beloved members of 12 .5, Adam Carmichael and Dalton Chalice, they started a

YouTube channel called Thinking Theology. Please flow over to their channel. Dalton or Adam, I believe this is probably

Adam, put y 'all's link in the side chat. And I will try to put that up on the screen momentarily.

But please flow over to their channel where they're gonna be cranking out some new content and you gotta subscribe to Thinking Theology, the

Thinking Theologians. Yes, it is the tatted theologian.

So yeah, definitely check out their YouTube channel. Thanks so much for tuning in, brother. Oh, Sparky said, yeah, quit confusing me with all the names.

I get it, I get it. But that's the name of the game these days. There's so many code names and titles.

And so what you are tuning into now, Adam. Oh yeah, let me put this where everyone else can see it.

This is, you can find it in the side chat, a link where you can subscribe to Thinking Theology.

So Adam, since you just tuned in, I'm wanting us to talk about the end of the age.

Because in the Great Commission, that's something that we see that's, you know, obviously the Great Commission is connected to Jesus' ascension, him being prophet, priest, and king.

He has all authority, has been given to him on heaven and the earth. So to your delight,

Trinitarian categories, because who gave Jesus authority? Well, it wasn't himself, it was the

Father. And then this potentially problematic statement that full

Preterists will try to hijack and redefine is, I will be with you even to the end of 70

AD. Oh my goodness, that makes me mad, because the way that Jesus is with us to the end of history is by virtue of the

Holy Spirit and dwelling saints. And so I'm wanting us to be mindful of how the end of the age isn't covenantal language to the

Jews that really terminated at 70 AD. So one way that we would do that is earlier in Matthew's gospel, in this parable, when he not only mentions the

Son of Man, but he mentions the phrase, the harvest is the end of the age, okay?

Now, what we observe in this parable is indicators that are describing, what

I would say, the nature of the end of the age, right? So we see it mentioned twice, we see something else that's really important.

Let me see if I can find it. We not only see the ongoing war of the offspring of the woman from Genesis 3 .15,

which is Christ first and all of those who by faith trust in him, he believers are the body of Christ.

And then you got the sons of the devil, sons of the evil one. So those that are born dead in their sins and their trespasses, right?

And so something else I wanted to touch on is, yeah, yeah, so how would we be able to distinguish what is the nature and timeframe of the end of the age?

So if we keep reading, the Son of Man will send his angels. So you gotta already think, he's already talked about judgment language, and this is where the full preterist comes in and says, well, see, 70

AD was a judgment on Israel. That is the kind of judgment that Matthew 13 and Matthew 25 is talking about.

That's wrong. And one way we can know that is, the Son of Man will, hey, thank you so much.

Oh, really? That's okay, thanks so much. I got round two of coffee. So let's see.

We have been going live for how long? Oh, an hour 20.

Okay, so this cup of coffee will let us go for another 45 minutes to an hour or so.

So how can we know the end of the age didn't terminate at 70 AD? Well, one way is all throughout,

I'm gonna say throughout the New Testament, you have the two age model, this age and the age to come.

This age is depicted, described as a temporal age.

And so yes, it will terminate, and the question mark is, was that a 70 AD? Or will it depict things that are continually to be true today that will be terminated at Jesus's return to consummate his kingdom?

I wanna say in this parable, we see one of those clues. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom.

Now, check this out. All causes of sin and lawbreakers.

So this is a slam dunk case. As long as there is still sin, death, evil, we are still living in this broken, fallen, evil day, this evil age that is, once again, perishing.

And we don't have probably all the time to go to 1 Corinthians 15, where this is the model that Paul is telling us, that this age will be wrought with apostates, with false teachers, and it's perishing.

And so when something is perishing, there will be a terminating point. And it cannot refer to just the lawbreakers of Israel, but it's all causes of sin.

And so this would be true of not just Jews, but Gentiles also.

The Book of Romans talks about how all are under sin, both the Jews and Greeks or Gentiles.

And so I think the four preterists would try to make the case, well, audience relevance,

Jeremiah. Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience. And I want to grant that to a degree and say, well, absolutely, it's

Matthew's gospel where Jesus came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And so we get into a conversation about what is true Israel and how do we distinguish true Israel with the nation of Israel.

But if, we do a thought experiment, if all that's to be interpreted, all the causes of sin for the lawbreakers that are

Jews, well, if the gospel writer Luke that's not writing to the same audience uses the same categories of this age and the age to come, it must be consistent.

Just because if Matthew is emphasizing a Jewish audience, you can't make the case that, and that's the only application to the first century

Jews. If another gospel is using same categories to talk to us about temporal categories pertaining to this age that continue to be identical to what we see today.

So what I'm saying is the end of the age here is going to consist of all causes of sin and lawbreakers.

Okay? And so in Matthew, the chapter right before, we see this two age model.

And so this is what the full preterist is wanting us to look at. This age is the generation, the 40 years essentially from, maybe it's 30 years, but almost 40 years of Christ when he, the

Jewish age, right? That terminated in 70 AD. And then the age to come was essentially consummated at Jesus's return in 70

AD. And I'm saying, okay, well we have the two age model here in Matthew. And then obviously the end of the age seems to be reminiscent of the end of this age.

And so yes, we're going to let scripture interpret scripture. And we want to be sensitive to how Matthew is utilizing these categories.

But however Matthew means it, it must be consistent when another gospel writer uses these same categories.

So glad I have another cup of coffee. Okay. So in Luke chapter 18, we get the two age model alluded to again in this time or this age and in the age to come eternal life.

Okay. The reason why this is an important passage and we'll look a little bit more at the broader context is notice the age to come is eternal.

This is huge because this time or this age is contrasted with the age to come that's eternal.

And so this age is temporal. It's not just an over realized Jewish age or Jewish aeon.

It's temporal. This temporal time. And so last time I woke up and looked outside, we still exist.

We still live in this temporal evil age where there's sin, where there's still a lawlessness, right?

But in Luke 18, I believe this is the exchange with the rich young ruler. Towards the end, obviously

Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God is the sphere and realm of salvation. Notice how he talks about the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is eternal, but it has been inaugurated and interrupted this present evil age.

It's been inaugurated. We are living during this time of the church where we have the

Holy Spirit indwelling the saints, but we await our blessed hope at Jesus returns where he consummates the eternal kingdom.

But I want to submit to you this time, this age. Luke's gospel says,

Jesus says, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life.

And so this time, this age is once again depicted by living in temporal dwelling places, right?

Houses that have temporal marriages. Okay, so this time, ever since the fall of Adam, we have been procreating, being fruitful and multiplying, ultimately fulfilling the creation mandate.

And how is that happening? Well, through the Great Commission. We are training up our children the way they should go and we're preaching to them the gospel of grace, telling them they must repent and believe and trust in King Jesus.

And we are discipling the nations. We are fulfilling the Great Commission. But this time, this age is depicted by temporal dwelling places.

It's depicted by marriages, right? Wives. And then notice parents, as we're talking about, having children.

This age is still, we still are procreating, right?

We still are giving in marriages and having offspring like we've been talking about. And so this relates, this is great continuity telling us that when we go back to understanding the end of this age, well, wherever there is still sin and lawlessness, lawbreakers, we're still living in this present evil age as the

Apostle Paul likes to say. And kind of another point to reinforce this is in Matthew chapter 22.

So what we see, we're not just totally leaving the context of Matthew's gospel, but we are given enough details to understand what this age, the end of this age looks like.

And just briefly, Matthew 22, for in the resurrection, right? The age that is to come, there will, they will neither marry nor are given in marriages, but in some way are like angels.

And so in the age to come, when Christ returns and judges the world in righteousness and sets up his eternal, consummates his eternal kingdom, well, there's gonna be no more marriages, right?

The way that we see today. The only marriage will be the bride and the groom, Christ and the church.

That's the only marriage. There's not gonna be any more marriages like we experienced in this temporal age.

And there's gonna be no more procreation. All that is done, all to the praise of his glorious grace.

And so that is contextually how I want us to be able to, be able to push back against the hyper -preterist that's gonna try to deceive you into saying, well, the end of the age was 70

AD. And when you're looking at the book of Acts, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

You know what the hyper -preterist is gonna say? So I wanted to show you something. The hyper -preterist is gonna say, hey, that's all been fulfilled.

The great commission, you know, we don't see the words of the great commission in the

Bible, but let me just tell you, what Jesus talked about in the great commission, that is already fulfilled.

And so the reason why I'm making such a stink about that, let's see if I can find it, is because I've done a live stream probably over a year ago where I've had to address the hyper -preterism nonsense, to be quite frank.

Zach Davis here. He is a full preterist preacher just right outside of my hometown. They're starting to spawn in my backyard.

They put out a video saying that the great commission has already been fulfilled. And oh my goodness, if this doesn't just strike the chord of basic Christianity 101,

I don't know what else it does, but the great commission is being fulfilled. It hasn't already been fulfilled.

And so I just wanna encourage you, hopefully after the live stream, I'll include a link to this episode that I did with Claude Ramsey.

He said, Jeremiah, we gotta address some of these things. And Zach did not appreciate it at the time. And so he contacted

YouTube and tried to have that episode strike down. And if you get three strikes on a

YouTube channel, then it's permanently deleted. And so I was able to dispute it and show that I wasn't doing anything wrong.

We were critiquing his viewpoint. And when you're critiquing something and you're transforming it, that is completely within the laws of fair use, especially on YouTube.

And you're like a journalist. This is free speech. And so full preterists will try, I mean, it goes into their whole paradigm, but they will try to push that the great commission has already been fulfilled.

And even though most people say that's craziness, yeah, Paula D says, oh my gosh, ain't it wild?

And that's why I do not mind just hurling shots at full preterists when

I get the chance to, because I really do not like that it tries to cloak itself as Christianity.

Go start your own little deal, identify as preterist or something, but just don't make it

Christianity. Just please stop trying to leech onto Christendom, evangelicalism, and call yourself

Christian. Full preterism's only been around since like maybe the mid, early 70s to the 80s with Max King that essentially produced kind of for the first time

Pantelism or covenant eschatology. So dumb. Forgive me.

I just cannot stress enough that this heresy can creep in unawares and dupe people.

Unfortunately, Gary DeMar has kind of bought in to many, if not all, hyper -preterist ideology.

And so go check out my past episode that I did critiquing Zach Davis on the Great Commission being fulfilled, but what they do.

And so this kind of returns us back to our text. Yeah, Sparky said,

I appreciate you saying this. She says, it's depressing. I don't care how they try to slice it.

Think about it. They try to say, yeah, this world that has evil, sin, hurts, pains, tears, death, this is the new heavens and new earth fully consummated.

Yeah, yeah, right. No thanks. So I wanna help be able to equip y 'all with context when we're looking to the

Great Commission and Acts chapter one, things like that. Yeah, Max King, Don Preston, Samuel Dawson.

I'm trying to think. Michael Sullivan, Mike Sullivan, he's another one.

Zach Davis definitely is getting paid some money to be able to push the false teaching of full preterism.

Yeah, Max King was a Church of Christ minister. Isn't that wild?

That much of my labors are evangelizing the Church of Christ and then when people started knocking on the door of the apologetic dog saying, hey, what do we do about full preterism?

How is it wrong? To my surprise, the origins of full preterism, hyper preterism, spawns out of the

Church of Christ. Blew my mind. So what the full preterists want you to buy into is the

Great Commission is already fulfilled. How do we know that? Well, because Jesus said

I'll be with you to the end of the age and that ended at 70 A .D.

And so when I interact with post -millennialists who are our brothers and they buy into the two age model being the two covenant age model of this age really did terminate at 70

A .D. That is the big core of full preterism and more importantly than just warning people and not trying to be reactionary,

I wanna show exegetically how to the end of the age, this is piggybacking off this age and the age to come and as we kind of reviewed,

Matthew 13 tells us that this age, to the end of this age, will be depicted with all kinds of sin and lawbreakers being in the mix.

How do we know that that's not only Jews? Well, when we go to Luke's gospel, it continues to show us that this time or this age and the age to come, the age to come is eternal, contrasting it with this time which is temporal, temporal with people living in temporal dwelling places where there will be continue of marriages, right?

And parents procreating, having offspring, having children and those are features that will stop at the resurrection or the age that is to come.

And so hopefully that brings you up to speed a little bit because I wanna continue to maybe touch on some of the principles of this age and the age to come.

We already showed how this age is so important to understand that it's marked by evil, sin, death, hurts, pains.

And one day when Jesus returns for a second time, those things will be no more. And so I do wanna touch on Matthew 24.

This is the Olivet Discourse. So much spilled ink has been endeavors to discuss the second coming of Jesus.

So I hope you started to see how the ascension involves the Great Commission and the

Great Commission necessarily involves this age and the age to come, understanding that. And Jesus' ascension commissioning us says, oh yeah,

I'm coming back. And so I'm wanting you to see how this is all wrapped up together. And what's interesting is when we look at the

Olivet Discourse, Jesus mentions the end of the age. And I wanna do another shameless plug.

Go check out my interview with Claude Ramsey on showing how the

Great Commission is not fulfilled, it is being fulfilled. And actually was able to do an episode with Anthony Rogers.

And we did a few episodes on eschatology. You can find that on his channel or my channel.

But we get into the Olivet Discourse. And so if you, anyway, if you, you can find a lot of my content kind of opening up the

Olivet Discourse. And so I just wanted to highlight a little bit to y 'all. See how the caption, the heading of the

ESV even says signs of the end of the age. So let me show you why this is relevant.

As Jesus said on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when shall these things be?

And what will be the sign of your coming, the second coming, and, remember what we're talking about, of the end of the age, okay?

So Jesus essentially asked two questions. I know there's debate if there's really three questions.

It's really two. So Jesus says, tell us, when, he asked a when question.

And the when is, when will these things be? So what's the when question? If we scroll up a little bit.

Jesus left the temple and was going away when the disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.

And he answered them, you see all these things, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple. And so the first question that the disciples are asking him, when will the destruction of the temple, when will these things be?

Question number one. Question number two is a what question, okay?

So everything after the what is kind of pertaining to the second question. What will be the sign of your parrhesia, your coming, your second coming, and then what's an addendum here or added on, and of the end of the age?

So I would like to submit to you, since this is kind of under the what question, the sign of the coming will be at the end of the age.

Now, will the destruction of the temple, how does that relate? And like I said,

I've talked about this quite a bit. And so as you're studying the, almost said the

Sermon on the Mount, when you're studying the Olivet Discourse, you wanna look at these two questions being asked.

And maybe we don't have, I would love to kind of go deeper into this, but I really wanna kind of wrap this up with a bow.

But since he's being asked two questions, Jesus gives two answers. So maybe, yeah, maybe let's look at this a little bit deeper, okay?

So Jesus answers the first question, look with me at verse four. Jesus answered them, see that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying,

I am the Christ, and they will lead you astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of war.

See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.

And so if we scroll up, what is the end more than likely referring to? The end of the age, okay?

The end is not yet, for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

All of these are but, this is key, the beginning of birth pains.

And so this phrase, the beginning, is being contrasted with the end, right?

You have the end of the age, and then you have that being contrasted with the beginning of persecutions, wars, rumors of wars.

All of these things will be leading up to the destruction of the temple, but that is just the beginning, and that won't stop.

That's not the end of the age, is it a sign? Is it a indicator that God will judge cosmically the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment?

Absolutely. But the destruction of the temple, the earthquakes, famines, wars, rumors of wars, these are but just the beginning.

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation. I wanna submit to you, during this evil age of death and evil, there will be nothing but persecution from the enemy on the saints, believers.

So they will deliver you up into tribulation and put you to death, thanatos. And you will be hated by all nations for my namesake,

Jesus says. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another, and many false prophets, likeful preterists, will arise and lead many astray.

And because of lawlessness, it will be increased. The love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end, perhaps here, the end of their life of persecution, maybe that's a good contextual way of understanding the end here.

And then verse 14, I believe, connects us back to the Great Commission. Gotta take a sip of coffee.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole cosmos, the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end of the age will come.

So you gotta think, the full preterist is wanting to connect the end here to the end of the age, and that was the end of the temple that was destroyed.

You gotta think, Jesus is being asked two questions. And so the first question is talking about the end of the temple being destroyed.

And there are many timing indicators that will let us know when that's gonna happen. There's gonna be wars, rumors of wars, persecution, tribulation, many things that must happen to that first generation, and then the temple will be destroyed.

And we're gonna get a timing indicator here in a moment that that will happen within the time span of that generation, okay?

But here in verse 14, all these things are necessary for the Great Commission, the gospel going out into the whole world, right?

Remember Acts chapter one, verse eight? It's going to start in Jerusalem, all

Judea and Samaria, the known kingdom, but it's gonna go to the ends of the earth.

And so a full preterist will try to say some nonsense. Well, the Great Commission is fulfilled because it was being proclaimed all the way to the known world, and that's the whole world, the whole known world.

That's garbage, because right here, as we're gonna continue to make this case, wherever there's dirt, that is where the gospel is meant to go forth, yes, to the known world, to Rome and beyond, to the ends of the earth.

Wherever there is dirt, that is meant for the gospel to be proclaimed. Wherever there's dirt, wherever there are image bearers.

So let me put that on pause and see what y 'all are saying out there.

Remember, if y 'all have any questions, we're at, we got about 15 more minutes to the top of the hour, but that's okay.

No one says I have to stop at two hours, because I still got a number of things I want to cover. Thank y 'all for tuning in.

Let me check on Facebook World. Nothing from Facebook World, that's okay. Just want to thank y 'all so much for tuning in.

All of us out there, we're talking about the Ascension ultimately, and if you're just tuning in, you might be like, Jeremiah hasn't mentioned the

Ascension one time. Well, I'm wanting to build a case that the Ascension is connected to the

Great Commission, which is also connected to the Second Coming, and as we begin to wrap up in a little bit,

I want us to have so much encouragement. When Jesus ascended on high, in some way, the angels said, he's coming back the same way, and so we're gonna look at another passage later that that's meant to encourage believers, and so here in the

Olivet Discourse, we see that the end of the age is embedded to what was quoted from Daniel, the abomination of desolation.

Jesus was asked two questions. When are these things going to be? When is the destruction of the temple gonna happen?

Well, the beginning of these things are gonna be wars, tribulation, and it's gonna happen within the span of this generation, but the what is the sign of the end of the age and of your coming, oh, that's gonna be, there's gonna be no timing indicators connected to that, and so in the meantime, the

Great Commission is we are to preach the gospel of the kingdom. It's to be proclaimed to the whole world, not just the known world, but wherever there is dirt.

Then this'll be the end of the age when Jesus returns, and so we'll continue reading.

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, remember Daniel 7, the son of man will be ascended to the ancient of days, and then he was given an everlasting kingdom.

That's why he was able to give marching orders to the apostles and to all saints. Daniel 9 goes on to say, oh yeah, all this is wrapped up with how ultimately

Jesus will come back to judge those that have rebelled against him.

So he alludes back to Daniel here in Daniel chapter 9. First, let the reader understand.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not return and not turn back to his own cloak.

And alas, for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that your flight may not be hindered in winter or on a

Sabbath, for then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the whole world until now.

No, and never will be, for in those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.

For the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, look, here is the

Christ, or there he is, do not believe it, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

Okay, and so I just wanna say, this is gonna be great. We understand there was great persecution around this time when

Christ ascended. He said, I'll give you my spirit, ultimately, to know what to do during this time of great persecution.

And so I do want to essentially skip down to where we start reading about the sign of the coming of the

Son of Man. And I want to, there's so many things we could touch on, but the big timing indicator is that Jesus says, truly

I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

So, and I believe there's so many good Orthodox eschatologies pre -millennialism, all -millennialism, and post -millennialism.

And I think there's so much charitable interactions about how we can understand the all of it discourse. And there can be some collegial healthy disagreement there, and that's okay.

But what we have to do is we have to bind together to not let hyper -preterism try to redefine

Christianity in appealing to the Great Commission. And so the stance I take is this generation marks the when the temple will be destroyed.

And so yes, there was a destruction of the temple at 70 AD. That was not at the end of the

Mosaic Jewish aeon or age, but that did happen.

Jesus is a true prophet. Not only some appeal to Daniel 9 to say that the destruction of the temple, the destruction of the sanctuary was going to happen, but Jesus being the true prophet gave a prophecy that this would take place within this generation.

Now, Jesus transitions to answer the second question of the what will be the sign of the end of the age and of your coming.

And he contrasts good timing indicators of the destruction of the temple with but concerning that day, right?

You have this generation contrasted with that day. No one knows.

And this is, the full verse goes on to say, no one knows, not even angel in heaven, nor the son, but the father only.

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the son of man.

For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when

Noah entered the ark and they were unaware until the floods came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the son of man, okay?

And this passage just goes on to depict there will be swift judgment at our Lord's coming.

And notice, what's going to be happening when the Lord returns at the end of this age?

Well, things that go on that depict this temporal world, right? There's gonna be marriage, giving in marriage, eating and drinking, procreation, all these things are gonna continue on until Christ returns.

So, like I said, I have a lot more content just kind of hashing that out, but the big takeaway was we don't want the full preterists, especially in the

Great Commission, to hijack to the end of the age, terminating at 70

AD. Now, this age is this temporal age that will continue on and the

Holy Spirit will indwell us. Christ will be with us by sending his spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the

Trinity, to indwell us and then we have the promise that he will return at the end of the age.

So, what do y 'all think out there so far? Oh, Major had a question, okay.

Send it to me again. Let me get ready for it.

Okay, do, do, do. Maybe this is the question. Major Victory says, that verse trips me up on whether or not there's a rapture.

Where it says that the days would be cut short for the elect's sake, does that not mean they would be taken up or something?

Great question. So, we always have to define what we mean by rapture.

And, you know, raptura from the Latin comes from 1 Thessalonians chapter four, which we're actually gonna read here in a little bit, is a snatching.

I believe the snatching, the rapture, is the resurrection for saints. And so, when you have a pre -millennial eschatology, the debate rages on if there is a pre -tribulational rapture, a mid -tribulational rapture, a post -tribulational rapture.

And so, when we're hearing the Olivet Discourse, the elect in those days, now remember, I think the verse that you're talking about,

I think that is tethered to the great tribulation that was happening in that first century that was leading up in this generation to the destruction of the temple.

So, I don't think the great tribulation is this seven year tribulation that, you know, there's three and a half years of false peace, and then a great tribulation, the second three and a half years where there's just so much of what the book of Revelation is talking about.

That's my conviction as a, you know, all millennials, to tip my hat. But the reason why

I don't think it's a rapture is because of what verse 37 says here.

For as in those days of Noah, I'm trying to remember, was it a question, did it ask about, let's see here, that verse trips me up on whether or not there's a rapture where it says that in the days would be cut short for the sake of the elect.

Doesn't that mean that it would be taken up? Usually, this verse is talked about with a rapture.

For as were the days of Noah, so it will be for the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days, before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, until the day when

Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the floods came and swept them all away, so that there will be at the coming of the

Son of Man. Oh, and this is typically the rapture verse. Then two men will be in the field.

One will be taken, rapture, and the other one left.

And then the other one, two women will be grinding at the mill, one of them will be taken, and the other one left.

So before I backtrack to your verse, I just wanna point out, I don't think this is talking about a rapture because this is judgment language, right?

Just in the days of Noah, there was swift judgment, and the one taken was not taken in a rapture, but taken in judgment, and the ones that were saved were left.

So yeah, when we go back to your verse, that was maybe a little bit problematic.

I think it's verse 22 you were talking about. And if those days had been cut short, no human being would be saved.

For the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. My best take on this is this is in that first question that was asked, when will these things take place?

Let me see. Tell us, when will these things be?

I think verse 22 is within that first question about the destruction of the temple.

Now, like I said, I wanna be very charitable here. I think what's being described is a great tribulation.

The Roman army was smiting all the Jews, all of the believers inside.

And so you see God's providence protecting a remnant of believers, a remnant of believers that would see the new covenant be inaugurated, right?

Which was inaugurated in Christ's blood. But there would be a remnant that would be persecuted and dispersed into the

Book of Acts narrative. So to me, I would say there's nothing here that is smells of a rapture.

That doesn't come till those verses about Noah and some will be snatched up or taken up and the other ones will be left.

Usually that's the verse about a rapture. But here just talks about God's sovereignty for an elect in those days of great, incredible persecution, great tribulation.

I think, like I said, when it says that the world is never known, I think this is just really intense language talking about the

Roman armies just smiting Israel. What do you think? That was my best crack major victory.

Dalton Chalice to say hello. Hey, you missed it. I gave a big plug for your channel and Adam's channel of Thinking Theology.

Dalton Chalice is a dear brother and I cannot wait to have him on to share with y 'all his testimony out of the

Church of Christ. That being said, y 'all hang tight for just about 30 seconds.

Y 'all like that music? You can imagine, I've been drinking a ton of coffee. Okay, hopefully

I didn't lose y 'all out there. So yeah, victory.

Did I answer your question to your satisfaction? Okay, Sparky says this is at the end of that generation.

Yes, yep. The question about the elect, I think that is essentially in answering the first question about the when of the destruction of the temple, the biggest timing indicator is it's gonna take place within this generation.

That's contrasted with that day that no one knows, that day when

Christ returns. I'm with you,

Sparky, way better. That is a way better explanation than what the hyper -preterists have to offer, which is hot garbage.

And Georgia says, thank you for explaining and clarifying this standing for the truth.

I love this, truly edified. Thanks so much, because like I said, I want the apologetic dog to be an edifying ministry that vindicates the truth, and we do more than just destroy arguments that rival the knowledge of God in debate, in the debate dojo on Donnie's channel at Standing for Truth and Marlon's channel at The Gospel Truth, but I also want to be able to walk through scripture and show y 'all how context is king.

Okay, so we just hit the two -hour mark, so we will begin to try to start winding down, but not yet, still got a little bit, still got a little bit.

Thanks, Sparky, appreciates the lesson that we're covering. Yeah, so one other thing with the

Great Commission, and remember, I want to give y 'all a little bit,

I want to give another plug to this, let me see. Don't forget about this episode.

I'll try to put it in the show notes we mentioned earlier. Think I'd be a pro at this,

I'm really not. There we go. Go check out this episode, because really try to systematically show you how the

Great Commission that was to go out into the whole world was not just meant for the known world.

And obviously, Zach Davis, the hyper -preterist, they're gonna go to the Olivet Discourse and say, see, it's all a package deal.

The end of the age, the second coming happened at the destruction of the temple, ain't no way, as we've kind of made the case.

And another thing, when we're looking in Acts chapter one, remember we were talking about this phrase, and to the end of the earth.

Another thing Zach tried to do was, he went to Romans 10, where we see the phrase, to the ends of the world, which is almost identical to what's said in Acts, right, can y 'all see that?

This whole context works against full preterism so hard that I love just sharing this with people.

So how we know the ends of the earth means wherever there's dirt, not just an unknown world, is, so Paul is talking about, well, actually, earlier in the context, right, how then will they call upon him who they've not believed?

So we're talking now in the missional, Great Commission mindset, and how they, and how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard?

So we are supposed to be preaching the gospel, fulfilling the Great Commission, and how they are to hear without someone preaching, and how they are to preach unless they are sent.

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. So Great Commission, Acts chapter one, verse eight, to Jerusalem, Samaria, Judea, and to the ends of the earth.

I want us to have that in mind. But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed in faith, faith apart from works, what has, what he has heard from us, and this is what

I want you to see. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

So this is the gospel. We are to evangelize, sharing the kingdom of God, the gospel of peace and love.

Then Paul goes on to say, but I ask, have they not all heard? Indeed, they, and I believe the context is

Israel, for their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.

This quotation, hopefully you can see it on your end, this quotation is from Psalm chapter 19.

And Psalm chapter 19 talks about the ends of the world. And number one, back in Psalm 19, the

Psalm of David, Rome was not a nation, not in the way that we see it in the

New Testament. And the point is, the ends of the earth, might just go there.

Check on this chat, make sure y 'all have it tuned out. Yes, Major Vickery says to make disciples of all creation.

I was gonna say the full preface will say, well, all the known creation. And so I'm wanting to make the case that, no, it's to the ends of the earth, wherever there's dirt, past Rome, past the known world in the first century.

And I wanna kind of tiptoe how you do that. This quotation builds our case and goes against the hyper -preterist.

So this comes from Psalm, let's just go to Psalm 19.

And so tell me if you can catch the quotation. The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork day to day, pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor other words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

Okay, so do you see the quotation that Romans chapter 10 is quoting from? This is the general revelation.

Wherever there's people living in the world, way past the known world that exist in the first century with Rome, wherever there's, the ends of the world is talking about wherever there is dirt, okay?

There is general revelation that declares the glory of God.

And David is saying, yes and amen. No person is without excuse. Romans chapter one says, everyone knows the truth of the creator, but the natural disposition of man are born

God haters not seeking out after him. And it's not until verse seven, the law of the

Lord is perfect reviving the soul. It's not until special revelation is presented about the saving gospel of Jesus Christ and putting your faith in him apart from works can someone be converted or having their soul transformed.

And so the fact that Paul quotes from Psalm 19 makes our case that the ends of the world is not just to the known world of Rome.

That is imperative to the full preterist, hyper preterist position about the great commission being fulfilled already.

No, it's being fulfilled. So I had to toss that in there for y 'all.

I hope that is helpful. Yep, amen, amen sister

Sparky. Okay, as we begin to wrap up, we are a little bit over the two hour mark.

So we got to go back to Acts chapter one. And I wanted to hopefully show y 'all how the ascension is related to Jesus being a prophet, priest and King.

He ascended on high and some other side notes that I had is

Jesus' ascension signaled the end of his earthly ministry. It signified that his earthly work was complete successfully.

It marked and I want us to kind of end on this high note. It marked the return of his heavenly glory.

It symbolized his exaltation by the father that he's prophet, priest and King. And he's going to prepare a place for us, a heavenly dwelling that will be brought to earth.

And this sets the pattern of his return. Beautiful, all this is wrapped up in his ascension.

And it should encourage us, fueling us for the great commission to continue in its fulfillment.

It hasn't been fulfilled like the hyper -preterist want us to believe. No, we are still fulfilling the great commission today.

We know that back in verse eight says, and to the ends of not the known world, not the known earth, but wherever there's dirt, right?

Romans 10 is obviously in that great commission mindset of how will they be saved?

How will they know unless a preacher goes and proclaims the gospel of peace? Well, the ends of the earth is rooted in what

King David said in Psalm 19. Oh, the entire world shows us the glory of God, reveals to us knowledge in those image bearers that are held culpable to the knowledge of God.

You must bring special revelation, the saving knowledge of the new covenant that is cut in Jesus' blood.

They are ready for missionaries to be sent and to give them the gospel that Romans 1 tells us is the power of God unto salvation for all those who believe.

Don't be duped by the full preterist saying the end of the age was 70

AD or to the ends of the earth is just really the known earth, the known world.

And so I wanna end on a high note because when we read that the men in white robes, who

I think are probably angelic beings, said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

This Jesus who was taken up, ascended in front of you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven, right?

Remember Luke 24 says that essentially this was, this filled them with great joy.

The doctrine of the ascension is meant to fill us with joy. Why? Because Jesus is a reigning king.

He's sitting at the right hand of the father, ruling and reigning now, and he's plundering the strong man,

Satan's goods, by regenerating souls. He sent the Holy Spirit. He didn't leave us as orphans, but he sent us the

Holy Spirit, another, and you gotta understand, a better advocate because the

Holy Spirit is all over the world. Jesus's earthly ministry was bound to one location.

And so this should fill us with great joy, knowing that when Jesus ascended, what did the angel say?

Oh, he's coming back. He will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.

And so as promised, I wanted to read another passage about the second coming of our

Lord, how it relates to the Great Commission, and it relates to the ascension. As Paul said in 1

Thessalonians chapter four, he wanted to encourage the believers at Thessalonica with the coming of our

Lord. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have died, that are in Christ, who are falling asleep, that you may not grieve.

This is where a full preterism cannot give you hope to those that are grieving by the hurts of sin, pain, and the death that we witness all around us because we will grieve of those who have fallen asleep.

If you don't know, I'm bivocational at 12 Five Church as a pastor and elder, meaning that my day job is a hospice chaplain, and I do a lot of bereavement.

And I see a lot of grieving. I actually help people grieve. And I'm not going to share with them, hey, guess what,

Jesus already came back. And when you look at the scripture, it's not written to you, it's written for you.

And so you just have to arbitrarily try to draw principles that make you feel good today. No, we have a message for those that are grieving that we know you can have forgiveness of sin by faith alone, in Christ alone, and that same

Savior who is our great high priest, he's coming back. Only that message will be able to help those that are grieving, that have lost loved ones.

So I'll back up. Paul says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, once again, this is my heart, as I want to inform and edify the saints, brothers in Christ, about those who have died or fallen asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

We have a blessed hope. We have a blessed hope of Jesus Christ one day returning to judge the world in righteousness and fully consummate an eternal kingdom that cannot fail for all eternity.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep, he'll resurrect them.

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming, the second coming of our

Lord, will not precede those who have died or fallen asleep. For the Lord will descend from heaven.

I just want to pause. If he is descending, this presupposes that he firstly ascended.

For the Lord himself will descend at his second coming from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then those who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air. So we always will be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.

Amen. So maybe that is a good place to kind of wrap it up, is the doctrine of the ascension.

When Christ ascended, this necessarily means that he will one day descend and return.

Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much, everybody, that's made it this long on this

Sunday evening live stream. I don't think I've done a live stream on Sunday evening yet, but like I said, got to squeeze them in there any way we can.

Don't you like how that was the last cup of coffee? Right in the nick of time. So if you made it this far or you've tuned in halfway,

I just want to thank you so much for showing your support to the Apologetic Dog by watching, by liking, subscribing, hitting the notification bell.

And I just want to encourage you, please share this content. I try to utilize some of these live streams to make shorter clips.

So that's one thing, is you can maybe put in the side comment or the comment after this is done about maybe some good ideas for clips that might be good for me to make into a separate video altogether.

Sparky, appreciate you being a mod for the Apologetic Dog. She goes, yes, Jesus Christ is coming back.

That is our blessed hope. Okay, well, with that, like I said, we got some cool things on the horizon.

Me and the Fishbone will be participating in a debate in just a few weeks away on August 23rd.

So be on the lookout for that. And hopefully, keep me in prayer, an announcement of my interlocutor debate partner for the conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee in February of next year.

Thank you, Georgia. Thanks so much, Sparky. And everybody else that was in the side chat.