93. The Bright Hope of Defeatism (A Critique of Historic Premillennialism)

Episode Introduction and the Case Against Defeatist Eschatology

Hello everyone and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 93 Defeating defeatism part 2. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the broadcast right now.

We're in a series called a practical post-millennial ism where we're talking about the end times. Doctrine called post-millennial ism now we're gonna define that term in the future. We're gonna see a biblical case for why this doctrine is the best doctrine.

But in these early episodes, we really need to look at the other Eschatological views. We need to understand how they're not only deficient But they actually contribute to a defeatist Mindset that has hampered the church in the modern world and has caused her to retreat from culture.

Expecting an imminent return of Christ who will come and rescue her from her bruised and beaten status. That inglorious view has done so much to harm the Bride of Christ in the modern world and to immobilize her for mission.

So before we get Started and before we get really deep into the biblical view of the end times and the and the pleasant optimism that post-millennial ism Affords what we have to wade through the dirty waters of eschatological defeatism.

We have to identify it and we have to know what it is so that we can flush it back down the tubes where it.

Belongs.

Now if you remember in episode 1 which was called defeating defeatism part 1 We tackled the most egregious of these end times perspectives a relative newcomer in the market of eschatological views Which is called dispensationalism.

There it was shown how dispensationalism is a theological system of Fragmentation slicing up the Bible into these seven arbitrary and totally made up epics Which have little or nothing to do with each other or the Bible?

It's like ripping a chapter out of a out of seven different books and then gluing them together and hoping that you can put together a cohesive story. Well dispensationalism produces only incoherence and Confusion and as a viewpoint and inspires no one to do anything.

This does not mean that all dispensationalists are lazy couch potatoes who are merely eking their way through life.

Not at all.

But what it does mean that whenever a dispensationalist does any Kingdom work evangelizing make disciples building and planting churches. Any of that they're not operating under their worldview. They're borrowing from ours if the sky is always falling and there's no time to build.

Which means whenever a premillennialist will do anything, especially dispensationalism will do anything building. Working whatever they're betraying their own worldview their worldview doesn't substantiate it because it only substantiates panic and doom.

Now furthermore by destroying the unity of Scripture and by assigning the church to this sort of arbitrary era that is doomed to fail and by punting all of the promises of Jesus's kingdom to some Indeterminate epic in the future that we're never gonna see.

Proponents of this view naturally withdraw from culture in the here and now because frankly, what's the point? We're never gonna win. We're only gonna lose. We lose down here. Our only hope is to be slingshotted out of here on an eschatological unbiblical rapture the consequences of that kind of view are devastating.

Because while proponents remove themselves from culture society becomes supremely more and more decayed. Big and it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the prophecy pundits. Instead of seeing the clear and obvious truth that society.

Decay society becomes worse when the Christian Church fails to engage it. When we remove ourself as salt and light as Jesus commanded.

Well.

Dispensation, let's see that and they say look at the world has continued to get worse. Therefore. We need to hunker down. It continues to worsen because they continue to retreat further and further away.

And as they retreat further and further away their fever to escape the mess that they've created ever increases. It's kind of like a fussy child who uses meltdowns in order to manipulate their mother.

Refusing to clean his room because it's grown so bad that he doesn't even know where to start and it has grown from bad to Worse and he knows that if he just waits it out. His mom will eventually step in she may fuss about it.

But she'll step in and she'll perform the rescue mission. What dispensation list treat Christ much the same way frantically adopting increasing levels of hypo mania? Over society in the future and their charts and their tinfoil hats much like the prophets of Baal cutting themselves to manipulate the gods.

Well dispensation list do the same thing attempting to get Christ to come down and take them out of here this winning and psychotic viewpoint has produced a landscape of losers and it's high time for us to discard it.

Historic Premillennialism in the Ancient Church

Now in episode 2 I invited renowned Bible scholar and teacher Gary DeMar on to the broadcast in order to help us to understand How this view is not biblical and how it doesn't work for a variety of reasons and if you remember for over an hour Dr. DeMar took us one passage at a time through the New Testament.

Proving how this rigid commitment to futurism does not account for what we see in the text. He showed us how the wars and rumors of wars the famines the earthquakes the abomination of desolation the Great Tribulation and all the other.

Signs that show up there in Matthew 24 are not signs of a future tribulation period under a European Antichrist, but instead they're actual historical events that happen in space and time in the first century in the lead-up to the destruction of Jerusalem.

And as I said, Gary DeMar took us one by one through these passages for over an hour completely and totally Dismantling the dispensational view and I highly recommend that you go and check out that episode which is on our YouTube page.

It's on Spotify Apple wherever podcasters sold or distributed or whatever. And this is also a good time to say if you're not subscribed to subscribe, we'd love to have you now today. We're gonna look at a more reasonable view the reasonable older sister of Dispensationalism the sister who's got her head on a little bit more securely, which is called historic pre millennialism.

Now by pre millennialism I just mean that this is a view in relationship to the men millennium that Jesus is going to return pre which means before He institutes his millennial reign. Unlike a millennial ism and post millennial ism which see Jesus currently right now Reigning on his throne in heaven that we are in his reign.

Well historic pre millennial ism sees that we're waiting for that. We're waiting for Christ's future and physical reign on earth. It hasn't happened yet, which by the way is gonna last for a literal thousand calendar years according to that view.

Now for us to properly examine this view and to show how it's deficient. We're gonna need to move pretty quickly we're gonna have to paint with broad strokes and I'm not gonna be able to cover everything and Not even close to an exhaustive way.

This episode is probably gonna be over an hour as it is. So I need to move quickly, but my goal is to show how this view Historically came to be how it's not biblical and how it actually produces Antibiblical attitudes in Jesus's church.

It undermines our mission and it has caused us and led to the mess that we're currently in in this country. That's right. I believe that pre millennial ism both historic pre millennial ism and its redheaded dispensational heifer is One of the chief reasons that society is murdering a million babies.

Why men are trying to become women and why political elites are embracing Marxism and running our country into moral? Chaos and so much more and you may be asking yourself. How can I make such a bold claim that?

Dispensationalism is or pre-millennial ism is one of the chief problems in our world. Well because when a view So successfully undermines the church's mission causing her to retreat causing her to to slump down and defeat and to stop Making disciples and to stop advancing and stop pushing back the gates of hell and cease holding culture accountable.

Well, should we be surprised when the pagans run into all kinds of rank and disgusting error if pre-millennial ism Causes the church to be impotent and the church causes the church's removal from the world causes the world to become rotten.

Well, then dispensationalism is to blame or pre-millennial ism is to blame. Let me give you an example. If you leave raw hamburger meat out on the counter it putrefies and that is what meat does when it's not preserved in a refrigerator.

Well in the same way pre-millennial ism left the kitchen the society to go hide in the eschatological basement waiting for her rapture which hasn't come and Sadly while the church has been waiting for a for 50 years at the old rapture bus stop Hands-in-pocket doing little else the meat of American culture has turned a slimy disgusting green and the moral maggots that infiltrated Hollywood and Washington have crept in and totally infested this country.

Vivid but true now my hope in the series is that some small way in some small way We can be a part of changing that. That we can be a part of seeing a more optimistic view of Christ of his kingdom and his mission.

So with that, let us begin our time today talking about the history of historic pre-millennial ism. Then we'll talk about how it's unbiblical. Then we'll talk about how it produces unbiblical emotions.

Then we'll close. Let's begin. The history of pre-millennial ism part one the ancient view. Now among the end times positions there are two schools of thought that go all the way back to the ancient and apostolic Church after the canon of Scripture was closed and all of the Apostles died and as The early church began to spread in the hostile Roman world.

Well, there began to be prominent and influential Christian thinkers who weighed in on a variety of theological Subjects to help the church become robust in her thinking. Well, unfortunately for us eschatology was one of those doctrines that took Significantly more time to systematize than the others.

It probably is true in your life. If you if you want to study doctrine Maybe you'll start with the knowledge of God and salvation those things are are good and and actually you should study those things before you get Eschatology doesn't mean eschatology is an important but the early church made the right decision and Prioritizing the systematization of other doctrines first, which means that in the first two centuries of the church We don't really have a lot of statements about Eschatology we have some scant points some underdeveloped postulations of what the earliest Christians living in the first two centuries Believed about the end times but of our information there are two basic views that sort of rise to the fore.

The first view set forth prominently by Augustine of Hippo is That when Christ ascended into heaven, he sat down on his throne to reign. Proponents of this view attest that he was not waiting for a future period of time where he's going to assume a millennial Reign of a thousand literal years.

He's reigning now which made the thousand years described in the book of Revelation chapter 20 a non literal number. To be clear this group believed Jesus was reigning from the very moment that he ascended into heaven and sat down on the throne of God which is what Kings do when you sit down as a king on your throne.

You're reigning and he would continue that reign until his kingdom had come in full The church until he had finished building all of it. Now, that's the first view and that's the view that I hold. The other view represented in the ancient church is that Jesus would return at some point in the future.

Maybe he's reigning in heaven and all of that but he's not reigning on earth and he won't reign on earth physically until the end when he returns and he sets up his kingdom for a thousand literal years.

This end time view shows up in Fragmentary form very early in the writings of church fathers such as Papias or Justin Martyr and Tertullian. But it's laid out most fully by a man named Irenaeus of lions and his work called against heresies.

Which goes all the way back to a hundred and eighty AD which means that it is quite old. That is a benefit actually to the historic pre-millennial view is that it goes back so far into church history.

It doesn't make it right, but it does mean that it's an old view, which is good. It's not like dispensationalism which popped up out of nowhere in the 19th century now. This view bolstered by a commitment to a literalistic hermeneutic of scripture tried to explain Old Testament prophecies of worldwide peace and prosperity and global justice as future events as a Physical period on earth at a particular time when Messiah would commence his reign upon his return.

Meaning that the world is going to experience Total peace that his kingdom is gonna be unopposed and there's gonna be Shalom all over the world. There's gonna be there's gonna be Vineyards that are planted and you're gonna tie your donkey up to the vine because you know What if the donkey eats the vine who cares you have so many that that's the sort of Old Testament prophecies that that are talked about when it comes to the reign of Messiah that it's gonna be in a world filled with peace and Prosperity and justice and goodness and it's gonna be amazing.

Now this is in fact precisely where postmillennialism and premillennialism agree. They both see these Old Testament prophecies is coming physically to the earth under the reign of Christ. Postmillennialist, however, understand these coming gradually and Increasingly upon the earth through the ministry of the church who is led by the Holy Spirit that Jesus sent By the will of the Father that the church is going to spread Jesus's reign Victoriously victoriously across the earth and that this sort of Kingdom that is described in the Old Testament is going to come in over time and gradually.

Now the premillennialist however on the other hand see the current age that we are living in as a Collapsing doomed epic that's going to fall down in fantastic defeat. The church itself is going to be completely and totally unsuccessful in her task to disciple the nations.

Which is gonna prompt Jesus to return to a world that is filled with evil. To put it all away and to be crowned as its new king. Who's gonna reign bodily on earth for a thousand years and yet in the premillennial view near the end of Jesus's reign?

There's gonna be a group of people who rebel against him showing that that even in Perfection and the reign that the premillennialist described as Jesus's his triumphing moment. He doesn't even keep all of his people and some of them rebel which is just crazy to me.

Now premillennialists understand the reign of Christ as a future event. Postmillennialists understand the reign of Christ is happening now. That is how those two views go back all the way to the ancient world and they're both substantiated part to the Middle Ages.

The Medieval and Reformation Decline of Premillennialism

Now as the ancient church began to gain ground in the Roman world Premillennial thought also began to wane and it sort of fell off the radar for more than a thousand years. With later apostolic fathers coming in around in the 3rd and 4th century such as origin who promoted his allegorical view which just means that he thought the Millennium was not a literal time period and Augusta of hippos towering theological influence as well as Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire during the time of Constantine.

Well premillennialism faded from the majority opinion to the minority report. It's hard to believe such a defeatist opinion when everything around you is becoming Christian and that's exactly what happened.

Well, Augusta in particular was influential in this transition. He argued that the Millennium described in Revelation 20 was not a literal number of years. The same way that God does not own the cattle just on a literal thousand hills, but he owns all the cattle on all the hills.

Instead according to Augustine the 1 ,000 years represented the ongoing reign of Christ over his church. It's his full reign. This became the prominent view in the early Roman Catholic Church and it remained the majority position in Christendom all the way until the 16th century and really all the way until the late 18th century.

When a few radical offshoots of the Reformation Gravitated back to premillennial thinking now for context the view that Christ has been reigning victoriously over his church and not waiting for a future return.

For that reign to ensue that view has been the dominant position of the church throughout the entire church history. Especially between the years 1400 and 1600 ad it has been the monolithic Most represented position.

So if you want to say what is the view that has been represented by most Christians at most time periods all throughout church history. It's either a millennial ism or post millennial ism, which we'll get into the distinctions of those next week.

Part 3 the modern era. During the Protestant Reformation Augustine's eschatological Allegorical ism again the thousand years aren't literal was a decisive influence upon the magisterial Reformers. This meant that the overwhelming majority position on the end times events that are described in Revelation.

Was that Christ was currently reigning over his church? Not awaiting a physical reign on earth at some point in the distant future. Now you had some of the Reformers who said that the Pope was the Antichrist and all of that.

That's fine. We'll get into that maybe at some point but at the same time. Everyone believed that Jesus was reigning now. Except a few radicalized offshoots of the Reformation the counter-reformation such as the Mennonites and the anti or Anna Baptist.

Those departed from the allegorical view of the Millennium and they began constructing all kinds of different unique various in times positions. So they began making new views. Some of those groups began returning to the old historic pre millennial thinking.

Reinvigorating it sort of in seed form that would last for a couple hundred years until the Plymouth Brethren. Would pick that up in the 19th century. If you remember from last week the Plymouth Brethren is where we get John Nelson Darby who became the father of dispensational Premillennialism and he's responsible for taking the fun out of the world and for bringing premillennialism back into the forefront of Christian eschatological thinking now before the Reformation premillennialism was Almost entirely unattested for more than a thousand years of church history after the Reformation.

It had a slight uptick in some radical Reformers and then it picked up as the predominant view of church history through a man named John Nelson Darby who brought it to the forefront of American evangelical thinking.

Now this is no credit to premillennialism as a position. It's no credit to its biblical Exegesis in fact, but it is what happened in history except among the Reformed churches. You see dispensationalism was always a flawed view and never really fully adapted by Reformation churches churches that held tightly to the theology of the Reformation and adopted its confessions and almost entirely avoided this sort of repugnant stench on the eschatological world and Since it's so clearly deviated from Covenant theology in a proper home and read it from for understanding Scripture.

Most of the Reformed churches completely avoided it like the plague. This was until George Eldon Ladd who was a 20th century theologian revived historic premillennialism from the ashes of history giving some Reformed thinkers a possible third option for eschatological thinking especially among strains of evangelicals and Baptists.

Unlike Darby who divided the Bible into arbitrary dispensations Ladd rightly saw that the Bible is one unified redemptive story With Christ at the center of it seeking to reintegrate that view into his theological work this included reintegrating Israel in the church who dispensationalism divided and Ladd saw as Distinct people yet under the same Lord and he also rejected the rapture driven escapism of dispensationalism.

Adopting instead a more moderate view where the church would suffer along with the world in a view called post-tribulational Rapture where we would suffer right alongside the pagans in Antichrist seven-year reign of terror.

That is before Jesus returns and Calls us home lad. Also, you know making things more moderate. He correctly identified that the pietism and the purely allegorical Interpretation among some amillennials typically among the radical two kingdoms types did not do just it justice to the prophetic promises that are given in the Gospels and in the Old Testament.

Which described these events as future realities that are going to come to pass on a physical earth and not just spiritually in heaven. You see according to him the radical amillennial types Relocated everything to heaven Jesus is reigning and it's a spiritual kingdom with all the benefits in heaven.

Lad says no and he's right in this that the promises in the Bible actually have a physical impact on this earth. He answers the question wrongly with pre-millennialism. We'll talk about how he you can answer it rightly with post-millennialism.

But the point is is that the reign of Christ will have an impact on the world that we are living in and lad rightly saw that now all these modifications by lad and others were Improvements and they certainly reinvigorated a kind of return to a true historic Pre-millennialism that had been known among the apostolic fathers and had been dormant for about 15 to 1600 years.

Yet.

While what lad did was an improvement the entire system was still built upon an entirely flawed premise a plank in the eye called futurism. We are all products of the world in which we were born. Modern pre-millennialism is no different.

It was born into a world of German higher critical thinking the rise of secularism and theological liberalism and a gamut of academic disciplines that were seeking to undermine the sanctity and the sufficiency of Holy Scripture things like philosophy and psychology all of these viewpoints were beginning to gain steam at the exact same time that modern pre-millennialism was taking root and You would imagine that Modern pre-millennialism in its infant stages would need to answer the questions that that the secular liberal higher critical Scholars are leveling and that's exactly what happened.

Now these scholars Attacked the scriptures ferociously and there's few places in the Bible where these attacks were leveled more ardently than on the person work of Jesus Christ. From accusations that he never existed that he was a failed messianic Upstart among many or that he was a false prophet who did not come back in the time frame that he had given secularists were continually attacking the credibility of Jesus more ferociously than piranhas on a ham bone and this is not a foolish strategy if you're a secularist if you can invalidate the author and the perfecter of the Christian faith and if You can remove the cornerstone from the structure.

Well, then you can dismantle the entire Christian building of All the places however that critical scholars aimed the barrel of their guns most pointedly. It was in Jesus's prediction contained in the Olivet Discourse.

If they could show that Jesus was a false prophet there That what he had predicted to happen did not come true in the way that he described it. Then they could dismiss Jesus as one of the legion of gods that were invented by mortal men that were relegated to the museum shelves.

In doing that they could live however, they wanted without being held accountable to a living absolute sovereign. Now according to these scholars the only possible way to understand Jesus's words in the Olivet Discourse was Matthew 24 Luke 21 Mark 13 is to see him predicting his immediate return.

Jesus according to them made it abundantly clear when he thought he was going to come back to the world and that was going to happen in a single generation from The time of his death if you remember a generation is 40 years.

So secular scholars accused Jesus of believing that he's going to return within 40 years and they say it Did not happen therefore Jesus is a false prophet and Because pre-millennialism was starting to gain its footing at the same time.

These accusations were being leveled. They had to come up with an answer to this question. And unfortunately, they got it wrong. Maybe they had good motives. Maybe they tried hard. Maybe they swung and missed but they missed it nonetheless.

Now I want you to remember the context so that I can prove this to you. Jesus is not talking about the future in Matthew 24. He is doing what the secular scholars accused him of he's saying I'm gonna return within 40 years.

So what's the context of Matthew 24. We go back to Matthew 21 where Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem and they give him only Leaves. They were a city that was supposed to bear fruit for God and they they didn't have any so they gave him leaves instead.

This is important because near the end of Matthew 21 or at least near the middle of it Jesus curses a fig tree which offered him only leaves and no fruit. These these events happened Nearly in the same day.

So the fig tree Represents Jerusalem in the same way that they gave him leaves and no fruit. This fig tree gave him leaves and no fruit and Jesus cursed it and he cursed it and said it would be ripped up and thrown Into the fire just like the city of Jerusalem would happen in AD 70 now.

That fig tree became a sort of typological picture of what was going to happen to Jerusalem. Matthew 21 18 through 22. After that, he goes into the city. He walks into the city and he tells three successive parables about how the kingdom of God was gonna be taken away from the apostate Jewish leadership and it was gonna be giving to a people who bear the fruit.

These people weren't gonna offer him just leaves and stubble and hay. They were gonna give him fruit and it's gonna be his church. That's going to do that. Not the Jewish religious leaders. There's those parables.

You can find Matthew 21 28 through chapter 22 14. It talks about a landowner. It talks about a vineyard owner. It talks about a father with two sons. It talks about a man who threw a wedding feast. The point of all of those parables is that Jesus is going to take that kingdom away from the Pharisees and give it to a people who will produce God's fruit and it says in the Text that the Pharisees understood that he was leveling these judgments against them.

So that's the context. Matthew 23 furthers that context when Jesus after he gives these parables of Judgment, then he pronounces seven covenantal woes upon the city. He tells them that all of the wrath that God has been storing up since the beginning of the world since Cain killed Abel.

It's gonna be poured out on that Generation of false shepherds. No one at the time was standing around looking at Jesus saying I bet he's talking about the end of the world. They didn't he said it's gonna fall on you.

Your city is gonna be left in flames. Matthew 22 7 your temple your house is gonna be left to you. Desolate desolate that's Matthew 23. Everyone understood what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about the downfall of that city and it was so clear that the disciples became freaked out and paranoid so much so that they asked him what he was talking about and Jesus made himself even more clear by telling his disciples that not even one stone from that flawed Fruitless temple was gonna be left upon another.

Matthew 24 1 through 2. Instead wars and rumors of wars were gonna occur. False Prophets were gonna arise famines and earthquakes heightened persecutions tribulations and abomination that caused desolation.

We're all gonna come against this people and against this temple leaving it desolate. Culminating in the dazzling return of Jesus Christ within a single generation. Matthew 24 29 through 41. Now since liberal scholars can clearly read from the text that Jesus intended to come back in judgment against that Generation of sinful Jews within 40 years.

They see that. Well, Jesus didn't bodily come back. Therefore he's not a real prophet. He's a false prophet and they level that blasphemous charge against Jesus. Saying that he's not God, but he's merely a man.

Well in doing that The pre-millennialist had to have an answer and it was during this period when the pagan men were running roughshod over the text believing that They had somehow invalidated the Christian faith by dethroning the Christian Christ.

Well pre-millennialism was born and it was born to give an answer and out of the best intentions as we said before. It gave the wrong answer. It attempted to craft an eschatological position that rescued Jesus from the attacks of the liberal scholars.

But it answered it wrongly. If you want to know more about this event, you can read RC Sproul's book the last days according to Jesus. I think it's chapter 1 or chapter 2 he goes into detail about this and it's fascinating and he's right.

Now to do this to pull this off pre-millennialism Needed to reinterpret everything that Jesus was saying in these passages they need to completely destroy the context that Jesus was operating under and Somehow instead of seeing the Olivet Discourse is happening in the lifetime of the people that Jesus gave it to they're gonna have to find Some way to tie it into the future which in that which would invalidate the accusations that are being pummeled against Jesus by these scholars they'd have to say no no, no, no.

No, these things don't happen in Jesus's lifetime. He's not a false prophet. No, these things happen in the future and secular scholars did not fall for it. They say you can't do that to the text. That's not what it says, but pre-millennialism did it?

Anyway, instead of attempting to show how these events really happened within the time frame that Jesus said Premillennialist argued that most of church history most scholars even the people standing right in front of Jesus listening to him speak Misunderstood what Jesus was actually saying and doing and instead these predictions occur sometime in the remote future.

Not within a single generation of Jesus's listeners now while the people who heard him say these things were still living. Premillennialist began to argue that they were wrong and the events were never intended to happen in the past.

They were only ever intended to happen in the future. In fact, they still haven't happened today and they're not going to happen until sometime in the future. When no man knows the day or the hour and you've heard the line.

Now this means that when the disciples asked Jesus What would be the sign of the downfall of the city and what would be the sign of the downfall of this era? And of the Jewish temple well in Matthew 24 3 They asked him these questions in order to to have the pre-millennial view.

You would have to believe that Jesus ignored his followers questions and Instead decided to talk about the things that were not going to happen for another 2 ,000 plus years and would have zero relevance to their life and their circumstances.

It would be like Jesus saying the city is under judgment. The temple is gonna be destroyed. Not one stone is gonna be left upon another and the disciples say when's it gonna happen? Jesus says I don't know.

But let me tell you about what's gonna happen 2 ,000 years from now because that's really fascinating has absolutely nothing to do with your life that would have us believe that all of the signs that Jesus gave were for a future generation and not for the people who were Standing right in front of him.

They were instead a road map on how to read the passage and how to walk through the Great Tribulation. In the modern world if that sounds like a thoroughly crazy and utterly insane way to interpret the text then you're right.

Congratulations, you're still sane. Not only would that Overlook the disciples their emotions their feelings their questions in the entire context. It would also in it would ignore all of the evidence that there is.

To present that these are actual events that happen and we could present that to liberal theologians proving That Jesus prophecy came true. And if you want on my blog and on this podcast I've got like 10 to 20 episodes on Matthew 24 where I prove that all of these things happened.

There really were wars and rumors of wars happening in the first century. There were and and that was a much more critical sign back then than it even is today because they were living under the Pax Romana, which meant that there were no wars.

We don't live during that time. We live in a time where there's constant wars just under Joe Biden's failed presidency. We've had two maybe possibly three wars that have been rumored to start and now we see that they have the Pax Romana.

That was not the case. So wars and rumors force was a sign that meant that meant a lot of sense to them. There was an astonishing number of earthquakes between the year 80 70 or 80 30 and 80 70. If you look it up in the history, you'll see that there were even pagans who were saying that these earthquakes are a sign of judgment.

You'll remember when Jesus rose from the dead earthquake when he died earthquake. There were earthquakes happening all the time and that was a signal to Jesus's disciples that these things were happening.

Now there was an empire-wide wide famine that one of the historians tell us about that that covered the entire Roman world. People were afraid that they were gonna lose everything. There were false prophets.

Acts chapter 5 tells us about two of them. There was an uptick in persecution by the Jews. The whole book of Acts is about that. One by one all of the signs that Jesus gave to us in that chapter can be shown to have already happened.

Which gloriously fulfills everything Jesus said. That's even true of the second coming. When you understand what Jesus is talking about He's not promising to come at the end of human history surfboarding on the clouds coming down from heaven and then you know.

A sword literally coming out of his mouth like his tongue has now turned into a spear. No, he is talking in Old Testament ways. He's not talking about rapturing a church out of here as the pre-millennialists suggest.

He's promising a judgment coming Against Jerusalem that was gonna happen just like in the days of Noah. You see in the Old Testament judgment comings happened when God raised up armies to destroy his wayward people.

It happened when he raised up Syria to destroy Israel. It happened when he raised up Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and Judea. This is just ways that God does this and the judgment that he describes in Matthew 24 is not a righteous.

There's not a rapture of the righteous, but it's a rapture. It's a sweeping away of the wicked just like in the days of Noah. Look at what it says in verse 37 and beyond. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah for as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and giving and marriage until the day that Noah entered the Ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away.