April 2, 2024 Show “The Partial Preterist Debate” with Jay Rogers (Postmillenial Preterist) vs. Roderick Edwards (Non-Preterist) (Part 1)

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this second day of April 2024.

Introduction to the Partial Preterist Debate

I'm very excited because we have another event that is a rare event on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but it does happen from time to time, and I actually hope that it begins to happen more frequently. We are having another two-day debate on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

This is a debate on the issue of partial preterism, and we have two opponents addressing this issue to defend their respective opinions. We have Jay Rogers, who prefers to identify himself as a post-millennial preterist, and he is an author and host of the website forerunner .com.

And opposing Jay and his post-millennial preterist views of eschatology is Roderick Edwards. Roderick Edwards is also an author. He's a former hyper-preterist, or full-preterist, and is the host of rodericke .com.

And Roderick is spelled with a C-K at the end, rodericke .com. And as I said, this is going to be a two-day debate. I'm very excited about this, and I want to make it clear to our listeners that neither one of our participants today is a full or hyper-preterist.

In other words, both of our debaters today believe in a visible, physical return of Christ in our future, and also the bodily resurrection of the dead in our future. So this is not a debate that will be addressing a defendant or representing a defendant of hyper-preterism.

And we are going to begin the program with 10-minute opening remarks. We will then go to a commercial break. We will return with both of our debaters giving five-minute rebuttals. Then after another commercial break, we will begin our cross-examination sessions, which is my favorite part of the debates.

I've been orchestrating debates since 1996, and this is definitely my most favorite aspect of the debates. There will be two sessions of cross-examinations where both of our debaters will question each other for seven minutes each, and then we will have final remarks by both of our debaters, and hopefully we will also have time enough left for audience question and answers.

And if you do have a question for our audience, our email—if you do have a question in our audience, I should say, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. I do not have time to define terms today. These are things that you will have to look up on your own. We don't want to take a lot of time away from the actual involvement of our debaters.

They, in their own way, if they so choose, will define terms when they see fit. And I am going to start the program with an opening 10-minute remark from Roderick Edwards. And by the way, the theme of this first day of our two-day debate on partial preterism is Preterism is New.

And if you could begin the debate, Roderick Edwards, you have 10 minutes.

All right. Can you hear me all right?

I can hear you perfectly fine.

Perfect. Perfect. Okay. First of all, I appreciate the effort you put into this and hosting this, and I appreciate everyone that's listening and taking the time to do this today. As you said, I am an ex-full preterist.

I was so for about 15 years until 2007. I'm a multi-genre author of all kinds of books, four of them on preterism. Some people might think this debate on newness is kind of pointless because it's just a word.

But it's not just a word. It's a concept as well. And as a full preterist, as an ex-full preterist, I'm telling you that this is very important to delineate between partial preterism, full preterism, and why it's dangerous.

It's not merely the fallacy of the slippery slope or argumentum ad novitem. It's an actual issue because the Bible talks profusely about how there's nothing new under the sun and how that we're supposed to stick to the old paths.

As my time as an actual full preterist in the movement, I know its history, not merely theoretically. Many people have become full preterists in that movement because of the arguments of partial preterism, and specifically partial preterists like R .C. Sproul Sr. in his book The Last Days According to Jesus, Gary DeMar's Last Days Madness, David Chilton's Paradise Restored.

In fact, there is claim, and I believe it's pretty valid, that Chilton became a full preterist there in the end as he was approaching his final days. And so many full preterists do cite partial preterists.

Now, is that enough to say, hey, let's not mess with partial preterism? No, but it's something to at least give pause. Unlike other theological perspectives, such as Calvinism, where we do not delineate between so-called full Calvinism.

Nobody ever says, hey, I'm a full Calvinist or a partial Calvinist. Even if there are such things, that's not how they normally define themselves. They normally say I'm a semi-Pelagian or Amorelian. They never say I'm a partial Calvinist, not typically.

If there was such a thing as full Calvinism, though, it would be the default position, whereas being told by a partial preterist that full preterism is not the default position. Now, we've spoken about preterism, and as you said, we didn't actually give a definition.

We neglected it on purpose because I wanted to show the point that some people might find this entire debate futile. They might think, who cares what somebody's end times eschatology view is? It's not a salvation issue.

But is it? Preterism comes from the Latin term preterate, which means in the past, just basically in the past. It's not even really a theological term. Preterism advocates that most, if not all, the New Testament prophecy was fulfilled in the past.

Tonight, we're trying to ascertain if preterism is a new doctrine being brought into Christianity. But, and I think you mentioned that my opponent here, Jay, calls himself a post-millennial preterist, not even a partial preterist.

Why is that? It's interesting. As he and I have discussed it before, many of our eschatological terms, including post-millennialism or pre-millennialism, they are also relatively new. Matter of fact, the word pre-millennialism originally was called a Achilleist, which comes, I think, from Justin Martyr's writings.

He mentions that he might not use the exact word, but there was a word before even pre-millennialism. So why are we getting worked up about these words if they're all new? Because I submit part of the problem is how preterism was developed in contrast to other terms.

Full preterists owned the term long before partial preterists in the 1990s began to use the term. Now, if someone calls themselves simply preterist, the first question by anybody should be, what kind of preterist are you?

Just like if somebody said, hey, I'm gay, but what they really mean is I'm happy. You're not going to find anybody using those terms for themselves because they're already loaded. So when somebody says, I'm a preterist, the first question, again, what kind of preterist?

Now, again, I was a full preterist for 15 years, and so this isn't just rudimentary or academic to me. I was there in the trenches of this. And so back in the early 1990s, there was a eschatology symposium at Mount Dora, Florida, about 20 miles from where I currently reside.

And in attendance was R .C. Sproul Sr., Kenneth Gentry, and then a whole bunch of full preterists like Max King and Ed Stevens. What they came together to see if there could be any kind of reconciliation between the full preterists.

And at the time, people like R .C. Sproul Sr. and Kenneth Gentry, who I believe at the time were not even calling themselves partial preterists. They were calling themselves dominionist and things like that.

And obviously Calvinist, which, by the way, I am one. So shortly after that meeting, when they realized that there is no reconciliation and that R .C. Sproul Sr. and Kenneth Gentry began to understand that these full preterists are dangerous, because full preterists, if you've ever been in a discussion with them, they quote the Bible.

They use what we call exegesis, which just means out of the text. People think if I say exegesis, that means I'm interpreting the Bible accurately. It doesn't mean you're interpreting the Bible accurately.

It just means you're getting your concepts out of the Bible. You're interpreting, which most people do. There's also the eisegesis, where you're reading it back into. But just by saying I'm exegeting the Bible doesn't mean you're going to be accurate.

Full preterists are actually fairly good at that. They like to stick with the Bible mainly. And so a lot of novices get hung up when they interact with full preterists. So anyhow, after this meeting in Mount Dora, Florida, it seemed like the reformed folks that attended that meeting realized, oh, wait, we have to do something because these full preterists have the high ground.

They've been at it for a while. As a matter of fact, in 1983, I believe it was, Walt Hibbert, I think he was with Baker Books at the time, did a reprint of James Stewart Russell's The Parousia, which was a book written in the late 1890s by James Stewart Russell, as I said, which basically was a full preterist book with a little bit of a difference.

I think he still believed the millennium was the future, but he believed that the rapture already happened. So anyhow, he did this reprint in 1983 and spent 10 or 15 years in Baker Books promoting this book.

And in that book is laid out basically almost a preterist Bible. R .C. Sproul Sr. at the time said, I can never read the New Testament again the same way I read it before reading the Parousia. I hope better scholars than I will continue to analyze and evaluate the content of J. Stewart Russell's important work.

Gary DeMar also praised the book. Dr. Kenneth Jenfrey, he said he didn't agree with the conclusions, but he highly recommended well-organized and carefully argued compelling and written defense of preterism.

Again, not delineating whether James Stewart Russell was full or partial, what he was advocating. Even Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous Baptist Calvinist, when he read it originally, he said, it throws so much light, new light, he says, new light upon obscure portions of scripture and is accompanied with so much critical research and close reasoning that it can be injurious to none and may be profitable to all.

So again, this is an important point. It seems like right after the Mount Dora meeting that you start coming out with responses to full preterism. R .C. Sproul, I think it was 1998, released his book, first published The Last Days According to Jesus, which, again, a lot of full preterists will say, hey, I read that book or I read Gary DeMar's Last Days Madness.

And because a lot of those books are 98 full preterist with 5 holding back become the partials, they took the extra step and went on. Now, is that the fault of the authors? Certainly not. But what I want to get out here is that we have to enter this carefully.

This isn't like a discussion between, hey, Calvinism and these terms. This is not just a term. This is an ideology that we have to consider, especially the full preterists themselves telling you why they became full preterists.

Most of them didn't jump from full preterism or jump right into full preterism. They were led into it by the books they read. For example, I became a full preterist after I read, oddly enough, John Owen's The Death of Death and the Death of Christ.

Why? Because we understand that the last enemy to be defeated is death. Now, erroneously, I concluded that, hmm, maybe there's more to it. Maybe it's not what we think it is. And again, I didn't have any influence by any full preterist at the time, just John Owen.

So I began looking for other people that might believe or might have this realization. And then I came across people like Ed Stevens, John Nguyen, and other full preterists. So my point tonight is it's important.

That is, this is not just a new term. It's a new concept. And the so-called partial preterists are trying to play catch-up here. They have been trying to play catch-up for many, many years. And it's very dangerous to call yourself a preterist.

I'm actually advocating for another term—we'll get to that later—that replaces that whole thing so we don't even broach that. I think my time's about up, and I will leave it there.

All righty, and now we have a 10-minute opening statement from the postmillennial preterist J. Rodgers.

Okay, not to respond too much to Roderick's opening, but I just wanted to say, first of all, that I became a postmillennialist as a fairly young Christian, and mainly that was in response to what Gary DeMar and others call last day's madness.

I sat in a prophecy seminar by a dispensationalist, and I had been familiar with the Book of Revelation even prior to becoming a Christian. And what happened was I became so curious about how dispensationalism seemed to be something I would never come up with on my own.

If I were to just read the Book of Revelation on my own, I never would have come up with that doctrine. So I began to look around at different things, and for a while I just became what I would call an ad hoc amillennialist.

I just thought, you know, the millennium is just here, it's the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God is now, we're in the kingdom of God, it's growing, and the millennium is a type of the kingdom of God in Revelation, or it's a symbol of the kingdom of God.

And then the hermeneutic I used was mainly like an idealistic one, where I would say that the prophecies of the Book of Revelation were relevant in John's day, because I was familiar with the Preterist approach, but also they're relevant throughout history.

So eventually I came across Ken Gentry, and I actually did some work with them. We did a video and later a book, and it was really through Ken Gentry that I began to understand the hermeneutic of Preterism.

And that's the thing I want to start with, is that Preterism, Roderick mentioned it as a doctrine. My first point that I was going to bring out actually was that Preterism is a hermeneutic, but Postmillennialism is a doctrine.

So first of all, I call myself a Postmillennialist, and I'm a Preterist Postmillennialist because of the way I interpret the Book of Revelation. All right, when you look at the Millennium, you know, when is Christ going to return?

Is it prior to the Millennium or after the Millennium? There's really only two choices there, unless you deny a Millennium or you deny the Second Coming of Christ. Either he's going to return prior to the Millennium, which is Premillennialism, or after Postmillennialism.

And like we were saying earlier, these are fairly new terms for a long time. Omnillennialism, which is actually a form of Postmillennialism, it just says that the Kingdom is now, Christ is going to return after the Millennium period is over.

Basically, Christians held that view. And then there was a minority view called Millenarianism or Kiliasm. But you basically picked one, you know, what side are you on? Either he's going to come prior to the Millennium or after the Millennium.

That's the doctrine. But Preterism is a hermeneutic. It has to do with how we interpret the Book of Revelation. And the definition I would give would be that if you're a Preterist, if you understand the Book of Revelation chapters 1 through 19 has passed, but still look for a future Second Coming of Christ, a general resurrection of the living and the dead, and the final judgment, and that's covered in chapters 23 -22.

Hyper-Preterists basically just see all of the Book of Revelation 1 through 22 as fulfilled. And I find that to be an impossible view myself. The Historicist does something similar. They say that, similar to Preterism, they say that part of Revelation has been fulfilled, maybe the early chapters.

And then as we move on to chapters 4 through 19, we see it happening progressively throughout history. But then chapters 20 through 22 are in the future, at the end of time. A classic Premillennialist will say, usually, that chapters 1 through 3 were about the First Century Church, but then chapters 4 through 22 are about the future.

And then Dispensationalists, like a real dyed-in-the-wool Dispensationalist, like someone that follows the Schofield Reference Bible, will say all of the Book of Revelation is in the future, even the chapters about the early church, that they symbolize different types of churches, and that we're in the Laodicean Age right now.

So, basically, Hyper-Preterism would be on one end, Dispensationalism would be on the other. I don't consider Dispensationalism to be heretical, but I do consider Hyper-Preterism to be heretical, basically, just because it denies the Second Coming in the future, a bodily resurrection, and a final judgment.

Although Roderick can probably tell you there's all kinds of different variations on that. Throughout history, if you look at the very early church, the first commentaries on Revelation were kind of treated like a grab bag.

You have, for instance, Victorinus of Pateau, who wrote in the 3rd century. He does have Preterist interpretations of several chapters in Revelation, but also he has Futurists and Idealists, and he mixes them up.

So did Tychonius of Carthage, who came in the 4th century, I believe, and then Beatus, who wrote an Irish commentary in the 8th century. So there's a man named Francis Gummerlach, and a while ago, I would say about 2012, he published a paper saying that back in 2003, he wanted to get the commentaries on the Book of Revelation from the Middle Ages into print.

He said that there were 21 commentaries on Revelation written between the 3rd and the 8th century, and at that time, only three had been translated into English. So what he did was he challenged readers and other scholars to do this translation project, and very soon, they got nearly all of them into modern English, and they're available online, and for the first time, we can study them.

And come to find out, many of these commentaries do have some Preterist commentary on Revelation. But like I said, it's very rare to find, until modern times, a commentator that sticks with one method, one hermeneutic throughout the Book of Revelation.

They tend to mix things up, and it wasn't really until the time of the Protestant Reformation that we had what they called the historical grammatical method, and the historical grammatical method had some principles to it, which was that scripture interpreted scripture, that you interpret a difficult scripture in light of an easier scripture that says something similar, that you interpret things in context, and you expect the audience and the writer of scripture to understand what they were talking about, that there were no hidden meanings, there were not double meanings.

So from the time of John Calvin onward, commentators tended to stick with either a historicist model, a Preterist model, or a Futurist model. So that's basically what I have to say, is that Preterism is not new.

The term is new, but the Preterist hermeneutic, the Preterist method of interpreting scripture, has been with us from the beginning. And for every chapter of Revelation from 1 through 19, I can show you a church father that saw it fulfilled either in the first century or in the early centuries prior to their lifetime.

Well, you still have about three and a half minutes if you'd like to continue.

I mean, I just would like to reiterate that hyper-Preterism isn't new, but Preterism as a hermeneutic—excuse me, hyper-Preterism isn't new either. We had in the early centuries a doctrine called Hymenaeism, and people think that Hymenaeism was just mentioned one time in the New Testament, where the Apostle Paul speaks about Philetus and Hymenaeus.

And I actually have an article on this I did a while ago. There was a man called Epiphanius of Salamis. He wrote a book about heresies back in the fourth century. And he deals with Hymenaeism, and he calls it a docetic-gnostic error.

And there's a number of different points that Epiphanius makes against these people. He says that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead, although it was a glorified body, he wasn't a ghost or apparition.

And likewise, there was a future bodily resurrection of the undeniable according to 1 Corinthians 15. And he said that Phygelus and Homogenes were two proto-gnostics that lived in the second century.

They apparently taught that the souls of the departed need to pass through this series of ions, and that they had this whole chain of being that worshiped as different types of gods, and they departed from the true gospel.

Then you also had Hymenaeus and Philetus. He said that they were part of that proto-gnostic sect. They taught endless genealogies according to 1 Timothy 1 .4. And he said that that was that chain of authority, like the lesser gods are ions.

And then later, there are other gnostics. They said that there is another god who is a father, and then there are many lesser gods. So he basically put the Hymenaeans in that category, and he said that the reason why they didn't want to teach a resurrection of the dead, that the resurrection of the dead was a past event, and that children of parents that were born again, like children of believing parents, received spiritual resurrection, and therefore there would be no bodily resurrection.

That's how he explained it. And so that's a heresy that was, it's a very minority view in ancient times. I think it's a minority view today. And I also think that, you know, even though preterism is not the dominant eschatology today, there have been many authors and commentators that have given preterist commentaries, especially to Matthew 24, but also to the book of Daniel, the book of Zechariah,.

And the book of Revelation as well. All righty, we are going to our first commercial break. And once again, if anybody listening has a question for either or both of our debaters, the question session from the audience will be at the very end of the program.

But submit your questions now, if you'd like to be included, or as soon as possible, to chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, city and state and country of residence.

We'll be right back with our debate, right after these messages.

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Go to royaldiadem .com today, mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We are now back with our partial Preterist debate. This is day number one of a two-day debate. This first day, the theme of our debate is, Preterism is New.

And the second day of our debate, which will be tomorrow, Wednesday, April 3rd, the theme of that debate will be, All Forms of Preterism are Unbiblical. And Roderick Edwards, the non-Preterist in our debate, will take the affirmative on that thesis.

And Jay Rogers, our post-millennial Preterist, will be opposing that thesis. That's tomorrow. But now is the segment in our debate where each of our debaters give five-minute rebuttals. And Roderick Edwards, our non-Preterist, will begin with his own five-minute rebuttal.

All right, clarifying,.

You can hear me still? Yes, I can. Okay. So what we're hearing here from Jay, which is fine, is a lot of talk about Revelation. But my question, not necessarily to him, just a general rhetorical question, is that do we get our eschatology only from Revelation?

Or can we get it from Jesus' words? For example, a lot of Preterists, both full and partial Preterists, will cite the Olivet Discourse, which is Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, parts of Luke 17, perhaps, as their basis for their Preterist understandings.

And so when we get to the portion where I'm going to discuss with and ask Jay some questions, I will ask him about why he continuously moves towards Revelation. Because for what we understand, a lot of Revelation was always, as he even points out, was interpreted many different ways by many different people.

For example, Martin Luther and many of the Reformers wanted to cast it out altogether, or they applied it to the Roman Catholic Church, exclusively almost. So full Preterists often point to these things, these variances that even Jay points out, as the reason why there needs to finally be, as they say, a conference or council on eschatology.

They say one thing has not been resolved, and they call for it all the time. And so I understand, this is, again, why I think that it's very dangerous for people to toy around with partial Preterism, not realizing even their own arguments, so far what I've heard from Jay, lead us right into full Preterism.

I would ask if I was a fairly novice Christian, really understanding my eschatology, that, well, why wouldn't I look at Revelation if it's so convoluted? Why wouldn't I look at other interpretations? Why is it supposedly heretical?

Because obviously, many people came to me, Martin Luther, saying that the Pope is the Antichrist, not just a type of it, but the Antichrist, would make me think, well, maybe I need to look into this a little bit more.

Maybe it is a new thing, or a new doctrine, or a new understanding, or hermeneutic of Revelation. Let's see what time, I didn't put my timer on. Please give me a count.

You have three more minutes.

Okay, got plenty of time here. And so, what I'm trying to implore, listeners, is that your eschatology does not come just from the Book of Revelation. It comes from Jesus Himself. Again, that's one reason why even R .C. Sproul Sr. understood that it was the last days according to Jesus.

He didn't quote just Revelation, and I'm sure that Jay's not saying we do that either, but there has been a lot of focus already on Revelation, and a lot of people will, a lot of Christians will, immediately go to that book, the most obscure, probably the most obscure book in the Bible, and use that as their basis for eschatology.

And that's the reason we have all the various eschatologies we have today, and it continues to be a thorn in people's sides as to what the proper interpretation is. So, for people to call one person heretical over their interpretation of Revelation is kind of laughable at this point, and it actually lends to the whole argument of full preterists that we need to address it more.

There are many full preterists who, as they moved from partial preterism into full preterism, like Walt Hibbert was the guy who republished the Parousia in 1983, as I mentioned earlier. He has a biography or autobiography of his life, and he talks about all these times that he was excommunicated, removed from his church by his various pastors, who wanted to use councils and creeds to remove him when he wanted to use, as he calls it, exegesis of the scriptures alone to prove his point about why full preterism is valid.

And so, I submit this debate here between today and tomorrow is not about, as you said at the top of the program, is not about defending full preterism. I'm not here to do that. What I'm here to say is that partial preterism is also indefensible because it leads directly into it.

Not just could, maybe, it does. Like, for instance, some people say, well, Calvinism could lead into hyper-Calvinism. Well, it's really unlikely because the five points tell you it's exactly the opposite of what hyper-Calvinism is.

It's built in a way that it's really impossible. People do it, I get that, but it's usually over emotional reasons, not over theological, hermeneutical, or even logical reasons why people make that jump.

However, partial preterism leads right into full preterism if you don't answer the questions. For example, we'll get into this more. How much.