Full Preterism? That's a Holy Nope with Dr. Sam Frost & Austin Keeler DMW#210

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast everyone,

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I'm your host Greg. Make sure to check us out at dmwpodcast .com, you can support the show there. I was holding up, if you're watching, the

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Check them out, jacobssupply .com. Cool, now that we got the business out of the way, let's get to the meat.

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First time guest on the Dead Men Walking Podcast. Just met him a few days ago. Thoroughly impressed.

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Already love him as a brother in the Lord. It is Sam Frost. How are you, Sam? I'm doing well. Business before pleasure.

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Business before pleasure. The pleasure part. There you go. Okay, we'll see if you hold up to it. So obviously we're recording here.

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If you're watching or listening, you might hear some stuff going on in the background. We are at the Y Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

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Sam is one of the speakers and did the pre -conference on Wednesday night, which I attended, which was phenomenal.

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And I said, we got to talk about some of the things he's talking about, writing about, things like that. But first, introduce yourself to the listeners.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself. What's the origin story, as they say in the comics of Sam? Well, currently

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I'm an instructor with Life Bible College, and they have an outlet there in Papua, New Guinea.

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And I also am working for becoming a commissioned ruling elder in the

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PCUSA church. And I know that's going to bring a lot of alarms there, but trust me,

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I'm still Westminster confession of faith guy. Okay, so you're Presbyterian, not lesbian. Oh, I'm sorry.

02:34

This is what we do on this show, guys. Sorry. We take learned men, and we bring them down to my level.

02:40

You guys know the show. Yeah, I'm Presbyterian. Okay. And there's a few of us conservatives still in the

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PCUSA. Okay. So we haven't surrendered yet. So what are we doing?

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Are we trying to do a reformation within that PCUSA, or are you going, hey, I'm not leaving, I'm here to stay? As long as I'm tolerated.

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Okay. So, yeah. So minister in Knightstown, along with Pastor Alan McCrane.

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Okay. And Knightstown, Indiana, Bethel Presbyterian Church. Okay. Nice thriving community there.

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Got my doctorates, do some writing. We have an article coming out, biblical,

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Bibliotheca Sacra that's coming out, being published, and do conferences like this on preterism.

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I did not know that. I'm sorry, but I introduce you as Dr. Sam Frost. I do like to use that title because it is earned. So, yeah.

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My wife keeps saying that, and I don't use it. She goes, you got to use that. We pay a lot of money for that. I was going to say, it's a sign of respect.

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If anyone's been through a doctoral candidate and things like that, it's a lot of work.

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If you're a doctor, I call you a doctor. It's a lot of work. So just involved in that.

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But I used to be one of the main leader teachers in the full preterist movement. Yeah. Came out of that 2011, 2010, 2011.

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Okay. And wrote a book on that why I left full preterism that was picked up by American Vision first, and now published by Kenneth Gentry's outfit,

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Dr. Gentry's outfit. But mainly, my main focus is the pews.

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That's a trance. I was raised in church, grew up in Foursquare Gospel Church. Okay. Loved everything about churches, church buildings, church pews, church smells.

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Always just love. Every church does have a unique smell, too. It does have a unique smell. You pointed that out Wednesday night. Yep, this is a church.

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So that's the trenches. Being in a rural area post -COVID, that really hit hard on a lot of these churches with 30, 40 members, and now they're down to 15 members.

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Right. So it's a battle. I enjoy it.

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And I'm still young enough at 56 to stay in that. So do you find kind of where you're one of your areas of expertise, full preterism, which we were talking about this on another episode with Jeremiah Nortier, who you know.

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I blame him for a lot. You blame him for a lot, okay. I feel like I've seen it on the rise in the last five to 10 years to where more people are talking about it.

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Obviously, there's a big scuffle with Gary DeMar, and we were talking about that off camera to where he was on the podcast almost four years ago now, well, three and a half years ago, and really holds probably a different position than he did now, but he was getting there then, it feels like.

05:53

And for those that are listening going, what are you talking about? You can go listen to our episode on full preterism, but essentially saying all prophecy has been fulfilled.

06:01

There is no return of Christ. There is no resurrection of the dead. Really taking Orthodox Christianity in the eschatology area and removing all that, and is it heresy?

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And you're saying you were there. You're now out of it. Do you see what you're doing is needed in the church today?

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Are you coming across people who are going, yeah, considering that, or that seems legitimate to me, or I'm open to it?

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Yeah. So over the last few years, I get a lot of emails, and many are from pastors that are one or two people have come into their church leading a

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Bible study or something, and they begin to introduce their full preterists that are infiltrating the churches.

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I've encountered this now several times. Some have had to be brought before the elders, excommunicated, have sought to have a conference or confrontation with them.

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At that point, many of them in these various churches have left. They don't want to be confronted. There was an elder that recently stepped down and left a church that he helped found, but he was full preterist and caused a great rift.

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I've seen this quite a bit, so it's becoming, I wouldn't say it's, you get these phenomenas in Christianity, like Rick Warren wrote

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Purpose -Driven Church, right? Sure. And, or Purpose -Driven Life.

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Life and Church, he did a church one, too. Yeah, and then, yeah. Gotta make the sequel when you sell. No one heard Rick Warren, and then all of a sudden, overnight almost, everyone's reading this book.

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He's the new self -professed Charles Spurgeon, yeah. He's trained over a million pastors. And they, and it's transcendent.

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It goes across denominational lines. Everybody's reading this. Episcopalians are reading it. Presbyterians are reading it.

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Reform Baptists are reading it. Everybody's reading this stuff. So, full preterism has not done that yet.

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But very well could, you're saying. The closest it's come is maybe

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R .C. Sproul's book, Last Days According to Jesus. He's, that book put Max King and Ed Stevens on the map, and those two are full preterists.

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Okay, those two are kind of big in that, okay. And that was written in 98, I believe. Well, that's also a concern too when you have any type of platform.

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I was talking to Dr. James White. It's like, it's tough. You don't, you know, sometimes you're just platforming people, especially in the days of social media.

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If that person with a heresy or with a weird view, minority view, can get their name and your lips to your platform, it's clout chasing, and it's tough.

08:45

And I imagine you come into this too because you've been doing this a long time. You have a little bit of a platform. People know who you are. You write books.

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You gotta talk about these things, but at the same time, sometimes they're just better left maybe in the dark in their own devices, and no one would ever hear of them in their heresy.

09:01

Enter one Jeremiah Nordier. So I was gonna get out of it because I'm just pursuing more academic things now in this time in my life.

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So, and being out of, I left full preterism in 2010, 2011.

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Yeah. And there's been hundreds that have come out. Over the years that have, there's groups, there's whole groups in Facebook, ex full preterists.

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So that's welcoming. And then I've been able, there's three groups of people.

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So there's the ones who are coming out of it. They just see the wreck that it is, thank God, and they study their way out of it.

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That this is just not working. And then there's the group that is looking into it, but they've never become full preterist, but you're able to dissuade them from it.

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They avoid it. They study it. They look at it and say, this is not tenable.

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Then there's the other group that have never heard of it. So I frequent a lot of churches and do a lot of ecumenical things with other denominations, other churches we get together.

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Um, they never heard of it. Okay. Is that who you're kind of focusing on? That's the church at large.

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Church at large. Okay. Just everyday average, uh, Joe and Mary go to church, good

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Jesus loving people, good community people, good educators, whatever. And, and you said, well, full preterists,

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Sam, I noticed on your face, you talk a lot about these full pre, you know, what do they believe? Well, they believe Jesus came back and the dead were raised in 70

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AD and they just rolled their eyes and said, well, that's, that's insane. And they never give it another, right?

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That's the majority of church folks that I meet, but you do have those inquisitive types.

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Sure. So Jeremiah, I was going to get out of it. And Jeremiah was said, no, don't because you're a source.

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Once you think you're out, they keep pulling me back in. Okay. Right. One of those.

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So yeah, I helped the Chino. So Jeremiah said,

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I want everyone to know about this so that when they see it coming, that's the problem. They don't see it coming. Makes sense.

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And we need to expose this for what it is on a larger, larger platform. You can't do anything about those that are going to go full tilt.

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Yeah. So I stopped worrying about that. Okay. And in God's providence, he does what he does.

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Yeah. So Jeremiah talked me back into using it still as something to expose.

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So, so here's that as a part of my, yeah. Many other things that I do, but that's going to be a part of it.

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That's going to stay. Okay. Well, and I'm glad it is because I think it's very important. I heard you use a couple words and I want to ask you the end result of full preterism.

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You heard people see what a mess it is. People kind of see it's not tenable, right? I only have two experiences with full preterists.

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One of them was about eight years ago as a young lady, she asked, she sent me a message. What do you think of full preterism? And at that time

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I had to go, well, I'm not learned enough to really even, I had to Google it and go, okay, maybe let me make sure

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I'm right on what I tell her before, you know, cause I had an idea of it, but like I said,

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I was one of those that just went early on. Oh, these are the tenants I'm out. It's right. So I didn't know the nuances of it.

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You know, eight years later, she's a full preterist and it goes from, Hey man, all we need to do, the only command we have is to love one another, right?

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That's where she went. There's guys like Sean McCrary on online, um, ex Mormon. And then you see his progression over five or six, seven years.

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And now he's to the point of like, there is, there is no commandments. Just love God with all your heart, which sounds good in theory, but, but, but it just seems to go into this really weird hippie kind of no rules, no order.

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Just, there's a couple experiences where that, that has been the experience of, you know, I'm not trying to generalize all full preterists, right?

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But, but I guess what I'm asking is you said it's untenable. They see what a mess it is. What are you talking about when you say full preterism is a mess or it's untenable?

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Where do you eventually get to as a full preterist? What does that look like in pragmatically in real life?

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That theology, that's the million dollar question. That's creating a lot of problems. Cause I still keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on.

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And amazingly like on Facebook or other social media platforms,

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I've not been unfriended by the major leaders. So I'm still friends, still friends with them.

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And so I still go to the websites and read what they're doing. And then the good deal of the audience that are readers of what

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I do on Facebook, you know, a lot of them were full preterists. So they're just attacking me. And I let them do that.

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I don't block them. I don't do edit them. I don't take their comments down or anything. Cause I want people to see what they're, what they're saying.

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And you get, it's, it's, they've become a movement now where you get five full preterists in a room, you know, the old

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Baptist church, you get five Baptists, 17 views. That's what's happening to them. So it's not this monolithic kind of thing.

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It's becoming a movement like any other movement. It's fragmenting. It's imploding on itself.

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And the question is, is what now? Post post 70 AD. Yeah. Some are saying, well, there's no more need for church.

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That's what I mean. It's kind of like more need for the Lord's baptism, the wild West for the Lord's table has been fulfilled.

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It's all been fulfilled. All of those, all of those things are rooted in eschatology and have an eschatological dimension to them.

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And if it's all fulfilled and it's, and the traditionalist in the new heavens and new earth, no, we won't be taking communion to the

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Lord's table and we won't be doing these things. Right. It's we're in a, we're in an age of perfection, um, eternity.

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So they're trying to take eternity and apply that now. Right. See how that works.

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Yeah. So how do you do that? And then you die and go to heaven and then you're really perfect. Well, some have suggested, maybe we won't be perfect in heaven.

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Maybe we'll still continue to sin and grow and continue to. It's just another stage. It's just another, just another, whatever.

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So can, uh, Max King and Doug King, who I think are the founders of full preterism, which is not that old, by the way, we established with German 71.

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It's crazy. Yeah. So this is, he's the first that really takes it because you, you get early forms of preterism 19th century.

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And the one that took him the furthest would be J Stuart Russell. Uh, Milton Terry would be, you know, another one.

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They, they took it as far as you could get it, but they still had a millennium and an end at some point in time.

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The full predators, Max King, the full predators and Don Preston, there's no literal end to history.

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Now, as we know it, this is, this goes on for infinity. It never, this plane that we're on now never, never ends.

16:12

So what is the full preterists hope? What is there? Go to heaven. You just die and go to heaven.

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That's about it. Yeah. Because dying and going to heaven was not available before Jesus.

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You died and you went to, you know, hot days, you know, you went to, so spooky world.

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And so now since Jesus has died for our sins, he has removed spooky world and thrown it into the lake of fire.

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And so now the redemption is we die and we're in the presence of the Lord. That's the gift that we're given.

16:46

Yeah. That's it. But that's, that's, that's it. Why do you, why do you feel, okay, so it's getting fragmented.

16:55

Um, so it does sound like you're saying there is a little bit of maybe lawlessness or kind of Wild West mentality sometimes within full predator.

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Why is that? Why is it just saying, well, we're, we're, we're saying millenniums fulfilled.

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We're saying all these things. Why would it naturally move in that direction? Uh, I think I know why it would, but, but to me,

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I look and I go, well, your eschatology, if you're on mill or pre mill or, um, uh, post mill, there's still some structure there of like, we have a hope to come.

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There's a resurrection. There's right. There's judgment. There's all these things. I think that feels like it kind of,

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I don't want to say keeps us in line morals, right? So why does it still obeying? But if everything is fulfilled again, there's not going to be ethics and morals in the new heavens and new earth.

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It's a genuine, we will be one with the father. Well, yeah, it's a genuine obedience.

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It's not like, Oh, well, I really don't want to obey God. Yeah. I guess I should, because it would be the right thing that I'm not going to be having those, that thought process in the new heavens, new earth.

17:58

So again, if you take that and apply it to today and all sin is literally gone, it's fulfilled because the law has been fulfilled and the law is definition of sin without law.

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There is no sin. Well, law has been fulfilled and done away with, then you have no more sin, right?

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So now everything's permissible covenant sense. Everything's in the covenant sense. Yeah. You have, you might drink too much and that's creating some problems in your marriage.

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I suggest that you get a handle on that, right? But don't condemn yourself. Don't, don't think that you've got to do that because God's going to not take you to heaven.

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You're still going to, you're going to heaven. It doesn't make any difference, but don't look at alcoholism as a sin.

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Okay. It's just a problem. Yeah. Just something that might give you some consequences you don't want. Yeah. Yeah.

18:52

Yeah. Like anything that's kind of the approach, that's kind of the approach to ethics and morals that I'm finding in the audience of full preterists.

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Man, that's crazy. Cause the two people I know, they kind of have that view. And one of them is an alcoholic and I'm like, get that.

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Oh no. You know, and it's, I didn't want to, I don't want to typecast or cliche, but just the two.

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Cause like I said, there's no sense of urgency. Yeah. It's just so crazy that your eschatology shifting to that type of heretical eschatology.

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It really does. It kind of gives you a paradigm shift in everything. So saying that, and this being rather new seventies, um, well compared to church history, extremely new.

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Let me back up. So you had Russell, you had this preterism. Yeah. It's been around for quite some time. Sure. King was the first to take the thousand years and shrink it between the ascension of Christ and 70, 80.

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Okay. That's the, that's the thousand. You get everything in there. That's Don Preston, Mike Sullivan. Okay. Dave Carter.

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Yeah. Uh, I think Gary tomorrow now is, is doing that because he's with Kim Burgess now.

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So Gary's Gary's saying when you die, you get your body in heaven. You get a new body in heaven.

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Okay. So that's, that's resurrection. That's the body. Okay. Which is not a resurrection. No, no, it's definitely not.

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Resurrection means definitionally from, from death, from the right. I mean, from the dead last

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I checked that that's what it, you know, so Lazarus would be a good example. Yeah.

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Dead four days resurrection. So, so what, what prompted you or got you interested in, in this theology?

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What was your like upbringing and how did you get to that point? And cause you came out 2011, but when did you first identify, what year did you go?

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Yeah. I'm a, I'm a full preterist. Probably 92, 93, somewhere around there.

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Cause I was reading, okay. Preterist material. Uh, Garrett Marr, Ken Gentry, James B.

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Jordan, Gary Norris, David Chilton. Of course, he's probably most known.

20:58

Yeah. Um, but I came from a dispensationalist background.

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That's another interesting biography about a lot of full preterists. A lot of them.

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I won't say all of them, but a good deal of the ones, the hundreds of thousands that I've met, um, come from a dispensationalist background.

21:17

Okay. Why do you think that is? Well, you've got a movement that is wholly future.

21:23

Everything's future. Everything's put into the future at all, all or nothing. It all stands or falls together.

21:30

Interesting. So full preterism is all or nothing in the past. It all stands or falls together.

21:37

You can't, you can't break it apart. So if all of Matthew 24 is fulfilled, and even

21:45

Matthew 25, all of that's 70 AD, so is 1

21:50

Thessalonians 4. Right. So is 1 Corinthians 15. Yeah. They're talking about the same thing.

21:57

Yeah. So you can just flip a switch and go from future to past. Yeah. It's all bundled up in kind of the same.

22:04

I just connected the dots and thought, well, if Matthew 24 is fulfilled, all of it, every bit of it, um, 1

22:12

Thessalonians four, using the language of Matthew 24 is fulfilled.

22:17

All of revelation is fulfilled, which parallels the Olivet discourse there.

22:23

I think many scholars have noted that. So that's all fulfilled. So we're in the new heavens.

22:29

So what's preventing me from saying the resurrection of the dead? It can't be bodily resurrection, right?

22:36

Maybe it's spiritual resurrection. And there's certainly literature out there that talks about spiritual sharing made alive.

22:43

Yeah. Well, let's draw off of that. Um, certainly in Calvinist literature about, you know, dead men can't believe.

22:51

Yeah. So you start using that metaphor of dead men can't believe what they've come to life.

22:58

Regeneration had been walking. Yeah. So we use that. We, we were pulling out of that. And that's because we're constrained by our, the, the time text.

23:09

Now this generation, some of you standing here, so not taste death. You won't finish going through the cities of Israel until the son of man comes.

23:19

So that constrains your time. If everything is to be fulfilled in this generation,

23:25

Jesus is contemporary generation. Yeah. Well, then that includes resurrection of the dead, right?

23:32

So you're tied by that. Now you can't go outside of that. And if that's 70

23:37

AD, is that in point, then you have to define resurrection as taking place in 70

23:44

AD. Well, all the creeds and confessions and commentary say it's bodily resurrection. Well, that's fallible, right?

23:51

The scriptures are infallible. So there's a heavy, there's a heavy belief on the infallibility of the scriptures.

23:59

And so full preterists claim to believe in the infallibility of scriptures, but they have a disdain for creeds or keeping my max cream,

24:07

Don Preston or church Christ guys. Yeah. Any confessions, creeds, uh, anything like that is, is, is just man -made traditions.

24:17

Yeah. And does not overturn the rule of, well, generally when someone, when a group or someone or, you know, a sect, uh, interprets the

24:25

Bible very narrowly to fit something, they generally don't like creeds and confessions because those are the majority of what, what people have agreed upon in a majority, you know, um, for me now as an indicator of that's a red flag.

24:42

Yeah. I don't, I'm so scriptural. I believe in the ultimacy of scripture, obviously, but, but what's nice is the red flag.

24:51

What's, what's nice for them and those types. And I get this a lot. I have a large, uh, King James only church right around the corner from me.

24:57

And I've talked to them is they interpret it their way, but then they get to claim, well,

25:02

I believe in the inherency of scripture and, but my, my interpretation of the inherency of scripture, because no one here,

25:08

I don't think we're saying we don't believe in the inherency of scripture. We do believe in it, but it's one of those things where you can take very narrowly interpreter, interpreted a way that hasn't been historically interpreted through creeds and confessions.

25:18

And then, no, that that's my way. And that's inherent. So yeah, creeds and confessions kind of have to go. I think it was a legit, it was a deliberate term when they said the, the

25:27

Supreme authority, that's a superlative. It's not the only authority.

25:33

Yeah. So it's a Supreme among many other authorities. It's the Supreme that term implies that there's other authorities in church life.

25:43

So we're not saying that the Bible is the only authority. There's no other authorities at all.

25:50

Yeah. It's the Supreme appeal to. So it's the Supreme amongst these other authorities.

25:56

So what are these other authorities then? Well, yeah, creeds, confessions, sure.

26:02

Things stated in unity with other sure. Many emperors and Kings were Supreme authorities, but they had many governors and things like that below them that also held authority, but ultimate authority went to one.

26:12

You got to listen to them. Church theology is done within the community of the saints. It's right out of the vacuum.

26:18

So when you're going through that, let's go back to the nineties. Did you start to gravitate towards that?

26:24

Because you're going, okay, I'm reading some books. I'm also looking at the word. I'm looking at scripture. Was it something where you went, this makes like head sense to me or this, or I'm convinced because of these writings, what, like any theological decision where you go, okay, this is my systematic theology, or this is my doctrine.

26:43

Was it something that you just went, it made, like I said, it made, it just made, it looks like it cleaned everything up kind of a little bit for your eschatology.

26:54

Because we were, of course you get the, Jesus expected this to happen in his generation and it didn't happen.

27:02

You're faced with that criticism of the scriptures. Then Jesus obviously is not who he says he was, or he's an error in on some parts, or at least the

27:13

Bible is in the air written in the first century and they're expecting, you know, this eminent dawning of God and it doesn't happen.

27:22

Yeah. So that's critical. That's the higher criticism that we hear quite a bit. And that's pretty staple.

27:29

So on the flip side is Jesus can't be a failed prophet, but we'll agree with the critics that yes,

27:38

Jesus did expect this to happen in his time. So now we have to go back and redefine what fulfillment would look like.

27:48

Right. This is where we spiritualize. So that becomes our, that becomes our hermeneutic is to spiritualize everything.

27:56

So the sun turning to blood and all that, that's, that's apocalyptic language. It's just mere metaphor for a

28:03

Jewish war, which, and so that's where we do that kind of stuff. I'll tell you that they, yeah, this.

28:13

So as I've become more mature in my studies and getting involved in those who have actually done the work in apocalyptic literature, these are the scholars that are looking at the actual fragments of the tech.

28:29

You know, these are the ones that are being asked to translate share stuff and they work with us. So 50, 60 years, they've been doing this like John Collins and several, several others would never describe apocalyptic in that fashion.

28:44

Yes. It's, it's metaphorical, but it's more than just depicting a little skirmish or a war over here.

28:50

It's, this is decreation language. This is the way that it's used. Dead Sea Scrolls is using it clearly more than just a war is involved.

29:00

This is God breaking into and radically changing the landscape in terms of justice.

29:06

Yeah. There's not going to be any head scratching when this happens. You're going to, you're going to know it.

29:11

Yeah. Even though the nations are going to know it. Yeah. So it's that kind of in breaking of, of God and 70

29:18

AD has just in most churches is a forgotten or even known event.

29:27

Yeah. I never heard of it growing up. Very little was said to me when I grew up in Georgia. Not until I got to college.

29:32

Yeah. Me too. Early 20s. Then you find out Josephus and all that. Why didn't I? No one's ever talked. Well, yeah.

29:40

I mean, it's a war happened a long time ago. Where do you live? Okay. So two questions. Where are you now on your eschatology?

29:47

I'd be interested to know, cause I don't think we discussed that. And then two, I've always been very interested in seeing that the animal sacrifice stopped right around the same time that the temple was destroyed.

29:56

Where do we, I mean, I would say that could even give partial or full preterism, a little boost and go see that's the age we're talking about.

30:03

The age is over. No, I mean, that's a huge thing in Jewish history. You tell me for thousands of years, we have

30:08

Jewish sacrifice or Jewish, sorry, animal sacrifice. And then

30:13

Christ comes, rises, ascends, and now it's end. I mean, just even if you're a nonbeliever, you go, those two things happen really close together in history.

30:22

So it's interested me. So there's Jesus in Matthew 24, definitely mentions the events of what becomes the

30:31

Jewish war 66, 70 CE. So there's no, no one doubts this. And even in dispensationalist, whether it be

30:38

Thomas, uh, Tom Iser, you know, John Walbert or anybody that they're, they're going to mention this.

30:44

So that's, that's pretty stapled. The question is, is, is that the end all be all of what Jesus was talking about in that entire thing?

30:52

The, it was that the end was, was that the end of that age? Yeah. So that becomes then the key question.

30:58

Cause if you back up and go to Matthew 13, he gives a parable about the end of the age.

31:04

And he mentioned that phrase end of the age, when he will take out all that cause scandal and all who do wicked and bundle them up and throw them in to fire into the fire.

31:13

That would be at the end of the age. Well, okay. How do you explain for that in 70

31:19

AD? Well, okay. It doesn't mean the world, even though the parable says the field is the world.

31:25

Yeah. It's the Jewish world. And Jesus took out the wicked

31:30

Jews and burned them up in the fire. And so you see how you're kind of allegorizing now.

31:36

Yeah. It's a lot of mental acrobats you got to do to get there on that. You're constrained to do that kind of stuff.

31:43

And again, biblical scholars look at that and we'll say, that's a vicious bias. You're really reading into the text there.

31:51

I could see where you're doing that, but if, but if you're constrained by 70

31:58

AD, and that is the end point, that's the system you're viewing outside of that, then you have to do that kind of stuff.

32:06

You must do it. And does it make sense when you do it? The world is the

32:11

Jewish world and the Jews that crucified Jesus were burned up in 70

32:18

AD Titus burns down the temple and that's the world he's. Yeah. You can allegorize point by point that, but is that what that text is?

32:27

Really? Let's see what the scholars, let's see what the consensus is out here in the vast majority, liberal and conservative.

32:34

Or good hermeneutics letting the Bible interpret the Bible as well too. How would Jews have heard that?

32:40

Right. They thought, oh, he's just talking about. Yeah. So you read

32:46

Dead Sea Scrolls that uses that language. They're not talking about Jerusalem being involved in.

32:52

They're talking about a worldwide God making himself so known that it is impossible to deny.

33:01

Yeah, he has broke into the world or what we would call new heavens, new earth, second coming, whatever. Yeah. Resurrection of the dead, you know, all of that.

33:09

So we had to redefine these categories. Once you start doing that, we started realizing that progressive sanctification that's rooted in eschatology.

33:21

That's from what's our order of Saludis regeneration. Yeah. Glorification. Yeah. Right. Glorification is 70

33:29

AD and we're glorified now when we believe not according to biological change.

33:37

Right. But by spiritual change. How does that affect your ethics?

33:42

You still send. Oh, I don't really send not sin problems. You see where I have to redefine all of this.

33:50

Yeah. Literally your entire perspective on how you're going to view not only your own practical life, but the world around you and how you interpret the world around you.

33:59

So like Ukraine right now or Gaza, Israel, that's a mess. It's horrible. Yeah.

34:05

Well, that's well, is that the wrath of the wrath of God has been fulfilled. Don Preston will tell you the wrath of God has been fulfilled.

34:13

What is God doing now? What do you call it over there, too? And where are we going? Are we going anywhere in the.

34:19

Yeah. So that's where the disconnect there. And I think when you wonder when

34:25

I wandered that deep into it, because it's all shiny and new at first, 70

34:31

AD, it answers a lot of questions. Well, there's a lot of at hand, like Demar loves the at hand.

34:37

It's close. It's here. So you can kind of start there as a stepping stone. It goes, it kind of fits everything.

34:44

It's exciting. It's new. Got a hold of something here and 70 AD and Josephus and scholars and you're bringing all that together.

34:53

And then you got to start working on what Dr. Talbot, dean of Whitfield Theological Seminary, really hammered into because.

35:01

What about now? Yeah. What's God doing now? What's he up to? What are you doing now? What's the church doing now? Yeah. What are we?

35:08

Are we supposed to be socially involved? Does it matter? Yeah. If you just die and go to heaven.

35:14

What does it matter what we do here on earth? I mean, everyone's going to die and go to one place or the other. So what, what future do you have?

35:21

Why would you want to stop abortion? It's going to go on for infinity. So whatever we stop today is just going to crop up again for infinity for infinite problems of infinity philosophy or notorious.

35:33

The Greeks hated it. Yeah. Because whatever you stamp out now, if you have an infinite, well, it's not just pop back.

35:39

So yeah. What's the point? Yeah. You just died. Live your life. Do as best you can.

35:45

Very nihilist view. Yeah. So where do you, let's wrap this up.

35:53

Uh, we'll bookends on this one. Hopefully I've turned you, turned you against full. I've never, never was.

36:00

Uh, but in, in, I, I wasn't going to cover partial preterism with you because we've talked about it before.

36:05

And, and Jeremiah talked about a little bit, but I would say, where do you land now? Um, after all this, you've been through this journey.

36:11

Um, you have obviously have schooling and training and all these things you've gone through full preterism.

36:17

Where do you land now in your eschatology? And why I'm a millennial, I'm millennial, pretty comfortable there.

36:23

That let's, that's a very broad, that's it's, that's where I'm at. And I feel like it's the, I don't know.

36:29

And I don't get disgruntled by my dispensational friends. I've got a lot of, it doesn't bother me as, as what it used to when

36:37

I was 20, 30 years old. These are brothers in Christ.

36:44

We, and as Sam Walter here was just saying, we have that same boundary and hope the new heavens and the new earth and where God will make all things right.

36:57

Yeah. And we will live forever from all of the believers from Adam to the last day.

37:03

We'll all be in unity together, living together in perfect harmony with God and creation.

37:09

I, and that's my hope. And I long for it. I live for it. And now I have incentive.

37:14

Now I have incentive ethically correct my life because if that's where it's going perfection, well then

37:22

I want to, I want to be now on the road towards perfection. Sure. Now I have incentive. The full preterist doesn't have that.

37:29

That's been ripped out. So that's where I'm at. I would say too, just for the listeners, and I'm just talking to majorities here, not generalities, but probably majorities.

37:39

Look at dispensationalists, classic, classical, pre mills, post mills, and all mills can probably all disagree with each other, but still go, okay, not heretical, but all three of them can agree.

37:51

Most likely majority wise agree that full preterism is a heresy. And I think that's a difference we need listeners to understand too.

37:58

We're talking about something that really the majority of all other eschatology, you know, other views within eschatology, look at that and go, okay, that's not orthodox, right?

38:08

I think it needs to be condemned on that level. Love the full preterist and condemn the full preterist.

38:14

I hope to God I'm wrong, but I feel what you're doing is very important for the next 10, 20 years, because we are on a secular path of where there's lawlessness and, hey, do what you feel and your truth, and that's leaking into eschatology and theology within the church, right?

38:31

You have a very woke, liberal kind of leftist understanding in some of these churches. Well, the natural progression of that would be, hey, man, it's all fulfilled and we have problems.

38:42

We just don't have sin. We just need a good therapy session once a week at church, our TED talk, right?

38:48

We've got counseling programs. I mean, it's really, I've seen megachurches that act like that, that really function like that, you know, and I'm sure you've been in a way.

38:56

So I think what you're doing and talking about this is very important because I could see it being a very big issue for the church, if not nipped in the bud, you know, people like you are there and going, oh no, no,

39:08

I've been through it. I understand it. It's heresy and here's why. So I'm glad that Jeremiah brought you back in.

39:15

He's the, not Al Pacino. I would be the Al Pacino. You're the Al Pacino.

39:20

I'm the Al Pacino. Yeah. Well, Dr. Sam Frost, thank you so much for being on Dead Men Walking Podcast.

39:27

Anytime you want to come back on and discuss stuff, we'd love to have you, but obviously we do stuff over streaming as well too, but it's so good to meet you here at this conference and looking forward to the rest of it.

39:37

Guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. As always, you can find us at dmwpodcast .com.

39:43

Got some snarky t -shirts there. The Wynham Dynam Romans Nynam, great t -shirt, good conversation starter.

39:49

Go grab it, support the show. And as always, remember the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

39:54

God bless. And we have Austin Keeler with us. Is that, we said that right? Austin Keeler. I just met him this week.

40:01

I had seen him on some of his videos on social media, which I believe you're part of the Holy Nope brand.

40:07

Is that correct? That's correct. Holy Nope. So if you guys are watching this and you go, I recognize that mustache, he's here in person.

40:17

So we're going to talk to him a little bit. Tell us a little bit about yourself so the listeners can get to know you if they don't know you and where they can find you at online.

40:23

Yeah, I am a former missionary to West Africa and now based in Shelbyville, Kentucky, one of the pastors at Reformation Church located over there.

40:35

And the Holy Nope is a ministry I started really last year, I think.

40:41

And it was really an accident. I think I was making content for a completely different purpose on TikTok.

40:50

And what I needed was, I needed a filler. I needed a filler kind of content that I could just put up quickly when

40:59

I didn't have time to make anything more substantial, longer.

41:06

And so I came up with the Holy Nope and well, that started to blow up. People love the

41:11

Holy Nope. And what I realized was that when I would post this funny or shocking video, people would come in and they'd be introduced to me, but then they'd stay for the substantial stuff.

41:23

And so I realized I've got something here. Oh, you totally do. Because it's a great hook too.

41:29

If you guys haven't seen any of the videos, it's you. I'm here on the Lord's Day.

41:35

It'll open with you opening the Bible. You sit down in the pew. And then it's just some insanity that we have out there right now in the

41:42

Christian community, or if you can sometimes not even call it the Christian community, of just heretical preaching or antics on stage.

41:50

It's Nope, right? Shut the Bible and walk out. And I just love it because the

41:55

Nope resonates. I've had that response before I even found you of just, Nope, I can't even deal with this right now.

42:02

This is so insane. And in my thought going, how do people attend these churches or listen to these pastors or preachers?

42:10

So I think there's a reason why it has resonated in millions and millions of views, because it kind of gets to the heart of the issue of the church culture we're living in right now.

42:18

Yeah, it is relatable. And it's very effective, I think, at opening up further conversations about why this is wrong.

42:26

And one of the greatest ways to preach a truth is to contrast it against the error.

42:33

And so that's what the Holy Nope is doing in those short videos is exposing the error.

42:39

It opens up the conversation. And I've had so many people reach out to me who have grown up in these spiritually abusive environments, just watching the videos and Noping them along with me is almost like a healing process for them.

42:59

So I'm very thankful that the Lord is blessing it. So what kind of content were you creating before to where this was just kind of a side accident?

43:07

I was theological apologetics kind of stuff. I'm also an evangelist with Reformation Frontline Missions.

43:14

And so I also create content that is more geared for the public proclamation of the gospel and equipping the church to do that on the corporate level.

43:24

Yeah, that's interesting. So what's your story a little bit? Did you grow up in the church? Did you go through different denominations?

43:32

Have you always been in the reform camp? I'm always interested to find out that little mini testimony of how you came to be. Yeah, so I was sprinkled actually, as a baby.

43:40

That never meant anything to me. I grew up in the youth group.

43:46

So hey, now you're talking to a good reform Presbyterian. Okay, well, I didn't stick. That's okay.

43:54

You're still in the covenant. You had the blessings. Yeah, I ended up in the

43:59

Christian Missionary Alliance, which is not a reformed denomination, though. I landed there after I was converted and immediately started reforming.

44:09

But I was there, had connections there, went to West Africa with them, came back, continued reforming, and just came to a place where we could no longer abide theologically nor methodologically with it.

44:24

So we embraced the 1689, led my family through that.

44:31

The second best confession behind Westminster. That's great. Right, just a little more reform. I like you.

44:38

I like people who punch back. All right. So you had that journey. Now, you got to tell me about how do you end up in West Africa?

44:46

Like, how do you go, that's where I'm going on missions? And how did missions even come about? Did you have a heart for that early on?

44:51

Or did you feel the Lord leading you there? What happened there? Yeah, I began evangelizing pretty immediately after I was converted.

44:59

And my wife is actually African. She's a white woman, but she was born in the

45:05

Congo because her missionaries have been, I mean, her parents have been missionaries over there for 40 plus years.

45:11

And so she was actually going there, planning to end up, I think, in like Sudan or something.

45:17

And then she met me and I ruined all her plans. So we got married. We wanted to do that.

45:24

Felt like to do that, prepared to do that. And spent a couple of years in Burkina Faso, supporting a local church, going out into the bush to support village pastors by drilling wells for them, which was a great, great testimony because in these villages in the middle of nowhere, it's a largely

45:43

Muslim kind of region. And when the Muslims have a well, they won't share their water with the

45:50

Christians. And so getting these small church of believers, a clean well, and then they share that and they're able to preach

45:59

Christ as the living water. It's a good thing. Which is really, I got to imagine, is the life spring of a community if you don't have drinking water and then you come in and you provide drinking water.

46:12

I mean, that's everything for a small community like that, isn't it? Yeah. So you did that.

46:19

And how long ago was that? We got back 2017 from that.

46:24

Yeah. So quite a while. So now you're back in doing that. You've got the

46:29

TikTok stuff. Do apologetics just on TikTok or are you on other social media platforms?

46:36

Well, yeah. I mean, we're on Facebook and Instagram as well. We've moved away from your typical apologetics and are focusing on equipping the church for public proclamation.

46:48

So that's Reformation Frontline Missions. But the Holy Nope is on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and all that stuff.

46:57

Let me ask you something because this is becoming... In the last year, I've seen the term discernment ministry more than I have in the previous 30 years.

47:06

Do you get bugged by that term if someone were to call you, oh, well, if you do anything that kind of criticizes or critiques a ministry that you're a discernment ministry?

47:17

I think Justin Peters would be one of the more popular ones. And I just go, we just find these new terms that we just love.

47:25

And now people are picking on discernment ministries and can you be one? Do you consider yourself that or no?

47:31

Proclamation of the gospel is what you're doing. I never considered myself as a discernment ministry until people started calling me that.

47:41

Oh no, I just perpetuated them. It never entered my mind. He isn't a discernment ministry. I mean, what even is it?

47:47

I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I guess I am trying to equip believers to exercise discernment.

47:56

We all should be in a little bit of a discernment ministry. I think so, yeah. But yeah, I think the main heart behind it all is the promotion of truth and the proclamation of the gospel.

48:06

I just had somebody message me on Instagram just a couple of days ago that the

48:13

Lord has been performing them for the last several weeks and he chose to use my content.

48:18

And they're leaving their Pentecostal church because they've seen all the error within and they're reforming.

48:25

And so I'm following up with him, sending him resources and things like that. I've said for many, many years and many times on this podcast, hardcore

48:35

Pentecostalism is one of the greatest evangelistic tools for Calvinists there is. I came out of that.

48:40

I've met a lot of people who just went, it went so far that I had to start actually removing traditions and reading the

48:46

Bible. And lo and behold, I stumbled upon the doctrines of grace. And you're like, God is good then. So you were a speaker here, you spoke yesterday at this

48:55

Y -Calvinism conference. Can you just give the listeners a little five -minute, 10 -minute preview or five -minute preview of what you talked about and what kind of the subject was for those who couldn't attend?

49:05

Sure. My text was 1 Peter 2, verses 6 -10. And I think the main thesis is that our

49:14

Calvinism isn't anything that we need to be ashamed of in all of its sharpness, its rough edges.

49:21

I gave the illustration of an alligator that a man bound up in order to remove the threat of its claws and its teeth.

49:29

And my topic was Calvinism in the gospel. And the issue today is that many, even those who call themselves reformed, feel like they need to take

49:40

Calvinism out of the gospel in order to make it more palatable for those who don't understand it or for those who are hostile against it.

49:49

And I think some of that is a legitimate concern because there are so many poor misrepresentations of biblical

49:58

Calvinism out there. But we need not be ashamed of the doctrine of the Bible, of the gospel of the

50:04

Bible, as Spurgeon called it in that quote. And we need to understand, especially from that text in 1

50:11

Peter, that men are going to stumble over the biblical gospel. And we don't need to sharpen its edges, and we don't need to be ashamed.

50:19

God is sovereign over those whom he has elected to his salvation and over those whom he has appointed to doom with Christ being the stone set intentionally in their way for them to stumble over.

50:32

He's sovereign. And so when we go and preach the gospel, we know that there are many outcomes of that.

50:41

There are many responses to that. And so the word of God proclaimed, the gospel of the

50:48

Bible proclaimed, is always effective. But it's not always effective for salvation.

50:53

Sometimes it's effective for the hardening of the sinner. Sometimes it's effective to be the

50:59

Christ presented as the stone over which men stumble.

51:04

And God is glorified in all of those outcomes of gospel proclamation. Yeah, no, that's good.

51:11

So when you, I always like to ask this question too from someone who came from maybe a different view and then came into Reformed faith or Calvinistic view, what was the biggest change when that theology changed for you?

51:27

Was it how you viewed God, how you viewed yourself, how to read the scripture? What was it for you?

51:33

You know, for me coming out of, you know, very legalistic when I was younger, kind of fundamentalism, then into very

51:41

Pentecostal, a big pendulum swing, and then coming into the doctrines of grace and Reformed theology, there was a lot of changes there for me on how

51:49

I viewed God and myself. Was that similar for you, or what was the biggest thing that changed for you?

51:55

You know, I think it wasn't so much as a big change happening, but just a very slow, steady reformation over time.

52:03

I realized a few months after being converted that I was a Calvinist. And I had entered this missionary training school that was like a five -month intensive program, so we spent a week on Calvinism and Arminianism, and we watched this video that was going through the five points, and after that video,

52:21

I said, hey, that's what I believe, right? Because that's what I've been reading in scripture. I just, I never,

52:27

I didn't have a name for it. Of course, I was given some dirty looks by my other classmates.

52:34

Wait a minute, so the video was giving you the five points of Arminianism and Calvinism? Just of Calvinism and how it was a response to Arminianism.

52:44

Why were they showing you that video before missions? Because it was, it was, it was just a week, it was like a topic, everything.

52:51

So it was kind of brushing up on everything. Talking about salvation, right? And so it was trying to give an unbiased look at here's, you know, what the

53:00

Bible says, Arminianism, and then, and then here's Calvinism. And I landed on the

53:06

Calvinist side. I was like, hey, yeah. So, so then, so that was, that was pretty easy for me.

53:11

And then, you know, reforming in terms of ecclesiology, I think was especially, especially crucial in my walk.

53:18

I wanted to plant churches and then I realized that, well, I don't really know what the church is.

53:26

And so, so yeah, the Lord is faithful to, to lead me through all of that.

53:32

Yeah. I think conferences like this are good just because, also too, because of that response to I tell people many times on this podcast, too, part of my testimony is

53:41

I was a closeted Calvinist for eight years, walking around with this theology and going, I can't be one of those.

53:47

I grew up thinking those guys are heretics and right. And then the Lord opening my eyes to church history and, and you know, going, wait a minute, we sing amazing grace and John Newton was reformed.

53:57

Wait a minute, I grew up reading Pilgrim's Progress and he was reformed. And wait a minute, we have a Matthew Henry commentary and he was reformed.

54:03

And wait a minute, the greatest preacher, the sermon was preached by Jonathan Edwards. He was reformed. And wait a minute, you know, my pastor quoted, you know, all these guys and they're reformed and going, oh, this is, this isn't some little minority sect.

54:16

This is full, rich church history and all these things. But people always giving me, giving you kind of a side eye when you say reformed or Calvinism.

54:24

But then also realizing in times of trouble, people are Calvinistic. When they have an unsaved loved one, they're

54:31

Calvinistic. Every funeral people become very Calvinistic. Well, the Lord has plans or Lord, save him or, you know what

54:39

I mean? Oh, Lord, help me through this time and take me out of it. We really trusted his sovereignty in those times.

54:47

But then a lot of people give you a side eye when you say the C word. And that kind of really sparked something in me going, okay, do we need a marketing department for Calvinism?

54:58

Because many of the, you know, many of these people believe in these things, but look at it as, and I think honestly,

55:06

I mean, tell me if you agree, I think the Western Christian church hasn't done us any favors and the pastors haven't done us any favors and even church teaching church history and early fathers and things like that.

55:17

Yeah, I think there's a... That's tough when you have a guy that's been in church 30 years and outside of his two or three talking points, he can't tell you a lot about his own faith.

55:26

Right. And we see that Catholicism as well, too. You know, you meet Catholics, they don't even know their own dogma. You go, do you understand that this is what the

55:34

Pope is? And, oh, I'm just a good Catholic. I go to mass and, you know, and we have that kind of an evangelicalism too within the

55:40

Western church of they don't even know their own church history or Christology or anything.

55:46

And I'm not saying that from a place of being condescending because believe me, I don't know everything and nor do I say

55:51

I do, but the passion needs to be there for us, especially for those non -reformed, non -Calvinists to bring them in and say, look, let's just look at this as a whole.

56:01

Let's just remove the traditions, read the word of God and let's see where it takes us. And nine times out of 10, it's going to take you into a reformed faith,

56:09

I find. I think so. I think you're right. Are you kind of there too? Well, yeah, I think an ignorance of church history is, of course, a great malady.

56:16

It keeps so many people just ignorant and trapped in traditions.

56:24

And I think it is one of the factors leading to the great plague of biblical illiteracy.

56:32

But I think when we shrink back from using those terms like Calvinist, even though we get the side eyes and all of that, then we're not having the conversations and clarity is not being brought to the issue and the problem is perpetuated.

56:45

So I'm, you know, talk about fight or flight. I'm more of a fight guy. Like, let's just hash it out.

56:51

Let's get it clear. Let's get offended if we need to and then reconcile and let's get through this thing.

56:58

I don't want to hide my Calvinism. Oh, no, not at all. And look, I went through a cage stage as well.

57:04

And I think we should use theology as a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, right? Sure. And the

57:10

Lord sanctifies us and kind of brings us into wisdom and discernment as we grow. And just to say, too,

57:15

I'm not sitting here railing on pastors. I'm not a pastor. We had Tom Askew on the podcast and he said it.

57:23

Why do we have all these issues, Tom? What's going on? He goes, we've had TED Talks for the last 50 years in the pulpit.

57:30

He squarely puts America's downfall right now on pastors in the

57:35

American church, not preaching the gospel, not evangelizing correctly, not exegeting the word.

57:41

And I just went, yeah, there's pastors out there that understand that. They have a responsibility.

57:47

You know, Ezekiel 37, being a shepherd is a very high calling.

57:53

And unfortunately, we treat pastors kind of like Oprah treats cars. You're a pastor. You're a pastor. You get to be a pastor.

57:59

Yeah. You know, but I'm getting on a soapbox. So let's finish this up. Tell everyone where they can find you.

58:04

I'll make sure we link everything up, too, and this goes live so they can just click on you and find you. But go ahead and tell people where they can find you online.

58:10

And yeah, you can find the Holy Nope on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.

58:16

So everywhere. And yeah, pretty much everywhere. So not LinkedIn, though, or anything like that. No, no,

58:22

LinkedIn. Holy Nope, LinkedIn Corporation, the CEO of Holy Nope. I love it. Austin, anytime you want to come back on, come back.

58:28

We get to, you know, an in -length discussion on a subject. Your brother -in -law, we love what you're doing.

58:34

And guys, make sure you go check him out. Follow him and check out some of the resources he has.

58:40

As always, guys, remember the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We'll see you next time.

58:45

God bless. Hey, guys, we're back here at the Why Calvinism conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Day three.

58:52

And having a good time. Lots of fellowship. Lots of great preaching. And we have one of the speakers here with us.

58:59

He's been on the podcast before. He was here last year. Dr. Michael Schultz. How are you, sir? I'm phenomenal.

59:04

How are you doing, Greg? Good, man. I got to tell you, just personally getting to know you a little bit more this weekend, too.

59:10

Just really love your countenance, love how you view the

59:15

Word of God, how you preach it. And then even talking last night a little bit. We're staying in the same house and getting to know you and your experiences and your wife a little bit more.

59:25

It's been a real blessing. It's great talking with you guys. I love, although you guys stay up way too late. I have to go to the house where, you know, we sleep.

59:35

It's separately. I've got a separate house for sleeping because you guys stay up two, three in the morning and I just can't. I can't run with you dogs, but it's great to know you.

59:43

The first night I was up late, that second night, I was like, guys, I drove nine hours down here.

59:48

I had an 18 -hour day yesterday. I got to go to bed. But some of these guys, man, up all night talking about the

59:54

Lord. But you know, when you're passionate about talking about those things, too, the time kind of flies, especially when you get preachers in the room that don't all necessarily agree on the same thing.

01:00:02

It's fun to watch them kind of, you guys go back and forth. But tell me a little bit about what you talked about at the conference here.

01:00:10

Give us like a little five, 10 minute for those listeners who couldn't make the conference or who might not be able to go through all the videos that are posted.

01:00:18

What was your subject and what did you get into? So my subject was Calvinism and the love of God.

01:00:23

Yeah. And that's a that's a hot topic issue because many people, both Calvinist and non, believe that God doesn't love everyone.

01:00:32

They believe that Calvinists specifically don't believe that God loves everyone. And so that was something that I wanted to tackle from the position of a

01:00:40

Calvinist, but also looking at the Calvinist in our community and addressing that as what I believe is an error.

01:00:45

And so my text was Mark 10, 17 through 27, which is the rich young ruler. And you see in that text that Jesus, first of all, he teaches total depravity, which

01:00:55

I'm not so bold as to say Jesus was a Calvinist. I don't like that terminology. Right. But he clearly believed in what we now call total depravity.

01:01:04

He taught that later in that passage. He talks about how that it's impossible for anybody to be saved without God intervening, which we would essentially say that's total depravity.

01:01:13

It also goes in with unconditional election and limited atonement and irresistibility of the spirit. So there's there's so much there that we now call

01:01:20

Calvinism. But right in the middle of that text, you have this unfathomable, unexpected love of God that's proclaimed for a man that is clearly lost, who walks away lost.

01:01:32

And so that was a big emphasis in the sermon was getting this across that even though Jesus taught what we now teach as Calvinism in many ways, and he was emphatic with this man that he needed to repent, that he needed to change his life.

01:01:48

He still maintained that he loved him, that Jesus Christ in the flesh, God, the man loved this lost man despite his sin and whilst also calling him to repentance.

01:01:59

So that was the emphasis of the sermon that God does love, but in loving, he calls us to repent.

01:02:07

So I think that's an important thing for us to carry forward that God does love and that love is specific in calling us to repentance.

01:02:14

So are there two different kinds of love? Because we live in a society, especially in the

01:02:19

English language event, where someone can love their wife and they also love pizza, right? And it's like, what are we talking about here?

01:02:25

Like, love. There's such a wide range when we say love, and we see this also, well,

01:02:30

Jesus loves everyone. Well, hold on, what are we talking about there? So are there different types of love?

01:02:36

Is there like a salvific love versus a familiar love? Like, what are we talking about there?

01:02:42

Yeah, absolutely. So there are theologically and historically, Christians have identified the love of God as being threefold.

01:02:50

We call it the benevolent love of God, the beneficent love of God, and the complacent love of God. Those terms are somewhat antiquated.

01:02:57

You might not know what they mean right off the bat. The benevolent love of God refers to God's disposition, His very being.

01:03:03

This is 1 John 4, God is love. Obviously, without anything to even express that love towards other than the

01:03:09

Trinity, God was already loving. The Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Spirit, the Spirit loved the

01:03:15

Father, so on and so forth. So without ever creating anything, God already was love. Then you have the beneficent love of God.

01:03:22

That word, we might associate it with benefit. So this is the way that God pours love on individuals or things or creatures.

01:03:28

So think of Matthew 5, God makes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust, the rain to fall on the good and the wicked.

01:03:35

And in that passage, He actually says, so love your enemies so that you may become the sons of your Father. So Jesus is teaching us that God does love

01:03:42

His enemies. He loves the people that we gather in other passages, like Psalm 55, God hates sinners.

01:03:48

God also loves that same person in an active way and a dispositional way.

01:03:53

The final love of God, that complacency, we might not use the word complacency that way anymore.

01:04:00

What we would call it is a love of satisfaction or a love of pleasure. This love is reserved for the regenerated, the

01:04:07

Church. And this would be something along the lines of, without faith, it is impossible to please

01:04:12

God. God cannot be pleased with you unless you are acting in faith. Anything not done in faith is sin,

01:04:18

Paul says. So God has a special love that He feels, this pleasurable, satisfied love for the

01:04:26

Church. But He has also this dispositional love that He feels towards everything indiscriminately and an active love that He expresses towards also the good and the wicked indiscriminately.

01:04:37

That love does not necessarily mean that you will be saved, as we see in Mark 10.

01:04:42

This guy walks away lost despite Jesus loving him. So that is one big misunderstanding in the

01:04:48

American Church is the idea that if God loves you, you will be saved. That is not the case. God certainly loves individuals that will not be saved.

01:04:57

And we have a difficulty understanding this. Calvin in his commentary of Mark 10, 21, he says

01:05:02

Jesus simultaneously loved and hated this man. And we have a hard time understanding that.

01:05:09

And the example that I use is if you had a child who was a grown adult and they fell into drug abuse, and they wasted their life, they ruined themselves, they lost all their money, they came to you, you tried to help them, but what they did was they robbed you, or they stole from you, or they harmed you.

01:05:24

And it got to the point where you just said, I can't help you anymore. I can't even try to help you anymore. Because you have become a person,

01:05:34

I hate everything that you are. You're a liar, a thief, and you're not the person that I've known my whole life.

01:05:40

I hate everything that you are. But nevertheless, they're your child, and you'll always love them. Even though you'd say,

01:05:46

I love you, but I hate everything that you are. And we understand that.

01:05:53

But we have a difficult, we have a hard time admitting that God can also love and hate an individual at the exact same time.

01:06:02

But I think it's perfectly biblical and logical to say, yes, God loves and hates individuals at the same time.

01:06:09

Yeah. So what would you say if I'm playing devil's advocate, and you have someone that comes up, and maybe they're just asking simple questions, and they say something like, well, if God truly loved them, then why wouldn't he love them with the salvific love to save them?

01:06:25

Is it really love if it's not going as far to save them from their sins?

01:06:31

Do we get back into a doctrine of election there on that answer? What would you say to someone that might say that?

01:06:36

I'll put you on the spot, but I think you can handle it. That's a great question. And it is a question that'll come, and probably in the comment section. This is one of the things.

01:06:45

What should God love most supremely? What should God love most?

01:06:50

What should he love with the highest regard? God should love himself the most.

01:06:56

God should love his own goodness the most. He should love his own purity. And with all that, God should love his own glory the most.

01:07:05

So if you say, why, if God loves these people, why doesn't he love them savingly? God has decided of his own goodwill that this is getting into Romans 9,

01:07:15

Kevin Hay's message. God has decided of his own goodwill that it is somehow more glorifying to him to express wrath on some individuals.

01:07:26

And in loving his own glory, he has chosen rightly to glorify himself by expressing his wrath.

01:07:35

So when we say, if God loves them, why doesn't he save them? What we're saying is God should love them more than he loves his own glory.

01:07:43

And that's simply a problem of the human experience. God should love us more than he loves himself.

01:07:51

God should love us more than he loves his glory. That's simply not the case. So if God loves you, but he does not save you, he does not save you because he has of his own goodwill chosen to express his glory by exercising wrath on you.

01:08:06

And that does bring him glory, which he loves. But from the perspective of the person being damned, we say,

01:08:14

I don't like that answer. Yeah. Well, then Romans 9, you know? Yeah. No, and I've talked about that before.

01:08:21

That was a turning point for me as someone who always thought I deserved the truth and I deserve an answer and, you know, from other people and seeking after it.

01:08:30

And then in my early 20s, coming to Romans 9, and I'm going, oh, finally, Paul's going to answer it.

01:08:35

Well, if some are vessels of wrath and some are vessels of glory, like, why does he find fault? And the answer was, you don't get to ask

01:08:42

God that because you're the clay. You're not the potter. And I went, oh, wow, that's the high view of God that I have to—it really hurt my pride in a good way, though, right?

01:08:53

Tore down the flesh. It goes—and many people don't like that answer. They don't like the going, well, you don't get to ask that.

01:09:01

And we don't like it as children when the parent lovingly says, no, that's not for you, or you don't get to do that.

01:09:07

What does our flesh do, right, as children? We rage, throw a temper tantrum. And I feel like sometimes it took me—I was throwing a theological temper tantrum at God.

01:09:17

You have to tell me why, right? And we have all these reasons why, and we get in, you know, all that. But I feel that very high view of God, and when

01:09:24

I say that, I even misunderstood having a high view of God. Early in my days of understanding, okay,

01:09:31

I'm Reformed and Calvinistic, and just thinking, oh, you just think He's very powerful. Well, no, having the high view of God that He's ultimate, just like you said, that you hold

01:09:41

His glory in such high esteem that you can understand that God has to love His glory more than He can love that sinner.

01:09:49

And that's the right thing to do. It's not a choice. It's not arbitrary. It's not that He's choosing to love Himself more than us. It's the correct thing.

01:09:55

What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That's the purpose for which we were created, and it's the right thing.

01:10:02

That's the right thing to create humans for, to glorify Him, because He deserves it.

01:10:08

It's not arbitrary. That's right. I find it's really tough for a lot of believers, though, who have sat in churches under TED Talks for 10 or 20 years, and I'm kind of being a little derogatory, but I've seen it over and over, that we don't get into this deepness of God and wrestle with those things, and we go through life, and they're saved.

01:10:31

I believe that, but they have a construed view of who God is, His character, and it just breaks my heart, and I'm not saying this from a place of pride or condescension.

01:10:43

Believe me, I don't have everything figured out, but whatever the Lord revealed to me in understanding how low

01:10:50

I am and how high and beautiful and righteous and holy and just He is, it's a life -changing event.

01:10:58

It just shifts your paradigm and how you view everything, and I think that's why this conference is important.

01:11:05

What you speak on is important. Probably, I would say, one of the harder subjects because, boy, is that the number one objection

01:11:12

I get if my kind of theology comes up, oh, well, you guys believe that God just loves a few people and hates everyone else.

01:11:21

I mean, that is the go -to, that and the robot, right? We all get that. Oh, just all robots, and it's so sad because it's so much deeper and richer and ingrained in the

01:11:31

Word of God than that, so I do appreciate you being part of this conference, too, and delivering that word.

01:11:37

I didn't get to listen to all of it. I've told people I'm in and out, and I'm hosting and doing things. I'm glad it's being recorded, and the listeners here, you guys,

01:11:44

I'll make sure I share it on our pages when Jeff gets all of the videos up so you can go back and watch those, and I'm gonna make sure

01:11:50

I go back and watch yours, too, because this isn't something to kind of puff you up, but I had multiple people come up to me going, that's when you should have been in the whole thing.

01:12:01

That was unbelievable, so the Lord used you in a powerful way to preach on that, and other than that, what else you got going on?

01:12:09

As we finish up here, what are you doing? Are you online anywhere? Can people find you?

01:12:15

I mean, what do you got coming up? I know you pastor, and that keeps you busy, but what's going on? Yeah, so I don't social media much.

01:12:21

I'm not on Twitter. I have an Instagram, but it's stagnant. Yeah, right. I just stay off. I feel like I don't have that much to say, honestly, and what

01:12:28

I do have to say isn't very good, so, you know, it doesn't need to be, you know, kept forever.

01:12:35

People don't really need to be hearing Michael Schultz for generations to come. That's my opinion, but... Plug your wife's book, if you don't mind, because I'm going to link that up, because we were talking last night, and that is very interesting.

01:12:46

Yeah, so my wife's name is Storm Schultz, just like the weather, Storm Schultz, and she writes mostly young adult

01:12:53

Christian fiction, but she recently published a book called Joy, and it's just Storm Schultz, Joy, and what it is is a book that's written from the perspective of a

01:13:03

Christian, two other Christian mothers in particular, who have experienced the loss of a child, and the book is specifically about the experience of trying to conceive or having another child after having lost one, because we've lost two children, and after the first loss, the child that we've named

01:13:28

Noah, we had a conception, and they call it a rainbow baby, and the child we named

01:13:35

Fiona Joy, and so that was sort of that homage to that, that this was our joy comes in the morning, because there are so many women who have lost, and they don't know how to move forward.

01:13:46

They are scared to get pregnant, and when they do, they're scared the entire pregnancy, and they just want everything to go well.

01:13:55

It's a very difficult thing, so I love this book. I think that any woman who has ever experienced loss will greatly benefit from it.

01:14:03

It's written from the heart of somebody who's been there, and I think you'd greatly benefit from it from a

01:14:09

Christian perspective, showing how that God can work in that, and how that He is still good, and if I can, before we stop,

01:14:16

I just want to say to the men, I've not written any book from this, because there's an absence there. Most men who experience miscarriage, they just become very quiet about it, but when we found out that Noah had passed in the womb, we had to go to a larger hospital to get confirmation, and then schedule a

01:14:34

DNC, and the pregnancy health center that we were at that told us that the child was gone, they gave us a gift card to a gas station so we could get gas and go to the hospital, and as I was pumping gas,

01:14:47

I remember standing there by my car, and the words that came into my head were, this is the day that the

01:14:52

Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it, and I remember thinking, that is such a weird thing for me to be thinking right now, because my child just died, but this is the truth, that in the fiercest pain that we ever experience, in the lowest moments of our lives, this is still the day that the

01:15:10

Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it, and we must keep our eyes upon Jesus, He is always there in the darkness with us, and so, mothers or fathers that have lost their children,

01:15:21

I love you, my heart goes out to you, I pray you will pick up a copy of that book, Joy, you can find it online for free, you don't have to purchase it, it's electronically available online, but I obviously would really appreciate you purchasing my wife's book, because that helps her, number one, it helps her to write more, but it also, we want to get that book into pregnancy health centers and places where women might experience this and be going through that, and that sort of funds that as well, that she can get author copies at a lower rate, but it still costs her, so we want to get that out to women as much as we can, so I would really appreciate anybody going through that.

01:15:54

That's awesome, and then the young adult fiction, what are the age ranges for that?

01:15:59

I have some daughters that are... Yeah, so this is a big gap in Christian young adult fiction. They're always looking for something good.

01:16:05

That's right, so most of the stuff that she writes is aimed at 10 to 14, well, let me say 10 to 16 year olds, because there's a big life change that occurs when you're 16, you get that driver's license, and all of a sudden the world is your oyster, you know, but for the kids between 10 and 16, you're going through puberty, you're awkward, you're weird, and your parents don't know what to do with you, because you're not the kid that they've raised this whole time, you're very different, you don't particularly like them anymore, because they're not cool, and that's an awkward age, and so you're starting to get into dating maybe, and some of these things that are new, and so she writes that, she's got one that's a romantic comedy called

01:16:48

Meant to Be, she's got another one that just came out that's more aimed at young adults in that age range called

01:16:54

Hey Jude Carpenter, so she's really good, I think, of course I'm biased, but I think that kids in that age range as well as adults and parents that can just look at their kids and go, yeah, that's exactly what they're going through,

01:17:08

I think that it's really good stuff, so yeah, Meant to Be, Hey Jude Carpenter, and Joy by Storm Schultz.

01:17:14

Awesome, Storm Schultz, cool, we'll link everything up, guys, for you listening, you can, on this episode, whether you're watching it on YouTube or getting it on your podcast site, it'll be linked up, such a blessing to hang out with you, man, and just fellowship with you, and hear you speak, and get to know you a little bit more, thanks so much for coming on.

01:17:32

Thank you, Greg, I can officially say you're my favorite Presbyterian. All right, that's good, coming from you, that's a lot, guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast, we're gonna push these all together, you've probably heard a couple other speakers on this episode, but this one will be the one we button it up with, as always, remember the chief end of man is to glorify

01:17:51

God and enjoy him forever, God bless. If you're a business that needs to reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers, then your demographic podcast advertising might be for you.