April 3, 2024 Show “The Partial Preterist Debate” with Jay Rogers (Postmillenial Preterist) vs. Roderick Edwards (Non-Preterist) (Part 2)

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Today is day number two of our two -day debate on partial preterism, and our debaters, again, are

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Jay Rogers, who is a post -millennial preterist.

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His website is forerunner .com, F -O -R -E -runner .com, and he is a published author on the subject of the debate of partial preterism.

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And we also have, taking the view of non -preterism,

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Roderick Edwards. Roderick Edwards is also a published author who has written on this subject, and his website is rodericke .com,

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rodericke .com. During the second day of the two -day debate, our specific theme will be, all forms of preterism are unbiblical.

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And taking that position, agreeing with that thesis statement, is Roderick Edwards, and he now has ten minutes for an opening statement.

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All right. Can you hear me all right? Just making sure? Yep. Okay. Just a way of introduction, in case some people weren't here yesterday.

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I am an ex -full preterist, have not been a full preterist since the year 2007. I was a full preterist for about 15 years.

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As you said, I write books, including four on preterism. A little bit of housekeeping, yesterday, close to the end of the program, we talked about David Chilton, and I made a claim that there is a claim that he was a full preterist at some point in his life.

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He did claim he was a full preterist, maybe he didn't quite understand what it was at the time, because we said this is fairly new, but he has a publisher, he had a publisher when he was living, named

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Gary North, who said this, quote -unquote, as the publishers of the Days of Vengeance and Paradise Restored, let me say, without hesitation, that the post -1994

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David Chilton is indeed a heretic who has denied the Church's historic creeds and confessions on the questions of second coming and Christ and the final judgment.

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Now, whatever happened afterwards, I don't know, but I just want to make sure it's clear that I'm just not making that up, there's other people who said that, including his own publisher.

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Now, moving on, today's debate topic, as you said, is how all forms of preterism are unbiblical.

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But how can I say that? Because yesterday, I made the assertion that in the debate, and admitted that you can interpret some texts preteristically.

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Well, this brings us to a recent statement by someone else who I interacted with as this debate was being developed, and they said to me,

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Roderick, I still wish you were willing to actually debate your view on exegetical terms.

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But what is exegetical or exegesis, which is a root term for it, simplified, it simply means out of or from the text, whereas eisegesis means into the text.

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Supposedly, when someone is looking at the Bible exegetically, they are only getting their conclusions from the

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Bible, no other place, exegetically. However, as we've seen, this does not mean their interpretation is correct.

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It just means that's where they're getting it from. Yesterday, I asked my opponent where he divides Matthew 24 as past and yet future.

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He said verse 36. But it seemed apparent as we continued talking that exegetically, mind you, that there are verses beyond verse 36 that appear to be past events as well, such as the fleeing from Jerusalem as it was surrounded by the

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Roman armies that we see in Luke 21, which he says is a different occurrence or talking about a different timeframe.

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My opponent essentially told me those verses could be interpreted many ways, and then I asked him why he gets interpreted this way.

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And he told me, which is fine, that he's a simple plowboy called to interpret the Bible for himself, just as we were told that that was done against the pope.

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So the problem is, aha, now we see what the problem is here. It's exegesis.

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We get this out of the Bible. So that preterism is preterism biblical, is dispensationalism biblical, is

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Roman, is a Roman papacy biblical? And as a Calvinist, I even ask, is Calvinism biblical?

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Is universalism biblical? I submit, no, none of these views are biblical, except that they can be spelled out or found in the

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Bible through exegesis. So we can say, hey, this looks like this supports this. This looks like that supports this.

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But we can't say something is necessarily biblical. Matter of fact, and this even sounds somewhat blasphemous, but we know

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Haddon Spurgeon once said, I'm checking my time here for some wonder what Haddon Spurgeon once said, the famous Baptist.

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He says, I have my own private interpretation that there's no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified unless you preach what is nowadays called

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Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those have always I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it

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Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else. A lot of people would take, you know, take a moment with that.

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They would not agree with that at all. So what am I saying here? I'm saying, or am

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I toying with words and definitions? No, as an author, precision is, in my words, is important.

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Apparently the same precision is important to my opponent as he called himself a post -millennial preterist rather than the more common label, partial preterist.

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We found that out yesterday. I don't, you know, this whole debate yesterday was about why is partial preterism dangerous?

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And he must obviously understand that, too, because he wants to clarify that he is something different. I think he understands that the pitfalls and words and labels we use, making sure

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I'm running out of time here, is very important. So the assertion that all forms of preterism is unbiblical is valid.

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Now, further on yesterday, we talked about how it wasn't until the fourth century that this view of how to interpret the

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Bible, especially Revelation, came into play, which our opponent said was historical grammatical methodology, which

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I don't disagree with. He said before that time, the interpretations of Revelation was more or less a grab bag.

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And I would submit not just Revelation, but a lot of eschatology was a grab bag until that time. He recites

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Epiphanius, Revelation wasn't done until the fourth century, as I mentioned earlier.

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That's quite a long span, considering that's almost three, four hundred years after the church was constituted at Jesus' resurrection.

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So, again, full preterists will say to you that this is a reason we need a council. This is the reason we need to have an actual discussion on eschatology.

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So I don't think we're getting anywhere on whether preterism is biblical and unbiblical any more than we would if we were having a discussion on dispensationalism.

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Dispensationalism was dominant in America for over 200 years. Everywhere you looked, dispensationalism was the lingua franca of the time.

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If you weren't that, then you weren't really Christian to a lot of people in much of America.

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Before that, when the original Puritans came over to America, they brought not the

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King James Bible, but they brought the Geneva Bible. So Calvinism was ensconced very heavily early on in America.

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So, again, for a time, not being a Calvinist in America was strange. So we keep on talking about,

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I know I'm repeating myself here, but we keep talking about, is preterism biblical? And I say no, any more than it's any of these other things.

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So what are we getting at, Rod? Then if we can't say what something's biblical or not biblical, then is it all lost?

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No, I think what it is, we need to quit accusing people of not being biblical. You're not using exegesis.

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You're not using proper interpretation. Who says? Obviously, as Jay told us, there's different methodologies of interpretation, and I think they should all be employed.

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Obviously, the historical grammatical and then you have the allegorical, because the Bible doesn't just speak one way.

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It doesn't just present. Actually, the disciples asked Jesus, why do you speak in parables?

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Why don't you speak plainly? And he said something to the effect I'm paraphrasing. He said, if I spoke plainly, then they would understand.

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Well, isn't that the whole point? Jesus coming to make people understand? Some people he didn't want to understand on purpose.

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He wanted them to think about it. He wanted them to get it into their soul and to understand it in a different way than just the cold, hard words, which we often do.

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And even Thomas Munzer, who was obviously what we call a radical reformer, he was kind of against Luther and his reformers.

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He used to go around saying Bible, babble, bibble, stuff like that, because they were all about the reformers were all about looking at the text, getting back to the text, being exegetical.

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And people like Thomas Munzer, who's not I'm no fan of, was keen on to say, well, wait a minute, you guys strained at the neck and miss other things.

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And so here again, as I'm wrapping up my 10 minute litany here is that we need to realize that we can't go around saying this is biblical and this is not biblical or you're not being exegetical and I am and you're not or, you know,

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I'm interpreting the right way and you are not. To me, that is the epitome of divisiveness.

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I think there was a quote at the beginning of this this this presentation where I had Matthew Henry talking about how we need to stay away from people who are not,

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I don't know if the quote exactly I was listening as we're coming in, stay away from people who don't rightly handle the word of God. Well, who is that?

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Who doesn't rightly handle? Is it us? Maybe I don't handle the word of God right. Maybe Jay doesn't. How do we determine that?

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So tonight, hopefully we'll figure out and get to the conclusion. What is biblical and not biblical about preterism?

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I still have a minute left, but I think I will yield my time over. All right.

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We can have some questions at the end. OK, and now we have Jay Rogers to give his opening 10 minute presentation defending a partial preterism, or as he likes to phrase it, post -millennial preterism as being biblical.

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OK, my opening statement on partial preterism, I'd like to mention that I do have

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Roderick Edwards, four books on preterism, and I've read them. I've skimmed through them before the.

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The bait, some of the information is very helpful because it talks about the the full preterist or the hyper preterist movement in general, but in reading them,

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I continually was frustrated because Roderick will often say that partial preterism is just as bad or partial preterism can lead into full preterism or partial preterism is just as.

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Errant as full preterism, but I don't ever really see him getting to that point in any of the books, why why is it?

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And why is it why can't partial preterism be true if it's used as.

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A method of interpretation or a hermeneutic. So exegesis is interpretation.

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This is how you actually read the words on the page and decide what they mean, like read something on the page.

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Revelation one one. What does it mean? OK, that's exegesis.

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Hermeneutic is a certain method. So you say someone is a preterist if they tend to want to look at.

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Prophetic passages in the Book of Revelation, Daniel, Zechariah, Matthew 24, as having already passed, but it's very important that we understand that preterism is a hermeneutic, it's not a doctrine.

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Roderick brought up a very good point that the word preterist didn't really start to appear in the

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English lexicon until about the 1830s, and that was during a time when there was like a lot of renewed interest and controversy over eschatology.

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So writers began going back and cataloging the different types of eschatology and also the methods of interpreting these books.

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And so one of the words that was used, which was kind of interesting, was preterist. Preterist is the opposite of futurist.

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I think it's a good word because futurist, everyone knows what that means. And we know what the word pre means, pre means before.

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So futurism tends to look at almost every prophecy that has an apocalyptic feeling to it as being something that takes place in the future, usually the near future.

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And then preterism is not the end times, but it's the before times. And then there was another method of interpretation, which there was one,

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I was looking at one 19th century classification of the past few years. They called it the anti -papal view, and that's essentially what the historicists would say, that most of what's in the

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Book of Revelation is about the Pope or anti -Christian forces in the Middle Ages, and it's culminating in a victory over these forces.

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And the truth of the matter is, is that most of the interpreters throughout history used some preterist interpretations, like some of this book does have to do with the persecution of the

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Roman emperors, especially Nero. And then some of them included later persecutions by Roman emperors, too.

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Some of it had to do with the ongoing history, and some of it has to do with the future.

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That's the historicist view. And so the historicist view actually mixes preterism, historicism, and futurism.

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So to me, it's not unreasonable to say that some prophecies in the

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Bible are past. Some are taking place in history. Some are still to take place in the future, and some are very general prophecies.

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They don't necessarily apply to one specific age, but it's just a prophecy about how the kingdom of God will be, for instance.

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Like we were talking about, there's some overlap material in Luke 17 and Matthew 24, and it appears in Luke 17 to be all jumbled up.

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But if you actually look at what those prophecies are, they're kingdom prophecies. They're prophecies about the kingdom of God.

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You know, when the Pharisees asked when the kingdom of God would come, he said the kingdom of God does not come with observation.

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The kingdom of God is within you. And so all of those parables he tells there are about the kingdom in general.

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It's very idealistic. Okay, so I don't think it's unreasonable to say that many of the prophecies that most modern evangelicals think will take place in the future are actually fulfilled.

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I've heard people say that when I was not a preterist, and I thought to myself, you know, they have a point.

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Maybe some of the prophecies that we think are yet to be fulfilled were fulfilled already. A classic example of that would be the prophecies about the restoration of the nation of Israel.

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That's very big right now with what's going on with Gaza and people accusing Israel of genocide and then people on the other side saying that, you know, the

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Gazans are the fulfillment of some type of Old Testament prophecy. There's a lot of that going on right now.

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As a preterist, I think it's nonsense, but I can understand if you come from that point of view with those presuppositions, you would be looking at what's going on in Israel right now as a fulfillment of prophecy.

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What I would say is go back to the Old Testament and notice that all of the prophecies that refer to Israel being restored are prophecies given either prior to Israel being destroyed by the

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Babylonians, I mean, the city of Jerusalem and the temple being destroyed by the Babylonians in 586

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BC, or during the restoration period when the temple was being restored. And you don't find a single prophet after the time of the restoration talking about another future, another captivity of the

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Jews and another future restoration. At the very most, what you have are some prophecies about from, you know, from Daniel, which

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I believe are about 80, 70 and so on. So. That's you have to look at the context, you have to look at what the what the author intended to say, what his hearers would have intended to say.

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A really good example of that is Revelation chapter one, which I just mentioned, one of the things that I say to people when they question me about preterism is

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I say, OK, well, open up your Bible to Revelation chapter one. What does it say? The revelation of Jesus Christ, which

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God gave him to show his servants, things which must shortly take place.

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And he signified it by his angel to the servant John. I'll say, what does that mean to you?

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What does that mean? It must shortly take place. And I'll let them answer the question. Another interesting thing it says in that same chapter is it says we just find this real quick.

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Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those which are written in it for the time is near.

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When I first read that, I thought, oh, great, I'm reading the book of Revelation, so I must be blessed because I'm reading it.

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But that's not actually what it means. What it means is that John was sending out letters to seven churches and there would be someone who would read the prophecy to the congregations, a deacon or an elder, someone that was gifted in reading and writing, and that they would be blessed when they read the words of prophecy.

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And also the people who would hear the words of the prophecy and keep it would be blessed for the time is near.

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So if you read the words in context and understand what they mean, the rest of the book has to align with that.

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So I don't think it's unreasonable to say that. Preterism is not a doctrine that needs to be rigidly held to in every single circumstance, but it is a hermeneutic that we must, must use when the context of the book demands it.

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And I would say that Revelation chapter one demands that we think in a first century context because he's talking about people who are hearing the prophecy in his audience at that time.

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His audience was a first century church. He's talking about a man who would read the prophecy to a congregation and so on.

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But what most people do is they take the Revelation chapter one and it's not

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John to the seven churches which are in Asia. It's John for the church in America in the 21st century.

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And they think that it's actually saying to us that these things must shortly take place in our day and that we who are reading it today are the ones who are blessed.

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So people would take it completely out of context. And that's the reason why preterism is missed as a hermeneutic.

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They don't think to apply it because they immediately jump to conclusions. And a lot of it is just not knowing the

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Old Testament as well as reading the New Testament and so on. A lot of it is the theology and systematic theology of dispensationalism which kind of treats the

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Old Testament as almost like God's word in the past tense that the Old Testament is not as important as the

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New Covenant because that's the dispensation that we're in now. So a lot of it is presuppositions that are derived from a false theology and so on.

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So I would just say that those are two things that are very important to keep in mind is that preterism is a hermeneutic.

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It's not necessarily a doctrine. You can have a preterist position. But I also noticed when

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I went back to the 1800s that I always found the word preterist and very rarely the word preterism.

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So when they first thought of the word, they didn't think of it as a belief or a doctrine. They thought of it as a method or a position to take.

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And we are out of time. We're out of time. And now we're going to a commercial break. And when we return, we're going to hear five minute rebuttals from both

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Roderick Edwards and Jay Rogers. If you have a question, and hopefully today we will have more time for audience questions.

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We are now back with our debate. This is day number two of a two -day debate that we began yesterday on partial preterism, and we have two opponents taking obviously opposite sides of the view today.

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Our specific theme is all forms of preterism are unbiblical, and affirming that thesis is

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Roderick Edwards, and denying that thesis is Jay Rogers.

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And now we are entering into the segment of our debate where both of our debaters have five minutes each for rebuttals, and we are starting with Roderick Edwards.

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You now have five minutes. All right. Can you hear me OK? Yes, I can.

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Perfect. I want to commend what something Jay said in his 10 -minute presentation.

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He pointed out how in the early days when the word preterist was used, they often didn't use the word preterism.

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It didn't become an ism until much later. This is very important because even partial preterists often call themselves their hermeneutic partial preterism.

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So even they're developing maybe unawares kind of a hermeneutic doctrine, if you might say.

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But what I'm about to say now, also, I'm not directing this to Jay, per se.

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Both he and I are just representatives of a type of people, of you. But I noticed he said the word futurist, and I've always, even as a full preterist,

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I have a problem with this because there's no Christian that I know of that believes all New Testament prophecies are future.

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So the most we can say is there's partial futurist or partial preterist when it comes to interpretation.

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Now, this might be a flaw of mine because my profession as a data analyst forces me to become as precise as it can be.

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And sometimes I stumble over my words because I would want to be precise. And so I've always had problems with these terms.

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And this is where we're getting at right now with these partial preterism, post new preterism, futurist. I think a lot of people listening to this program think, what is this all even about?

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And that's the reason why I wanted to have this debate the way we're having it. And now here's where I'm getting to a point.

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I'll have to make sure, watching my time, I don't want to go over and I don't want to cheat us anything. We only, we got, okay, we have three minutes.

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And I'm looking at this, you know, Jay said some things I found interesting. And I don't, again,

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I'm not picking on him, but it comes off arrogant when you say things like the context of a book. Well, who gets to decide what the context of any

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Bible book? Well, he'll say, well, the grammatical, whatever methodology you apply to it decides the context, or sometimes it's allegorical, sometimes it's not.

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But who gets to decide that? That's the reason why we have so many dispensationalism, Calvinism, who gets to decide these things?

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And then he said a phrase, most people, he was talking about most people. Well, is he admitting that the majority of Christians are uneducated about how to interpret the

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Bible, how to use proper exegesis? Is he, or other theologians, almost, you know, elitist when it comes to understanding the

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Bible? That might be our whole problem. That's one reason why I'm saying it's dangerous to talk about preterism or preterist and why it's dangerous to say the

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Bible is preterist. Like we said with the Chiles Haddon Spurgeon quote when he said Calvinism is the gospel.

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I've actually been around full preterists that say preterism is the gospel. Preterism is the

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Bible. It's in the same way that, and I'm sure Jay would not like that, but that they're behaving just like Jay.

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Now, also the other day he said something about how it only took him a day, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong. He studied and then became a post -millennialist in a day.

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This is dangerous. He said it took 10 years to become a preterist or have those concepts, but it took a day to be a post -millennial.

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To me, these are very dangerous things because as I said earlier, there's one fellow on the thread that we had the other day.

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He said his brother is a pastor, had been one for 40 years, and he just now came to full preterism.

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So again, I'm asking, is preterism biblical? Is dispensationalism biblical? Any of these views are not biblical.

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They have to be teased out of the text. And then we start calling people heretics. If they don't, like I said, at the top of the hour, we had the

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Matthew Henry quote said, be careful who you interact with your conversations with people because they could cause you to fall and slip.

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Well, if we're saying that most people don't understand the Bible, basically in eschatology, shouldn't we be careful throwing around these terms, preterist and preterism?

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That has been my point during this entire conversation, these two days and will continue to be my point. And I think that we're getting there when we talk about my books.

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And he said, Jay said that, well, Roderick never really addresses why partial preterism is dangerous. Because the problem is because in my books,

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I don't really delineate. I do that on purpose. I don't delineate partial preterism as much from full preterism. So when

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I say preterism is dangerous, I am saying partial preterism and full preterism. Now we're coming up on the end of my time and I yield the rest of the 40 seconds to Jay.

38:27

All right. Jay Rogers, you now have five minutes of rebuttal time to defend post -millennial preterism as being biblical.

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You may begin. Okay. So some of this is going to sound like unfinished business, but Roderick made this statement earlier that David Chilton died a full preterist.

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This is a common charge and it does come from Gary North. Gary North said that David Chilton denied the second coming and the final judgment prior to his death.

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Now, nowhere in all of David Chilton's writings and any of his sermons or in any of his written correspondence, did

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I ever see him deny the second coming or the final judgment? That's the definition of hyper -preterism.

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It would be a school of eschatology, which says the second coming, the general resurrection, the final judgment are in the past, or at least, or else it spiritualizes it.

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Okay. And that would go against the apostle's creed, the Nicene creed, every other creed of every major denomination.

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That is why I made the point yesterday that there might be some hyper -preterist pastors out there.

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There might be some hyper -preterist churches, but most of these are going to be run churches. When I say run churches,

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I mean, a church of like 50 people that's not going to grow. It's not going to become healthy and grow.

39:51

There are no hyper -preterist denominations. And the reason for that is that even churches that are anti -credal, that don't have a creed, that don't like creeds, they at least implicitly recognize the second coming, the general resurrection, the final judgment as core doctrines of Christianity.

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So how would I define preterism in general is mainly has to do with the book of Revelation.

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It has to do with Revelation 1 through 19 is passed. When we get into the millennium, now we have a thousand years to talk about them, whether it's a thousand years, that's figurative or a thousand years, that's literal, it's a long period of time.

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So you can't cram a thousand years into a couple of years. So we say that that part of Revelation does deal with ongoing history and the final judgment, the general resurrection, which takes place at the second coming of Christ.

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I think it's very clear when I read it. Is there a context to this? Yes, there is.

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When we look at the book of Revelation, you have to understand what it is. It's a letter written to seven churches.

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So if you read it as a letter written to seven churches, you have the context. You have the audience relevance, you have the historical context of the first century.

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I don't see how there's a controversy over who gets to decide the context.

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The book itself says what the context is, but a lot of Christians do ignore that. The reason why

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I say that I became a post -millennialist in one day is because I understood what the issue was.

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I understood that Jesus is either coming back prior to the millennium, and until that time, we're going to have darkness to feed the antichrist tribulation, and that when

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Christ comes back, then there'll be this golden age of wealth, prosperity for the nations, and so on.

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Or Christ already established the kingdom, and we're seeing the kingdom advance in history.

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It's really much a binary choice. Like even amillennialism says that there is no physical millennium with Jesus sitting on a throne at Jerusalem for a thousand years prior to the final judgment, the resurrection and the final judgment, so I just found it fairly easy to say, okay, once I understood what the post -millennial model was, and I understood the argument for it,

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I came fully on board with it. It wasn't as though I was a premillennialist. I had basically been searching for an explanation to this for at least months or several years, and I finally did find a book that explained it in a hundred pages.

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I thought, this is great. There's either Jesus returns before the millennium or after the millennium, pick one, so I picked one.

42:44

Preterism is harder because preterism does deal with exegesis and hermeneutics. You have to be able to go in and handle the text, and these texts are very difficult, but I think that when you start with something like Revelation 1, and you say, blessed are those who hear the words of prophecy, and there are commands to understand the prophecy to those churches, you can't say that John is commanding people in the first century to understand a prophecy, and that it would be impossible for them to do so.

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So I come in with the presupposition that the people hearing this prophecy were blessed, and they did hear the words of the prophecy, they did keep the things that were written in it, and the time was near for them.

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Now, was all of Revelation near? Was a thousand years near? Well, the beginning of the thousand years was near, but the end was not.

43:36

So everything else in Revelation, you know, how do you interpret what the large stones were that were the large hailstones that were flung at the city of Jerusalem?

43:46

How do you interpret that? And we are out of time. Sorry. And we do have time to take a couple of listener questions for each of our debaters before the break.

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In fact, I would like each of our debaters to respond to each question, even though it is intended for a specific debater.

44:13

The first question comes to us from Sheridan, and it's either

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Quebec, like the Americans pronounce it, or Quebec, like the Canadians pronounce it,

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Quebec, Connecticut. And Sheridan asks

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Roderick Edwards, let's see here, where is the question?

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I was just, oh, here it is. In the Bible, in Matthew 16, 28, we read,

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Truly I say to you, there are some who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the

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Son of Man coming in his kingdom. These are the words of Jesus Christ, of course, and it seems very incomprehensible to believe that this has to do with a future event thousands of years after the words were spoken.

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And Jesus may have been easily viewed as a false prophet after this did not occur in his day, while people who were still standing there have all died.

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Can you please explain that? All right.

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So I usually point to Matthew 26, 64, where Jesus talks about how the

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Sanhedrin will see the Son of Man coming and sitting at the right hand of the

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Father. Unfortunately, we always think coming means to return, to come back. And that's one of the problems with some of the modern interpretations from dispensationalists.

45:50

They always think it's a return. So it was fairly, it was fairly understandable. Even Jesus, when he's talking to Martha and Mary, said that if they die, even now they will have life, even though they're dead, even though they die in the future.

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So there was a type of resurrection in the kingdom that came immediately, not sometime in the future, not even after Jesus's death and resurrection.

46:08

It was immediate. So I think that's where he was getting at. OK, Jay Rogers, could you respond to that as well?

46:17

Yeah, I think it's important to understand that in the Bible, there are different types of comings.

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A coming could mean something like someone just came on the scene, like Jesus came to Jerusalem or something like that.

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It could also mean the Lord coming in judgment is another meaning of the word coming.

46:37

Christ came at Pentecost through the Holy Spirit. OK, that's another type of coming.

46:44

And then there is the second coming as well. So I think that there are about seven different ways that you can take that word throughout the

46:54

New Testament. I just mentioned the four main ones. There's an interesting passage in the

47:02

Gospel of John, the one that you just mentioned just now. I tend to, that statement to the

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Sanhedrin, I believe it was, I tend to want to interpret that as meaning Pentecost. You know, that these people, they were going to see the

47:20

Son of Man come in the glory of this church, that they were going to see something happen within a few months or within a few weeks, actually, that the church was going to be both in power and that they were going to see that.

47:38

And so that happened on Pentecost. It happened afterwards and so on. There's another interesting passage in the

47:45

Gospel of John toward the end where it said. Jesus said to Peter, when he was talking to Peter, that if I remain, if I will, that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

48:03

You follow me? He's talking about talking about John. And in this particular case, like if you were to allow that Peter died and Jesus actually,

48:14

I don't know, I know I don't have time here, but Jesus gives a description about how Peter would die, that he had his hands stretched out, that he would die a death of crucifixion.

48:24

But if you get, if it's given that Paul was beheaded, Peter was crucified, but John remained alive until A .D.

48:32

70, that passage makes sense. As a matter of fact, preterism is the only method of interpretation

48:40

I know for that passage that makes sense so that Jesus could come during the time when

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John was still alive, but not come in the, you know, not come in all his glory, not come bodily back to the earth.

48:55

OK, we have a second question from Trudy in St. James, Long Island, New York.

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And this question is for Jay Rogers. And Trudy says, do you view hyperpreterism as an excommunicable offense in the

49:13

Church? It seems that too many partial preterists are very soft on the sin and heresy of hyperpreterism.

49:22

In a Church context, yes. I mean, if you have a Church creed or a

49:28

Church confession, and all denominations that I know of have one, and it speaks about the second coming, if someone is going to teach that in the

49:37

Church, they should be barred from the pulpit. Yes. How about if they just believe it as a member?

49:46

That would be interesting, because if you started to, you know, if you went through the

49:52

Apostles' Creed and you basically, you know, I think that people need to be taught the right way. If someone was causing division in the

49:59

Church over this, I would say yes. If someone naively believes in a primary heresy, they need to be instructed.

50:07

That's how I would do it. I wouldn't just say it's automatically an excommunicable offense if you believe this.

50:13

I would say that, you know, everyone's on a different place with their knowledge. Most Christians don't understand the

50:18

Trinity. Most Christians don't understand the difference between death and going to heaven and then the final general resurrection.

50:29

That's another doctrine that's difficult to understand for people. So I would say that, you know, you have to take it on a case -by -case basis.

50:37

If someone is sincerely in error and they're trying to understand, they need to be instructed.

50:44

If someone's causing division and they're ruining the peace of the Church, that would be cause for excommunication.

50:51

And we certainly would not let someone teach it from the pulpit if the creator confession of the

50:56

Church said otherwise. Okay. Roderick Edwards, you have time to respond. Okay, real quick.

51:03

Obviously, I just want to clarify. Excommunication does not mean they have damned the person to hell.

51:08

Because when I was making my transition from full preterist to non -preterist,

51:14

I often got labeled by the full preterist saying they were going to hell, which I had never said. And I have no idea. That's up to God.

51:20

So, yes, if somebody's causing division, I don't care what it is. You're in a Church, you're causing division. It might not even be a theological thing.

51:26

Then the Church administers, the pastor or the elders, whoever, however it's structured, have an obligation to make sure that the other congregants can study and learn in some relative peace, because that's what they're there for.

51:40

Unfortunately, nowadays, we think the Church is some kind of missionary field when really it's the place where the

51:46

Christians go to get prepared for the missionary field. So we don't really need a lot of division in there. I would admonish anyone that's causing division, be removed no matter what it's about.

51:57

Okay, great. When we return from our midway break, we are going to enter into my favorite session or segment of the debate or any debate, and that is the cross -examination sessions.

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01:07:40

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01:10:04

Chris Arnzen at gmail dot com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And now we begin the first cross -examination session and Jay Rogers, the post -millennial preterist, will cross -examine or question

01:10:20

Roderick Edwards for seven minutes. You may begin. OK, my first question is, do you make a distinction between someone who is a full preterist and someone who says,

01:10:34

I am a post -millennialist, I believe Jesus is returning, and I interpret most of the book of Revelation preteristically?

01:10:44

Yes, obviously, because, again, they said most of, so full preterists say all of.

01:10:50

Right. So. But you still are taking the case that I believe what we're debating here is that both full preterism and partial preterism are equally wrong or just they're both wrong.

01:11:06

They're equally dangerous. OK, and if someone says, you know,

01:11:14

I affirm the second coming, the general resurrection, the final judgment, I affirm the creeds, how is that dangerous?

01:11:23

Well, despite the creeds, let's leave those out for a moment, I think you could even have Mormons that would agree.

01:11:28

So I don't think you would think you would classify them as Christians. So that's not enough for me to say that it's not dangerous.

01:11:36

They don't believe the Mormons do not believe in the creeds. Yeah, that's what I just said. Despite the creeds, put that aside.

01:11:41

All those other things you mentioned, they do agree with. So I think I'd need more context for that person to decide whether I think what they're doing is dangerous or believing it's dangerous.

01:11:52

Right. But you're talking we're talking about a method of interpretation and even you admitted that preterism is warranted.

01:12:00

So how could someone be dangerous if they use a preterist method of interpretation, but they were otherwise orthodox?

01:12:08

How could that stance be dangerous? Well, I keep hearing you tell us that most

01:12:14

Christians don't know how, don't understand how the Trinity works. Most Christians don't understand how to interpret this. Most.

01:12:19

So I think that's dangerous to get into preterism before we even get past the thief on the cross understanding of our theology.

01:12:26

So, yes, it is dangerous, very dangerous. And I would I'd agree that eschatology is a little bit more involved, a little bit more difficult, and it's more non -essential than understanding the atonement.

01:12:42

And so when I agree with that, how would you define the word eschatology? Well, obviously many definitions, but this is my definition, obviously, it deals with the study of the end times as ologies, the study of the knowledge of.

01:12:55

So it's the study of the eschaton, the end times, the fulfillment. OK, so do you agree with the term realized eschatology?

01:13:05

Do I agree with it? Well, first of all, I don't know if you know who Kenneth Talbot is, and he used that actual title and he was trying to supplement full preterist with his own version.

01:13:15

So that's a loaded term for me. Realized eschatology is loaded for me because it comes straightly from Kenneth Talbot, who

01:13:23

I greatly disagree with and have. And I, the reason I mentioned that is I hear even some partial preterists use that term.

01:13:30

So I thought that maybe you thought maybe that's there's some naive. There's some naive use of terms like eschatology, eschatology is the last things, the eschaton is the last things.

01:13:43

So it would be an oxymoron to say that eschatology is realized. Would you agree with that?

01:13:49

OK, what about the word apocalypse? What does that mean? That to me, the definition, that's the things that actually happen, the events that happen in this eschaton.

01:14:00

And you can specifically, obviously, John, the book of Revelation was actually called Revelation, the apocalypse of John, so.

01:14:09

Right, apocalypse is the first word in the book of Revelation, and it's translated as the revelation of Jesus Christ.

01:14:15

So an apocalypse is I look throughout the Bible every time that apocalypse is our apocalypses or somewhere with some use of that word always deals with the revelation of Christ or revelation of God.

01:14:28

In some way. And I do you agree with me that, you know, Christians ought to get those terms straight, that we shouldn't talk about apocalypse to be speaking of the end times and we shouldn't be speaking of the eschaton to be speaking of first century events.

01:14:46

Well, they do overlap because just because apocalypse is a revelation of Christ because Christ revealed who he was, the

01:14:53

Messiah, would you call that apocalyptic just because he said, I am the Messiah? Is that apocalyptic?

01:14:58

I'm not trying to question back. So my answer is that, yes, obviously, precision in our words is very important.

01:15:04

That's the whole point of this discussion or debate, at least I feel it is. Flesh and blood has not revealed this unto you is

01:15:11

I think that that's actually a I'd have to look it up, but I think that that's a a version of that word that's used there.

01:15:20

So, I mean, that's that's one of the one of the things I agree with you on. This isn't necessarily even a challenge is that we have to be careful about how we we use words.

01:15:31

OK, so context is everything. It's you use a word and I'm using the word eschatology to mean something that took place in the first century.

01:15:39

You use the word apocalypse to mean something about the end times. It's that causes confusions there.

01:15:45

So. Why do you think that preterism had became such a popular, not so much popular, but there seems to be like a resurgence of preterism first in the 1800s and then again, like you said, in the late 1980s, early 90s.

01:16:04

Why do you think that those two time periods saw a resurgence of preterism? Well, I might take issue with the fact that in the 1800s, it didn't really have much.

01:16:13

So I would say it's it's actually in probably in the late 1800s, more like 1970s with the Church of Christ.

01:16:18

But I believe it's a reaction to the 200 years of dispensationalism and time setters that were constantly saying any minute now that the, you know, imminency passages is coming soon at hand any moment, which we talked about and you talked about in the one of the first verses of Revelation.

01:16:34

So people wonder, what do you mean by any time shortly? So there had to be an answer to that.

01:16:39

Well, preterism became a huge controversy in the 1800s. You can do that by your word search.

01:16:46

You can go on Google Books and look for the word preterist in that time period. And there's a huge number of books addressing it during that time.

01:16:53

Before that, before that, there were none. So I'm just asking, have you ever studied? Like, why do you think in particular that time period it saw such a boost?

01:17:03

Well, in the 1800s, it was more of an academic. It didn't really get out to the people so much.

01:17:08

It was more like the theologians that were dealing with that. And you had the German theologians and philosophers and people like that.

01:17:17

And obviously, you still also had dispensationalism that was rising then. And you had the whole, we'll get into this later, but the post -Middle with the

01:17:26

Civil War, America and then eventually World War One, World War Two, you had a declining of that and people had to answer, well, is there going to be victory?

01:17:32

Is there not going to be victory? And we are out of time. And now Roderick Edwards, the non -preterist, will question

01:17:40

Jay Rogers, the post -millennial preterist for seven minutes. OK, I'll try to keep it brief.

01:17:46

Maybe we have some other questions from the audience. You cite William Tyndall, who's made that quote to some degree about how when he's done, the plow boy will know more about scripture than the pope.

01:18:00

But it seems like during this conversation, you keep talking about how there's a lot of Christians that don't understand the

01:18:07

Trinity, don't understand some basic concepts in context. So how many, how many

01:18:14

Christians, just give me a percentage, I know this is just anecdotal, but how many Christians do you think have a very well understanding of the

01:18:21

Bible in a percentage wise? As far as being able to be saved,

01:18:28

I would say all of them. Right, but I'm saying to articulate a basic understanding, it depends on what you say by understand the gospel, the whole point of the gospel is not so much that we understand it is that we believe it.

01:18:43

And belief comes by hearing belief doesn't come by. First, we have to understand it and get all of our theological ducks in a row.

01:18:50

And then finally, we can say we have faith. Faith comes by hearing. And then the rest of our lives is a journey in which we're trying to understand the word of God.

01:18:59

We're trying to renew our minds by the word of God. So to me, this is to me, this is this is the fun stuff.

01:19:05

This is the good stuff where, you know, we're secure in Christ, but we're able to like debate.

01:19:11

We're able to, you know, like why this program is called Iron Sharpens Iron. We're able to have these discussions and challenge each other, especially on the non -essentials.

01:19:20

And I do consider partial preterism to be a non -essential, but I do consider also the second coming, the general resurrection, the final judgment.

01:19:30

I think that the average Christian in America has been raised in a church that does not emphasize historic

01:19:36

Christianity, the confession of your church, their church, the church fathers, creedal

01:19:42

Christianity and so on. That's part of the problem. I think that a lot of Christians are very well educated.

01:19:47

They're just educated. They're just taught by the wrong teachers, essentially. OK, I agree with that.

01:19:53

Let's be more specific, though. The quote I had earlier from from Spurgeon, who basically said that the gospel and Calvinism are basically synonymous.

01:20:01

So obviously a lot of Christians would not agree with that quote, but that is what I would say. He was talking about an essential salvific issue.

01:20:08

Obviously, there are a lot of what we call free willers as a shorthand. How many do you think that's essential that the free willers first learn that?

01:20:17

You know, the Calvinistic or the monogistic way before we even get to the eschatology and some of these other so -called non -essentials, do you believe that's very important?

01:20:28

I think that's the way it is. I don't think that it's necessary.

01:20:34

It's interesting that in the early church, the controversy was what was over who is God, was

01:20:39

Jesus God, and then it became Trinitarian issues. There were Aryans, there were Gnostics, there were adoptionists and so on.

01:20:47

And so the Trinity became an issue. And then after that, for hundreds of years, issues of Christology were addressed.

01:20:54

And then in the Middle Ages, you saw the issue of salvation being addressed. And since the 1700s and 1800s, the doctrine of holiness was a big thing, sanctification.

01:21:07

And then we get into the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and we start seeing more of these tertiary issues like eschatology and spiritual gifts and different things like that being debated.

01:21:19

So I think, yes, there's an order. You definitely should not be like studying eschatology if you don't understand that Jesus is

01:21:25

God. You shouldn't be studying eschatology if you think that. I mean, I think that Calvinism, the belief that God is sovereign, not just Calvinism, but the belief that God is a sovereign

01:21:37

God, that God elects the nations, is essential for getting your eschatology right.

01:21:44

Because, for instance, as a post -millennialist, I believe that the nations are predestined to be saved.

01:21:50

That's something that's going to happen. Someone who is more of a

01:21:56

Pelagian, semi -Pelagian or Pelagian in their views, would believe that, well, it's up to us to see how many people are saved.

01:22:03

And so victory, Jesus is only going to come back when we do our job. I've heard things like that said before.

01:22:10

So, yeah, in a sense, what you're saying is right. I think that someone can be wrong. I mean, for instance,

01:22:15

John Wesley was an ardent post -millennialist. Many Armenians are ardent post -millennialists that I know.

01:22:23

So as long as they believe that we're saved by faith and not by works, I think that we're in pretty good territory.

01:22:29

I think that we have enough common ground as Protestants to have theological discussions about other things as well.

01:22:36

So. All right. So if I have any more time, I cede that so we can hopefully have some questions at the end. All righty.

01:22:43

Now we have Roderick Edwards questioning Jay Rogers for seven minutes.

01:22:50

All right. So earlier you were talking about context and the history that goes along with the understanding exegesis of the

01:22:57

Bible. Obviously, I think you've read Josephus, who was a first century observation of the actual destruction of the temple.

01:23:05

Many of the things we read in in the Olive Discourse and Revelation, he's a firsthand witness of those things.

01:23:10

He talked about the hailstones and the and the horses in the clouds and such. So my question to you, do you think it's helpful or even necessary for Christians to understand the historical context is like Josephus' commentaries around these eschatological events?

01:23:29

It's not necessary. It's not necessarily even helpful to the average Christian. I find it very interesting.

01:23:35

I think that if you are a post -millennialist and you believe in victory or it doesn't really matter if you're pre -millennialist, amillennialist, post -millennialist, you should believe in the victory of the church, that there is going to be a church among all nations and so on, that we're going to see a great number of people come to Christ.

01:23:54

I think that post -millennialism helps you to understand the vision for that, that we're not just waiting until next

01:24:02

September for the second coming because of all the bad things that are going on. I'm very involved with pro -life issues, for instance, and there's a lot of pro -lifers who have a very gloomy view of the future.

01:24:16

And I always want to ask them, if you believe Jesus is coming back at any moment, why are you involved in trying to end abortion in our generation?

01:24:25

Isn't the Antichrist coming? Isn't there going to be a lot of abortion as soon as that happens? Shouldn't we just be trying to save the people we can?

01:24:33

So I think that post -millennialism helps you to be a better Christian in the world because it gives you a long -term vision.

01:24:39

And preterism just gives you a model for then, well, what do you do with the Book of Revelation?

01:24:45

What do you do with all these dire warnings about tribulation and that type of thing? It helps you to make sense out of it, that there's a context for that, that we're not in the time of tribulation, we're in the time where victory is going to become more apparent.

01:25:00

OK, let me ask you this, and I'll clarify for us, for the audience. Your post -millennialism, you believe the world is getting better and better and at some point

01:25:09

Christ will come back and just complete the victory and everything will be perfect or better then, or it's going to get worse and worse and worse and then eventually?

01:25:18

I know the answer, I'm doing rhetorical, but I want to hear it from you. Oh, I believe that my view of how optimistic

01:25:26

I am is short -sighted. If you want to read a really good post -millennialist, read

01:25:32

Jonathan Edwards. If you want to read someone who is incredibly optimistic about the future. And many of the things that Edwards predicted actually happened.

01:25:39

I remember reading him saying that it would be amazing in the future if there were like Christian doctors, you know, doctors of theology that were trained in places like Africa and India.

01:25:49

Just for a moment, because you mentioned it, obviously, Jonathan Edwards in the 1700s before the American Civil War, before World War One, before all these major calamities that killed many, many human beings.

01:26:00

So you think he would still have that outlook if he experienced those things after the fact? I know it's anecdotal, but.

01:26:07

There was also the 30 Years War, which ended in 1648, so he was living close to that time.

01:26:13

So, yes, I think he still would have that optimistic view. Most of modern history has been peaceful because of Christianity.

01:26:22

People don't realize that. They think it's just been war after war. But there's only been really three major periods of war since the 1500s.

01:26:30

And right now, the period that we are in is one of the most peaceful. It is the most peaceful period in modern history.

01:26:37

There are fewer people killed in war right now per capita than in many hundreds of years, going back to when we first started keeping the records of that.

01:26:45

So I think that, yes, I think the Bible teaches it, but I also think that history bears it out and there are setbacks.

01:26:53

You know, it's not to say that things just keep getting better and better and better and better, but on the whole, it gets better.

01:27:00

All right. I see the rest of my time. All righty. Now, Jay Rogers has seven minutes to question

01:27:06

Roderick Edwards. OK, I'm going to go back to something we were talking about yesterday about how many preterists are there.

01:27:15

I would say that partial preterism is a minority view and that full preterism is a much smaller minority, like a fraction of those people.

01:27:29

Out of the total number, like out of all of the people that have any type of preteristic idea about the

01:27:36

Bible, what percentage would you say are the heretical full preterist form?

01:27:43

Well, I want to I want to actually take a disagreement with what you say, probably maybe that might be more partial preterist today.

01:27:49

There wasn't originally until after the Mount Dora symposium. However, if you type preterism in Google or preterist,

01:27:58

I would almost guarantee you, obviously, anecdotally, that just about 80 percent of the websites that you click there are full preterist websites, are full preterist doctrines.

01:28:07

Even the Wikipedia entry in Wikipedia about preterism, I was there when

01:28:13

Virgil Vaduva and many of the full preterists were battling with the partial preterist to make sure they get to define it.

01:28:19

So whether there's a minority or majority, full preterism, when you mention the word preterism, is the typical expression of preterism, at least out on the

01:28:30

Internet. Yeah, and there's also obviously, you know, criticism of preterism, like there are people like, you know,

01:28:41

Gospel Coalition, GotQuestions .org, whatever, where they would basically treat preterism as full preterism because they don't like preterism, you know.

01:28:51

Now, you might have another. So anyway, my question, I want to ask that question again, because I think it's important. Yes, if you were to take like, for instance, if you were to just take a slice of all people that like, say, 100 people that say,

01:29:04

I believe in a preteristic view of Revelation, how many out of that 100 would you say don't believe in the second coming and don't believe in the general resurrection and the final judgment?

01:29:15

Now, so I'm questioning people who call themselves preterist, right? Yeah. OK, out of 100 people, again,

01:29:21

I would say the majority, if I'm going to talk to preterists, the majority are going to be full preterists. So I say of those,

01:29:27

I would say over half are going to be full preterist, less than half are going to be partial preterist.

01:29:33

A lot of people have never even heard of this word. I'm sure people in our audience go, what are we even talking about? And so the partial preterists are still, even though there may be more than there was back in the 1990s, there's still in a way at least a vocal minority.

01:29:45

Yeah. And I disagree with that. And the reason why is because I would say that, you know, if you look at some of the people that have converted to a preterist view, like Hank Hanegraaff, R .C.

01:29:54

Sproul, C. Peter Wagner, you don't find a like a really major Christian leader that's well known.

01:30:02

That's a that's a full preterist. No, I get that, although Gary DeMar might be coming.

01:30:09

Yeah, Gary DeMar, Gary DeMar would be an exception to the rule that in fact comes out and says that, you know, we could argue about David Scholten as well.

01:30:18

So, I mean, that's that's the danger is that you think that more than half of the partial preterists are going to become full preterists.

01:30:26

So I think full preterist is a bit insipid, I mean, because it can weave its way into even the partial preterist.

01:30:33

Before you know it, you're saying, well, wait a minute. Yeah, I'd have to reason with the Josephus and the

01:30:38

Hellstones and everything was reasonable. And eventually you will become full preterist if you continue down that road and continue to talk.

01:30:45

If you don't become full preterist, the people around you will as you talk about it. I think Gary DeMar and some of the others have sparked more full preterists than they realize.

01:30:54

Yeah, I mean, I sat in R .C. Sproul's church for 10 years, as you probably know, and I heard him preach through the

01:31:01

Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and the Monolithic discourse. And most of that church understands the view.

01:31:08

So it's a fairly large church. It's over a thousand people. I don't I don't see a controversy in that church over full preterism versus partial preterism.

01:31:18

It's very well spelled out what the difference is. One of the one of the people associated with R .C.

01:31:24

has written a book on it. Keith Matheson wrote a book on it. So I I want to challenge you to like back that up.

01:31:31

How can you say that most of the preterists are full preterists? I just don't see that.

01:31:38

No, if you told you said if if I had preterists, if I had 100 hundred preterists, how many of them would be full preterists?

01:31:45

Right. And I don't I don't see that most people that claim to be preterists are full preterists.

01:31:50

I think it's a very, very small price, a small slice. We're talking anecdotally here.

01:31:56

And you're also talking about leaders as opposed to that rank and file leaders. I agree with you. Probably less.

01:32:02

But if we're talking about rank and file, people who come across preterism, they quickly fall into it because, as you said, a lot of Christians don't understand the concept of the

01:32:10

Trinity. They don't understand context. They don't. So they quickly fall into it because of because it seems it seems logical.

01:32:17

It seems rational. It seems like the Bible supporting it. It seems like Josephus supports it. So why don't why don't we see hundreds of full preterist churches and full preterist denominations?

01:32:29

If that's true, then most people that are embracing preterism would get into that. We would see this movement kind of go into like, you know, mainstream church.

01:32:39

Yeah, well, and they tried that a lot of the ones that do that, it's a death of them, a death of the leader, you know, physically, theoretically, because it can't happen.

01:32:48

If you try to move over to full preterism as a pastor, that's usually the end of you. I've even seen people who were moved over to Calvinism from being

01:32:56

Arminianism. That was the end of that guy as a pastor. So, yeah, it's right now it's a death knell if you try to move into full preterism as a pastor.

01:33:04

So, yeah, but I'm talking about the rank and file, which is in a way more dangerous because it's a it's a grassroots movement.

01:33:11

So it's like the saying, if a doctrine is new, it probably isn't true. Preterism itself is not a doctrine.

01:33:17

We both agree on that. The method of interpretation has been around since the beginning.

01:33:24

But I don't what I don't see is that just because we've had this method of interpretation since the beginning,

01:33:30

I don't see how you can say that that's inevitably going to lead people who use that method of interpretation into full preterism and that most people end up that way.

01:33:39

I just don't see that happening. Anecdotally, I don't see that backed up by numbers or anything like that.

01:33:45

So I just ask you to defend that. Well, I'd submit that if you talk to full preterists and ask them, how did you become a full preterist?

01:33:52

A lot of them will tell you that you can be full preterist by reading R .C. Sproul, by reading Kenneth Gentry, by reading.

01:33:58

Now, again, those people make those those leaders may not have intended that. But that's what happened. They need to be more careful with their doctrines, obviously, how they explain these things.

01:34:05

And we are out of time. We are out of time and we have to go to our final commercial break. If anybody wants to join us with a question of your own, submit it to Chris Arnzen at gmail dot com.

01:34:17

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

01:34:24

Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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01:36:04

Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love.

01:36:15

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York. Pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his

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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:37:36

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

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Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or the

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Bronx, in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

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That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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Now shipping worldwide. Welcome back, and I want to remind our listeners that this debate is made possible in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &

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01:47:12

Make sure you mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And now we are going to begin the final remarks session, and Roderick Edwards, the non -preterist, begins with his three minutes of final remarks.

01:47:28

All right, I'll try to keep them brief, so maybe we'll have some time for listener questions at the end. Originally, when

01:47:34

I wanted to come on the program to discuss preterism and all forms of preterism, and I've been graciously hosted by Iron Sharpens Iron twice before to discuss this topic, but when

01:47:43

I approached this time, I think my stance towards not just full preterism but all forms of full preterism spooked some people, and here we are with the debate, which

01:47:51

I really appreciate, and I'm glad it turned that way. So praise God that the sovereignty works the way it does.

01:47:57

Now, day one of this debate was about how preterism is new as a term and a concept. I think

01:48:02

I proved that, and ironically enough, my opponent helped in proving that, and perhaps even better than I. As day two came, which

01:48:10

I imagine people are like, how in the world is he going to prove that? Day two of this debate was about all forms of preterism as being unbiblical.

01:48:18

Did I prove it? I'll let listeners decide, because along the way, I may have gored their sacred ox, as I did even with my own salvific perspective called

01:48:25

Calvinism. I'm not a Calvinist because of John Calvin. He's merely the poor bloke whose name got saddled with a theological perspective that we monarchists and determinists, non -free willers, or anti -Arminiests.

01:48:38

See all those labels? Calvinists got his name associated with a view we believe can be exegeted out of the

01:48:45

Bible. In conclusion, I implore people to be careful jumping so quick to a claim they believe something because they came at it via exegetical terms or some kind of methodology.

01:48:56

Preterism, like many and any poorly understood theological firearms, can be mishandled to our own destruction.

01:49:04

And I thank everybody for listening, and hopefully that was helpful in edifying to Jesus, and I thank

01:49:09

Jay for participating, and obviously Chris for hosting. Thank you. And Jay Rogers, the post -millennial preterist, you now have three minutes.

01:49:20

Yes, there's an interesting discussion about heresy in Paul's letter to 1

01:49:26

Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where he says that, I hear there are divisions among you, and in part

01:49:33

I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you.

01:49:40

The word recognized can also be manifest or evident. When I first read that,

01:49:46

I didn't fully get that what Paul was saying was that there must be factions among you.

01:49:51

In other words, God doesn't desire heresy. He doesn't desire division.

01:49:57

It's not God's will for there to be division, but Paul is saying it's necessary. And the reason why it's necessary is that there are those who must be approved and recognized among you.

01:50:08

In other words, God uses error many times in the church to point out the truth and bring us deeper into truth.

01:50:15

And we've seen that throughout church history. Whenever there's been a heresy, there has been a standard that's raised up, a church council or something like that, and people have come to the truth.

01:50:27

In the early church, there was preterism as an interpretation. Clement of Alexandria wrote a very good explanation of Daniel chapter 2, saying that the rock made without hands is the kingdom of God, and that came into the world in the time of Jesus.

01:50:42

And then he used that model to interpret the rest of the book of Daniel preteristically, including the prophecies about the kings lining up with the emperors of Rome and so on.

01:50:53

There was another writer named Hippolytus of Rome who interpreted the rock to be Jesus at the second coming, even though the text itself says that the rock is the stone made without hands is the kingdom of God.

01:51:05

There were several church fathers who took that as meaning, no, this will be Jesus at the time of the second coming.

01:51:11

So how do you deal with that division? Well, what you do is you go to Scripture and you decide, okay, there is a division among how we interpret this.

01:51:21

How do we approve what's correct? And so this is the reason why I don't shy back from using the term preterist to describe my method of interpretation.

01:51:31

It's a good word. It means what it says. It means that things came before, they're not coming after, but they came before.

01:51:37

And I don't see a danger of hyper -preterism ruling the day just because we have found a correct way of interpreting

01:51:49

Scripture. It doesn't mean that we need to make it into a doctrine and force the Bible to conform to our doctrine.

01:51:56

I think that there are plenty of people that are going to be approved and recognized as great teachers who are going to understand how to handle

01:52:03

Scripture and use preterism as a method of interpretation. Wherever the context warrants it.

01:52:10

Okay. And now we have time for some listener questions. The first question is for Roderick Edwards, our non -preterist.

01:52:23

And I would like both of you to answer the questions, even if it's not directed to you personally.

01:52:30

We have Jordana in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And Jordana says,

01:52:39

One of the things that frustrates me about amillennialism is that there seems to be very often a plea for agnosticism when it comes to a direct and clear understanding of very important aspects of the book of Revelation, like the

01:53:00

Beast of Revelation and the Whore of Babylon. You hear over and over again amillennialists say,

01:53:06

I really can't say for sure what that signifies. I was wondering if you are less vague than that in your understanding of eschatology.

01:53:19

Well, specifically about the Beast, I'm probably just as vague, because, again, as I said in the previous discussions, there's certain things that can't be known.

01:53:27

There's been all kinds of interpretations. Can I give some kind of personal interpretation? Maybe. But I'm not really going to say that's definitely the interpretation.

01:53:35

For example, John Agashela, who was in the temple in AD 70, he went into the

01:53:41

Holy of Holies and started using the utensils for common uses. Was he the one that was the abomination of desolation?

01:53:47

I don't know. Maybe it seems to fit that. There's all kinds of other interpretations. So, yes, amillennialism is frustrating because they say it happened.

01:53:56

It is happening and will happen. Those kind of concepts. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for you when it comes to the

01:54:03

Book of Revelation. And, J. Rogers, could you add your own comments? I would say that I'm the opposite of that.

01:54:11

I believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. That's a doctrine that says that if there's a difficult passage in Scripture, and there are many difficult passages in Scripture, you understand it by a similar passage that's easier or the immediate context of what the writer is talking about.

01:54:29

So, I believe that God gave us a Bible. It's an inspired book. It's a supernatural book full of many remarkable prophecies.

01:54:37

And that we should look and study these prophecies and try to understand them. And I believe that with the aid of the

01:54:43

Holy Spirit, we can understand them. I've written several books. I wrote a fairly lengthy book on Daniel, in which

01:54:51

I get very specific. You can look that up on the internet if you're interested. I wrote a book on Nero Caesar, which is more of a graphically intense book, where I try to prove that Nero is the sixth head of the beasts in the

01:55:05

Book of Revelation. And I would say that one of the reasons why we don't understand is because we don't...

01:55:16

Our hermeneutic is not correct. We begin with presuppositions that are incorrect. And we begin with not really looking at Scripture the way that the writer would have understood

01:55:28

Scripture and that the audience would have understood Scripture. We often begin with our own set of presuppositions.

01:55:34

And that we really need to discard those first and really get back into the

01:55:40

Bible in its whole context, with Scripture interpreting Scripture, the Old Testament and the

01:55:46

New Testament. Alrighty. Now we have a question for Jay Rogers.

01:55:55

And this is coming to us from Terrence in North Belmore, Long Island, New York.

01:56:02

I was listening to one of your answers to Roderick Edwards, and I wasn't quite sure where you landed on your post -millennialist views.

01:56:12

But I know that most post -millennialists that I have read and heard speak do not believe that we just keep getting progressively better and better and better, that we could even enter into centuries of darkness like the world has never seen before things eventually will progress and where the world will be more populated with Christians.

01:56:34

Can you be more clear about your view? I don't. I said that there would be setbacks.

01:56:41

So I don't hold that view. I don't think that the gospel is preached and then we see darkness.

01:56:50

I think that when the gospel is preached, we see light. I think that when the gospel is preached, that we see people converted.

01:56:58

And if people are preaching the gospel and they're not seeing people converted, they're doing it wrong. Christ said that we are to go into the world and preach the gospel, that we're to make disciples of all nations.

01:57:13

God's given us the commandment, but he's also given us the means of accomplishing it so that we're not going to fail in that.

01:57:20

So I would say that, no, I don't agree that there will never be setbacks, but I also don't believe that it's possible for us to fail because God gave the commandment,

01:57:29

God's sovereign, and he's raised up a people who are obeying the commandment. Okay.

01:57:36

And if you could also respond to that, Roderick. Okay. Kind of doesn't apply to me, but we'll see.

01:57:43

So in the first century, we had Josephus, who was a historian. He was there and commentating on things that were happening.

01:57:49

Then at the time, he mentions about a woman whose starvation was so bad, and siege was so bad, she actually was eating one of her children.

01:57:57

So he mentions that. And these thieves came up and thought that she was eating some meat, and they tried to steal it from her. When they realized it was her child, they were fabricated.

01:58:05

My point is that, yes, obviously the world, when we look at it, it's, oh, look how bad it's getting.

01:58:10

We always look how bad it's getting. But if you could look back, you could see it's actually been worse than other times. And it might even get worse as time comes.

01:58:17

So I am a Victorian. I believe that, not Victorian in the sense of 1800, but victorious that Christ is going to ultimately be victorious.

01:58:25

Will it play out in the physical world? Maybe, maybe not. But at some point, it will play out. And so I can see a time when the gospel somehow conquers what we see today, the rampant

01:58:37

Islam, the rampant transsexuals, and all these other things. I can see a time when that can happen.

01:58:43

But it just seems difficult to see that now. Well, I have a question of my own.

01:58:48

I heard a rooster in the background crowing earlier, and I was wondering if either of you view that as an unfulfilled prophecy and who is it intended for?

01:58:57

I live in the forest on a farm, so I'm right out in the middle of nowhere. Well, I want our listeners to remember that the website for the postmillennial preterist,

01:59:09

Jay Rogers, is forerunner .com, F -O -R -E, runner .com. The website for the non -preterist,

01:59:16

Roderick Edwards, is rodericke .com. That's rodericke .com.

01:59:22

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions. I want to thank both of our debaters for being gentlemen and Christian brothers who did not use adhonement or anything like that.

01:59:37

And I want to remind all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater