Truth in Love Podcast- When was Revelation written?

Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast. Thank you for joining us. This is the 1st of 2023.

Stick around. We're going to continue to talk about post -millennialism, the dating of Revelation, and we're going to hit it off with a couple topics, 1

Corinthians 3 and 6. Our body is the temple of God and possibly being slain in the spirit.

We'll see how far we can get into these things, but stick with us. 1

Corinthians 3 and 6 Welcome back. Thank you for joining the Truth in Love podcast. It's so good to be here with you.

Dan, how are you doing? Good. How are you doing? I'm doing good. How was Christmas? I don't remember.

It went by so fast. It was good. I mean, we were sick on Christmas Day.

We had been really excited. We were all hyped up about having Lord's Day and Christmas Day all on the same day.

We were going to go and have just a fantastic time of being with the saints on the

Lord's Day on Christmas Day. And then, of course, like three out of our four kids were sick.

And one of them is brand new. Congratulations. How's that little one doing?

Oh, she's doing great. She doesn't know what day and night is, but she's doing all right. She'll sleep most of the day and then try to stay up all night.

Good deal. Well, before we move any further along, this is going to actually be our first commercial,

Dan. These are not paid advertisements.

This is a free advertisement because we believe in the unity of the body of Christ, supporting other believers.

And so with that goal in mind, we want to support businesses that are owned by Christians and we love their support of the ministry.

So check out these friends of the ministry before we get any further along. Take out the overlay and press play.

Here we go. Free diapers.

That's helpful. How about that?

Nice. Oh, it's good to have friends. There we go.

The videos just want to continue to play. Sorry about that. Of course they do. Now we're back on schedule.

And we lost three viewers because of our commercial. How about that? Let me turn the comments back on.

Let us know that you're watching. If we can pray for you, let us know that as well. If you have any questions, we'd love to try to answer those.

If we can, we'll do the best we can. Somebody already stumped us or stumped me at least a couple of podcasts ago.

Hopefully we can get back into Daniel, Daniel 12 and Matthew 13 or 14.

I can't remember which one it is, but that was a really good one. It was a really good one. And it's a relevant topic in some circles, the partial preterist view, understanding the scripture correctly, interpreting it correctly.

But that was that's a toughie right there. Let's jump into this is a question coming from Dan's side of social media.

Somebody posted a question about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit, temple of God.

And what does that mean? Some people, many people, I'm sure, were brought up hearing or being taught, don't smoke, don't do drugs.

Your body is the temple. And that was that was their application. So don't smoke, don't chew and don't go with the girls who do.

That's right. I may have to take off the overlay again, Dan. Let's see.

No, there goes right in the middle. Well, except for the cross, the cross. Well, that's where it should be.

Right in the middle. Let's take off the overlay. There we go. So First Corinthians chapter three, where do you want to start?

Let's see. Chapter one.

No. Start in verse 10. I'll turn the volume off on my phone.

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. I can't. I can't read that. Oh, OK. According to the great.

Do what? So that's way too small. My apologies. Let me see if I can make that bigger.

No, I'll follow along in my Bible. OK. According to the grace of God, which was given to me like a wise master builder,

I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it, for no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is

Jesus Christ. Now, if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, a straw, each man's work will become evident.

But the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.

If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.

If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved.

Yet so as through fire. Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you?

If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him for the temple of God is holy and that is what you are.

And I think that's where the crutch of the question come from, because you don't want somebody to destroy the temple of God and then

God burned them up because they destroyed God's temple, which is your body. So how would you respond to this person?

Well, you got to take the whole thing in context to look at what is being being said here.

The whole book is dealing with a disunity and a really a church that's gone off track.

Like they they at one point had the gospel, believed in it, even even to this point still do.

But they have got some major practical things just wonky. And so Paul is talking to them.

He says some stuff in chapter one and chapter two about how they're divided over certain teachers or was this teacher or that teacher that they were that they were joining themselves to.

I'm of this one. I'm of that one. I'm of Christ. Know whoever you wanted to be linked up with.

That's the camp I'm in. So I'm better than you because you're only over there dealing with that guy. So what you're saying is

I'm trying to address you. You go back in the first part of chapter three, trying to address you as spiritual people, but you aren't able to handle that.

You're dealing with jealousy and strife. He says, who is Apollos?

Who is Paul? It doesn't matter. Who cares? We're here to do the same work. And that work is to build up the church.

So we build up the church. We build up in order to to to do so. As long as someone is building up the church rightly, then that person is all right within the confines of the church.

That's not who Paul is getting on at that point. So he goes on and he says about what is it that you're doing to build?

You're laying a foundation of gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw. Whatever you do is going to be judged on the last day.

God will look at what you've done. And if what you did was worthwhile, you'll be judged as gold or silver, precious stones.

If not, it'll be burned up as wood, hay or stubble. Then he says, do you not know that your

God's temple and the Holy Spirit dwells in you? So if someone destroys the temple, if you give a wood, hay, stubble offering to the church, if what you do is worthless and is burned up, what do you think is going to become of you?

He even goes on in the next few verses and says, let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks he's wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

What he's saying there is we're not trusting in our way of doing things. We're going to have to trust in the way that God is, the way

God is doing things. So I want to point out something in verses 16 and 17, because they're the verses that people look at the most.

It says, do you, and this is important. When you look at the word you there, do you, that you is singular.

It's talking about an individual. Do you, who is under the sound of my voice, not know that you, and that word you there is in the plural.

Southern folks would say y 'all, y 'all. In fact, when

I was taking Greek this last year, taking Greek one again, not because I failed, but because I just had to for credit.

We convinced our professor to use y 'all for the second person plural. So we would be reading through and y 'all would be acceptable.

So do y 'all, or do you not know that y 'all, you guys collectively are

God's temple. And that God's spirit dwells in y 'all, you, plural.

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Now, I think the context here pushes in a certain direction. However, the grammar is a little bit ambiguous.

Here's what that means. It could be saying that you are the temple of the

Holy Spirit, Robert. And I, Dan, am the temple of the Holy Spirit, if we believe in Christ Jesus.

Likewise, with every single individual, that individual is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Or it could be saying you,

Robert, and me, and every other Bible -believing, God -fearing person on the planet, that trust in Christ for their salvation, collectively is one temple of the

Holy Spirit. So while the grammar is a little bit ambiguous, I think the context would push us to believe that he's telling us that the church as a unit is in view here.

So don't you, Corinthian church, know that you are the temple, you are

God's temple, and that's where God's spirit resides. So if you go about doing work that is destroying the church of God, destroying

God's temple, you will be judged for that on the last day. I think that's what the interpretation says.

Now, like I said, the grammar is ambiguous. So I got to have a little bit more background, a little bit more footing under me to make that statement as boldly as I just did.

So if you look over into chapter 6, that same language is used, the same idea.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You start in verse 19.

He's going through here talking about fleeing against sin. Don't destroy the unity of the believers through lawsuits.

Don't engage in sexual immorality because, where does it say? Verse 18, flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside of the body. The sexually immoral person sins against his own body, his own singular body.

So what does that mean? Verse 19, or do you, singular, not know that your body and that your there is plural?

Your, plural, y 'all's body, singular.

One body is the temple, or is a temple, singular, of the

Holy Spirit within y 'all, you, whom y 'all have from God.

Y 'all, you, plural, are not y 'all's own, not your own, for y 'all, plural, were bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body, singular, one body.

So, because Paul uses the same metaphor here, and I think he uses more clear language, that the temple of the

Holy Spirit is the collective body of the saints. It's the church.

I think also that you, it's not talking about someone who say, well, you've heard it said that people who get tattoos or smoke or drink or do something to defile their physical body is defiling or destroying the temple of the

Holy Spirit. I don't think that's what that's saying at all, at least not here. There are other passages that talk about gluttony, doing things above and beyond, drinking too much wine, doing stuff that is harmful to yourself.

We have the sixth commandment, which talks about preserving life. Preserving life, I believe, has, if you take it out to its logical conclusion, means doing things that are necessary to preserve your own life, which would be living a healthy lifestyle, making sure that you're getting proper sleep and exercise and all of that stuff.

But I don't think that's what it's talking about here in 1 Corinthians. So this warning that the one who destroys

God's temple, God will destroy him, I don't think is talking about people who are smoking or drinking too much or any of those other things because of those actions, because I think that this passage is talking about those who would destroy the church from the inside.

What do you think, Robert? I said a lot. Well, I'd like to study this issue a little bit more because I'm coming from that same background where this is taken as an individual take.

So I need to, you know, sorry about that. I'm seeing this as we could also say tabernacle, just the way it's described.

My body is a tabernacle, trying to compare it to Old Testament tabernacle, tabernacling.

The Holy Spirit dwells in here. God dwelled in the Holy Spirit. Tabernacle means dwelling, you know, where God dwells.

And so that's what's happening here in the temple. God is, the

Holy Spirit is dwelling there, so he's tabernacling with us. And then, you know, don't defile it.

So that's where I'm coming from. But also, it reminds me of conversations that we had in college, that we don't think in the

Western world the way you're talking about, the way they thought, the authors of the text here, with this mindset of group, with the group in mind, with the culture in mind.

We are more individualistic, and so we tend to read Scripture individualistically, even though there is the justification by faith, the gospel is for the individual,

God saves individuals, that is in Scripture. We have that. But also, there's the theme, and there's the mindset, there's the thinking, there's that which is written about the collective, about the whole.

I mean, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Make disciples of all nations.

The nations will come to Zion. I mean, even in the New Testament, there's that idea that the nations will come.

Go disciple the nations. And so you have that concept, and as you're explaining this thought here in 1

Corinthians 3 and chapter 3 and chapter 6, it's pretty consistent with what's going on in chapter 5.

If you look at the incident that Paul brings up at the very beginning, there is such a sin among them that is not even mentioned in the

Gentiles. And what does he ask them to do? Verse 7, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump.

So he's enacting church discipline here because of, one, to preserve the whole.

Right. And so to me, that interpretation that you're drawing out here of the temple, of the

Holy Spirit, the temple of God, being a more collective mindset here, falls right in place with chapter 5 and what he's going after there.

Right. It also helps you to realize that, especially with the sin of sexual immorality, if you as an individual commit that sin, it's not just you who is affected.

We take our dirty feet and we'll stomp it all over the temple of God as we bring it to our collective local churches on Sunday.

If I'm out here looking at pornography or cheating on my wife or anything like that, and I bring that into the sanctuary, unrepentant, oh, man.

I think that's a much closer situation to what he's describing here,

I think, than the one who has a cigarette before they, who smokes a pipe on the way to,

I don't know, chop wood with friends or whatever they do. Well, to me, it also sounds like a biblical, dividing it up between systematic and biblical theology.

It seems like a biblical concept. We don't draw everything from the

Old Testament because Christ fulfilled those things that was pointed to him in the

New Testament. But as far as principle goes, you have God speaking to the whole,

God speaking to the nation of Israel. And just the one instance that I'm thinking about is go plunder, or not plunder, but go destroy this nation, but don't take anything.

And then here you have this guy who hides some spools underneath the tent. And what does

God do? He doesn't destroy the whole nation, but he takes care of that one individual. Right, but the nation was in trouble before they called him out.

They as a nation had the sin brought upon themselves as a collective, even though the individual was the one who was punished.

And isn't that an interesting concept? Sure. Yeah, so it's not like God, like say, we've just got some bozo down here who just will not repent of his sin.

I'm not going to be held accountable necessarily for his individual sin.

However, the consequences of that sin being allowed in the group, in the church, in the temple of the

Holy Spirit, of allowing something that is defiled to be around the thing that is holy,

God, that we can have some hindrances.

Us as a church could be held back, or it could get a little dicey.

Well, the other place that I can think of, which I'm sure there's many others that we could talk about, but I'm going all the way to the book that we're going to talk about tonight,

Revelation. You've got the first several chapters there.

Jesus is speaking to the churches, and he speaks of removing their candlestick, speaking to the church at whole.

And so, yes, there is individualistic applications in Scripture, but transitioning from the

Old Covenant or the Old Testament to the New Testament, Old Covenant, New Covenant, there still is that idea or mindset of God deals with the whole.

There is a large continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Maybe some baptize their children.

You know, I can't wait. I had to. I can't wait till we have that podcast on the

Laborer's Podcast. I've got it on our list. I'm not sure if you noticed it or not. I'll have to show up for that one.

It's going to be a good one. Hopefully, my Presbyterian counterparts will show up and not hang me out to dry. Believer's baptism versus infant baptism.

Covenant baptism. Covenant baptism. My apologies. No, that's okay. Infant baptism is important.

We still baptize new converts. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the only other thing that I would say on this is you've got the – and you mentioned it just a few minutes ago, and you read the previous verse.

In chapter 6, I guess it's verse 18, where the sin of sexual immorality.

And it's a sin that's inside the body. All other sins are outside the body. And it's talking about defiling the temple.

If you want to camp there for a few minutes in your study and talk about that, I was thinking about those things.

And, you know, in Scripture, you have the immorality idea of defiling the temple.

You have idolatry, defiling the temple. And then people talk about – if you read other people, they talk about just sin in general, defiling the temple.

And then we get into, you know, what is a sin? Is this a sin? Is that a sin? Is it a sin of the conscience?

Is it a sin for you, a sin for me? Those things that people were bringing up, they're sins if they become a sin.

They're not necessarily – you know, some of these things are not sins if they don't take control of us.

You know, if the Holy Spirit – we loosen the control of the Holy Spirit, we don't yield to the Holy Spirit, and those things become controlling over us.

Like, don't become drunk. You know, that's kind of where we stand on that, you know, where the drinking comes in.

Don't become drunk. Don't let it be your controller instead of the

Holy Spirit. And so the same thing is true for smoking. Same thing is true – and you brought it up too, gluttony.

Same thing is true for eating. You can eat too much. You can eat the wrong things.

So all these things are sins when they become sinful. Right. Another thing to think about that would,

I think, keep us from making the conclusion that each – say smoking, for instance, is a – like, say you die of lung cancer because of smoking, that you are automatically, say, judged of God for destroying

His temple. Right. If that person repents, even if they repent later on, they still have the cancer.

The cancer still takes the body, kills the body. Is that person then who has repented and trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, is that person then lost just because of the nature of how they died?

And I don't think that the Bible teaches that because the Bible teaches that anyone who comes to Christ for the forgiveness of their sins is going to find

Him to be a perfect Savior. So if we are reading a passage that, when we come to its logical conclusion, could lead to a situation where someone who is truly repentant still suffers a consequence of previous actions, that that person can't be saved because of their previous actions, then we have done a great disservice to the gospel itself.

The gospel has the power to save even those who, say, did smoke for years and got cancer, who have repented of their sin, and yet there they are.

They're still suffering the consequences. But it doesn't mean that they can't find salvation in Christ.

Right. The blood of Christ... Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, the blood of Christ pays for all sin, even future sin.

And people, we are going to continue to struggle with sin for the rest of our life.

Even if it's that same sin, we should be moving in a certain direction of holiness.

We talk about that, we preach on that, but we're going to struggle. There's going to be...

We're going to continue to struggle, and Jesus pays for all of our sin. Right, and that's why it's so important for us to be a part of a local body and for the local body to be involved in each other's life.

I think of what Jesus said when he asked... He had the people outside of his house, or Peter's house, or wherever he was, saying...

And if we want to talk about Jesus having a house, we can talk about that later too. We have the people saying,

Hey, your mother and your brothers and your sister are outside. And he looks around and he's like, Who is my mother and my brother and my sisters?

It's those who do the will of God. So really, the true family relationship where we should be encouraging one another the strongest is our church family relationship.

That should be our strongest bond. That's where our tightest bond should be forged. It should be between those of us who are believers.

It's why it's so important to be within a believing body of Christians.

Because one of the purposes of us joining together, humanly speaking, is that we will have a people to hold us accountable, to uplift us, to point us to Christ, and to help us along the way.

Absolutely. We're about at the 30 -minute mark, and I don't think we're going to get a chance to go into being slain in the spirit, a subject another listener brought up that we would like to hit on.

Maybe we can do that next Monday night. And by the way, if you happen to notice, if you watch us live, our night has changed for right now.

We're going to be doing Monday nights instead of Sunday nights. Monday nights at 8 .30. So let's jump into the main subject of the night.

See if we can get it in at 30 minutes. Well, there's so much more we could always talk about.

But the dating of the book of Revelation, we want to talk about that tonight, and we want to talk about why that's important.

But before you answer that question, Dan, why that subject is important, I wanted to read just this little section here, and I should have marked it.

I thought I'd be able to find it really easy because it's at the beginning of the book. Let me get past all the prefaces.

Well, I'm going to find it. What book is it?

I'm going to reveal that in just one moment. Suspense.

It is suspenseful. You pay for the whole seat, but you only need the edge.

All right. There we go. It was at the beginning. It is the preface. So here's the book. Days of Vengeance by David Chilton.

No comment. Oh, it's a good book. I've got a copy of it myself. This is in the preface.

Sorry it took so long to find it. I just wanted to read this before we got started. He says, number one, his number one point in the preface,

Revelation is the most biblical book in the Bible. St. John quotes hundreds of passages from the

Old Testament, often with subtle allusions to little known religious rituals of the Hebrew people.

In order to understand Revelation, we need to know our Bibles backward and forward. One reason why this commentary is so large is that I have tried to explain this extensive biblical background commenting on numerous portions of the scripture that shed light on St.

John's prophecy. I have also. Okay. He reprints this appendix, but I thought that was so important.

It's an important point that his claim is that Revelation is the most biblical.

He put that in quotes, biblical book in the whole Bible. It's referencing so much from the

Old Testament. So when we look at the book of Revelation, we don't try to import our ideas, our eschatology, our own thoughts into our futurism, into Revelation.

We need to understand Revelation based on how John intended us to read it and his inferring back to the

Old Testament, his quoting the Old Testament. And so if we interpret it or read it in light of how

John wrote it, we're going to come up with such different conclusions than what's so popular today.

Sure. But I thought that was such an important point to make. Understanding how

John wrote the book helps us to understand how we should interpret it. So Dan, why is the date, the writing of the book of Revelation so important?

Well, it's important for several reasons. I don't know where to start.

One of the reasons why it's important is that if it's written in, if it's written at, say, in 95

AD, like some people say it was, 95 or 96 AD, that takes place after 70

AD, because of math and time and physics and how all that works. If that's the case, then the book here can't be said to be predictive prophecy of what is about to take place.

I guess you could make the argument that it is revealing in type and shadow things that had already taken place, but we haven't seen a pattern of that in scripture, unless you're willing to take some of the more liberal positions on like Isaiah or Daniel or whatever.

Bible -believing Christians take the Bible at face value. If it says it was written at a certain time, you believe it.

And we see predictive prophecy all the way through the Bible.

There's no reason to think that when you come to Revelation, it would be different, that this would be like after the fact or something.

So one of the reasons why it's important is that if this was written before 70 AD, it matches up fairly well with the events that conspired to see the fall of Jerusalem and the ending of the old covenant era.

And if that's what's taking place, then that's what we should understand the text to mean. So one of the reasons why is because if it's written in 95

AD, it's not talking about that because those things would have already happened.

But if it's talking about stuff, if it was written in say 65 or 66 or 67

AD, those events that John were to speak of would be future and not just future, but short to come shortly, would shortly come to pass, would take place soon, which

I think there's evidence within the book to suggest that there would take place soon. But that's some of the reasons why it's important.

Well, we talk about some of the aspects of these different eschatologies, like dispensational pre -true pre -millennialism.

And then we talk about post -millennialism. And some of those aspects that I brought up before we talked about before, if one of those things falls apart, it really punches a big hole in that eschatology, if not breaks it down.

Is this one of those areas, one of those concepts that depending on which way you go, the other one kind of crumbles?

It can. I would say that'd be more true for your interpretational method for the book.

So it would probably have more to do with whether or not you take a preterist position or an idealist position or a futurist position or a historicist position.

I don't necessarily think it would impact someone away.

I don't think no matter when it's dated, it could cause someone to not be a post -millennialist or to not be an amillennialist.

Even if you do have a later date of, let's say 95 or 96

AD, I still think that people like R .J. Rushtuni took an idealist perspective of the book of Revelation and still was a strong post -millennialist.

So he came away with it with a different understanding of the book of Revelation, but still held to a post -millennial eschatology.

So yes and no. But it is pretty powerful. It is.

And it can strengthen one argument or the other. One of the reasons why it does that is because the dating of the book helps determine the context in which it was written.

If it was written before the fall of Jerusalem and the punishment of the

Jewish nation at the end of the old covenant, if it was written before that, then those things would be in view.

If it happened after that, it would change the whole context because those things had already passed away and the

Christian church had started and been going for a little bit, almost 60 years at that point before he had these visions.

So it definitely changes the context that the whole book would take on.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you take an earlier date and you're reading Revelation, and it's meaning this or it's talking about that, and it can't be talking about that.

But if you take a later date, then it can't mean what you were reading into it when you held an earlier date for the writing of Revelation.

So, I mean, there's a lot that plays into it. Yeah, John wrote to real churches that were around at his time.

So if the date was in 70 or 66, 67

AD, then we would have to read the book of Revelation as if we were in one of those churches receiving the book from them.

And if it was written in 95 or 96 AD, we would have to read the book as if it was given to us in one of those churches in that date.

Unless, and here's a big if, you take one of those positions that, and for whatever reason, a lot of dispensationalists will do this, they will spiritualize the churches into different eras of history, saying that it typifies what's going to happen throughout time.

I don't know how you have a very literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of the

Bible all the way through, and then you come to the seven churches and say, it's clearly talking about ages of church history.

I don't know how you arrive at that conclusion. That's the point that I was going to bring up. It seems wildly inconsistent to me, but people do.

It does. You've got to take it literally. You've got to take it literally. Oh, well, let's spiritualize this one.

I mean, you can't pick and choose. Yeah, I don't know. Well, this is where I like to start,

Dan, because it's my understanding that the argument for the later date, which you said was the writing of Revelation happened around 95, 96.

Right. The real big argument in support of that date is

Irenaeus. Yep. And from my understanding, that's really,

I'm not well -read. I'm not claiming to be well -read. I'm not claiming to have read it all or heard all the arguments.

But from what I did read, that's pretty much it. That's the biggest, if not the only argument for the later date is

Irenaeus. Well, you've got Irenaeus. You've got Irenaeus. You've also got, I think it's

Clement of Alexandria. And then you've got a bunch of people who quote those two.

So people will try to say, well, look, you have all these people who are saying that it was during Demetian's reign.

It was towards 95, 96 AD. And yet they're just quoting the same guy over and over.

So it would probably be helpful to look at this quote. You got it ready?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got it. We're good. It comes from Irenaeus' work on against heresies at book five, chapter 30, verse three.

And it goes like this. We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist.

In other words, he was talking about who the Antichrist was. He says, I'm not going to pronounce what his name is.

I'm not going to say what his name is. For if it were necessary that this name should be distinctly revealed in this present time.

In other words, if we were to know it, then it would have been announced by him who beheld the apocalyptic vision.

In other words, if John thought it was important for us to know who he was, he would have just told us in plain English or Greek.

Then here comes the portion of it that is, it's the portion of people point to the most.

For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our own day towards the end of Domitian's reign.

Now, here's the thing. If John saw the apocalyptic vision, if he saw the vision of revelation and he saw it at the end of Domitian's reign, then there's no way that he could have written down the vision that he hadn't seen yet 30 years prior.

Does that make sense? Right. It makes sense. The problem is that the

English here is much more certain about what actually took place than the

Greek. Right. So, in Greek, there's no first, second, third person, just like in English.

First person being I, me, my. Second person being you, yourself, y 'all.

Third person being he, she, or it. So, you can say different things like he saw the movie, or I threw a ball and it hit the window.

It being third person. So, really, what you have in Greek is it's left up to the context to determine whether it means he, she, or it, because it's all wrapped up into the endings, the conjugation of the verb.

So, that verb is the one for was seen. Was seen.

And it was in the third person. So, for that or for it was seen would be the apocalyptic vision referred to before.

But it could also be referring to for he was seen.

Announced by who? Announced by John. For John was seen in no very long time since, but almost in our own day towards the end of Domitian's reign.

So, it could have been that following with the logic of the whole quote, they're not going to answer because if it was necessary that John would have told us,

John would have said it in plain language. And he had opportunity to do so because we've seen him, and we've seen him even towards the end of Domitian's reign.

He's had time to clarify who this Antichrist figure was. So, the

Greek at best doesn't tell us anything.

So, it could be referring to the text itself, or it could be referring to John who they saw.

Right. And so, we really have no way of knowing what it was that Irenaeus was trying to say to us.

Now, I think that in the context of the grammatically, we don't know.

I mean, it could be one, it could be the other. I think in the context of what he wrote down here,

I think it makes the most sense to say that not that he saw the vision recently, so we should know, but that John didn't clarify and he had the opportunity to because we saw him even at the end of Domitian's reign.

Right. He had time to clarify his statement. Why don't we just take the principle that we learned in hermeneutics, the science of interpreting

Scripture, interpret something in light of the clear. So, like you said, this is ambiguous.

It could go either way. And you have a whole eschatology that weighs in the balance on the dating of Revelation here.

Possibly. Possibly. Maybe. But it supports it strongly if it's written later.

The dispensational, you know, pre -meal view, the pre -trib rapture view, you know, it swings heavily towards this later date.

However, the support for that later date is very, very iffy.

What is clear? What have we found out that is clear? What do we have the most support for?

The internal evidence of an earlier date of Revelation. And so I think it's important to carry over a hermeneutical principle of interpreting

Scripture, understand something that's ambiguous or hard to understand in light of the clearer passages.

Does that make sense? Well, even in science and mathematics, which I mean, once you come out of Scripture, you lose the theological aspect to how you interpret things because these are not inspired words.

So if it's not clear, we can't say. If it's not been proven, like you think of geometric proofs from geometry.

If you haven't proven it, then you can't use it to solve the problem. But Scripture is inspired.

Scripture is inspired. So Scripture, we have a theological aspect where maybe something can be ambiguous, but it's spoken of elsewhere through the analogy of faith and through the rest of Scripture.

But here, this has to be taken at face value only in this context, unless he explains himself expressly somewhere else.

Because he's allowed to define his terms. But if he doesn't define those terms, we're not allowed to define them for him, which also we do in the

Bible. If the Bible doesn't say it, we allow what is clear in the Bible to speak.

Yeah. I do want to squeeze this in, and I'm not big on contradicting anybody, especially on air or in a podcast like this, but my notes were coming from Ken Gentry.

And when you brought up Clement of Alexandria, I did take a note when he mentioned Clement of Alexandria.

He is saying that he wrote Clement was about 200 years after, 200 AD, and he was in favor of an early date of Revelation.

And it's because in his writings, he found it in Clement's writings called

Who is the Rich Man, Chapter 42. He said that the apostle, the apostolic era, ended with Nero.

Sure. And John wrote, or John is the author of Revelation.

So, therefore, I guess logically he's making the connection. If the apostolic era ended with Nero and Demetian, not

Demetian, I got Demetian. Demetian. Right. Demetian, he comes after Nero.

So, if the apostolic era ended with Nero, then it had to be written earlier because John is the author, if that makes sense.

No, no, you're absolutely right. And what I meant by that was that there is a piece of external evidence that is claimed to be in support of a late date that comes from Clement of Alexandria.

Okay. However, you're right. Gentry does say that this piece actually goes in favor of an early date, and I agree with him.

It absolutely does. Because what he does is he says this,

And to give you confidence when you have truly repented that there remains for you a trustworthy hope and salvation, hear a story that is no mere story but is a true account of John the

Apostle that has been handed down and preserved in memory. When after the death of the tyrant, he removed from the island of Patmos to Ephesus.

Now, the contention is that when it says tyrant, that it's speaking of Demetian.

Gentry does a really good job of pointing out that Demetian never had a worldwide general persecution of the area, let alone

Christians, and that he was a violent type of dude.

He was not a nice guy, but that his were more isolated and purposeful. Nero was just psycho and wanted to kill everyone, especially

Christians. So the person who was called tyrant by the people who were living in that day was

Nero. If you had somebody and you were talking to them and said, what about the tyrant?

They would say, that's Nero. It's that guy. So what he's saying here actually gives a better, when you understand the tyrant to be

Nero, it's better evidence for the early date. So it says, when after the death of the tyrant, he removed from the island of Patmos to Ephesus.

So he left the island of Patmos and went to Ephesus to serve for a time after Nero died, which was not anywhere close to the 90s.

It means that he was able to go right when

Nero died, which is much closer to that 70 AD date. Well, with the time that we have, go ahead.

I was saying, you're right. The evidence that was said to be in favor of a later date is actually evidence of an earlier date.

Well, with the time that we have remaining, let's see if we can look at that more clear.

I think it's more clear internal evidence that we're pulling from John and the book of Revelation and how it supports an earlier date of him writing the book of Revelation.

I was going to go to Revelation 11, 1 and 2. Yeah, you can do that.

All right. I like Revelation 11. And I'll just read those two verses real quick and we can walk through those verses.

Yeah. Before we go there, we should probably back up a little bit.

Sure. And show just how Revelation, instead of going into the middle of Revelation and showing stuff that we feel to be consistent, actually building the case from the beginning of Revelation itself.

Okay. Yeah. If we start off in verse 1 of Revelation 1, it says, the revelation of Jesus Christ was

God gave to show his servants the things which must soon take place. So whatever date you come up with for the dating of the book of Revelation, the events that are contained in the book of Revelation are supposed to take place soon.

People will try to say that that just means that they're going to happen quickly after they start, but it's not like those words that mean soon and quickly, they don't mean that.

It's not meant like that hardly anywhere and certainly not in the biblical record.

So, I mean, it's almost like you have to reinvent, change what's happening now with the definition of what a woman is in the

Merriam -Webster dictionary. You almost have to go back and redefine what soon means in your

Greek lexicon. Yeah. I mean, I could just imagine if you were original reader and let's say that it was written 95, 96

AD and you are an original reader and you read this and John is telling you this must shortly take place.

I'm thinking we're going to have to go through this again. We just went through it.

We have to go through this again or something similar. Right, right. If you're one of these people in Ephesus, Smyrna or Pergamum, Thyatira, you're going to be like,

OK, he's writing to me. This is going to happen soon. Therefore, I need to be ready because these things are going to happen soon.

You pop down into verse seven. It says, Behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Even so. Amen. So, Jesus is coming. He's coming on the clouds.

Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all the tribes will wail on account of him.

Even so. Amen. Matthew.

Twenty four. Speaks of. The returning of.

Christ. It says the a returning of Christ.

Let me say that. Matthew. Twenty four.

Thirty one says the sign of the return of the son of man and all the tribes of the earth will mourn.

They will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power. It's. Really similar.

You see coming on the clouds of heaven. The tribes of the earth were worn. Every eye will see him.

You know, he will have becoming great power and glory. And what's so important about that is that when you look in Matthew.

Twenty four. Just a few short verses after verse thirty one. You find a.

You find that little phrase where it says. That all these things will take place before this generation passes away.

So the people who are going to be there. When these events take place are going to be the people who are there listening to him that day.

Even it even says it here. Even those who pierced him. Some of the people who are there in order to execute the the the crucifixion upon Jesus were going to be around for the events that were taking place in the book of Revelation.

Is describing what this coming is going to look like. How is it going to be?

What's taking place here? So because.

Just because of the dating. It seems that these events were all wrapped up in 70

AD. If all these events were wrapped up in 70 AD, that means that the book of Revelation had to have been written before that.

Right. In order to. Say this is what's happening. This is what's coming up in the future. Right.

Yeah, you've got this. You've got the. I can't remember the terminology that's used, but the nearness language.

Shortly take place. It's near. It's at hand. You have all that language and it's sprinkled throughout the book.

You know, if it's just if it's just in like a one place, then you can maybe. Say it's ambiguous, like we were talking about.

But it's sprinkled throughout and it's the context makes makes it clear who he's speaking to, who the audience is, who should be understanding that it's which audience is it near to scripture.

I think it's clear on that. And then, like you said, if you look at Matthew 24, if you look at Revelation, you see a parallel.

And Matthew 24 is speaking of. That generation and leading up to Matthew 24, you know.

Jesus is hinting at who is going to see his is coming. You will not finish going through the cities of Israel.

You know, he's just he's telling us who his audience is, who is going to see these things.

And then Revelation becomes a parallel to Matthew 24. The same events are described.

Right. Also, if you remember. The what

Clement of Alexandria was saying, how John was released from Patmos at the shortly after the death of Nero.

Nero died in June of 68 AD. It says down here in verse nine,

I, John, your brother and partner, tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Christ Jesus was on the isle of called

Patmos on account of the word of God in the testimony of Jesus. It says was past tense.

Now, where was he? So I think he wrote this down shortly after, you know, sometime in 68

AD, somewhere shortly after June, when he was finally released from the island, he left and wrote down the vision that he had while he was on the island.

Which when he says soon, I mean, like, like, you're pushing it, man.

Like he saw that vision and is writing it down. And like all of these things would be happening like now.

Right. He may have been penning stuff while events were beginning to take place around him.

Yeah, it was it was incredibly tight timeline. Anything else before we jump to Revelation chapter 11?

No, go ahead. All right. Well, just on the theme of what you were doing, let me do this.

Speaking of parallels, Luke chapter 21, verse 24. Now, everybody listen to this and Luke chapter 21, verse 24.

And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all nations.

And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the

Gentiles are fulfilled. Now, that's a big question for folks. What is the time of the

Gentiles mean? Is that is that what we're going through right now, the time of the Gentiles, the gospel going to the Gentiles?

And then, you know, Israel will come back and, you know, be big again.

What's the time of the Gentiles? Look, look in Revelation chapter 11, verses one and two.

Then there was given me a measuring rod like a staff. And someone said, get up and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship in it.

Leave out the court, which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations.

And they will tread underfoot the holy city for 42 months. This trampling and treading underfoot of the

Gentiles. Same thing, parallel passage, Luke 21, 24, and here in Revelation chapter 11.

I think we can answer a lot of questions in these looking at these verses. Yeah.

So let's let's start at the beginning of verse one. Then there there was giving a measuring rod like a staff.

And someone said, get up and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship in it.

Some people want to spiritualize this. So people who are promoting an early writing of Revelation, they're saying this is evidence because the person speaking to John is telling him to get up and go measure the temple.

Now, people who want to promote a later date. I cannot pronounce this guy's name, but he says greetings.

Greetings to you, Mr. Production. He's on YouTube. Thanks for watching.

We really appreciate it. Can you say that name? Finkle Mist Comics?

I'm not sure. Yeah, it's like three words put together. Finkle Mist Comics.

Gotcha. Or maybe it's Finkle Mist. I don't know.

So those who want to promote a later date of 95 96

AD for Revelation, they're going to spiritualize this and say or. If CP will do, you said it right.

You got it right, Dan. Figurative, figurative language or spiritualize it and say, well, he's he's, you know, he's not speaking of a literal temple.

He's spiritualizing it. How do we know,

Dan, that John is being told to measure the temple, the literal temple that's in Jerusalem?

What other temple is he going to measure? Exactly. What other temple is going to measure?

The one that's that's still standing, the one that still is, if if this was written in 95

AD, the temple has been destroyed. There's not a temple to measure. Right.

And where is the temple? The temple is in Jerusalem. And if it's still going to be trampled underfoot by the nations for 42 months, it would have been describing past past information.

Yeah, exactly. And then the other evidence there is he's speaking of the actual temple is that he's speaking of the one that's in the holy city.

And the holy city had to be still standing. And the other references in Scripture of the holy city is referring to Jerusalem.

That's how we know he's speaking of Jerusalem. That's how we know it's speaking of the temple in Jerusalem when he says the holy city here.

And so the holy city, Jerusalem, must still be standing and it must be speaking of a literal the literal temple in Jerusalem because he's speaking of a holy city.

He's not speaking of a spiritualized or figurative place that the

Gentiles are going to tread underfoot for 42 months. This is a literal event that's going to happen.

And so the temple must be literal that he's supposed to be measuring. Does that make sense?

Yep. And so if all that's true, if all that's true, then it has to it hasn't happened yet.

And so it's pointing to John to John. Yes. So it's pointing to an early date of Revelation being written.

Let's see. We have a question from YouTube, Mr. Production. I haven't gotten to Revelation yet.

I've studied Matthew to Jude and then went to read Ezekiel and Daniel first. Hey, great places to start.

And if you're interested, you know, if you're interested, shameless plug here. We've done some videos on Daniel.

Did we do Ezekiel? We did Ezekiel, didn't we? We did a little bit of Ezekiel, the portions that were related to.

That's right. Esther. Right. So we did some relevant passages in Ezekiel.

We went all the way through Esther. So I think those would be good for you to listen to as you you're leading up to.

And we did some stuff on Matthew, of course, Matthew 24, especially as you lead up to Revelation.

So right now, we're just trying to look at the eternal evidence of the dating or the early dating of Revelation.

So we believe that John is pointing here to a literal temple that he is asked to measure.

Hasn't happened yet. Literal sitting, little literal trampling for those for those guys that are accused of not taking the

Revelation literally. We're speaking. We're taking it literal here. I do believe that there is a world event that is being spoken about in Revelation that I would say have already happened, but also that there's a spiritual side.

From what I know so far, I would hold to a later date. Gotcha. We won't turn you away.

Be honest. I think there's more to it than a recounting or a short term prophecy of what's about to happen.

I think John is telling, I think he is telling of what's about to take place.

But I think he's doing so in such a way that we'll be able to look ahead into our time and see patterns of things that could happen.

So as we see a judgment come upon the nation of Israel here in the book of Revelation, we can kind of see and understand the workings behind what

God is doing. Perhaps when other nations are judged, have other nations done this, that or the other thing?

What are some of the things that happen in the world that could be construed as warnings from God to turn and to repent?

What sort of things could be a sign of God actually pouring out his judgment on a people?

So I don't necessarily think that you can, it's kind of like nailing firm jello to the wall.

It's actually absolutely speaking about, I think, the events of 70 AD, but I think he's also giving us a guideline for the future as well.

Ending in, and this is very important in today's conversation, ending in a future second coming of Christ and a bodily resurrection.

Well, I would throw this in there, Dan, and I would relate it to a comment that you made earlier.

And I'm making this comment because there's probably most or many people that watch our podcast are probably unaware of some controversies that are happening in some of the

Facebook groups that we're reading or listening to between partial preterist and full preterist.

I would say this based on a comment that you made earlier, just because a person holds to a later date of the writing of Revelation, the year 95 or 96, doesn't mean they can't still be a post -millennialist.

I would say this because I know a lot of people are tiptoeing around this issue right now.

If you hold to the early date of Revelation and Revelation pointing to the culmination of the tribulation and everything ending in 70

AD, and that's what all this is pointing to, doesn't make you a full preterist. You can still be a partial preterist.

It's okay. And so many of these things overlap between the two groups.

Sure. I'm not a full preterist. I'm not a... What did you call it?

Hyper preterist? Hyper preterist. It wasn't heretical preterist.

You said something. Called us orthodox preterists. Orthodox, yeah. Yeah, orthodox preterists.

Yeah, yeah. We're still orthodox preterists, but I think Revelation does speak to that time period and the fulfillment of all these things happening in 70

AD. But one other thing that I would like to mention as far as internal evidence and something cool helping us understand and interpret

Revelation, these dates come up. And sometimes we don't have dates, and we don't know when things are going to take place.

But when time periods are given, like in Daniel, when he talks about weeks, 70 weeks, how do we understand those things?

Sometimes when dates are given, we don't understand them. Here, we have some dates. Some actual dates are given.

And how do we understand that? How were they used? How do they help us understand Scripture? Well, John says here in verse 2 that the

Gentiles, or as he says in Luke, the time of the

Gentiles, are going to be 42 months. That trampling is going to be 42 months. Now, this is the notes.

I'm going to give credit to where I studied, Ken Gentry. He said that Vespian was a

Roman general. So was Titus. Vespasian, yeah. Thank you for that.

I can't pronounce these things. What did I say? It's okay. I can't pronounce half of them either. Well, see, my problem is

I'm trying to read these names based on how I wrote them down. No, no.

And here's the thing. I don't think we should be making fun of people for mispronouncing stuff because a lot of times when people mispronounce stuff, they mispronounce it because they learn through reading instead of through hearing.

Which means that they did a lot of the research and thinking on their own and weren't just parroting someone else.

Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that. Hey, man, I'll give you all the help you can get. So it's

Vespasian? Yeah. Okay. And then Titus also was a

Roman general. They arrived, these Roman generals and the army arrived in April of 67

A .D. And then everything culminated and ended in August of 70

A .D. And Ken Gentry is saying that if you add that up, you've got 42 months.

And that would be the trampling by the Gentiles, the time of the

Gentiles here in Revelation chapter 2. And so that would be our support, our internal evidence of an early writing of Revelation and also something neat and interesting to look at to help us understand these dates that are in here.

What did he mean? Here's what happened. This war happened.

He called it. He prophesied it. It happened. It happened in 42 months, exactly.

And then you have the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A .D.

Right. And those 42 months also link up with Daniel.

Okay. And it's just cool.

Are you reading the comments? No, I didn't. Oh, I don't read a second coming when

I read things like Matthew 24. I think I have 27 chapters relating to the idea, but I'm not sure there was a word for my view.

I lost Internet for a bit. Okay. Thank you for watching, though. So what were you saying about Daniel?

I was just saying that the 42 months and all that is all related to the book of Daniel. I mean, that does put a damper on, say, the dispensational premillennial position.

Because if the book of Daniel says all these things will take place in the days of those kings, and we see this book is clearly related to it, then all of these things,

I think, should take place in the days of those kings, which would be. You know, at least during the first few centuries when the

Roman Empire was taken out. Right. Right. Well, and if you look at the 70 weeks of years that Daniel speaks of, and you don't put that gap in between the 69th and 70th week, if you just keep it consistent.

I know you kind of took a different view there when we looked at Daniel. But if you do continue that trajectory and consistent timeline, you do end up here at this time period.

So Daniel matches up. Matthew matches up. Luke matches up. Revelation matches up. All these things are consistent, and it's consistent with an early writing of Revelation, which supports the partial preterist view.

And I would add, you know, challenges.

I think, and I think I can speak for Dan as well, I want the scripture to tell me what

I'm supposed to believe. I don't want to be guilty of what I, you know, what I think I see others doing, importing my eschatology, importing what

I want the text to say into the text, and trying to make it fit.

I want God to tell me what he says, and then I go with that interpretation. And that's why

I'm so excited when I see the consistency. And that's why

I hold the view that I hold, is because of, I think that's, I think the consistency is part of the evidence of God speaking to us in scripture.

Any last thoughts as we wrap up? No, my brain is pretty much fried. Yeah, we got to get up and go to work tomorrow.

We've been on here long enough. The most important thing is, is that the

Old Testament, the New Testament, it all points to Christ. And it points to his coming to rescue sinners, to rescue the world, to make things right.

Because we blew it, we messed it up, we sinned, and we brought the curse here into this world.

Even though God set up a sacrificial system, it was just to temporarily cover sin.

Jesus came and wiped sin away, and now he is remaking.

And he has called us to go and disciple the nations, help him or use us in this kingdom building process.

But to be able to be in that kingdom, we've got to repent of our sins.

The Bible calls us to repent of our sins and put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and plead with him to save us.

He says he will cause us to be born again. He will make us new, new creatures, give us a new heart, a heart of flesh.

And he will give us a desire for his word, a desire to obey him that we didn't have before when we were blind.

We're blind to our trespasses and sin. We're blind to the things of God, and we don't seek after him.

We need him to rescue us. We've all sinned, we've all missed the mark, we've all broken his law, every single one, and we need

Jesus to rescue us. So Dan and I plead with you tonight to repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

Dan, would you mind to close us in prayer? Sure. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for tonight, for giving us the opportunity to look at your word.

We pray that you would keep us humble. We would remember that you are the author of Scripture, and we are not the ones who get to determine what it means.

If we're wrong, we pray that you would cause us to repent. We pray that you would reveal yourself to each of your children, and that you would continue to build your kingdom.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Let's look at this last comment. I would say that because he's using coded language, then he would have to be in a position where it was necessary, and that would defend a later date.

I've heard that. I've heard that. He didn't want the authorities to understand what he was saying, but he knew that Jewish people would understand his language, which to me, that would support an early date as well.

There was more widespread persecution of Christians under Nero than there was under Domitian. Yeah, yeah.

You have a blessed day as well. Thank you so much. We hope you were encouraged, and it's okay if we disagree.

We'll work this stuff out. Iron sharpens iron, and God will teach us, and we'll all be unified one day when we're around his feet.

Thank you again for watching, everybody. We really appreciate it. Remember that Jesus is king. Go live in the victory of Christ.

Go speak with the authority of Christ, and continue to go out there and share the gospel of Christ. We hope to see you real soon.