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- and we are live. Welcome to Reformed Ex Mormon. I am
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- Pastor Brayden, and it's a true blessing if you're able to watch this video. I'm very excited for today as we are having the opportunity to interview
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- Dr. Sam Frost. Sam here is a gentleman I got to be in a house with while at a conference and was able to dialogue, have some fellowship with him at this recent
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- Open Air Theology Conference back in February on the topic of why Calvinism. Sam preached during the pre -conference that was about the dangers of full preterism, and it was a real blessing.
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- I gotta let you know, Sam, everybody that I've talked to at the conference said, this has been echoed amongst several, several people, is they were so genuinely thankful to see how much of a humble man you were, and that was some of their highlights of being at the conference was just being able to sit around and being able to fellowship with yourself.
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- So I hope that's not too much of a surprise to yourself, but it was a real blessing being able to talk to those individuals and hear them say those things about yourself.
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- I'm very proud of my humility. That's right. You're the humblest man, you know, huh?
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- Well, I love being there. It was a real, as these conferences are, it was a real shot in the arm, just a vitamin
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- B12 shot, Holy Spirit shot. And, you know, for several days afterwards, just basking like, man, and I'm sad that I had to leave early.
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- I had to leave Friday, and I wish I could have stuck around for the whole thing, but everyone I met there, you know, was just great.
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- The fellowship was wonderful. It made a lot of contacts. That's the thing.
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- And many are trying to persuade me to become Reformed Baptist. I would be one of those individuals.
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- If I can, if I could, if I could chat with you after the live, and we'll see if I can convert you to 1689.
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- That's right. Well, brother, I think that's a, that's a really good place to start is just introducing yourself.
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- Who is Dr. Sam Frost? We're talking about preterism today. So if you wouldn't mind guiding it in that direction, but who is
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- Sam? So Sam, I've been in church most of my life, raised
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- Foursquare Gospel Church, and loved every minute of it, still do stay in fellowship with some of those, with some of those folks that are still alive.
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- So 56 years old, went ahead and got my doctorates. I pursue more academic kind of things as an instructor with Life Bible College, and I'm starting to kind of pursue that end of things that may, in my 60s, end up in a seminary teaching.
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- But right now, my focus has always been in the, where my passion is, and that's in the pews, the churches, especially like these rural, smaller churches that are really getting hit industrially wise, and then also cultural, just being hit on all fronts.
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- And a lot of churches are closing, you know, in these small rural kind of communities. You're in Tennessee, right?
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- No, so I'm in Southern Idaho, and I'm in a very rural spot myself. You're in rural, then you know what
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- I mean. Yeah. Absolutely, I do. Churches of 20, 30 people, you know, that kind of thing.
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- And I love these gatherings. These are becoming some of my favorite gatherings of, because you find some real tight -knit people in the group of 30, you know, that are really just pulling everything together.
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- Yeah. And successfully doing so. The worship is dynamic, the teaching is dynamic. Everything is, you know, you think that only occurs in context of, you know, 500 people or things like that, but it doesn't.
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- Some of the greatest teachings I've heard, Richard Gamble, I could think of a lot of, were in churches of like 20 people.
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- You know, and you had a really great theologian or somebody teaching, it's like, man, this is good. Right. Not everyone wants to hear that.
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- So that's where I'm at with Presbyterian Church right now, Bethel Presbyterian Church here in Knightstown, working with several other churches too in the area.
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- So, ecumenical like that. But that's where I'm at here in Indiana. Wonderful. Working on six books that'll never be finished.
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- Out of all those books, which one is your, is your favorite one that you're focusing the most on? Right now
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- I'm in Zechariah. I've been in Zechariah for many years. So I'm translating right now. So I'm just working through translating and Zechariah is a very interesting, boy, you try to find patterning there and it's not easy.
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- It's, and there's been a couple of good theories that I'm looking at and trying to, and then also looking at it, you know, from my own, but by the time you get to the end of Zechariah, you know, wow, what a doozy,
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- Zechariah 14. That's just a, just blows you out of the water every time
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- I read it. I'm like, man, what is he saying? If we, you know, if we come at texts like this, where there's a multitude of interpretations, like Zechariah 14, there's just a multitude of them and all of them have very good points.
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- But yet you still walk away thinking I, there's no uniform clarity here or consensus here.
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- There's just not. And then you have to ask devotionally, you know,
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- God, the Holy Spirit, why, what did you reveal to Zechariah? Is it your point that you left him with what is to us very mysterious?
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- Yeah. Chapter 14 is a hard one. No, I totally understand what you're saying.
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- That one, that one's a, I feel like the, leading up to that chapter, I feel comfortable going through it.
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- But once you hit that, it's just, it's like, oh, okay. What, how do you, how do you, how do you untangle this ball of knots that is going on right here?
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- And it's, it's challenging. That's for sure. It is a ball, it's an inspired of the
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- Holy Spirit. You know, Zechariah is just writing down what the Holy Spirit is telling him to do. Yeah. He's just, and, but you feel it, you think it's going to be one strand of one ball and it's like, oh, that's a strand.
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- Oh, this ball's got a lot of strands. And they're not going to, they're like, how's this going to matter? Here you thought it was only one rope you were tying and you actually have -
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- It's not one rope. It's not one rope. It's a lot of ropes. That's right. That's right. It's almost like the Old Testament.
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- I've looked at, you know, 70 AD, that certainly has been suggested. Jesus, the
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- Lord is standing on the Mount of Olives, Acts chapter one. Seems like a no brainer there, Zechariah 14.
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- It's like, okay, is there an illusion there? Is Luke doing something?
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- And he's talking about, all right, this time you're going to restore the kingdom. Okay, that's what
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- Zechariah is doing. Is that, are they asking, are you going to make Zechariah 14 happen now?
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- Is that what you're going to, because you're standing on the Mount of Olives in Zechariah. And then you keep repeating it and you're like, no, that didn't happen.
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- That's good. So maybe, and I think I asked you this question at the conference, and I can't remember if I was able to get you to answer or not.
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- Do you have a set eschological position that you find yourself in, like an all millennial, post -millennial?
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- Where do you meet? I was raised dispensational pre -millennial.
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- So I was reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth. You know, when I'm, you know, eight, nine years old,
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- I was reading that book, saw the movie as it was presented at our church. So this was 74, 75.
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- And then, you know, the Schofield Reference Bible, all that kind of stuff. Just very young age,
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- I was reading my Bibles studiously. So pre -millennial, go to Bible college, meet all millennial, post -millennial, you get everything, and became post -millennial through various teachers that were there.
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- And there was an all millennial teacher, but I, for many years, this was the 90s, I became post -millennial, and now leaving full preterism,
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- I'm now decidedly, comfortably at home with all millennialism, because that just is a very broad, and allows, and I thought, okay, here, you can't pinpoint me down on anything, really.
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- I love it here. I've got a lot of problems. I've got a lot of problems with pre -millennialism and post -millennialism.
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- And when I say I wasn't here, I grew up pre -millennial. So for all of those years, up till my teen years in Bible college, 19 years old,
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- I'm decided, I am pre -millennial. How lengthy, dispensation, this is the way it is.
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- And Bible college, I became post -millennial, so 1989, 88, 89, 90, and that carried me through the 90s.
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- So when I say I was these things, it wasn't for just a year, I locked myself in.
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- So read Rush Dooney, Institutes of Biblical Law, and Theocratic, was reading everything,
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- Theocracy, I could get my hand, Gary North onwards was talking to these guys, calling them up on the phone, bothered them.
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- I was just devouring everything that they, and I saw it. I'm a very visual thinker, so I can think,
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- I think in terms of pictures. So I saw the whole, yeah, kingdom of God, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it.
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- The laws of God, thou shalt not steal. Yeah, that should be legislated. Laws against adultery, great.
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- Laws against sodomy, perfect. That's been in our history, great. Get it, I understand biblical law.
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- Post -millennial, God's gonna take. So I was decidedly that way, but then
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- I, because of that link with full preterism, which has an open -ended future, you don't really know where it's going, because the end is, well, there's no end.
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- There's, you remove all of, and post -millennialists do this. They have to put all the bad parts in the first century.
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- So the beast, Antichrist, or 666, or any of that's end of the world, the moon turning to blood, all of that.
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- A thousand years. That's, it's all back there, doesn't have anything to do with us whatsoever, other than knowing that it's back there.
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- Which means that now we have to get busy and change the laws of our local institutions and run for mayor and become chief of police, whatever else that we gotta do to take over the world.
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- So that should be the focus of the church. I'm like, and I was right there with him.
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- Now I'm not, so much. Not so much. Do you feel like - We don't have to run for the chief of police, sure.
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- Yeah. We could just be chief of police. Absolutely. More the merrier. Yep. But I'm not post -millennial.
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- Yep, that's fair enough. And I feel like, honestly, now that you mentioned that, I'm starting to put up in my mind some individuals that I know of that are either full preterist or partial preterist, or used to be such of those things.
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- And they did come from a dispensational background. Oh, yeah. Do you feel like dispensationalism, because it does give these convoluted answers to the book that make no sense when you look and dive deep into it, that now here is preterism that seems to give very solid one -for -one answers in the first century.
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- Do you feel like that's why a lot of dispensationalists would gravitate to full preterism, partial preterism, post -millennialism, and those things?
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- Very, very, very insightful of you. Because of this quest for certainty, we just love charts and certainty, and we've got it, and it's black and white, and here's my name, and this is the word of God, and that's it.
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- And then I can go about my day, because I've got it all figured out. And we rest in that.
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- I think that can be dangerous. Yeah. My rest should be in the Lord, which means that He's not revealed everything.
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- That's where my faith really comes in, because once you think you've got all this lined up, and then you start seeing holes in it, we watch people leave the faith, because they start seeing the problems, and they're like, oh,
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- I wasn't as certain as what, maybe now nobody can be certain. Well, it depends on what your certainty is.
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- My certainty in Jesus Christ is Lord, and God raised Him from the dead on the third day. That's a certain as I'm drinking this glass of water here.
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- Yep. That's, and I've been, in my 56 years of the church,
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- I've had every reason in the world to doubt God. And I read all the top tier atheist stuff and liberal stuff.
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- In fact, half of my library is more liberal than it is anything else. Because I like reading, I like reading the attacks.
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- I still believe the Bible is the word of God written, without error. That's good.
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- Amen to that. That, looking at Zechariah 14.
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- So I'm reading through Merrill Unger, his commentaries. Great scholar, you know, but Dallas Theological Seminary, but nonetheless, he's a great scholar.
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- But he's got it all compartmentalized, and Zechariah is doing this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and it's all mapped out, and then there it is.
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- But, and then you, but you read the text, you translate it, and you're like, boy. Yeah, it would work that way, if you imposed this system on it, you could get it to work that way.
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- But if you just read the text, it's not working that way.
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- It doesn't look like that. I gotcha. You gotta move, it's like those puzzle pieces. You gotta move Zechariah around a little bit.
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- To get him to fit. That's right. So maybe that would lead into a really good question. So you're talking about the presuppositions, the systems that somebody might build that are maybe really appealing to the person that maybe in their history didn't have that same aha moments.
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- What was the point, because you used to be a full preterist, what led you away from it?
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- What was the point that was the chinking in the chain? What was the hole that was big enough that you said this, I gotta get out of this?
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- Well, and this is a little bit in my book, why I left full preterism, but mainly
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- I had some really good mentors, teachers, and one of them, may rest in peace,
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- Dr. Kenneth Talbot, who was always pushing. And a good biblical scholar is somebody that's always testing even his own views.
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- He's running even your own views through the ringer.
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- Like I've done with Trinitarian, I've ran that through so many and tried to come out, what if we're wrong?
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- What if we're wrong? Let's go out of this way. And then I would always come back out like, no, Athanasius is, he got on, he nailed it.
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- Clearly, well, anyway, so I don't wanna get off on Trinitarian. So with eschatology just being notoriously difficult for what it is, and full preterism,
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- I was beginning to see in the last couple of years how we were a system. We were, it was the system that dominated everything.
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- So you had to run everything through 70 AD. So passages like John six, where Jesus says,
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- I will raise in the last day, in the last day, in the last day, in the last day. He says it five or six times there.
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- And then John 11, John 12, which includes the judgment of the wicked in John 12.
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- They will be judged in the last day. So the judgment in the last day, the resurrection's in the last day of all whom the
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- Lord has given to me, I will raise in the last day. How do we get around that in 70 AD? So I floated that out there because the earlier guys that were working on these exegetical issues.
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- So Max King, Don Preston, a handful of guys were working on this. I never, I didn't see any work on John six.
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- And so I went into John six and could not get any good responses.
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- Well, John six, the last day is talking about the last day of the end of your life. Well, that doesn't work.
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- Well, the last day is the last day of the old covenant age in 70 AD. Okay, well, that really, really doesn't work because Jesus quotes
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- Isaiah 54, which is a new covenant passage in John six.
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- And that's who he's talking to are those taught of the Lord by the spirit. They will all know me. And I thought that's new heavens and new worlds kind of stuff going on there.
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- It's those that he's going to raise are those who previously are taught by the Holy Spirit that full predators do not believe in being taught by the
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- Holy Spirit. So now you're limited. So now you would have to say, well,
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- God drew those in the first century to 70 AD and he raised them all from the dead in 70
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- AD. And then he started another salvation program of which he's drawing even more in than was previously.
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- And I thought, okay, now we're just making stuff up. And that wasn't gonna work for me.
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- So that's when it all started kind of like, well, we got a problem here, real problem.
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- And then the idea of positing an infinite universe wherein sin, evil, and death are infinitely active, which is absurd.
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- That's the absurdity of that on its value. And when I say that, that's one of the biggest ones with Christians.
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- And I speak to Nazarene Christians and Methodist Christians and first Christians and friends,
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- Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, Reformed Baptists. So even in the crowd, the conference there, when
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- I brought this point up that evil, death, and sin will continue on as we know it for infinity in history, linearly, as we know it now, that point alone shuts off all of these
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- Christians from all of these denominations as it's almost repulsive to them.
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- And I began to interpret that as that, that's the Holy Spirit. If you can say, if you have no problem and state it positively, that my view leads to the idea that sin, death, and evil, and all of its disgusting manifestations that you could debaucherous, whatever that you could think of, is never going to end.
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- And that to me is just, if that's your God, see, you don't have the
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- Holy Spirit. I don't think you could say that. Does that make sense? I'm trying to come at it that way. No, I'm totally tracking you.
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- And I think that maybe that goes into another question I had for you regarding that, is do you think that somebody that would hold to full preterism in the sense that they're saying sin, death, everything that comes along with that, the evil and atrocities from both man to the devil in that sense.
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- Those things, a full preterist, can you call someone like that that has no issue with that?
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- Do you call them brothers and sisters in the faith? Or is that - You can't, okay. I would be on the same page with you.
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- Yeah, because I can't. To me, it goes against everything that this weekend,
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- Easter, Resurrection Week, it goes against everything.
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- That's right. That's in my very strong theological background now, 10 years or whatever removed from all of this.
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- So now it's just, and they say, well, you've debated full preterists, you never really have proven them wrong.
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- That proves them wrong. If you can't see that, there's no proving you wrong then.
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- That to me is a no -brainer. Yeah, so do full preterists meet on the
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- Lord's day and on Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection? They don't. Are they usually pretty, I don't need to go to church type of attitude people, or they just see no value in church?
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- Most of them are. Most of them are, yeah. See, and this is really edifying to me because this is all new information to myself as far as what the lifestyle, what does it look like to be a full preterist and what their weekly basis is.
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- The part is, so what's the problem? Why don't they just form their own churches and do their own thing like the
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- Mormons, right? Right. And they're easy to demarcate and say, well, okay, all right, they're full preterists, they're not
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- Christians. Yep. Mormons claim to be Christians. I remember the Met Romney campaign.
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- I'll never forget. Mormons are Christians. It was on Fox News. Mormons are Christians too. Yeah. They're trying to get all the evangelicals to vote for Met Romney, who's a holy underwear wearing guy.
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- Not a Christian. That's my preset generation. This guy, Met Romney is about as Mormon as you can get.
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- That's right. You know this. I do know this. Yeah, I know this very well being an ex LDS myself.
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- Right. And Mormons were all excited. Oh, we're evangelical. You know, the Mormons are evangelical. And you'd hear these
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- CNN and that. Well, Met Romney represents the evangelical. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, he doesn't.
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- No, that's far from it. Right. So that's what full preterists do because there's just enough there.
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- Yeah. Well, full preterists too. Are they conservative?
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- Yeah. You know, are they going to vote for Donald Trump? Yeah, most of them will.
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- They're conservative. So do they believe that the Bible is the word of God? Yeah, they say that.
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- Jesus is Lord God. So they got all that going on. Well, so does a Mormon. You know the subtleties then you being in your situation.
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- Where do you draw the line? So what do you say to a Mormon? Are all Mormons destined for hell?
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- Well, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. It ultimately comes down to. Yeah, it's a denial of essentials in some way or another, right?
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- And so like the three places I go with is that a denial of their being a monotheistic
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- God because they believe in a plurality of gods. And so right there, that's contradicted to God's word. Two, they have a different Jesus because they have a plurality of gods.
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- They see Jesus as separate than the father. And so if Jesus is not the I am, you die in your sins.
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- That's an essential of the faith. And number three, well, going back to number two, faith is only as good as the object we put it in.
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- And if we put our faith into a false Jesus, that Jesus doesn't save. And then three, if that faith that is placed even in a false
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- Jesus or the right Jesus, if it is also being said that it's faith plus my works, then
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- Christ died needlessly. And so that's usually the three places I go with an LDS person to show that it's a false gospel because it's denying essentials of the
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- Christian faith. And so I feel like that's how you would even argue against a full preterist, right? If one of the essentials that all these creeds and confessions are saying and the
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- Bible itself very clearly teaches, if Jesus isn't coming back physically, how can we believe that he rose physically?
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- There's some logical issues that come about with that. Well, there's an increasing amount of people that are leaving full preterism and becoming agnostic atheists.
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- In fact, one close friend to a couple of people that I knew very dearly are now atheists.
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- Really? Full preterists, yeah. These were people that - I find that fascinating because that's what's happening in the
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- LDS as well. It's when people leave the LDS, instead of coming to try to seek the true
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- God, they just go straight into agnostic atheists. No trust in -
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- I never heard of an atheist coming from leaving the Mormon and becoming an atheist. Yeah, in fact, I would argue the majority of LDS that leave the faith, they are majority of the times agnostics when they leave.
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- Oh, yeah. Well, because again, your whole world is so certain.
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- You have everything is answered. There's no mystery. There's no - And when that dam starts to crack, your whole world is shattered.
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- Yep. And I think that Christian theology can run into that same problem where Christians are trained to have an answer for every -
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- Well, it doesn't - You ever noticed where Jesus, and I love Michael Schultz, the sermon he gave there at the -
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- Jesus just kind of leaves a lot of these questions that are asked him, he kind of leaves them hanging a little bit. Yeah. That's the real answer.
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- It's true. Like you're not supposed to answer, if you're in a debate, you can't answer a question by asking another question.
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- Oh, Jesus does. Right. That's the one. Yeah. He breaks that rule all the time. So I started doing that like,
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- I don't know, you know. But I like that because I know that he knows and my faith is in him.
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- It's not in me. I don't have faith in me. And I hope no one else does either.
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- If your faith is in Christ, your faith is in God. So another Jesus. So Jesus of Nazareth no longer exists.
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- Yeah. In the full Preterist world. Jesus of Nazareth no longer exists.
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- Jesus the Logos, the son of God eternal, he exists. But Jesus of Nazareth no longer exists.
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- He was burned up or he was consumed at the Ascension or he was re -informed back into the
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- Godhead as eternal Logos, son of God. Yeah. So that right there, you're done.
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- Yep. Outside of the camp of Christianity right there. Right there. Yep. And again, when
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- I say that, the response of full Preterist is, well, why can't we, how do we know that the church has always been right about the human nature of Jesus?
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- These things ought to be questioned and discussed. To which I would agree to say, I think they should be questioned. In order to understand how did we all universally arrive at this conclusion from all walks of life, all four corners, all nations, languages, and peoples that have come to the
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- Lord for 2000 years have arrived at this same conclusion. And they're not corroborating either.
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- These are from different pockets that have come with this. And then they meet each other like, oh,
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- I agree with that. Yeah, we agree with that too. And it becomes this. So that's the Holy Spirit.
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- Yeah. And so that, yeah, it's just not working. And I know that it puts me in a place where I don't look nice.
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- And again, I, you know, God love you, but you're in a rank heresy here.
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- And I was a full preterist for well over a decade in a committed, sold my home, sold my business, moved my family, dedicated full preterist.
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- You know, wrote a book, spoke at over 25 conferences, just totally sold out to this idea that Jesus came, all prophecies fulfilled in 70
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- AD. But yet also trying to work on how to bridge the gap between 2000 years of the church and answering the question, what is
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- God now doing? So that question post 70 AD, what are we doing here?
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- That's the biggest problem. If you ever encounter or meet a full preterist in your congregation or whatever, someone shows up and starts teaching it, just ask them that question.
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- What are we supposed to do now? You'll get a whole bewildering look.
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- Because you can, because they'll say, well, you know, we should be encouraging each other in what?
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- Well, in the faith, Jesus, who's Jesus? We're not talking the same thing here.
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- There's a disconnect, a big giant disconnect. You know, that really reminds me. So Matt Slick, he's a friend of mine.
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- He's somebody that discipled me early on in my career. Yeah, it was a huge blessing.
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- I will, I definitely will. But one thing that he really helped me do is if you ran into somebody that had heresy or anybody in general, he said he was a big fan of asking questions.
- 30:59
- Like just ask questions and you can start seeing their holes immediately start to be exposed. And they are starting to even question things when you ask them questions.
- 31:06
- So I really genuinely appreciate hearing yourself say something like that. That's good stuff.
- 31:12
- You gotta run me through the Bible and. That's right. And then run into the nerd, like Jack Bam Empy. Right.
- 31:19
- Blasting out characters. That's like, I'm a scholar, right? So I gotta say, well, no, no, no.
- 31:24
- Let's look at that verse. Slow down. I don't just shotgun
- 31:30
- Bible verses out here. I want to look at each, everyone and the languages. I'm very meticulous these days.
- 31:38
- I want to know the context. Right. Let's control a couple of top tier commentaries here.
- 31:45
- You know, let's look at that. That's good. And when you begin to do that, the full printer, well, you've lost them.
- 31:51
- They don't have any interest. Interesting. Or you're going to get the response. Well, that's all biased.
- 31:58
- Futurism. Those are futurist commentaries. Those are futurist lexicons. Those are futurist
- 32:04
- Bible dictionaries. All right, well, we're done here. Yeah. The resources
- 32:10
- I'm using now are even bias. Yep. So I can't win.
- 32:17
- It's almost like debating with somebody that denies the laws of logic. You just can't. It's like, if you're just gonna.
- 32:27
- That would be. You know, one thing that really, what's that? Debating someone that denies the laws of logic.
- 32:36
- How would you even begin? But anyway. Yeah, you can't. You just walk away. You need
- 32:43
- Jesus. Yeah. You need the Lord. That's right. I can't show you this. You know what, something, another, this is really fascinating, brother, because I've never thought about all the correlations between, which
- 32:56
- I think it ultimately comes down to just cults and false religions and heresies having so much in common. Something that you said is almost like they're anti -credal.
- 33:05
- Like they're opposed to confessions and creeds. That's LDS as well. Like that's what Joseph Smith in the garden when he supposedly receives this vision, he's told by supposedly the father and the son who are two separate beings in that vision that all their creeds are an abomination in his sight.
- 33:23
- And so Mormonism is right out the gate. Let's deny Orthodox Christianity and creeds within history right out of the gate.
- 33:31
- And so that's fascinating that that's even how full preterist it seems like use arguments regarding things.
- 33:38
- In your studies. So Smith is operating right in that cradle of time where you're getting this restorationist, you're getting the
- 33:45
- Pentecostal, you're getting the, you know, just all these movements.
- 33:51
- They're all, everything is just going on. Seventh day Adventist, L and Y, dispensation, all of it.
- 33:57
- Plus you've got this other thing happening across the sea of higher criticism, you know, the
- 34:04
- German school, University of Berlin and all of this is coming out. So now 19th century, you're really getting a very technical, sophisticated, textual, you know, looking at the historic
- 34:20
- Jesus, historic context, and they're really beginning to take apart the Bible.
- 34:26
- Okay. So the Bible's really getting severely redacted and taken apart and all of this kind of source criticism, form criticism, all of this.
- 34:36
- Well, the church, how does the church respond to this kind of stuff? That's what dispensationalism is a response to this.
- 34:46
- Do you have to draw off into this mystic sort of thing to which you can't really have an argument.
- 34:52
- So what you have with Mormons, you've got the, well, the burning, burning bosom thing, I think is what it is.
- 34:58
- Because you can't textually deal with, it's the myriad of textual analysis beyond how am
- 35:05
- I gonna even begin to argue against that kind of stuff. I determine truth based off of how
- 35:11
- I feel about it. Yep. That's the thing. And then the anti -credal, anti -cleric, that kind of stuff, church of Christ, disciples, all this,
- 35:26
- Barton Stone and Campbell, all of that kind of stuff that was, and I'm not saying everyone in this are not
- 35:32
- Christians. I've met dear beloved Christians that are in these various, what they wouldn't call them denomination.
- 35:39
- I don't know what else you'd call them, but it was denomination. But all of that's just going on.
- 35:46
- Well, full preterism is starting to make its way real mark right there in the 19th century.
- 35:55
- Until Max King in the 70s, that you get a full hyper, every stitch, every jot, every tittle of prophecies fulfilled by the time of 70
- 36:07
- AD, and nothing after. But that grew out of that rising preterism, because again, here's where the, they try to answer the question.
- 36:20
- Yeah, Jesus said he was gonna come again in that first century. That's assumed. And he didn't.
- 36:28
- So, well, you can throw your Bible away now, because if Jesus is wrong. So that's how they get you.
- 36:35
- That's how it got me. So Matthew 24, this generation will not pass away until they've seen these things come to pass.
- 36:42
- That's the foundation. That's the hook in the mouth. Somebody just jerked it on you. Interesting.
- 36:48
- Yeah, because you can't have Jesus wrong. If Jesus said, he's gonna raise the dead in the first century, or by the time this generation passes out, then the dead are gonna be raised by the time that first generation passes out.
- 37:01
- Period. If that's what he said. Yeah. That's not what he said.
- 37:09
- So maybe that, so that's fascinating. Right there. That is.
- 37:15
- So do you find yourself seeing any texts now? So, I mean, so Matthew 24, some people would,
- 37:21
- I think it's very wrong, but some people would see all the 24 as preterists. Some people would even extend into chapter 25 as preterists.
- 37:29
- Do you see any text in the Bible fulfilled fully in 70 AD as a partial preterist text?
- 37:36
- And I know that's a large question, because we're considering many, many verses at that point. But is there anything that comes to your mind?
- 37:42
- I'm saying, you know, they're obviously there at the temple, and we've all seen these 3D, you know, recreations of the temple, and you've got the museum outside of Jerusalem that has the big giant model.
- 37:57
- So you can get a pretty good, we can get a fairly 90 % accuracy idea of what that looked like in the first century.
- 38:03
- So yeah, it would have been massive, marvelous structures of, you know, and Jesus is right there in the
- 38:11
- Herodian temple. Yeah, I think that's why Jesus says, I'm the true vine. I think he's left the upper room discourse, and he's on his way to the garden, and he's looking at that temple, and he's saying, it's me.
- 38:21
- Mount of Olives, he's looking right over the, they're not looking at the dome of the rock, they're looking at the
- 38:27
- Herodian temple. You can see it, they're right there. So he's talking about, and yeah, and that was destroyed 37 years later after Jesus said.
- 38:39
- Yeah. That's the idea destroyed. But the end is not yet.
- 38:45
- See, that's, but the end is not yet. That's the thing. And when you try to make the end 70
- 38:52
- AD, that's it. You have to literally reinterpret the entire
- 39:00
- Bible from the way that everyone else has always understood it, including our best and brightest, hundreds of thousands of scholars throughout these centuries.
- 39:15
- Right. And - You have to be kind of prideful to think that I came to the right conclusion over those gentlemen.
- 39:21
- Not just, oh, your timing of the millennium is wrong.
- 39:26
- Right. Not just, you know, oh, your timing as to when somebody ought to be baptized.
- 39:36
- What does a person have to do before? We can have those very good necessary discussions.
- 39:42
- Absolutely. We're talking about everything. The whole Christian enterprise is wrong because whether you're
- 39:53
- Calvinist, whether you're Arminianist, whether you're Methodist, John Wesley, it doesn't make any difference.
- 40:01
- Whether you're Catholic, whether you're Eastern Orthodox or Ethiopian, you know,
- 40:07
- Coptic, it doesn't make any difference. All of theology is worked out with this end in mind of glorification and perfection.
- 40:15
- And so we're heading towards that. But if that is now back here, everything in between then does not apply to you anymore.
- 40:26
- Progressive sanctification, what are you progressing towards?
- 40:32
- Right. It's fulfilled. It's done. You're a saint, period.
- 40:38
- You're glorified. You're already raised from the dead. You're awaiting nothing to happen to you in terms of salvation.
- 40:49
- Brother, I've got so many questions. You've got to still die. So now I got to deal with the fact that, well, that's not what you think it is.
- 40:57
- Death is as natural as apple pie. Death is not an enemy. Physical death, spiritual death is.
- 41:03
- See, you have to literally be, so like the Mormon who mentions death or Jesus or the
- 41:10
- Bible or God, but you ask him for his specific definitions and you're not getting the same thing.
- 41:16
- So that's what the full Preterist does. They won't admit they do this, but it is what they are doing because you start talking to them and you realize,
- 41:27
- I don't even have the same meaning of death. Yeah. I just don't have the same meaning of glorification.
- 41:34
- I don't even, body, the word body. We don't even have the same meaning as that.
- 41:39
- Wow. Yeah. This is opening so many questions in my mind. So maybe a great question to jump with this is because tomorrow is resurrection
- 41:48
- Sunday. This is going to be a multi question. You ready for this? Yeah, tomorrow.
- 41:53
- Do full Preterist. Tomorrow is like the reason why we're here. Right. Is a full
- 42:00
- Preterist, do they believe in the resurrection, the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus? And if they do, what death did
- 42:07
- Jesus conquer when he rose from the grave? Because if they don't believe death is a, if it's just this spiritual thing.
- 42:14
- Yeah. Tell me about that. What's your mind go to on that? Clearly you have to affirm that Jesus, the human being of Nazareth left an empty tomb.
- 42:26
- Right. So even the full Preterist can't get out of that one. So that, it can't get out of that one.
- 42:34
- So now it becomes, okay, when was he glorified?
- 42:40
- Was he glorified at resurrection or was he glorified at ascension? So I'm gonna start clouding the issues because Jesus, it says he appeared and he appeared in the midst of them sort of looks like, the text doesn't say he walked through the door, but you read the text and you're like, seems to intimate that Jesus just kind of showed up.
- 43:04
- Right. Bunch of guys in a room talking and everything. And they look, oh man. I didn't hear a door open.
- 43:14
- I mean, how did you get here? How did he appear? And it says he appeared and reappeared and did all this. Yeah. So that would seem to indicate some sort of, but then we'll point out, well, he did that before he walked on water, he transfigured, he did all those kinds of things.
- 43:28
- What's the big deal? And you could make, that's where you start chipping away at the idea that Jesus was raised glorified and was thus in his glorified immortal body as a human being, the divine or the human nature,
- 43:48
- Jesus of Nazareth. Not the Logos of God, but Jesus of Nazareth, the man.
- 43:55
- So we have Jesus, there's two hyper -preterist answers here.
- 44:05
- The first one is you've got to recognize that Jesus bodily ascended to heaven.
- 44:13
- If that's the case, then our likeness of resurrection would be like his.
- 44:19
- So it would have to be bodily. But clearly you can't have that if the resurrection is 70
- 44:24
- AD, because we still can dig up bones and tombs and all that other stuff. So that obviously didn't happen.
- 44:32
- So what happens is, is that when we die now, because of what Jesus did, when we die, we get our new bodies in heaven, in the eternal state.
- 44:45
- Are those bodies physical? Or would they say those bodies are physical? They're bodies. Okay. They're bodies, yeah.
- 44:51
- So they're bodies, but they're just, they're heavenly, holy other bodies.
- 44:59
- Not these bodies. I'm exchanging one body for another.
- 45:05
- So that's transmigration. That's not resurrection. No. That's my soul creeping out of this one and slithering into another.
- 45:16
- Well. It's almost like necromancy. Like you're going into another person's body. That's weird.
- 45:22
- Surely Paul is not teaching that. That idea was around then, you know, the
- 45:29
- Greeks came up with all kinds of stuff. They did. Yeah. They're all over the place. Yeah.
- 45:35
- So Paul's like, this is the resurrection of the body. So that view runs into numerous problems.
- 45:41
- So the other hyper -preterist camp has gone over into the corporate body view.
- 45:47
- Corporate body view is that Christians are brought into the corporate body of Christ in terms of their identity.
- 45:57
- It has nothing to do with your biology, your biological body. When you die, what kind of body you're gonna get.
- 46:04
- And so they just removed that entire. So to be raised again from the dead is mainly akin to regenerating or being regenerated and leaving the body of Adam identity and coming into the body of Christ identity.
- 46:18
- So it's an entirely, an ideal rooted in gnosis. I would say it's pseudo -gnosticism or neo -gnosticism because it completely divorces the whole question of this stuff.
- 46:32
- So Jesus leaves the empty tomb. What did this physical death mean? His physical death was needed on the basis by which he could obtain spiritual death.
- 46:45
- And thus spiritual resurrection had to be also brought back into his body to show that spiritual resurrection takes place in this body.
- 46:56
- And then when we're done with this body, which has nothing to do with being spiritually raised by the Holy Spirit, we just chuck it off and go to heaven.
- 47:05
- And because we're in the body of Christ. Okay, so what happened to Jesus? Well, Jesus was resuscitated into his body that died, but he's spiritually alive in the same body as this one is.
- 47:19
- And this is the one that he had. His body physically was not changed by any stretch of the imagination at all from what it previously was.
- 47:28
- And when he died or when he ascended, his body dematerialized and he's...
- 47:39
- And so the same, our spirits, our bodies, our meat sacks go into a casket and that's the end of that.
- 47:48
- But we're in heaven in the body of Christ. So I know that your mind, your brain is probably just exploding right now.
- 47:56
- I find this fascinating. This is, my mind, it's the same level of things
- 48:02
- I heard when I was - I love explaining that. I love this. I've never heard of it. I haven't. I haven't heard of it actually.
- 48:08
- Like how the heck did you get that out of it? Because 70 AD is my end point.
- 48:14
- So I have to, I must, I can't go beyond 70 AD. So you have to, you're forced to do this.
- 48:23
- So I've got to redefine, clearly it can't be bodies reconstituted out of the dust of the earth.
- 48:29
- You can go to the catacombs and visit the dead Christians. Which makes me, this all makes me think about, so going back to February, when we were at the conference together, we were standing in the room where they were doing some of the shows and Dr.
- 48:45
- Waldron and yourself, we were all standing, talking about some of the stuff. It was a, oh my goodness.
- 48:51
- I was so blessed by him. It was wonderful. There was something I said, because it's a genuine, that's always been my hardship when it comes to partial preterism is
- 49:04
- I don't see a clear indication of a harmonical principle to say that something is still future.
- 49:11
- There doesn't seem to be that line in the sand of what I have to admit this is still ahead of me because if I take that idea of Matthew 24, that hook, and I'm consistent then with every text
- 49:24
- Revelation, Thessalonians, all these different texts, 1st Corinthians, I have to walk away as a full preterist if I hold to partial preterism to the degree that a lot of post -millennialists are holding to today.
- 49:39
- Did you, could you say, yes. Yeah. What, how, how would you guys, you know,
- 49:45
- Jeff Durbin and White and all these guys. So that was going to be my question. I like James White. I like Jeff Durbin.
- 49:53
- What's that? I don't know where he's on second Peter three, but yes, Jeff Durbin. And I put that out there recently and got a lot of.
- 50:01
- Yes, you did. Oh, you're attacking Jeff Durbin. And I was so happy you did that because I was like that, that needed to be said that that scrutiny and criticism needs to be done to everybody in general.
- 50:13
- This is right. Not all, not all people would think that. Yeah, I can't.
- 50:19
- I know it shocks a lot of people, but that Doug Wilson could be wrong. I know that.
- 50:25
- What? What? So they're all wrong, but Doug Wilson can't be wrong.
- 50:35
- Not Wilson, not my Northern Idaho peeps. He's doing a great work. He's, how can, you know, everything comes out of his mouth is.
- 50:44
- Gospel. I'm like, no, I hope people don't think that about me. No, I sure don't.
- 50:51
- I hope you don't think that about me. Yeah, please don't throw the cold around me. I don't want that done. Don't do that.
- 50:56
- No, absolutely not. I'm wrong a lot. I'm wrong a lot. That's right.
- 51:03
- I wonder. Yeah, that brings up a lot of good questions. How, where do these people, where is their harmonical principle to have that line in the sand of saying something is still future?
- 51:15
- I don't think they have. I think that they, see,
- 51:22
- I didn't. I saw that consistency. Okay.
- 51:28
- When you read John Owen or John Gill or any of these guys, second Peter three or John Lightfoot, you know, these old reformed bed guys, you know, 18th, 19th, 16th.
- 51:38
- So, and it's just a handful of them. It's not the majority of them. It's just a handful and they weren't followed.
- 51:45
- So John Lightfoot on his multiple ways that he's taking second
- 51:51
- Peter in many other passages where he's just, he's really bad. And I know John Lightfoot, the great Westminster confession divine and he's all, all of this stuff.
- 51:59
- He's again, but John Lightfoot can be wrong. Yeah. Just, you know, he
- 52:05
- Lightfoot is, you know, doing some things there that are just not warranted.
- 52:14
- And so what happens is, is a person will say, well, Lightfoot gets away with it.
- 52:19
- Lightfoot said it. Owen said it. John Owen, John Gill. Great Baptist, John Gill.
- 52:24
- You know, he can't be wrong. Well, yeah, I can. There's in some places where Gill, I'm reading him like, well, that's one of the dumbest things
- 52:31
- I've ever read in my life. I'm preaching through the book of Job right now. Yeah. I'm preaching through the book of Job right now.
- 52:38
- And I like John Gill's commentaries for the most part, but he, I disagree with what he does with the book of Job often.
- 52:45
- And that's fine. Yep. It should be. But some people think that you're, you don't have the authority to do that or something.
- 52:54
- I don't know. Very, you know, there's places where I read Calvin's work and like, he's a man of his times, you know.
- 53:02
- That's right. 16th century here. That's just not the way it's working right now. Plus he didn't have the
- 53:09
- Dead Sea Scrolls. That's a big thing. Neither did Lightfoot. So yeah, a lot's gone on since the days of Lightfoot.
- 53:18
- You gotta keep these guys in their time, you know. A lot has gone on since the 16th century.
- 53:28
- That's right. You know, we're moving on. Scholarship is moving on.
- 53:35
- Yep. So they take these guys and I was the guy that said, if 2nd
- 53:41
- Peter 3 is fulfilled, if Romans 8 is 70 AD, if 2nd
- 53:48
- Corinthians 5, 1 through 10 is 70 AD, if, boy, then first, and all of 24 and 25 of Matthew, end of the age is 70
- 54:00
- AD. So the parable end of the age, the wheat and the tares, that's 70
- 54:06
- AD. So God has removed all of the wicked, all the causes of scandal. What does that mean?
- 54:14
- Well, God removed all of the wicked, unbelieving Jews out of the old covenant and brought in the new.
- 54:21
- See, it's now an allegory. You're just allegorizing. You're substituting one thing for the other.
- 54:28
- Interesting. 2nd Peter 3, the heavens and the earth dissolve. Well, the temple was heaven on the land of Israel and the
- 54:36
- Romans took away heaven on the land. Yeah. Okay.
- 54:43
- Does the Bible ever talk about the dissolution of heavens and the, well, not really, because in Isaiah 65, you know, death is still around, and infants are living to be 100 years old in the life of the tree.
- 54:58
- Although I've never seen any human being live to be the life of the tree yet. And that's the miracle of it.
- 55:05
- Okay. See, it becomes this thing. And the 98 percenters,
- 55:13
- I call them, they don't know, they won't go the way that I went, where I say, look, at this point, who cares about the creeds?
- 55:22
- I'm gonna be consistent with the Bible. If 2nd Peter 3 is fulfilled in 70
- 55:28
- AD, then so is the resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15. You can't.
- 55:34
- And secondly, I've got the weight of scholarship behind me. Critical scholars that would never divorce these passages.
- 55:43
- No, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, those, you can't separate those by thousands of years.
- 55:51
- There's no way in the world you could do that. There's not a biblical, liberal, critical scholar in the world that would do that.
- 55:57
- That's why they say it didn't happen, therefore it failed, that they'll never go the route of, well, what would happen if we just split hairs and started splitting these passages so that we can hang on to our creedal affirmation, you know, well,
- 56:12
- I believe in bodily resurrection of the dead and that hasn't happened yet, but yet hang on to this 98 % everything is fulfilled.
- 56:23
- And let me say this on your show, the full predator will come, like myself and others, and just tear that apart.
- 56:31
- You're inconsistent. So I say to the Jeff Durbin's of the world and the Doug Wilson's and everyone else, you're inconsistent.
- 56:37
- And the full preterist, you have given me every reason in the world to become a full preterist.
- 56:44
- And even if you disagree with that, you can't get mad at me for becoming a full preterist.
- 56:51
- I've got every reason in the world to be. The only objection you're giving me is, well, the creeds and the church never believed in me.
- 56:58
- Okay, who cares at this point? Yeah, because if that's your lens that you're seeing all these other texts through, you'd actually be dishonest to agree with the creeds, which
- 57:11
- I think at this point, that might be a testament to the value of creeds because it keeps those that are those 98 still within the faith.
- 57:19
- They're just leaning on those guardrails too hard. That's a good point on the other side. I would say they're being inconsistent, but at the same time, praise
- 57:28
- God for creeds because it's keeping them in line because I think a lot of them, in fact,
- 57:35
- I know, that in the back of their heads, they're saying, well, you've seen
- 57:42
- Gary DeMar. Yes. Gary DeMar, well, I believe there's gonna be an end.
- 57:50
- Oh yeah, there's eventually gonna be, but I'm just saying that there's the Bible talk about that.
- 57:58
- Mm, mm. Where are you starting? See, you've obliterated and blurred the lines.
- 58:06
- Interesting. Right? Don Preston will say, well, I believe Jesus has a body in heaven. I never said that.
- 58:12
- Okay, well, let's explore that. What body? Well, then he'll go off into, he can't nail them down.
- 58:20
- So Gary DeMar will say, well, when we die, we get a body in heaven. What's wrong with that? Well, because that's not a raised body.
- 58:30
- Yep, that's not my body resurrected. Right?
- 58:36
- Yeah. I never resurrected them. Interesting. So you do have a debate coming up with Don Preston here soon, is that correct?
- 58:46
- No, Ward Finley, I think Jeremiah Norrier. Yeah, Jeremiah Norrier. Okay. So I debated,
- 58:52
- I've debated a lot, most of the leaders of the, most, a lot of them won't debate me.
- 58:58
- Right. The full predators. So Don Preston did with Chris Arnson. You may have heard of Chris Arnson.
- 59:05
- Yes. Yeah, so that was a couple of years ago. And then I did one with William Bell recently, who's a main leader that I used to teach with in seminars and all that kind of stuff.
- 59:19
- Holder Neubauer was another, and then Michael Miano, he's up in New York. So these guys, but most of them, now
- 59:30
- Ward Finley, he's stepped up to the plate and he said, yeah, I'll debate Sam. So in May, Jeremiah Norrier is going to be hosting that.
- 59:38
- Jeremiah is an amazing, let me give a shout out to Jeremiah. That guy, you know, he keeps me young.
- 59:44
- I heard that he was somebody that kind of helped spark you being a little bit more vocal in things.
- 59:51
- Is that correct? He, yes. He, I'm glad that providence of our
- 59:58
- God has brought him into my life. Yeah, because I was just, full predatorism to me is an obvious error.
- 01:00:06
- It's anymore now, it's, I look at it, I read the, I still keep my finger on the pulse of everything going on.
- 01:00:13
- And I read their papers and all that stuff. I'm like, this is just bad. This is right. And I've got all my old stuff still too.
- 01:00:21
- And I go back and I'll reread some of them. Like, man, you were so far off. Rad love, bad exegesis, bad everything.
- 01:00:31
- But I, again, we get stuck in these myopia, you know, tunnel vision and we can't, that's why
- 01:00:42
- I like a more broad view where I can talk to a lot of people.
- 01:00:50
- And I'm not pigeonholing myself. And I think post -millennialist, you know, they do that too.
- 01:00:57
- Right, it's a little bit more of an echo chamber, right? Echo chamber, yeah. Yeah, or I think so anyway.
- 01:01:04
- So somebody asked a question here, how can full predators do communion if Jesus already returned?
- 01:01:10
- And you're saying that they don't even go to church typically. They don't do communion, that was fulfilled. 70
- 01:01:17
- AD came around, no more. Oh, so there's no baptism anymore either. Interesting. Why would you do it?
- 01:01:23
- So what are their views on hell? Do they believe in an eternal damnation? Are they annihilists?
- 01:01:29
- Most are annihilationists. Okay. So you have the majority of them being split between annihilationists and universalism.
- 01:01:40
- Right. And that's a big split. And that's a big camp in both. A lot of full predators that followed
- 01:01:48
- Max King went off in the universalist route.
- 01:01:53
- So they're in that camp. And then the others, because again, you know, eternal conscious torment, you just, you know, that just goes out the window.
- 01:02:03
- There's no point. Right. God just extinguishes the wicked and that's the end of that. So that, you know, that solves that.
- 01:02:09
- So you don't have to deal with that anymore. And then going, so what do you do now?
- 01:02:15
- Well, you might have some Bible studies. Get with other Christians, get with other Bible believers.
- 01:02:21
- You might even go to a church, just remain silent. Yeah. If the opportunity arises where you can, you know, cram all 66 books into this generation, you know, you'll take that opportunity.
- 01:02:37
- Right. Yeah. The whole Bible is to be interpreted with the phrase this generation.
- 01:02:45
- Right. The whole Bible is that phrase, this generation. It all boils down to this generation.
- 01:02:54
- So you see the dispensationalist does that too. Yep. Oh, where are the -
- 01:03:00
- It's your small future. This is the generation, this is it. Oh, the eclipse, the red heifer.
- 01:03:07
- That it's happening, it's happening, but it's not happening to me because I'm going to be secretly raptured out of here.
- 01:03:14
- Yeah. It's not happening. So, brother, I have so many wonderful questions.
- 01:03:21
- I got to have you come back on the show at some point because I'm going to have about a hundred more after this. But so like with the book of Revelation, like, so I come at the book of Revelation with a
- 01:03:30
- Baptist covenantal idealistic reading of the book of Revelation. That's me.
- 01:03:37
- How, is that you? See, brother, you're more and more reformed Baptist. Jeremiah keeps saying that, you know, come back, come to the -
- 01:03:47
- Come over. It'd be good to have you in this camp. No. I like them too.
- 01:03:57
- They're just wrong. So with the book of Revelation and how it was authored, and there's the seven letters that are sent out to the seven churches, how does the, because in my experience, especially with the partial prayers, that's what
- 01:04:15
- I've been more exposed to when it comes to the book of Revelation. They would say like that chapter one to chapter 20 is all filled, but chapter 21 and 22 is future, typically is somewhere in that ballpark.
- 01:04:27
- And the biggest thing I've always taken with it is why is it talking about these seven churches that weren't near 70
- 01:04:33
- AD with that temple? If the book is meant for that, what's your take?
- 01:04:40
- How would you have argued that as a - Yeah, you seem to be mentioning it a lot. Yeah. You can't read a full
- 01:04:47
- Preterist book without every paragraph talking about 70 AD and Josephus and the
- 01:04:53
- Jerusalem temple and how just paramount, fundamental, foundational that is.
- 01:05:01
- And then you get to Acts, where is it? I don't, where is it?
- 01:05:07
- When you get to the book of Revelation and the letters, where, why would, why would them, why would they in Smyrna care about?
- 01:05:19
- If you Smyrnans don't repent, I'm going to come soon to you. Well, in Jerusalem, not for you, but in Jerusalem.
- 01:05:27
- Interesting. And I'm going to knock down that temple over there and then you'll know. Well, that doesn't make - Interesting.
- 01:05:33
- That doesn't make any sense. No. Why would they care?
- 01:05:40
- And from all indications, a lot of people just didn't pay a lot of, you know, the
- 01:05:47
- Tacitus and Suetonius, they write a few paragraphs about it and then they move on with the rest of the world events going on in the lives of the
- 01:05:58
- Caesars. Yeah. They don't spend this amount, this gigantic amount of time. Now, Josephus doesn't, thank
- 01:06:04
- God for Josephus, for first century studies. You know, Josephus is where it's at, but Josephus doesn't see this as the end of the world.
- 01:06:15
- And he's a Pharisee. Yeah. He's a theologian. Josephus is a PhD elite.
- 01:06:24
- Very well, his Greek is, I mean, this guy is a smart as a whip.
- 01:06:31
- He's political. He knows, I mean, he's, this guy is, he's like Henry Kissinger.
- 01:06:37
- You know, he can navigate. This is a Jewish Pharisee that's navigating in the Roman courts.
- 01:06:43
- Who is this? He has the favor of the Roman emperor. I mean, he's in that league and clearly knows his
- 01:06:52
- Hebrew scriptures, but he doesn't say this is the end. He doesn't intimate any of that at all. It's an atrocity.
- 01:06:58
- It's horrible. It's exiled. The Jews are exiled, but you don't see
- 01:07:03
- Paul in Romans nine through 11. He's very well aware that this is going to take place. Has God forsaken his people?
- 01:07:11
- By no means. Yep. God forbid. This is not the end of the, this is not the end.
- 01:07:19
- This is not the end. See, that's where I really, and I think with Revelation, so he's seeing the ascension of the lamb in Revelation five.
- 01:07:27
- And then at the end, you see the new heavens and new earth. So what does everything in between persevere?
- 01:07:34
- Yep. Because you're going to go through, I've come to bring a sword. I've not come to bring the end.
- 01:07:40
- So what does that text, what's Revelation teaching us? Revelation is teaching us through rather grotesque and fantastic images of the
- 01:07:48
- Holy Spirit. A lot of which is just indecipherable, but scary nonetheless, that in between ascension and new heavens and new earth, ye will have tribulation, but take care
- 01:08:03
- I have overcome the world. Right. The end is not yet. That's what he's saying. I thought, oh, he's just teaching what
- 01:08:10
- Jesus taught in Matthew 24, through fantastic images and stuff, of which none of us have a clue what the third trumpet refers to.
- 01:08:19
- I don't know, right? Interesting. Read it a hundred times, a mountain coming flying out of the thing and falling into the thing.
- 01:08:29
- I'm not agreeing with this. The Holy Spirit, esoterically, however, psychologically, he's seeing this in his mind.
- 01:08:40
- He must be thinking the same thing. What is going on? Flying off into a craziest thing in the world.
- 01:08:49
- What does that mean? Well, he doesn't tell us what it means. Yep. It's, it doesn't look good.
- 01:08:59
- That's, I just, I put this together again. I'm seeing so many correlations between dispensationalism,
- 01:09:05
- Mormonism, and full preterism. So let me give you an example. Sure, yeah. The dispensationalist usually looks at the book of Revelation and would say that there, it appears to be very bad, a book that is not great, right?
- 01:09:20
- Like this is not a good day. The preterist is doing the same thing. This is a day that doesn't look great.
- 01:09:26
- But then as an idealist, as somebody that's seeing this as a description throughout the last 2000 years of how the church is to be, all these things,
- 01:09:36
- I see the book as a great hope that God is not going to leave the church, that there's going to be persecution, but God will vindicate.
- 01:09:43
- That there's, take courage, take courage, Saint, take courage, Saint. In fact, I think if I could send one letter to a suffering church today,
- 01:09:50
- I would send them the book of Revelation because there's hope in that book. Oh man, I'm so glad you say that.
- 01:09:55
- I'm teaching through the Revelation right now. And so, I mean, I use a chalkboard. I'm sorry,
- 01:10:01
- I just talked over it. So I drew these big giant beasts and the big false two -horned beast and the woman's riding on the back of this beast.
- 01:10:12
- And then the dragon, this big giant dragon's back behind and he's trampling on, it says he's trampling on the saints.
- 01:10:21
- So his feet are big enough to just smash. That's how big this monster is.
- 01:10:30
- And the saints are these people being trampled, surrounded by these just monstrosities.
- 01:10:39
- There's no hope. Who can make war?
- 01:10:47
- Who can make war? Take the number. Who can make war against this? Because it's all around you.
- 01:10:54
- And you're just a little tiny little Reformed Baptist church over here in some neck of the woods with your people doing your little thing.
- 01:11:02
- You don't have a chance. Nope. But you do.
- 01:11:08
- Yes, yeah. Through Christ. I can get excited about it. I do too.
- 01:11:14
- You are the light of the world. You are, and you go on and on and on.
- 01:11:20
- I'm like, you're a pillar. I'll make you a pillar in the temple of my God. Preach.
- 01:11:25
- Not some puny little Doric pillar down here on earth. I'm gonna burn all that up.
- 01:11:33
- I'm like, oh. That's right. You have to endure.
- 01:11:38
- It gives encouragement through the persecution. It tells you, don't think your suffering is going needlessly.
- 01:11:47
- God knows. And in fact, I think it shows that God is sovereign over those persecutions. Like, praise
- 01:11:53
- God. That's right. Nothing's outside of God's hand. Genderism, abortion, pornography, technology, industry,
- 01:12:03
- Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, billionaires that are atheistic.
- 01:12:13
- They've got all the power. They have all the technology and now they have all the medical and the health.
- 01:12:19
- And they've got all... You don't stand... Don't be anxious about any of this.
- 01:12:24
- That's right. I got it all. And I'm like, I don't know.
- 01:12:30
- So I don't have to be anxious. No, you don't have to be anxious. Which I think that you see that because the book of Revelation is that more hazy text.
- 01:12:39
- But I think you see this in the clear text. So tomorrow I'm preaching from Acts 2 with the resurrection of Christ, that that's what
- 01:12:47
- David was looking forward to. And then with 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ being the first fruits of the resurrection.
- 01:12:54
- For he must reign. So Christ is reigning. Now, that's my encouragement today.
- 01:13:00
- Christ is sitting upon the throne. So be it if I am. crashing the nations to pieces.
- 01:13:06
- Now that looks great for those that follow Christ. That does not look good for the nations that are being smashed to pieces.
- 01:13:12
- So how do you get post -millennialism out of nations, including America, being smashed to pieces?
- 01:13:21
- Because these are anti -Christian forces. They're doomed to lose.
- 01:13:27
- We're winning. We are always winning. The church never loses. Jesus was never lost in his life.
- 01:13:36
- That's right. For a second, I will lose none. I will lose none.
- 01:13:44
- So when you start thinking on these things, that's faith, that's hope.
- 01:13:50
- And that hope becomes a very active thing. So I always use this so we can close here.
- 01:13:56
- I know time. So my father died a few years ago.
- 01:14:04
- And my sister and I participated in the hospice work along with hospice that was with us.
- 01:14:11
- Because they had cirrhosis of the liver. So he was just immobile for the last two months. And I loved my dad very much, missing.
- 01:14:22
- So burly, athletic man, Marine, all this stuff in here, laying bloated completely, just total opposite.
- 01:14:31
- I hate death. Death is not natural as far as I'm concerned.
- 01:14:37
- It's unnatural. It's an enemy. Now, realizing that my dad had a few weeks, do my sister and I care less for him or do we care more for him?
- 01:14:51
- We cared more for him. We were changing diet. We were monitoring, changing.
- 01:14:57
- I did more for my dad in that two months than I've ever done for my dad. And I've done a lot for my dad than I've ever done in my, no.
- 01:15:04
- So just because you know something is dying and being corrupted and do you stop taking care of it?
- 01:15:10
- No, you take, no, no. Because your hope means you take care of what is dying.
- 01:15:18
- So this whole thought, you don't polish brass on a sinking ship. They always use that. Yeah. You know, that's just dumb, number one.
- 01:15:29
- My dad is not a sinking ship. My dad is dying and he will be raised again from the dead.
- 01:15:35
- I hope he even takes further care. I don't dismiss him. Well, he said, well, there's no use in changing his diapers.
- 01:15:44
- And you took care of him. I mean, he's gonna die anyway. Right. And you took care of him knowing that he wasn't going to get better too.
- 01:15:54
- Right, like. That did not stop me from taking care of him. Right. That's good.
- 01:16:00
- These people that say, well, if you're not post -millennial or you're not any of this stuff, you believe the world's getting worse.
- 01:16:07
- I think the world's getting worse. I don't think it's getting better. Right. You know, you got more centers now than you've ever had.
- 01:16:13
- And centers do what centers do. They do what, look at the world. Yep. We've got people now, there's a person at Harvard Medical Bioethics that's talking about modeling your genitals that they don't have to be either male or female.
- 01:16:32
- You might make one into a flower. That's terrible. That is so bad.
- 01:16:39
- What? This is a delusion.
- 01:16:47
- Normal people don't say this stuff. Normal atheists don't say this stuff, but that's what we're watching now.
- 01:16:55
- This is, it's unheard of. This is not gonna get any better, I don't think. Yeah.
- 01:17:00
- There's going to be an end. And I think that's another fear of the resurrection tomorrow in your sermon.
- 01:17:09
- And Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 15, and then comes the end. Yep. So all post -millennialists out there, there is an end.
- 01:17:19
- This all ends. Yep. So whatever nationalism you got going on, it's going to end.
- 01:17:28
- It's whatever republicanism, whatever, but that's all secondary. Yeah.
- 01:17:33
- The kingdom of God is primary. Right. So I can get off on that kind of stuff, but.
- 01:17:41
- Brother, I wanna invite you back. I would love to talk about the book of Revelation with you and go over some stuff.
- 01:17:47
- I think that would be a blast. I think you and I are probably almost one for one from what I'm picking up.
- 01:17:54
- Yeah. Maybe, go ahead. Yeah. No, you've been very encouraging. So that, you know, reminding me of the encouragement at the conference that I got.
- 01:18:03
- So meeting you and everything. Yeah. It was really good. If, yeah,
- 01:18:09
- I would love to set that up with you sometime. And this was, I gotta thank you. And just the time that you've given for tonight,
- 01:18:14
- I know tomorrow's Easter. And so you got a busy day tomorrow. And so thank you so much, brother. If you were to give one final word, because tomorrow is
- 01:18:24
- Easter, and we know that there's a day that's going to come where death is going to be spoken of as death.
- 01:18:30
- Where's your sting? No death. Where's your victory? Because we do believe in a future resurrection. What's your final encouragement to a full
- 01:18:37
- Praderist if they were to watch this? The death that Jesus rose and can die no more.
- 01:18:48
- He's immortal. And that this is our hope to be immortal, to live with God in this creation for eternity, without sin, without death, without pain, without misery, without any, the aspirations of every philosophy and religion that you've ever read for the, of all of humanity, they all have this groaning and urging of a better world, a better life, a better humanity.
- 01:19:16
- And the answer to that is in what tomorrow is. That's the answer. Jesus said that I am the way of the life.
- 01:19:23
- I'm the answer. I'm the truth. I'm the resurrection. And it's rooted in this very much creation, which affects in which we all love, the birds and the trees and the sun.
- 01:19:33
- I love that creation was made for us to enjoy forever in the presence of God.
- 01:19:39
- And that what resurrection means, the resurrection of Jesus, is that the demonstration of what our hope is, because he is the first, which means we're going to follow that.
- 01:19:53
- And he has death, the keys of death in his hands, and he's not yet thrown them into the lake of fire.
- 01:20:02
- He has conquered. The fact that he's got them in his hands, the keys, that's the authority, which means he can throw them in the lake of fire.
- 01:20:11
- They belong to him. Well, I want in that, that's what
- 01:20:17
- I want. And anything less than that, that separates spirit from matter like that, that separates
- 01:20:24
- God from creation like that is not fulfilling. It's certainly not fulfilling in terms of the scriptures, and it's not fulfilling in the very things that touch us every day in this life, from our relatives and death and the things that we deal with, people in jail, people on drugs, families that are broken and shattered, all of that kind of stuff, is ultimately
- 01:20:46
- God's going to heal all of this. All of this is going to be healed. That's the message. And if you can't preach that, then there's something wrong with your message.
- 01:20:54
- Amen. Brother, it's been so edifying. You will be invited back. We're definitely going to do this again, brother.
- 01:21:01
- This was great. Well, everybody that was able to watch, it was a real blessing.
- 01:21:07
- Please continue to keep an eye out for brother Dr. Samuel Frost. This has truly been wonderful.
- 01:21:14
- God bless. Go in peace. Have a good rest of the day. Yes. All right.