Responding to a Pastor's "Refutation" of Postmillennialism & Theonomy
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Join us for the newest episode of Apologia Radio! We chat about the recent New York Times article about Apologia Church and Pastor Jeff Durbin and we engage a bit with a small clip of Pastor Emilio Ramos which claims to refute Postmillennialism and Theonomy.
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- 00:00
- Non -rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!
- 00:08
- Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?
- 00:15
- Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.
- 00:21
- So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?
- 00:32
- Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.
- 00:45
- Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.
- 00:52
- Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.
- 00:59
- When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.
- 01:06
- Take an amazing journey to a place that no one will ever know.
- 01:26
- For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given.
- 01:31
- And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
- 01:41
- Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness.
- 01:54
- From this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.
- 02:00
- What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world.
- 02:06
- Get more at ApologiaStudios .com. A -P -O -L -O -G -I -A -Studios .com.
- 02:11
- I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That is Luke, the bear. What up? And that's Joy, the girl over there.
- 02:17
- Hello. Hello, hello. We're glad to have you guys joining us today. Thank you for everyone joining us in a live stream. Make sure you guys like and share all of this.
- 02:23
- Make sure everyone gets to hear this and see this content. Today, we are going to talk about,
- 02:28
- I think, we'll see where we go, but we'll talk about two primary things. We'll lead off with a New York Times article about Apologia Church and our message.
- 02:38
- And we're also going to deal with just, it's not a very long portion.
- 02:44
- We may make it through all of it. We may not. It's about 11 minutes long. It is a pastor, Pastor Emilio Ramos.
- 02:51
- He did a message, and this is just a clip from a portion of one of his messages.
- 02:58
- And it's titled in YouTube, if you want to go check it out, Why Postmillennialism and Theonomy Fails the
- 03:03
- Biblical Test. So we said a couple weeks ago we're going to engage a bit with that, talk about the kingdom of Christ as a present reality, the ultimate end of the world, victory of the gospel, and the law of God.
- 03:15
- We're going to engage a bit with some of the comments, and so that's what's on the schedule for today. But before we get into that and a few things,
- 03:22
- I'm going to pass it over to Luke DeBear. Bear, you got, there's a weapon on the table. There is. There is a weapon.
- 03:27
- I spent my 4th of July watching the Patriot and putting together my battle belt.
- 03:34
- So I think I accomplished it. Not to be confused with a fanny pack. Oh, definitely not. This is definitely not a fanny pack.
- 03:41
- That's a mani -pack. Favorite part, real fast, of the Patriot. Quick. Favorite part.
- 03:48
- When he's with the flag. When he's riding on the horse. My favorite part's where he's going to save his son, and he's like, he makes it look like there's multiple attackers with his young boys.
- 03:57
- I love that scene. That was that frontier fighting. Amazing. That the Brits did not want to listen to.
- 04:03
- That's right. Mani -belt. Yeah. My, sorry, I'm getting way off topic. Mani -pack. My favorite part is
- 04:08
- Mel Gibson's ponytail. I didn't even ask you. That was so mean. I just was him.
- 04:13
- That's our pastor's attitude. I was just trying to move fast. I'm sorry. Favorite part of the Patriot. Mel Gibson's ponytail.
- 04:18
- His ponytail. Legit. Okay. My kids were like, we woke up Monday morning, and they were like, can we watch a show?
- 04:23
- It's a holiday. And I was like, sure. You're going to watch the Patriot. I was like, you're going to. I'm like, they're watching.
- 04:29
- And I'm like, this is why we're celebrating today. And they were like, okay. That's a good dad right there. Anyways. Yeah. I just wanted to show it because I know everyone's, not everyone,
- 04:38
- I wanted to show it because our Republic is awesome. And we're going to try something today, which
- 04:43
- I'm failing miserably at it. And that's being structured. Yeah. Okay. We were told. We're not used to that.
- 04:48
- We were told by the powers that be. They literally were like, this is how you're going to do it today. You're going to do it just like this.
- 04:54
- And we are already. I have completely biffed it. So we're not talking about that yet.
- 04:59
- No, we are. I just wanted to show it. Yeah. I'm confused now. What are we doing? It is.
- 05:04
- It's got all the things. I even got my mags ready to go. If you can't use the stuff in it, just swing it and hit someone in the head.
- 05:10
- They're going down. This might come flying out. That's the benefit of a manny pack. You get to carry your man stuff, and you can also hit people with it.
- 05:17
- It's a manny pack. Fun fact. Few people know that in 1776, the newly formed
- 05:25
- United States rented private battleships to help them resist British tyranny. Like in the
- 05:30
- Patriot, for example, the movie I mentioned earlier. That's right. Private battleships. I didn't know that actually.
- 05:36
- That means people just had their own. Like private battle belts. He's making a parallel.
- 05:43
- Yeah. Okay. It's stretching, but it's there.
- 05:49
- I'm impressed by that. Thank you. But I'd be much more impressed if next week you had a battleship.
- 05:54
- People had, like, yeah, I guess I'll rent out my battleship. Yeah. Just make sure you return it back to me in good condition.
- 06:01
- Yeah. It was like the Turo of 1776. Otherwise, I'll have to charge you a deposit. It was Turo of 1776. They could just scroll through.
- 06:08
- Nah, this isn't going to work for me. This is a bit too high end and expensive. Well, now I'm imagining Uber, just short term.
- 06:15
- Could just come pick our soldiers up. Yeah. Facilitate the battle.
- 06:20
- I think there was an app like, oh, my battleship's not here. Where are they at? Do I have to buy insurance on this thing, too? This was supposed to be a 60 second read.
- 06:29
- Here's something we can share. We can share the battleship with someone else. While it'd be another 15 years before the
- 06:36
- Second Amendment was officially ratified, these private battleships are a glorious example of the right to keep and bear arms.
- 06:42
- Like this one right here. Another glorious example of this right is owning and wearing body armor at the
- 06:48
- Armored Republic, previously called AR -500. This is important because this is a name change and mission statement.
- 06:55
- We stand for arming free men with body armor so they can resist tyranny for Christ the
- 07:01
- King. At its founding, Armored Republic's flagship product was the AR -500 steel body armor plate, which was innovatively designed to provide rifle rated protection at a lower price than any other armor on the market.
- 07:14
- Back then, we were named after that plate, AR -500 armor. Now, though, we're emphasizing our broader mission alongside a wider catalog of products, so we're refocusing on the name
- 07:24
- Armored Republic. Since in a republic, there is no king but Christ, and men should serve
- 07:30
- God rather than men by resisting tyranny. Did I read that right? Mm -hmm.
- 07:35
- Okay, sounded weird. Check out our website at AR -500Armor .com. Sign up for the email list.
- 07:41
- Equip yourself. Join the Armored Republic today. Is that a real gun? Yeah. You put a real gun into the studio?
- 07:48
- I mean, I actually have one. So did you. I have one on me. There's lots of guns in the studio.
- 07:53
- I have one on my person. This is my XD -40, which I'm not normally going to carry in here. I'm working on that.
- 07:59
- We have a variety of weapons in the studio. A variety. And apparently, protein powder and chia seeds.
- 08:05
- Chia seeds. Chia seeds. Armored Republic, y 'all. They love
- 08:11
- Jesus, and we love them. So, ready to get started? I'm ready to get started. All right. So a lot's happened in the last couple of weeks.
- 08:19
- Obviously, we've done some shows on the overturning of the tyranny of Roe.
- 08:24
- We went through those things. We talked about what happened in Louisiana. I want to let everybody know that coming very, very soon is a piece of content we've been working on the last two weeks.
- 08:35
- It is... I just watched the finished content this morning.
- 08:41
- It is fantastic. It's got Tom Askell. I'm doing a lot of explaining in this piece.
- 08:48
- It's got a bunch of our friends in it. We've got Pastor Brian Gunter. It's going to really bless you.
- 08:54
- And it sort of takes a snapshot of what took place in Louisiana with our historic bill that made it to the floor, passed the hearing in Louisiana, HB 813.
- 09:05
- What happened when the establishment, the pro -life establishment, came in to kill it and work against it?
- 09:10
- And we even got some footage of what happened at the SBC annual members' meeting in Anaheim where Pastor Brian Gunter was then able to go up and ask the
- 09:20
- ERLC, Brent Leatherwood, from the platform about why the ERLC signed onto a letter opposing a bill of equal protection.
- 09:29
- So that's all coming out hopefully next week. I want to just sort of drop that into your ear for a second.
- 09:35
- So just be on the lookout for it. Hopefully we maybe even get a trailer out for it before we do. But I want to ask you very personally, if you would, keep your eye out for this piece of content and then please share it because the substance of it is the main thing.
- 09:49
- It's the main thing in terms of what is the greatest thing right now we need to overcome to bring the gospel and biblical worldview into conflict with the issue of abortion and to ultimately establish justice for our pre -born neighbors.
- 10:03
- It's the main thing. It's all about the gospel. The establishment doesn't believe it's about the gospel.
- 10:08
- They will not stand on the authority of scripture. And because of that false doctrine, their false doctrine, their heretical doctrine, they've been able to infiltrate
- 10:15
- Christian organizations and churches with heretical teachings that teach that the woman is never guilty for what she does to her child in the womb.
- 10:24
- And so it's a gospel issue. It's a word of God issue. It's the authority of Christ issue.
- 10:29
- Coming into conflict with abortion. And what's coming out, again, hopefully next week, is the substance of it all.
- 10:35
- And it's very eye -opening. I watched it. I was like, that was done really, really well. Thank God for our team that works so hard on putting this together and serving
- 10:42
- Christ in this way. If you have not signed up for Bonson U yet, do it. It's a free, high -level seminary education all at ApologiaStudios .com.
- 10:51
- You can do it with your family. You can do it individually. You can do it with groups. It is fantastic. Dr.
- 10:56
- Greg Bonson, his family entrusted his life's work to us, seminary lectures, church teaching, hermeneutics, church history, philosophy, apologetics, law of God, all that stuff.
- 11:08
- It's all at ApologiaStudios .com. Bonson U, it is absolutely free as a gift from the Bonson family and us to you.
- 11:16
- And so that is what you can do there. Sign up for all access, partner with us in this ministry, make everything that we do possible. When you sign up for all access, you're not only a ministry partner with us making all this gospel proclamation across our platforms possible, but you also get additional content from us, including
- 11:31
- Ask Me Anything, which is once a month. We get to have a private meeting with each other where you can ask questions. We kind of hang out together.
- 11:36
- So that's what's up with that. So let's get into what took place in the last week. So an article dropped.
- 11:42
- It was an article from the New York Times. It dropped, am I thinking about this right, last
- 11:47
- Friday? Is that right, something like that, last Thursday, last Friday? It was Friday because we were hoping it was going to be
- 11:54
- Thursday and it was not. So article dropped New York Times, the journalist
- 12:00
- Elizabeth Diaz, and it actually took a little while for that to get done because really the conversation between Elizabeth and myself took place, it was started around Louisiana, which now is a couple months.
- 12:14
- And so we started that conversation. Then she actually came out to Arizona because she actually has some family out here, and she was put on this project.
- 12:22
- And so she spent some time, she came to a church service, and she came to the studio and spent some time with us.
- 12:27
- Really, really sweet lady. I'm honored to know her. I had a really good time with her and her photographer as well.
- 12:38
- Let's talk about the article. It went to the New York Times, and it was front page of Yahoo for at least a day.
- 12:46
- And so it made its rounds. It went to New Zealand too. I forgot to tell you. Oh, really? It made its rounds. I heard that Rachel Maddow actually tweeted it.
- 12:54
- I think I had 1 ,000 shares after that. Yeah, so it's good. Now here's the thing, and I even texted
- 13:00
- Elizabeth as well. I told her that she's a very gifted writer, and I mean that, and I told her that I was thankful that she really made an attempt to be a faithful journalist.
- 13:14
- When we first talked at church, when she came up to me at church, face -to -face, first talk face -to -face.
- 13:19
- We talked on the phone before that. I just told her, I said, look, I'm going to be honest with you, and all
- 13:24
- I'm asking is that you just be a journalist. Be a good journalist and just tell the truth about what we believe. Just be a journalist.
- 13:30
- And she committed to that, and I commended her in my text to her after the article came out and told her that I think she's a very gifted writer.
- 13:36
- And I said, she made an attempt to be a faithful journalist to express what we actually say.
- 13:45
- And I said, I could tell there were moments where your own worldview was coming through. I could see that.
- 13:51
- I understand that. And I said, but you did make an attempt to be a faithful journalist, and so I really appreciate that. And one thing
- 13:56
- I want to just say to Elizabeth, Elizabeth apparently keeps checking on us and listening. I don't know if she still does.
- 14:02
- Oh, okay. But Elizabeth, if you are listening, I do want to express my gratitude to you, my deepest gratitude.
- 14:09
- The issue of equal protection leads to people being treated as Luke from the womb, as me.
- 14:18
- So equal protection means that the baby in the womb gets the same protection, justice, that Elizabeth does.
- 14:24
- And, of course, that leads to criminal penalties. And so it's not just the mother. That's how this gets framed in this debate, is that we want mothers to face justice for killing their children in the womb.
- 14:34
- Well, yeah, because equal protection, if you kill somebody, anybody responsible has to be held responsible.
- 14:40
- That means also we would want the person doing it to be held responsible. We want the people who were the drivers and are willing drivers and know they're a part of this whole thing, paying for it.
- 14:51
- We want not just the woman, but everybody involved in killing a human being needs to have, there's some culpability there. But what gets left out of this conversation, what other journalists try to do, is they try to remove the hope of the gospel that we're bringing to this.
- 15:04
- And so I did express to Elizabeth when she was asking me questions about punishments and justice, I asked her, can you please make sure that you express that we want women to know there is forgiveness in Christ for this.
- 15:18
- That for us, there's two things we're concerned with. We're concerned with the soul of the woman, and we're concerned with the life of the baby.
- 15:24
- We're concerned with justice. And, Elizabeth, you did it. You made sure that in the part of the article where you were discussing how this ought to be punished, you made sure that you put that in there for me, and that I wanted women to know there's forgiveness in Christ for this.
- 15:37
- So I'm going to just commend Elizabeth for that. Obviously, there's parts of the article where, like, this is the culture we live in.
- 15:44
- All this must look weird to people. Like, I think it's maybe near the beginning of the, well, let me just, since I'm already on it here,
- 15:50
- I'll go ahead and read this part from the article, New York Times, directly from them. It says, he works in a studio office space behind a door.
- 15:59
- I'll skip all that. It says, the inside is dark, industrial, and metal. With movie, that metal's you.
- 16:06
- Yeah, metal. With, I was like, Shanka, what do I do?
- 16:12
- What's that? Except for my office. Except her office is not metal. It's very girly. There's flowery things in there, and it looks like a lady.
- 16:18
- But Joy does like metal. I do. Just for the record. I do. It says, industrial, metal, with movie posters for films like Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.
- 16:30
- Now, just in case anyone reads that and is like, say what? Our studio on this side, actually, one of the things we wanted to do is try to give constant inspiration to our team that, as Christians, we need to outdo the world, outperform the world.
- 16:47
- We need to be creating the better art, the better media, all those things. If you know the history of the church in terms of art and music, it's
- 16:55
- Christians and the Christian worldview that gave the best of the best to the world. It didn't just end there.
- 17:01
- It ended with academic institutions. It was with science and medicine and all of that.
- 17:06
- Christian worldview, we were the movers and shakers. Christians were movers and shakers and culture makers and all those things.
- 17:14
- Even the history of modern media and movies and those sorts of things, there's a really cool story about sort of the
- 17:20
- Christian foundation to Hollywood. That's all gone now. But there's a really cool story in terms of Hollywood itself and the
- 17:26
- Christians there. We're trying to create Christian media, good quality art in film and stories.
- 17:33
- And so what we have over here is we have movie posters of sort of epic things, things that overcome past obstacles or that are new and creative and have good stories.
- 17:51
- So people say, why do you have a Quentin Tarantino hateful hate movie? Yeah, I admit there's stuff in that movie that's violent and totally inappropriate.
- 18:00
- But we have different films that sort of like create new genres or outperform and outdo people.
- 18:06
- So we have Star Wars posters because that was something that transformed movies in terms of sci -fi and graphics.
- 18:15
- Stuff with cult following. Technology, yeah. We've got hateful hate because if you think about hateful hate, it's a story,
- 18:23
- Quentin Tarantino does a story where it's a single cast of characters, not a very large cast of characters, in one location, in one spot.
- 18:32
- It's just one location. There's no crazy technology involved in the film in terms of, there's no lasers and spaceships and there's no graphics that are crazy.
- 18:49
- It's just a story with a small cast in a cabin in the middle of a snowstorm.
- 18:54
- And this story takes place over hours. It's a very, very long film.
- 18:59
- And so it's just one of those examples. You don't need to have the crazy technology to create a story that captures people and they can sit there and watch it and be glued to it for hours.
- 19:12
- It's like the old, we talked about this before, like Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone. I could sit and watch episodes of the old black and white
- 19:19
- Twilight Zone over and over and over again and there's nothing to them. Yeah, they're very simple.
- 19:25
- Very simple. It's just small cast characters. There's not a lot of money invested in even the sets and everything else.
- 19:33
- One of the really good ones, the whole entire episode takes place inside of a cylinder.
- 19:40
- They're like a clown, a ballerina, and it turns out they're toys at the end.
- 19:47
- They don't know why they're in there. They think they're in hell. That's a great episode. They're toys in a toy store in a little bucket.
- 19:53
- But there's nothing to it at all. It's just a good story and it keeps you in it and you don't need to be shocked and see sex and flesh and all that stuff.
- 20:01
- It's just, you know. So anyway, we have movie posters to inspire our staff, our team, to create amazing things and outdo the world.
- 20:13
- Do you have something you want to say to that? I was just, the comments. One, I was going to say, someone's going to take us doing the metal sign now and say,
- 20:18
- See they're doing hand signals to the devil. Do you not see a joke? And then old
- 20:24
- Seamus in here is shaming us because there's cursing in that film and he doesn't find that epic.
- 20:30
- Yeah, yeah. No, I don't approve of it. I don't approve of it. There's other things. I don't approve of it.
- 20:36
- The point is, here's what the world is made of. I'm not sure why Christians, Christians have got to be better thinkers, okay?
- 20:43
- You've got to be more consistent in your thinking. If you took that we love and approve of all of these unbelieving things because we have these posters up, then you weren't listening to a thing that I said.
- 20:53
- And you've got to be better thinking than as a Christian because what I said was, and I think most everyone heard me, is that here is the stuff that the world is making in terms of creating genres and outdoing the past stuff and we need to be the ones that are creating better content than that.
- 21:11
- We need to outperform the world. And so it's sort of saying, Hey, look what they're doing. Let's do something better. It is possible to outdo the past.
- 21:20
- And so that's what that was about. Where was I now? I lost. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff coming up in the chat that I'm trying to hold on to for later because it's good when we get to the post -Monthly
- 21:30
- Enemy discussion. The New York Times article, and she was describing the interior of the office.
- 21:37
- Okay. So there you go. Okay. She then says, Tubs of four
- 21:43
- Patriot emergency food survival kits were stacked nearby. Now she asked me about those and I told her.
- 21:49
- I said, We're a church. This is our studio space, but it's also our church offices. And so a lot of churches have food pantries to take care of people who are hungry.
- 22:00
- And so this is our space that we have. We rent a space from a church to do worship. So this is our space. So we have food.
- 22:08
- We have food for families that are hungry. We have food to make sure that if someone's in a tough spot, we have food for caring for families in need.
- 22:17
- We have food for survival because that's what churches do. They make sure they're prepared to care for their people. And so that's what that's for.
- 22:24
- I'm not sure why she mentioned this, though. Food survival kits were stacked nearby with water, protein powders, and chia seeds.
- 22:32
- There's like three canisters of protein powders right there because we do like smoothies. We do juices.
- 22:39
- We got one little canister of chia seeds there because that goes into a protein shake. Is there something wrong with chia seeds?
- 22:47
- I don't know. That's why I didn't understand. Maybe she was just describing. Maybe she's just describing. Maybe she's just describing.
- 22:54
- It's a metal room with chia seeds. I mean, this is the New York Times. You have to really put us there.
- 23:02
- Yeah. So maybe she just wants to let everyone get a feel for what it's like to walk inside. Yeah. Mr. Durbin, 44, has five children as well as three grandchildren and five black belts.
- 23:11
- Before he was a pastor and online activist, he was a national karate champion who played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat, the live tour.
- 23:17
- He married his wife when he was 20, and she was 18 and pregnant with their first child, and he devoted his life to Jesus after he nearly overdosed on ecstasy, he said.
- 23:26
- He often tells the story of how they adopted their youngest son after the boy's birth mother sought an abortion when doctors wrongly expected him to be born with spina bifida.
- 23:35
- Just to touch on that for just a quick moment, official diagnoses, many ultrasounds.
- 23:43
- You can see the hole in his spine. We have all that, the hole in his spine. Very serious diagnosis because they actually saw some problems, too, with his brain because it was all connected.
- 23:51
- Spina bifida creates that, and he was on the better end of the worst side of spina bifida. So they're saying he could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
- 23:57
- He may have problems with his brain, all that stuff. And so we have all that stuff, official diagnosis.
- 24:04
- You see the spine open, all that they expected. So the doctors weren't incorrect in there. No, and that's why they were so shocked.
- 24:11
- The doctors were coming in, and they just kept coming back in and talking to each other like we've never seen this before. And they were referring to the fact that we've got the ultrasounds.
- 24:19
- You can see it. It's right there, brightest day. Big old black hole in his spine. You can see in the ultrasound.
- 24:25
- So it wasn't a misdiagnosis, just so everyone knows that. You could see it with your own eyes.
- 24:31
- He came out whole because God healed him. So the article itself tries to explain, well,
- 24:38
- I'll tell you its title. It says, Inside the Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion. Inside the
- 24:44
- Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion. Now, I realize that that's sort of a clickbaity title. It's sort of a shocking title.
- 24:50
- The Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion. It only seems extreme, however, today, after 50 years of Roe versus Wade.
- 25:02
- Because before 1973, abortion was a criminal act in many, many places.
- 25:10
- As a matter of fact, any nation that was affected by the gospel, where Christians were in their communities, of course resisted the issue of abortion and mothers killing their child in a womb.
- 25:20
- So, Inside the Extreme Effort, again, only extreme because of the cultural context we find ourselves in now, to punish women for abortion,
- 25:27
- I would just say to make abortion a crime. I think that's a better way to put it, because anybody involved should have to face justice for killing a child in the womb.
- 25:37
- Not just women. We would want anybody involved in killing a human. So, yeah.
- 25:44
- You guys can fill in here with your thoughts towards the article. But it's at the New York Times. I think that Elizabeth Diaz did as great of a job as she could as a journalist working for the
- 25:55
- New York Times. It's the New York Times. They don't share a Christian worldview. And so, there were moments where she said things like, you know, the pastors of Apologia Church, all men.
- 26:06
- It's almost like, from a Christian perspective, that's stuttering. Well, there's some other,
- 26:12
- I mean, basically she stepped into our world, which was very weird for her.
- 26:18
- But because we live in it, it wasn't weird for us. And it's really, and even historically, it hasn't, our position hasn't ever been weird.
- 26:31
- But, yeah. Again, since the last 50 years maybe. Yeah. So, it just. And in the
- 26:37
- SPC, apparently. I just thought that, it reminded me of, what was that one?
- 26:43
- The Vice one. Hate Your Neighbor. Yeah, Hate That Neighbor. But, yeah, it just kind of, there seems to be a pattern every time someone tries to tell the story of what we do here.
- 26:56
- And, yeah, it's like this, it's like they're looking into like a weird Amish community that they can't possibly understand.
- 27:02
- But, obviously, we live our lives every day, so. We're just old school, guys.
- 27:08
- All men. Babies and wagons with kids. I would say, to anybody who read this article, say who's a leftist or pro -aborder, holds that perspective and holds that worldview, if you were celebrating the 4th of July this
- 27:23
- Monday, you were celebrating it on the shoulders of people who were basically like us.
- 27:30
- Believed like us, theologically, pretty much across the board. And so, if, like Doug says, if you're thankful for the 4th of July and Independence Day, go hug a
- 27:44
- Calvinist. Because that's where it came from. From those old Huguenots and Puritans and those old
- 27:50
- Scottish Covenanters, the descendants of those Covenanters. So, we look weird today, perhaps, to New York Times.
- 27:57
- But you have a New York Times because of the Christian worldview. I think I even mentioned that to Elizabeth, that the
- 28:03
- New York Times was used as the major peace platform when the pastors and doctors were fighting against the abortifacient industry that was rising up after the
- 28:14
- Civil War. They used the New York Times as their pro -life platform, and the New York Times was distributing their stuff.
- 28:20
- And they put down the abortifacient industry, thanks to the New York Times. I think she forgot to include that. Yeah, so the
- 28:26
- New York Times has come a long way. I think the New York Times is forgetting to include it as well. The New York Times used to be for Christian propaganda.
- 28:34
- I guess you could say. But one more thing here, I wanted to mention this. It says, at a time when church attendance is often shrinking,
- 28:40
- Apologia Church had so many families on a recent Sunday, about a month before the Supreme Court decision, that it ran out of bulletins.
- 28:48
- That's just more irresponsibility on our part, is really what it was. We should have just printed more. Yeah, we should have just printed more.
- 28:53
- Fathers wheeled in children in wagons, and mothers held babies while leading other small children by the hand.
- 29:01
- A man at the door greeted them in a black shirt that read, Jesus is Lord, pass the ammo. When I read that,
- 29:08
- I was like, that's fantastic. That's actually a really good picture of Apologia Church on a Sunday.
- 29:14
- And that was Mike. That was definitely Mike. So good job, Mike. Although some people might read that and be like, what a bunch of rednecks.
- 29:21
- Mike ain't no redneck. Mike is definitely not a redneck. Muscular. Muscular, definitely not a redneck.
- 29:30
- Beefy. Beefy. He's just got beef. Man beef. Mr. Durbin preached from the book of Proverbs, which he said offers wisdom on every part of life, including about nations rejecting
- 29:42
- God's wisdom and then being destroyed. If you read the book of Proverbs, yeah, that's what it says.
- 29:48
- And how a Christian mother looks when she builds a home over and against the average unbelieving mother.
- 29:55
- A woman's role in the home is to raise up little heroes and little image bearers of God, he said. Right? Is that offensive to you?
- 30:02
- Does that bother you at all? No. Actually, it inspires you, right? It's like, yeah. It's a great message. That's a great message.
- 30:07
- You pro -birther. Pro -reproduction. Pro -reproduction family.
- 30:15
- Well, I'll end on this. I would hope that unbelievers, secularists, leftists, pro -borts that read something like this would be able to look into it and go, yeah,
- 30:28
- I don't agree with them, but man, it looks like they're being consistent. I mean, they believe in a culture of life and it looks like they actually have it.
- 30:35
- Yeah. Yeah. I think that was kind of just the main, but obviously that's from my perspective.
- 30:42
- But yeah, I thought it, I don't think she intentionally tried to slam anyone. I do think it had, it was written from her perspective.
- 30:53
- Right. But yeah, to me it just came across as like, oh, oh, all right.
- 31:00
- It's like, oh, well, and they don't, they don't believe in female pastors. It's like, okay. Yeah. You know, so I guess just, it was written.
- 31:09
- Some of the more shocking moments were probably not written for us. Yeah. Or people who uphold historical
- 31:16
- Christianity. Yeah. Like the part where it says, you know, the apology is pastors, all men. We're like, why would you, like, if you were describing a horse, would you say that's a horse horse?
- 31:23
- It's like, you know, just sort of, it's just sort of, why are you repeating yourself? Yeah. Because the
- 31:29
- Bible says that's how it's supposed to work. But today it's like, oh, that's weird. You're not like Rick Warren. Well, yeah,
- 31:34
- I do think that that, I think that a lot of secularists probably do a lot of their arguments and conversation are probably geared more towards like modern evangelicalism, which we see some problems with as well.
- 31:54
- But that probably was a little surprising. Yeah. Well, I mean, in her defense, it's just as controversial to say, oh, there's a girl's basketball team.
- 32:03
- All girls. Right. Yeah. She really did need to clarify.
- 32:09
- In each one of these was biologically. For real. Real. Yeah. True. All right, let's get to it.
- 32:17
- So we're going to have a discussion. Hopefully it's a beneficial discussion. We want to do this discussion with graciousness and respect, but also get down to it.
- 32:25
- When you have a public teaching ministry, I think that that's fair game in terms of being able to engage with something that's coming from a public platform into the public square.
- 32:36
- And we want to be able to engage with that. So public teaching ministry, that's something we're like, okay, let's respond to that publicly as well.
- 32:42
- Because I think it would be helpful and beneficial for the church to try to sharpen each other on these issues. Some people might be coming to this conversation as new believers or just like myself many years ago.
- 32:54
- Totally ignorant about other views of eschatology, of Christians in history. Totally ignorant about the fact that the popular eschatology, the dominant eschatology today in the evangelical
- 33:07
- West is an eschatology, an eschatological system. Very tired today.
- 33:13
- My words are not coming out clearly. That was a mouthful to say. You need some chia seeds. I do. Seriously. I need some protein powder.
- 33:19
- I got my casual yellow yerba I'm holding here, which she also mentioned in the article. Many today are just not informed about the fact that the eschatological system held by many evangelicals in the
- 33:33
- West today is actually a theological novum. It's something that's new in history. Or I should say an eschatological novum.
- 33:40
- It's something that's new. It is something that didn't appear until about the 19th century, around the time actually of like many movements that popped up in North America, whether it's the...
- 33:51
- You've got the Mormons. You've got the Shakers. And, you know, not long after that, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society appears.
- 33:57
- But you also have the Scobie Reference Bible. And this was a particular reference
- 34:05
- Bible, a commentary, that promoted a view of end times that no
- 34:11
- Christian had thought of, heard of, in the entire history of the Christian church. And so it's popular today to just understand that this is what
- 34:21
- Christian history has taught. This is what the Bible teaches, is that the world's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
- 34:27
- And then there's either going to be a secret rapture before seven years of tribulation, or there's going to be a rapture in the middle of it, or there's going to be a rapture right after it.
- 34:34
- You know, people piece it together differently. There's pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib. And everyone sort of thinks, like, and then we've got this, you know, thousand years, literal thousand years of millennial kingdom on Earth here.
- 34:45
- And so we sort of think, like, that's it. And so where, you know, where are you at on eschatology? And it really means you're either pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib.
- 34:54
- That's sort of, like, that's it, right? Not understanding, many Christians today, they don't understand that that particular eschatological view is brand new in history.
- 35:03
- You don't find it in history. I mean, you've got classical premillennialism or historic premillennialism that teaches a thousand -year literal reign on Earth of Christ.
- 35:13
- You've got amillennialism and postmillennialism. And when I was in Bible college, I remember the day.
- 35:19
- Dr. Brewer, that was his name, in Bible college. The day, and eschatology was my favorite class because I was a fiend about it.
- 35:28
- The day we started talking about other views on the millennium, and he put it up on the board.
- 35:34
- I remember it was premillennialism, and it was amill and postmill. And he basically said, now this is the historic view of the church, premillennialism.
- 35:42
- Not true, by the way. Premillennialism, and over here is amillennialism and postmillennialism.
- 35:48
- And he goes, and this is just theological liberalism. It's not Christian. And so that's it. He just waved his hand at it, and that was it.
- 35:54
- He goes, they just believe it's not a literal millennium, and they spiritualize and allegorize everything. And so that's all.
- 36:00
- It's just liberalism. So back to premillennialism. That's exactly how it went.
- 36:06
- And so I was unaware as well until I actually started reading the Bible and saying to myself,
- 36:12
- I can't get what I was taught to come out of this. I'm looking for it, and I can't get it to come out of this.
- 36:19
- So I committed to just read—this is how—I was seeing lots of problems, but I just committed to read the book of Revelation every day, once a day for 30 days.
- 36:26
- By day four, I remember distinctly, by day four, I finished Revelation, I closed the Bible, and I had a little bit of a freakout moment.
- 36:33
- I thought some of this had to have already happened. There's just no other way.
- 36:40
- And I think I'm wrong. And so I went into a very significant study, just going to the text, saying,
- 36:46
- I want to know what the text says. And lo and behold, I found out that I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
- 36:52
- I realized that some of the greatest heroes of the Christian faith in history were postmillennial, and they were seeing what
- 36:58
- I was seeing. And oh, by the way, some of the giants of the faith taught this
- 37:04
- Christian church—the Puritans. The Puritans were all postmillennial. And so, as a matter of fact, the dominant eschatology early on in this nation was postmillennialism.
- 37:16
- And so it wasn't—a more historic perspective is postmillennialism. Christians have disagreed on a lot of things in history, so we have to go to the text.
- 37:25
- What does the text actually say? So it's an important conversation to have, and we're going to go right into Pastor Emilio's comments.
- 37:33
- Looks like he's in the chat, actually. We're actually going to go to his comments and just try to engage a bit with him. Pastor Emilio Ramos loves the
- 37:41
- Lord, preaches the gospel. He's a solid, solid dude. And obviously,
- 37:47
- Christians are not going to agree on everything, and that's okay. So I want everyone to start this conversation understanding something very important from our perspective, is that we need to hold together, unified, with fellowship, fighting together for the gospel and worshiping
- 38:06
- Christ. We need to do all of that, and we need to hold to the essentials together. And we need to be okay with, in terms of having the conversations but not dividing with each other, over non -essential issues, differences of opinion on the eschaton, the future.
- 38:22
- So like Pastor Emilio and myself would both agree that there's going to be a final judgment. We both believe in the
- 38:29
- Trinity. We both believe salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone, apart from any works.
- 38:35
- Law cannot justify you. We both believe that there's going to be a final judgment and a physical resurrection of the just and the unjust.
- 38:42
- We both believe in an eternal state. We both believe in hell, and we're unified.
- 38:48
- We have some differences here that are significant, and they're important. I'm not minimizing them. On what takes place leading up to all of that.
- 38:55
- That doesn't mean that Pastor Emilio and I are at odds with each other or are not brothers, or are somehow in a fight.
- 39:04
- No. It's public teaching, and so we're engaging with it. We're engaging. He has a particular view, and so we're going to engage and try to engage with Scripture, and let's allow the people of God to hear.
- 39:17
- What does the Bible actually say? And so this is by no means, and it should never be taken that way, as somehow his camp versus our camp and we're at war with each other.
- 39:27
- That is a wrong way as Christians to live life. I was going to say you just referenced historical
- 39:33
- Christianity, specifically the Puritans, and many, many of those people were
- 39:39
- Presbyterian. That's right. And you're Baptist. So it's not like just because it's historical that automatically means it's right.
- 39:47
- Yeah. And it doesn't automatically mean, like, I don't know. Well, yeah. The list of my heroes and the men that I point people to and the people that I want you to read, it's probably
- 39:59
- Presbyterian 100 to 1 to my Baptists. It's probably 100 to 1.
- 40:06
- Presbyterians are my heroes. They're just wrong on one thing. Yeah. Some of my favorites in history,
- 40:12
- Presbyterian. I've got some. You've really got the Great Awakenings, right? There's old school Anglicans. There's old school
- 40:18
- Anglicans like J .C. Rowland. Like, that's a man of God. I'll never get to his level. He is deep.
- 40:24
- Yeah. Knows the Lord and can teach in a way that I don't think I'll ever become close to.
- 40:30
- And he's Anglican, you know? And also, hey, look, if you think everyone has to agree with you on every single piece of doctrine so they look just like you and your 21st century evangelical church in the
- 40:44
- West, you're going to look back in history, and you're going to realize if this is the standard, that everyone looks like me, believes like me, and all these things, you're not going to find you in history.
- 40:56
- Well, and what you actually believe is that it's a sin to disagree with you. Right. Not God. Yeah. I mean, we're both
- 41:02
- Reverend Presbyterians today. Yeah. And they're wrong on that. They're wrong on baptism.
- 41:07
- And they put on horrible conferences, but that's another. They put on conferences. I'm sorry. What is Jeff representing? Because half your shirt is.
- 41:13
- No, this is symbolic. We didn't even plan this. We didn't. Luke came in. He wears this all the time, though. He came in with a Fight, Laugh, Feast shirt to represent our friends at CrossPolitik and their conference.
- 41:23
- Even David Reese from Armored Republic is a. And it's more like this is like year one of CrossPolitik putting on their conferences, you know, really well done, nicely done.
- 41:34
- And this was the one that they held outside of Nashville. It was like in a horse stable. You couldn't see anything.
- 41:42
- Much like the shirt. Yeah. This was like looking at the screen of the speakers. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
- 41:47
- You're like, where's your. You were like, what exactly is that? Is that a mouth? Are those eyes? I can't see his face.
- 41:53
- I don't know what's happening because they didn't even show up there. They didn't show enough concern that the people who like paid all this money to come across country and pay to feed again in the conference would actually want to watch the conference.
- 42:03
- They just were like, let's just put them in a horse stable. Who cares? And like, who cares if they can see the screens and all the rest? It was very uncomfortable.
- 42:09
- Just amazing. And we wouldn't do that to you at ReformCon. By the way, ReformCon .org.
- 42:17
- It's a conference that's in a great venue. You're going to be able to see the speakers. We're going to have security at the door so that people who actually bought a ticket have to like show that they paid a ticket so that like random strangers can't walk in for free because we would never do that.
- 42:31
- We would never say to somebody, hey, buy a ticket to our conference. But if you show up, really, it's a free for all and anybody can get in because it's not even security at the door checking tickets.
- 42:39
- So why buy a ticket? I mean, is it stealing? Yes. Yes. It's theft, which we're going to get into a little while.
- 42:47
- If you try to sneak into our conference, there'll be someone waiting at the door wearing one of those. With a
- 42:52
- Jesus is Lord, pass the ammo t -shirt. Yes, that's right. That's just how we do it. Anyways, so we love
- 42:59
- Pastor Emilio, but we're going to just engage a bit. Again, we're not going to be able to make it through all 11 minutes of this, but we're going to engage a bit because I think it's important because this stuff does impact the work of the church in the world significantly.
- 43:10
- So let's get right to it. Again, the name of the
- 43:16
- YouTube video, the clip anyways, is Why Postmillennialism and Theonomy Fails the Biblical Test.
- 43:21
- Emilio Ramos. And again, sorry, before you play that, it's important to note, because I was confused when I watched this, this was,
- 43:27
- I think you mentioned it earlier, but this was taken from another sermon. So by itself, you kind of watch it by itself and you're like, that was weird.
- 43:35
- So it was clipped from another sermon. Yeah, and we're just going to engage with the substantial comments made because I think it's even easier to do that because he was,
- 43:46
- I think, clear enough on his position here. Transformation. Some people want to do that today.
- 43:53
- Listen, everyone wants to transform the world. Haven't you noticed that yet? Social justice people, they want to transform the world.
- 44:01
- Politicians are promising you they will transform the world. I love the climate talk. I love when
- 44:08
- Obama, Obama's going to turn the temperature down on the Earth, not too much, just a couple degrees.
- 44:15
- He's going to set the Earth's thermostat on a timer or something. This is utter futility on behalf of man.
- 44:24
- Agreed. In terms of unbelievers who are made in God's image that know their creator but refuse to the fact that they are in fact made in the
- 44:36
- Imago Dei. And being made in the Imago Dei, you can be an atheist, the hardest atheist on Earth.
- 44:43
- Hate God. Rail against God. And as soon as you're finishing your teaching on railing against God, like Dr.
- 44:50
- Clark in Utah, you're going to turn around and you're going to drive home and you're going to act like nothing you said was actually true.
- 44:57
- And you're going to act like there are things like love, things like morality, things like justice.
- 45:02
- Like the atheist who rails against God and says, there is no God, I hate him, and there's only sky above us, no justice, and there is no absolute truth.
- 45:12
- He still gets really angry when he comes home and he found his door kicked in and his television set stolen.
- 45:19
- He acts as though justice must be done. And so image bearers of God will cry out for justice.
- 45:26
- Because they're made in the God, in the image of the God, who is the one who is the standard of all justice, whose throne is established on justice.
- 45:35
- And I agree with Pastor Milo here. It is futile for unbelieving men and women to cry out for justice and to try to change the world.
- 45:44
- They don't, and this gets to the theonomy discussion, they don't have a standard, a reference point outside of themselves to point to.
- 45:53
- It's just them saying with bluff and bluster, justice, justice, we must demand justice today.
- 46:00
- Well, they can't escape that desire as image bearers of God, but the point here is this, they can't transform the world because that assumes that there's a standard to which they ought to be transformed to.
- 46:12
- And for the Christian church, the reference point of all truth is the one who is the very embodiment of truth.
- 46:18
- It is Jesus Christ. It is God's Word. That's the reference point.
- 46:24
- That's what we're pointing to. The very character of God is the standard of holiness and righteousness and justice.
- 46:30
- And so, yeah, unbelieving men and women will never, ever be able to transform the world, but Jesus can.
- 46:38
- Jesus can. God by His Spirit can, and He does it because of salvation, but also
- 46:45
- He does, in terms of the standard, it goes according to His law word. Were you going to say something there?
- 46:52
- Sorry, I'm having these people abandoned. There's some stuff I want to say, but I think
- 46:58
- I want to wait, but it ties into this, but I'll wait. Yeah, let's watch a little more. Everyone's trying to transform the world.
- 47:06
- Even Christians attempting to transform the world in some geophysical fashion, it all falls short of what
- 47:14
- Isaiah and Scripture is talking about. This can never be accomplished through politics. It can never be accomplished through social action.
- 47:21
- It can never be accomplished through education. It can never be accomplished through technology or medicine or evolution or anything else.
- 47:31
- These are miserable substitutes for the future of what God is envisioning here in Isaiah of a world truly regenerated, transformed.
- 47:43
- Nothing less than a genuine new creation full of the kind of radical and ontological transformation that is necessary for this world will do.
- 47:56
- A complete, total cosmic deliverance. Indeed, this entire creation, this entire cosmos will be delivered from the curse of sin.
- 48:08
- See, that's the real problem. Just quickly on that,
- 48:15
- I was going to say that I think it's important for us to just remark on the fact that one of the errors is that if I'm hearing
- 48:27
- Pastor Emilio correctly here, if he's talking about the earth itself, the physical cosmos, those sorts of things, under the curse of sin, all of that, if what he's talking about is that this physical cosmos must be destroyed and then a new one made, then that's not transformation.
- 48:47
- That's destruction and something brand new happening after that. Now, we can get into a long conversation here that could be an entire show on its own about new creation and what all that means and how
- 49:04
- Scripture uses that. For example, in the New Testament, it says that we are a new creation in Jesus Christ.
- 49:11
- Believers in Jesus Christ are a part of that new creation in Jesus Christ. He is the beginning of the new creation.
- 49:17
- Jesus Christ is the beginning of the new creation. We are new creations in Christ. And so, according to the
- 49:22
- New Testament, that new creation has already started. It's already started. And so, one of the distinctions,
- 49:29
- I think, between what many people think today is they're thinking about this universe, this cosmos, this earth is just a throwaway.
- 49:36
- God's going to destroy it. He's going to just throw it away in the trash heap of history, and he's going to create something brand new here.
- 49:43
- We actually believe in a resurrected cosmos. We believe that this physical cosmos itself is renewed and resurrected, that this world, we're going to live with God forever in eternity.
- 49:57
- We're going to live with God forever in a resurrected cosmos, but it's going to be this cosmos. Just like when
- 50:04
- Pastor Luke dies and rises again, the body that he gets when he is resurrected is a resurrected
- 50:11
- Luke. It's going to be, dude, it's going to be beefy. But it's going to be
- 50:17
- Luke, right? God's not throwing away Luke and then creating something different. This body is raised like Jesus' physical body was raised.
- 50:26
- Our resurrection is going to be like his resurrection. He's physically raised, same body, touch my hands and my feet, feel the nail prints.
- 50:33
- It's Jesus. It's his body. That's raised. Our resurrection is going to be like him, and what we're saying is that the physical cosmos itself is like that.
- 50:42
- It's the same, but it's resurrected. It's not a throwaway. So I don't believe that God's going to throw away this cosmos and destroy all of this.
- 50:51
- The popular text that's brought up from Peter on this has been responded to many times before in terms of what
- 50:58
- Peter's describing there is not a destruction of the physical cosmos, but he's talking about the old covenant order. I refer you all to John Owen's amazing expositional work on that text from Peter to talk about that.
- 51:12
- I totally forgot to pull these passages up ahead of time. Do you remember what the reference in Isaiah is that he's talking about right there?
- 51:20
- This particular one, Isaiah 30 was the original sermon sent to me from the full thing.
- 51:28
- Someone could have sent me the wrong one, but that's what I was told. I had it all pulled up before when we were going to do it, and I forgot. From Isaiah 30 as well.
- 51:34
- Okay, so that's fine. So there's a couple things here, and I don't want to get us too far off track, but one of the questions that came up in the chat as people were saying that post -millennialism is basically the prosperity gospel.
- 51:51
- Okay, so I know what they're trying to say because there's a lot of critics of our position that say we're the same as the
- 51:59
- New Apostolic Reformation or the Seven Mountain Mandates. Which is to show they've never read a book on post -millennialism. Exactly, but it ties in exactly to what
- 52:07
- Pastor Emilio was saying here because the point he's trying to make is that he's trying to say that we as a church can't transform the world by force or through law, which he's going to get into.
- 52:20
- And we're like, yeah, we agree. It's through the gospel. Start to the bottom, work his way up to the top.
- 52:27
- That's our position. So I wanted to take a little break here to say this because for those in the chat that are asking those questions, the
- 52:35
- Seven Mountain Mandate basically says there's seven mountains in the culture and that in order for Christ's kingdom to come and be established, we have to take control of those seven mountains and then usher in Christ's kingdom.
- 52:49
- We're saying Christ's kingdom has already been established and we're building his kingdom through the gospel.
- 52:54
- And that's where it starts and that's how we build his kingdom. So it's the exact opposite of that. But all that to say...
- 53:02
- Well, real fast, because you made a point that people... We say that.
- 53:07
- There's people probably listening right now that will say, what do you mean he's established his kingdom? Jesus taught that.
- 53:13
- From the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, it teaches that Jesus has the royal right to the throne. He has the right to the throne of David.
- 53:21
- First thing John the Baptist does in John chapter 3 is he says, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God, same thing.
- 53:27
- Synonymous with each other. And the axe is already laid at the root of the tree. The winnowing fork is in his hand.
- 53:34
- Jesus comes out of the temptation. And it says that he's preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
- 53:39
- The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God is at the fingertips reach. When he's challenged by Jews in his day in Matthew chapter 10, they're saying that he's casting out demons because he's working with Satan.
- 53:50
- He gives them an if -then. If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God or the finger of God, he says, then the rule of God has come upon you.
- 54:00
- So question is, did Jesus cast out demons by the Spirit of God? Yes. So the kingdom of God had come upon them.
- 54:08
- The rule of Christ. Christ is called the King of Kings in the New Testament. He's called Lord of Lords.
- 54:13
- It says he already has all authority in heaven and on earth today, Matthew 28, 18 through 20.
- 54:19
- And the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus Christ is reigning now.
- 54:25
- Where? From heaven. And what does that reign mean? He's reigning on the throne of David. Today, he has that Davidic throne.
- 54:32
- He's reigning now as the Messianic King. And he will do so until all of his enemies are placed as a footstool for his feet.
- 54:38
- That is kingdom of God language. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that's happening today.
- 54:44
- That was 2 ,000 years ago in the first generation after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
- 54:50
- Yeah, and so I'm glad you brought up the Great Commission because I wanted to start there. Obviously, Christ, who has all authority, says,
- 54:56
- I have all authority. Therefore, go. So he's given us that authority to go make disciples, baptize them, and teach.
- 55:03
- That's where it starts. Teach them all that he has commanded. So that's how we transform the world is through the
- 55:11
- Great Commission. Which includes regeneration. Which includes regeneration. But what I wanted to get to is
- 55:17
- Colossians 1. Obviously, I'm not going to read all of it, but Christ created all things.
- 55:24
- All things are created through him, by him, for him. He holds all things together. Verse 20, and this is where I want to get to with Pastor Emilio because this is what we're trying to say.
- 55:36
- And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
- 55:43
- So part of why Christ came was to reconcile all things, including the earth, including everything we see.
- 55:49
- We are to reconcile that to Christ through the gospel. Which I feel like is in direct conflict with what he was just saying.
- 55:58
- And what he will continue to say. That's a good point. So more from Pastor Emilio here.
- 56:05
- Sorry, I skipped off that thing there. And here we go. That's why you can't actually accomplish transformation.
- 56:12
- Because true transformation can only happen through the deliverance of sin. And I'll show you that in a second.
- 56:18
- Clearly in scripture, you can't have it. You can't produce it. In my opinion, you can't
- 56:27
- Christianize the world enough and then that's going to influence the world enough. And now people are going to start behaving. This is an important point.
- 56:36
- Pastor Emilio, brother, I'm sure you don't really believe that. I would say proof of that.
- 56:45
- And this is where I would ask you just maybe to look inward at what you just said there. Is do you feel that way about your local church?
- 56:54
- So I'll play that again so everyone can hear it. This is what Pastor Emilio said. I'll just back it up just a little bit.
- 57:01
- Can't produce it. You know, in my opinion, you can't
- 57:07
- Christianize the world enough and then that's going to influence the world enough. And now people are going to start behaving and being more righteous.
- 57:17
- I hope as pastors we don't think that about our local churches. That's so defeatist.
- 57:25
- Sanctification does... Pastor Emilio does believe in regeneration. He does believe in sanctification.
- 57:31
- That a regenerate heart will love the law of God, will be filled with the Spirit of God, and will want to obey
- 57:37
- God's statutes. Ezekiel 36. I know he believes that. And I know that Pastor Emilio, I'm sure, is a good pastor.
- 57:45
- He believes that his local church, when they turn to Christ, people turn to Christ, they're filled with God's Spirit, they begin to live in a righteous way.
- 57:55
- Not because themselves, but because they are now new creations. They are filled with the
- 58:01
- Spirit of God and they desire to pursue and to love and obey Jesus. And so, doesn't...
- 58:07
- Okay, let me ask it this way. Does a local church look like that, Pastor Emilio? Does a local church look like people who have been filled with the
- 58:15
- Spirit of God, regenerated, and they now live more righteously because they are regenerate and they have turned to Christ and they're justified?
- 58:22
- Does a local church live more righteously than the world because they're regenerate and because they trust in Christ and they're new?
- 58:30
- I would say, I know, I guarantee you, Pastor Emilio, I would say absolutely. People who are there in Christ, within a local church context, yeah, that local church looks more righteous because they're obeying
- 58:42
- Jesus because they're filled with the Spirit of God. Now, ready? Expand that. Now imagine the
- 58:49
- Great Commission is not just wishful thinking, but it's actually a command, that it's the future. Now, go from the local church context, which
- 58:56
- I know Pastor Emilio agrees with, regenerate people actually live more righteously. I believe he believes that.
- 59:03
- Now take that on a global scale. If the Great Commission is not just wishful thinking, and it actually is a command and it's what
- 59:09
- Jesus expects from the world, that's the future of the world, then will the world, if it is filled with people who are filled with God's Spirit and filled with regenerate people, will the world look more righteous?
- 59:22
- Will the world want to obey the commands of Jesus? Because let's remember the Great Commission. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
- 59:30
- So we're not waiting for Jesus to come and assume authority. He already said he has it. So this whole idea that later he's going to get that authority here on earth, he already says he has it.
- 59:39
- So what's he coming to get later? He already has it. But he says, therefore, because it's true, he says, go make disciples of all the nations, and he says, obviously baptize them, and he says, in the name of the
- 59:53
- Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teach them to observe all that I've commanded you. So teach them to obey.
- 59:58
- So we are to win the world to Jesus and teach them to obey Jesus. Now here's the question. If the
- 01:00:04
- Great Commission is actually a command, and it's what Jesus expects of the church and the world, then what does a world look like when the nations have come to Christ and they're obeying
- 01:00:14
- Jesus? Does it look like a transformed world? If the Great Commission is not just wishful thinking, but is actually a command of Christ and what he expects of the world, then if that happens, will the world look more righteous?
- 01:00:30
- Will it be filled with new creations? Will it be filled with regenerate people who actually love and long to obey
- 01:00:37
- Jesus? I believe so. And that's the claim of post -millennialism, that that's the future of the world.
- 01:00:46
- It's a world where people are reconciled to God, they love Jesus, paid for, bought by his blood, filled with his spirit, and they love
- 01:00:54
- God's law and long to obey his statutes because that's what Ezekiel 36 says is going to happen. So there you go.
- 01:01:02
- I don't know. Because I'm not a theonomist, I don't believe that simply using the law of God in politics is going to produce righteousness in the world.
- 01:01:12
- Matter of fact, I would point you to history. Just go back and look at what happened in Israel's history when you took the law of God in this fallen evil world and tried to govern the people with it.
- 01:01:23
- Yeah, and that's a major argument in Romans, and that's a major argument in the New Testament, that what the
- 01:01:30
- Old Covenant didn't have is what the New Covenant's blessings and promises give us. That what you have in the
- 01:01:37
- Old Covenant is a very different scenario than what you have in the New Covenant because what is the promise of the
- 01:01:44
- New Covenant in the Old Testament Scriptures? It is Jeremiah 31, 31. He's going to make a new covenant, not like the one that he made before.
- 01:01:55
- The New Covenant, he's going to put his law where? On our inward parts.
- 01:02:02
- On our inward parts. I mean, we've been talking about it a couple times today, so I'll mention it again. In Ezekiel 36, one of the great classic passages that Reformed people like to point to about what does
- 01:02:11
- God do in salvation, God says, not for your sake am I going to do this. He's talking to his covenant people.
- 01:02:17
- I'm not doing it for you, but for the sake of my name, which you've profaned among the nations. He says, I will, in this promised
- 01:02:24
- New Covenant, what he's going to do, he says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, so be clean. He says,
- 01:02:30
- I'll cleanse you of all your idols. And he says that I will remove a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, and I'll put my spirit within you and do what?
- 01:02:40
- Cause you to observe my statutes. By the way, and I don't mean this in any way as a slam, but it's something that needs to be addressed.
- 01:02:50
- It doesn't strike me as probable that Pastor Emilio has ever read a book on theonomy.
- 01:02:59
- I don't think that he's read a book from Bonson, say, Theonomy and Christian Ethics. It doesn't sound like he's read anything from Rush Dooney, or really anything from the
- 01:03:07
- Puritans on this point, because somebody who has read something by theonomists who argue for theonomy exegetically and the rest, someone who has read a book on it wouldn't make the claim that he just did.
- 01:03:23
- So I'm going to go with he hasn't read anything from a theonomist and really invest the time in it, because I don't want to believe that Pastor Emilio has read books on theonomy and then went and made this claim.
- 01:03:37
- That would be worse. It would be worse, because theonomists really take pains to make sure that it's clear that we do not believe that you can transform a world through the law of God.
- 01:03:50
- You can't take the law of God and drop it on unbelievers and expect the world to change. It's whitewashed tombs.
- 01:03:57
- It's like giving medicine to a dead man. It doesn't work that way. The law of God has to come from inside the people of God.
- 01:04:05
- New Covenant is what he's going to do. That's what was different, new, old promises of God. It's an inward thing written on the heart of God's people.
- 01:04:13
- It's an inward desire to obey God's law. However, however, you cannot transform the world.
- 01:04:21
- Gospel transformed the world through the law of God. However, I don't think that Pastor Emilio really believes what he just said there either in terms of the law of God.
- 01:04:31
- Useless in society today in terms of standards of justice and righteousness, because I bet you 100 % that Pastor Emilio wants
- 01:04:39
- God's laws in civil government regarding theft. He also wants
- 01:04:46
- God's law today in civil government regarding rape, because we realize, everybody, not every culture, tribe, and society in the world today agrees with the law of God in terms of cannibalism, bestiality, rape, slavery, name it.
- 01:05:04
- Those are all things that are blessings of the Christian worldview in the world today. And so I do believe that Pastor Emilio does want the law of God applied today in society.
- 01:05:15
- He wants civil magistrate to enforce God's law and standards regarding murder, rape, slavery, molestation, name it.
- 01:05:26
- He still wants it applied today. I think that's true. I think Pastor Emilio would want that.
- 01:05:32
- However, we agree with Pastor Emilio you can't change the world through the law of God. It has to be gospel -centered, which, by the way, is why, and this is not just a plug, it's just as an example,
- 01:05:43
- Pastor Emilio, it's why end abortion now is the way that it is. It's a gospel -centered movement of fighting against the issue of abortion with the authority of Christ, the call to repentance, and the word of God at the abortion mill and at the legislature.
- 01:05:56
- I mean, Pastor Emilio, I think you'll probably really be encouraged by this. The bill that we worked to get into the legislature in Louisiana was put in by a
- 01:06:06
- Christian legislator with a Christian pastor alongside of us, speaking to all the legislators to obey
- 01:06:12
- Jesus and to repent, essentially, and to establish justice for these pre -born children. But our bill itself in Louisiana said that what's in the womb is in the image of God.
- 01:06:24
- See the difference? It's always pointing to God's law as the reference point,
- 01:06:29
- God's word as the reference point. But we don't believe, listen, we don't believe, let's say, for example, in Louisiana, let's say things were different and the pro -life establishment didn't fight against our bill.
- 01:06:41
- And let's say the legislators passed HB 813 and abortion would be a crime and there'd be equal protection in Louisiana.
- 01:06:48
- Let's say that's true. Does that mean that Louisiana is a transformed state?
- 01:06:54
- That all those now people are all in relationship with Jesus and all is well? No. It just means that we've stopped our neighbors from being slaughtered, and we've established justice for the pre -born, and that's all according to God's standards.
- 01:07:07
- But Louisiana still needs to turn to Christ. Amen. And come under Christ and His authority. The legislature in Louisiana, part of the nations, needs to obey
- 01:07:15
- Jesus and His teachings. So, there you go. Did that work out?
- 01:07:23
- It didn't work out. Because you needed circumcision of the heart, Moses said. Just look back at the
- 01:07:29
- Reformation. People point to Reformation, they point to Geneva as a time where the law of God was essentially one with the state.
- 01:07:37
- What happened there? Nothing but corruption. Persecution. The Genevan government persecuted
- 01:07:44
- Calvin. They hated Calvin. Furthermore, all of the politicians... By the way, you'd find this in,
- 01:07:52
- I think, the most popular work by Dr. Reag Bonson, Theonomy and Christian Ethics.
- 01:08:02
- You'll find very strenuous argument against a blending of the state and the church.
- 01:08:08
- Very strenuous. Yeah. To the degree that Dr. Bonson even points to the fact that you're not supposed to have that blending because the law of God explicitly forbids that blending of the church and the state.
- 01:08:19
- To the degree that he gives examples from Scripture of people trying to cross that and blur that line between church and state and getting leprosy from it.
- 01:08:28
- That God actually punishes people by trying to combine church and state. You're not supposed to do that.
- 01:08:34
- Those are two distinct spheres, but both are supposed to be under the authority of Jesus Christ and obedient to God's law.
- 01:08:41
- We wouldn't want something where you have this perverse blending of the church and the state.
- 01:08:47
- Which, by the way, that concept of a different sphere church, state, under the authority of Christ, that's something that language we use today, separation of church and state, is actually because Christians argue that's what the
- 01:09:02
- Bible teaches. Church and state both under God, but separate and distinct spheres. And you don't want to have that blending together.
- 01:09:10
- Just one word, too. Also, one of the benefits that we see of the
- 01:09:15
- New Covenant itself and what's given in the New Testament is the emphasis on the fact that you can be a
- 01:09:21
- Jew outwardly and have physical circumcision, but not truly be a
- 01:09:26
- Jew, what? Inwardly. Like a real person circumcised at the heart. Right? Your heart's changed.
- 01:09:32
- Like, you're for real. It's inside. So we wouldn't want the law of God to drop on uncircumcised people in terms of their flesh.
- 01:09:40
- We want them to be circumcised in the heart. That's where we're going. I would just say quickly, that was another point
- 01:09:45
- I wanted to make because someone had made it. Can you make that point for two minutes? Because I'm going to... I'm going to do my best. I'm going to take a bathroom break.
- 01:09:51
- So someone had claimed that in a theocratic state, in a theocratic nation, that the church essentially would control the state.
- 01:10:00
- And that was a point I wanted to make. I mean, Jeff just did a great job of explaining that. But obviously, in Scripture, there's a complete separation of the church sphere and the state sphere.
- 01:10:11
- So we have the four spheres, which we talked about when I had you and Summer on. So you have individual, family, church, civil.
- 01:10:19
- And so all those four spheres of government have their own jurisdictions. And sometimes they may overlap.
- 01:10:26
- But there's only one supreme jurisdiction and that's
- 01:10:32
- God. So everyone else has their limits with what they can do in the answer to God. So even in a theocratic state, the church does not control the civil realm.
- 01:10:45
- God does. So that didn't make two minutes. Yeah, no,
- 01:10:50
- I think that, well, I don't know what a lot of the... I guess I don't know what the confusion is so much because I'm just a post -millennialist.
- 01:11:00
- So I'm just enjoying... Just a little post -millennialist. But yeah, that seems to be a...
- 01:11:11
- I don't know if Pastor Emilio is confused on that point. It wasn't him that made that up. Yeah, right.
- 01:11:16
- But I do know that's a common confusion. I was just saying, would you just explain the point was that someone was saying that in a theocratic nation, the church controls the state or the civil realm.
- 01:11:28
- And I was like, absolutely not. But you basically just made that up. Yeah, the church has a prophetic role to the state to preach
- 01:11:33
- God's word. The church is about the mercy of God and they have the prophetic mission of bringing the word of God to the world.
- 01:11:39
- The state has a duty, according to Romans 13, to be the servant of God. Right. Not a strange
- 01:11:45
- God. Not any God. The state, Romans 13, is to be God's deacon, God's servant. There is only one
- 01:11:50
- God. Paul wrote that. He believes there's only one God. He said that during a time of Rome. So he's obviously giving something that is prescriptive.
- 01:11:57
- This is the role of God's deacon. And they are to wield the sword of justice to protect the righteous and to punish evildoers.
- 01:12:05
- And the question has to be asked by what standard is the state supposed to do that?
- 01:12:12
- What do you think Paul would have said? What do you think Paul would have said if you were to ask Paul by what standard ought the state to wield the sword of justice?
- 01:12:21
- Right. According to pagan standards or according to the standard of the law, word of God? And this gets to the point, we'll talk about theonomy.
- 01:12:27
- Theonomy is from two words, theos, namos. That means just God's law. And so when you look at the
- 01:12:34
- New Testament, you see, we don't have time to make this whole episode on this, but it's important to talk about.
- 01:12:39
- You see that the New Testament writers, authors, the New Testament apostles, you see that they assume the abiding validity of the law of God throughout.
- 01:12:52
- And the only time that we have a right as Christians, we would argue, to say, well, that doesn't apply in the same way anymore, it's a different administration, is where the
- 01:13:02
- New Testament, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tells us you are no longer to practice this anymore like this, because of Christ in this way.
- 01:13:10
- So for example, we don't have a temple today, a physical temple. We don't have a priest today offering sacrifices.
- 01:13:17
- Yom Kippurin. We don't have the Day of Atonement taking place today. We don't have animal sacrifices. We don't do any of that because the
- 01:13:23
- New Testament explicitly tells us what that was all about. We don't do that anymore because Christ has fulfilled all of it.
- 01:13:29
- It was a shadow of the things to come. He's the substance. It's done. But guess what? Guess what?
- 01:13:35
- We still have a temple today. Right? Christians? We still have a sacrifice today, but it's a once -for -all sacrifice and it's complete, never to be done again.
- 01:13:46
- We still have a priest today, a high priest. We still have a mediator today between us and God.
- 01:13:52
- We still have all of that. And guess what? Blood sacrifice is still relevant today in the New Covenant.
- 01:13:57
- It's just finished. But all those things are meaningful because they were old covenant signs and they were old covenant shadows.
- 01:14:06
- It doesn't mean that they lose their meaning in the New Testament. It's just fulfillment. And you can look at example like Ephesians chapter 2 where the
- 01:14:13
- Apostle Paul explains why are we not following the holiness code anymore? Like why aren't we worried about fibers, mixed fibers?
- 01:14:20
- Why aren't we following the dietary restrictions of the old covenant? Why? We don't follow the holiness code anymore because we are given explicit reason in the
- 01:14:29
- New Testament under inspiration. You don't do this anymore because it's a new covenant, different administration, and this is what all those things meant.
- 01:14:39
- Like they were supposed to be taught with training wheels in the old covenant. Don't mix fibers.
- 01:14:45
- Well, that seems weird. Why not? I kind of like it. Well, because God was teaching them against syncretism.
- 01:14:50
- Don't blend with the nations around you. Don't do what they do. Don't adopt their practices. Even down to your clothing.
- 01:14:56
- Let me teach you to not blend. Right? That's what it meant. The dietary restrictions.
- 01:15:03
- Don't even eat like them. Be separate from them. Be different than them. And so, in the new covenant, we don't do those things anymore. However, this is key in terms of the abiding validity of the law of God in the
- 01:15:12
- New Testament. What do you see the apostles referencing post -cross, post -resurrection, post -ascension?
- 01:15:19
- Animal husbandry laws. Just the apostle Paul talking to a young pastor, and he says, don't muzzle the ox while it treads the grain.
- 01:15:28
- He expects them, he expects them to understand what he's saying. Don't muzzle the ox while it treads the grain. I want to remind you this is post -resurrection and ascension.
- 01:15:36
- Jesus is ascended, and the apostle Paul says, after ascension, he says, don't muzzle the ox while it treads the grain.
- 01:15:42
- He just brings it over like you're supposed to know this. Right? General equity of that law. Feed the thing that's working for you.
- 01:15:48
- Take care of what's laboring for you. He takes a general equity of an animal husbandry law, and he says, this applies in the
- 01:15:57
- New Testament. He also applies other things, like he just assumes it in Ephesians, talks to kids, assumes they're in the congregation, and he says, obey your parents and the
- 01:16:06
- Lord. And he quotes Law of God, Ten Commandments, and he said, this is the first commandment with a promise.
- 01:16:13
- So, Ten Commandments are quoted by the apostle Paul. Animal husbandry laws. Or how about this one? When he says, do not receive an accusation against an elder unless it's on the basis of two to three witnesses.
- 01:16:22
- Where's that from? God's judicial standards. That's for the courts. That's about receiving accusations, and that's about court stuff.
- 01:16:29
- So here we have, just as an example, small example, small sampling, animal husbandry laws, assumed, abiding, valid, today.
- 01:16:37
- Ten Commandments, assumed, abiding, relevant, today. And we had, what was the last one
- 01:16:43
- I said? Oh yeah, judicial. Two to three witnesses. Judicial. How are you supposed to actually be wise in judging a case?
- 01:16:51
- Two to three witnesses. And so the abiding validity of the Law of God is throughout the New Testament itself, and that's post -ascension of Jesus, which gets to this important question about theocracy.
- 01:17:04
- That's God ruling over. Okay? Theocracy. God is the ruler.
- 01:17:10
- Now here's the thing you've heard us say a million times before. Theocracy is an inevitable, foregone conclusion in every culture, in every society.
- 01:17:21
- It's not a question, as my friend says, of whether you will have a God over your system.
- 01:17:26
- It's a question of which God. It's a question of which God. Why? Because we're made in the image of God, and there is an ultimate in this universe.
- 01:17:34
- And if people don't serve that ultimate, they worship and serve the creature instead. They make a God in their own image.
- 01:17:40
- And so you can have North Korea. Who's God in North Korea? The dear leader.
- 01:17:47
- Kim Jong -un. He's the ultimate. It's his word is final. That's a theocracy. It's about an ultimate ruling, and there's the
- 01:17:55
- God. Or how about China? What is it in China? Is it Jesus? No, it's the Communist Party of China.
- 01:18:01
- Or how about in America today? What do we have today? Well, we're not a theocracy, not by any means.
- 01:18:07
- Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You have a God over your system. What's the God over your system? Demis. Democracy.
- 01:18:13
- The people. It's whatever the people say today. Our word is ultimate. Whatever we say is ultimate.
- 01:18:19
- It's to be obeyed. It's the law. There's no transcendent law above us. We don't have to yield to a
- 01:18:25
- God above us. What? We will be our own makers. We will determine the ultimate truth.
- 01:18:30
- And so theocracy is an inevitable foregone conclusion in this world. It's not a question of whether there be a
- 01:18:36
- God over your system, but which God will you have over your system? And I kind of want to just suggest everyone consider this very humbly.
- 01:18:43
- What does a world look like that is a Great Commission world? If Jesus in that world is seen as the one with all authority on earth and in heaven, and if those nations have been baptized and they are obeying the commands of Jesus, what kind of world is that?
- 01:19:03
- Sound like theocracy to you? Sounds like a theocracy to me. Jesus is the ultimate, all authority, and the nations are loving him and obeying him.
- 01:19:12
- If you want to call that a theocracy, then give me the t -shirt. Sounds like a theocracy to me in terms of the meaning of the word.
- 01:19:20
- What's it look like? The challenge is that Jesus actually says that's ongoing now.
- 01:19:26
- It's a mustard seed that becomes a tree. It's leaven in a lump of dough. It's something that takes place over time.
- 01:19:33
- It's happening all over the world today. Pastor Emilio, he's a man of God. He loves the
- 01:19:38
- Lord, loves the gospel. He's preaching the gospel. I think Pastor Emilio, is he in Texas? He's in Texas, right?
- 01:19:44
- I believe so, yes. I think Pastor Emilio is in Texas. I've seen some great stuff from Pastor Emilio.
- 01:19:52
- He's doing that in Texas. Texas is on the other side of the world from Israel. Here I am today.
- 01:19:58
- We're in the desert in Phoenix preaching the gospel, loving Jesus, making disciples. He's also from a different tribe than me, clearly.
- 01:20:08
- I'm from one tribe. He's from a different tribe. Here you have these two people represented here of different tribes who worship and love
- 01:20:14
- Jesus and see him as the ultimate. Sounds like the Great Commission is happening. Sounds like it's ongoing.
- 01:20:21
- We've got a lot of work to do. No question about that. Started with 11 men.
- 01:20:26
- That's right, 11 very confused disciples in a very remote part of the world about 2 ,000 years ago.
- 01:20:35
- The work is ongoing. This gets to another thing we need to overcome in terms of post -millennialism is that people think, you think the world's just getting better and better and better.
- 01:20:43
- It looks really bad right now. I would say, yeah, we have a lot of work to do. But if you think where we're at today is not better than 11 confused disciples of the ascension, then we've got different standards of success.
- 01:20:57
- I think we're actually, we're on the move as the church. People are coming to Christ constantly.
- 01:21:04
- We're doing baptisms at Apologia Church constantly. The world is being transformed by Jesus Christ.
- 01:21:10
- It's not a question of like a utopia thing. In other words, we don't believe that it's always getting better and better and better.
- 01:21:19
- It's that the church is growing and growing and growing, but there's going to be moments of historic judgments. There's going to be moments of even apostasy and difficulty.
- 01:21:26
- Church history has looked like that too. It's like this. It's like these fits and starts. It's like great transformation, moments of darkness where people turn away from the word of God and the purity of the gospel, and then boom, light again, and then difficulty, then boom, light again.
- 01:21:41
- It kind of looks like, it's more like a Christmas tree. Right? That's well done.
- 01:21:46
- I would say R .C. Jr. was, I liked his explanation. He did on Apology Radio once. He said it's like a roller coaster, but it's an upward trending roller coaster.
- 01:21:55
- Yeah. You start down here at the bottom, and we might be here in history, and we might be at a low point, but it's still way higher than it was down here.
- 01:22:02
- Yeah. Let's get another minute or so of this. I know we're going over today, but we'll try to get a little bit more in here.
- 01:22:09
- We're leading the reformed city. We're sleeping with concubines.
- 01:22:17
- These were the leaders of the city. It's no fault of the law of God. The law of God is perfect, holy, righteous, and good.
- 01:22:24
- The problem is the people are not. So you put that in their hand, and what do they do with it?
- 01:22:30
- Not righteousness. I would say they do the opposite with it. Is that true about you,
- 01:22:36
- Pastor Emilio? Tough question. Hard question. Difficult. Very personal, but I think you need to answer it.
- 01:22:44
- We, of course, have examples in history of people professing to believe in Jesus and violating the law of God.
- 01:22:49
- We can give so many more examples than what happened there. But Pastor Emilio, I want to challenge you with this.
- 01:22:56
- Do you believe that about yourself? That if I put the word of God in Pastor Emilio's hand, it's always going to look like that?
- 01:23:03
- Or do you believe that about your church? Because every Sunday you go up and you preach to your church from the word of God, giving the law of God.
- 01:23:10
- Do you really believe that while you're doing that, it's futile? That it doesn't matter? That you're giving the law of God, you're teaching the law of God, you're giving
- 01:23:18
- God's principles, and it does not matter? Because when you put the law of God into the hands of people, it's meaningless?
- 01:23:26
- No, you put it in the hands of regenerate people. God sanctifies people. He transforms them. And I know,
- 01:23:31
- Pastor Emilio, you and I are both pastors. We believe that about our churches, that when we have regenerate people being fed the word of God, they're renewed.
- 01:23:40
- They're renewed in their minds. Their lives are transformed. They love righteousness. The world changes because Jesus saves people.
- 01:23:47
- God indwells people. And that's really the claim of post -millennialism, is that Jesus is ruling and reigning now.
- 01:23:53
- He has drawn the nations to himself. The gospel is transforming people at an individual level, at a heart level, and that begins to shape and transform the world.
- 01:24:02
- I mean, don't forget, this is a really key issue here. I'll just, I can give you many of these, but I read at the beginning of the episode,
- 01:24:07
- Isaiah 9, 6 through 7. What's it say? It says that the government should be upon his shoulder. That's Jesus.
- 01:24:14
- Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. That's an increase. It just keeps going and going and going.
- 01:24:21
- On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
- 01:24:30
- And if that seems impossible to you, the encouragement is at the end. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
- 01:24:35
- Now, here's another promise of the kingdom of the Messiah. Very important, and it's clearly something that has progressed in history.
- 01:24:42
- It says in verse 1 of chapter 42 of Isaiah, Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.
- 01:24:49
- I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.
- 01:24:55
- He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.
- 01:25:03
- He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his
- 01:25:16
- Torah, his law, his law. That sounds like post -millennialism and theonomy in four verses.
- 01:25:25
- In four verses, Isaiah 42, 1 through 4, that sounds like post -millennialism and theonomy.
- 01:25:33
- There's more that can be given, but that's kind of the point here. The substance of it all is this, is that the
- 01:25:39
- Old Testament promised what the world would look like with Jesus bringing salvation and redemption around the world.
- 01:25:46
- It promised, here's what you're to expect. The nations obeying God. The nations being drawn up to God's mountain.
- 01:25:54
- God's Torah coming from the people of God, from Zion. Jesus who will faithfully establish justice.
- 01:26:00
- Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David to establish it with justice and righteousness forevermore.
- 01:26:08
- Those are promises and there's way more. But that's what the world is supposed to look like and then
- 01:26:13
- Jesus comes, says that he's king. The New Testament authors say that he's king. They say that he's reigning now and they say that he's putting all of his enemies under his feet today.
- 01:26:21
- Right now. That was 2 ,000 years ago. It's still happening now. All of his enemies under his feet. Emilio was an enemy. Now he's a child of God.
- 01:26:29
- I was an enemy. Luke was an enemy. Joy was an enemy. Now we're under the authority of Jesus Christ. The point is, is that the
- 01:26:35
- Bible says that the future of the world is supposed to look like something and it looks like a world transformed by the gospel and it looks like a world that actually loves and longs for the law of God.
- 01:26:48
- So that's a start. That's about three minutes in. Yeah. There's a lot more. There's a lot more. We'll try to get to it.
- 01:26:54
- But we thought this would be a good conversation to start. So here's some recommendations. Recommendations in terms of if you want to really examine the scriptures on these things, give it a test.
- 01:27:05
- Give it a test, which we should always be doing with everything that we're taught, everything we believe, is does this actually fit with what
- 01:27:12
- God has spoken? That's the key issue. Does this fit with what God has actually spoken? If you want to test,
- 01:27:19
- I would recommend Buy This Standard by Dr. Greg Bonson. It's a good, easy read.
- 01:27:27
- It's not a huge commitment. Buy This Standard by Greg Bonson. Get that book. If you want something that's more comprehensive, it's a much larger thing to tackle, but it sort of goes from soup to nuts, the issue of theonomy,
- 01:27:41
- I would pick up Theonomy and Christian Ethics by Dr. Greg Bonson. If you want to get a good book going from beginning to end of the
- 01:27:49
- Bible, the scriptures that teach about the kingdom of Messiah, what's the world going to look like, if you wanted a one -stop shop,
- 01:27:56
- I would get He Shall Have Dominion by Dr. Kenneth Gentry. That's a one -stop shop where Dr.
- 01:28:01
- Gentry actually is very fair with different Christian perspectives.
- 01:28:07
- He actually handles, here's what they would say, and he gives the most faithful representation of what somebody would say to argue with his exegesis of a particular text, and then he shows, and here's why
- 01:28:17
- I think they're wrong, but he's very fair and very respectful in that book. So, He Shall Have Dominion by Kenneth Gentry.
- 01:28:22
- You can also pick up, I think, sort of a fun one. It's fun. It's small, and it's Postmillennialism and Eschatology of Victory by Dr.
- 01:28:30
- Greg Bonson. If you want something that will just set fire to you in terms of excitement, I would get
- 01:28:37
- Paradise Restored by David Chilton. I literally, when I was reading that book at Starbucks two decades ago,
- 01:28:45
- I jumped up in the middle of reading it, and I was like, Yes! In Starbucks. Everyone's turning to look at me.
- 01:28:50
- I was like, I'm sorry. Dat Postmill. And that's, you know, they didn't understand what
- 01:28:56
- I meant then. Dat Postmill wasn't a thing yet, but I felt it. I felt it in my bones.
- 01:29:01
- It was brewing. I felt it in my bones. We love Pastor Emilio. We're grateful for him as a pastor and his ministry.
- 01:29:11
- Again, this is just Christians engaging with public teaching, talking through some issues we think are important because they do impact the world and how we live in the world and how we continue to fight.
- 01:29:22
- So, if you haven't done so yet, go to EndAbortionNow .com. Get your church signed up. Get free resources. Join us on our mission to establish equal protection and abolition in the name of Christ.
- 01:29:34
- EndAbortionNow .com That is Luke the Bear. Peace out. That's Joy the Girl. See ya. I'm Jeff. They call me the
- 01:29:39
- Ninja. We'll catch you next time right here on Apologia Radio. ApologiaStudios .com