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June 22, 2026
BUZ TAYLOR, ordained minister retired from the pastorate & author, who will address the theme of his new book:
“GOD’s LAWSUIT: BIBLE PROPHECY LIKE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD IT BEFORE…BUT SHOULD HAVE”
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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.
It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have an imbue in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 22nd day of June 2026.
Before I introduce to you my very special guest and our topic for the day, I want to remind all of you to mark your calendars for this Thursday and Friday, the 25th and 26th of June. And we have returning to the program two men who will be engaging in their third debate together on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, their third two-day debate right here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
And the men that I am speaking of are Jared K. Henry, a Nazarene pastor who, as a Nazarene, believes true believers can lose their salvation. He will be debating Reformed Baptist pastor Jeremiah Nortier, who will obviously be denying that thesis that true believers can lose their salvation.
A very important topic, dividing the body of Christ for centuries, and I hope that you all will make note of that and listen in this Thursday and Friday, the 25th and 26th of June. But today, I am so thrilled to have an old friend back in the program.
If anybody listening today has listened to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for years, especially in those years beginning in 2015, when I relaunched Iron Sharpens Iron Radio after relocating from New York to Pennsylvania and restarted the show, very frequently you would have heard on the program as my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, whose actual name is John Busby Taylor.
And he is an ordained minister, retired from the pastoral ministry. And he is an author. And today, we are going to be addressing a book that has been in the works for years, and I'm so thrilled that it's finally in print, God's Lawsuit, Bible Prophecy Like You've Never Heard It Before But Should Have.
And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio after such a long absence, Buzz Taylor.
Well, Chris, it's absolutely wonderful to be back on the air with you. I was thinking about it earlier, like seven or eight years or something, because I've lived in Fitchburg now for like five years.
I was in Buffalo for once, at least six, since I left Pennsylvania. And so it's been quite a long time. So it feels like coming home, though.
Amen. And that's Fitchburg, Massachusetts, right?
Fitchburg, yeah. Fitchburg. Almost like the bird, Finch, but Fitch. Oh, okay. No N.
Okay. Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Well, first of all, tell us about your theological journey that took place over the years. You used to, at one time, hold to not only a very different eschatology that you currently hold to, which is the driving force behind your book, God's Lawsuit, but you had a different theology altogether, other than the basics of Christianity remaining the same.
But you were, at one time, an Arminian, and you were, at one time, a Charismatic. And we could go on and on with all the different changes that you've gone through. But to tell us about where you began your evangelical life and pastorate and how you wound up to the point you are today.
Well, thank you, Chris, for hanging up all my dirty laundry. But, yeah, well, I came to Christ at the age of 17, and that was in 1974. And within a year or so, I ended up going down to four years at Bob Jones University, where obviously I became a dispensational premillennialist, pre-trib, the whole nine yards.
And I was a Bible major, and that's what I learned there, was basically dispensational, pre-tribulational, you know, all that. I was also, at that time, an independent Baptist. But as I was leaving my first pastorate, I started changing theologies.
One of the things that happened, and as I say many times, I don't know why the Lord had to take me through the avenues that He did, but I spent some time as a Charismatic, largely because we were going through a really tough time.
We'd lost an infant son, and my church shortly after that gave me what I have affectionately referred to as the left foot of fellowship. So there was a very low point, and the Charismatics reached out to us.
And I'm so glad they did, and we made many wonderful friends. But there was one guy in particular that, he seemed to know a lot more about what he was talking about biblically, so I respected his scholarship.
And we were both Charismatic at the time. And I made a comment to him once, something about the rapture, and he said, well, that's not true. And I'm like, oh, come on now, don't do this to me, you know, like, I trust your judgment, so don't do this.
Well, he wouldn't tell me why he said that, and I kept bugging him, so he loaned me a book. Now, we're talking 1988 at this point. He loaned me a book called, what was it, Jesus Has Returned to Planet Earth, by Ivan Grove.
And I devoured that book. Now, I can tell you there's a lot of things in that book I don't agree with, I didn't agree back then, and I don't today. But he, piece by piece, tore apart everything I had believed.
As a Baptist pastor, I spent two years teaching a series on Bible prophecy, with, you know, breaks in between for Mother's Day and Christmas and all that stuff. But I went through Daniel and Revelation and Matthew 24 and 25, and my main sources were books like, which was at that time a staple work, my textbook from college, Things to Come, by J. Dwight Benacost.
And for Revelation, I used a cassette series by, of all people, Jack Van Impey, called Revelation Revealed. So I knew the position that I was teaching back then, but it's not like I wasn't aware of what dispensationalists believed, because I was one, and I had been teaching it very enthusiastically.
So when I started questioning it, it was very uncomfortable, and I didn't know where I was going with this. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, as far as Bible prophecy, I was grabbing books by Seventh-day Adventist, anything, like, where is this going to lead me?
And I started seeing some patterns, and what was interesting was, I was becoming a post-millennialist and didn't even know it, because going to Bible college, I was never told what post-millennialists actually believed.
It's like, well, there's post-millennialists, there's amillennialists, but don't worry about them, they're wrong, so use premillennialism. And I never heard a description of post-millennialism. And then one day, I happened to read a book by David Chilton called Paradise Restored, and I'm reading this and seeing everything I was coming to the conclusions about, and like, yeah, I think this guy's pretty much figured out what I'm figuring out now.
And then he called it post-millennialism, and I'm like, no, no way. That's not what post-millennialism is, but it was. So I, without knowing it, became a post-millennialist. But then, we talked about going around Robin Hood Barn theologically, I started noticing that a lot of the people that I was reading books from about Bible prophecy, the ones that really seemed to know what they were talking about, the ones that were very biblically based and looked at the scriptures as they are written, not jumping through all kinds of hoops, they were Reformed.
So I got to thinking, you know, I really got to check into this Reformed theology. And that changed everything, and as you know, for a decade now, I've been Reformed. So that's basically the avenue that I took.
It started with just a little conversation in a friend's living room, and it's ended up with this book, God's Lawsuit, which just came out this month.
Now I happen to know, having known you for so many years, that in addition to being a post-millennialist, you are a partial preterist, and that distinguishing aspect of your post-millennialism needs to be mentioned, because there are a spectrum of different thoughts on eschatology, even within the framework of post-millennialism.
In fact, years ago, when I had my last eschatology marathon, because I have done it a couple of times on the show, where I had a representative of each major eschatological view prevent his view on the show one day at a time, I needed three different days for post-millennialism alone, because there were such stark contrasts between the three different men.
Right. Yeah. I remember one of those shows. And so perhaps if you could, before we get into the heart of the book, break down in summary form what post-millennialism actually means and what partial preterism means, because there are caricatures that are frequently laid out there in the public eye and ear about what post-millennialism is supposed to be, and they are typically slanderous caricatures.
Yes. I can't believe some of the things I'm supposed to believe as a post-millennialist.
Yes. That if you're a post-millennialist, you believe that the world just continues nonstop, progressively getting better and better and better and better. And it's just a straight arrow pointing upward that there are never any detours that the world will go into as far as entering into periods of darkness and so on.
And that is just not true at all, is it? Now, let me see if I got this right.
Your show's only two hours long. Let me start with what you said about preterism, because as a preterist and a post-millennialist, I have been very misunderstood and a lot of people don't know what we really believe and people confuse one thing with another.
You mentioned I'm a partial preterist. That means I believe that many of the prophecies that people think today are talking about our near future were actually fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in A .D. 70.
And that's the main portion of my book is showing why I believe that. But there are what we call full preterists that believe that every prophecy has been fulfilled. And I every once in a while watch them on YouTube, and I can't believe some of the things they say.
They would say the rapture and the resurrection, all that has already happened too, and I can't figure all that out. They've obviously left the creeds of the church by believing that. But the problem is people who don't do enough research link us all together.
And in fact, I had to respond to an article once called Preposterous Preterism where the guy was telling things like how Jack Van Impey and Hal Lindsey made good money on preterism. I'm like, how much time did he spend researching this?
Because they were like the nemesis of preterism. So you hear these things, you scratch your head, and you wonder. But he was confusing the two, and consequently, I would say he was, well, coming against me indirectly, but holding me to views that I don't hold to.
So there's a lot of that. And there's a lot of things about postmillennialism too that, and by the way, you remember I used to have trouble saying the word community? When I was on the radio down there in Carlisle, you know, well, I have trouble saying postmillennialism.
I can't even describe what I am. I had a Korean friend who could not say Presbyterian, even though he eventually converted to become a Presbyterian.
Yeah. Like my mother said once, she liked being a Baptist better because she could at least spell it. But some of the things that people accuse postmillennialists of believing, in fact, on his radio program years ago, Adrian Rogers said, then there's those postmillennialists who believe every day in every way I'm getting better and better.
And a lot of people equate postmillennialism with the self-help, prosperity gospel, all the self-help hype, liberal thinking. And there is no resemblance that, I mean, that practically amounts to slander.
It's so far off. They say things like postmillennials believe that everybody in the world is going to get saved. No, we don't. They think that we are going to take over the world with Uzi's and military might.
No, we don't. We talk about the preaching of the gospel. The main thing is we believe that ultimately the preaching of the gospels is going to be successful in bringing the nations to worship at the feet of Christ.
And you look at world conditions and say, no way. But remember, when I came to Christ in 1974, you couldn't find Christians who expected to see the year 2000 because the signs of the times were all there.
Jesus was going to return by, you know, absolutely before the year 2000. But if you allow church history to continue for thousands more years, a lot can happen. And I believe that the gospel is the power of God, the salvation to everyone who believes.
And like Spurgeon once said, the Holy Spirit would never allow the imputation to rest on his name that he was not able to convert the world. So that's what we believe is that ultimately through the preaching of the gospel, the nations are going to come to Christ.
Not every person, but those who don't come to Christ will be like, think of your local church as a microcosm of society. I ask people, do you go to a Christian church? Well, we say, of course. Well, do you believe that everybody in your church is truly saved?
Well, no, I really don't. Well, fortunately, the ones who aren't truly saved are not in power. They're not in control in your church. And hopefully that's the case. When that isn't the case anymore, churches go liberal.
But yeah, it doesn't mean everybody's saved in the church. Well, it's the same thing with society. Many, many, many people are going to come to Christ to where it's going to start impacting the laws of countries, and they're going to worship at the feet of Christ.
And when you consider the change that the church has already made in the last 2 ,000 years, I believe that's going to continue on. So I don't know if that's answering your question or not.
Yes, and of course, we should let it be known that there are post-millennialists who do believe that at the time of Christ's final appearance returning to the earth, everyone will be saved at that point.
There are post-millennialists who do believe that.
Yeah, you'll find all kinds of stuff in any camp, really. That's just the way it is. You know that. You're a Reformed Baptist. You know how many views there are in Reformed Baptist churches, even. I mean, Baptists, in fact, I've tried to repeat that one joke you tell all the time about the Baptist, you know, jump, erratic, and I just can't tell it like you do.
I'm sorry.
No, you can't. But anyway, I think that we have to return at least briefly to the partial preterist aspect of your beliefs, which, just to let our listeners know, even though I am an Amillennialist, an optimistic Amillennialist, I am also a partial preterist.
But just as one going from Calvinism into hyper-Calvinism is a dangerous journey into heresy, one being a partial preterist who makes a journey into full preterism, or hyper preterism, as its opponents call it, that is also a journey into dangerous heresy, some would say damning heresy, because it actually teaches that there will be no future visible, physical return of Christ, and there will be no bodily resurrection of those that have died, neither the saved nor the lost will be resurrected bodily in the future.
So those are very heretical ideas, would you not say?
Yes, and it's very unfortunate that people who do see the truth go so far beyond—and you used a good example there. We certainly don't deny the doctrines of grace because some people go hyper-Calvinist, same thing when it comes to eschatology.
It's unfortunate that many have gone from the preterist camp to the full preterist camp, but that's not the fault of preterism. I think that's the problem when people come to view things like, I know something you don't know, I've got this inside information.
I mean, it was very enlightening to me to become a preterist when I started seeing the Scriptures from that perspective, and it would have been easy to swing the pendulum so far the other way that now I really know something that you don't know, and they go too far.
But the fact that they swing the pendulum so far the other way does not negate the fact that when Jesus was talking in the Olivet Discourse, He was talking specifically about the destruction of Jerusalem, and I see no reason to push that out 2 ,000 years and say, Jesus is coming soon.
So basically, what I come up against in my book is the imminent return of Jesus and the modern prophecy movement. I'm not so much after the millennials and all that stuff. I mention them, but for the most part, I'm going after people like Jack Bennett, Tim LaHaye, because how many people have read the Left Behind series, and they think that's gospel, and it's just not.
So yeah, does that answer your question? Yes.
And well, let me see what time it is, because I don't want to interrupt you in mid-sentence. Yeah, we got time. You have a very intriguing title to your book, God's Lawsuit, Bible Prophecy Like You've Never Heard It Before but Should Have.
Let's go to the subtitle first. Is this hyperbolic, like you've never heard it before? Or do you actually contain in this book things that not even postmillennial partial preterists have seen? No, no, no, nothing like that.
I was so intrigued by Bible prophecy from the preterist and postmillennial perspective that I was asking myself, I've read the Bible, you know, sometimes a few times a year, and how come I never saw this before?
How did I miss all this stuff that's in there? And of course, I was taught not to see it through my education in Bible college and all. But yeah, I wish I had heard it the way I'm presenting it in the book first, but I didn't.
And so that is to draw people in. Well, as it says on the back of the book, I start off by saying the translators of the King James Version of the Bible wrote in their original preface, the translator to the reader, but we weary the unlearned who need not know so much and trouble the learned who know it already.
This book will no doubt do both. And I end the thing on the back cover saying, whether you are learned or unlearned, this book will challenge your thinking. I went years and never heard the position that I espouse now, and I could not figure out how that was.
So I'm realizing that this book is going to be reaching a lot of people like me who couldn't imagine that there were other views than the one they were taught, the ones they got from the Schofield Reference Bible, and much less that the argument against them is so powerful from the scriptures.
So that's the subtitle. Now, that was going to be the original title of the book when I started working on it, but I got into this Writers Association when I was still down in Carlisle there, and one of our sessions was about titles, and I decided not to be puritanical about it and find a short title, and I came up with God's Lawsuit.
And you don't really find out until about chapter 4 or 5 somewhere. I can't remember where I finally mentioned Lawsuit in the book. But just for your curiosity, prophets were God's prosecuting attorneys.
When Israel was breaking covenant with God, when they violated the covenant, God would send them prophets. Sometimes they predicted, sometimes they didn't, but the whole point was come back to God. You know, you're going the wrong direction.
So they were the prosecuting attorneys bringing God's lawsuit against covenant breakers. And that's basically what the book of Revelation is. It's God's covenant lawsuit against Christ rejecting Christ murdering first century Israel.
So that's where that all came from. John was acting as a prophet bringing the lawsuit against first century Israel. And then it ended there, by the way. You know, I don't hold Jews today culpable for the crucifixion of Christ because that was the first century and they were punished.
Now, I hold it against them if they have not accepted Christ like I would against any group that does not, but I don't hold them culpable like the first century Jews were. For the murder of Christ.
Tom, well, we already have a listener and I haven't even announced our email address yet. We have David in Ada, Ohio. Does dispensationalism fit into this discussion? If so, please explain. Now, I don't know if David tuned in late, but you've already given the background information.
If you want to repeat anything.
Well, David, I was a dispensationalist for many years. From 1974 to 1988, I was a dispensationalist. Dispensationalists divide the Bible into seven, what they call economies or dispensations. And presumably, God deals differently with mankind in each one of those dispensations and not much gets from one dispensation to the other.
So, for example, if you push dispensationalism, you come up with things like what Andy Stanley says now. We need to just unhinge the entire Old Testament because there's really not a whole lot for us anymore.
That was them. We are us and we're not connected in any way. That's basically the results of dispensational teaching. So, no, dispensationalism does not. It's the opposite, if you will, of post-millennialism to some degree.
Or the word I used earlier, the nemesis, the polar opposite. So, yes, in fact, that's one of my main targets in the book is dispensationalism. Specifically, dispensational premillennialism.
Tom Hanks. Well, guess what, David? You have won a free copy of God's Lawsuit Bible Prophecy like you've never heard it before, but should have by my guest, Reverend John Buzz Taylor. So, make sure that you email me your full mailing address there in Ada, Ohio.
We have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.
Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are in a church that is teaching a view of eschatology over which you vehemently disagree, or perhaps you're just starting to disagree with it.
We would not want you to identify yourself publicly because we don't want to publicly be criticizing a church that we know nothing about, and we don't know if our listeners are being accurate in the way they're describing their church and so on.
So, this would be one reason that you would want to remain anonymous, and there may be many others, and we will respect your request to remain so. But if it's a general question on what the scriptures teach, what Christians have taught throughout history and so on, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages.
I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune God.
We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.
We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.
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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is my old friend Buzz Taylor, and we are discussing his brand new book that is the fruit of years of a labor of love that he has been working on.
How long has it been that you've been working on this book? Because I've been hearing you talk about it for at least five or six years, but it might be longer.
Buzz Taylor. Well, it's hard to know when it was a book that was being worked on. Some friends of mine years ago were getting ready to go into the ministry, and having studied eschatology, I didn't want them to go in and get it all wrong like I did.
So I said, I'm going to tell you some stuff before you do. So I started having Tuesday night Bible studies at their home, and I started taking what I was studying and putting it in organized fashion, making pages of notes about it.
And they ended up going a different direction, but I had these notes. Then I ended up teaching a Sunday school class, and the notes got bigger. And then when I was pastoring my last church in Maine, the notes got even bigger because I did 14 sermons with some breaks in between, but 14 sermons on, well, basically the series, the Bible Prophecy Series.
And I kept developing them over the years, and to where it's now, if I were to preach them anywhere, it would be about 20 lectures. So, but then I decided, well, because of a friend, you know, Dan Seitz, our friend there in Carlisle.
Yeah, he informed me one time that I'm not going to live for 500 years. And he was very encouraging to say, you know, get this thing down in writing. And I got to thinking about this, like, yeah, I want something that's going to outlast me.
So I decided it needs to be a book. Well, it took a long time to write the book. And I had no idea how, not so much the difficulty in getting published, but just getting everything right, saying it exactly like I wanted to.
A number of people proofread it. And then when I sent it to the publisher, they proofread it and changed a whole bunch of stuff and it came out a whole lot better than I could have done on my own. But it took a long time.
The study itself, like I mentioned before, started in about 1988, and it's been progressive ever since then. And it just, well, this month is when it finally got released. So, by the way, it is on Amazon, Aronson Noble, Kindle, and Walmart websites.
05 .44. Oh, great.
And that book, again, is God's Lawsuit Bible Prophecy, like you've never heard it before, but should have. And you and I know, especially because our libraries are filled with them, yours more than mine, probably, there have been many books written on eschatology over the centuries, including some contemporary authors, even those that are coming from a post-millennial and a partial preterist perspective.
What was lacking in those books that compelled you to write your own book to fill in the gaps, as it were?
Well, I'm not trying to replace the other very good books. Obviously, I've read some authors that I have a very high respect for, but I also realize that my book will find people that theirs won't because they never heard of those authors.
So, and the other thing was, I watch a lot of videos on YouTube, sermons and stuff, and I hear a lot of stuff from the other side. And every time I would hear somebody get it wrong, I'm like, oh, man, I gotta get this out there.
At least now I'm feeling like I've exonerated myself. I've done something about the issue. So that's why I wanted to know that there are some phenomenal. In fact, when I started the study, there were very few books.
Now there's blogs and books all over the place. It is amazing how this has developed because, to be honest with you, people are really weary of hearing prophecy teachers giving failed predictions. I recall back in the 70s, I heard about the planetary alignment, that all the planets were going to be in one corner of the solar system.
That's going to put stress on the surface of the sun and the Earth's crust, and that's going to cause all the tribulation things, the evil, the scorching of men, the earthquakes for the tribulation period.
All that was going to be caused by the planetary alignment in 1982. People have heard this stuff forever. They used to sing songs. I wish we'd all been ready. You'll be, you know, the sun has come and you've been left behind.
And, of course, Tim LaRoe wrote the whole series called Left Behind. People have read these predictions, Hal Lindsay's prediction, that Israel became a nation in 1948 and a generation, Jesus said this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
And Hal asks in The Late Great Planet Earth, which, by the way, was the first book I'd read as a new Christian.
And it ironically has led many people to salvation in Christ who later came to reject his book.
IR1. In fact, when my mother was still alive, we used to joke around about that because she got saved under a hairdryer in the beauty salon reading Late Great Planet Earth, and she came to disagree with Hal Lindsay also.
We used to have some good laughs about that. The speaker the night I came to Christ was Jimmy DeYoung of Songtime USA. I don't know if anybody remembers him, but he was their spokesman, if you will, living over in Israel, telling us all about the book of Revelation and how it will all be fulfilled and all that stuff.
So we had some good laughs about that. But see, people have heard this stuff for so many years, and they're finally saying something's wrong. You know, Hal Lindsay said a generation being 40 years, then the budding of the fig tree in Matthew 24 was the rebirth of Israel, even though the text said nothing of that.
But this is what he taught. And a generation being about 40 years means that the second coming of Christ would probably be around 1988. But as a pre-tribulation person, he subtracted seven years for the Great Tribulation.
And strongly insinuated that the rapture of the church was going to be around 1981. In fact, in 1980, he wrote his book, The 1980s Countdown to Armageddon. And like, hang on to your seats, folks, because here we go.
Well, now we look at that and say, no, I guess he was wrong. But all these guys are wrong. They have all their big conferences, but they're all getting it wrong. Why is that? It's because their whole system is broken.
They are spouting basically the Scofieldism that they were raised on, the dispensationalism, and they never heard the alternative views. But people know there's got to be something different. You know, these guys have been making these predictions.
Vultures. I got a tract here somewhere that's obviously very old. Going by the graph, it's probably the 60s or 70s. And it's talking about the vultures over in the Middle East are laying four eggs where they used to lay one each.
Because God is preparing these buzzards for the great feast that they're going to have when Russia moves against Israel in the tribulation period. How long can you hear these things and start to say something's wrong?
And that's basically what happened with me as I started studying these things out. Like, yeah, now I can see what's wrong. They take the verses that Jesus used to warn about the destruction of Jerusalem, warning them to flee, and we press them out and said, oh my, look at that.
We see all those signs, the times in our day. Why? It must be talking about our century. It used to be the 20th century. Now, of necessity, it's the 21st century. And even there, when you think about it, Hal Lindsey said that the generation that saw the rebirth of Israel, you know, Jesus said that generation would not pass away.
We are now two generations past that, if a generation is indeed 40 years, and I believe it is. We're two generations past that, which means now even Jesus is wrong. Now, obviously, I don't believe that.
But I sure do believe Hal Lindsey was wrong. So people are tired of it, and my book is out there to say, hey, take a look at this. This might help you to understand why things are so much in prophecy teaching.
And we do have Rose in New York, New York, and Rose says, most common accusations I hear hurled against both amillennialism and postmillennialism are that those who believe in those eschatological systems do not take the Bible literally.
Is this true, in your opinion? That is definitely one of the major accusations.
I hear that all the time. Let me say emphatically that I very strongly, am I making my point strong enough, believe in the authority of Scripture, okay. I would never believe postmillennialism if I didn't think it was taught in the Scriptures.
I do take it seriously, but the big accusation for decades, in fact, the book that I used as my textbook in college, James White Pentecost, Things to Come, accuses those non-dispensationalists of merely allegorizing the Scriptures.
It's a bunch of stories that have spiritual lessons, but they really don't take the Bible seriously. Well, first of all, that is a self-congratulatory sham, okay. They don't even interpret everything literally.
They can't. And I've pointed out in my book a number of places where they can't interpret literally.
And one way that's blatantly obvious is that dispensationalists making this claim that we don't take the Bible literally, none of them are Roman Catholics, and yet if you were to take the Bible literally in a wooden sense, you would believe in transubstantiation, that the elements of the Eucharist are the body and blood of Christ.
There you go. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that whole thing is, like I said, it's just a big sham. It's a straw man is what it is, because we do very strongly believe in the authority of Scripture, and we don't allegorize everything.
But you have to understand, the Bible uses the use of speech. It uses imagery. There's a certain way the Bible is constructed, and we have to recognize this. The problem is, as I say over and over again in my book, we don't know our Bibles.
Most people haven't read the entire Old Testament. They don't know what the prophets have written. They can't relate what's in the Old Testament to the New Testament. When they see quotes in the New Testament from the Old Testament, they're not aware that they're reading quotes.
So they don't get to connect the dot. And here's the thing. Dispensationalism was really, as best we can tell, was invented. They disagree with this, what I'm about to say, but they won't come up with evidence.
But it was invented around 1830. So what they're saying is that nobody prior to the invention of dispensationalism was able to correctly interpret the Bible, because you have to interpret according to the dispensations to get it accurate.
So you think of everybody, John Calvin, John Knox, Zwingli, Jonathan Edwards, all these people prior to 1830 got it wrong because we were waiting for dispensationalism to show up. That just doesn't make sense to me.
And when I go back and I see, wait a minute, the post-millennialism do not name that because there were no other isms to compare it to. It goes back to the first century. And as I point out in my book, the apostolic writers themselves and Jesus himself.
So yeah, that whole idea of allegorizing the scriptures is just made up. It really is. I don't allegorize anything, but I do understand certain imagery. And an excellent book that I read about biblical imagery was Paradise Restored by David Chilton, where he goes back and shows all this imagery that was established in the Garden of Eden and carries it through the entire Bible.
It's phenomenal. I see the Bible now like it really is. 66 books, but one book. I never could understand that before because it was so disjointed and divided up in my thinking that I couldn't make sense of it.
Now I have no trouble making sense of it. So I hope, Rosa, that answers your question. That, yeah, that accusation has been very, very common. But I point out in my book, it does not hold any water. And I go into a lot more detail, of course, about that.
And let me say something else while I'm on this. One of the problems that I have, even this afternoon, is that this is a very vast subject. My book is, what, 300? I forget how many pages it is. Let me look at this thing again.
It's 354 pages. Okay. You can't say it all at once. And I say over and over again, soundbites don't work in theology. The problem is you can't say everything all at once. I'll say this and somebody will retort with that and back and forth and back and forth.
Now, at least with my book, I can say, read this and then we'll talk because I can get the whole ball of wax out there for them. Then we have something to discuss because I can look at individual verses and you can say, well, I don't think that means that.
Okay, that's fine. But look at the rest of my support behind that. And it becomes a very strong case eventually.
Okay. Yes, Rose, make sure you send us your full mailing address because you've also won God's lawsuit by my guest today, Reverend John Buzz Taylor. Thank you very much. One of the things that we should point to in light of that accusation, that slanderous accusation, that non-dispensationalists do not take the Bible literally, use allegory, in a broad-brushing way like that.
The fact of the matter is that dispensationalists pick and choose when they use the Bible or interpret the Bible literally, and they can't possibly believe that Psalm 50, 10 through 12, well, actually just 10, verse 10, for every beast of the forest is mine, this is God speaking, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
Well, that must mean then that the cattle on the thousand and first hill and all the rest of the cattle, the whole rest of the cattle are not owned by God.
Yes, a classic example. That's good, and I do mention that. I don't remember if I mentioned, I hope I mentioned the cattle on a thousand hills. If not, I'll have to rewrite it. But that's exactly how we, when we talk about the millennium, they will rule and reign with him for a thousand years.
That is a number that is used to mean indeterminate. It's a big, big number. So the thousand years has already been 2 ,000 years, just like all the hills, the cattle on all of them. So yes, the Bible does use imagery like this, and it does use numbers that way.
But everybody would insist on wood and literal. I'll give you another example, though. I don't know if any dispensationalists believe that there's going to be a great sea monster coming out of the Mediterranean with 10 heads, you know, and how many of them believe, for example, Revelation chapter 12, that there's a giant pregnant lady in heaven and a great monster in space is coming after her to destroy her child that she's about to give birth to.
Everybody knows these are figures of speech. And even things like when the apostle Peter was preaching on the day of Pentecost, he explained what had just happened about the pouring out of the Spirit and then writing a judgment.
And people say, well, that stuff hasn't been fulfilled yet because, I mean, look at the stars falling from heaven, the moon turning to blood. All these apocalyptic things haven't happened yet. But when you read in the Old Testament, like, for example, Isaiah, Ezekiel, where God judged other nations in the past, how was it described?
The powers of the heavens will be shaken, the moon will turn to blood. All these decreation symbols about judgment, the changing of governments. And when you come to the New Testament and Peter says that, it says the Jews were cut to the heart and said, brethren, what do we do?
Because he had just taken what they knew was judgment language against all their enemies in the Old Testament and he just used it against them because he was warning them that there is a wrath to come, just like John the Baptist warned them.
The axe is already laid at the root of the trees. There's judgment coming. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? He wasn't talking about hell, he was talking about the judgment in AD 70. And so much of the Bible, when you understand about AD 70 and how big it was in God's program, a lot of other things start to make sense.
In fact, I noticed like one of the, who was it? Your friend, I quote him a lot. So he's my friend too. James White? No, no, no, no, no. The pastor who, it slips my mind right now. So you gotta understand, Chris, I'm a little bit older than I was when I was in Carlisle last time.
Yeah, that's true. Moorcraft.
Oh yeah, Joe Moorcraft too. By the way, folks, thank you for everybody. I just want to thank everybody who listens to the show, who has been praying for my dear friend, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, one of the largest financial supporters of this program.
As many of you know, Dr. Moorcraft fell in his home over a month ago, was in the hospital and then in a physical rehab unit. He is home now. He has already preached at least two sermons, continued to pray for his continued and full and complete recovery.
He is partially deaf ever since this ordeal, and we want to have him back on the program as soon as possible, obviously. I don't know if that partial deafness is going to prohibit that. So please pray that he is very quickly restored to full health so he can return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
But anyway, go ahead, brother.
Yeah, well, I really like John Moorcraft. He's hilarious. He was talking about those prophecy charts that people used to stretch across the front of the churches when they were doing their conferences and all that stuff, and he said they look more like the schematic of the sewer system of New York City.
That's Joe. But he pointed out, I think very accurately, he says eschatology is not an appendix to theology tagged on to the end, but it is the very warp and woof of all theology. And I found out how that is, that how much my views of prophecy affected how I interpret other passages of scripture.
And I'll give you a classic example of that. When the disciples asked Jesus about these guys that, I guess, a tower or a portion of the wall of the temple fell on them and they were killed, and then there was others that Pilate had mixed their blood with the blood of their sacrifices.
They asked Jesus, were these worse sinners than the rest that this happened to them? And Jesus said, no, but I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Now, we have taken that verse, and I've done it too, when you're witnessing to somebody to say, the Bible says, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
But there's a word in there that shows you how that's to be interpreted. He said, likewise perish. Now, you can't interpret that without the word likewise in there. In AD 70, what happened? The Romans brought the temple down on them, and they mixed the blood of their sacrifices with their own blood.
They rejected Christ. They did not repent of what they did. And 40 years after, they were judged in AD 70, and that was fulfilled. They did likewise perish. So, you see how you interpret all these other things in light of what happened prophetically.
And I know, as we've already said, you are not a full or hyper-preterist. And don't we need to be extremely cautious and extremely careful to not follow suit with the hyper-preterists who apply far too much to that historic event in AD 70, when the temple was destroyed?
Oh, right, right. Some of them talk about that that was the end of the reign of Christ, or something like that. I've heard so many different views on that. I just, I find it very confusing. But, you know, we were talking before about being literal.
Here's a passage of script that I take literally, okay, that I don't think the dispensationalists do. In fact, whenever I sign my book for somebody, which, if I remember correctly, all the books that you have that you're handing out today are all signed.
Oh, great. So, they are signed by the author. But I quote, or at least I reference back in 214, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea. That's in one verse, post-millennialism right there, that the knowledge of the glory of God is going to fill the earth.
I take that literally. Amen. And we have to go to our midway break right now. And once again, if you have a question you'd like to submit, please give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence.
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Please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Reverend Buzz Taylor on his book, God's Lawsuit, Bible Prophecy, like you've never heard it before, but should have.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We have Amethyst in Jupiter, Florida, and Amethyst says, you were mentioning earlier in the show that the dispensationalists routinely accuse those who do not interpret Scripture exactly as they do as being guilty of figurative interpretations of the Bible rather than literal.
Would one of the ways in which they get that wrong inconsistently with their own belief system, could that be found in John 6 verse 40, and that reads, for this is the will of my Father that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise Him up on the last day.
Dispensationalists believe they are going to be raised a thousand years before the last day. Isn't this inconsistent? Bill, I agree with you that that's inconsistent. Do you have any.
Comments, Buzz? I sure do. Yes, in fact, four times in John chapter 6, Jesus said He will raise up His on the last day, but that doesn't exist in a vacuum either, because the chapter before Jesus made the comment, this is John 5 now, He said, and I'm paraphrasing here because I've read so many different versions that I never get them right, but He said that, let me see if I got this, I want to get it as close as I can.
I don't have my Bible open in front of me. An hour, singular, an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of Man and will come forth. Those who did the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment, those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of light, eternal light.
That's what He said. Now, if you think about that, He said a single hour, everybody is raised. Now, what is taught, what was I taught originally as a dispensationalist? I was taught that at the rapture of the church, the dead in Christ are raised first.
Seven years later, those who came to Christ and were martyred have to be raised from the dead to enter the millennium, and then at the millennium, there's a third resurrection. When Jesus said all who are in the tombs will be raised in a single hour, when is that hour?
Well, in the very next chapter. He said it'll be on the last day. And then, jump a few chapters ahead, Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. Martha comes out and says to him, if you were here, my brother wouldn't have died.
And Jesus said, your brother will rise again. And she said, yeah, I know he's going to rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Now, Jesus did not correct her flawed eschatology because she knew more eschatology than a lot of the people on the landscape today that have all these elaborate prophecy conferences because she took Jesus at His word.
Yes, that is the truth that everybody is raised on the last day. So that's a classic example of, well, who's allegorizing? I take that and say, yeah. But then people talk about the thousand-year gap between the resurrections and Revelation chapter 20.
Well, I have to ask, I referred many times in my book to a practice called verses versus verses. That's verses vs. verses. I believe a certain way, and I'm going to use my proof verse to prove to you that I'm right.
And now you have a verse that proves your view right, and you don't agree with my verse, and I don't agree with your verse. So we just have to agree to disagree. Well, either one of us or both of us is wrong in that situation because one verse isn't pitted against the others.
I have to reconcile that somehow. How do I reconcile Revelation 20 with John chapter 5 and 6? Well, I do that in the first chapter of Revelation, where John was told that these things were signified to him, communicated as other words that it's translated.
But if you look at the Greek, the word signified is exactly what it sounds like. It's signified. Revelation is written in sign. It was never intended to be in a wooden, literal sense. But Jesus was speaking didactically in John 5 and 6 and 11.
So yes, what's the problem? You say, well, that's just copping out to say, well, it's only figurative. But I have to make it figurative in Revelation because otherwise Jesus is pitted against Jesus. And I don't believe for a minute that that happened.
So I'm forced to say one of them is imagery and the other is literal. Yes.
And even—go ahead, I'm sorry.
Well, that's good. I think I answered the question.
Well, even the aforementioned dispensationalist, the late Hal Lindsey—he is the late Hal Lindsey, right?
Yes. Last year or the year before, I can't remember.
He said that the swarm of locusts in Revelation 9, 1 through 11 were Russian helicopters.
So yeah, they used to say Cobra helicopters. And of course, this is so typical of what they would do. They say, we interpret literally, well, Cobra helicopters, from John's perspective, not understanding what they were and seeing them flying through the air—and of course, there's nerve gas coming out, so they got a terrible sting to them—that must be what the locusts are.
Now it's Black Hawk helicopters. Everything keeps changing, you see. And they say that's literal. They're interpreting literally because that's what John would have seen. Well, there's a lot of things they do like that.
They say the mark of the beast is computer chips that are placed under people's skin. The Bible just said it's a mark. I mean, why couldn't it just be a tattoo? Why can't it just be drawn with a pencil, for crying out loud?
But they say all these weird things and insist that they are interpreting literally. And I'm saying, no, they're not. They're making all this stuff up, but they're accusing us of not interpreting literally.
But I say, if they're locusts, literally, then they're locusts, if I want to be literal. Now, I don't think they're really locusts. I believe they're demonic creatures or whatever, but the point is, I have to allegorize something.
And it's not unbiblical to do that because we're expected to do that when we're interpreting the Scriptures. That's the way God has written. Tom.
Amen. And we have a second question from David in Ada, Ohio. I typically don't take second questions, but I'll let David's second question slide. And that doesn't mean you're getting a second book, David, though.
I was going to ask about that. A fellow believer disagrees that the Jews and the Gentiles are the same, i .e., in the same body of Christ. I believe from Adam to the end of time, all that are saved are in the same body, belong to the same fig tree.
He will say that in this age of grace, he agrees we are the same, but when I press him about before this age of grace, he says that is another matter, but doesn't explain. Have you ever heard this?
Yeah, okay. I'm not exactly certain the question aspect of that, but let me go ahead and talk about that because this kind of stuff does come up a lot. Do you get exactly what he's asking, though? I mean—.
I am wondering if he is speaking of the eternal dwelling place of the Jews of the Old Covenant before the earthly ministry of Christ and his crucifixion.
Okay, yeah. I think I got it.
I think that's what he's talking about.
Okay. I watched a video on YouTube once, and I don't remember. There was three guys. They were reformed, and they were having a panel discussion, and one of them was Ken Gentry, I know, and I can't remember what the other two were, and one of them was a former dispensationalist, and they asked the former dispensationalist, when you get to—and they were talking from Galatians.
The middle wall of partition has been broken down, you know. I mean, how do you get through Galatians as a dispensationalist? I don't know, and they asked him, how do you guys—how did you interpret these scriptures?
And I couldn't believe his answer. He said, I got to be honest with you, we ignored them. That's what he said. Because very clearly, we're all in the same fold. We're all grafted into the same branch, you know, or we're the branch that's grafted into the same vine.
The middle wall of partition is broke down. The apostle Paul says circumcision is nothing. You know, we're all together. Jesus said, I have other people outside of this fold that I need to go get also.
And the whole mystery of the Old Testament wasn't that Gentiles were going to be saved, but that they were going to be saved into the same body as the Jews. And if you think about first century history, it started in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
It was all Jews. Then in Acts chapter 8, the Samaritans, the half-breed Jews, received the gospel. Then in Acts chapter 10, the Gentiles received the gospel. And then in chapter 18 of Acts, the Old Testament saints are brought into the same thing.
So every people group is now in the body of Christ. There's no second-class citizens. We're all in one body. That's the teaching of the scriptures, that we're all in the covenant community, which is today the church.
So in one sense, I used to say that we're the replacement of Israel, but people questioned that. And so I'm going to be a little bit more careful and say that the church is the continuation. Where did it stop being Israel and start being the church?
Well, it never did. It morphed into the church, if you will, to where eventually it was more Gentiles than Jews, but there was never a point where it suddenly changed from one to the other, because it started with Jews and then, like I said, morphed to Gentiles.
If that answers the question. Mark, couldn't you say that the church is the fulfillment of Israel?
Yes. As a matter of fact, there's four—excuse me, I think there's three chapters in the lectures, four lectures, but in the book it's three chapters, so I get confused with this sometimes. I specifically go through the subject of Israel in Bible prophecy, and I go through and show the inception of Israel, the promises made to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob, and to David, and I go through all these promises and show how they are fulfilled in Christ, that the purpose of Israel was to bring forth the Messiah, that seed of the woman that was prophesied in Genesis 3 .15.
They were—and through that seed, we're told, and Paul goes out of his way to say this. How we miss it, I don't know. It didn't say seeds, it said seen, which is Christ. Through Christ, all of the promises to Abraham are being fulfilled.
What promise is that? That through his seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that's what's happening as the gospel is going forth even today. The nations are in the process of being blessed with salvation because Christ came and he's fulfilling it.
He's ruling the nations with a rod of iron from the right hand of God the Father. The fact that he's not in Jerusalem does not make him less of a king. He's an ascended king who is in control of history, and that to me is extremely comforting because when I look around me right now, I don't feel so good about what's happening in America and in the world, but this isn't the final chapter.
If the world were going to end in a couple of years, I'd say, well, we've been an abysmal failure. But you see, I don't expect history to end in a few years. I kind of think of the Old Testament as the scaffolding that built the true temple, which is the church.
Now, in AD 70, the scaffolding was torn down because the church was built. I would expect the building to last a lot longer than the scaffolding that was used to build it. I expect church history to go on.
It could be thousands more years. But you see, to say that in today's climate where nobody expected to see the year 2000, that sounds ludicrous, like you can't be real. But yeah, not because I'm not aware of how bad our world is today, but because I know what Christ said is going to happen.
I know what He's commissioned us to do, and I believe it's going to be fulfilled. That's what basically postmillennialism is. It will be successful.
All righty, we have Gregory from Middle Island St. Kitts in the West Indies. Is the Valley of Dry Bones about the nation of Israel or of the church, and what is its connection to Romans 11?
Okay, yeah. Okay, first of all, let me confess that I read the Old Testament prophets, and I realize every time I read them, I need to study them, but I'm not going to live 500 years. I don't know when I'm going to be able to go back and give them the time that they need, okay?
But you read in the prophets the terrible times of judgment and turmoil for Israel, terrible times, and then all of a sudden it gives you whiplash almost to talk about this great abundant blessing. What is going on?
We're supposed to see through all of this that one is fulfilling the other. And the Judaism that existed in the Old Testament was going to be replaced by, if you will, the Judaism that exists in the New Testament.
Great blessings are fulfilled, as I just said before, in Christ. So the Valley of Dry Bones, I haven't specifically studied that, but I just read it a couple of weeks ago. I was reading through Ezekiel, and I saw that, and I'm starting to think that these things are talking about basically the church or salvation, that can these bones live?
Well, yes, they can. The world, you look at the way Paul described the world before Christ. You were separate from the commonwealth of Israel, the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.
That was the whole world in the first century. I mean, we think we have problems today. You know what some of the emperors of Rome were like? I mean, they're not that bad today. So yeah, there's a radical change that's happening.
I believe that we're in the process of seeing the sinews and all that coming together on those dry bones. And that's basically a picture of, yes, salvation through Christ. When you consider the fact that Jesus said that all the prophets, the law and the prophets were about him, somehow that has to be connected to Christ.
And that, to me, seems like a very apt picture of the dry bones coming to life again. I'll tell you what I don't believe it is, absolutely. It's not the rebirth of Israel in 1948, because that was never prophesied that that was going to happen.
And that's a last subject that I don't know if we're going to get into that or not, but I don't believe that it has any prophetic.
Significance whatsoever. Well, Gregory, as I've told you once before in the past, I would love to mail you a free book, but the West Indies is too far away from the postal codes of the United States, and it would cost me a fortune to have that sent out to you.
So once again, if you have a friend in the United States who can ship that out to you, if you give me his or her mailing address, we'll have the book shipped to that person. But thanks again for actually a very good question, Gregory.
Let's see here. We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania. And Susan says, what is the subsequent bad news for those who are interpreting eschatology erroneously?
What could be the horrible outcome? Why does it matter? Is that the Susan in Newville that I know? Yes, it is. Hi, Susan. Good to hear from you. Here's the problem. First of all, I think errors should always be confronted no matter what.
And I hope that goes without saying, but unfortunately many times it does not. The other thing is ideas have consequences. And what happened is the church used to be very involved in outreach, trying to clean up and convert the world.
But what happened with the inception of dispensationalism is things changed. The whole demeanor changed to where, no, we're not supposed to fix up the world. We're not supposed to clean the world. As Hal Lindsay says, I was called a fish, not clean the fish bowl.
All of a sudden people were looking for the great escape. We can't fix society. It's just not in the cards for us. We're going to get out of here when in fact we are supposed to be making cultural changes in the world.
That is the fulfilling of the Great Commission, to press the claims of Christ in every area of life, in any place where we have influence. Dispensationalism got people thinking, I'm just going to wait for the rapture.
You know, I'll take as many to heaven as I can when I go. But they don't expect the gospel to have any effect on society for the better. And I'm saying, you get all these spirit-filled people that are multiplying themselves by witnessing and raising godly offspring, reaching their children, and this goes on and on.
If this goes on for thousands more years, yeah, that will fix the world, if you will. That is the solution. I tell people many times, if you don't like what's in our world today, understand that you as a Christian are the solution to the problem.
Get busy doing it. Stop waiting for the rapture and get busy converting the world. That's what we're supposed to do. So yes, ideas have consequences. And for that reason, that's one of my main impetus for writing this book, is like, get that word out there so people will start to do what they're supposed to be doing, aligning ourselves to God's program instead.
Of trying to align Him into ours. Tom. Yes, and I could think of some other really harmful results from misinterpreting eschatology. You have people throughout history who have expected the return of Christ on a certain date, and they sold all their belongings, they did all kinds of things that left them destitute, and the end didn't come, Christ didn't return.
And some of these people were so discouraged that they abandoned Christianity.
Altogether. David. Oh yeah, I quote Bertrand Russell in my book, of all people to quote, right? Because he takes wrong eschatology and uses it against Christianity. Jesus said He was going to return soon, and He didn't.
Therefore, how can I trust the Bible? Well, Jesus did return soon because the destruction of Jerusalem is what He refers to as His coming. Let me say with that, the Bible never mentions second coming, get any concordance out.
But whenever we see the word coming, we instinctively add the word second. The Bible did not do that. Jesus was talking about His coming in judgment because that's what the apostles were asking Him about at the beginning of Matthew chapter 24.
But another reason to teach it correctly is because there is a lot of lunacy out there. I mean, a lot of our mutual friend, Justin Peters, who's been on your show. In fact, when he spoke at your luncheon, I was there and recorded it for you.
But Justin Peters showed a video, I don't know if he just, I saw it the other day, I don't know when he showed it. But he pointed out about this, somebody who was teaching that the apostle John is alive in a cave somewhere in Turkey today.
And one of these days, he's going to come out of that cave and explain to the, he's going to reveal himself and explain to the world what the book of Revelation means. And Justin Peters did an excellent job saying, if he were there, where was he attending church all these years?
Because he is a believer, he was supposed to be attending church and putting himself under the authority of the elders, all these problems with it. But here's the thing, people hear that stuff and they believe it.
John is not in a cave somewhere. But you see, if you understand what Jesus was really talking about, you wouldn't make all these weird speculations like this.
Now, we do have to rush into a clarification, because although you do not like the phrase second coming, you do believe in a future return of Christ, a visible, physical return of Christ at.
The end of all earthly existence. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up, because yes, as I was saying, as a powerful preterist, absolutely. And I already mentioned John 5, an hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth.
And they will be raised on the last day. So yes, the most quoted Psalm, Psalm 110, is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament, like 20 some times it's quoted. And Paul quotes this also, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
So Jesus is not going to return to defeat his enemies, but we're told that he will come back when his enemies are defeated through the preaching of the gospel. And that can be done three different ways.
They are converted, so they're not as enemies, or they just come to cultural irrelevance, or they're judged, killed somehow, whatever. So, but yeah, so I don't know, I kind of... Well, I know one other...
Yes. Go ahead. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrecting chapter, he talks about that, that the final enemy that's going to be defeated is death, because when Jesus comes back, he raises everybody from the dead.
Death is... Read 1 Corinthians 15 carefully, and you'll see that.
All right, we have to go to our final break. And when we return, I just wanted to make a point about another catastrophic result of bad eschatology. So perhaps, Buzz, you can remind me to bring that up when we come back.
And if you have a final question before we run out of time, send it in to Chris Armson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least. City and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of.
Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.
It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.
I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have. For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.
I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a Christ-centered, gospel-driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family. At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
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Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship.
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Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.
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We can be reached at securecommgroup .com, that's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist.
Church on Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sense that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com, that's nhpbc .com.
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Make sure you tell Daniel P. Botafogo, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Botafogo and Associates, from Chris of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Also, all men in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free biannual Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon, featuring for the first time our keynote speaker, Dr. David A. Harrell, pastor of Calvary Bible Church of Jolton, Tennessee.
He will be speaking on the theme of one of his books, which is Why America Hates Biblical Christianity. It's Thursday, October 1st, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.
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Send me an email to register at chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. Please make sure you give me your full name, the full name of your church or ministry and its location, and the number of men who will be joining you.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. Okay, before I go to another listener question, I just wanted to add one of my own catastrophic results that may occur as a result of bad eschatology, and that would be when people wrongly interpret the fact that those who bless Israel will be blessed by God, and those who curse Israel will be cursed of God.
There are people, there are many Christians today who believe that we are to support the modern state of Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not only not a Christian, but he's not even a Bible-believing Jew in the old covenant sense.
He's an atheist, and the modern state of Israel is a secular state with the largest homosexual activist group in the whole world. And if you blindly follow Israel wherever they lead this country in military involvement and so forth, it could wind up being an absolute catastrophe.
And, you know, if you really believe that supporting Israel militarily or otherwise is a wise thing for a military strategy and so forth, that they're the only ally we have in the Middle East and many other reasons that people support Israel, that's fine, but do not attach to it a biblical prophecy that would compel a Christian to follow Israel's move in every point, because, once again, that could be disastrous.
Tom Doyle. Absolutely. When you consider that public policy is being made on bad eschatology, I think that's pretty scary. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, God said in Jeremiah that he had written Israel a bill of divorce, which ends a covenant.
The first teaching we have in the book of Deuteronomy on divorce says that if a man divorces his wife because he found some impurity with her, and he writes her the bill and sends her away, and she marries another man, and that second husband dies or writes her a bill of divorce, she's not allowed to go back to her first husband because she's been defiled.
Now, God could choose anything he wants to be the laws of divorce and remarriage. I think he was making a point there. If he wrote Israel a bill of divorce, if he divorced Israel from the covenant because they rejected, and he's married to the church, do we really think that he's going to divorce the church and go back and remarry Israel?
I don't think so. We have to look at the imagery that we see in the Scriptures and include that into our interpretations. So, yes, I think that was a very good point you made there, Chris. By the way, at your luncheon, are you still handing out sacks to the ladies, those heavy sacks for the books?
I mean….
What do you mean to the ladies? It's a men's only event.
But when you have these luncheons, or when you host debates and stuff like that, folks, I mean, you want to hear some of the best stand-up comedy, Chris, when he did it in front of a crowd. And at one of his luncheons, he was saying he didn't want the women left out, so he said the women can use the bags.
Anyway, honestly bad at that, okay? But as I've said, I know we're running out of time, so as I've said, I urge people to buy the book because, first of all, I need the money. No. I wrote the book to get the word out there.
I'd barely scratch the surface, and if you really want the whole ball of wax, you're just going to have to buy the book and read it. It's available in both hardcover and paperback, so I'm a paperback writer now.
And I tell people, if you're going to reread it, and I hope you will because there's a lot of information you're not going to get from just one reading, get the hardcover. And if you're just going to read it once and put it on the shelf, go ahead and get the paperback and save some money.
But the difference in my royalty between hardcover and paperback is ten cents. So please, folks, get the hardcovers. I need the dimes. If you believe that, I'll tell you another one.
All right, we've got time for, well, one quick question. Rod in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, why do many post-millennialists not like using the term rapture, since you do believe that the dead in Christ will be caught up in the air?
Oh, in the amount of time we have left, you bring up the rapture.
Right. You do believe that the saints will be caught up.
Yeah. Well, I'm going to say this as fast as I can. If post-millennialism is true, which I obviously believe it is, when Christ comes back at the end of history on the last day to raise all the dead, there will be a lot of people who have not yet died.
There will be billions of people in the world. They've got to have their glorified bodies either for punishment for eternity or to go to heaven for eternity. But they need their glorified, resurrected bodies.
But they haven't died. They're changed. And that's what the rapture is about. It's not so much being caught up as it is being changed into our eternal bodies without ever having undergone death. And if you read 1 Corinthians 15 very carefully, you'll see that there's a whole chapter devoted to the rapture in my book.
But you don't believe that they're going to be.
Caught up in the air on the last day? On the last day. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.
It happens at the same time as the resurrection. It's part of the resurrection. The dead in Christ are raised, and everybody else who's alive and remain is changed.
Right. Well, thank you so much, Buzz, for doing such an excellent job. I really loved every moment of the interview. And thank you, everybody who listened. Remember, you could get the book by John Buzz Taylor, God's Lawsuit, Bible prophecy like you've never heard it before, but should have from Amazon and Barnes Noble.
I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.