70 - Understanding of End Times, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity. You can find more information about striving for eternity at strivingforeternity .org.

I am your instructor today, Andrew Rappaport. This is our class on our School of Systematic Theology.

This is specifically an introduction to systematic theology, number four, the fourth book in your syllabus.

This is God's program for the ages, covering the doctrines of the church and the doctrines of last things.

Specifically, this lesson we'll finish up today is on the lesson number five, understanding last things.

With this, we encourage you to pick up a syllabus. You can pick up a syllabus at our website, store .strivingforeternity

.org. What's the advantage of a syllabus? Well, very simply, the advantage of having a syllabus is that you will have all of the notes that we provide, fill in the blanks, which are the important parts for you to know.

And also, it becomes a single source for you to take some of your own notes, do your own study, put it all together there so that you have one kind of quick reference you can go to.

So, that is the advantage of picking up the syllabus, so I encourage you to do that. Now, last class we started looking at the

Doctrine of End Times, and I'm going to reference this throughout the rest of this class, and that is that this is something that we have to be aware of, that there are some differing views when it comes to the

Doctrine of End Times, and it's not as clear as we would like them to be. Quite frankly, the scriptures in this area are not as clear as some would like to think that they are.

The point being is that when we look at the Doctrine of End Times, we have to be aware that we look forward to things that aren't fulfilled, and they are going to have areas that are just a little bit fuzzy.

Just like the first coming of Christ was not as clear to those at that time, so it is now that there are some who will look at this and it's not as clear now for what's future to us.

When we go back and look at the first coming, it's very clear to us. Why? Because it's already been fulfilled. So, this is a study called eschatology.

Big word. What does it mean? Study of End Times. That's basically what it means.

If you hear the word eschatology, it is a study of future events, and that's what we're going to be looking at.

So, I understand that this is an area that a lot of people get excited about. Some avoid completely.

Those are the two extremes. Some people will see everything related to their view of End Times, and other people, they want to avoid it altogether because it's just so controversial.

There's so much speculation. I think some of that speculation is what intrigues people.

I've said this before as we've gone through this class. The two areas of study that a lot of people start studying their theology is the area of salvation, they get into Calvinism, Arminianism debate, or this one,

End Times. And that is not the good place to start your theology. Start it, well, lesson one like we did, on the attributes of God.

If you have the nature and character and attributes of God right, I think some of these other things fall in place.

But the reality is, most people don't start there, and so what they do is they start to see all their theology going through on their understanding of either

End Times or salvation. I encourage you to go back to looking at the nature of God first.

Now, this is, as I said, is a study of End Times, and it is something that most people try to avoid, it seems, even though so much of the scriptures deal with this.

And what we dealt with last week, and I want to deal with this again, just as an overview, is the benefits, the benefits of the doctrine of last things.

There are actually benefits, I know. That may surprise some people. There's benefits to studying the

End Times. And we looked at this last class. I want to just reiterate this because I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that this is not an area we should just avoid because it can't be completely known well enough, and it's not something we should do too much speculation on and assume that we're absolutely right because this is an area where we have to have some give and take.

Let me explain one thing that we have to understand. There's a difference between what's called beliefs, convictions, and preferences.

So what are they? A belief is something like the doctrine of Christ, something that's very clear, something

I'm willing to die on. This is something that if someone puts a gun to my head and says, deny the deity of Christ, I would be amiss in denying it, okay?

It would be a sin because it's very, very clear. There's some that disagree with that.

I understand. I would say they're in error because I think the Scripture is clear in the areas of belief.

This area, End Times, is one that I put in the category, I would put this in the level of saying that this is a conviction for me.

I'm not willing to die for this. Someone puts a gun to my head and says, believe in a different position than mine, I'm not going to make a big deal of it, okay?

Do I think I'm right? Of course, everyone does, right? But there's areas that I see some other views that have good points to be made.

And I don't think it's clear enough for us to say this is absolutely right, okay?

That's a conviction. We see Scripture supports our view, but we can't be absolute about it.

So belief, you could be absolute. Conviction, there's a lot of support. Can't be absolute. Last is a preference.

Preference is going to be your music styles that you like to listen to, things like that.

Things where Scripture doesn't really say, and it's just what you prefer over another. And that's what it comes down to.

So when you look at this, it's going to be, is it absolute in Scripture? That's a belief.

Is it something you believe is in Scripture, but it's not absolute? Do you think there's good support? Conviction.

Is it something where you just have a preference, and sometimes you may even try to use Scripture to support your preference?

Maybe it's just a preference, okay? And so I'm putting this in the category of a conviction. It's something I feel strong about, but I don't think it's absolute.

I'm saying that to say, and I'm going to say this over and over, because I want you to realize that though I have a position, it doesn't mean it has to be your position.

I'm going to try to be fair in explaining today all the different views, high level, so we have an understanding of them.

But I'm not going to say, son, you all must hold to my position. I think this is an area where we can't do that.

But let's take a look, real quick review of the benefits. We mentioned last week that one of the benefits of studying end times is that it teaches us something about the greatness of God.

We look at the end times, we see that God is great. When we look at it, we see that in, we saw last week that John proclaims a blessing in the study of the book of Revelation.

Studying the book of Revelation, he says, is a blessing to those who read it and obey it.

We mentioned the fact that a tremendous amount of Scripture that deals with the second coming lends to an understanding that this is something that is important to God.

We said that it provides comfort to those who are grieving. When people are grieving, looking at end times, and we mentioned that God wins, that's the most important thing.

That helps us through difficult, grieving times. We said that it gives, it'll be a source of strength in the second coming.

As bad as things look like they're getting now, and if you watch the news, you look at the culture and it looks like it is turning really, really bad.

People get depressed. First off, I'd say maybe you should just stop watching some of the news.

You won't be as depressed. The thing is that if you're looking at the culture and it is depressing you, the encouragement, the comfort, the strength is knowing that God wins.

That's really the main thing that all of us, I don't care what view you take, amillennial, premillennial, postmillennial, we're going to get into those in a minute, whatever view you take, just remember we all agree on one thing.

God wins. That's it. And that's where we're going to find our strength and comfort.

But the fact that God wins also means God's coming back, and as we mentioned last class, that should motivate our evangelism.

The fact that He can come back at any moment, I don't think with any system that there's anything really waiting, maybe postmillennialism, we'll look at that, but there's really nothing waiting where God couldn't come back and we have to be aware of that and we should be out there sharing the gospel.

Lastly, it should encourage a believer toward a more godly lifestyle, realizing

Jesus is watching us. Jesus is coming again. We're not living in a vacuum, but we're going to give an account for everything that we say and do and think one day.

And so for that reason, we should live in light of Christ's return.

Lastly, that we looked at is that the doctrine of last things should prompt us for the confession of sins, as I just mentioned.

The fact that Jesus is coming back should motivate us to realize we've got to clean up our life a little. We need to realize that God is watching.

And so those are some things. What I want to do this class, in the time we have now, is look at the different approaches that there are to this doctrine of last things.

There are different ways of approaching this and we're going to go through these.

And for right now, it's not going to be important to understand yet, amillennialism, premillennialism, postmillennialism.

Those three are the main views. Each of them have differing subcategories.

But as a main view, we're going to look at those three. I'm going to get to that in just a bit.

If you don't know those terms, don't worry about it. We're going to get to it. It's not going to be important for what we're going to say just now.

If you are familiar with these terms, you know, it may seem that, oh,

I study these things, I know these things, I can just skip this. Maybe not. One of the cautions

I'm going to give you is that most people that I find misunderstand the other views that they don't hold to.

And for that reason, we want to try to be fair, make sure we're accurate in what other people believe and why they believe it.

And that's important because when we look at these variations within all of these views, ultimately the differences are going to come down to how we interpret the

Word of God. Doug Bookman writes this, quote, The premillennialist is forced to his system of eschatology by his hermeneutic.

The amillennialist is kept from that same system by his hermeneutic, unquote.

So eschatology, study of end times, hermeneutic is the art and science of interpretation, in other words, how we interpret the

Bible. So what Doug Bookman is saying there is that how you interpret the Bible is going to put you into different camps.

So a premillennialist is going to have a view and he's going to have that view because of the way he comes to interpreting the

Scriptures. But an amillennialist is going to reject that view for the very same reason, because of the way he interprets the

Scripture. So the importance here is not the system. It's not what view do you hold.

That's not where we should focus discussions. If you get into discussions of end times, I plead with you and I want to encourage you to make it a discussion not about the system as much as how someone comes to that conclusion.

Because that's really where the discussion should be. The discussion should be how one interprets the

Scriptures and comes to the conclusions that they come to. That's the important thing, all right?

So I say that to say as we go through this, we're going to give an overview today. I want a 10 ,000 foot level.

We're going to dig in deeper in the next several classes. But an overview so if you hear these terms amillennialism, premillennialism, postmillennialism, you understand what they mean.

You may not understand all the details of those systems. Not trying to do that in this class. But what

I am trying to do is give you an overview so if you hear these terms, you know what they mean. This is going to be one of those classes where, well, the syllabus is going to help because we're going to give you charts and different diagrams and pictures are worth a thousand words so they say, well, we're going to give you some of those that hopefully help you in an understanding.

So let's start with a basic summary. The first one is the amillennial view.

And actually before we do this, let me do this. Let me back up if we could. And I didn't give you this but if you could open your

Bibles, I hope you brought Bibles to class, open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 20. Because when we look at this, maybe there's a phrase you heard going through each of these, amillennial, postmillennial, premillennial.

You see a prefix, a -post -pre in front of the word millennial.

Millennial means millennium, thousand year period. Basically the differences on these three views are going to be based on what they do with the thousand year period mentioned in Revelation chapter 20.

So open your Bibles to Revelation chapter 20. I don't have a slide on it so you'll just have to read in your

Bible as I read aloud. But I'm going to read chapters 20 verses 1 through 6.

What I want to do with that is this. I want us to take a look at this. I want us to examine what it says here.

The reality is each of these views are going to take a different position on these six verses.

And so I want you to see what the verses say and have an understanding of this thousand year kingdom.

And then we're going to break down each of these different systems and look at how they're going to view what's mentioned here.

So Revelation chapter 20 verses 1 through 6 says, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the keys to the bottomless pit and the great chain.

And he seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer.

But until the thousand years were ended, after that he might be released for a little while.

Then I saw the thrones, and seated on the thrones were those whom the authority to judge was committed.

Also I saw the souls of those who were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received its mark on their forehead or their hands.

They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection.

Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection.

Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

If you go to verse 7, and when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison, and he will come out to deceive the nations from the four corners of the earth,

Gog and Magog, to gather them to battle in their number from the sands of the sea.

And it goes on to explain that, and it gets into white throne judgment.

What you see there is in six verses, the word thousand years is mentioned six times.

So, what you have here is a reference to a thousand year period.

Okay, so now, I said each of these are going to have a different understanding. So, let's start with the amillennial position.

The amillennial position is going to be, if you look in your notes there, if you have a syllabus, that there's no upcoming calendar events.

In other words, an amillennial view is going to see those passages that we just read as being spiritualized.

They're not going to see that as literal. The thousand year millennial reign mentioned in Revelation 20 is going to be a figurative, non -literal event that represents the scope of this current age, when we're living in.

So, it's going to deal with future events that are spiritualized. In other words, when they see this, an amillennial is going to say, you know, how can you have a physical chain that binds

Satan? Satan would be an immaterial being. You're going to have an issue there. So, what are they going to do?

They're going to say this must be figurative because you can't bind Satan with a physical chain.

And so, they're going to see some figurative language. We all agree that in this passage there is some figurative language.

The fact that Satan is called the serpent, the dragon, you know, is figurative references to an individual,

Satan or the devil. So, we all accept, everyone accepts that there is some figurative language.

Now, the question is, is the thousand years literal or figurative? In an amillennial view, am means negative in Greek.

So, it's the negative. So, it's a no millennium. That's literally what it would be.

It's no thousand year period. In other words, that thousand years is an indefinite amount of time.

In other words, it's really up to 2 ,000 years right now. Okay, why? Because, well, it's been 2 ,000 years from Christ.

So, they're going to see this as a point of time that is not specific and that this passage in Revelation 20 is not literal.

Now, by the way, this is one of the things I want you to realize.

Many of those who hold to an amillennial position will rightly quote from Augustine.

In the Augustine of Ahippa, 400s, he is the one who really explains some of these things, not in as much detail, however, as we have today.

Have news for you. Those that call themselves premillennialists also quote from Alexander.

Sorry, Augustine. I didn't say Alexander. Wow, that was wrong. Augustine. Now, why is that?

Well, Augustine actually did teach that he believed in a literal 1 ,000 -year period, but he also taught that we were in that 1 ,000 -year period.

So, an amillennial view is going to look at Augustine where he emphasizes all of the emphasis on us being in this millennial kingdom.

Now, there are some who held to that view and held to it being literal up until about 1 ,000

AD or thereabouts when all of a sudden you had a problem. Where's Christ, right?

So, it was really under, I think it was Pope of Innocence who changed things, who started to see that this period of time was an extended period of time.

So, I'm saying that to say this. When we look at the early church fathers, they did not work through their systematic theology as well as we have it defined today.

In other words, everyone goes back to the Founding Fathers and says they can find their doctrine within the

Founding Fathers. By the way, a lot of heresies can be found in the Founding Fathers as well. They didn't have things as clearly defined as we do today.

We have to keep that in mind when we try to argue for the Founding Fathers. They're not always as clear as we might like them to be because we have worked off of their work and further clarified it and clarified it and clarified it.

I think through the advancements that we have today, we have a better understanding of these things than the Founding Fathers did.

But what I do want you to see is that an amillennial position is going to see this passage as being mostly figurative.

Okay? And because of that, they're going to see a 1 ,000 year period as not being an actual period of time for 1 ,000 years, but an indefinite period of time that is a spiritual kingdom.

So with that, let's go to the next one which is postmillennial. Now, if you're looking at this,

I said this is a compound word. You have the post and millennialism. So what does post mean?

Well, post means after. So it's after millennium. Okay? So it's the 1 ,000 year period that we just read in Revelation 20.

That 1 ,000 year reign of peace on earth will be before the tribulation.

So in other words, there will be a final rebellion that's mentioned there in that passage that we talked about.

That final rebellion is the tribulation period. They would say that this kingdom is brought about through the spread of the gospel and the defeat of evil.

So they see that things will get better and better through the preaching of the gospel. Many people will come to know

Christ. The world in general, not every pocket everywhere, but the world as it mentions in there will be in a kingdom of Christ where you will have things get better.

You'll have a period of time where at the end of that millennial period is the tribulation.

So post millennial refers to this time known as the tribulation. Not going to get into a lot of detail now on what that is, but it's the time of trouble.

You saw here mentioned that Satan would be loosed for a little while. So the idea there is that there's this tribulation period that they would say is that's the loosing.

That he's loosed for a little while, he's bound right now, but at the end of this period now they will see this as that thousand year period again as figurative.

So they would see that we're in that period. But they would say that there's this kingdom that we're in where we're to be sharing the gospel.

Things will get better and better because the gospel will be spread and because of that after that when the kingdom is over then there will be a time of purging of those that were still rebellious to Christ.

Now let me be clear, though I disagree with this position,

I agree that the best means of trying to change a culture or society is the gospel.

I don't think our sharing of the gospel will bring about the end times, but I do think that rather than getting involved in trying to change people to be more moral, it's better to have them come to know

Christ. So I want to preach the gospel. In them receiving Christ, the

Holy Spirit will do the work he naturally does on a believer and they hopefully will become more moral and overall a culture will change.

We've seen that time and time again where there's been great revivals throughout a culture. We see more morality as well.

But we don't want to be doing it to create a moral gospel. I think one of the problems in the American church and why it's suffering so is that they moved from the gospel to morality and in that shift,

I think that we've lost the message of the gospel in much of America and the American church.

Let's get back to the gospel, but not to bring Christ's second coming, but because well,

God commands it. So I do agree with it though the idea of the best way to change the culture is going to be the gospel.

So with that said, I don't agree with this position and I don't know if I said this, but because this is a conviction area, though I may disagree with the position, it doesn't mean

I'm saying people aren't saved. It doesn't mean we can't talk. No, we should talk about how we come to the passages, the interpretation that we do.

Maybe I'll get to explaining why I take Revelation 20 the way I do. But understand that different people have differing views and it's not that they don't have good reason for their position.

Everyone believes what they believe because they think it's reasonable, they think it's well thought out, and they have a reason.

So let's focus on that. How did you come to the conclusion you came to? That's the question I would ask and I often do.

All right, so with this, what we want to do is see that the post -millennial is that at the end of that period of time known as the millennium, that's when the tribulation comes at the end.

Now, saying that, I hope that then you understand pre -millennialism, pre -millennial.

Again, this is the pre meaning before the millennium, so that tribulation is going to be beforehand.

So one says there's no tribulation period because the kingdom is not literal, it's just an indefinite period of time.

The other says, post -millennialism will say, there is a tribulation, it comes after the millennium.

Pre -millennial is going to come, say the tribulation is going to happen before. Now, each of these three, and I'm going to get into defining pre -millennialism in a bit because I'm going to break that one down a little bit more, each of these have differing views within them.

There are some differing views within amillennialism. There's differing views within post -millennialism.

You have historic post -millennial. You have reconstructionist post -millennial. You have a lot of differing views in those.

And I'm not going to get into all the differences of all of those. I do want to break down pre -millennial only for this reason because it is one that there's much confusion on and it seems to be the one, it seems that pre -millennials seem to get hung up on end times more than anyone else.

It just seems that way. There is a resurgence, I think, in post -millennialism.

I think there really was actually a surgence of it before World War I in Germany especially.

You saw a lot of activity around it in World War I Germany until World War I.

And that because people did think things were getting better and better. The world was communicating a bit more.

It just looked like there was going to be world peace and then World War I occurred followed by World War II.

But there does seem to be a resurgence in that. I think because of the study of Reformed theology, there's a resurgence in amillennialism as well.

But I want to look at post -millennialism. So the Tribulation and what's called the

Rapture. We're going to get into these things in later lessons. So if you don't know what the Tribulation is, it's okay.

We're going to look at that. You don't know what the Rapture is, it's okay. Tribulation is a period of turmoil. The Rapture is a catching up where the believers go up and just vanish from the earth.

Okay, we'll get into more detail but that's a high enough level for us to understand here. So the pre -millennials would view that the

Tribulation period and the Rapture occur prior, that's your blank there, prior to the millennial reign of Christ.

So in other words, you're going to have this Tribulation, you're going to have this Rapture, then you're going to have a literal thousand -year kingdom.

There are differences within this view based on the timing of this Rapture and Tribulation.

And we're going to discuss that in a moment. So we're going to get into further details in lesson 14.

Actually, I think that that changed. I don't think it's number 14. I got to, I changed the numbers around.

I better double check that. But I think it's going to be lesson, I think it's lesson 10.

I'll check that later. But anyway, in a future lesson. So with that, we're going to see that, what these terms are.

But let me give you some overviews of this. Let's start with one called

Post -Tribulationism. That's a big word. Let's break that down if we can.

Maybe that'll help us, right? Well, let's see. Post, we said post is after.

Tribulation, we mentioned that's that time of unrest.

So Post -Tribulationalism, that is going to be this idea. Now remember, this is within the camp of pre -millennials.

So this is the camp that says you have this Tribulation and then a literal thousand -year kingdom, okay?

Now why would they say literal? By the way, just so I answer this in Revelation 20, a pre -millennialist is going to see that those thousand years is a literal thousand years.

Now an Amillennialist will say, well, if you look at the word thousand -year everywhere in Scripture, and it only appears in three other places, but in every other place, it's figurative.

It's mentioned four times. Twice in 1 Peter, once in Ecclesiastes, I believe it is, and once in Psalms.

And those four times, three passages, they're all figurative.

I agree with that. But that doesn't mean that these six references in this one passage must be figurative, okay?

I don't believe that's a proper way to interpret. I don't think that just because it is figurative elsewhere that it requires it to be figurative everywhere, okay?

So, I think that it is literal. This is literally what John saw.

John literally had a dream, as it mentions in verse 1. He literally saw Satan being bound.

Does it mean Satan was literally bound by chains? Well, I think that God can create a chain that can bind

Satan. Would it be a physical chain? No. But Satan's not a physical being.

So, he can do that. He can put them, because I believe there is a literal place called hell and a lake of fire that Satan will be thrown into and will be temporally in a place.

He will be in one place at one time. And so, in some sense, is it more than I can understand?

Sure it is. I don't understand the immaterial world as well as I would like, but the reality is that this is literally what

John saw. And I think that the emphasis of the thousand year over and over and over, six times, six verses,

I think is for that emphasis. I agree with Augustine on that, that the emphasis is that it is a thousand year period.

So, that would be how I'd come to it. Now, with that in mind, a post -tribulational means that you have this tribulation that's going to occur.

It's going to be before that millennial kingdom, but the belief is that the rapture will occur after the tribulation.

So now, tribulation, the word after, post -tribulation is relating to when will this rapture, this catching up of the believers, the believers being instantly kind of like Enoch, just walking there one minute and then gone the next and in the presence of God.

That's what the rapture refers to. They believe post that it's going to be after the tribulation.

So, you had pre -millennial, the pre refers to when is the tribulation going to occur before, after, or never to the millennial kingdom.

Now, what we're dealing with is this rapture. So, we're kind of breaking it down now. So, the big picture, millennial kingdom, when did the tribulation occur?

Does it happen at the beginning? Does it happen at the end or does it not happen at all? That's the millennial, pre, post, amill.

Now, this one's dealing with when will the rapture occur in relation to the tribulation?

Before, after, or in the middle. We're going to get to those. But post is going to say it's after. So, there's a couple of uses even within this though.

So, even though there's some variety, you have the classic post -millennial view, or post, sorry, post -tribulational view.

I'm going to keep doing this. I'm going to try not to, but it is confusing. I understand. This is where the notes help you because you can look at them.

So, a classic post -tribulational view is going to reject a literal seven -year tribulation.

The seven -year tribulation is found in a couple of places, most strongly in the book of Daniel, the 70 weeks of Daniel, that there's some seven -year period still yet to be fulfilled.

And so, they will say that a literal seven, that they reject the literal seven -year tribulation, and that the tribulation has been happening ever since the resurrection of Christ.

Where do they get this? Well, John 16 and verse 33. If you look at John 16 verse 33, we see here,

I have said these things to you that you may have peace in the world, and you will have tribulation, but take heart,

I will overcome the world. Now, they look at this and they say, see, we are, ever since the time of Christ, we have been having tribulation.

And they were going to look at that and say, this is what we, where it's, we're in the tribulation period.

So, where, as we said, with the post -millennial or amillennial, they think we're in the millennial kingdom now.

This one's pre -millennial, so they see the millennial kingdom as future, but they think we're in the period of the tribulation.

Let's, let's do a picture if we could. The first one is a view of what's called classic post -tribulational view.

And this is within pre -millennialism. What you see there is the unified period of tribulation from the cross until Christ returns.

So, this is an undefined period of time, known as the tribulation, that they're going to say we're in, and then

Christ will come back and set up his kingdom. So, they're going to say that Christ will return at that point and set up his kingdom.

Okay, then you have a future post -tribulational view.

Is this stuff getting confusing? I know, I'm actually trying to make it simple and keep it high level, but it is confusing because there's so many different views on this.

So, future post -tribulational view is going to say that the literal, that a literal seven -year tribulation, so they're going to see that there will be a literal seven -year tribulation, that the believers will be taken out of the tribulation, but, or they won't be taken out, sorry, but they'll be protected from it.

So, they're going to see that sometime in the future, there's going to be this seven -year tribulational view, and that after that, the

Christians will go through that tribulation, and afterwards, there'll be this rapture. So, if we look at a picture of that, we have that up on your screen there, you see the future post -tribulational view.

You have the church age from the cross until sometime when this literal seven -year period begins.

They see that there will be a literal seven -year tribulation. At the end of that will be the rapture.

The believers will go and be with Christ, and then Christ will come down to earth with some of those saints for a literal thousand -year kingdom.

So, you see, they go up and they come back down with Christ and rule with him in the kingdom.

Okay, so let's move this back a little bit. There is two views that are called either mid -tribulational or pre -wrath.

They kind of have some similarity, okay? The difference is mid -tribulation is the idea that in the middle of that seven -year tribulation, three and a half years in, at that point, then is when the rapture will occur.

So, that's going to be right in the middle. The pre -wrath view is going to say it's very much like the pre -mid view.

It's kind of in between the pre -mid view and the post -tribulational, the future post -tribulational view, okay?

It's going to be sort of in the middle. And the pre -wrath view is going to have the idea that, okay, we got a picture up there, good.

So, you have the church age starts at the cross and goes through, then at some point starts this literal seven -year tribulation.

Now, whether you take it in the middle, exactly three and a half, or the pre -wrath view is this idea that there will be a period of wrath that will be poured out by God on the earth, and God will take the church and rapture them just before that wrath occurs.

And so, the idea is Christ will rapture them up, the believers, finish out this literal seven -year period, and then

Christ will return for a literal thousand -year reign. If this is confusing,

I really encourage you, you want to be watching the video on this, or you want to be getting the syllabus on this, so that you have the pictures, because it does make it a lot easier to understand some of these things, all right?

So, it's really, again, I'm trying to make this clear. Once you get into the pre -millennial, it's a question now of breaking down, when does the rapture happen in reference to the tribulation?

So, high view again, you have a millennial kingdom. When does the tribulation happen in reference to the millennial kingdom?

If there is a millennial kingdom, that's the highest view. Once you break that down, and you get to pre -millennial, now you're getting into more specifics of, okay, you have this tribulational period, and you have this rapture.

When are they going to happen? Is it going to be before? Is it going to be after? Is it going to be in the middle? Well, let's deal with the one that we haven't dealt with yet, and that's pre -tribulational.

This is the view that I'm going to hold to. This is going to be the view that, basically, there's going to be a rapture that's going to start that seven -year period.

So, when we look at the chart here, we have the church age, again, starts at the cross. The church age runs until the period known as the rapture, that that is going to be the thing that's going to start that literal seven -year period of tribulation.

At the end of the seven -year period of tribulation, I believe Christ will return to the earth, and He will then, in that return,

He will then reign for a literal thousand years, and then the white throne judgment.

I understand that this is one of those classes where maybe you want to come back and listen to it again, watch it again.

You want to take some notes in it. This is laying the foundation for really a lot of what we're going to deal with.

There is going to be a lot of discussion, and when we get to this, it is going to be some confusion.

Now, I mentioned it was chapter 8. Thank you for that. Chapter 8 is when we're going to deal with the issues of the rapture and the return.

And so, chapter 8, lesson 8, sorry. And then lesson 9, we're going to deal with the millennial kingdom.

So, I encourage you to try to keep this in mind. We're going to lay some foundation still so that we understand some different things.

But we do want to make sure that we understand an overview of this to make sure we have this kind of laid out for us.

So, high level again. I'm really trying to keep it high level. I understand for some people, you understand these terminologies, and you want to move on.

We're going to get into death in the intermediate state next class. That's going to be the next class that we're going to have. But what we're going to deal with is, right now, just high level.

You have this reference to a millennial kingdom in Revelation 20. Some see it as completely figurative.

So, they believe there is no tribulational period. None. That we're in that thousand -year kingdom and Christ returns.

That's it. No tribulation. That's all millennial. The second view is post -millennial.

That means that we're in the thousand -year kingdom, although that thousand years may not be a literal thousand years, and that there will be a tribulational period, but that comes at the end, post.

So, it's the relation of the tribulational period tied to the millennium.

So, it's afterwards. Premillennial is going to see that tribulational period before that millennial kingdom.

Okay. Now, we break down premillennialism a little further because within that, there's these other two views that you have.

You have not only that tribulational period, but the rapture. Now, what we see is a breakdown of the views from the rapture.

Where does that fit within the tribulational period? Is it after? That's post -tribulational.

And the differences there between those two views I said is one's a literal seven -year, one's not.

That's the differences there. Okay. You have mid -tribulational or pre -wrath, either one of those, which means that that rapture is going to occur in the middle or somewhere in between that seven -year tribulation.

And then you have pre -tribulational. So, this is the idea that before that tribulation, you're going to have the rapture.

So, I believe, you'll see this come out, but I believe, and can I be wrong? Sure, I could be wrong on this.

I don't think it's on. I can be absolutely sure on. I believe, though, that the next set of events will be that there will be a rapture.

People will instantly be changed into glorified bodies. They won't suffer death. They'll be what's called being caught up in the air.

That's going to be, that is going to kick off then the next stage, which will be a seven -year, literal seven -year period, called known as the tribulation, which will end with Christ returning.

And then He will then reign on earth literally for a thousand years. And then at the end of that, usher in the great white throne judgment.

That would be my view. High level. We're going to get into more details. I'm not going to get into this in the detail that I understand some of you would like me to get into.

I know. I'm sorry. I just want to keep this at a level that we can discuss these things, have an understanding of these things.

So, we know if we get into discussions with people, we at least understand the terms. But this is not an area that we need to be fighting over.

Okay. It really isn't. It's an area that we have to have some liberty with one another.

Okay. Now, I do want to say if you have questions about this or anything else of these classes, please email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Just a programming note for those who are paying it, watching live. There'll be no class next week.

And the reason for that is next week is the Jersey Fire. We're going to be very busy in all the planning for those who are watching live with Jersey Fire, which is

July 8th and 9th of 2016. Strongly encourage you to come out to that.

We really need you to be letting others know about this and be coming out this if you can at all make it.

It really is going to be a good, good time. Want to encourage you with that. So, because of that, though, we're not going to have class next week.

Want to encourage you also to go to the store where you can buy the syllabus that I've been referring to.

Get these diagrams that I've been referencing. Get the syllabus. While you're there, you could pick up my book,

What Do They Believe? Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions. You can also maybe have your church host a

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. Would strongly encourage that. That is where we're going to get into how to interpret the

Bible. It's a weekend conference, weekend seminar. We come in and teach people how to interpret.

I strongly recommend that, especially in the discussion that we've been talking about today. If you've seen, we've talked about how different interpretations affect the way you're going to view these things.

So, we really want to know, what are the rules we're following? And that's what we cover in that seminar. So, with that, want to encourage you next class.

We're going to look at the death and the immediate state. And until then, strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.