Postmillennialism

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Let me just share this very quickly, as we think about the issue of eschatology, there's a lot of differing views on eschatology, there's no doubt of that.
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And I remember speaking of Dan Wallace earlier, when I sat under Dan in seminary, who holds a very different eschatology than even you do, as you know
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Dan's a good friend of yours as well. He talked about the issue of, we often think of theology in a couple of different ways at least.
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We think of the theological views that we hold, either in concentric circles, whereas that we understand that there are some doctrines that are absolutely fundamental doctrines that are in that core that we all must believe in order to be truly
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Christian. And then as you go out in those concentric circles, the next are those, they're all important, but when you get to the second circle, those are things that are not necessarily fundamental to the
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Christian faith as far as being Christian, but they are important issues because they involve fellowship.
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For instance, it might divide a Pato Baptist and a Credo Baptist in being able to fellowship in the same church together.
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It affects that. Or maybe ecclesiology and how you govern the church. And then out from there you have, in that other circle, areas where there's even more disagreement, but even within the same church there can be areas of disagreement in that and still be faithful in handling the scriptures.
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The other way to think about doctrines, which I think is dangerous, as Dr. Wallace talked about, was people think of their doctrines as dominoes, that you set each of those along the way and that if one falls, what?
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They all fall. And so they kind of put all of them lined up and therefore they treat every doctrine exactly the same.
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And I think that it's dangerous for us to think along those lines. We'll talk more about that in the Q &A on Sunday night.
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But I've asked Dr. White to share with us the postmillennial view. Somebody earlier thought
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I said post -trib, so just so you know, we want to clarify that. The postmillennial view so you understand how that fits within the spectrum as well of we've looked at pre -mill, pre -trib, pre -trib, pre -mill.
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We've looked at historical premillennialism and we have looked at amillennialism. And so I'm going to ask him to come and share with us.
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And he has to teach us everything there is to know in a little bit of time on this issue. Yeah.
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Right. All right.
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So when Tom made this request, I was already on the road.
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And so what I will do is probably not quite the same as what other people have done.
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What I want to do is tell a little bit about my journey so I can give you some background as to my position now, how
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I got there, and then answer some of the questions that Tom specifically mentioned in regards to the relationship of postmillennialism to amillennialism and premillennialism in its various forms.
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And as you know, there's all sorts of variations within premillennialism. I know that, for example,
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I have seen fisticuffs in parking lots at Baptist churches between pre -trib and mid -trib people, things like that.
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So there's lots of variations in all of these. There's pessimistic amillennialists and optimistic amillennialists, and there's variations within postmillennialism as well.
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So keep all of that in mind as we consider these things. But I was raised in an independent fundamentalist
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Baptist church, and the only eschatology I had any knowledge of whatsoever was dispensational premillennialism.
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And the mindset in my young years was that all
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Christians believed that, always had, always will, and if you didn't, you weren't a Christian. So it was a matter of fellowship and really a matter of heresy if you did not hold that position.
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But I didn't know anybody who didn't hold that position, so it wasn't a real big deal. I remember very clearly coming out of the
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Baptist church when we moved to Arizona, coming out of the
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Baptist church we were attending, and Edgar Wisenant's 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Happened in 1988 was sitting underneath the windshield wiper of my car.
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And I remember that because sometime around that same time, we had a youth lock -in, and I had a tritium watch.
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Does anyone know what a tritium watch is? A tritium glows all the time, and I think it's pretty cool.
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They're actually radioactive, but it's alpha radiation which can't get through a piece of paper, so don't worry about it, you're good.
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But I remember in a lock -in in a pitch dark room with a little New Testament, using my tritium watch to illuminate the words of Matthew chapter 24 to explain to my compatriot teenagers the parable of the fig tree, and to inform them that Israel had become a nation in 1948, and therefore 40 years, 1988, and this is probably about 1980.
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So, man, guys, we are right there, and so on and so forth. And again, it wasn't until I went to college at Grand Canyon College, which was
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Southern Baptist College at the time, that I encountered another perspective.
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And that was really the man who became by far my favorite professor,
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Dr. Davis Carroll Martin, D .C. Martin, and learned so much from Dr.
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Martin, but Dr. Martin was an amillennialist. And it's not that he converted me.
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In fact, I can remember there was a group on campus that were selling helium -filled balloons, and some of us ministerial students tried to pool our money.
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We didn't have enough to do it, but we tried to pool our money to buy a bunch of helium -filled balloons to be delivered to Dr.
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Martin during class with a note that said, in case of rapture, hold on tight. God might take you anyways.
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But it was honestly doing apologetics ministry in college that caused me to begin to be uncomfortable with some of the hermeneutical positions and the inconsistencies
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I felt in the hermeneutical positions that I was taking to hold to a premillennial perspective.
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And so, for years, I was an eschatological agnostic. In other words,
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I was one of those people that used that worn outline, I'm a panmillennialist.
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It'll all pan out in the end, okay? Because I saw churches split.
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I saw...there have been a few things in my experience amongst Christians that creates more emotional energy, negative emotional energy, than your eschatological views.
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It's just amazing. I just didn't want to have anything to do with it. And unfortunately, at that point, I did not yet recognize the importance of having a fully -orbed theology that ties all these things together.
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And so, for example, I will tell you, I made a big mistake once.
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I was actually helping John MacArthur. We were at the Christian Booksellers Association in 1995 or 6, one of those two.
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And he was signing books, and I was helping him by handing him the books because it was a book
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I contributed to as well. And out of the blue, he says, so what's your eschatology?
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And I didn't expect that. And I said, well, I'm sort of a panmillennialist.
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You should have seen the dirty look I got. If you've never gotten a really dirty look from John MacArthur, it's memorable.
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It really is. It's not something you forget, especially when you're younger. So anyway, somewhere shortly after that,
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I listened to a series of studies by Dr. Nichols at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church back in Montville and Trinity Academy, where he presented the this age and the age to come argumentation for amillennialism.
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And so, I had a conversion, but it was a conversion of convenience.
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I knew I needed to have a position. Panmillennialism was not a position. That sounded like a pretty decent argument.
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And so, I said, okay, we'll go with that. But I will be perfectly honest.
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I'm not going to be one of those people who says, you know, has convert syndrome. Oh, I know exactly why you believe what you believe.
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I'm not going to say that to an amillennialist because even when I embraced the position, though I came to understand it in general purposes,
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I was never passionate about it. And it was not... It was, I need to have something and this is the simplest one
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I can find. And honestly, when I was premillennial,
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I didn't know there were any other positions. It was just, it was like the time
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I was on a Hawaiian cruise with D. James Kennedy's ministry in 2007,
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I think. And it was right after Dr. Kennedy had had his heart attack. And so, they asked
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R .C. Sproul and myself to take his place on the cruise. And so, we had a
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Q &A in the back of the ship in this amphitheater. And so, it's myself,
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R .C. Sproul, and Gary DeMar, who is a very well -known postmillennialist. And a little old lady up in the very top row asked a question about whether we thought the rapture would be happening in the next year.
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And I remember looking down the row like this and I see Gary looking down the row the other direction and R .C.
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is sort of like, okay, who's going to introduce the bad news here? And we're not really sure.
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We left it up to Gary because he's written all sorts of...he wrote Last Day's Madness and all sorts of stuff like that. So, we let him do it.
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But I am not going to be one of those people who claims, well, I really knew the premillennial position.
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I was a young person into Bible college. It was default. It was just what I was raised with.
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And I didn't think about any other position. I felt guilty when I started listening to amillennialists and I had no idea what a postmillennialist was.
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I had never heard of one. And even when I embraced amillennialism, I still didn't know what postmillennialism was.
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I had heard of it. But all I had heard was postmillennialists believe this is going to get better and better and better until Jesus comes back.
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And that's about as simplistic as it could possibly be. So, I muddled along with that and there were books that I wanted to read.
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I never got around to reading. And then, when I moved to Apologia Church, my other three elders are all postmillennialists, and I started reading a lot of books that were touching on the subject.
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And then in 2000, well, actually, that was pretty much concurrently the same time period, when the woke stuff started and all the critical theory stuff started and global totalitarianism got on the rise.
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And then, of course, with 2020, everything going on there, I was forced to recognize that there were two particular areas that I was seeing over and over again were vitally important to formulating a coherent
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Christian theology in light of what we're facing. And that was an understanding of what
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God's law says to God's people today in the New Covenant, and a recognition of what...when
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Scripture says all authority has been given to Jesus Christ in heaven and earth, what does that mean?
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What is the application for that? And so, when
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I gave a sermon back in February of this year, presenting my reasons for finally having embraced postmillennialism,
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I explained it like this, I really believe, at least now,
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I know all the other positions and am familiar with the argumentation, thankfully, and have fairly listened...had
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fairly listened to what the postmillennialists were actually saying at that point in time. And what
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I...the conclusion I came to was I need to start up at the top with the grand theme of what
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God is doing in this world. And I need to reason from those top -level realities downward to the details of whatever text or Scripture you might be trying to fit into your eschatological position.
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And I realized that the vast majority of conversations I had ever seen would start off with something like, well, what do you do with Daniel 9 in comparison to Revelation this, in comparison to the
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Olivet Discourse at this point? And I had become convinced that almost everything in Matthew Chapter 24 was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
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I had never understood the eagles will be...where
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the corpses are, the eagles will be gathered, and I'm like, what the eagles? I couldn't even figure that out from any perspective until I realized that the standards that the
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Roman religions carried had eagles on them. Oh, okay, duh. And so, I was seeing...my
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fellow pastor, Jeff Durbin, was preaching through Matthew Chapter 24, and we are joking that that took far longer than the time of destruction of the
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Temple of Jerusalem actually took. So, I mean, he just really went through it, but he did an extremely thorough job.
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And so, I had that going on. But then the big thing was that I started looking at the key texts in the
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New Testament that really deal with those overarching things that I came to understand, need to determine everything down line, rather than starting down here and trying to move up from all the details here to an overarching theme.
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And I think that's where a lot of the conversations go off track. So, let me just briefly share with you the texts that were key to me, and then
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I'll talk a little bit about the fact that...well, I'll just do this right now, in regards to the things that Tom had asked me about.
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If you stand back, what you see is that there is a connection between postmillennialists and amillennialists.
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Technically, all amillennialists are actually postmillennialists. They are so in regards to the timing of the coming of Christ.
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But all postmillennialists and premillennialists agree on the nature of the millennium against the amillennialists.
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Now, that didn't clarify it for anybody. It did. Let me try that again. Timing -wise, the coming of Christ, amillennialists and postmillennialists actually agree on that, over against the premillennialists.
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But it's the nature of the millennium where the disagreement is. The premillennialists and the postmillennialists actually agree on the nature of the millennium here on Earth being a real, physical reigning of Christ on Earth, whereas the amillennialists spiritualize that into the
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Church Age, where Christ is reigning from heaven but not upon Earth. So, if you want to sort of figure out where the three of them are differing from one another, that's where amillennialists and postmillennialists, we are in agreement on the timing issue, but not on the nature of the millennium.
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And postmillennialists and premillennialists agree on the nature of the millennium, but not on the timing issue. That's why that's pre and post.
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So, if you're into charts, and postmillennialists really aren't into charts that much, but if you're into charts, and I saw a book, you know,
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Tom was trying to give me a book filled with charts for some reason, and he just wouldn't believe me that I already have that book.
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And I have had those books for a long, long time. One of the first books my dad ever gave me was by J. Dwight Pentecost.
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So, yeah, my dad was a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and is a firm, firm, firm dispensational premillennialist to this day.
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So, I have all this stuff in my library. So, but what is the key as far as I can see in postmillennialism is the victory of Christ's kingdom in this world.
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Where do you get that? Well, let's look at Psalm 2. I'll be brief because I have less time for this than I had for the other one.
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And I don't...I'm very sensitive to... So, we're supposed to be done in 14 minutes? Oh, a quarter after.
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Oh, okay. All right. I thought you said 40. Well, okay, 45 minutes would be a quarter after. Okay. All right. Psalm 2.
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Why are the nations in uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand. The rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against his anointed.
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Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then he will speak to them in his anger and terrify them in his fury.
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But as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. I will surely tell the decree of Yahweh.
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He said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will surely give the nations as thy inheritance and the very ends of the earth as thy possession.
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Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, shalt shatter them like earthenware. Now therefore, O king, show discernment, take warning of judges of the earth.
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Worship Yahweh with reverence and rejoice the trembling. Do homage to the son lest he become angry and you perish in the way.
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For his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him. Now, this is an incredibly messianic psalm.
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And the New Testament writers quote it over and over and over again in many different contexts in regards to its fulfillment in Christ.
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But I focus in upon verse 7, I will surely tell the decree of Yahweh. He said to me, you are my son.
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Today I have begotten thee. Ask of me and I will surely give the nations as thine inheritance and the very ends of the earth as thy possession.
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Now, what does that mean? How is that fulfilled in your eschatology? Is this part of the triune
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God's plan to glorify himself? Will he glorify himself?
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And will the son ask of the father, ask of me and I will surely give the nations as thy inheritance?
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Well, is the son going to ask for that? Will he fail to ask for that? Can God do this?
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Certainly, as a reformed theologian, I had to understand that if I accept the amazing prophecies in the
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Old Testament that are fulfilled in the life of Christ, then how could I ever question God's ability to fulfill all of these prophecies to their fullest?
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So, what does it mean for the son to ask of the father, I will surely give the nations as thine inheritance and the very ends of the earth as thy possession?
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Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt shatter them like earthenware. And then I go, rod of iron, where have
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I heard that before? Oh, that's the resurrected Jesus in the book of Revelation. This is something that is a reality in Christ's exalted state.
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Keep that one in mind. Just turn a page or two, Psalm 110, God's...well, it's not a page or two, but they're in the
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Psalter, Psalm 110, God's favorite Bible verse because he quotes it so often in the New Testament. Thank you.
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I found one person that may have been laughing at the baby, not even at me, so that's okay. Yahweh says to my
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Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet. Yahweh will stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion saying, rule in the midst of your enemies.
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Thy people will volunteer freely in the day of thy power in holy array from the moon with the dawn. The youth are to thee as they do.
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The Lord has sworn, will not change his mind. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at thy right hand.
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He will shatter kings in the day of his wrath. He will judge among the nations. He will fill them with corpses. He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
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He will drink from the brook by the wayside. Therefore, he will lift up his head. Again, an incredibly messianic text quoted numerous times,
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Psalm 110, the most quoted psalm in various portions. And again, numerous references that we could tie into some of the material in the book of Revelation.
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But notice, after the section that Jesus quotes of himself, remember when he asked the
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Jews, how can David's son be David's Lord? Yahweh will stretch forth thy strong scepter from Zion saying, rule in the midst of thine enemies.
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Not rule above your enemies, not the idea that I was familiar with that Christ rules in heaven and his is a spiritual kingdom in heaven.
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But rule in the midst of your enemies. Well, how can you be in the midst of your enemies if you're not ruling where they are?
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Where the same ones who in Psalm 2 are gnashing their teeth and seeking to throw off the fetters of the father and the son, et cetera, et cetera.
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Rule in the midst of your enemies. Then, I had to tie together
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Isaiah chapter 40. And we know, again, these are all the key messianic texts that we know that Jesus taught the apostles after his resurrection.
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This is what Jesus was talking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This is what Jesus was talking to the disciples in Luke 24, when he opens their eyes to understand the scriptures because this is what appears in the preaching of the early church and in the epistles and everything else.
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Isaiah 40, a voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord. In the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our
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God. Let every valley be lifted up, every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley.
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Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed. All flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord is spoken. A voice says, call out. Then he answered, what shall
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I call out? All flesh is grass, all that's leavened is like the flower of the field, et cetera, et cetera. We know the rest of this.
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And we know, again, Jesus is quoting these verses of himself in regards to the fulfillment in his own ministry.
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And so, you have, who is directed to the spirit of the Lord? Counselor, verse 13.
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All the nations are as a bucket, so on and so forth. The comparison that is given, and I'm looking here.
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Well, where did it go? This is not the normal Bible that I use.
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I actually am using a paper Bible. What is there to ever compare about that?
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Some people think that's a more spiritual way, but let's see.
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To whom you liken me, there is a section here, maybe someone can call it out to me since I'm not seeing it right now, where there is the promise of the father to the son of giving to him the nations as his inheritance that goes right along with, oh,
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's Isaiah 42. Behold, thy servant whom I uphold, verse 1, my chosen one whom my soul delights.
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I have a spirit upon, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not crowd or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street.
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A bruised reed he will not break. A dimly burning wick he will not extinguish. Again, Jesus said, these are about me.
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This is how he responded to John, remember? He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not beat his heart into a crush until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law.
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Now, this is the section that Jesus pointed John's disciples to to say, yes,
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I am the one. So the question is, what does it mean when we say he will establish justice in the earth and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law?
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Is that a millennial thing in the future? What is the nature of Christ's reigning?
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What is the nature of Christ's kingdom? And when you ask that kind of a question, it's hard for me to avoid two things.
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Before I go to the New Testament, I do want to point something out to you that you may have not considered before or thought about before.
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But before we get all the way to the New Testament, let me remind you something from Daniel chapter 7. Remember what happens in Daniel chapter 7?
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Daniel chapter 7 verse 13, I kept looking in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man, excuse me, a son of man was coming and he came up to the ancient of days and was presented before him.
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And to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him.
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His dominion is everlasting dominion which will not pass away and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. Now, hopefully, we all know the text.
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Why do we know that text? At the trial of Jesus in Mark chapter 14, beginning
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I think at verse 55, 56, what causes the high priest to tear his garment and say, you've heard the blasphemy, he's guilty, put him to death?
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What did Jesus say? Jesus wove together words from two texts of Scripture.
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Psalm 110 and Daniel 7. And he sort of surrounded
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Psalm 110 with the Daniel 7. And so, the question I have, when was
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Daniel 7 fulfilled? When was one like the son of man presented before the ancient of days?
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Because notice what it says, when that takes place, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him.
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His dominion is everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. I would submit to you that this is in reference to the ascension and enthronement of Jesus after the resurrection.
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And if that's the case, then Jesus is reigning right now, and it's not just in heaven, because it says, and to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language, and the term that's used might serve him in the
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Greek Septuagint is Latruo. That's the highest form of worship, might serve him.
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It's Ahav in Hebrew, but it's in the Greek Septuagint, it's worship him. His dominion is everlasting dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.
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Now, we can say, well, that's in heaven, but if this takes place at the ascension, then this has to be something that is a reality now, not something that you're looking forward to way down the line.
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So, with that in view, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, I'm trying to be brief.
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1 Corinthians chapter 15, you know what the chapter is about.
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It's a resurrection chapter. Paul is dealing with objections in the Church Corinth to the concept of resurrection.
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And beginning verse 20, but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruit of those who are asleep.
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For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. Sounds like Paul believes in the federal headship of Adam and that Adam was actually a historical man.
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I'm not sure how...well, that's controversial. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
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Very, very briefly, if you don't recognize in Romans chapter 5, you have two humanities, the humanity in Adam and the humanity of Christ.
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You'll never make heads or tails out of Romans chapter 5 or the rest of Paul's theology. And there is a summary statement right there.
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For as in Adam all die. Everyone who is in Adam, all he can give you is death. So also in Christ, all shall be made alive.
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That is all who are in Christ. That humanity that is in him. If you don't see those two humanities, you're going to end up in universalism.
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But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits. After that, those who are Christ at his coming.
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There's the those who are Christ that reflects back in the preceding verse. Then comes the end when he delivers up the kingdom, not establishes the kingdom, but delivers up the kingdom at the end to the
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God and Father when he has abolished all rule and authority and power.
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For he, the son, must reign until he has done what?
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Until he has put all his enemies under his feet. Now, the postmillennial position is saying that what we have seen ever since the resurrection has been the establishment of the kingdom of God.
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The kingdom of God and the church are not identical. They are intimately related, but they are not identical to one another.
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They must be distinguished in certain fashions. But that since that resurrection,
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Christ has been putting under his feet his enemies. Arab and to Rome, it's ruins.
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No one could have ever imagined that back then. I think, for example, you look at India.
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And when the English first arrived in India, what was... Does anybody know what satay is?
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The Indian tradition was that when a man would die, his wife, his widow, would be burned alive on his funeral pyre.
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She would not be allowed to live. She had to die when he died. So if your husband died, then you would be placed upon his funeral pyre alive and burned alive.
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Guess what the British did? They did what is today considered to be colonialism. And the
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British did a lot of bad things as colonialists. There's no question about that. But what they did was they said, stop it.
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They stopped that tradition in India. And you know what? That was a good thing. That was a proper thing.
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It was barbaric to kill women in that way. And so there was an example of that was an enemy to Christ to kill women in that way, doesn't exist anymore.
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Rome doesn't exist anymore. There's been a lot of things like that that have happened over the past 2 ,000 years.
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Now, that does not mean... And there have been a few representatives of postmillennialism who have presented the idea of just a linear line, just getting better and better and better and better with no ups or downs.
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That obviously is not the case at all.
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I think that what you see when you look at history is similar to what you would see when
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I, for example, drive up to Colorado during the summer to do some of my bike riding up there. When you see mountains in afar, what you don't see are the valleys in between the various mountains you're going to have to go over to eventually get to those high points.
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For example, if you're familiar with Denver, you know that the Denver skyline is predominated by Mount Evans.
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And I've ridden my bike up Mount Evans a number of times, but there's a bunch of valleys between Denver and getting to the top of Mount Evans.
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You've got to go up and you've got to go down. You've got to go up and you've got to go down before you finally get to that high point. And what we see in church history is
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Christ building his kingdom and submitting his enemies under his feet one by one in different ways and not overnight.
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It's frequently a long -term... What was the illustration Jesus used?
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Yeast. That doesn't just explode. It works through and leavens a whole lot.
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What is the seed that goes into the ground? And then it's a very small seed, but eventually it grows into something very large, but it takes time.
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It doesn't just happen overnight. And so, I see the advance of the kingdom as going over that mountain and there might be a period of persecution or something like that where another world power arises or another enemy of the cross becomes predominant.
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And then that is defeated and you go up the next one, you go up the next one. Let me make a quick application where this is really important to me right now.
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I am really holding on to this, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet because I am convinced that historically there has never been a greater enemy of Jesus Christ than secularism.
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Even the Romans were at least theists. Even Caesar at least recognized that there was something about mankind that didn't just happen.
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We are literally facing a worldview in our culture today that's becoming global that denies everything good that Jesus ever taught.
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Jesus taught that from the beginning, God made them what? Male and female.
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How long before... Well, there may be peoples in this room that have lost your job for already believing that.
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I mean, secularism denies there is purpose in anything.
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It denies there is order in anything. It denies there will ever be a day of judgment, that there will ever be cosmic justice done.
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I've never... Looking back at church history, I cannot see anything that is a greater enemy to Christ to rise than secularism.
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So, here's my thought. Some people would say, well, if you see all this difficulty in coming, you know, how can you be a post -millennialist?
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Because it's not a matter of believing that God does not judge nations or cultures. He has and he will continue to do so.
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It is a part of the building of the kingdom. It is a part of the demonstration of his holiness and justice.
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There's nothing in post -millennialism that says that God will not do that because we can look back on all sorts of nations, don't exist anymore,
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God judged them. But what I see is, let's say we are going into an extended, incredibly difficult period of time globally, thanks to technology and satellites and drones and everything else.
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When I look back at what happened under the Soviet Union, 70 years, 70 years, people suffered under that system.
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And over that period of time, over the last century, what, 125 million people between Russia and Maoist China died under that system.
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And people continue to die to this day. But they didn't have the technology that we have today.
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What if there is an extended period where secularism is allowed to completely take over?
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One thing I can tell you for absolutely certain, a cultural system that cannot tell the difference between a boy and a girl will not last.
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A cultural system that bankrupt, that insane, that evil will not last, but it can be propped up for a long time.
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And so, what I'm thinking is when Christ crushes that enemy under his feet, would it ever be able to rise again and present its ugliness in all of human history, or would we not be able to look back and go, oh, we know where that goes.
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We've already learned where that goes. And so, what we would need is a bunch of faithful people committed to gospel truth who survive all that and are there to be there when it all collapses to go, let us show you the way.
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Let us show you who truly is Lord. We were telling you that from the beginning. So, notice what it says.
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For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. What is the last enemy?
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The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
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So, do we see many enemies of Christ still standing at this point?
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What does it mean that... I always just sort of figured, well, yeah, you know, it's just all going to get wrapped up at the end and we're not going to worry about this order.
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Paul seems to have this idea of an order of things and that the last enemy that will be abolished is death, for he has put all things in subjection under his feet.
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So, there is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy again here. When does
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Christ banish the last enemy? And was he actively doing so in this world?
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So, where would death have to be destroyed? Is it in heaven or on earth?
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On earth. That's where it exists. Does it exist in heaven? No. So, if the crushing of enemies and reigning, and the last enemy is death, is in reference to the earth, then where is he reigning?
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All authority is given to me where? In heaven and on earth, and on earth.
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So, the line doesn't go like this, but the idea is
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Christ's kingdom will continue to grow and will do so in such a way that it will fill the world with the knowledge of the
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Lord as the oceans cover the earth. And I'll have to admit, once I became a post -millennialist,
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I look back at Genesis chapter 12, your descendants shall be as the stars in the sky or the sand of the sea.
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That's a lot of people. And the idea I had before was, no, it's just going to be a tiny, tiny little, you know, small number.
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And here is the question, if you've come from my background, this is where my mind still sometimes goes tilt, okay?
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And this is where my church history training and teaching for years and years also came in. Every generation that's ever existed thought they were the last generation since the time of Christ, except for some of the
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Puritans who were post -millennialists too. Some of your favorite Puritan authors were actually post -millennialists.
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And they all looked at what was going on around them and fit it into biblical prophecies and things like that.
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I still have all the books from the 1980s. You know, every time something would happen with Israel in the
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Middle East, you know, you're finding something in Revelation that tied into it. I get it. I get into it.
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But what if, you ready? You sitting down? You got your seatbelt on?
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What if we're still in the early church? I had never even thought about that.
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It never crossed my mind. No one had ever challenged me. What if we're still in the early church? Because every generation has thought that the people who came before were the early church, they're now at the end, and so we're going to be the last generation.
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What if there's going to be a lot of generations yet to come? What should we be doing? And you know, one of the things
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I'll have to admit, maybe this has something to do with where I've gone. And hey, by the way, you know who else went from pre -mill, aw -mill, post -mill?
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R .C. Sproul. Read R .C. Sproul's last book on eschatology, and he talks about the same thing, and he presents the same position that I'm presenting.
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So I'll admit, maybe this has something to do with it, but I've got grandkids now, and I've admitted nothing has changed me more in my view of time and my own life than my babies having babies.
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Because all of a sudden, you see, this is going on. This is...I'm a part of...this
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is what people were doing before me, and they're going to be doing it after me too. And all of a sudden, I start thinking, man,
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I need to be doing everything I can to build for them, to pass on to them, to invest in them, especially in regards to the faith, to give to them a heritage.
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And man, when I look at what my grandkids are going to be facing right now, oh, Lord, if I didn't trust in the sovereignty of God, I would be seeing if there aren't some caves in Tanzania that are open right now.
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But that's not what we're called to. And so when you think about, you know, I've listened a lot to Doug Wilson on this, and he very plainly said, he said, most
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Christians never think about their great -grandchildren. They never think about their great -grandchildren, eschatologically speaking.
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But what if we're in the early church? What if there is more than 10 or 20 years left?
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What if there's another 1 ,000 years left? What if there's more than that? I know when
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I look back at church history, I look at those individuals, and the people that sowed into our richness today are the people
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I go, wow, the Lord really did something in their life. It wasn't the people that were hiding out on a mountain someplace going, well, it's about over, no sense polishing brass on a sinking ship, right?
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It's the people that left enduring legacies for the coming generations that I look back on.
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And so the question is, the last enemy that will be abolished is death.
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What is the process that leads up to that? Is it that all sorts of Christ's enemies actually take over the planet and then they are put under his feet by just one big
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Armageddon crush fest? The post -millennial position is that crush fest doesn't happen at one point, it happens all the way through as Christ reigns because the authority has been given to him in heaven and upon earth.
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And therefore, when we say Jesus is Lord, now we understand why the Roman state tried to destroy the
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Christian faith. Because Caesar wanted ultimate obedience and ultimate fealty to him, not to this man named
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Christ. And if he has all authority in heaven and earth, then Caesar can never have that authority which he has, and he doesn't want to submit to that.
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I see that happening all the time right now. Oops, look at that. How's that?
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One minute. I am within one minute. He fell asleep, so didn't hear a word
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I said, so he can't be held accountable for anything I said at all. So, in conclusion,
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I do not consider myself an expert on this all of yet. I'll just tell you one thing. It's the first time in my life as a theologian
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I've been passionate about eschatology, knowingly. Knowingly, it's the first time.
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Why? Because as I see it, I am tying in the key elements of what
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I've always understood was God's purpose, the triune God's purpose in this world. Starting up here, you move down from there.
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Rather than all the stuff down here, well, does this fit here? Does that fit there? What's the chronology here?
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What's the chronology there? And trying to build something up to where it makes connection to these grand themes. And so, for the first time in my experience, my eschatology,
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I think, is now flowing together with the rest of my theology, rather than just being this interesting thing that's over there, and we have arguments about it.
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And I've run, however, no matter what position you end up on, can we all agree with this?
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One of the freakiest, creepiest scenes ever put on film was when the camera panned down during the rapture scene in Thief in the
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Night, and you have that lawnmower left just sitting there, running, because the guy that was mowing the grass has been raptured.
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I'm not sure how many people were converted because of that scene, but I remember seeing that sometime around midnight on a lock -in sometime in the 1970s.
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If you have not seen... My daughter has never seen Thief in the Night. I've failed her completely somehow.
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But if you've never watched Thief in the Night, Thief in the Night was the most rented VHS videotape in the
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Christian world ever. I'm sure it's... I know it's available on YouTube. If you've not watched it, you got to find that scene because at least we all should be able to agree together.
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That may be the creepiest scene ever placed on film. So, with that,
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Brother Buck, it's all yours. You almost did what
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I was... Well, Sunday night, you're not going to be here.
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You hear how he said that? You're not going to be here. We're going to fix all this Sunday night. But we're going to...
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We will have a panel. All our pastors will be on that. We're going to talk about the various views. We're going to talk about what we have in agreement.
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We're going to talk about a variety of things in that. And you can send, if you're a member of the church, you've got an email where you can send a question in if you have questions that you would like to ask.
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Ultimately, what we all agree on is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the sovereign ruler of this world, that he is going to return, he is going to reign fully and completely for eternity, and that we are all going to, who know
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Christ, are going to be in his eternal kingdom. And we need to be busy now taking the gospel to a lost world because everyone is going to stand before Jesus Christ as he is their judge, and he is my judge, he is your judge.
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If you want to have a conversation about the gospel, then we encourage you to stay afterwards as well and see one of us.
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But let me close this in prayer. Father, I'm thankful tonight that we can gather together as Christians who are committed to your word.
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Lord, we admit that we are clearly finite beings who are doing everything that we can to submit ourselves fully to your word in every way.
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Lord Jesus, we are so thankful that we gather in this room tonight because of the fact that we know that Christ has came to this earth in the first coming to secure for himself a people, went to the cross, died, paid the price for us, and that you are going to return.
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We long for that day as we look around at our world that is in so many ways antithetical to you, that is in every way an enemy of yours in this worldview that we see around us.
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We are thankful to know that, Lord Jesus Christ, that you are the supreme ruler of this world, and every antichrist that rises up against you is crushed.
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And so, Lord, we leave here tonight confident in the hope of the gospel, confident in the reality of your kingdom that will prevail, and that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that you're