The Dangers of Full Preterism, 1 Corinthians 15, errors of Gary DeMar w/@openairtheology3783

The Church’s Blessed Hope and Why Eschatology Matters

All right, did everybody get a handout? Raise your hand if you didn't, because we have a number of them, and Brother Danny has the handouts. So thank you all for having me this evening, because eschatology matters.

And as you heard from Dr. Frost, there's a lot at stake here, and he mentioned a little bit of how I roped him back into this conversation. And so I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 -5 Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

That's a verse reference to Romans 12, verse five. That's about the church where we are one together in the body of Christ. And so we are a church plant in Northeast Jonesboro, Arkansas. And in this church plant, I wanted to do an apologetics ministry also.

So the apologetic dog, where we guard the deposit that's been entrusted to us. And so as I was doing more apologetics, mainly evangelizing the Church of Christ, I had a number of people starting to knock on my door and ask me more about eschatology.

I was kind of like, oh, it's gonna all pan out in the end, right? We just trust God with it. That was my typical response. And then essentially in our backyard, there was a church plant that was preaching full preterism from the pulpit.

And this church plant was being started by some dear friends of mine who we started a ministry together. And they were partnering with another Southern, they were partnering with the Southern Baptist Church who the preacher was starting to preach openly hyper-preterism.

And these things broke my heart because as I was studying apologetics, my pastor friends were starting to study eschatology. And they went from pre-meal to all meal to post-meal. And they were right up on the edge of full preterism.

And I remember getting a phone call one day from my friend at the time. I'm just saying, Jeremiah, I think I'm a heretic. And I was like, well, slow down. Like, what in the world are you talking about?

And he's like, I really think all of biblical prophecy happened at 70 AD and I don't see a way around it. And he said something at the time that was very encouraging. He said, I think I'm gonna just back out of ministry altogether because I don't want to ruin people's lives.

I know the word of God is inerrant. So the problem is with me. And I was just thinking, well, that's good. Like, don't preach it. I said, it's okay to struggle with things, but don't preach it. So anyway, I was encouraged a little bit by that conversation, but it wasn't just a couple more months where he just totally swung the other way.

And so I had people coming to me saying, Jeremiah, what is full preterism? I'm like, I don't know, but I know someone who does. And his name is Dr. Sam Frost. And so we have a mutual friend, Eli Aguila, who runs a YouTube channel called Revealed Apologetics.

And so he interviewed Dr. Frost probably two or three years ago on hyper-preterism. So that was my only knowledge. And so I had to call the big guns up and say, Dr. Frost, do you know these people? What's going on?

And so I remember you were just like, oh, Jeremiah, I don't want to get roped back into this. I'm like, I need help. I know a lot of other people that need help as well. So I appreciate so much of Dr. Frost's help.

God has used him mightily in my life, and I hope he is a blessing to you. Definitely check out his books and support him. You're a blessing to the church.

So thank you.

Titus 2 and the Christian’s Blessed Hope

So this, I just wanted to remind y 'all of all that because this heresy is personal. I've lost friends. I've seen those lives go down this path of, eschatology is no longer just having minor disagreements over coffee, but redefining Christianity altogether.

And so I want us to kind of take an exegetical approach. I want to show y 'all how we can know with certainty what our blessed hope is. As Christians, what we look forward to, and I want us to deal with some objections that full preterists will make.

And they will definitely ask you, and they definitely come out in social media where the apologetic dog lives, and I want to tell y 'all the things that I've discovered. But if you have your copy of God's word, please turn with me to Titus chapter two, where I want us to look at the time that the apostle Paul told us about our blessed hope, or if you have your handouts, I have the passage here as well.

So here the apostle Paul says in Titus chapter two, starting in verse 11. He says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives, and make special note of this, in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

This is the Christian's blessed hope, right? You see the phrase here, he says that we are waiting for this blessed hope, the promise of the apocalypses, the revealing. He says here that it's the appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, right?

This is something that is meant to encourage Christians, amen, right? We look forward to this, right? The one who is going to restore all things. And so this is in Titus chapter two, meant to encourage one another in discipleship.

Older men, older women, encouraging younger men and women in the faith. And so this is referring to the second coming of Jesus Christ. And I also want to bring this in. Paul says, renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

Now this is huge in the topic of eschatology. Something Dr. Frost and I talk about and warn people about is when you understand this two-age model of this age and the age to come, the full preterist wants you to see that this age is back in the first century, talking about the Jewish age, the Jewish mosaic aeon that terminated in 70 A .D.

Okay, well, you got to be careful because what's at the end of this age, according to Paul in the Olivet Discourse, well, it's the Parisian. Okay, and so, but Paul tells us, no, no, no, the present age is something that is filled with evil, sin, and rebellion against God.

And the saint is called to be set apart, to live holy lives, to glorify God. And it's going to be a struggle. We are going to suffer in this present evil age. But we await and long for the age to come with the consummation of an eternal kingdom that Christ will establish at his Parisia, at his second coming, okay?

And so, as I was thinking more about this, I talked with a lot of people in Johnsboro, Arkansas. They're like, Jeremiah, you're just being a little harsh. Right, and that's why I wanted to attack verse 15 here in the passage about our blessed hope.

It's because Paul says, declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority, let no one disregard you. This is not a small matter. We are called to exhort and to rebuke. So we're going to continue to do that a little bit this evening.

We're going to have a little bit of exhortation, encouragement, but we're also going to rebuke, right? Rebuke is essentially calling someone to repent because they are wrong, okay? And once again, this is crucial within discipleship, the older men, older women, encouraging these truths of our blessed hope, but also rebuking if they have it wrong.

This also goes hand-in-hand with the man of God back in Titus chapter one. The man of God is to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also able to rebuke those who contradict it.

So our blessed hope, this is ever tethered with the gospel itself that we're going to see. And so we hold our blessed hope with a closed fist, something that we as Christians long and that we're waiting and looking towards.

So on your handout, I kind of wanted to show three main points of our blessed hope, and these are the essentials of eschatology, right? We have the all millennial king in the building here, right? We can learn from the Keith Foskys, right?

About all millennialism. We can look to John MacArthur about pre-millennialism and we can learn from Jeff Durbin, right? And James White about post-millennialism. And we can agree to disagree, but we all agree on these three major fundamental truths of eschatology, right?

So look with me at these.

Christ’s Future Bodily Return, the Resurrection, and the Restoration of All Things

Number one, Jesus Christ's future bodily return. This is not up for grabs. This is one of those things that gives us hope and encouragement.

I can't wait to see him face to face.

Number two, we're going to talk about the resurrection of the dead. This is also a part of our blessed hope. And lastly, number three, the restoration of all things that includes judgment. So we hold these things closed fisted.

This is not up for debate. And so Dr. Frost talked about Max King. I just want to tell you that the church for 2 ,000 years of all the disagreement that the church has had, this is the thing that everyone has always agreed on for 2 ,000 years.

Until Church of Christ minister Max King comes along and says, oh, I have this new eschatology. And he called it essentially covenantal eschatology. That's a realized hope. Everything happened in the past.

70 AD, 70 AD, Flavius Josephus, 70 AD. That's full preterism in a nutshell. And so this conference was almost about the dangers of the cult of the Church of Christ. And so I find it just absolutely mind boggling that full preterism is barely 30 years old and finds its origin in the Church of Christ with Max King.

So if you look at the top of your handout, what I put there is that all full preterism is essentially that all prophecies concerning end times have already been fulfilled in the past. This extreme view of eschatology redefines Christianity and is therefore called hyper preterism.

Everything is fulfilled in the past. And I wanna make a case that this absolutely undermines not only our blessed hope, but corrupts the gospel of grace that has been entrusted to us, amen. So if you have your copy of God's word, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

I believe Paul systematically undoes and dismantles full preterism at the core, and he vindicates these three primary points of eschatology. And so like I said, this is the Achilles' heel. 1 Corinthians 15, where we know this as the great resurrection chapter.

And Paul begins by talking about the essentials of the gospel itself. And so look with me starting in verse 20. Like I said, it's also here in our handout. Paul begins in verse, where we're gonna start in verse 20.

He says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order.

Christ the firstfruits, then at his parousia, his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and make special note of this, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. What's so amazing about this passage of scripture is it spans all of redemptive history.

It brings up Adam, right? With his sin plunging the cosmos into death, but Jesus reverses the curse, right? We're talking about the second and better Adam that promises us resurrection life, right? The passage we just looked at, there's a whole context leading up to that, we'll look at it a little bit.

And everything afterwards is pointing us back to these central truths. And so Jesus's glorious return is at the end, we'll talk about that too, to restore all things with the consummation of his eternal kingdom, in eternal age with a kingdom that cannot fail or perish.

Okay, and so this has encouraged saints for 2 ,000 years, this is our blessed hope. So look with me back at major point number one. Paul is talking about Jesus Christ's future bodily return. Something I wanna emphasize in this context as we circle around the word death in verse 26.

What is death talking about?

Well, Paul's case is saying, well, look back to Jesus. What kind of death did he have? And we might ask, well, what kind of resurrection are believers gonna have? Look back to Jesus, what kind of resurrection did he have?

And so verse 20, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. Meaning that Christ has been, this perfect tense, he has been raised from the dead and remains to this day as our risen Lord. Understand this about Christ, he died bodily, which means physically, okay?

We're not talking, he died merely a spiritual Gnostic death, no, it was bodily, right? The scriptures prophesied that he would be buried according to the scriptures, right, a physical death. His resurrection was bodily also.

In Acts chapter one, we see that he had a bodily ascension.

Into heaven and the angels said,.

Oh yeah, he's coming back that same way that you saw him leave. And understand Jesus is the God-man. He didn't lose his human nature, his human body didn't get dissolved like some of these full predators would say because they need to get rid of the body in their view.

Understand Jesus is the perfect high priest. He is the God-man that intercedes perfectly on our behalf. And all this is showing us how he will return bodily as the God-man and glorify him. That's the context.

And so it's not hard to know that this has not happened yet. Look at with me at verse 23. Paul says, at his coming, those who belong to Christ then comes the end. A lot of debate revolves around what is the end here?

Well, Paul has been developing in so many ways that the end is the end of this evil age, this perishing age. This assumes that there's going to be a last day. And so he's talking about the end of history, the end of this evil age where the apocalypses, the great revealing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ will return to judge the world in righteousness.

You know what he's gonna do? He's going to crush the last enemy, death. And so a lot of our conversations revolve around what is the nature of death? Who do we look to?

Jesus.

What kind of death did he have? Oh, that was physical. That wasn't a near spiritual death. And so that is the number one timing indicator that we can say the last enemy, death, has not been destroyed.

We see it all around us. My day job is a hospice chaplain.

Guess what?

I see a lot of death. Praise God, I get a lot of opportunities to share the gospel, but it hurts my soul when I hear people say that this was merely a spiritual death that happened at 70 AD, 70 AD, Flavius Josephus, 70 AD.

I'm like, no, it's not gonna work on me because I see the corruption, I know you do too, of sin and evil that all results back in returning to the dust of the ground. So the parrhesia has not happened.

How do we know? Not only is scripture clear, but we see death continuing day in and day out. Major point number two, the resurrection of the dead. Full preterists need at least two things with the resurrection of the dead.

They need this to merely be spiritual and fulfilled at 70 AD. Paul destroys this idea. Back in verse 20, he says, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits, this is so important, Paul repeats it twice.

Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. So to be the firstfruit is a picture of what is to come. It's the first crop harvest. If you looked at the firstfruits, everything else is going to fall in line with that.

That's why Paul is building his case, pointing back to King Jesus. And so if you would look with me at verses 21 and 22, where we see a double parallelism with Adam and Jesus Christ. For as by a man came death, and then in your mind, draw a circle and think, okay, what kind of death related to Adam?

For as by a man came death, by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Remember everything that happened with Adam, he sinned and plunged the world into death.

Jesus reverses the curse. What Paul is communicating is that all humans are in Adam by nature and share in death. But all who are in Christ by faith alone shall be made alive. He's given us a promise that we will be resurrected unto glory and see him face to face one day.

So in verse 23, he says, but each in his own order, right? Remember, Christ is the firstfruits. His resurrection is first, and then all of his soldiers at the last day will be resurrected like him. He's first and all who are in Christ will be like him.

Okay, so we understand that the resurrection of the dead will be like Christ's resurrection, bodily, not merely spiritual. This is something we look for at his return, which we know has not happened. Major point number three, the restoration of all things.

So if you look with me at verse 24, Paul says, then comes the end, first wind clause, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. And in verse 28, we see the second wind clause and says that God may be all in all.

What I'm stressing is all of history is his story of redemption. There's not gonna be any open ends. And correct me on this, but full preterism says everything that you see around us continues on into infinity.

That means the evil continues on with no end in sight, right? Because they don't want us to think about the end being the end of history. Well, God is not the author of confusion. All things will be restored and he will judge the world in righteousness.

So my point is, full preterism has this story open ended and it never gets resolved. But God will restore all things. Christ will deliver the kingdom to God the Father. And it says, destroying, literally abolishing all those who do not submit to the lordship of King Jesus.

This would include the resurrection unto judgment. Remember earlier, we see the resurrection of the dead. This is primarily referring to saints, right? For us, we've merely fallen asleep because we will be raised one day, right?

We will see a new dawn. We will see our Lord and Savior and be with him for all eternity. But for those that will receive the judgment, they will be cast into the lake of fire. Ongoing death, ongoing alienation from God.

And so the Hebrew scriptures prophesied about the great and awesome day of the Lord and he will bring into fruition this consummation of a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells eternally.

Now there's a lot of different views about the book of Revelation, but something we have to recognize is it gives us a foretaste of this consummated eternal kingdom that is not yet. No more sorrow, no more hurts, no more pain and death shall be no more.

The apostle John says, no longer will there be anything accursed, nothing touched by sin, but the throne of God and the land will be in it and his servants will worship him.

They will see his face.

And his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no more light or lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their life. And make note of this, they will reign forever and ever.

This is a kingdom that cannot perish and cannot fail. No more sin, no more evil, no more death, just eternal glory with our sweet savior. And so as we begin to look more at the context of first Corinthians 15, look on the back with me of your handout because the full priors would say, well, you're wrong.

The church has got it wrong for 2000 years, you need us actually. We have some questions that show the faulty of you hyper-credalist out there. You need to get back to the Bible only, no creed but Christ.

That's what they'll say.

Like I said, it comes out of the Church of Christ restorationist movement that said, no creed but Christ, which is a creed.

I just want to point out.

And so they will bring out four objections here. And the common thing with all four objections is understanding the word death. So let's look at them. Objection number one, Adam only died spiritually the day he sinned.

This is actually a good question or a good point to be raised that I want to help equip you to be able to handle. And we're going to spend the most time on objection one because it's going to help us with the next three objections as well.

Number two, the quotation, the last enemy can't be physical death because everyone dies. Number three, the dead refers to the corporate body of Old Testament saints. This by far is the most odd and bizarre view that's imposed onto 1 Corinthians 15.

And lastly, number four, a quote from Hosea, oh death, where is your victory? The full predators would say, oh, that's just referring to spiritual death. If you don't know what the prophet Hosea says, then you can't understand the apostle Paul.

So you can see how everything kind of revolves around verse 26 in 1 Corinthians 15. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. Okay, remember the context, the first 25 verses, Paul is building his case saying death.

Oh, well, Jesus physically died, right? So this is what Paul has in mind. The full predators are going to front load the conversation like Dr. Frost was saying that it's spiritual, it's covenantal death, right?

They don't want us to think in these physical categories of returning to the dust of the ground. And so we look back to Jesus, not as the exception, but as the rule, as the first fruits, right? You can always have in mind Jesus Christ, what his resurrection, what his death looked like.

That's what's promised to us. That's the context of the apostle Paul. Death in the Greek is thanatos, and it's perfectly defined for us, the termination of physical life. That's the context. And so our blessed hope revolves around Jesus restoring all things at the end of history when physical death is destroyed.

But I can already hear the full predators say, but Jeremiah, you conveniently left out Adam and the kind of death that he had in Genesis chapter three. Okay, does this make sense? They say, listen, Adam only died spiritually the day he sinned, not physically.

And this point is valid to at least raise and say, well, how do you account for this? Because look with me back in verses 21 and 22. Remember the parallelism, right? For as by a man came death, question mark, what kind of death?

By a man has come also the resurrection of the dead, for as in Adam all die, question mark, what kind of death is being talked about there? So also in Christ shall all be made alive. So sure, Paul wants us to go back to the beginning.

He even quotes from Genesis later here in first Corinthians 15, where the context there we're familiar that Adam was supposed to have dominion over all of God's creation and to subdue it. But Adam sinned and plunged the entire cosmos into death.

And so this is where the full predators comes in and say, Jeremiah, Adam only died spiritually the day he sinned, not physically. And so I believe there's a few assumptions in their objection here. And this is huge.

Dr. Frost has spent many hours talking about this first one. They are assuming a radical separation between physical death and spiritual death, as though they are almost unrelated and disconnected from each other.

As we're gonna see, Scripture talks about the death. We can talk about it being two sides of the same coin, where yes, there is a spiritual death, a spiritual element to things, because we are human, we are both spiritual and physical.

And yes, that's inextricably linked with returning back to the dust of the ground, which is termination of physical life, thanatos, death. And so the other assumption is, well, day here in Hebrew is yom, and this must be referring to a 24-hour window in which Adam sinned and died.

And so I wanna challenge that. Is that being consistent to say that yom is merely referring to a 24-hour window, or is it referring to a new yom, an evil day of death? I want us to consider these things.

So if you do wanna turn with me in your copy of God's Word to Genesis chapter two, I want us to look at when God spoke to Adam and talked about the day that he sins, ultimately he will die. Genesis chapter two, starting in verse 16, says, the Lord God commanded the man Adam, saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.

For in the day, yom, that you eat of it, you shall surely die, okay? Now, we not only have objections from full preterists saying, see, he only merely spiritually died here, there was no physical death.

Even atheists will come in and say, well, if Adam didn't physically die in that 24-hour day, then Christianity is a sham. And so I just want us to be equipped to answer these objections and laser focus in on, for in the yom that you eat of the tree of knowledge and good and evil, you shall surely die.

Now, there's a semantic domain to the word yom, and so I just want us to kinda consider, too. Perhaps we can understand yom as a 24-hour window of evening and morning, but yom also is open-ended. It could be a reference to any number of days, any general specific time.

And so one good example of this is when we look back in Genesis chapter one, the debate rages on between young earth creationists and old earth creationists, and that's okay. But perhaps some good evidence for a 24-hour window of time is when we see the phrase evening and morning, okay?

So if you can just humor me for a moment, Genesis one, verse five, God called the light day, which is another usage for the word yom, and he called the darkness night, and there was evening and there was morning, the first yom, okay?

Some look at this as really good evidence for a 24-hour window of time. But in Genesis two, we see a shift in the word yom to some degree, because the seventh day, God rested, and we don't see that phrase evening and morning anymore.

Right, God didn't get tired, he didn't need a siesta, right, but he simply ceased from creation, right? He entered into a day of rest, which is not a 24-hour window of time. In fact, the New Testament and the book of Hebrews says, if we wanna enter into that same day of rest, we'll look to King Jesus.

He will save you from the evil day of death. And so when God says to Adam, for in the day that you eat of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, you shall surely die. God is being clear to Adam. He is saying, the moment you sin against me, you will enter into a new day.

You will enter into the evil day of death, and everything that you were supposed to have dominion over, oh yeah, it's going with you. And then we see in the next phrase, you shall surely die. We could easily understand this as dying, you shall die.

And so Ken Ham with Answers in Genesis says this, the Hebrew is literally die, die, muth, muth, with the two different verb tenses, dying and die, which can be translated surely die or dying, you shall die.

This indicates the beginning of dying and ingressive sins, which finally culminates in physical termination. That's exactly what we see in Genesis chapter three. Adam sinned against God and entered into that day of death, and then God cursed the ground because of man's sin and told Adam, by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread.

You will return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you were dust, and to dust you shall return. As I've listened to Dr. Frost's debates, we can't get a clearer definition of death, can we?

The returning back to dust. This is not just merely spiritual. Adam entered into the state of dying with the absolute certainty that he would physically return to the dust of the ground. And Genesis 5 .5 does highlight this, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died.

We see the death at work, meaning the death goes in through the power of sin, which is spiritual, but it guarantees us that we return back to the ground, which is physical death. And so just because we can distinguish aspects that are spiritual and physical, listen, physical death, spiritual death, two sides of the same coin.

You don't get one without the other. This goes back earlier to Genesis one and two, where God said, let us make man in our image. For the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, think physical, and he also breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, spiritual.

This is man, he is a living creature. And so when Adam sinned, death necessarily touches all of what man is, spiritual, physical. The prophet Isaiah says there will be a day when the death, the one and only death, that touches all of man, that death will be swallowed up in victory and that is what the Apostle Paul has in mind when he quotes those prophets.

So the Apostle Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was familiar with this yom, this evil day of death. And so he is warring against the flesh. In Romans chapter five, he brings this concept out. He says, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, the death reigned through sin.

So death spread to all man because all sin. He goes on to say, as sin reigned in the death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Okay, so you start to see the connection between the Hebrew roots of Paul and the didactic clear teaching in the New Testament.

Paul was warring against the flesh because that's where the power of sin would rear its ugly head. In Romans, he says, it was sin producing death in me for I know nothing good dwells in me that is my flesh.

Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? The death, the one and only where the spiritual power of sin reigns and will certainly return man back to the dust of the ground.

And I think it's a valid question to ask, why did Adam live so long in the evil day of death? Adam had committed treason against the cosmic creator of the universe who is holy, righteous and good. God would have been perfectly just in terminating Adam's physical life because he sinned.

Fellowship had been lost. God's covenant with man to have life was broken and we understand the wages of sin is death. Valid question, why did Adam live so long in the evil day of death? There's mitigating circumstances, isn't that right?

But God, God wanted to show his grace and mercy and reveal more of himself to fallen man, to Adam and Eve. God was merciful and provided a substitutionary animal sacrifice, right? Animal skins to cover Adam and Eve's shame, their guilt.

They had sinned. In order for Adam and Eve to continue to live temporarily, a sacrifice had to be made. The book of Leviticus tells us that for the life of the flesh is in the blood, make atonement for your souls for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

Physical death did happen in that 24 hour window when Adam sinned, right? For my Hebrew scholars out there, the Hebrew language really emphasizes the action and what I want you to understand is physical death did happen and it definitely should have been Adam and Eve, but God.

So what we're taking away from this is that physical death is a result of Adam's sin. That's the whole point in 1 Corinthians 15, physical death, which results from the sin of Adam. And here's the reality, Adam was not the only one stuck in the evil day of death, but he plunged all of humanity into that same evil day.

Paul being a Hebrew of Hebrews, he brings out this concept in Ephesians chapter six. He says, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day having done all to stand firm.

You hear that, the evil day, the evil day of death, this perishing age that will end at the end, the last day when the perishing happens. John Calvin weighs in on this and says, all the days are evil.