Is The Rapture In Our Future?

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Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat, I want to sink it!

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Are you going to bark all day, little doggie? Or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

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Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

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So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. It's the unhop on!

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What? What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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He will faithfully bring forth justice.

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He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law.

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That's Isaiah 42, y 'all. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world.

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So thank you. I'm Jeff, the calm of the ninja. That is Luke, the bear right there. What up? That's Joy, the girl.

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Hello. And as you can see, we have a very, very special guest in the studio with us today. I am thrilled.

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So before I bring Dr. Damar on, before I bring him on,

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I want to just sort of tell you, I was raised in a Christian home, heard the gospel immediately.

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First Bible study ever went to, ever, ever went to in my life was a little youth group

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Bible study. I was 16 years old and I walk in and I don't know anybody there.

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There's only a few people there. But on the television is an old 70s or early 80s film on the rapture, pre -tribulational rapture.

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That's what I walked into. My first Bible study was on secret rapture, seven years of tribulation.

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That was my very first Bible study. And from that point on, I was a fiend about eschatology and time stuff.

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I would go to bookstores to get the Jerusalem Post to see what the new things were in Jerusalem. Like, hey, y 'all know they got the red heifer.

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They got the cornerstone. They got it all ready to go any moment. I was a freak. I would watch the Howlinsey Report every

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Friday night, I believe it was, or maybe it was Sunday night. I watched the Howlinsey Report. I was, I was reading everything eschatology.

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My Bible college was dispensational pre -millennial. And then I started to read the book of Revelation.

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Just Lord, help me to understand this. Help me to understand it. I'll take the blinders off. I just want to let everything go.

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What are you saying? And I committed to read the book of Revelation once a day, every day for 30 days.

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By day four, I remember I was in Starbucks. I read through Revelation. I closed the book. And I thought to myself, what's happening?

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This can't, this can't be. It can't be future to me. Some of the stuff in here, did it happen already?

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And so then I start reading the Olivet Discourse just fresh. Like let it speak. No, no, no people teach them.

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I want to, what does it say? And I started to get freaked out because I thought to myself, this really seems like it had to happen before they all died.

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And I started kind of panicking because I didn't know anybody in my circle that believed. I didn't know it was possible.

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And thank the Lord, the Lord directed me and guided me to really historic Christianity and many Christians in history, all the way down to the church fathers who were even using the

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Olivet Discourse and the Great Tribulation as an apologetic against the Jews, that Jesus truly was the Messiah.

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And then I discovered post -millennialism and I discovered some of the giants of the faith in history were all post -millennialists, including the

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Puritans. And I discovered that the view that I had of eschatology was actually a new view in history.

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And no one had any perspective like it before the 19th century. And so I started to get kind of settled in that and really got directed at that point to two men that became my primary teachers and encouragers in this area of eschatology.

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And the supremely was Uncle Gary. Gary DeMar from American Vision.

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And so from that time forward, I picked up his books. I was getting his articles, listening to his lectures. And so, Gary, welcome to Apology Radio, brother.

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It's good to be here. So AmericanVision .com or .org now? Both. What's the best one?

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AmericanVision .org. And from there, you can get to everything else that's there, the store and articles and so forth.

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Okay. So as we bring Gary on, we start talking about this. We're going to talk about Rapture stuff, post -millennialism, eschatology, end times stuff for all you guys that are interested in that.

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I want you guys to go to American Vision and check out the articles. Check out the store.

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I would say the book that really affected me and really transformed my thinking,

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Gary, and it was such a huge blessing and helped me because I was kind of in a panic state at that moment, like I don't know anything, was

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End Times Fiction. Oh, yeah. Okay. End Times Fiction. It was a little book. Thomas Nelson.

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I knew Mike Hyatt, who was with Wogemuth & Hyatt. They had started a publishing house.

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One of the first books they published of mine was actually Last Day's Madness, and Mike Hyatt worked for Thomas Nelson. But Wogemuth &

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Hyatt eventually went out of business. He called me up. He said, Gary, actually I got it from a book agent,

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David Dunham. He said, Gary, Thomas Nelson wants you to write a book on the Left Behind series. I met with Mike Hyatt.

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He came to Atlanta, and I said, you want me to write a book on the Left Behind series? Let me understand this. These bookstores are selling these books like hotcakes.

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They eventually ended up being like 16 volumes, and you want me to write a book refuting the

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Left Behind series? So they might make $4 on my book and probably make tens of thousands of dollars on Left Behind.

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And I said, I'll do it. I'll do it. And I wrote it, End Times Fiction.

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When I got the rights back to it, I retitled it Left Behind Separating Fact from Fiction.

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But it's a good primer to this whole debate. It is, the whole discussion. So it's called

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Left Behind Separating Fact from Fiction. It's up at American Vision? I think if the print version isn't available,

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I'm pretty sure that the downloadable version would be. If not, I'll make sure it's up in the next couple of days.

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Okay. So that book, I think, is a good primer. It's a good small book that hits a lot of the larger issues that really will begin to,

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I think, it causes us all to start really probing to say, wait a minute, is what

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I believe, is it accurate? Did I accept this and believe this because I actually saw it in scripture?

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Or did I believe it because it's a paradigm that was given to me via well -intentioned pastor, teacher, or something like that?

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Is this where this comes from? Did it come from the Bible itself or did it come from proof texts that I was fed throughout my life?

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And it was a really encouraging book for me because that was my whole thing.

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Was it left behind series, the rapture? I remember having debates in Bible college, Gary, where we were arguing whether we actually had six months or two years left.

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That was in 1996. And I remember somebody suggested like we had like 10 years or something like that.

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And we all laughed him to scorn. Like, you're so ridiculous. 10 years. You're so hilarious.

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Like a red heifer. The red heifer. I mean, the cornerstone of ever being at lunch like us, like just berating this guy.

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And now it's 2019. It's eating. So keep in mind that how Lindsay's late great planet

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Earth came out in 1970. Yeah. So what is that 34? Was it? Well, almost almost 50, 50 years ago.

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It's a long time ago. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Almost 50 years ago. Of course, he made the he says he didn't really make a prediction, but everyone knows he did.

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Right. That it would all come to an end before 1988 because Israel became a nation again in 1948.

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This generation will not pass away. Generations 40 years. You had 80, you know, 40 to 88.

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You get 2000. You get 1988. The rapture takes place seven years before you got 1981.

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Edgar Wisdom came out with a book in 1988. 88 reasons why the raptures in 1988.

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I debated him. Did you know this? I debated him on the radio. Do you have a guy?

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Is this available somewhere? No, no. I know that one isn't. But he said on that show, he says, if I am wrong about this, the

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Bible is wrong. Oh, goodness. And of course, the next you came out with another. He came out with another book.

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The next year was a 89 reason. Nine. Yeah. He had failed to calculate where you go from B .C.

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to to A .D. that there's a year that you have to account for. Oh, yes. And so he he was a NASA scientist.

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Yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Wow. All right. So let's do this. I wanted to do a couple discussions today.

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One, let's talk about the Olivet Discourse, the Great Tribulation. You are very, very helpful. You're a blessing in that area. Then I want to talk about the kingdom of the

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Messiah. What does the Bible teach us about the kingdom of the Messiah and the future of the world with the kingdom of the

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Messiah? And then maybe just spend just a few moments responding to Brother Albert Mueller's comments on the briefing, where he talked a little bit about post -millennialism, mentioned some things that I think could be we can offer some helpful and loving correction in that space.

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But let's talk about the Great Tribulation. The Olivet Discourse is in the synoptics.

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It's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. And those three, the synoptics contain the

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Olivet Discourse, which is the discourse that the Lord Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives when he departs from Jerusalem after condemning the

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Jewish leadership and confronting them in the Gospel of Matthew.

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And so Jesus departs and leaves Jerusalem and then is on the Mount of Olives, which is, by the way, the same direction that Yahweh, his glory, leaves the temple in the

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Old Testament before its destruction in the Old Testament. He departs from there, goes to the east to the

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Mount of Olives, and then that's the same course Jesus takes after saying that all the blood of the righteous is going to be upon them.

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Jesus then gives the Olivet Discourse. And this is the famous discourse that is used universally with the cults and all these other religions to abuse other human beings and teach them that the end is near and that this generation is not going to pass away.

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And they always refer to their generation. Joseph Smith did this. Early Mormon prophets and apostles used the kind of language that's here, the apocalyptic, to say that Joseph Smith's generation wasn't going to pass away until Jesus returned in final judgment.

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It's been done over and over and over. The Millerites. Yes. I mean, you're right. The Jehovah's Witnesses and almost every cult in the 19th century was based upon some apocalyptic concept of the future that was going to take place in their particular generation, which became easy for them to go and witness to people and bring people into their cult is because they were saying, look, if you don't join with us, you're going to miss this eschatological event.

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You're going to go to hell. And so that was one of their recruiting devices. And people still use it today.

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And they'll say something to the effect, well, we're leading people to Christ with this. You know, people don't say this.

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People are going to get scared and they'll come into the kingdom. But then after a while, as people start reading the Bible, things just don't seem to fit with that.

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That's what happened to me. And then they start questioning not only the Olivet discourse, but if Jesus was wrong about that, then what else was he wrong about?

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And they end up leaving the faith. Bart Ehrman is a perfect example. He is. Yes. That's what happened to him. Yes. So in terms of the importance of this section,

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I'll just say quickly, you just mentioned it. Gary just mentioned the importance of this is that this section of Scripture, the

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Olivet discourse, if we don't interpret it biblically in its context faithfully, if we impose a paradigm upon it, well, then what are the consequences?

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Well, I would say, A, people will, I think rightly say, based upon the biblical standards that are given to us,

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Deuteronomy 18, 20 -22, if you have a false prophecy, you're a false prophet.

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Well, I mean, people like Ehrman and Christopher Hitchens will look at that, and it's a chestnut argument for atheists, where they'll say, well, look,

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Jesus gave a false prophecy. He said to them, those disciples, not to some other disciples, to those disciples, that their generation wouldn't pass away until what?

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All, all, not some, all these things take place. So atheists will use this to...

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Christopher Hitchens did it in... Yep. Collision. Collision, yes, he did. With Douglas Wilson at Westminster Seminary.

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Brought up that very issue. That's right. And I've always said that if it had been a dispensationalist who was answering

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Hitchens, they'd still be there. That's right. Trying to figure out what this means, but it took Douglas Wilson...

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60 seconds? Yeah, you know, maybe a little longer than that. And I would talk to Darren, Darren Doan, who was the producer and director of it, and he said you could hear a pin drop, because these were

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Westminster Seminary students who hadn't heard the apologetic that Jesus was referring to that particular generation and that particular generation alone.

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Yes, that's right. So people will abandon the faith. Obviously, we know that if, you know, they went out from us, they were never really of us, but they'll abandon the faith, their profession of faith, because they'll see in a text like this, no,

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Jesus did say to those disciples that their generation would experience and see all these things before they all had passed away, and atheists use this as a chestnut argument.

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But also, I think just generally speaking, God calls us to be faithful with his word, and I think all of us, we need to come to a text like this and interpret it in light of the biblical narrative, the whole story of the

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Bible. This isn't a one -off moment for the Lord Jesus where he comes in and starts tossing out some stuff that was, like, never anticipated, never expected.

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This is the Old Testament story actually unfolding, the promises in the Old Testament of judgment and salvation with the coming of the

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Messiah. And here is Jesus now in that story, promising those covenant breakers the judgment that was anticipated.

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In fact, in Matthew's Gospel, if you start reading it, you begin to see that the Olivet discourse actually begins with chapter 21.

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That's right. Because Jesus is at the Mount of Olives, and everything from chapters 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25, it is a unit.

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And when you see the whole thing, and Jesus lays out this indictment upon that generation, it just doesn't begin with Matthew 23, 36, and Matthew 24, 34, because his audience in Matthew 23,

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I guess it's 21, verse 45 says, "...when

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the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them.

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And when they sought to seize him, they became afraid of the multitudes because they held him to be a prophet."

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So, look, they understood he meant their generation. Jesus, why didn't Jesus say, well, no, no, I'm not talking about you.

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This is something that's going to take place in the way distant future. And that would have, you know, saved an argument.

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But Jesus was talking about them. They knew exactly who he was talking to. That's right. And so,

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Jesus, you're exactly right, and an apology of church, that's exactly what I've done from 21 through 24, we're at thus far, is shown that it is a complete unit here.

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Jesus, you have to take this, Jesus coming into Jerusalem, they're going to kill me. He comes and he has a second cleansing of the temple, which was in the law of God.

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That's what the priests would have to do. First cleanse the, come check the house, come back to see if there's disease, and take it apart, stone off a stone.

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There's a lot there that's happening. And so, Jesus comes, cleanses the temple, comes out, curses the fig tree.

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It's a figure, it's Israel, and no fruit's going to come from you again. And then comes this, this constant indictment upon those covenant breakers, where Jesus is talking about them.

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They know he's talking about them. They even say it, they're getting angry because they know. Right. It's them. And so,

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Jesus then has the epic moment, where he uses the serrated edge against the religious leadership of Jerusalem, where he calls them brood of vipers and all the rest.

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And this is where we get to 23, I'd like you to help us through here, 23, where Jesus says that all the blood of the righteous will be upon that generation.

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And he says, truly I say to you, verse 36 of 23, he says, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

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Now, Gary, just help us with this. You've talked about this a lot in your books, but this is a big help to me. When I was in Bible college, there were ways,

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I remember being in eschatology class, and my professor, I won't mention his name, he was a good man.

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He was telling us that genea, the word there, referred to probably the

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Jewish race or Jewish people. But what does the word mean when it's used throughout the

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Gospels in the New Testament? Well, what I do is I take people back to Matthew chapter 1. Okay. Everyone talks about the first use of a word, it's significant.

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That's not always the case, because there are obviously multiple ways a word can be used.

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But Greek is a lot more precise than our English language. But look at Matthew chapter 1, verse 17.

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Where the same Greek word is used in Matthew 1, 17, you'll find in Matthew 23, 36, and Matthew 24, 34, and lots of other places.

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Matthew probably, I think, probably uses genea more than anyone does, chapters 11 and 12 and elsewhere.

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But therefore, all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ, 14 generations.

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And Schofield referenced Bible, and a lot of even translations today, I'm using the New American Standard, and they'll put it in the margin, and it'll say, they put generation in the text, and they say, or race.

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It makes absolutely no sense. If you were to plug in race in Matthew chapter 1, verse 17, you end up with, therefore, all the races from Abraham to David are 14 races, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 races, and from the deporting to Babylon to the time of Christ, 14 races.

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It makes no sense. Genea means people born and living at a particular period of time.

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And there's no other definition you can give it. It's so clear in all the

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Gospels. It is amazing to me to find scholars trying to get around it.

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And I think we've won that battle. Very few people today would try to say it means race.

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So they moved to stage two, and stage two is, well, it must mean the generation that sees these signs will not pass away until all these things take place.

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And so in order to get that, you have to get rid of the word this, add the word the, the generation, and then add that sees these signs.

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There's the example of having a paradigm, an idea outside, not letting the text simply speak and having to say, well, let's impose this idea or these words on the text to make it fit our paradigm.

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I've been listening to a series of talks that Greg Bonson did for one of our conferences.

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This was done in 1992, and it's a wonderful thing on Christian apologetics. And I think it's the fourth lecture.

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And he's dealing with this very topic of facts are always interpreted facts.

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People have underlying assumptions. And when you present them with an argument, one of two things happens.

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They were they will reassess their position and change their presuppositions, or they'll hold on to their their position, and then they will create a new paradigm in order to make it fit the facts as they see them.

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Yes. And so that's what's happened here. And what you know, the generation that sees these signs, well, all you have to do is look at verse thirty three.

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So this is right before verse thirty four. It says, even so, you too, when you audience reference here, when you see all these things, recognize that he is near right at the door.

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So we're told what audience is being addressed here. Yes. It's them. Yes. You see these things.

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Now, this is so can't mean race of people. It can't it can't mean that generation that sees these signs, because you have to you have to take away a significant word, the near demonstrative this and then add words in order to make it work.

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And we're always critical of cults for doing that. Jehovah's Witnesses. If you go to Colossians one talking about Jesus as you know, he was before all things and they put in brackets before all other things.

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Yes. So, you know, what we accuse the cults of, you know, here we've got we're doing that.

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Yeah. Then someone else said, well, it's really this nation will not pass away. Well, there's a perfectly good word for the word nation.

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It's up in verse fourteen ethnos. We get the word ethnic out of it. And then the logic doesn't make any sense.

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If you see this race, which they mean the Jewish race. So it says the Jewish race will not pass away until all these things take place.

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When all these things take place, the Jewish race passes away. Yeah. But the whole dispensational system is about the permanence of the of the of the

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Jewish race. Yeah. So no matter which way you go with this, the the biblical interpretation is it's referring to the generation to whom

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Jesus is speaking. Right. And you're not left with another option. No. That's it. And we shouldn't want one.

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And I think the important thing here is somebody's if somebody's opening up right now, listening to this thing, OK, I'm open now. I'll listen to what you're saying.

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And I'm going to I'm going to assess my presuppositions. What I want to encourage them to see is that if you take this as it stands and as it's stated, that generation and Jesus is actually speaking to them about things that are going to happen to them.

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Guess what you get. You get the vindication of the Messiah. Exactly. That all these things did happen exactly as Jesus said on time, as promised.

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And it vindicates Christ as the Messiah, as the promised Messiah. So it's a good thing to say, let it speak as it's as it is.

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And let it let let the text actually guide you into showing you that this generation means that generation.

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And it took place on time and as planned so that you can see that Jesus is the promised Messiah. Exactly. Yeah. You can believe him on this.

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Yeah. And you can believe him on anything. That's right. This also helps. You go to Second Peter, chapter three, people talk about, oh, you're just scoffing.

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You know, people say, well, Jesus is not coming back in our day and so forth and so on.

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And and then Second Peter, chapter three, Peter writes, know this, first of all, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?

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For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.

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And people say, hey, you're a scoffer because Jesus made this prediction and you're scoffing about his coming.

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But what Peter is dealing with here is that generation was about to pass away.

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The last days is not the last our last days, but the last days of the old covenants about about to pass away.

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That's right. And these people were mocking Jesus's prophecy that he would come before their generation passed away, because here we were probably maybe mid 60s.

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Temple still standing. In fact, the temple is standing like it had never stood before. I mean, this is the this is the rebuilt temple that the

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Old Testament talks about. This is Herod's temple. And my understanding and reading about history that this was a glorious, glorious edifice.

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In fact, Jesus makes makes that point, I think, in Mark and Luke's gospel.

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I mean, look in the disciples point out to look at this. Look at this grand temple here. Right. That's what they were mocking.

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He said this temple was going to be destroyed before our generation passed away. And look at it. How can you say that?

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Well, within a few years, it was not one stone was left upon another. It was burned. It was burned down.

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And today you go to Israel. There's no indication that that temple every ever existed.

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That's right. That's right. And I think what's interesting, too, to point out, and this was,

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I think, devastating to my own thinking on this issue, based upon what I had believed and been taught before, was that Jesus actually says here in 2337,

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Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing?

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He says, and so he tells them about the coming destruction. But what's interesting here is he's speaking about Jerusalem.

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And then as you get a little bit into the discourse here where he's talking about the Great Tribulation, he says in verse 15 and 24,

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So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. Then those who were in Judea flee to the mountains.

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So this is obviously a local judgment that can be escaped. Exactly. On foot. On foot. On foot.

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It's interesting because if you actually compare this to Luke 21, Luke gives a little more Gentile language here.

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He helps to sort of express what this is. Instead of saying the abomination of desolation, he says, when you see

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Jerusalem surrounded by armies, flee. And what's interesting, too, is that the early Christians did. They did, yes.

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Tell us about that. Well, the Roman army had, in fact, surrounded

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Jerusalem. And no one knows why, but they dispersed for whatever reason, which then opened up a gateway out of the city.

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And there were, unfortunately, there were a lot of people within the city who thought that they were going to be rescued by the

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Messiah. And it never came. And this is another interesting point.

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The modern -day theory about the Great Tribulation, you know, the rapture takes place,

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Christians are supposed to be taken off the earth, and then the seven -year period, which is Daniel's 70th week, that's a whole other topic.

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But during that period, we're told by the dispensationalists that two -thirds of the Jews living in Israel are going to be slaughtered based upon Zechariah 13, verses 7 through 8.

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And think about that. So this is another holocaust. Now, this isn't my assessment of their view.

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This is their view, and I've got all the quotations from them, from, you know, Hal Lindsay and John Walvoord and all kinds of people about this particular position.

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And yet, these, you know, same Christians today are excited because they see here that Jews are returning to Israel.

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And yet, if they really believed this, they would be telling them to get out of Israel.

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Jesus did. Jesus told them to leave the city, flee to the mountains. Jesus gave them 40 years to make this decision as to who they wanted to align with.

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But today, it's, you know, the Jews are moving to Israel, and that's great, let's go visit

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Israel. But there are the same people who are saying two -thirds of the Jews are going to be slaughtered during the Great Tribulation. That's right.

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That's a good point. Yeah, very good point. And it definitely piques your curiosity in terms of the perspective that you bring to this.

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But if you look at the text there, the Lord Jesus is actually telling people how they can escape this local judgment, flee to the mountains.

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The early Christians actually did. After the Roman armies backed away, the Christians actually fled. And history,

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I think it was Eusebius that said they went to a town called Pella. So they did escape. They didn't go back to get their coat.

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They didn't go back to go there. Jesus is warning them, when you see this, don't waste time going back to grab your stuff.

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Yeah, and by the way, this is an indication that this is an ancient culture here.

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You've got flat roofs. We go up on our roof just to check for a leak. We don't go up there now to live and so forth.

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You don't want to go to any roofs in Arizona. Trust me. I know how big our closet is and how many cloaks my wife might have.

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That's not talking about this. Sabbath day regulations were still in operation.

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And again, you could escape this by just fleeing to the mountain on foot.

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And by the way, that little statement in there about being with child during this period of time, because there is this incident that Josephus talks about.

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Starvation had taken place. Talk about that. Yeah, that's important. There's a woman. I think her name was Maria. There's a woman.

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Well, these Roman soldiers come in. This is after all this devastation has taken place. And they smell something cooking.

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And it was a woman who had actually, I don't know if the child had died or she had killed her child, but she needed something to eat.

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And she cooked her child. I mean, these were hardened

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Romans and they were affected by it all. Yeah. And last night we talked a little bit about a strange, strange

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Bible verse that commentators don't seem to be able to figure out.

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We have a mutual friend, Jim Jordan, who seems to be able to figure out all these passages. There's a verse that says, you do not boil a kid in his mother's milk.

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And now the Jews have taken that. You don't mix meat and dairy together, which if that's all it means, it's kind of strange.

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And Jim says this is an indication of what God's rebels do with his offspring.

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And so Jesus is the kid. He's the lamb of God, takes away the sins of the world. And they murder him.

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They boil him in their mother's milk, Jerusalem being in fact the mother.

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That's right. Which it's referred to as the mother. Yeah. And so all of this fits together and makes much, much more sense in terms of the generation to whom

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Jesus is speaking. Right. And so people struggle though, Gary, this is what they struggle with. And just to do a burst on this, they'll struggle because Jesus says there's gonna be wars and rumors of wars.

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Now, when I first discovered this, I was blown away because I thought, well, yeah, that's funny.

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Because if a prophet came in the room today and said, hey guys, I'm the Messiah, and I'm gonna give you some predictions about the future today, 2019, there's gonna be wars and rumors of wars.

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We would be like so unimpressive. Right. So, so very unimpressive.

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But why was it impressive for Jesus to say there's gonna be wars and rumors of wars? Personally, I think what

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Jesus is saying here, those really aren't significant signs. The real signs don't occur until later.

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I think what Jesus is saying here is, you're gonna be hearing of these types of things.

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They're not the types of signs you need to be looking for. There's a much more significant sign going on here. But there were wars and rumors of wars.

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The Roman Empire was an empire of compulsion. It was,

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I mean, Israel was under the heel of Rome and every, so was every, so was Egypt and Syria and the rest of them.

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There were constant wars going on during that particular period of time. This takes place during, excuse me, during the

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Pax Romana, supposed to be a period of peace, but it wasn't. There were wars taking place all over the place.

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The same thing with earthquakes. It doesn't say that there will be bigger, there'll be more earthquakes and bigger earthquakes.

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It just says there'll be earthquakes in various places. And there were earthquakes in various places. The time of Jesus' crucifixion, there was an earthquake.

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Time of Jesus' resurrection, there was an earthquake. In the book of Acts, earthquake, the history of the period, earthquakes.

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Acts 11 talks about famines. There was a famine throughout the whole oikumene, the whole Roman Empire.

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This is, you don't have to even go outside to the history books. The Bible itself explains all these things.

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Everything Jesus said, they understood, referred to their generation and no other generation. In other words, you can see it in the

34:44

New Testament unfolding. Yeah, exactly. It's right there in the pages of the New Testament. You don't have to go outside to find it. Right. Okay. Now, let's get to some of the stuff.

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Well, let's do this. We're going to take a quick commercial break here, guys, and let everyone get a chance to use the bathroom. Do what you got to do is make sure you share the episode, let everyone know.

35:01

When we come back, I am going to ask the challenging question that everyone's going, yes, but let me show you the complete failure of this perspective.

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And that's about stars falling from the heavens and the signs in the heavens and those sorts of things. Because you see, here's the deal.

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Look, no stars hit the earth in the first century, Gary. So clearly, you are wrong.

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We're talking about blood moons and all the rest. Clearly, this perspective, it just can't cut the, it doesn't work.

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It will not actually fit. And so I'm going to encourage you guys to stick with us and we're going to find out, did the stars fall from the heavens in the first century?

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My answer is, biblically speaking, absolutely without question. So stay with us, guys. Be right back.

35:41

ApologiaStudios .com is where you guys go to get more content here with Gary DeMar, the bear, the girl. When we come back, we're also going to, see this?

35:49

See this? When we come back, we're also going to do our drawing for all the early birders. Yeah, yeah. Everyone who is early bird for ReformCon, our conference the 24th through the 26th of October, ReformCon .org.

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ReformCon .org. Everyone who is early bird got put into a drawing here where we're going to take you out to dinner.

36:07

So stay with us, guys. See if your name comes up. We'll be right back, right here at ApologiaStudios .com. The goal for New St.

36:57

Andrews College, as it trains its students, is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs.

37:06

People who will just be bricks in the wall of our society. The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

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I want their faith to not just be something that stands, but something around which culture can be built.

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We want students who can think critically about arguments, but also about the culture around them, that can then speak clearly to it, and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message.

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Because that's really what the gospel does. The gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people.