Doug Wilson: Full Preterism, Historical Christianity, 1 Cor. 15, Orthodoxy vs Heresy @blogmablog4870

There is a climactic moment, there's a last chapter, where we all turn around and look at the book of human history, and we say, that was the best story ever, right?

But with the full -fledged view of human history, it's not a story at all.

It's just one damn thing after another. Hello and welcome to the

Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of grace. So within the logo of the

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So thank you for joining me. Just wanna give some quick announcements. Coming up in February, I will be speaking at a conference that Jeffrey Rice will be hosting, and has invited me and Dr.

Sam Frost to speak about the dangers of full preterism. And so this is important because people have questions, and I think it's so good to be able to point back to our creeds and confessions to show that our rich historic faith has fundamentally denied the fact that our blessed hope is in our past, but it's something that we long for in our future.

And so Dr. Frost and I will be talking about probably a number of different things. So that is coming up in February.

So mark that on your calendars if you're in the Tennessee area and that you would love to join, because that's just the pre -conference.

Soon after the pre -conference will be the rest of the conference that is discussing why Calvinism, which is an important conversation to be had about God is sovereign and you are not, and so what that looks like.

And so those are some things coming your way. And so speaking of eschatology, we're gonna be getting in that today as well, because eschatology matters.

I love the guys out on that YouTube channel, Eschatology Matters, Brandon Wood, Josh Howards, and Tim Bashong.

Thank you men for contending for the faith, and telling people your view of the end times directly impact how we live here and now.

And so today we have a special guest with us, Pastor Doug Wilson. How are you, sir?

Doing great. Pastor Doug, thank you for taking your time to just meet with me today to talk about some interesting, very important matters of the faith.

And so before we do that, is there anything you would like to tell the audience about where they can find you, some of the work that you've been maybe writing some new books lately, things like that?

Yeah, we set up, my blog is called blogandmayblog, and the address is dougwills, all lowercase, dougwills .com.

And we set it up such that if you look at the front page, scroll down a bit, you can, there's a portal to pretty much everything

I'm involved with, Logos School, New St. Andrews, the church, everything. So that's the one -stop shopping spot.

Awesome. Well, we don't know each other, but I'm from Jonesboro, Arkansas.

So I'm in the deep south, so you may hear that accent going on. So that's where that's coming from. But the reason

I wanted to - Yeah, well, I got the Arkansas beard going. Got the beard coming out.

I like your beard, by the way. Well, thank you. It's more seasoned than mine, so I hope to grow into a beard like that one day.

Right, you don't wanna get a white beard too quickly, though. Yes, sir.

So in Arkansas, there have been two churches that have been openly preaching full preterism.

And so it's just been something kind of weird that I've had to address. I serve as a pastor and elder at 12

Five Church, church plant, Pastor Doug, so keep us in prayer. We just completed three years, and it has been amazing.

And so a lot of people come to me with apologetic questions, and so full preterism's kind of been on the rise in Arkansas, and it's been so strange.

And so I just wanna thank you for the work that you've done. And you're no stranger to the world of eschatology.

You wrote a book on it. I did. Do you recognize this one? I do. Yes. I wrote that one, and I also did a commentary on the book of Revelation that overlaps, yeah.

Yeah, well, I just wanna encourage people to go check out your work and material. Also wanna thank you for teaming up with the guys at Eschatology Matters, Brandon Wood and Josh Howard and Tim Bichon, great guys.

I actually was, just a few weeks ago, I spoke at a conference with them in Indiana, and so I was asked to preach on the resurrection of the dead.

And so I knew I needed to call in Doug Wilson just to get, just to have you weigh in on some of these things, because what

I immediately start pointing people to is the heresy of Hymenaeus and Philetus.

And so this is something the scripture speaks explicitly about. And before we dive into this passage of scripture that talks about the resurrection of the dead, how this is attached to our blessed hope and the timing of Jesus's second coming,

I wanted to get your thoughts on this real fast too, because you've done a lot of work talking about how full preterism is not just a difference of opinion of eschatology, but it's a completely different worldview.

And so what I've started to notice is, in order for, I believe one of your videos said all 14 full preterists out there, in order for them to survive, they have to be parasitic.

They have to say, well, we're just disagreeing on tertiary matters. You can still welcome us into the fold.

And so that's been so much of the problem here in Jonesboro, Arkansas, is you have these full preterists saying that they're

Christians. And so people kind of unawares, understand that they're kind of coming in and just want to welcome them with open arms.

And so I kind of have that hard task of saying, no, no, no, this is a different Christ. Maybe we can talk about this.

This is a different gospel, a different blessed hope. And so do you think that's a fair characterization of what they have to do in order to stay alive essentially?

Yes, I think that's fair. I don't want to say that everybody who embraces, who gets to the point where he says,

I'm a full preterist, that he's necessarily unsaved. Sometimes people, sometimes saved people get pretty seriously muddled.

And I think that that happens with some, but I do believe that full preterism as a system, articulated, understood, defined, and promulgated is not the

Christian faith. It unravels the whole thing. And there are a number of ways to come at this, but the

Christian church has been divided on matters of eschatology from early days, the first centuries.

But the one thing that Orthodox Christians have always agreed on eschatologically has been that full preterism is wrong.

That's the only thing, that's the only thing that we've agreed on because the

Apostles' Creed, which goes back very early, we believe that Jesus Christ is gonna come again to judge the quick and the dead.

So this confession that human history has a terminus, human history has an endpoint at which

Christ comes and the dead are raised, that is inconsistent with full preterism.

And the Orthodox Christian church for 2000 years has always confessed that.

And that's the one thing that we agree on, which is that full preterism is wrong.

And I would argue that this is not simply, I just said 2000 years, but I think it's much older than that because when

Jesus is talking with Martha after Lazarus dies, she's a faithful Jewish woman, first century, she doesn't have

Thessalonians in her possession. She doesn't have the Book of Revelation in her possession. And she says to Jesus, I know he will be raised at the last day.

Speaking of Lazarus. So a belief in the final resurrection of the dead at the last day was something that faithful Jews like Martha were confessing before there was a

New Testament. So this goes way back.

And when you look at the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, and Paul comes off the top ropes when he's dealing with them, right?

He says, they're making a hash of everything. When he says that, if you adopted the full preterist view, and Paul is writing this near the end of his life, these are in his pastoral letters, near the end of his life.

And if you believe that everything was fulfilled by 70 AD, you have to be saying that Paul is coming off the top ropes calling their teaching gangrenous and ungodly, upsetting the faith.

And he's saying this because they were a few months off in their calculation, right?

Pastor Doug, do you care if I read that passage real fast and we can begin to kind of unpack this? Because the

Apostle Paul is talking to Timothy and warning him about false teachers, right? And he already addressed one of these gentlemen in the first letter.

So here in verse 16 of 1 Timothy chapter two, he says to Timothy, but avoid irreverent babble for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene.

Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have swerved from the truth saying that the resurrection already happened.

They are upsetting the faith of some. So that's pretty heavy language here.

And Pastor Doug, I've been interacting with full preterists and it's so interesting because they wanna say, well, look, the only thing that Paul is addressing is the timing, not the nature.

So of course, Paul and these two individuals must be in agreement on the nature of the resurrection.

What's your first thoughts when you hear something like that? Then if the only disagreement is timing, then you have to answer my question.

Why is Paul so upset over them being a few months off where he's coming at them for introducing a gangrenous teaching that's gonna introduce ungodliness and why?

Because they say the resurrection happened in 62 AD instead of 70

AD? Are you serious? Pastor Doug, you gotta understand that the temple was still up.

It hadn't been destroyed yet and they were still under the law. So by Hymenaeus and Philetus, by them saying the resurrection already happened, what they're really doing is saying that the law is still gonna be this yoke of bondage and the temple can stay as is.

So somehow, Pastor Doug, those are two determining factors that are in the backside of Hymenaeus and Philetus' mind that totally just undo

Christianity. That's what I get a lot of times, that the temple is relevant in this conversation and they're still under the law.

The problem is that Paul doesn't mention the temple or the law. He mentions the resurrection.

He says, my problem with what these guys are saying is what they're saying about the resurrection, right?

He doesn't say anything about the law and Paul is more than capable of handling

Judaizers. He addresses that in Galatians.

He addresses that in Colossians and Romans. He knows how to attack people who are promulgating a legalistic

Judaism or who want, he says, this is what you're doing.

He talks about their problems with the law by using nouns like law, right?

So here, he's talking about the resurrection. Right, correct. And so the main feature here is the timing and so everyone has to interpret what all else is going on but what he's purely addressing is to say that the timing of the resurrection and so these false teachers would have been familiar with what the

Hebrew scriptures would have talked about like in Daniel 12 about the resurrection of the dead.

Right, this is something that all saints have in the back of their mind when we talk about eschatology and so he only focuses in on,

Paul only sees it necessary here to focus on the timing and so if someone is teaching that the resurrection of the dead has already happened when it hasn't, it's anathema language, it's poisonous, it's cancerous and he uses the term swerved from the truth, right?

Makeshift wreck of the faith essentially and so that's all, yeah. Exactly because if you take the position that the

Orthodox Christian position maintains which is that the general resurrection of the dead happens at the conclusion of human history as opposed to someone who says the general resurrection happens in the middle of human history.

That's a difference but it's a difference over the meaning of history. It's not a difference if it's just a few months apart.

If Paul says, no, Hymenaeus has always been a hothead, he's jumping the gun, it's not gonna happen for another five years, okay?

That's not a dispute about the meaning of history because if you have a dispute about the meaning of history, it's a dispute about the meaning of life and the meaning of the new life and the meaning of the gospel.

This is one of those things where, in one of my blog posts on this, I said it's like theological

Jenga where you're pulling out this thing at the bottom of the stack of blocks and you think, it's just one block,

I'm just pulling this out. But the whole edifice rests upon this as Paul's language indicates.

Right. Yeah, I play Jenga. You wanna be careful not to go straight to the bottom.

Yeah. Well, the big point that I wanted to stress here like you're bringing out is the timing.

Here, Paul is addressing here, there's other scripture that we'll get into here in a moment about the nature of the resurrection.

And so, Pastor Doug in Johnsboro, a lot of people really look up to you and your content and I was real excited to be able to have you on because these full preterists, you probably are aware of this but they will grab your content and other men of the faith that we look up to and so they're trying to infuse themselves in to orthodoxy, right?

And so I just wanna let you know that your labors haven't been in vain. In fact, it's reaching us here in the deep

South, just the cautions, the dangers that are attached to full preterism.

And so I just wanted to thank you again for that. And I've actually had a few incredible platforms to speak to other pastors in our local area of saying,

Jeremiah, what is full preterism and why is it bad? Why is it dangerous? And so I've been able to warn, kind of sound that bullhorn and I've been able to connect with other men that I believe you're familiar with,

Dr. Sam Frost. I've had him on a number of times to really get his insights because he was a big leader in this movement for about a decade and has come out of it and wrote many books, which

I think you're familiar with some of his writings. Yeah, I read his, why I left full preterism was a very, very good book.

Oh yeah, definitely wanna recommend the audience to go check out that book as well. And even you'll appreciate this, even our homeschool groups here in our local area,

I've been able to speak to board of directors and just explain to them all the dangers of how this redefines our blessed hope enough.

And what's interesting is when people intuitively, when they hear that everything is already fulfilled, that's prophesied and terminated in 70

AD in our past, most people are like, are you serious? The second coming already happened, the resurrection of the dead happened and the new heavens and new earth is already and no, not yet.

Most people intuitively think that's kind of wild. And I remind them, yeah, this is only about 30 years on the scene.

I mean, that's why you rightly in the past have said there's only about 14 of them, right? Yeah, right.

And so keep us in prayer here in the deep South because we're constantly having to fight these battles.

And so it's just interesting when you're able to sit down and open up 2 Timothy chapter two, you can talk about,

Paul saw it necessary to talk about things like the timing because this has embedded in it all of history connected to it, right?

And so if the resurrection already happened, then our blessed hope is not future, but it's realized.

And so I do wanna get your thoughts here on the nature of the resurrection. And so I feel like one of the best places and we can go to some other scriptures if you have in mind, but 1

Corinthians 15 is a chapter where Paul addresses that very topic.

And so when I'm talking with full preterists that say, oh, well, let's just assume that Hominaeus and Philetus are in agreement with Paul on the nature of the resurrection.

And so one of the points I immediately go to Pastor Doug is, well, that's not what he's addressing there, but we have other passages of scripture where that's exactly what is in question.

So do you have any thoughts before we dive into some of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15? Yeah, I would wanna frame it this way, because in 1

Corinthians 15, Paul draws a straight line link between Christ's resurrection and ours.

So when we talk scripturally, the nature of Christ's resurrection is the same as ours.

And if you go with the full preterist understanding, it has to go the other way. So the nature of our resurrection would be the nature of Christ's.

Now, what that means is let's say a brother, a Christian, we call him Demetrius, died in 69

AD. Okay, he died and was buried. And then we come back in 71

AD after the culmination of all things, after the resurrection has already happened, or let's put it right before whatever date

Hymenaeus and Philetus put it, right? Can we come back to that grave and find the body?

Okay, now, if someone died before their resurrection, and we come back a year after and dig the body up, is there a body that can be dug up?

Now, if that's the case, if you say, well, the full preterist says you die and you receive your new body in heaven, and your body is in the coffin still, well, here's my question.

Could we do that with Jesus? All right, our resurrection is,

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ's resurrection is the first fruits. It's the down payment, it's the earnest, that what happened to him is going to happen to us.

Therefore, what you're claiming happens to us is what you're claiming happened to him. Right, now, that means if you could say with a straight face,

Christ was raised and his body is still in the grave. You're just a theological liberal.

And the apostle Paul says, our faith is vain, we're still in our sins, this is all a big bunch of nothing.

Right, well, I appreciate you kind of setting that up because as we're gonna look at this passage, and I believe this passage, verses 20 and following, we'll kind of stop at verse 26, but this was also,

I believe I heard you say, a passage that led you out of dispensationalism, right? Or at least the premillennial dispensational because we look at what the end is talking about with Paul, and it's the parrhesia and the resurrection of the dead.

And so I think that's interesting that this passage does seem to kind of lend itself away from dispensationalism and, in my opinion, is the death knell to hyper -preterism.

And so I'd like to look at this passage and get your thoughts on it because it does talk about such a tight unity of what it meant when

Jesus was resurrected from the dead, what that told us as Christians would happen to us one day as well.

And surely we'll be restored to new life now, right? Spiritually, this is eternal life that we know the true

God that Jesus Christ to me sent, but there's something we still long for and look forward to, that bodily aspect of what it means to be human.

So 1 Corinthians 15, 20, there's a wonderful context here that Paul has been talking about 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 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.

And then the post -millennial say, for he must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. I gave your post -mill crowd a plug there.

But the reason why I kind of stop it at verse 26 is because what is death, right?

I've noticed this is important when we're talking about the resurrection of the dead. Jesus died.

What does the phrase fallen asleep mean? All these, in my opinion,

Pastor Doug, are connected to the buildup that Paul's getting with when he says thanatos, right, death.

And so I think you have to conclude consistent with what Paul is arguing here is this is talking about a physical death, the termination of physical life.

So what are your immediate thoughts? Absolutely. And in the full Preterist vision, human history just goes on and on and on and on.

Sin is never completely destroyed. Death is never completely destroyed. And yet here in 1

Corinthians, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Doesn't that mean it will be destroyed?

So they have to say this is a spiritual death, right? Right. Exactly, but then it unravels backwards.

Why would the first fruits of the harvest be completely unlike the harvest, right?

Why, how can we insist on the bodily resurrection of Christ? He comes out of the grave, the tomb is empty, and his body that went in the grave is transformed.

That's the reality, and that's the first fruits. Well, in verse 23 here, each in his own order,

Christ, the first fruits, whatever the nature of that is, it applies to what follows.

So the first fruits of the harvest is the same as the harvest. Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.

And that means the people who are raised at Christ's coming are participating in the same kind of bodily resurrection from the grave that Christ experienced.

Yeah, so that kind of gets into the discussion later in 1 Corinthians 15. They continue to talk about the nature.

So I believe it's around verse 35. Maybe I can get you to weigh in on this as well.

But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?

And so as I was studying this, Paul was kind of mad at just the nature of the question itself because it seems like it's being asked in a mocking tone.

Like, that just seems impossible for a physical resurrection to even take place.

And Paul is just saying, look, you already believed in Jesus's resurrection, which you received by faith.

And so you know resurrection is not only possible, but it's a reality. And so when he says in verse 36, you foolish person, it seems like he is saying it's unthinkable,

Pastor Doug, for Christians to deny a future bodily resurrection for believers as our blessed hope.

And so you know kind of the rest of the passage. Paul gives many illustrations about how this is necessary. A seed has to die in order for it to be raised and transformed, right?

So this Adam's sin -cursed body, guess what? Is going to die physically.

Right, and when it dies and goes in the ground, it does so, looking at verse 37 there, it does so as a bare kernel, right?

So, but according to the full preterist, the body that goes in the ground is not a kernel at all.

It's not a seed at all. It just goes in the ground and rots, and you get your new body in heaven.

You don't plant a seed in one place so that the plant will grow in another place, right?

The women who witnessed Christ's resurrection met him at the place where he was buried.

They went to the garden where he had been buried. The angels appeared where he had been buried.

And if our death and burial is gonna be like his, that means the crop is going to come where we were planted.

Now, this is something that when Paul's preaching to the sophisticates at Mars Hill in Acts 17, they listened to him up until the resurrection part, and then they said, oh, this is outlandish.

There's something about the resurrection of the dead that is offensive to the person who wants to be intellectually sophisticated.

It seems childish, it seems very simplistic, and you mean to say, the

Greeks, Socrates believed in the immortality of the soul. That's something you can believe and be sophisticated.

But if you believe that your body is going to come out of the dirt, right?

That seems like good grief. But here, this is one of my favorite points

I'd like to intrude here, and it's not really an intrusion, it goes with this. The atheist materialist likes to make fun of the

Christian for saying that God formed Adam out of dirt, right?

That is, oh, come on, are you saying that human beings were created out of dirt by God?

And I'd say, well, you believe the same thing, only you leave out the God part. We've got men and we've got dirt, right?

You've got dirt, primordial goo that we evolved out of, and we have dirt that God superintended and fashioned man out of, but both of us believe that organic matter came from inorganic matter.

And then you think that Christians are absurd because we think it's going to happen again, right?

We believe that I'm gonna die, my body's gonna be dead, it's gonna go in the ground, and then it's gonna be raised again.

But that's not the first time, right? When I'm raised from the dead,

I will come into a new existence just like I did in 1953, only it'll be much, much better.

It won't be corruptible, it won't be dishonorable, it won't be all the things that Paul lists in 1

Corinthians 15. But life from nothing, life from death, that's something that happens and everybody acknowledges it.

Yeah, well, something I wanted to also touch back on because you mentioned Adam, because I get how the atheist worldview, they read the account of Genesis and it's absurd to them.

It might usually retort back as just saying, look, I would rather look at the eyewitness testimony, the one who was there and gets to tell me truth.

That's a worldview is the God of truth gets to reveal to us what the truth is, not just my speculation and assumptions on given sets of patterns that I don't know always have consisted the same way.

And Pastor Doug, a couple weeks ago, I got to preach on this passage, 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 26.

And so I began by saying, look what Paul is emphatically saying, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

Paul only gets the benefit of declaring this as truth in fact, because the word of God said it would happen.

So what's interesting is Paul goes on here to talk about Adam, right?

For as in Adam all die. And so one objection, Pastor Doug, that gets thrown back at me as well, when we go back to Genesis chapter two,

God said the day that you sin and eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then you will surely die.

And their response is, well, Adam didn't die physically that day. So this must be a spiritual truth.

And so I say, well, keep reading, right? Because essentially Adam and Eve sinned and we see consequences of the fall.

And a part of that was man returning to dust. Oh, that sounds like the best definition of death we could see in scripture that God used the dust of the ground to form

Adam, breathed into him the breath of life. And it was as a result of sin, man is going to return back to dust.

So is that a good take on saying, well, there's more going on than simply Adam not physically dying that day.

And I even go as far as say he should have, but a substitute was made. God took animal skins, animal physical death had to happen on Adam and Eve's behalf.

So that just proves that Adam and Eve should have died, but God was merciful, gracious, loving.

We get to see kind of more of God's character put on display. I agree. I would say amen to everything you just said.

And I would add a couple of additional things. The first thing is that I define death, not as cessation, but as separation.

So the day that Adam ate of the fruit, he was separated from fellowship with God, who was his life, okay?

So, and you can see that when they heard the Lord walking in the cool of the day, coming down to walk in the garden, they hid.

They were separated from him. And so there was a covenantal death that happened right away because of the separation and the severing of fellowship.

Physical death is the separation of the soul and body, okay? Now the physical death that they went through years later happened because of the separation of fellowship with God.

In other words, it was a cascading set of deaths. There was an immediate covenantal death, separation from God.

If they had been killed on the spot, there would have been no injustice done if they'd been physically killed.

And the reason they weren't physically killed is because God is merciful. But God is not merciful just, okay,

I think I'm feeling kind today. As you pointed out, there were animals that were killed by God and Adam and Eve were covered by God's mercy.

But that mercy ameliorated the death. It did not indicate that God changed his mind about the death.

The day you eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, you shall surely die. Ezekiel says, the soul that sins shall die.

Paul says in Romans, the wages of sin is death. But you can have death without ceasing to be.

So in Ephesians 2, we were all by nature objects of wrath and we were dead in our transgressions and sins in which we used to walk.

So in Ephesians chapter two, you have people walking around in death. They don't cease to be, but they're in a state of death, which

Adam and Eve were the moment they ate from the fruit of the tree. Yeah, so there's layers to this because you mentioned kind of a covenantal relationship with Adam and God.

And so this is where the full preterist says, yeah, it's covenantal death. Everything is covenantal. And from my estimation, it's actually built on a type of dispensational hermeneutic because when they are talking about a covenantal

Adamic death, they are referring to the ethnic people of Israel, right?

They're not looking at the deeper principles of who the true Israel is. And so I loved what you said.

Death is more separation, right? Alienation, as Calvin put it. And so there's a lot going on in the garden.

And so the whole man at least is dichotomous, right?

He has a physical element made from the dust of the ground and there's that spiritual element, and this is inextricably linked together.

And so when I read Genesis one, two, and three, death would be touching all of who man is.

And so is that another good way of just kind of expounding on death? You can't separate it to merely be just spiritual or just physical, but it's also covenantal and touches both features of what man is.

Correct, absolutely. It touches everything we are and it touches everything we touch.

And if someone says, yes, yes, covenant, it's not a physical death because they didn't die that day,

I'd say, okay, let's come, always come back to Jesus. When he came from the dead, was that a covenantal resurrection or when

Mary Magdalene came up and touched him, what was she doing? What was happening there?

It was real. It was real. And so that's kind of Paul's whole beginning argument in this great resurrection chapter.

He begins with the resurrection of Jesus, his suffering, his death, his resurrection, that was according to the scriptures.

This is Christianity 101. And I believe he's saying, don't forget that, right?

This was all according to the scriptures. And now some of you are beginning to doubt that resurrection is possible.

And so he points to Jesus as the principle, as the rule and as the paradigm, right?

And so - Yes, the paradigm and the biblical word for that paradigm would be first fruits because he uses it in verse 20 and he uses it in verse 23.

And if the first fruits is wheat, the harvest is gonna be wheat.

If the first fruits is the bodily resurrection from a grave, then that's what the harvest is.

What are your initial thoughts? I've heard this objection. I kind of laugh because I know what I say initially, but Jeremiah, the resurrection of the dead, the first fruits are talking about Old Testament Israel.

So this is kind of a corporate body, covenantal resurrection. This isn't necessarily for Christians.

Yeah, I'd say, what did Jesus do? So going back to the first fruits principle, pointing to Jesus and -

It's always, yeah. I like to point out that those who have fallen asleep is not just a reference to Old Testament saints, but it's also used to describe those that saw our

Lord's resurrection, some who have fallen asleep, and some of those are still alive among you today.

So fallen asleep, when we look about the account with Lazarus, this is a term for saints, both

Old and New Testament. And so - Exactly. This corporate body resurrection view just falls flat.

You can't point to Jesus like you're pointing out, not consistently. They have to redefine first fruits.

They have to redefine what it means to be fallen asleep, because fallen asleep is a reference to saints

Old and New Testament, and it means that they physically died. Now, we don't believe in soul sleep, but this is talking about the blessed hope that Christians have, that we long to wake to a new day, a new dawn, to see our

Lord Jesus face -to -face. So it is as though, metaphorically, that this is just merely sleep.

We're gonna wake up. The general resurrection of people outside of Christ, they don't get to look at death as merely falling asleep, right?

So I wanted - Amen. Yes, I got some amens from Pastor Doug. That's what I'm talking about. And so, going back to this passage, so much is wrapped into this type of resurrection of the dead.

It's bodily. And then we get, in verse 24, more timing indicators.

I don't know how much you've interacted with Full Preterists, but their whole claim to fame is the timing indicators, the timing indicators.

And you've actually said, when you get a few good nuggets, right?

You had this theological hammer, and you started just smashing everything in to 70 AD with these timing indicators.

Is that how you've put it before? Yeah, probably, I don't remember. Yeah, well, you said it one time,

I laughed. I was like, that's so good. Because much of Scripture, some of Scripture does seem to point at what

Jesus in the Olivet Discourse is about to happen with the destruction of the temple, and perhaps with this generation.

I know there's a lot of talks within orthodoxy that continues to sharpen one another.

But what I've really pressed on people is saying, look, let's actually answer back with a stronger timing indicator.

And I believe Paul lays it out clear as day here, because in verse 24, or verse 23, but each in his own order,

Christ the firstfruits, what Jesus's resurrection looks like as a promise to us. Christ's firstfruits, then at his coming, right?

As at his returns, the presence of when King Jesus comes back, he says, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.

So we're starting to see at Jesus's return is gonna be when we who belong to Christ resurrect from the dead.

And then verse 24, then comes the end, okay? Because full preterists like to redefine the end always to mean to be the end of covenantal

Israel at 70 AD. So do you wanna comment as we're kind of going through verse 24, but then comes the end.

Is that very important to understanding, Paul? Yeah, because if you say, well, that's just talking about covenantal

Israel, then if they place the end in 70 AD, then that means

Jesus delivered the kingdom to God the Father in 70 AD. He had destroyed every rule and every power by 70

AD, and he's no longer reigning, okay? So if I said to a full preterist, is

Christ reigning now? I think given their understanding of verse 25, they'd have to say, no, he must reign until.

That's good. Because you mentioned this earlier, full preterism has the world as we know it.

This is the new heavens and new earth, right? That's just spiritual language to say that when we are in faith in Christ, we are in the new heaven and new

Jerusalem. And then to your point earlier, everything continues as is.

And so they maybe point to what Jesus accomplished at Calvary to accomplish, to defeat the penalty of sin, the penalty of death, but this worldview can't actually articulate how we interact with the physicality of death, right?

Its presence, right? Because it's gonna continue. And so then comes the end.

Paul talks about earlier in 1 Corinthians, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

And so there's been so much work talking about the already and not yet. Jesus' first coming brought his kingdom, right?

Inaugurated at his first coming. And then we're gonna see that one day at the end of this timeline, right?

That essentially Adam kickstarted. That's gonna reach an end, and that's gonna be the consummation of the age to come.

So I didn't know if you wanted to touch on that as well. Yeah, according to the full preterists, basically

Jesus had a reign that lasted for about 40 years. That's the millennial reign to them, right?

That's the millennial reign. And that's an awful lot of millennial reign to get into one generation.

I guess I would argue that it simply doesn't do justice to the cosmic scope of the language here, right?

It's sort of like this is a setup for a major letdown.

That's it? That was the millennium? You mean I've lived 30 years longer than the millennium did?

That's not cool. Yeah, and that's why I'd say intuitively when people start hearing what full preterism is, they're unconvinced.

I mean, because spiritual warfare essentially goes out the window, right? Because the devil and all of them have been already judged and thrown into the lake of fire at 70

AD, right? And so it redefines Christianity. They have this hammer where everything gets reinterpreted into 70

AD, right? It has to be read backwards, not progressively the way that scripture was handed down to us.

And so we're kind of building up to this major timing indicator that I believe full preterism has zero to respond with of real substance because for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. And so when people come to me or I try to help warn people of these things, there's still death, there's still sin, there's still wars, all the effects of evil around us.

And this is a promise that as we look around us and we still see the effects, hurts and pains of evil, sin and death, this is a reminder that Jesus has not returned yet because when he does, all these things are gonna be judged with the apocalypses, right?

The great revealing of the great coming of our Lord to judge the world in righteousness. Exactly, exactly so.

The last enemy, what you're doing is saying, well, you have to understand that verse 26, the last enemy to be destroyed is death doesn't mean that death is destroyed.

And I say, why did God give us a Bible? Well, this is a

Adamic death, Pastor Doug and Adam didn't die that day. Yeah, so if it's

Adamic death, so that death and sorrow, when the Bible says death and sorrow flee away, what you're doing is saying they don't.

So I have the sensation basically of standing in a full preterist view of history.

And I feel like I'm standing in a corridor of wax linoleum on the floor and an acoustic tile ceiling that's eight feet up.

And this tiled hallway with acoustic tiles up above my head, eight feet tall goes on forever and ever and ever and ever.

And that sounds basically, that sounds like hell. Basically, the

Christian hope is realistic about the existence of evil and wickedness and suffering and affliction in this world.

But we have a story arc. And in the story arc, there's a pivot point, which is the death and resurrection of Christ.

There's the advancement of the kingdom. There is the fulfillment of the great commission.

And then there is a climactic moment. There's a last chapter where we all turn around and look at the book of human history.

And we say, that was the best story ever, right? But with the full preterist view of human history, it's not a story at all.

It's just one damn thing after another. Yeah, and it's frustrating, right?

I mean, I feel the words of the Apostle Paul to the believers at Corinth. He says, you foolish person, right?

They're casting doubt that resurrection is even possible. And he's like, look to our Lord, right?

He did it and he's the first fruits. Right, exactly. I'm with you. I mean, it makes me angry because this is not a tertiary doctrine.

This is attacking our first tier gospel blessed hope because what you do with the resurrection has a necessary consequence.

I like what you said. That's kind of redefining who Jesus is. And so, a couple more thoughts on this, but I just wanted to say, in my interactions with Dr.

Sam Frost, we're talking about death, right? How this is talking about the wholeness of who man is.

And he astutely pointed out in Psalm chapter 90, you have the

Psalm of Moses saying, you return man, literally Adam, to dust. And you say, return,

O children of man. And all of his posterity in that same passage goes on to say the years of our life are but 70.

So my point is, he's talking about actual physical life. There's a terminus, right?

There's an end that all of history is working towards and our life is a testimony of that, right?

We wither up, we dry up and maybe we'll live 70 or 80 years, but we are going to die and returned to dust.

And so to your point, I mean, that's just totally taken away to say, oh,

Adamic death, right? It's just sin against God and it's merely spiritual. So I just want to thank you,

Pastor Doug. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Basically, I would say, and so do you think that physical death is the result of sin?

Or do you think that physical death is something that God looked down on in creation week and said, behold, it is very good.

All right, so is physical death good or bad? Is physical death connected to Adamic death at all?

Is it a consequence? Because otherwise, now you've disrupted apologetics and the defense of God's goodness because God has sort of decreed as a good thing, anguish and suffering and decay and decrepitude.

Is that a creational good? Or is it the result of sin?

So you said something that really resonated with some of my experience because I say, unfortunately, but God's providence,

I've been having to study this for the better part of a year. This goes back to about a year ago, I had a dear friend that's pastoral ministry calling me saying,

Jeremiah, I'm gonna explore the world of eschatology. And I told him, good luck. I'm gonna continue with apologetics, but we'll still sharpen each other.

And months into this thing, he went from pre -meal to all meal to post -meal. And then he called me one day,

Pastor Doug, and just said, Jeremiah, I think I'm a heretic. And I was like, hold the brakes.

What in the world are you talking about? And so he said, remember that full preterism stuff I was talking to you about a while back?

And I just said, yeah, that crazy stuff. And he goes, I can't disprove it. And so my advice was, it's okay to wrestle with hard to understand concepts, but please, by everything that is holy, don't preach it from your pulpit.

And so it was just a matter of weeks, maybe a couple months, and that's exactly what this individual started doing.

And so this has touched Jonesboro in a way where I'm from where it's personal.

So when you start talking about how they redefine everything, one of my big questions was, okay, like I said to my friend,

I said, apologetically, you have to be able to give an account for why things happen in the world.

And my point was death. Why does death happen? Because it's a result of sin. And the response of this individual at the time was, it's just talking about spiritual death, not sure why physical death is actually occurring because in his mind, he's uncomfortable with saying, well, it's a result of the fall because of the implications of that later on.

So to your point, full preterism, they can't give an account for the world that we live in, the purpose, right?

Much less the telos of what everything is working towards because for them, it goes on infinitum. Yeah, and one of the most manifestly obvious truths for anyone with a

Christian common sense is that death, physical death is an enemy. It is, and we can back it up with scripture.

Like when the full preterists say, y 'all are just hyper -credalist. I'm just thinking, oh boy, we have to have this conversation because you've rightly put out, look, they're not the ultimate authority, the creeds and confessions, but they are a higher authority than you, right?

Right, right, not higher than scripture, not higher than scripture, but higher than you guys.

If you utilize that table of contents in your Bible, we're bound by types of creeds, right?

And that's not a bad thing. And so what I've tried to encourage all of us within studying eschatology, because eschatology does matter,

Brandon would, is we should be able to offer a robust eschatology of our blessed hope, the second coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, that's bodily for crying out loud, and how

Jesus will return to restore the world and righteousness and restore all things. So I do think we need to have robust apologetics to answer the full preterist, right?

But like you've rightly said, we don't wanna hand them a microphone, right? I believe you've talked about first order threats versus first order error, is that right?

You talked about two categories, I believe? Correct, yeah. And so at this point in time, there's about 14 of them, right?

Now, unfortunately, all 14 of them are in my backyard. So I'm forced to call

Pastor Doug and Dr. Sam Frost, and which I'm grateful for the opportunity. So I do wanna remind people, hey, we do need to give a scriptural answer, contending for context.

And I think 1 Corinthians 15, and going back to 2 Timothy 2, are wonderful places to start, but this is embedded in a larger worldview, like you've been pointing out, right?

This isn't just the first time we've read about these things in scripture. Exactly. So as we begin to wind down,

I wanted to get some more of your thoughts, because when people say, Jeremiah, why is full preterism attack on the gospel?

Well, we've kind of talked about, it's an attack on Jesus's bodily return, right?

Because they put that in the past, 70 AD. And we're like, no, Jesus is going to return to destroy the last enemy, death, physical death.

And it's almost unfortunate I have to keep qualifying that, but that's the argument Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15.

And so number two, to get the timing of the resurrection of the dead is heresy. I mean, it causes people to swerve from the truth because our resurrection is so tightly connected with Jesus's resurrection,

Him being the first fruits. And so I've also told people, full preterism undoes the nature of who

Jesus is as the God -man. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. So their understanding of 1

Corinthians 15 is flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. So there's no bodiliness in heaven.

And I had to learn that the new heaven's new earth is disconnected from the idea that we go to heaven one day.

And so when you start asking about Jesus being the God -man, they don't like Him having a body now in heaven.

And so I believe Dr. Frost wrote an article is, where do they hide the body essentially? Because in their theology,

Jesus needs to be the God -man somehow, but He can't have that human nature as we know it.

And so are you aware that they kind of pushed that view that Jesus is no longer the man, right?

The way, because you got to think 1 Timothy 2, that's before 70 AD, right? I don't know how that helps them, but that's usually the rescuing device.

But Jesus does not have a body now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. So you, and so I'd say that, so then you don't have a high priest interceding for you.

Right, you don't have a high priest. And that's necessary. Romans 8 is a good place to say like, He has given us all things.

He not only died for Christians with his penal substitutionary death. Sorry, my Arminian friends out there.

But more than that, He was raised for us, no dispute there. And He continues to intercede as our perfect high priest.

And that's the whole point of like federal headship. We need Jesus to perfectly represent us, but they will say

He no longer has that humanity aspect. And it's this sort of, when they have this kind of carnal logic that has them by the throat, it just carries them right out of Orthodox Christianity.

If Christ is not the God -man in heaven now, interceding for you now, you're not a

Christian. It's that simple. Christ is declared in Romans 1, 4,

He's declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. We know that He's gonna judge the whole world,

Acts 17, by His resurrection from the dead. He was in Romans, He was raised to life for our justification.

So that resurrection, if it's not a bodily resurrection where He ascends in the body, 10 fingers into heaven, if that's not the case, you're still in your sins.

And if you're confessing something different, you're not a Christian. Which kind of makes sense for what they're trying to do because as you know,

Acts 1, 11, we understand the way that Jesus ascended is He's coming back. But in their whole redefining is that He was ascending authoritatively, right?

And so that's kind of the moment that He somehow loses the body because when He returned at 70 AD, He was spiritual.

You know what I mean? And so they're not shy about denying that Jesus doesn't have a body.

Now, they can't, I mean, they'll try to say He's still the God -man. But one view that was put out,

I believe by the gentleman named Don Preston was, well, Jesus, when He ascended, was reabsorbed back into the

Trinity by the eternal Logos. So He still has those human memories when He did that. So like I said, they are serious about He doesn't have that bodily nature.

This is just Gnosticism. Because, so then the question is, some full preterists say we get a heavenly body, but what if Jesus doesn't have one, why do

I need one? Now, go ahead.

Well, that's it. Do you believe, what it's starting to boil down to is do you guys believe in a resurrection at all?

Well, I was resurrected when I put my faith in Jesus. Jesus said to, was it Martha, I'm the resurrection of life that you believe in me?

So then the answer is no. They don't, not a future bodily biological, as some of them said resurrection, so they denied that.

And so something I was talking with Dr. Frost about, is there's many passages that use the present tense of Jesus's human nature.

For in Him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And so it seems like at the incarnation,

I mean, this fits with what you already said, but there's a present continual sense that He must continue to represent us perfectly.

And so this has been one place, Colossians 2 .9. And another place I would love to get your thoughts on is in 1

John chapter four. Ironically, because you mentioned kind of Gnosticism being at play,

John's getting ready to combat these Gnostic ideas.

It says, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come, present tense, in the flesh, is from God.

And so what do you think about this, keying in on Jesus coming in the flesh is in the perfect tense, the continual sense that He's in the flesh.

To deny that is essentially heretical because you no longer have that high priest.

I agree with that. And they would say, well, we believe that He has come in the flesh, but then

He quit doing that. My question is, why did

Paul use the perfect tense if that was gonna have a terminus? Yeah, I would say the same thing.

In Romans, he ever lives, let's see, Romans 8, 27,

Romans 8, 34, sorry. Who is he who condemns?

It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

So it links His intercession for us in the body.

He died, He rose, and He prays. If I don't have a high priest, if I don't have a high priest in the body,

I don't have a high priest. So I'll read this kind of passage again that you were talking about.

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?

Christ Jesus is the one who died. I always put a finger up, because I say I want people to remember three things.

He died, a penal substitutionary death for Christians. Paul's talking about the elect, sorry,

Arminian friends. But more than that, argument from the lesser to the greater who was raised, and is at the right hand of the

Father who is interceding for us. And so I think that's such a strong passage, because it does talk about the particularity of Jesus' substitutionary death, right, for the elect, for Christians, but it's a package deal.

His resurrection isn't disputed, that it's for those who believe, and He continues to intercede on our behalf. So there's a lot hanging in the balance there.

Pastor Doug, and I just wanna be respectful of your time, and so I appreciate you talking to me about these important matters.

I think you have done a phenomenal job of not giving the microphone to full predators that I'm constantly hearing.

People drag your name through the mud. Now, they'll praise you with so much other stuff, but oh, poor

Doug, he can't get his eschatology right. And it's so frustrating, because it's not like you're afraid to debate and tussle with these people.

I mean, you've written books, you've talked on this subject, but you rightly are not gonna give them a platform, because they're trying to call out

Jeff Durbin, who I'm friends with, and my thought is, don't waste your precious pastoral time with these wackadoos, you know what

I mean? And so there may come a day where that's necessary, but it ain't today, right?

And so I think you've done a phenomenal job with that, because they are springing up in Arkansas, and so you may have to keep pumping content for the apologetic dog to continue to wage the good fight.

Now, I will say this, by God's grace, there's two full -predatorist churches where I'm at.

One is already closed shop, and so people ask me why, and I'm just like, they can't self -sustain.

I mean, they can preach a year on the Olivet Discourse, and that's their battle cry, but when it comes to meaningful discipleship, pastoral care, it's not gonna be a healthy church, right?

So it's gonna have a way of just dying and self -imploding, and so a lot of these guys that write books on full -predatorism, they have to sneak in to these mega

SBC churches, right, where they can't, they might become members, but any reformed church is gonna bar them from coming to the table and being a member, and so my big caution to people is, look, full -predatorism is parasitic.

It has to leech off orthodoxy and try to cloak itself and creep in unaware, so do you have any kind of final words to any full -predators out there listening?

Yeah, I would just say the incarnation was permanent. Just like that, the incarnation was permanent, and there's so much other things that we've talked about that's attached to the incarnation, but you have to give up so much in order to save the paradigm, the worldview of full -predatorism, and so,

Pastor Doug, thanks so much. I want to encourage people, go read your book, Heaven Misplaced, and did you say you wrote some more on eschatology elsewhere?

A commentary on Revelation called When the Man Comes Around. When the Man Comes Around, you come up with the best titles, by the way, just with everything, so appreciate your work with all that, and so,

Pastor Doug, maybe our paths will cross again one day in the future, and so until then, thank you so much.

Yes, we'll be ready soon, right? All right, God bless. All right, God bless, take care.

Thanks so much for tuning in to The Apologetic Dog.

This was a big blessing to have Pastor Doug come on and just talk about why eschatology matters, what our blessed hope looks like in the return of King Jesus in our future, and so if you haven't subscribed, please do that to The Apologetic Dog.

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