110. Justin VanRiper Interview | A Practical Postmillennialism Series

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when i became a calvinist i realized that pretty much all of my theology was wrong and not in the last thing to sort of rebuild theologically was my eschatology once i got my view of salvation right my soteriology and my view of christ and and all these things once that all kind of fell into place and i kind of firmly landed into a confessional position i finally felt comfortable re -examining my eschatology hello everyone and welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf this is episode 110 an interview with justin van riper well hello everyone and welcome back to a special episode of the podcast i am talking to the one the only justin van riper how are you justin i am doing well brother how are you i'm good justin is my favorite baptist he might be the only baptist i'm friends with i'm just kidding he's my favorite one though and i've got him on the show today because we've been in a series called a practical post -millennialism and if you haven't been joining us what we've been trying to to look at is how is this doctrine of the end times that jesus is gonna is gonna return after he's built his kingdom uh how is that practical because it's not an ivory tower doctrine for theologians it's not something that dusty textbook on a shelf that you never crack open this actually has real uh value for how we live our life i've said over and over in the series that if you don't understand the end times or if you understand the end times wrongly you're going to live wrongly in our time and i'm so pleased to have justin on the show today justin is a um is a man uh and i maybe we have to qualify that in a world filled with confusion justin is a man justin is a brand new dad justin is an elder candidate at your church yes sir that's what i thought i didn't think you had crossed over into the uh into the world i haven't got my badge just yet yeah but brother uh yeah if uh if there's other things you want to add to that in your bio tell us who justin is because i already know you yeah yeah no kendall is uh kendall is a dear friend and um yeah i like he said i am a i'm a dad i'm a husband i'm a son i'm a author an elder candidate um a whole host of other things i don't know i've done a lot and um and i am just enjoying the life that god has given me and um yeah i am also a baptist of the particular variety uh but i am also a dear post -millennial brother in arms and uh yeah so i'm i'm really excited to be here and to talk about uh victory and how we can bring that victory into our homes amen um yeah it's kind of like presbyterians are the marines and um and baptists are the coast guard but we're still fighting the same fight right yes we like to defend the homeland i'm just kidding you guys build way bigger boats than they do it's true it's true brother start us off in case someone is just first time on the show and they're trying to figure out like what is post -millennialism i'm a new dad i'm a new mom what does this mean it maybe give us sort of a biblical uh overview of it and how you came to be a post -millennialist yeah uh well uh real quick preface post -millennialism uh is simply the eschatology that we think is biblical it is the idea that um christ is reigning right now at the right hand of the father and he is taking uh dominion meet by the means of the church through the world and that his promises are not merely some sort of ethereal spiritual victory but that his victory actually reaches the ends of the earth and that his promises will be fulfilled in history and that we get to enjoy being a part of that as we move forward for the name of christ on the earth and so uh yeah we we believe the promises all the way back in genesis 22 that uh when abraham is promised that his seed shall possess the gate of his enemies we believe that that's true we believe that we are descendants of abraham by faith and that we will indeed take dominion over the earth as we have been commissioned since the beginning so post -millennialism is great i grew up um like many in a sort of dispensational uh left behind sort of eschatological environment uh i grew up a wesleyan and that was just kind of the default view of the end times right that that eventually we'd be raptured up and and that everything would continue to crumble and get worse until eventually we we finally get saved from all the horror that's around us and that and that christ would save us and we'd vanish like ghosts leaving our clothes and our tooth fillings behind um and uh you know i i watched the movies i i read the books the kids series of the books you know i i was a card carrying dispensationalist until uh until i had a wake -up call uh when i became a calvinist i realized that pretty much all of my theology was wrong and and the last thing to sort of rebuild theologically was my eschatology once i got my view of um salvation right my soteriology and my view of christ and and all these things once that all kind of fell into place and i kind of firmly landed into a confessional position i finally felt comfortable re -examining my eschatology i spent some some time as like a pan -millennialist right and all kind of pan out in the end um and but you know i started to realize as i was examining my theology that my my eschatology impacted the rest of my theology so i needed to i needed to dive in and figure out where i landed and um and so i kind of started in the amil camp for a while a lot of baptists especially famous baptists have always been sort of in the amil camp it's a good catch -all if you don't know where you're going it's like yeah i'll just hang out there for a while exactly yeah i was kind of an optimistic amil guy you know i i still believed in victory but um you know just not total victory yeah and and so uh once i heard what post -millennial post -millennialism was um i you know kudos to my dear friends at apologia for introducing me to post -millennialism um once once i heard that and i and i kind of learned of it i i ordered the books you know i got all the ken gentry stuff of course and i started reading through um botner and and gentry and and all these guys and i realized okay this is where i am this is where this is what i see in the scriptures this is what i i feel like is the most coherent and the most logical and the most full uh eschatologically speaking and so that's that's kind of how i ended up in the post -mill camp um i did take a brief stint as a theonomist uh but i i have backtracked from that i i do not consider myself a theonomist um but i am all for christian nations and we should we should take over the world for christ so yeah let's go man i'm i'm hyped up yeah maybe we can talk about theonomy in another episode but for now uh and christian nationalism uh seems like you were dropping that uh dropping that bomb right there as well uh that's been crazy but yeah i had a great conversation with tom askell on my show oh i can't wait to listen to it man um but you you dropped a couple names just there which i think was is helpful and i don't know that yet in the series that we've really done a good bibliography of of post -mill readings you said ken gentry said maureen bettner um you said the what would be like if if you were going to recommend to someone um a reading list for post -millennialism maybe start with an entry -level book uh maybe more of a a middle -range book and then and then maybe um a guy like ken gentry and he shall have dominion goes down at the bottom on the on the detailed exhaustive treatment of it but yeah uh what would you say um interestingly enough that i don't think there's nearly enough work uh written about post -millennialism uh in terms of um books that are that are easily available uh but there is uh there is some stuff out there um i i would start ken gentry has done a lot of work um and i think that folks uh his he shall his book he shall have dominion is definitely a a good one um but it might not be where you want to start honestly i recommend people start with ages yeah i recommend people start with uh sproles uh sproles uh sort of treatment of eschatology in general uh the last days according to jesus he he gives a pretty good summation of kind of all of the views that kind of fit within orthodoxy um and and i think he does a pretty fair treatment overall uh that was actually that got my dad out of um dispensationalism sort of pan -millennialism uh he's kind of worked his way to the amil camp i'm still working on that but we'll get there um rc's book was the book that got me um out of historic pre -millennialism so yeah that's an incredible book i highly recommend that um but there's a couple other books uh that i might recommend um gentry does do a book called post millennia post millennialism made easy um it's it's not nearly as intense as he shall have dominion but uh it's it's very useful um uh bonson also wrote a book called victory in jesus can't go wrong uh with that um and then uh the most controversial of the bunch mr mr douglas wilson when the man comes around uh again a useful a useful book uh in terms of uh terms of eschatology and then there's one other one i'm trying to remember the name of it uh it's it's something about an eschatology of hope i think it's called uh by keith matheson yeah um again that's another decent uh read that's a little bit older that's from the from the 90s um so you know it's not like everything written is totally new so yeah there's just a handful of books that maybe folks can check out um all of those are i think available on amazon or wherever you buy your christian books um but yeah yeah those if you read a those handful of books you'll have a pretty solid um treatise on post -millennialism uh what we believe and you're going to get a little bit of a mix you know you're going to have um with someone like bonds and right uh you're going to get a little bit of the theonomy uh just kind of built in uh they often go hand in hand they don't have to but they often do um so uh you know read at your own uh discretion but highly recommend uh highly recommend all that stuff well speaking of things that go together it seems to me um and and i'd like to get to the practical portion of this first but or in just a moment but yeah um but first it seems to me that also post -millennialism goes hand in hand with partial preterism um you've got um i think roughly four hermeneutical categories of how to read end times literature by hermeneutics i just mean uh the way to interpret something so uh all the passages could be future that's called futurism all the passages could be spiritual and nature only that's called idealism the passages could be somehow fulfilled in sequential order throughout history that's called historism and then you've got preterism or partial preterism um would you say that that's a true statement that those two things go together and um how has that hermeneutic actually affected the way that you read the scriptures sure um i would say generally yes post -millennialism i think in its right setting would be partial preterist um there are some futurist post -mill sort of hybrid camps that i've i've heard um but it's it's usually pretty wonky um so yeah generally i would say that that's kind of the setting uh to really understand post -millennialism rightly you kind of have to end up in the partial preterist camp in terms of partial preterism we didn't even define it yeah oh right so that would be useful um that's essentially the idea right that uh the majority of the prophecies that we see about the end times in the scriptures have been essentially fulfilled um save maybe the great white throne judgment which of course when christ returns and and puts death to death uh finally and um so yeah to understand that that primarily um the prophecies that we understand even in revelation right kind of took place uh in and around and concluded around 70 a .d

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um there are some who might argue 90 you know whatever but separate conversation um but yeah i mean it's a relatively it's a relatively uh i mean that's essentially the the idea you know you got the futurists right that are that or even the historicists the folks that kind of think things are unfolding over time and and that maybe you can try to squeeze prophecies and the scriptures into your news clippings and say oh yeah you know hitler was this or whatever but no we we um we don't do that here right um yeah so we would say that as partial preterists that um that most the majority of the eschatological passages in the bible have already been fulfilled yeah and there's very good reasons for believing that rc brings this up in his book last days according to jesus that's why i actually sort of brought it up is because if you read last days according to jesus another good book that you could get that was influential for rc and also for ken gentry is called the parousia by j stewart russell now uh disclaimer he thinks that everything has been fulfilled already i don't agree with that and i know you don't agree with that right but the parts that he gets right are really good and they're really useful so i i would say i mean that's a big book that's a that's a heavy lift if you want to get into that but it's a good one as well excellent yeah that's great all right so with jesus um he's going to make uh his kingdom advance he's going to put the government on his shoulders he's going to spread out his kingdom uh from sea to shining sea to to where it covers the entire globe uh and it's going to encapsulate all of uh what we know as planet earth today and it's going to happen before he returns so we agree with that how does that actually affect the way that you live what difference does it make sure well um consider any battle that you're in uh any battle that you've watched on on tv uh in movies right i think of a brave heart you know they they always go and give the great speech right before they go into battle why why would you give some sort of encouraging speech uh encouraging that you're gonna have victory you're gonna have dominion well if you go into battle knowing well we're all gonna die and we're doomed that's not really encouraging that's not really fruitful um i don't think that that's going to be great for morale so when we rightly recognize that god is truly sovereign over all of history that christ truly is king and that he really is reigning if those things are true the only inevitable outcome is victory right uh we are uh created beings people of the earth we will always be people of the earth we are always going to be human beings we're never going to be a different type of being um and god is making all things new he's not making all new things he's making all things new and uh creation cries out and yearns uh for redemption right we we have a lot of things that we can look forward to when we when we understand how things end rightly and so uh as we live out our lives as we go to work as we evangelize those who are standing in front of um walking into abortion mills to slaughter their children as we go out and we give the gospel to folks as we uh work hard and bring the gospel into our workplace uh as we raise children in our homes um what's going to be the most effective um means of encouraging us to do that and then also giving them a purpose like why why are we raising our children to fight if we're just going to lose in this in the in the thing we should do is just sit back relax um because tomorrow we're all gonna you know we're all just going to be slaughtered anyway so what difference does it make right but when i can look at my son and i can say look the world out there is deadly the world hates god but god has made you for such a time as this there's a lot of people out there who need the gospel there's a lot of dragons that need slaying and guess what you got the sword we're gonna equip you we're gonna train you now you go out there and you you conquer right you take dominion over what god has put in your field of view right um as you go out you need to be excellent at school why do you need to be excellent at your school work well because the smarter you are the more effective and more capable you're going to be at bringing the gospel to the nations uh the the more fit and strong you are the more effectively you're going to be able to protect and provide for your family yeah um and and to uh effectively um take care of the orphan and the widow right if you're if you're horribly out of shape and you're lazy because you're just waiting for jesus to show up while you watch netflix well that's that's not going to be an effective means of taking dominion and bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth and if and if all those promises are merely spiritual well sure you know of course we want to go out we want to we want to encourage people to not die and in their sin and end up in eternal damnation but there's so much more than that right christ is also a man and he is also going to come back down to earth and accomplish what he's started right if if it it doesn't make a lot of coherent sense to me um if if there is no physical reality to the promises that have been made uh it doesn't really encourage me it doesn't make me want to uh rear up my children uh into into battle i would want to make them as comfortable as possible so they can have the easiest life possible until jesus comes back but that's not what we're called to right i don't want lazy slothful children i want children who want to go out there and want to see an end to abortion they want to see an end to the evils of the world to slavery that that's still happening in countries all across the uh the earth you know that there's so much out there that needs to be destroyed and the only way that's going to happen is the same way it's always happened in history and that's through christians taking dominion over things yeah it's so good um so many things we could jump in on that but um just it was i was uh thinking as you were sharing there's a couple things uh number one we serve in the abortion uh mills or we serve outside of them we preach the gospel because we have an expectation that sinners will be converted because christ said that the whole world will eventually be filled with worshipers so there's only two outcomes either they defy the lordship of jesus christ or they come under his leadership and and inherit his blessings but we have no uh pessimism whatsoever that that they're winning no the only reason that they have the appearance of winning now is because we've retreated so we need to actually engage we need to bring the gospel and we need to love them enough to say turn from your sin and turn to jesus christ so we have an expectation that they will when they hear the gospel the gospel has powers the power of god so that's the first thing um second thing i was thinking of um i don't even drive the same way that i used to now that i'm a post -millennialist you know i used to uh when i was a dispensationalist i used to drive as if everybody was my enemy and that they were i was just one attack away from the rapture like and and i was you know it just made me a little bit more aggressive as a driver now i look at people who are you know cutting me off and who are flipping me off whatever i live in massachusetts so it's crazy but i look at those people and and i have sorrow in my heart for them and i say that's the mission field that's who christ died for i want to share the gospel with him so like it's changed that that that assumption of victory that assumption that the world is not always going to be this way has actually propelled me to be more active um and the last thing i think that i was uh just reflecting on what you just said is post -millennialism is the only view that reinvigorates the cultural mandate all of the other views sort of say well god made a physical world and we messed that part up so now all we have left is heaven spiritual existence that the physical aspect of everything has passed away and god's done with that part of the plan maybe brother um described us how that's ludicrous yeah yeah no i i absolutely agree um the the idea that i i would argue that in many ways that's kind of a gnostic way of understanding things that we have somehow damaged the physical creation to such a degree that it's fully corrupt and that there is no good left of any kind and that god is just going to totally uh abandon it and that all that's left is going to be uh sort of an ethereal spiritual blessing and and then everything's going to be made all over again um i don't see that story in scripture i don't see that god created everything and it was very good and then it's now been totally and utterly corrupt we believe in total depravity not utter depravity right depravity affects all things but it's not utterly depraved we are not as as depraved as we could be creation is not as depraved and rotten as it could be you can go outside and see beauty you can go outside and you can see wonderful glorious things you can look in the stars romans right the heavens declare the glory of god why because they're good it's a good creation that god made and we've tarnished it but it's being made new and if that's true and we get to be a part of making it new well how does that happen right it's the it's the conversion of souls first of all but our conversion is not where christianity ends if we are truly converted we are going to walk in the good works that god has prepared for us and if we're walking in good works that god has prepared for us that's going to have an impact on the world around us it starts in your family and then it all of a sudden your church is starting to reform and all of a sudden your church is growing and all of a sudden that impacts your community and then what happens the christians in your community start running for office and then you have dusty deavers right yeah so these things are realities that inevitably take place you can't escape you can't escape this idea that people are converted and then they just kind of hide out in the church and wait for everything to collapse that doesn't make any sense we go out and and we fight against the evils of the world because we know they will be done with and so when i'm teaching my children at home hey you need to grow up and you need to be able to understand what the scripture says you need to be able to articulate and give an apologia for your faith you need to be able to to contend with with the best and the brightest why because you're going to win you're going to win over them there's going to be victory and what you do now is going to affect your grandkids and your great -grandkids right if we if we want our great -great grandkids to worship christ that that's a physical hope it's a spiritual hope but it's a physical hope we hope that the world's going to be here for our great -great -grandkids to be born right and that assumes that our children are getting married and that assumes that our children are going out into the world and doing what like just fiddling around like that's not christianity that that doesn't make any sense to me and so i think the the the inevitable conclusion of christianity has to be post -millennialism because there is an inevitable physical result of becoming a christian that affects your whole life there's no way it doesn't impact the physical world around you and if that's true and christianity we know is going to continue to to go from one nation to the next and eventually we're going to be making disciples and all the nations uh two plus two equals four my guy i mean i don't see how you can end up in another conclusion right um as you were talking brother i was i was thinking everybody has an eschatology victory except christians which is which is so strange to me uh secularist and um and liberals and progressives they all have an eschatology victory they believe that if they do consistently their worldview if they take over the schools and if they indoctrinate our children and if they if if they you know foist abortions onto the populace and if they do uh if they take over the media if they take over hollywood if they take over everything then their worldview will come about their victory will come about muslims but like the muslims do the same thing if we can just take over the world then our worldview will work out why do christians think that or believe in this sort of theology by retreatism our job is to bring all of christ into all of life it's oh it's maddening no that that's a really great point uh and that's conversation i've had several times with people right the reason that the left is being successful or the reason that islam is being successful uh the reason that any of these pagans are being successful is specifically because they live practically post -millennial they recognize and they believe that they eventually will have whatever utopia that they think uh they're promised and so they work relentlessly in order to achieve it and yet the christians have become sort of a i mean think about it a few hundred years ago christianity ruled the earth we ruled planet earth everywhere that was civilized was christian why well practically speaking even if their theology was not eschatologically developed we were being post -millennial yeah we were taking things for christ right for christendom right and so why have we stopped that now now that we actually have a developed eschatology that we can justify with scripture and explain and teach uh and there's plenty of work that's that's been done in order to do that we we can actually sit back and we can say no look this is what this is what bible has always taught we see it played out over and over again in history as christendom has taken over the earth and and as everything that's civilized which has come from from christians why why have we suddenly decided to stop and be lazy um i think to some degree and this is this is um maybe sort of pedantic but i feel like we've shot ourselves in the foot by being post -millennial we've created a society that has flourished so greatly and we've been so successful that we've become lazy we we've we created a culture in which it was so easy and so comfortable to be christian that nobody had any sense of urgency anymore nobody had any desire to go because you know here we live in the christian west you know everything's great everything's easy we're the world's strongest nation you know now we can finally sit back smoke our cigars and everything will be fine except we stopped too early and and now here we are bearing the fruit of that um and with any war right you have battles that you win and battles that you lose just two battles forward one battle back you know this is war we are at war it's spiritual war and and it's it's a physical war i mean look around you you know you got children getting their body parts chopped off uh and being pumped full of drugs yeah i'd consider that a real war an attack on humanity uh and an attack on all that is christian um and in natural and everything else yeah that that's we're at war and we're we're just kind of sitting on our bums hoping that what he's going to send in the airplanes i mean we're it we're the we're the soldiers we need to take up our cross we need to pick up our arms and we need to thus always to tyrants right right resistance to tyranny is obedience to god we need to resist that which is evil we need to fight back and to do that it starts in our homes right we the reason i care so much about catechizing my children is because we're at war it the muslims are doing it they're taught from the time that their children to hate america hate the west hate christianity and so you have seven -year -olds walking around uh casually bringing in ieds uh into into u .s