Aug. 17, 2015 Show with Dean Davis on “Amillennialism” [End Times 6-Day Marathon]

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.

Arnson. Welcome to the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. During the broadcast and recording of this episode, we experienced technical difficulties that affected the quality of the audio. In particular, Chris Arnson's extended introduction of the week's theme was largely unintelligible.

Although we cannot currently restore the original audio, what follows is more or less what Chris said. This is the first time on the new Iron Sharpens Iron that we have focused six days in a row on one theme.

This is the first day of a six-day marathon on end times, or last days, or eschatology. On every single day for the next six days, we are going to have representatives defending the major views of eschatology.

Today, for instance, our guest Dean Davis is going to be representing Amillennial Eschatology. Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 18th, we are going to be featuring Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church and Michael Vlock of the Master's Seminary, who are going to be discussing pre-tribulational premillennialism.

On Wednesday, August 19th, we have Barry Horner of John Bunyan Ministries and James Hamilton, who are going to be defending historic premillennialism. And then on Thursday, August 20th, we're going to have Alan Kirshner, a blogger for Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and Vince Sawyer, a retired pastor and itinerant evangelist, who are both going to be defending the pre-Wrath Rapture view.

On Friday, the 21st of August, we're going to be featuring John Jefferson Davis, author and professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a Reformed Baptist pastor from Ohio, Fred Pugh, who are both going to be defending the traditional understanding of post-millennialism.

And then on next Monday, the final day of our six-day marathon, Monday, August 24th, we're going to feature John Otis and also Jeff Durbin of Apologia TV, Apologia Radio, and Apologia Church, who are going to be presenting theonomic post-millennialism.

And now, we join Iron Sharpens Iron In Progress with our host, Chris Arnzen. So.

There you go, we have a really rich week of diverse brethren who all, though, believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They believe in the salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And they differ, though, at times very strongly on eschatology, and that is why we are having this six-day marathon, because there are many brethren in Christ who may have a heart beating as one, they may even be sitting in the same pew, but they disagree on matters of eschatology, which brethren in Christ throughout the centuries have disagreed on, even if in many cases they agreed on many of the pillars of the faith and had much in common.

But let me introduce our first guest. Our first guest today is Dean Davis, and he holds degrees in philosophy and theology, and he is a member of Mercy Hill Church and the director of Come Let Us Reason, a Bible teaching ministry specializing in apologetics and worldview studies.

And he is the author of the book, The High King of Heaven, Discovering the Master Keys to the Great End Time Debate. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron, Dean Davis.

It's a great pleasure to have you for the first time, Dean, and first of all, let me ask you, I know that your book is an outline, or it's more than an outline, it's a massive volume here that we have.

It's one of the largest works in eschatology I've ever seen, actually. It's over 720 pages. This is a very thorough and in-depth work on amillennialism, not only larger than most I've seen on amillennialism, but larger than most I've seen on any eschatological view.

Why did you find the need to write The High King of Heaven in light of the fact that other men, both old from days past and new, contemporary authors, have addressed this issue? What's different about The High King of Heaven that you felt the need to write it?

After I graduated from seminary, the topic of eschatology, I went through seminary, I was intrigued with the view, and I studied it, and I'd say over the course of about a year, I was pretty fully persuaded that this was the Bible, and I'm the kind of a guy that sort of likes to think while he writes, and I always think it's good for there to be two or three or more witnesses to the truth, so I thought it would be good to try to write a book.

So I tried and tried and tried for about three or four years, and I couldn't succeed. I've been writing in eschatology for many years. I thought it was time, an opportune time, to put together the book.

I think I was basically definitive on this question, the Herkimer's book, The Bible and the Future, that was one that was very influential in changing my thinking, but I felt that there was a weak link in most defenses of amillennialism, and that was a mislead and thoroughly testament text that our premillenarian brothers embrace, and I recognize that, and why so many evangelicals cling to premillennialism, is that they want to honor scripture by interpreting Old Testament prophecies of the kingdom in a literal manner.

If my book brings anything to the New Testament doctrine of the kingdom of God, what's its true nature, what's its true structure? Secondly, how in fact did the apostles handle those Old Testament kingdom prophecies?

Did they use a literal hermeneutic like our premillenarian brothers do, or did they handle them more figuratively? And then thirdly, I wanted to go back to the Old Testament text. So, time in world culture, in American culture, and I certainly do believe from my theology that the Church will pass through what traditionally is called the Great Tribulation, I'll deal with that term a little bit later, I prefer to call it the Last Battle, and that we would be ready for adequately equal time that the Church must pass through before she sees the Lord return in glory.

So, that's the question, I'll answer more if you have more questions on it.

The Meaning of the Millennium and the Binding of Satan

Well, I better have more since this is a two-hour program. Well, since this is on amillennialism, what is the thousand-year reign, often referred to as the Millennium of Jesus Christ, that is referred to in Isaiah 2, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 11, and other places?

Give us an amillennial perspective on what this means, and obviously, I should have said this at the outset, there are many different types of amillennialists, well, at least there are several, but there are probably many, just as each of the other categories of eschatology are.

No doubt, there's going to be diversity, there's going to be people who are going to protest that their particular view is not being adequately represented, and so what, let's start off with that, what is the Millennium?

Revelation chapter 20, into four sections, and each of which deals with this mystery, with a lot of different points of view on that, I think have two views of those thousand years' future. You mentioned Revelation 20, where we have the binding of Satan, and obviously you very frequently will hear those of the pre-millennial views mocking the idea that Satan could possibly be bound now due to the wickedness that is overwhelming the earth, can you tell us what you mean, what you mean, or what amillennialists in general mean by the binding of Satan in Revelation 20?

Sections, the section of the Last Judgment, and then in chapter 7, you get a little, probably not, but the power to bind the dragon, they should not be, from coming to Christ, he's gathering, so that's a long answer.

So, would you say this has a lot to do, in reference to the nations not being deceived by Satan, do you think that has a lot to do with the fact that with the coming of Christ and the New Covenant, the Gentiles were being ushered into the kingdom in mass like never before, would that have something to do with the nations not being deceived by Satan?

Yeah, yes, my point was that the Satan not deceiving the nations, is that in some part relating to the fact that the Gentile nations are coming into the kingdom like they never were before in the Old Covenant, with the ushering in of the New Covenant and Jesus Christ himself.

Oh, I've got it here now, yeah, I'm sorry, I, see, let me explain to our listeners what's going on here, our brother has a hearing problem, so I've been having to switch things on the studio board like I've never had to do before, and I appreciate your patience, those who are listening, but as I was saying, the deception of the nations that is not going to be happening during this thousand years, referred to in Revelation 20, is that somehow correlated with the fact that the New Covenant, in the New Covenant, with the dawn of Christ in the flesh and his sacrifice and his resurrection and so on, that the Gentile nations, like never before, were being ushered into the kingdom of God, and does that have some kind of connection with the reference to the nations not being deceived?

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be good and dies, it remains by itself alone, but if it dies, it, Bishon history, disciples into all the nations who are sort of symbolized or represented there by these Greeks, so that's exactly what you have, think back to Luke chapter 4, the devil took Jesus up to a high mountain, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and he said, if you'll just bow down to worship me, all of these I will give to you, they've been handed over to me, a little old Israel and maybe a handful of Gentiles who had found their way into Israel were deceived by Satan, they were bound by him, they were blinded to the truth of God.

Now that the gospel has come into the world, the church will no longer be able to deceive,.

Christ will have his people. So that would be the glorious and wonderful part of the millennium, that the other views, especially the pre-millennial views, cannot conceive why this would be so glorious, because they see nothing but wickedness getting worse, and they see, you know, I mean, we've reached things in this nation where there is same-sex marriage, abortion is off the charts, and the numbers of millions of children being murdered, and in their view, the millennium, Christ is actually physically present, so he is raining with a rod of iron and so on, and therefore the wickedness that we see now in their scenario of an earthly millennium with Christ physically present, they see that to be much more of an improvement or a glorious hope.

If you could contrast your view of the millennium with that, and why you still view it as something to be precious and something to praise God about.

Well, of course, that seems to me especially true of our dispensational brothers, the amillenarians have a realistic view, a much more optimistic view, you have two sons of the king, two crops are predestined to grow side by side until the end of the age, will return and affect the final separation, that's the consummation, the end of the age.

So what's optimistic and what's pessimistic? I say the amillennium for these reasons, in the parable of no longer be deceived from coming to cry, to a grateful and a beautiful reason, guilty and trial and tumult, that we try to portray the millennium as Christ is reigning, our monastery will compel them to admit that there is still sickness, and they're suddenly going to all rebel against and attack the holy city and the camp of the saints, something is wrong with that picture.

We're.

Going to be going to a break right now, if you have a question of your own for Dean Davis regarding amillennialism, write to us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com at c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com and please when you write, we ask of you to include your first name, your city and state, your country of residence, if you are outside of the USA, and we ask of you to only remain anonymous if this is involving something personal or private, but obviously this subject that we have today wouldn't normally lend itself to that type of question.

So email us as soon as you can, we would love to hear from you at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, don't go away, we'll be right back with Dean Davis and his discussion on amillennialism.

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Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us. Welcome back. This is Chris Arms and your host of Iron, Sharp, and Zion. If you've just tuned us in, today is the beginning of our six-day eschatology marathon.

And for the next six days, we are going to be going over all of the major views on eschatology. And today we are discussing amillennialism. And we have a representative of that view of eschatology, or end times, or last things, or last days.

He is the author of The High King of Heaven. And Dean Davis is also a member of the Mercy Hill Church. And he is going to be addressing, as I said earlier today, the amillennial position. And I have to read a quote by a well-known brother in Christ that is known to people across the board eschatologically, C. Samuel Storms.

Dr. Sam Storms writes of Dean's book, the most sweeping and comprehensive book on eschatology that I've ever encountered. The scope of this book is simply breathtaking. And that is quite a commendation since Sam Storms wrote his own book on eschatology.

So he's been quite a promoter of.

Your work, hasn't he, brother? So I'm just talking to you on my regular phone. Hopefully.

The people... Well, that sounds great. That sounds great, brother. And let's go back into our discussion where we left off. And please be patient with me, listeners, as I switch back and forth here because of our brother's hearing problem.

And sometimes I may forget to switch back and forth the correct knobs that I'm supposed to be hitting here. But you were talking about optimistic versus pessimistic eschatology earlier. And the post-millennialists will obviously say, well, you're far too pessimistic no matter what view you take.

Their view, of course, and it varies, there are no one set of beliefs held by post-millennialists, but they, for the most part, either believe that all of the Earth's inhabitants will become Christian or will at least bow to godly law, or that the majority will.

And what is your view of the future of planet Earth prior to the return of Christ? Do you see only a remnant remaining faithful or being obedient to godly law? Or do you see a close parallel to what a post-millennialist might say?

Your view of eschatology in the proper place, which is in the gospels and in the epistles supplemented by the book of Acts, rather than try to cobble together an eschatology based on Old Testament prophecies or based on the book of Revelation, you will see that pervasively the New Testament authors recognize that the disciples told us, first of all, all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

Six, on spiritual warfare, the entire pilgrimage in this Earth will be wrestling and fighting and struggling in the present darkness, as it says in the RSV version. I like that translation. So, again, the premise, the assumption is that to Satan, with the acceptance of the Father, has given to his son and who are called out of darkness into his marvelous light.

I don't see any New Testament justification for the idea of becoming better and better to such a degree that Christ will return to a Christianized world. In fact, if I were to respond to your question, I would say the opposite seems more likely to be true.

Jesus said that in the last days lawlessness will betray their parents and parents will put their children to death, brotherhood will be demanding, and that Christ's particular point is relatively little flock.

So, I don't know the objective answer to that, but that seems to me to be the tendency of the Olivet Discourse and other texts in the Bible.

Preterism and the Final Battle

If you could, even though this is not our main theme, if you could define preterism, because there are even amillennialists that would define themselves as partial preterists, and, of course, many more postmillennialists do, although not all.

In fact, I do have two separate days being dedicated to postmillennialism during this marathon because of the fact that one of the reasons is because of the fact that postmillennialists disagree on preterism and on theonomy.

But if you could give us a definition of preterism and let us know.

If at all you would embrace that ideology. There's a section in my book where I describe both partial preterism and full preterism, which just means pad. The gist of preterism, let me just summarize it broadly.

The gist of preterism is that preterist world evangelism has already been complete. Antichrist has already arisen. Tribulation in 70 AD. Titus came. There's a great deal of emphasis on the Olives' saying to the effect that we can place.

Full preterist basically says, now living in the new heavens and the new earth. The partial preterist says that, well, the gospel has been cleared. That would be Nero, for example. And the tribulation has occurred because Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD.

So the next big event to come is the second coming of Christ. Now, the reason I object to this is for the same reason that I would object to post-millennialism and dispensationalism. It leaves Christ's church unprepared for the last battle, for the final assault of Satan and his powers against the church.

Really develop at some length in my book because there are over 15 Old Testament and New Testament prophecies dealing with a final end-time assault of the nations inspired by Satan and led by the Antichrist against the church.

The preterist view says, oh, that's already happened under Nero. And then you throw in some post-millennial optimism and one day soon the Jews will be converted and the world will get better and better.

I think that's setting us up for a horrific disappointment. I think we should be girding up the loins of our mind right now and recognize that it is possible. I'm not predicting anything here, but I certainly think it's possible that we are entering into the kind of the final end-time agony of the church.

We see so many thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters all across the pond giving their life for the gospel. Us here in America, I don't think we should expect anything different, and I think we should be ready just in case these are the means of the end indicating that the Lord will return.

In regard to what you said,.

Uh, tell us something about in detail what this great rebellion you describe will be like.

And how the church is to be equipped to fight it. I had to talk about them at some length, but the kind of the locus classicus of this, of this, in Thessalonians chapter two, at the end of the age of lawlessness, a little bit here on my, um, well, while you're, while you're.

Looking, I could just repeat our email address. If anybody listening would like to email a question for Dean Davis, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please include your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the United States, and we obviously ask of you to keep the question, uh, relevant to.

Subject in hand. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, how this man of lawlessness, it says in field in the flesh and we'll be at the end of the age of the antichrist. So he has a coming just as first and the second coming the antichrist claims to the antichrist will be able to perform miracles and they will come from his father, the devil, rather than from the Lord.

He has a gospel, which Paul refers to as the lie. And he has a following, which Paul refers to as those who do not love the truth. And he has apparently a worldwide kingdom. He opposes Christ. Second Thessalonians says he opposes all that is called God, true God, because he wants all people.

He sits in the, in this gun, he suppresses the worship of the true God and he persecutes. So I would put a fairly large idea that there will be at the end of the age as humanity rebels against the law and gospel of God, two things were to look for the man of lawlessness.

I think the rebellion against the law and against the gospel, which I think we're seeing quite as something that looks like that now for sure, creates an environment in which a man of lawlessness can step forth and lead the world in a counterfeit religion.

So I don't think the antichrist is an institution like the papacy or this involves prophets in general. It seems to me quite clear that there is a real person will be the one to have tell you much more about it in detail.

I don't know that, but the evidence to me looks like that's what will happen. Just as a side note, if you go through the revelation, you'll see that at least on three or four separate occasions, including revelation chapter 20, you have a depiction of this final battle that will be waged against the church.

Maybe later, if you care to, we could talk a little about revelation 11. I find that especially powerful. That's another place where it's very clear that the world system will mount a final attack against the church.

Well, yeah, I would like to discuss that.

Right after I asked this question. You said that in your opinion, the Bible or the biblical definition or description of the antichrist would rule out the papacy. I'm assuming you mean the papacy as an office in general, but not particularly or not with certainty.

It would not rule out a.

Pope in your mind, would it? The note in my book saying that evangelicals should keep an eye out for what comes out of the Vatican. It does seem to me as I read some of the texts in Daniel, however, that the antichrist, if I'm reading those texts correctly, and they are difficult, I admit that it looks like he's more of a military leader, ecclesiastical leader.

But we know from histories that some popes actually did lead their armies to battle. So I do not rule that out. No,.

I wouldn't. Do you equate as far as either the same person or entity or figure, the antichrist, the beast and the false prophet? Do you believe that the antichrist and the beast of revelation and the false prophet are all the same figure or are they different?

An opportunity to touch on that. I embrace an approach to interpreting the revelation, which is called idealism. The idealist interpretation says, no, in the revelation, don't just talk about the pre-millennial views.

They talk about the pilgrimage through salvation history, the Holy Spirit. And in my mind, in the center of my mind, you see in chapter 12, a depiction of Christ. He's born of mother Mary, the dragon, who is Satan and who is Satan is attempts to devour him, but he eludes Satan's grasp and he is raised up to heaven and seated at the right hand of God.

Then the dragon begins to pursue the woman into the wilderness where she goes for 1260 days or three and a half years or times time and a half a time. Now, why this is so important is this is a great, great picture.

That is the foundation of it is laid in the old testament in the exodus. The Jews, the Israelites are delivered from Egypt, which represents the domain of darkness that Paul referred to. They pass through the wilderness, which represents the pilgrimage of the church.

And finally they enter the promised land, which is where we're headed, the new heavens and the new earth. So while we're going through the wilderness of this world, this dragon is using various institutions and personalities to try to trip up the bride of Christ, the woman, symbolized by us in Daniel, as you probably know, and they symbolize in Daniel, they symbolize the various that Satan uses to persecute the church all throughout her pilgrimage, presents which are used to either deceive or to oppress the true spiritual church.

And you notice chapter 13, where that first comes up, the beast and the false prophet are working hand in hand, representing the spirit of the new testament, you're trying to get people to worship Caesar and so forth.

And that's how the text that would have come, that's what would have come to mind to new testament believers, really that the pilgrimage. So the false prophet represents working hand in hand with the church.

Think back in reformation times, how the catholic church worked hand in hand with some of the kings and princes in Europe to try to crush the reformation. That's a good illustration of the false prophet at work.

Then the final one, of course, is the harlot or the symbolizes the world system. You're thinking of, instead of just deceive religiously into losing their edge and to going over into a life of comfort and pleasure and interpret the false prophet.

I hope I answered your question. That was a long discourse. I want you to be as lengthy as.

Possible in your explanations, so you don't have to worry about over speaking. I want you to be thorough on this. And once again, I apologize to our listeners that I'm operating this board in a way that I've never had to before, due to our guest's hard of hearing difficulty.

And he gave me permission to announce that, so I'm not embarrassing him by saying this. And I just thank him for his patience with me as well. We're going to be going to our next break. So if you'd like to send us an email, we will get to your questions eventually.

I do see a couple of the emails that our listeners have sent in. We will get to them eventually, but we do have more meat to dig into in regarding this very complex issue that obviously has the church at large in great disagreement for centuries.

And it's amazing how brethren who are in lockstep on many other theological issues are divided over eschatology. And I think next to music, this is the most divisive issue that we face as a church. But we're going to be going to our next break right now, and we hope that you stay tuned.

And we'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin. If you've just tuned us in, we are on our first day of a six-day marathon on end times or eschatology. Today we are addressing amillennialism or amillennialism as some pronounce it, and our guest to do so, who represents amillennialism is Dean Davis.

He is the author of The High King of Heaven, and this is a book, a massive 720-page book promoting the doctrine known as amillennialism or amillennialism, and our email address if you have questions for our guest is ChrisArnsin at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, and we do have a listener.

We have Hugh in Santa Rosa, California, who says, Could you discuss how premill all forms and postmill are all pre-consummationist while only amill is post-consummationist? That is, the latter rightly sees the fullness of the blessing of the kingdom coming in the second coming, not before.

And Hugh, the moment of his son, wants to puncture the consummation. Then the scripture says in Matthew 24 that the son will not give his light to the middle symbolism of the entire universe. And then in very quick succession, there is the resurrection from the dead of the living flesh, not only of the church in the sense that God sends forth the angels and catches up all the Christ.

The problem with these other scenarios is that they try to fracture it and break it up. We have another listener in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. I'm sorry if I'm butchering the.

First word there and the name of that city. Sean writes,. I'm wondering if Dean could give us his viewpoint on the importance of the text of 1 Corinthians 15 and how we can relate the resurrection of the dead with the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh, I have amillennialism .wordpress .com, but is the one that you said the same?

Part that I find so interesting is that in verse 20, the first fruit, new heavens, and then says, well, gathered in, there will be up, and then death will be put in Paul's mind. His rise first, as he says in 1 Thessalonians 4, then the living saints are transformed, are given their glorified bodies.

We do have our first listener that has written a question to us.

Since the inception of Iron Trap and Zion from India. We have Vincent in Bangalore, India, and he writes, Dean, I'm one of your biggest fans and have been extremely blessed with your work and strongly recommend it to all.

I think it will help all our Christian brethren listening. If you would please explain what you think. There is fog and confusing multiplicity of views, as far as eschatology is concerned. You've explained it very well in your introduction,.

And that's Vincent from Bangalore, India. I just felt Polycarp, the material, and the author of the Didache was called to Diognetus, Hippolytus, Origen, Eusebius, and getting all of the Reformers were amillennarian.

I'm not saying this will be across the board, but I think we'll begin to.

If you could, return to Revelation 11. You said you had some more pressing issues that are relevant to our discussion. From Revelation 11, if you have anything further to say about that specifically.

Hugh writes back, our listener that asked the question earlier,.

Why are you not willing to say that this is Jerusalem, which now is that of the law? Before we go to our last break, Dean, I'd like you to think about a question, and then you can answer it when we return.

But the question is, what is the relationship between Old Covenant Israel, the Israel that exists today, and the Church? Obviously, you are fully aware, Dean, that many pre-millenarians, and perhaps even some post-millennialists, would identify amillennialism as anti-Semitic, or at least that it promotes anti-Semitism, and that we are teaching what they would call replacement theology, although I have never heard an amillennialist or a Covenant theologian use the term replacement theology as a way to identify themselves.

But you have heard that accusation and that label placed on amillennialists and even Covenant theologians by others. But when we return from the break, if you could respond to that, and primarily involving the relationship that we have, what is the commonality and the difference between Old Covenant Israel, the Israel today, and the Church?