#75 This Is the Correct Way to Think About the End Times + Dr. Matthew Halsted

The Mark of the Beast cannot be accidentally taken. It's a mark of loyalty. Taking the Mark of the Beast is coupled with the idea of worshiping the beast.

You just made this way scarier. You do not accidentally worship God. You do not accidentally become a Satanist, right?

I have a couple questions about Revelation. Is it predicting the future? Is it describing the present or both?

If you are in Christ, you are a participant in the end. So let's start with the rapture. Where's your stance on that?

Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

I'm your host, Cassian Bellino. I have a couple questions about Revelation that we're going to dive into today.

Is it predicting the future? Is it describing the present or both? That's the question that we're really going to answer today with my new guests.

One, and these are questions that have fascinated me. They have terrified me. I distinctly have a memory as a kid where my mom's like, the end of the world might come tonight.

And I just was terrified all night long. And like as a kid, I had so much fear over something that, again, you hear about it in church and it just like sprouts fear.

So I want to get into the contextual history of Revelation. I want to understand

Revelation as if I was there as it was being told to the ancient Near Eastern Israelites. I want to put it in historical context.

So to help us navigate those questions, I brought in an expert who wrote specifically on it. I'm thrilled to welcome

Dr. Matthew Halstead. You wrote the book, The End of the World As You Know It, What the Bible Really Says About the

End Times and Why It's Good News. So this is going to be a pretty rare conversation where you bring in scholarly depth.

You're going to bring in pastoral insight because you are more than qualified to discuss this topic. Some of your credentials are, you have degrees in international studies and philosophy.

You have a PhD in philosophical hermeneutics and biblical studies from the London School of Theology and Middle Sixth University.

And you teach at Eternity Bible College. I'm so excited to unpack this with you. Welcome to the show,

Dr. Halstead. Hey, thank you so very much for the invitation. I love this topic. It's so much fun to discuss.

So thanks for the opportunity. Pretty rare response. Why do you love this topic so much? Well, you know, like you,

I grew up sort of afraid of this topic because of the way it was taught. And it wasn't until I began to ask questions about the sort of things that I was being told that I began to see that actually eschatology is good news.

It is part of the gospel. And so when you stop and think about, well, how is eschatology good news when it's wrapped in so much fear in popular culture, popular

Christian culture? And that's a really good question to ask. And so as you ask that question and you dig a little deeper, you find out the reasons why it actually is good news.

And so the subtitle to my book captures my heart behind this whole endeavor. I wanna show why it's good news.

And so to answer your question just succinctly, I would say that I love this topic because I discovered that it's all about Jesus and it's all about the victory that we have in Jesus.

More so than like the resurrection, the transfiguration, the miracles, this is what stood out to you in your studies.

Well, actually what I would say is that the resurrection, the transfiguration, indeed the entire

Christ event, the life and ministry of Christ, all of that is eschatological. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I immediately wanna be like, are we like living in an eschatological time period?

Well, you know, the scripture says that Jesus is the alpha, the omega, the beginning and the end. And so to be in Christ is to participate in the eschaton.

So we have to understand that Jews of the first century and the surrounding era, they believed that at the end of time, there would be a resurrection of the dead.

And so as someone like N .T. Wright has argued forcefully and very carefully, we need to see the expectations that first century

Jews had of all about the end. And so at the heart of that was that God would raise the dead.

So can you imagine what the disciples were thinking when their Messiah had died and rose from the dead?

Their first thought is, is this the end? And so they had to work out the eschatological aspects of all of this.

In fact, one of the first questions they asked of Jesus in the book of Acts, prior to his being ascended into heaven, they asked him, is now the time you're gonna restore the kingdom back to Israel?

This is for early Christians, the beginning of the end. There's a lot more to be said about that, but yes, to answer your question directly, if you are in Christ, you are a participant in the end.

Okay, that's well said. I feel like I get a little bit too black and white. I'm like, okay, September 23rd, that's when it begins.

But I think you put it more in like, we are actively participating in a part of a fulfillment of prophecy and how it's written.

Is that a fair assessment? I do, yeah, absolutely. That is a fair assessment. That's what I would say.

Okay, cool. Well, let's get into your book a little bit. Why did you write it? How did you write it? Like, tell me a little bit about the story behind the book.

I tell you, it's a hilarious story. This was around 2020 when

COVID happened in the spring of 2020. And there was a lot of fear going around as we all remember.

And particularly among evangelical Christians that I saw on social media posting about COVID as if it was the beginning of the end times.

There were talks about - I remember the conspiracy theories, yeah. They were everywhere. And specifically, there was a lot of focus on the

Mark of the Beast. And then that got brought into questions about the vaccine and all of those sorts of things.

And I remember reading these commenters that I was seeing on social media. And I was telling my wife, I said, man, this stuff is just not correct.

People are using scripture in ways that just are not consistent with the historical context, right?

And so my wife, she was like, well, you should say something. I was like, I don't know. I don't really wanna get involved in these sorts of public social media debates.

But she convinced me. And so what I did was I pulled out my iPhone and used the iPhone app, a notes app.

And I just jotted, just, I don't know, scribbled up just something really short about some of the things I had been seeing.

Well, it resonated with a lot of people after I posted it on Facebook, I think is what it was I posted on.

And a buddy of mine was an editor. He was living in the UK at the time. And he worked at Logos.

And he said, hey, could I use that for an article on our Logos academic blog?

And I said, sure, let me just kind of tweak it a little bit and then get it ready for that. And so we did, and he posted it online on his website, on the

Logos website. And it spread like wildfire. It was crazy. What did you write?

Like, what was the post? I think it was called, what was it called? That one was COVID -19 and the

Mark of the Beast or something like, I don't remember. It's still up. But I know at the time it was the most read. Oh, that SEO went crazy.

It really did. Yeah, yeah, he titled it so well. And anyway, it went viral.

I think it was the most, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know. But as I recall, it was the most viewed article on their website.

Maybe still is or whatever, but it was at the time. And so I wrote a follow -up piece that resonated with people as well.

And it really, I think it helped people. And the thing about it is I wasn't doing anything novel.

I wasn't reinventing the wheel. What I was doing is sharing with people in those two articles what scholars actually just say about this issue.

I was just sort of bridging the gap between the academy and the church. And so it really, I was just a window.

I mean, I wasn't doing anything spectacular because I think a lot of Christians just aren't familiar with what scholars are saying, right?

And so I wanted to bridge that gap. Long story short, my buddy Tavis, he sent me a message and said, hey, how quick can you put out a book on this topic?

And so it wasn't that quick because it took about a year and a half or two years before I could finish it up.

I just had other things going on. And so, yeah, anyway, long story short, that was the genesis of my book on the end times.

Okay, well, there are some big topics we're about to cover. You kind of already talked about it, like the mark of the beast. And again, like something you just like are not well -educated on.

So I'm excited to be a window between my audience, curious and confused, and your scholarly. So I have some big

Christian questions and I just kind of wanna like hit it head on of like, what's going on with this? How should we understand this?

Is it literal? Is it biblical? And I wanna go into three things, one being the rapture, the second being antichrist, and the third being all of the symbolic imagery, like the plagues, the four horsemen, is it literal or is it more symbolic?

So let's start with the rapture. Where's your stance on that? Is that something that falls on a date?

Half of us will be gone. It'll be like that Avengers Endgame type vibe, and then we start these like years of like oppression and torture and mark of the beast.

How do you feel about the rapture? Yeah, great question. Let me begin by saying that I totally respect those who disagree with me.

And there are lots of godly Christians who are on the other side of the fence of this particular question. And so I rejoice in that.

I'm so thankful for my brothers and sisters who disagree with me on this. My opinion though, is that I do reject that typical popular understanding of the rapture, namely the one that says that one day

Jesus will show up secretly and take us up into the sky and leave us there for about seven years.

And then during that seven years, there's a tribulation. And then he'll come back, I guess for a third time, although they don't say it's a third time, that would be the second coming for them.

And so I reject that whole schema, mainly because I don't agree with their exegesis of scripture.

So in my book, what I did was, I tried to focus on the three most prominent texts that they used to make this case.

And I couldn't focus on all of them, but what I did was, I think I was following Tim LaHaye's version of this.

And if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I wrote this, but if I remember correctly, he used three passages that he considered to be the most important passages that teach a rapture theology, like a pre -tribulational rapture idea.

And that was 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, and John chapter 14.

And so that's what I wanted to use. That was the passages important to him, and I wanted to look at that myself.

And what I show in my book, I hope I show this successfully, is that rapture proponents misinterpret this.

So if you look at 1 Thessalonians chapter four, Paul does say that Jesus will come back on the clouds and we will be caught up with him in the clouds.

So now that sure does sound like a rapture. So the idea is that we will be taken into the clouds and then into heaven, and then all the tribulation happens on the earth for seven or so years.

I mean, dispensationalists disagree on how long exactly, but that's the gist. And what's interesting is when you look at this passage, you notice two very curious things.

In that passage, it doesn't say that, it doesn't even comment where we will be going after we're in the clouds.

You have to read it into that passage if you wanna believe that you're taken to heaven.

All it says is that we will - Right, like we're just in the waiting room of heaven, just waiting. It's a clear assumption.

So I encourage people to read 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 to 18. And yeah, it just says we'll be caught up together with him in the clouds.

Okay, so the question is how do we - Caught up as in with him through that, like when you say, because caught up is like the hinge at which that belief kind of sits on.

So what do you interpret taken up as? Yeah, excellent question. So what

I do is I point out how we're going to have to make assumptions. It doesn't say that we're being taken into heaven.

It also doesn't say where we're gonna be taken at all. Now, my view is that we meet him in the air and we escort him back to the earth immediately.

Now, okay, somebody could say, well, Matt, you're assuming something. The red entrance, wow.

Exactly, yeah, that's a great way to put it. And so what I, now somebody could rightfully say,

Matt, you are reading that into the discussion too. I readily admit that, but on what basis?

So we have to acknowledge that both sides are reading into the text. That's fair.

The question is what assumptions are we willing to make or can we make? Do we make modern assumptions?

So this is a very important point to make. Rapture theology, by and large, is a rather new concept.

It's a mid 19th century idea. So for, yeah, Darby, Schofield and others,

Hal Lindsey, of course, is the most recent and maybe Tim LaHaye. But anyway, it's very hard to justify it.

I know that some dispensationalists claim to find it one instance in the first millennium,

I think mid first millennium, but by and large, this is not something that's old.

It's not what we would call part of the great tradition, right, by no means. It's largely 150 years old, you know, thereabouts.

Again, there's that one exception. Some people point to a text from the mid first millennium or so. But anyway, so do we read that modern assumption into the text?

Or there's a second option. What if we pay attention to this word meet? So it says that we will meet the

Lord in the air. We'll meet him there. Well, that word in Greek is an interesting word.

It's actually quite loaded. It was used in antiquity, for example, in Josephus. It was used in antiquity to describe a meeting that you would have with a royal dignitary or a royal family member or something like that.

So the idea was if you lived in a city, whether it's, oh, I don't know,

Ephesus or Colossae or wherever, if you lived in one of these cities and you got word that the emperor or one of the emperor's representatives was coming toward your city.

Now you have to remember, this is first century. They don't fly into the middle of the city, right? It's not like Air Force One just lands in the middle.

No, no, no, you know they're coming for miles. And so it was customary to go out and meet them before they arrived to your city.

And the word there is to meet the dignitary, to go meet them out into the city, outside of the city walls, and then parade them back, as you say, as a grand entrance.

And that is a way you paid homage. It's a way of telling the emperor, hey, this is your city.

We are your people. Enter into your home. So - Hold on. Go ahead.

That adds so much context if that's what was customary back then when it was written.

Yes. Now here's the thing. Remember how I said we all have to make assumptions? My question is, which assumptions should we make?

21st century modern Western assumptions? Or would the Thessalonians, would they have registered this meeting the

Lord in the air and in his return? Would they have registered that as an opportunity for a grand entrance?

Now, the reason I can say this is because when you read other texts, such as Revelation 19 and 20,

Revelation 19 specifically, Jesus comes back on a white horse and he doesn't take anybody away.

In fact, he shows up and sets up a kingdom. This is a really important thing to say.

So the idea for the Christian hope is when he shows up, he shows up. It's not secret. It is as lightning across the sky.

People will see this kind of thing. And so, look, I'm not certain about a lot of things, especially when it comes to eschatology.

And so would I say that my interpretation is certain? That's a high bar. And most of us don't have certainty about much.

I'm certain that two plus two equals four. But what I can say is

I am highly confident that this is what the Thessalonians would have been thinking because they had been living in this

Roman world. They would have seen this sort of thing happen. And Jesus is the royal emperor, if you will, of the entire world.

And when he shows up, you better believe it, we're gonna go out and meet him and then parade him back because that's the moment all things will be made new.

Oh, that's so good. I love that you just did that with historical context. This is what you're here for.

Okay, but it made me come up with another question of, again, like my own interpretation and my own assumption of this, because it's saying like, well, when he comes, everybody will see it.

And the logic that I drew from that is like, well, yeah, of course, because of iPhones, because we all are gonna see it on the news and we're all gonna see it on our iPhones because when they were writing that back then, they had no idea how we would all in the world see

Jesus. People in China and people in the US, like all over the world, clearly God knew that at the time that he came, we would be advanced enough in technology that iPhones would exist.

So we'd all see it come down. Am I insane for thinking that? No, no, you're not insane at all.

But I do wanna be clear, I don't know how that would happen. I might venture to guess that it would happen much like it happens with prayer.

So you might be in one part of the world, another person in the exact opposite part of the world, and you might be praying to God at the same time and you might feel his presence.

If you ever had those moments when you're praying or reading scripture, and you just feel the weight of God's glory come upon you and you feel comfort and stuff.

Well, if God can do that now in a spiritual sense, I have no doubt in my mind that some way there's a miraculous way for him to do that in a physical sense.

I'm gonna plead ignorance, but I don't know how that's gonna happen, but I think your hypothesis that it would be aired on TV is not a bad hypothesis.

Okay, that's fair. I appreciate that. Moving right along into the Antichrist, I just had Dr. Leo Purser on, and we had an amazing conversation about the rapture and he was like,

Antichrist is not in Revelation. And it was kind of this wow moment of like, then why are we like calling all these political figures signs of the end times because they're the

Antichrist? How did we get here if it's not even mentioned in the chapter, in the book, in the

Bible that talks about the end times? Is this like a person? Is this more of like just a common enemy that's symbolic?

How should we properly interpret what the Antichrist is? That's an excellent question.

And I do have a whole chapter on this and I parse it all out. And you're exactly right. Nowhere in Revelation is the word

Antichrist or Antichrist ever mentioned in the book of Revelation. You have the beast, you have the dragon, but the term

Antichrist is nowhere mentioned there. It's only mentioned, the only time this is mentioned in these sorts of conversations is gonna be in first and second

John. It's mentioned five times. And in my book, I show that right there, the word

Antichrist means a couple of different things. I think in at least one occasion, it does refer to a final

Antichrist. But in the other occasions, it means it refers to anti -Christian powers or people all around.

Even in the first century, John tells us they're there. Now, the idea of a final Antichrist is interesting because we get so obsessed with this person, which

I have to scratch my head and be like, it seems like when it comes to eschatological discussions, we are more obsessed with the Antichrist than the real

Christ, right? But anyway, be that as it may. Be that as it may, when it comes to the

Antichrist, there's a lot that we can't know about, right? And I think the emphasis for John is not, hey, there is a final

Antichrist. I think it's more along the lines of, hey, there are so many Antichrist, they're Antichrist right now, there'll be

Antichrist tomorrow, but thank God there's gonna be a final one. I see. Notice the difference in emphasis.

And so, now, all that said, Paul mentions a man of lawlessness,

John mentions an Antichrist, and I think he does refer to a final figure in the end. Revelation does mention a beast that is on the earth when

Jesus shows up. Okay. Yeah, what's up with that? What's going on with that? Yeah, so what I do is in my book,

I argue that Paul's man of lawlessness and John's, in first second

John, his Antichrist, they're likely the same person, likely talking about the final

Antichrist. Now, for John in Revelation, he does have a beast, this beastly figure, and I identify that beast with Rome, the

Roman empire, first century reality, okay? And we could talk about that more if you want to, but I'd still acknowledge that the beast is around when

Jesus shows up. So does that mean that there will be a Roman empire at the end of time, that whatever?

What I say in my book is I think I say that John likely anticipated the return of Christ during his own lifetime.

I think this is a reality that many first Christians had, just like we do, and every

Christian is right to expect that. I would want every Christian to expect that. But for John, I believe it's inspired text, and so I think

John's personal thoughts might've been that Jesus is gonna show up, and when he shows up, he's gonna kick Rome out, and he's gonna be the true king and show us all that he's the true king.

But John uses such symbolic language and his imagery of a beast, a beastly figure, is pliable enough that I think can be applied to a final

Antichrist. So what I say in my book is I don't necessarily think it's correct to say that the beast is the

Antichrist. I just think the Antichrist will be beastly or will be the beast. And so think of John's beast as a sort of symbol, sort of image, a sort of end times, but yet still first century concept that the final

Antichrist will fulfill. It's sort of like a costume that the final Antichrist will wear.

And that costume is pliable enough to apply it to the final Antichrist, to a Hitler, to a

Nero, to anybody, it's a symbol that's pliable, right? And so what we can glean from Revelation, and I'll wrap it up with this part, and so feel free to follow up, but what

I think we can do with Revelation is admit that John probably thought that Jesus would show up in the first century. I don't think he would pontificate about that.

I think that was maybe a hope, but he used language through divine inspiration that can be applied to anybody and to say that one day,

Jesus will show up and beat the final beast and destroy the work of the final beast.

And for John, that was the first century Roman empire, but for us or a future generation, that might be somebody else.

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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now back to the show. Yeah, that's some good stuff.

I'd still, I mean, the one thing I feel like we can rely on for Christ is that like he's predictably unpredictable.

Like we will not know what's going to happen. And when you mention all of that, it's like the beast, when I read that,

I envision like an orc, you know, like Lord of the Rings, like disgusting looking figure.

But it kind of goes into like that final tribulation of like, I guess that fear that I have with revelation is like the mark of the beast.

If this is more of like a Hitler or, you know, like a leading, you know, one world order, whatever it might be, what is that mark of the beast?

And I've had prior conversations with scholars, namely Dr. Tim Yontz, a good friend of mine. And he said, listen,

Cass, the mark of the beast isn't something that you're going to accidentally get.

It's something that you are actively choosing. And that's why he would argue that, you know, we're already in the end times because every day that you choose

Christ, you're not choosing the mark of the beast. That's more of like a worldly association.

I don't think that's the right word for that one. But you'd look at kind of the, I'll let you answer to that.

Like, is that what you agree on when it comes to the mark of the beast? Yeah, largely so. I mean, so the first thing we have to realize about the mark of the beast is that John expects his first century audience to know what he's talking about.

He says, this calls for a mind of wisdom. And he says, and that's an invitation for them to figure this out.

666 was a number game, if you will. So in the first century, Greek speakers did not have the luxury of having two different scripts, one for letters and one for numbers.

You know, we have a script for letters and we have an Arabic script for numbers, right?

And we have two different ways of doing that. In the first century, if you wanted to use a number system, you reuse your letters.

And so what this invited people to do is to play games with these names. And people did this all the time in the first century.

They would take a person's name and turn them into numbers. So for example, the letter alpha would be the number one, the letter beta would be number two, the letter gamma would be number three and so forth.

And so we could take your name right now and turn it into numbers. We could take mine and do the same. And so most scholars are content to say that the number there is a clear reference to Nero.

You can make it fit very, very easily. Who is Nero? I don't know that. Okay, so Nero was a

Roman emperor in the mid to late 50s and early 60s. He was a ruthless person, a morally degenerate person.

The first part of his reign was steady. The latter part of his reign was hideous.

In fact, the Senate declared him to be an enemy of the state. He ran away and killed himself.

And so he was a very, I mean, he's so corrupt and morally perverse that I don't even feel comfortable telling you what he was doing in his spare time.

He's famous for killing Christians, using them as candles for his garden, for example. I encourage your readers to go read

Suetonius's biography on Nero. You'll get a glimpse of exactly what people thought about him. Anyway, so he was a

Roman emperor and there were other emperors, particularly in the 90s, there was one named Domitian and he was very hideous as well.

And so more than likely this beastly figure had something to do with Nero and Domitian. I think Revelation was written during Domitian's reign in the 90s.

And so some people in that era referred to Domitian as like a second

Nero. That was sort of his nickname. Wow, I don't know any of this stuff. This is really enlightening.

Well, I'm just, you know, it's interesting because if John expected his first readers to understand what he was saying, and I think a case can be made for that, then they would have had to connect to the dots and I think they would have connected these dots to the beast.

And the mark of the beast would have been, they would have seen Nero or Domitian. Yeah, yeah, so let's talk about the mark of the beast.

The mark of the beast, as you rightly say, cannot be accidentally taken. It can't be accidentally taken because it's a mark of loyalty.

So think of it this way. In the book of Revelation, you have numerous instances where the mark of the beast and taking the mark of the beast is coupled with the idea of worshiping the beast.

Those two concepts are closely tied together. So to take the mark of the beast is to worship the beast. Now, how do you take the mark of the beast?

Well, we have to first realize that there are actually two marks in Revelation. In Revelation chapter 13, verses 16, 17, and 18, you have the famous mark of the beast passage.

Now get this, in the very next verse, which would be chapter 14, verse one and following, you have another mark.

This is the seal of the lamb that goes on the forehead of God's people. It's really interesting.

Can I just put a little footnote here for a moment for everybody? How interesting it is that we focus so much on the mark of the beast, but so many of us neglect the second mark, the mark of what

Craig Keener calls it, the mark of the lamb. Now, John's not the only one to talk about the mark of the lamb.

Paul himself talks about the mark, the seal of the Holy Spirit that believers receive, okay?

So the mark of the lamb in Revelation is the counterpart to the mark of the beast in Revelation, because the mark of the beast goes on the forehead or on the hand.

It's a number of a name. Now let's unpack this. The mark of the beast is a name. Yeah, 666.

Now in Judaism, they talked a lot about marks and marking. Typically, these are marks of protection.

So for example, in Ezekiel chapter nine around verse six, it talks about how

God's gonna destroy the temple in Jerusalem. But before he destroys the temple, he tells his angels, go mark people to protect them.

Go mark the people, and then when I destroy the temple, they'll be protected, okay? So that's an instance of a mark being a mark of protection.

In the Psalms of Solomon, which is a Jewish text, it's not in the

Bible, but it's a Jewish text written about 100 BC, so before the New Testament, it talks about a mark of destruction and a mark on the righteous.

So this idea of a mark in Revelation is not a new concept in Judaism. It's an older concept.

It comes from Ezekiel and the Psalms of Solomon. Think also of the Shema in Deuteronomy chapter six.

God tells his people to put his commandments on their forehead and on their hand. Now, what does it mean to put the commandments on you?

What does it mean? Oh, and also think of Numbers chapter six when Aaron blesses the people. It's the priestly blessing.

The Lord causes his face to shine upon you and give you peace, and it says in that text, this is how

God puts his name on his people. So to bear the mark of the beast and to bear the mark of the lamb is to bear the name of your master.

It is a loyalty pledge. It is a loyalty mark. So all to say, you do not accidentally worship

God. You do not accidentally become a Satanist, right? You have to make decisions to do that, and I think the mark of the beast is all about who are you worshiping?

That's a very important question to ask in the first century and it's a very important question to ask in the 21st.

That is so well said, but again, to plead ignorance here, people were afraid of getting the vaccine or a chip in their hand because of Amazon, the way that you pay, because it's like, oh, is this the mark of the beast?

And our thinking is like, well, I don't wanna accidentally do what I think is just technologically advanced. You know, unknowingly now be a part of some cult that I didn't knowingly sign up for, but I think that you put it well, like what are you worshiping?

And Amazon Prime's not outwardly worshiping Satan, so I don't think that if I get a chip in my hand to pay, then

I'm accidentally. Well, let's talk about this. So I would be the first to not take a chip in my forehead or my hand, even if it was just technologically convenient.

I would encourage other people not to do that too. Is it the mark of the beast? No, it's not, you know, that's not what that is.

Now, okay, caveat. If someone went around and said, hey, I'm putting a chip in my hand in honor of Satan, who

I worship. Well, then it becomes a mark of the beast, right? But, you know, so I think it's all about, again, think of the mark of the beast as a symbol that's very pliable.

And so will there be in the end times, will the final antichrist employ something like a identity marker?

Maybe. I tend to agree with Craig Keener that this mark is likely invisible, just like the seal of the

Holy Spirit cannot be seen on Christians. And yet we would still say that we are sealed in the

Holy Spirit. The mark of the beast says Craig Keener, that it's probably invisible too.

Now here's the thing, let's caveat this. You just made this way scarier. Well, okay, maybe, but here's the thing.

But here's the thing, even though it's invisible, you can have physical manifestation. So let's talk about the seal of the

Holy Spirit. I can have the seal of the Holy Spirit, but that is visualized in the fruit of the

Holy Spirit. I can have a mark of the beast, and that is visualized in the works of unrighteousness, right, you know them by their fruits, right?

And so I'm not suggesting this is completely invisible and there are no physical manifestations. Case in point, think of the early 20th century with Nazism.

They had a symbol that represented their perverse ideology, namely the swastika.

I'm fine with saying that that is a mark of the beast, right, and so it takes on that meaning based upon the way it's perversely used.

And so, yeah, I just think we need to ask better questions. And if you, it all comes down to worship.

Who are you worshiping? By the way, Bob Dylan, he's a great theologian, you know, he made this comment.

He said that, well, it was a song, you gotta serve somebody. I encourage everybody to go listen to this song, you gotta serve somebody.

You're gonna serve somebody. My goodness, I forget. But anyway, you will serve somebody. And the question is, who are you serving?

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. Beautiful. Okay, I'm gonna keep going because there's like so much more that I wanna ask you.

So I'm sorry to just move on from that, because that was a lot. But just to kind of go over the last couple of things, like the plagues, for example, the four horsemen, the apocalypse imagery, which like now

I know the apocalypse is just to reveal, but that's such a scary word to us. And it's like these years of, kind of like it flashes back to Exodus and just like all the plagues that like Egypt went through, but it's like,

I'm gonna, if I don't get taken up, if I don't make that first rapture pull, I'm gonna go through years of being persecuted for being a

Christian, potentially having to claim my faith or being put to death or just like losing my family and going through these terrible plagues.

Is that what's in store? Or again, is that us like hyperbolizing this imagery?

Like what were like Israelites seeing when they were talking about these plagues? That's an excellent question.

So you're right in Revelation chapter six, you have the four horsemen. It's chapter six verses one through,

I don't know, six or seven or whatever. If you pay very close attention to what these four horsemen are doing, you'll see that it's actually pretty generic and what they're doing can be applied to just about every generation or any generation.

So for example, one horse brings famine, one horse brings death and those sorts of things. And so I think these are just apocalyptic imageries that are meant to show that there are sinister, dark, real spiritual powers who are bent on bringing destruction upon the earth.

And I don't necessarily think, in fact, let me just put it this way. I do say in my book that it's a shame that we tend to look at the four horsemen of the apocalypse as a future entity only because in so doing, in so doing

Satan has blinded us to the reality that these beastly figures are already here and they have been here for a very long time.

Famine has been here, diseases that aren't being cured because of greed or whatever, that's all the work of the devil.

And I think that we, here's the thing, when you put eschatology only in the future, that just means you don't have to deal with it in the present.

That means you don't have to maybe be responsible for doing things in the present world.

Now, I'm not suggesting that's totally the motivation for seeing these as future realities. I'm suggesting it's convenient.

And so what I like to tell people is to say, let's take a good look. Now, as you say, revelation begins, it begins with these words,

Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, not the apocalypse of the

Antichrist, not the apocalypse of the beast. This is about Jesus. Now, it's an apocalypse of Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? It means that Jesus is here to reveal. Apocalypse means to reveal. Jesus is here to reveal truth, but make no mistake about it,

Jesus himself is the apocalypse. He himself is the revelation. And what he's showing us in these texts is that if you align yourself with destructive forces, these same destructive forces will prove to be self -destructive.

But I offer you a better way. I wanna reveal to you the truth behind reality.

I am way better than any of these destructive forces. And one day he says that he will, this is actually a quote, he will destroy the destroyers of the earth.

You catch that? Those who destroy the earth, these beastly powers, they are destroying the earth, but they will inherit what they have sowed.

They will reap what they have sowed, destruction. And do we wanna get caught up into that? Let's go a better way.

Let's choose truth, beauty, and goodness, not death, darkness, and destruction. Wow, oh my gosh.

I love that you just said the thing out loud. It's very convenient for us to think that we're not there yet.

So everything here is still kind of justified because it's not technically at the end times of the scary parts. Whoa, that is, stop shouting, oh my gosh.

Okay. Hey, can I say, I don't mean to preach. This is convicting to me too. Like I have to take stock of how this is a word to me.

This is a word to you. This is a word to all of us. And so we have to take stock of what are we doing with our lives? Are we following Christ or are we really following Christ?

That's the question. Yeah, no, you're doing the Christian thing right now by holding us all accountable. So thank you. I know that I sent you a bunch of notes and we wanna talk about the future or the present, but what

I really wanna talk about is like the scripture itself. Because to me, if I was in that first century and I would have read a revelation, put me in that headspace because all

I know is 2025. And so I wanna go into the key scriptures that I sent you and just kind of be like, how should

I properly read this? Because we only have the lens that we have. So I'm gonna go into, we kind of,

I guess we already talked about the four horsemen. We've already talked about the beast. What about the millennium? Let's go into Revelation chapter 20 verses one through six, the millennium.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven. He seized the dragon, bound him for a thousand years.

They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. What the hecky heck is going on?

Hey, that thousand year question is the million dollar question. Oh, okay.

Cause that's saying like when it comes, like is it, that's like. Yeah, yeah. It's very confusing.

So many good people are on both sides of the fence. And so basically what you have here is this idea that there's one view, the pre -millennial view that says that Jesus will show up.

And then at that point, he's gonna lock Satan in prison for a thousand years. And then he's going to rule on earth with his people for 1000 years, right?

And then. So that would put us at 2025, right? Yeah, you're 3000 if it happened today, right?

So, but it's, you know, it could be a literal, some pre -millennialists aren't sure if it's actually literal, but whatever the case, we'll just say the literal view, a thousand years.

And then he unlocks the pit that Satan is in, lets him out. And then he goes off and deceives the nations to have this final war against Jesus.

Jesus, you know, it's easily won by Jesus. So that's the pre -millennial view. Yeah, that's right. He wins, right?

The all millennial view, all millennial. So anytime you put an A or in Greek, it'd be alpha in front of a word, it negates the word.

So if you believe in God, you're called a theist. You're a theist, you believe in theism, right? If I put an

A in front of that, it's atheism, which means you do not believe in God, right? So all millennial means not a literal millennial.

Okay, so the view is that right now we are in the millennium because right now

Jesus is ruling and reigning through his church. Okay, and Satan is bound right now, he's locked in a pit, he's bound.

And then when Jesus shows up, he'll be released, he'll deceive the nations, and then Jesus smashes him with his presence, essentially.

Now, so which view is correct? Well, let me know when you figure out because I can make a case for either view.

What I would say is we need to be careful with those words, 1 ,000 years, because in scripture, especially

Revelation, numbers are highly symbolic. Revelation uses numbers very symbolically. So 1 ,000 might just mean for a long period of time.

Okay, it doesn't necessarily have to be literal. So for example, in Psalm 54, I think, it says,

God says, I own the cattle on 1 ,000 hills. Does that mean that on the 1 ,001st hill,

God doesn't own those cattle? No, no, he just means I own a whole lot of stuff, guys, right?

And so what if the millennium means something like that? Now, the other thing to keep in mind is one way to interpret the binding or the imprisonment of Satan is not like a literal, total binding in that sense.

Perhaps binding there just means he's not capable of deceiving the nations and stealing them away from Jesus.

In other words, when Jesus shows up on the earth, I mean, 2 ,000 years ago, when he showed up and he resurrected and ascended, he put an end to the devil's work.

He was cast out of the ground, thrown into the earth. The word there is, the Greek is astengain, into the earth.

And so the idea is that he's lost some power of some sort and the gospel can go forth and it saves people and it brings us joy and it brings us into the family of God.

And so Satan has been hindered. One might say he's been bound all these years, 1 ,000 years, doesn't mean it's a literal 1 ,000, of course, like we said.

And so, but the thing I would say is, whatever your view of the millennium is, you have to say that Jesus is king today.

He is ruling and reigning today. The powers of hell will not prevail against the church.

We are winning and we will win. The kingdom has been inaugurated. It will be consummated when

Jesus returns one day. So to answer your question directly, there are so many good views on both sides.

And I wanna acknowledge that. I'm not 100 % certain. I see.

So there are just, there's a couple of sides that we could take and some could be a literal 1 ,000 years, but some, it could be more symbolic of a time period where Jesus is ruling, which clearly we can say he is, but Jesus is present.

The church is alive. The kingdom is here. Okay. Think about the kingdom idea.

What does it mean when Jesus says the kingdom has arrived? We have to really take that for granted.

And in my opinion, and I beg people to, I humbly ask people to correct me if I'm getting something wrong here, but I feel like some pre -millennialist aren't, at least to my satisfaction, thinking carefully about the idea of kingdom.

Now, that's not true across the board. I can point out weaknesses in all millennialist positions too.

There are many of those, but I'm just saying, what, perhaps I should just say this. We need to take the idea of the kingdom advancement seriously.

Jesus's death, crucifixion, his resurrection and ascension, that did something. It altered world history and it put

Satan to flight. One might say it put him in prison. Fair enough. That doesn't mean he can't do anything.

It just means that he can't deceive people to the point of blinding them when they encounter the gospel.

Oh, okay. Because I would say some people would feel very blinded by the enemy, but when presented with the gospel.

That's a weakness of the all millennial position. I'm not entirely convinced that all millennials are getting this right either.

I mean, when you read Revelation 20, it sure sounds like Satan is totally incapacitated, right?

You know what I mean? And pre -millennialist arguably do a better job there as well. Again, I can make really good arguments for both positions.

I'm just ignorant when it comes to what the actual truth is. But one thing that we all agree on,

I think, is that all shall be well. Yeah, you keep ending with that moment of hope, that period of hope.

So I appreciate that. Now, again, because I am one of those Sunday school Christian, which

I, based off all of my knowledge, based off what I learned in church, and you're the expert here, logistically speaking, what is the new heaven and the new earth?

Because Revelation 21, next chapter, kind of, again, talks about these things where we're like, are we there?

Are we gonna show up? Chapter 21, verse one through four. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. I feel like we get a new earth, we get a new heaven, or this is more like new era.

Something new has happened in the exact same place that we were before. Yeah, excellent question.

This is probably my favorite topic in all of Revelation, to be honest with you. Oh, let's get into it. Yeah, yeah,

I think a lot of Christians, I grew up like this. I grew up thinking that the gospel is all about me getting my life insurance policy so that when

I die, I leave this despicable earth and go to heaven. And who knows what I do up on the clouds?

It's a very spiritual existence. I've since learned that that's not what the Bible teaches, right? So the idea with eschatology is that God renews what has been corrupted.

He doesn't throw out what has been corrupted. He renews what has been corrupted. Whoa, that's good.

So think of the, I mean, think of the resurrection. We are given renewed bodies, right?

We're not given a new body in the sense that there's a new thing off the factory conveyor belt. No, our bodies that went into the ground are raised, right?

But it's not resuscitation. It's not like we're just resuscitated. No, there's something new about what's coming out of the grave too.

So it's kind of a both and. Now, the thing about the new heavens and the new earth is that what we can say is that earth itself will have a resurrection, right?

It's not that it's totally obliterated and a new one is off the factory line conveyor belt, like I said.

No, it's just, it's not resuscitated, but it's also not discarded.

It's renewed. Now, so I don't think the Christian hope is going to heaven when you die.

I do think people right now are in heaven and they're safe and they're in the loving arms of Christ.

For Christians, that's our hope and we can rest in that. However, that's not their final state.

Theologians call this the intermediate state, the temporary state. And so the idea, to answer your question, is that in the end, heaven comes to the earth and it's depicted in Revelation as a bride with her bridegroom.

And just like we see in Genesis, it's so interesting, by the way, how Revelation repeats the

Genesis story. It's as if God really is restoring paradise. Anyway, this whole scene is depicted as a man and wife and the two are becoming one.

And this is the point, this is the point. Earth and heaven collide.

They come together in perfect unity so that what was severed, human's relationship with God, is now brought together in perfect, blissful unity.

So heaven and earth come together. It's heaven and earth. And I think that's the emphasis. That's our hope.

So when I tell people, when I tell people, go look at the trees, go look at nature, and one day you're gonna look at it in ways that you could never have imagined because God's gonna bring it alive in every sense of the word.

And he's gonna bring you alive in every sense of the word too. So that's, instead of the life insurance goal of becoming a

Christian, that's the goal, is to witness heaven on earth. To witness and to experience that.

That's right. Okay. Yeah. So for those that don't accept Christ, that don't convert, what happens?

Their eyes are blinded to that? So yeah, so this is, yeah, this is a big conversation, of course.

And so what I like to do is adopt C .S. Lewis's position. I think he has a lot of good things to say.

I'd recommend people read his book, The Great Divorce. Maybe the problem - I haven't heard of that one. Oh yeah, it's a great book.

It's fiction. It's a short little book of fiction. And he tries to explain the afterlife and the way things work.

It requires more than one reading. I will say that. Don't just read it once. Read it two or three times. Okay. Take a lot of notes.

And then get with a study group and then you can hash it out with folks. But anyway, the idea for Lewis is that hell is locked from the inside.

And he tries to show how, unfortunately, it seems like in scripture, there are going to be people who say no to life.

And if you say no to life, by definition, you are saying yes to death.

And you're saying no, if you say no to life, you by definition say no to God. And if you say no to God, you by definition embrace that which is not

God. That which is not true. That which is not good. That which is not beautiful. And that's a situation that we would call hell.

And scripture uses multiple imagery symbols. Sometimes hell is described as a place of outer darkness.

Sometimes it's described as a place of fire. Now, if you notice those two don't go together if you interpret them literally, right?

How could something be completely dark if it's all on fire? At least it's a different sort of fire than what we're used to. So it's not the literal fire that we're used to.

But I think scripture is grasping for images and pictures to describe what life is like without God.

And quite frankly, it's indescribable to some extent. So yeah, that's why, you know,

I agree with Lewis. I think anybody who is in hell would be there because they've insisted on it, even after, you know, seeing the truth.

And Lewis goes into arguments how that could be possible. And I'd recommend folks read Gregory Boyd. He talks about this in his book,

Satan and the Problem of Evil. And lots of resources on this.

But yeah, I don't know if that helps any, but I guess I would say, I don't think

God's mean. I don't think God's like, you know, you're a sinner and I'm locking you up and I'm gonna get a lot of joy out of that.

I think God is more like a father pleading for people to embrace him, for people to come into the light.

And for whatever reason, it seems that some people will say no to that. And I think that grieves God's heart.

But because he has given us some sort of free agency, at some point he has to give us our final no.

That's what Gregory Boyd will talk about a lot. And I know this raises lots of questions about free agency, free will, and all that kind of stuff.

But he gives us that. And if he didn't give us free will, then our capacity to love is severely impeded, right?

And so he gives people a certain amount of free agency, at least enough to choose against him.

And I think at some point he's gonna give people their final no. And I think that's going to, I think that grieves God's heart.

I love the way you said that like, if you are not in heaven, it's because you insisted on it. And I think that like, that just like released so much as a

Christian for me, because it's like, did I worship enough? I went to church and I tried so hard, but like, was

I good enough? Like, you know, good and faithful servant. Like, is he gonna turn me away? But the way that you say, like, is he,

I had to have insisted on that. It's a brand new perspective on it. And secondly,

I love Dr. Boyd. He came on and he gave an amazing, he's great. And then

Paul Eddie came on and they were disagreeing. It was great. They're amazing. I love Greg.

In fact, I need to, I have an email from him. I need to respond. We've been going back and forth. He's a wonderful person. He actually endorsed this book.

I disagree with him on some stuff, but I love dialoguing with him. And I think when it comes to some of these things about hell and free will,

I just, I've learned so much from him. He is a jewel. I love that guy so much. Even if we disagree on some things, you know what

I mean? But he's a good man. I highly, everybody should just, don't read my book, go read some of his stuff.

He came on and we talked about open theism and I had, I'm completely ignorant to it. I don't know anything about it.

And he told me and I was like, you know what? That makes sense. But then I had Paul on, Dr. Eddie, and I was like, oh, simple foreknowledge is actually where I believe in.

And Dr. Boyd was amazing. Cause like he like, he poured into me. I mean, he's one of the few people that I met and it was like talking business with.

And then he was like, but you, how do I pray for you? And of course you meet a grown man for the first time and you're crying your eyes out.

That's the kind of person he is. And he's just wonderful. He is. And yeah, I think he's wrong about open theism a lot, but I think people should, you have to get to know why he's an open theist.

It has to do with his perspective on time. As I recall, not so much on, it's not about God so much as it is about what can be known in the future is not something that can be known.

And it gets into all these other things, but it's been a while since I've read some of that. But anyway, but yeah, he's a pastor and I've just learned so much from him.

I just have, so anyway. Well, I've learned so much from you. I feel like these are the types of things that just like add so much color to our faith.

And unfortunately we just like don't get this in the 90 minutes we're at church on Sunday and I'm not gonna go to seminary.

So this is such like a shortcut for me. I kinda wanna like end with like, well, what now? Because there's so much we didn't cover in Revelation that it's like,

I can't make you sit next to me and we go line by line. So there's gonna be a lot left on the table here for me, for everybody listening of like, okay, cool.

So I feel like I got a couple of things down, rapture, Antichrist, Mark of the Beast. But like, what about this other passage that you didn't touch on?

So just like in general, you keep ending with this moment of hope. And so I kinda know where you're probably gonna end with this, but living in eschatology, how should we live today in shape of Revelation?

Where's the healthy dose of like having the fear of God and having a fear of what might to come, but also knowing that Jesus wins?

Like, is there a guiding light or like advice you just wanna like provide early Christians with?

Man, that's such a great question. I've actually been thinking a lot about this because I'm a confessional scholar.

Like I believe the Bible, right? I think it's inspired. And so it's not just an academic pursuit for me. I'm, when

I opened my Bible, I'm ready to hear from God, you know? And so here's what

I would say. And I don't know, I feel like God's given me this ministry and he's given me this word to tell people.

And I've been telling people for years this. I want every listener who's listening to this right now to just listen very carefully to everything

I'm about to say and here it is. You are deeply loved by God. And I don't think we've understood that.

We are so deeply loved by God that he is not content with letting sin destroy us or this world.

That he is not content with letting the dark powers rule. That he is the one who has destroyed all those things and is in the process of destroying all those things.

And will one day finally do away with every tear, every disease, every plight, every sorrow.

And we will enter bliss for all eternity. That is the truth.

And if that is the truth for tomorrow, then that helps us to look back on our past and say, man,

I really messed a lot of things up. But God is so forgiving. And he knew all my sins.

And he has taken care of that for me because the future is bright for me because I'm in Christ and Christ is the future. He's the alpha, the omega, the beginning and the end.

And I am safe because I have a good landing. Now, I've talked about my past. I've talked about the future.

Your question is about the present. I think that we should bring the future into the present.

And we do that through Christ. When we say the Lord's prayer, let your kingdom come.

We are saying right now today that we want his rule and reign to be fleshed out into our lives such that when the world sees us, they see a preview of the new creation.

When they see us love our enemies, they see what it means to be truly human.

When they see us smile in the face of adversity, they are seeing the life of God shining bright in a world that's captive to darkness.

And all of that is what we are called to be, a light in the world. But we cannot do that if we are not convinced that we are deeply loved by God.

I don't care how hard you try to love people, you have to be filled up with the deep love of God.

And the adventure that I'm on right now is to, this is gonna sound weird, but hear me out.

The adventure I'm on right now is not so much to learn how to love God, but to learn how to be loved by God so that I can love

God. Yeah, and I have to think about that.

And I have to meditate on that. I gotta confess sins to get my mind right about that.

And so anyway, it's a hard thing. I think Jesus tells us, Jesus tells us that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And I think the reason we are called to love people is because the greatest need that people have is to be loved.

And the ultimate love comes from God. So that's the adventure I'm on. I'm working hard to learn how to be loved by God and to just bask in his grace and his goodness.

One day I'm gonna get there, but it'll be all through Jesus. And I can't wait for that day. In the meantime,

I've got work to do and I've got hand to the plow. And I encourage, I need everybody's help.

I'm gonna help you, you guys help me. And here we go. Oh my gosh, that was such a good answer.

Wow, I'm sure everybody's just, I mean, you're so good at this. I can see how you're a pastor, right?

Yeah, I'm a priest in an Anglican church. I'm an assistant priest. Okay. But my full -time job is as a biblical studies professor and I also,

I work at a small school. So we do like two or three jobs, right? So I'm an administrator, a professor, a pastor, yeah.

That answer was so good. I mean, that was awesome. I needed to hear that clearly, but how do people like get more of you?

Like obviously your book, which will be linked below, but if they wanna go to your parish, if they wanna take some of your classes, how do they do that?

Yeah, I mean, you can find me on social media. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and what's the other one?

X. And so yeah, people can find me there. I've got a website. It's just my name, MatthewHalstead .com.

And they can, there's a contact form there. I will say I'm not good at always responding to emails. I've just, it's been a very fraction of the day on emails.

And so, but I do read them and I do appreciate people reaching out and yeah, yeah.

Please do reach out and I'd love to hear from folks. Insane conversation,

Dr. Halstead. I'm so grateful for you just like enlightening us with this wisdom and giving us the shortcut to understanding revelation and just like speaking so well.

So I'm so grateful for the time and your like willingness to share all this. It's been a gift to me personally and I'm sure everybody listening, but thank you so much.