The FUTURE of Apologetics is ESCHATOLOGY | w/ Emilio Ramos @redgracemedia

The Apologetic Dog

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The future of apologetics is eschatology. But really, when you think about what it is that these folks are envisioning, and what

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I call the futurist dream, it is nothing short of a full -blown cosmology.

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It is a new worldview, and equipped with, fully equipped with their own narrative of both creation and consummation.

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Well, hello, and welcome to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of grace.

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And so if you look at the logo, you see that bearded apologetic dog, and embedded in the logo, you see 1

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Timothy 6, verse 20. This is a verse that kind of grounds this apologetic ministry, where Paul tells

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Timothy, and to all Christians, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you.

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And Timothy, avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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And so at The Apologetic Dog, this is a reference to Christians. We're to guard the deposit, the gospel of grace, and we war against those worldviews that contend with Christianity, that rival the knowledge of God, and we do that by standing firm on God's truth.

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And so I just wanna thank you for tuning in, and I have one quick announcement that I'd like for all of you to be made aware of, is coming up in February, this is a little bit ways away.

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Myself and Dr. Frost, we are going to be speaking at a pre -conference hosted by Jeffrey Rice, and we are gonna be speaking on the dangers of full preterism.

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And so this is a part of a much broader conference that will get into the importance of Calvinism, explaining our view of who

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God is, is so important. The triune God that we worship is sovereign, and that's a surprise to people.

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But you cannot thwart God. And so the questions about Calvinism have been on the rise, and there needs to be good answers.

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What has God said about himself according to his word? And so this conference is geared around asking those deep questions, because your view of God has a direct impact on your view of man, what that looks like and how we relate to God.

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And so I believe Dr. White will be participating in a debate at this conference against somebody that opposes the

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Augustinian view of predestination. So this is all coming at you in February.

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So be on the lookout for that. And so today is a very special episode where I have a guest on, and I cannot wait for you to know more and more about this individual and all the projects that he's on.

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But I met him at G3 a couple years ago, and his name is Emilio.

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Did I get that right? You sure did. They don't get it right at Starbucks, but you did pretty good. I'm with you.

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My last name's Nortier. I've heard everything under the sun, and I just tell them, it's okay, it's French.

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And so they just have to know what it's like. Yeah, that's right. But Emilio, thank you so much for coming on the Apologetic Dog, where I deal with primarily apologetics, but I also serve as a pastor and elder at 12 .5

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Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. And so you're a pastor as well. Yeah.

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Yes, sir. Just, matter of fact, just planted a new church, a City View Church in Frisco, Texas, just a young church plant and families that gather together for the sake of worshiping the triune

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God and really just worshiping in light of our conscience and around central theological convictions, as you know, and just excited to be part of a

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Reformed church that really wants to walk in the Reformed path of the

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Reformed tradition and Reformed theology. And, you know, the Reformed community is getting kind of smaller and smaller in terms of real faithful Reformed theology.

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So I'm just blessed to be with families that want to honor the Lord by cultivating that Reformed theology in their own lives and kind of living it out in a total worldview kind of thing.

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So yeah, it's great. It's a blessing. Thank you. So you're a part of the church planting life.

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How old is y 'all's church? We're about one year old at this point. So it's a very, very, very fresh, very young church.

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And I've been pastoring here in Texas since 2007, pastored in Fort Worth for several years, recently resigned from pastoring at a different church here in Frisco.

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And that's what kind of led to this new church plant. So there you go. Well, that's exciting.

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I understand the joys and the pains of church planting. So 12 .5

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church comes from a Bible verse. People are like, 12 .5, is that what time y 'all meet? I'm like, no, it comes from Romans 12, verse five about the church.

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We're individually one of another, but we come together as the body of Christ. And so Emilio, yesterday marked a completion of three years in our church plant.

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Great. We're just excited. We're actually getting to move into the heart of my town. About a month, we have a new building that we just signed a lease for.

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And so I feel you, brother, with the church planting life. It comes with so many joys because there's a lot of barriers.

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And yet people that are really hungry for Christian fellowship and wanting to know more about sound, robust theology of who

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God is, those people tear through those barriers. And so you see that really fast in these people's lives.

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Hey, we will pray for you. And so what's the name of y 'all's church again? City View. City View Church, and that is rooted in Hebrews 11, where we are told that we are to look to the city that God has prepared for us, and that we are to confess ourselves that we are strangers and exiles in this world.

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And then if we do that, God is not ashamed to be called our God. And of course, because Hebrews goes on to say, because he has prepared a city for us, so city for them.

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So City View is all about that sort of heavenly, eschatological vision of the ultimate city of God.

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And so it's definitely rooted in that heavenly hope that we have. Uh -oh, you mentioned eschatology.

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That's been a hot button topic. Yeah, I just got done speaking at a conference about two weekends ago called

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Eschatology Matters, How Then Shall We Live? Because like you know, your view of the end times has a direct impact how you live your life here and now.

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And so you also run a YouTube channel and ministry, Red Grace Media, is that right?

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That's right. So what's some of the goal and vision with Red Grace Media? You know,

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Red Grace Media just kind of started out as a blog initially, and we did some podcasting in the primitive stages of that.

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But now, Red Grace Media, we now have a YouTube channel, weekly YouTube channel,

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Red Grace Live, and that airs every Sunday night at seven. And then we have also a podcast,

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Christ in Kingdom, that you can find in the Apple Store and everywhere else, basically you can get a podcast.

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And then also on top of that, Red Grace Media is also part of an aspect of my ministry that I never thought would actually be part of my ministry, which is filmmaking and developing material through film.

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And so if people are obviously familiar with the American Gospel, and then now the American Gospel streaming platform,

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AGTV, I'm on the board of directors for that, and also I've created content on that channel, different film projects that people can find there.

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And that's something we wanna continue to do, and several works are actually kind of in the works of that.

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Matter of fact, one film we just finished, and we're just kind of struggling with how to get it out and what's the best way to move forward with it.

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But I just finished a film with Peter Jones, apologist, theologian at a

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Westminster, now retired, but truth exchange ministry, Peter Jones. And it also features

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Steve Lawson and Ken Ham. And so it's a wonderful, wonderful film, documentary, and just Peter Jones is a profound thinker and a profound voice in today's kind of pagan world and pagan context that we live, this sort of post -Christian era that we're living through right now.

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Very, very important. I'm very pleased with the project. I did another project a long time ago that people still, it's amazing,

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I still get people giving me feedback on it. But many years ago, I actually, I did a film called

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Unpopular. People can watch that for free on YouTube. And that's with James White and Paul Washer and myself.

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And that was just really more than anything, just a gospel presentation, just making man aware of their need for Christ and in a way where we used media, but to convey that powerful message through film.

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And so those things are definitely a burden of mine. Definitely, I feel called to be involved in media production and filmmaking and things like that.

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And so God has brought me several brothers to help with that. And we've got other things kind of lined up and ready to go.

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It's just, when you get into film, after you film, the other big factor is production and funding.

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And so that all boils down to getting everything in order that way. So, but I think that we're gonna be continuing to put out content here in the near future.

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All right, we look forward to that. And I will list that movie you were talking about that's on YouTube.

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I'll list that link in the show notes below. And so yeah, you spent time with Ken Ham and Steve Lawson.

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I believe those are gonna be some speakers along with Dr. White at G3 coming up in a few days. Yeah, I'll be there,

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Lord willing. I went to one a couple years ago and that was great.

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That was a fun time, big conference. I think this year may be the biggest ever, something like 8 ,200 at least.

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So, I mean, we're talking about 8 ,200 people. I mean, that's a lot. So that's a big conference. Yeah, I believe it's on the sovereignty of God.

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So this is like the Mecca. Yeah. Now, you said you remembered me because I think

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I first met you at the last G3. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is

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Emilio Ramos. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is Jeremiah. Well, I don't know about all that.

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But I first recognized you or saw you on Marlon's channel. Marlon Wilson does the

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Gospel Truth YouTube channel. Please, if you're watching this, go support Marlon and check out some of his debates.

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He's had a bunch of scholars on his channel, like Emilio. And I've seen a couple of your debates.

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And oh my goodness, you kept your composure debating an atheist that would have probably drove me crazy.

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But you contended for the faith well, with love and respect and gentleness, sanctifying the

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Lord in your heart. And so that was apparent. And you stood, can I say presuppositionally on God's word?

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Sure. Yes, of course, transcendentally, presuppositionally, probably most accurate of all, in a

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Vantillian presupposition way. You're speaking my language, Emilio.

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And so that also, I do wanna do another plug to a mutual friend of ours, Eli Ayala at Revealed Apologetics.

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That's such a good brother who's doing works in the world of apologetics. And I look up to and learn a lot from him.

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Like you said, with these transcendental ideas, understanding that the world we live in must proceed from the

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God who is sovereign and triune and has revealed himself to us. And so you do a lot of work in apologetics.

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And so we were talking earlier about kind of this new age apologetics that you spend a lot of time dealing with.

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So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Honestly, I haven't really done anything substantial on it yet other than some

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YouTube videos. I did probably seven or eight, maybe 10 YouTube videos where I deal with what

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I've called the new apologetics. And the new apologetics basically is just saying that the old apologetics, though we will always have to contend with the old, in a sense, the old lines of demarcation.

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Christian cults, Islam, atheism and evolution and things like that.

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Maybe even textual criticism. But I think that we're in the 21st century, we've kind of entered in an unprecedented time because of technology on the one hand and globalism on the other hand.

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And typically, if you look back in the history of apologetics, you don't see very much being done by way of technology and globalism.

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Typically, globalism has been sort of lumped in with a geopolitical sort of framework, socioeconomic framework.

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And then technology has sort of been looked upon as benign or just as a tool.

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I mean, technology comes from techne, which means tool or craft. And so we've looked at it like that, but now and in today's times as technology and the forces of a socioeconomic and political system, whatever you wanna call it, but it is no less than that, are coming into closer and closer alignment, especially when you think about the economics that are sort of impending, let's say in the next decade or so as we are being increasingly moved towards things like a digital

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ID, a digital banking system, those kinds of things, they will have remarkable effects upon the way that we, well, really the way that the world operates, but then that will all be lumped in.

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And in my opinion, that's gonna be all connected to not just economics, but also the sociological framework of the way the world works all the way down to worldview issues like ethics and spirituality and morality and those kinds of things.

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And so these are big, big tectonic sort of factors that have the potential to shift the course of human history in different directions.

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And when you think about, when I'm talking about the new apologetics, I'm talking a lot about futurism, and that includes transhumanism, post -humanism and robotics.

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And certainly we're seeing that kind of doled out right now in the culture in very incipient forms.

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Little by little here they come, but what they plan, at least what their ambitions are, what their dreams are for all of this, according to the leading transhumanist scholars, engineers, mathematicians, robotics experts, like Ray Kurzweil, Hans Marvich, Max Moore, Natasha Vita -Moore, many others,

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Damien Broderick, many of these men that Christians have no clue who they are. They're totally unfamiliar with them.

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We can list people, let's say, in pseudo -Christian cults. We can talk about leading thinkers in Islam.

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We can think about leading thinkers in Mormonism or Jehovah Witness or whatever, Catholics.

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But really in the transhumanist world, we are dealing with what Yuval Noah Harari calls the data religion.

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And this new data religion, I think that's actually quite an apt description for it.

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But in the data religion, everything is up for grabs again as far as they're concerned, all the way down to the redefinition of what man is.

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And so we're dealing with some pretty serious forces. And I'm hoping to write something,

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I'm hoping to do something substantial on this. And it's taken my reading and my interest in a whole different direction.

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So that's at least part of what we're talking about with the new apologetics. Well, it sounds exciting, because you mentioned worldview.

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And so at The Apologetic Dog, something I try to stress is that we're not neutral.

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And when we ask the question, where do we get truth? The only way to get truth is from the God of truth who cannot lie and who has revealed himself.

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And so I'd love some more of your insight. What kind of encouragement do you have for Christians living in this world where robotics, artificial intelligence, the world as we know it is shifting, right?

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These times are shifting and this affects how we're living to a particular end of history.

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So what would you encourage the Christian with as we see the culture change left and right just quickly?

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What do you think? Yeah, no, ironic, Jeremiah, it's ironic. But what we're talking about today, Jeremiah, with eschatology, the way that I've stated it for podcasts and on the new apologetics videos that I produced and even just going forward in the

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YouTube channel what we're doing is that the future of apologetics is eschatology. And that typically there's a disconnect there.

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And when I say that, people tend to kind of go draw a blank and kind of not understand what I'm talking about because when they think about eschatology, usually what we're thinking of in terms of eschatology are things like the timing of the return.

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Is there a rapture? What's the nature of the millennium? How is the world gonna end, et cetera, et cetera. But really when you think about what it is that these folks are envisioning and what

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I call the futurist dream, it is nothing short of a full -blown cosmology.

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It is a new worldview and equipped with, fully equipped with their own narrative of both creation and consummation.

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And if we don't understand that, then we won't grasp necessarily how to approach all of it.

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Let me give you an example, Jeremiah, of what I'm talking about. When you look at the leading transhumanist literature and globalist literature, it is a repeated theme over and over.

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I can show you the books where repeatedly these thinkers begin their books the same exact way.

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They begin the book by giving you a retelling of the story of the origin of man and everything.

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And so they begin with a basic evolutionary framework and then their focus begins to focus on progress, advancement, innovation, and eventually technology until we get all the way to what they're talking about now, which is no longer evolution.

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Matter of fact, in the cutting edge futurist literature, the language of evolution has been replaced and now the language is the language of anti -evolution or what they call self -evolution.

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In other words, we're no longer undergoing the evolutionary process in a passive way.

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We will now, in a sense, take the reins of evolution over, self -evolve, and in that way, self -advance into whatever next stage of humanity or the next stage of man down to our biology, down to our economy, down to our environment where everything is gonna be reimagined.

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And it's all in the language of advancement and for that reason, it's eschatological because we're talking about taking mankind to the next level.

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The Humanity Plus website is all about moving humanity to the next stage of evolution, yes, but they don't really care about evolution anymore because you see transhumanism, which just means man and machine coming closer together and humans being augmented and being advanced through technology and altered somehow, whether it's wearable technology or implantable technology.

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But that leads all the way to post -humanism where this technology not only changes us but slowly begins to replace us.

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And truly, truly committed post -humanists like Hans Marovitch would say that the final step as far as he can see into the future, and that's why

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I call it the future's dream, not only because it's a fantasy, it is, it's not gonna happen, but this is what they envision for the far future, for the distant future, is that Hans Marovitch would argue that robots that are empowered by at least artificial general intelligence if not artificial super intelligence will leave humanity in the dustbin of history and they will go on to essentially, to quote the old

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Star Trek intro, to go where no man has gone before, to explore strange new worlds and new civilizations.

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In other words, the robots will own the future and we will live vicariously through them.

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So this is, we can laugh at this and we can caricature it as some sort of sci -fi in a sci -fi cartoonish kind of a way, but it kind of like, it's like this,

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Jeremiah, it's like it's all fun and games until billions and billions of dollars are being spent on it.

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I see. And so when you see where the money is going in places like Google and Synchron and Neuralink and when you're starting to see that the money is going to these tech innovators that have this worldview and ultimately that have this vision, it begins to make the conversation a bit more serious.

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Well, you said a shocking yet important statement. You said the future of apologetics is eschatology.

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And I love that because like I've been delving into the world of eschatology more and more, realizing that your view of the end times directly impacts how we live here and now.

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So what's your encouragement to the Christian about in this time where everything is kind of going robotic?

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Is there anything that you would say directly how to help us stay tethered to Christ, looking to Him during these times?

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Yeah, I would say that our hope is eschatology because we have to believe it.

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And as times become increasingly more complicated, more delusional, deceptive, when things become more increasingly difficult to discern as far as let's say, for example, how much of the application of cutting edge technology do we incorporate into our lives?

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And the next step coming up here real soon, coming to a neighborhood near you is how much of this do we incorporate into our body?

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Then we need to really, really believe what the Bible teaches about eschatology, about the parousia hope, about the consummation, about the true nature of what advancement is.

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And for that, we need 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45 all the way to verse, let's say 52, and then following into the resurrection.

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But we need to understand that humanity's advanced through the spirit of God and through resurrection, not through technology and human augmentation or something like that.

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And nanotechnology, that's not the way we're gonna advance ourselves forward. So we have to keep that hope in front of us.

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And we need to understand that we are building a system, all of us, like it or not.

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Jeremiah, I would argue, based on Revelation 17, 17, for example, we are all building

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Babel 2 .0. Whether you like it or not, to some degree, we are all participating in this sort of Babel 2 .0,

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sort of a one world sort of system, right? Until we can't build it anymore, because we cannot build that which dishonors

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God and that which dishonors Christ. And at that point, you asked me for encouragement.

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And so I'm sorry if this doesn't sound encouraging, but the encouragement is that we also have to develop a healthy theology of suffering and even martyrdom.

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And so if we don't, I think we're sort of shortchanging ourselves.

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And so I think we're undermining. And if you just look at the Bible, I just did a

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Bible study here recently for our church where I said that it's difficult to find a single book in the

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New Testament that is not predicated on persecution. And you look at the book of Hebrews, you look at what's going on in Colossae, you look at what's going on in Philippi, you look at what's going on in John's letters.

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I mean, you look at the book of Revelation. I mean, persecution is the sort of, it is the assumption of both the author and the audience.

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And yet, thankfully, we in the West are at least mainly sort of removed from that mentality because we are not persecuted in, let's say, in a physical way, although we are increasingly marginalized or we're oppressed through socioeconomic ways and things like that.

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But we can't ever lose sight of the fact that the Bible is written to a persecuted people.

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Well, the future of apologetics is eschatology. And when we were talking earlier about thinking presuppositionally and transcendentally, we're talking about, look,

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God is the necessary starting point for our existence in the world that we look at.

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So he gets to tell us truth. And so it's his word, a robust understanding of the whole counsel of God in the eschaton, where we will see the parrhesia, his coming to restore all things.

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And you're talking about in this world that says, look, the evolvement of humanity is robotic and essentially artificial.

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Well, that goes against God's word. He has given us insight. The one who declares the end from the beginning tells us what the end's going to look like.

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And for this world, it's perishing, right? 2 Peter 3 tells us more about, even though the world's going to mock

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Jesus's coming, it's all gonna be burned up. And at his coming, he will restore all things, the new heavens and the new earth, right?

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So we have this beautiful, blessed hope as Christians. And so you mentioned 1

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Corinthians 15. And so there's that whole chapter, and it's over 50 verses, but the whole chapter is rooted in what our blessed hope looks like, and it's tethered to the gospel.

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And I love studying eschatology, and essentially there's three orthodox perspectives. You've got premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism.

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And they have charitable conversations about the nature of some of these things.

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But at the end of the day, they can unite around the things that we hold with a close fist, that Jesus's coming is future bodily.

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He's gonna restore all things with the resurrection of the dead, the righteous unto everlasting life, and judgment to those who died in their sin.

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And so 1 Corinthians 15 says, we can rest knowing that our resurrection will be like Christ when he resurrected.

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So I think an encouragement for these new generations that are coming up is being equipped with God's word and his promises.

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And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this passage, Emilio. So 1 Corinthians 15 starting in verse 20 says, but in fact,

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Christ has been raised from the dead the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead.

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For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order.

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Christ the firstfruits, then at his parrhesia, like we've been talking about his coming, those who belong to Christ.

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Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

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For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

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And so, you know, we can stop there because that captures so much,

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Emilio, of our blessed hope, right? Who Jesus is, what we will be resurrected like, we'll be like Christ when he resurrected bodily, right?

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So I think in a lot of ways, this defeats this mentality of, you know, kind of robotics and humans being one.

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Oh, certainly. Yeah, and to be really clear, brother, like I don't obviously believe that the futurist dream will be realized.

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However, let me just make a distinction and maybe this is jumping ahead of us a little bit here. Oh, got it.

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You know, I did do one episode where I talked about this with another guy on a different podcast and somebody in the comment section said, you know,

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Emilio does not understand post -millennialism because he doesn't understand that transhumanism is one of the things that Jesus will put under his feet.

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And of course, where we disagree is not on that point. Of course, I agree that Jesus will put the enemy of transhumanism if it becomes antagonistic towards humanity, right?

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But in a sense, anything belonging to this sinful world, Jesus is gonna put all of these things under his feet but I just believe that the post -millennial position has erroneously exegeted

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Psalm 110 and they have a false interpretation of the timing of all of that and the dynamics of all of that, situating that in some sort of progressive, sort of intensive kind of way leading up to the return of Christ where through the church,

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Jesus is somehow putting all enemies under his feet. When I think it's very clear from the verse that you read here, that he will do this at his coming.

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And so I believe that when Paul quotes Psalm 110 here, he is not saying that we should expect that the dynamic of the kingdom of God in this present evil age is going to be that the church should look out in expectation that all of the present enemies that we see here and now, one by one will slowly begin to be toppled by the power of Christ through the church.

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I think that's called exaggerated eschatology and that's ultimately motivated by an agenda for reconstructionism ultimately.

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And I think it's false. And I think you have a commentary on this passage in Revelation chapter 20 before the great white throne judgment where John says in Revelation 20 verses 14 and 15, right?

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Even as it says here, the last enemy to be abolished is death. And then notice in verse 27, he says, for he's put all things under his feet.

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So he has put all things under his feet is demonstrated ultimately by Christ having the power to abolish death.

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Well, Revelation 20 tells us when all of this happens, it happens at the great parousia judgment of Christ.

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And it does not happen prior to that. And this is,

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I tell you what, Jeremiah, one of the things that you mentioned something, I don't know that I did a good job of explaining it, but in terms of the hope that we have, the encouragement that we have in light of everything that is potentially coming soon, the hope of that is that Christ is going to put all these things right, but we cannot give the church a false hope.

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That's something we can't do in Christian discipleship. We cannot tell the church because a

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Planned Parenthood institution was closed down, that that is somehow evidence of Jesus subjecting all things under his feet or that he will put all of his enemies under his feet.

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That is not a clear indication of that. And if we start teaching the church to view the supremacy, authority, and lordship of Christ that Paul is talking about here, if we start training the church to look at these things through the lens of our geopolitical developments,

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I think we undermine the totality of the Christian hope. I love the passion there because what we're emphasizing is eschatology matters, and post -millennialism is orthodox, but it's different than the all -millennial framework, and it's different than the futurism of pre -millennialism.

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And I think you would agree with me. We see post -millennialists as brothers, and they look at all -millennialists as brothers, but there are some real differences there, how

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God's law is supposed to go forth and how it's going to affect the nations and humanity and eschatology.

36:39

And so what I love is that we can charitably speak back and forth and tell each other on both sides of the aisle what to look out for because I love my post -millennialist brothers, and I tell everybody, look,

36:54

I come out of the Johnny Mac pre -millennial dispensational crowd. You gotta think, I was in it for eight years,

37:00

Emilio. And so I've loved the deep study of all -mill and post -mill because sometimes

37:07

I can't hardly tell the difference between the two, and I'm starting to see more and more, there are real differences. And so getting to speak at the conference in Indiana, in Topeka, Indiana, a couple weeks ago, was awesome because I got to hear some very clear speakers on their view within post -millennialism, and you see how it does affect everything.

37:29

And for you being more of the inaugurate kingdom come, the all -millennial paradigm of saying,

37:36

Jesus is ruling reigning now, there's a difference with how we see this age and the age to come.

37:43

And so this has been one of my cautions to the post -millennial crowd. And what's awesome is not everyone in the post -mill crowd views this age the same, but then there are some big cautions that I have.

37:56

If we view this age that Jesus talked about in the Olivet Discourse as merely talking about the

38:03

Jewish aeon, the Jewish age only, then you have real problems. I don't know if you've looked into it this way, but essentially, the parricide is supposed to happen at the end of the age, right?

38:16

Jesus' second coming. And so what I love about the consistency within all -millennialism is this age is this temporal age that's perishing, which would encompass all the things promised to the

38:29

Jewish nation or what they would be a part of. And many of their ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ.

38:35

And we just see the destruction of the temple saying, hey, no more religion. That is dead, right? It found its fulfillment.

38:41

And the apologetic of the book of Hebrews is saying, y 'all are neglecting such a great salvation in the person of Jesus.

38:47

And y 'all are falling back on all these dead ceremonial works and laws. And so what do you think about that?

38:54

I know you have some caution of saying how we view the end times and how we get there are very important.

39:02

But I don't know if you've looked into much about understanding the distinctions with this age and the age to come.

39:09

Yeah, certainly. Actually, we recently did a couple episodes on our show where I'm advancing what

39:17

I'm calling sort of the reformed encyclopedia. And the reformed encyclopedia for me consists of five components, which is reformed

39:27

Trinitarianism, stressing the idea of autotheon, John Calvin's view, reformed biblical theology.

39:36

Well, let me say it this way. Reformed Trinitarianism, try to say it in order of the way that I think it should be thought of, reformed federalism or covenant theology.

39:46

And then also reformed biblical theology in a Vossian, Kleinian sort of tradition.

39:52

And then reformed apologetics in a Vantilian tradition. And ultimately, reformed eschatology.

40:00

And when I say reformed eschatology, I know those sound like fighting words. Because people would say, well, wait a minute,

40:08

I'm reformed, but I don't have your eschatology. And I say, that's fine. I would make a case that when you look at the reformed confessions, for example, the vast majority of reformed confessions are favorable to an amillennial position.

40:21

They're certainly not killiest. They're not premillennial. And I would say the confessional standards of reformed orthodoxy seem to be contrary to postmillennialism on several grounds.

40:34

Now, that does not mean the crafters or the people that framed some of these confessions individually did not have postmillennial leanings or postmillennial exegesis or postmillennial convictions.

40:46

It is just to say that the documents themselves, for example, the Westminster, the

40:51

London Baptist Confessions, both clearly futurist in their eschatology.

40:59

We could argue idealist to some degree, even from the confessions. But there's no question that the

41:05

Westminster Confession and the London Baptists believe in the coming of an Antichrist. Mistakenly, this is ironic, because I think they erred mistakenly identifying the

41:16

Antichrist as the Pope, which I don't think he was. But - When I read

41:22

Calvin, I mean, he does not, you know, he does not hold back in roasting the papacy and linking them to the

41:28

Antichrist. Sure, and we would say it is an Antichrist, right? It may be under an Antichrist, lowercase

41:35

A, but capital A Antichrist, we would see, and I think the confessions are arguing, is a future thing, at least from the confessions, get this, it's certainly not preterist.

41:48

Oh. Got it. So it cannot have a preterist, even a partial preterist, fulfillment.

41:55

They saw Antichrist as a futuristic dynamic, together with the future apostasy and persecution of the church.

42:03

In the Second Helvetic Confession, the Reformers who crafted that equated a post -millennial type of vision as Zionism, Jewish dreams of some kind of carnal kingdom that is going to arise, concluding in some sort of partial, repristinated earth.

42:26

They don't support that either. And so when you look at these confessional standards, brother,

42:32

I just say, that's why when I'm talking about Reformed eschatology, I'm talking about partially that, but I'm also talking about partially that within Reformed theology, rooted in federal theology as it is, rooted in biblical theology as it is, we always have to honor the two -age construction of Scripture.

42:57

Adam was in a two -age construction. He had the present age, not the present evil age, but he had the present age, and then he had the age to come through eschatological advancement had he obeyed perfectly, personally, exactly the law of God in the covenant of works.

43:17

And then he would have been advanced eschatologically via the tree of life, together with his posterity, into the age to come, which is the

43:27

Sabbath realm. And so what happened? Well, of course he fell.

43:33

And in the fall, what happened to that two -age construction? The only thing that happened is that the present age became the present evil age, but it did not change the two -age construction at all.

43:50

And so in my opinion, Jeremiah, what happens under these other systems, pre and post, is that you have a blending together of the two ages until a tertium quid arises, a third thing, a third principle of a third dynamic or a third age, where it's not quite the present evil age anymore, but it's also not quite the age to come.

44:18

And what we would argue from a reformed amillennial, I'll come back to the word amillennial, but what we would argue from a reformed amillennial position is that these are sub -eschatological structures.

44:31

They're not actual eschatology proper. They fall short of eschatology because they end up putting

44:40

Christ in a sub -eschaton where he hasn't actually arrived at the true age to come kingdom glory.

44:51

And that's something that we cannot afford to believe in reformed theology. We cannot imagine, even as Louis Burkhoff pointed out in his systematic theology, the problem with premillennialism is that it results in multiple absurdities.

45:10

And I know that's fighting words, but I think there is, but I think,

45:16

Jeremiah, there's no greater absurdity than to argue that Jesus Christ will return in all of his glory, his glorified body, to once again be in the tension of an already not yet dynamic.

45:30

Absolutely not. Same thing with postmillennialism. Postmillennialism envisions a time, a golden age, the millennium, where essentially, right, as even

45:43

Bonson said, sin is reduced to negligible proportions. And that what he calls, we can experience a semi -heavenized world.

45:56

There is no such thing as a semi -heavenized world. Never will be, and that is not our hope.

46:05

Our hope is not. Aren't we pilgrims? Yeah, well, our hope is not in, our hope is not in sort of drawing back degrees of the curse.

46:17

That's not our hope. Our hope is in eradicating the curse.

46:24

But we don't eradicate the curse in a partial step -by -step fashion, but Christ eradicates the curse altogether when he comes.

46:37

So there are deeper structures to eschatology than what we tend to fight about up here in the surface.

46:45

If we're just, you know, this is a, I hope people are okay that we're kind of playing 40 chess here, because this is kind of a

46:53

Vantilian approach, Jeremiah, because remember what Vantil taught. Vantil taught an indirect approach to apologetics, right?

47:01

You don't trade factoids with unbelievers. This rock in Jerusalem is this old.

47:09

No, it's not, it's this old. No, we found it, it's this old. Okay, well, we're gonna, well, my experts say it's this old.

47:15

My experts say it's that old. Okay, we can argue about archeology till we're blue in the face, or we can come with an indirect argument to answer the question, can your worldview account for evidence in the first place?

47:29

And so I would say it's the same thing with eschatology. All your individual points of exegesis, we need to ask the deeper structural covenantal questions.

47:42

Can your covenantal theology sustain the points that you're making in your individual exegetical points you're making throughout critical texts or whatever?

47:53

And I would say, brother, I would submit that only and uniquely the amillennial position can do that and honor the covenant theology of the

48:04

Bible. Emilio, you're getting me fired up over here, man. I love it, because I have a question, because I know with the postmillennial framework, their battle cry is we win, right?

48:16

We have a winner eschatology, right? We're not going out thinking we're gonna lose.

48:22

And so that's kind of the sales pitch I hear a lot of times. And I'll be honest. I appreciate people being on fire for wanting to serve the

48:30

Lord and be obedient to the marching orders of the Great Commission, but what's your immediate thoughts when the critique for premillennialism and amillennialism is that is a loser mindset and a loser theology?

48:48

I would say you sound too much like the Corinthian church, because in 1

48:54

Corinthians 4, verse eight and following, the Apostle Paul had to correct any triumphalistic spirit of the church, any delusional, you know, delusions of grandeur that you are somehow going to arrive at some kind of eschatological triumph prior to the eschaton, so that you tend to think of yourself as a winner.

49:20

And Paul says, well, to use, you know, to paraphrase, I wish that we could win with you, because apparently we don't understand the nature of your victory.

49:30

We're paraded all day long as fools for Christ. And so you're on thrones, but we're put to death.

49:39

And so I think what Paul was saying was, you have misunderstood the nature of this age.

49:45

And triumph, victory, eschatological reward and vindication do not happen this side of heaven.

49:52

They don't happen prior to the parousia. And if you think you do, you have arrived at some sort of pseudo kingdom element in your theology.

50:01

And it is a false triumphalism that needs to be checked by biblical eschatology.

50:07

And I think that's what Paul is doing in Corinthians. And so we never wanna sound like that.

50:13

And so I don't know how helpful even, you know, Jeremiah, this language of winning and losing, I don't know how helpful that language really is.

50:20

I think it ends up just becoming sort of fodder for online banter and things like that.

50:25

But I think at the end of the day, it just seems to run against the grain of the tone and the attitude of the

50:33

Christian church, the apostolic church, and even the teaching of Christ. When you read Christ in his beatitudes, that you are blessed, in fact, when you are persecuted and maligned, the apostle

50:48

Paul is saying, look, I'm content with persecutions and weaknesses because when I am weak, then he is strong, or then

50:55

I am strong, right? So that we never get to a point of self -reliance or self -sufficiency by thinking that we ourselves are gonna take the reins of this age.

51:10

And you know, there's a really helpful little book. You mind if I plug a book? Oh, 100%, go for it. Yeah, so there's a really helpful little book.

51:17

It's a PhD thesis by William Dennison, Bill Dennison. It's called

51:22

Apologetics and Paul's Two -H Construction. And it's got that long technical name because I guess that's what you do when you write your

51:31

PhD, your thesis for PhD. But that little book there,

51:39

I have found it to be uniquely, uniquely useful for understanding an actual biblical, exegetical,

51:49

Pauline apologetic rooted in eschatology. So maybe people will have to go back and listen to this again or whatever, but that book will really help you to understand

52:04

Paul's theology of this age and the age to come.

52:11

And you know, I personally subscribe. I said I was gonna comment on the word amillennialism because I've actually taken on a little bit of a nuance.

52:19

I've added a different preposition and the Greek preposition ano, you know what it means?

52:27

It means above. Okay. So I think maybe the most accurate way that we can describe our eschatology is an ano -millennialism because where is the millennium, strictly speaking?

52:47

It's in heaven. Listen, wouldn't you agree, wherever the throne that Jesus is sitting on, right there is his reign.

53:01

And so if the throne of Jesus is in heaven, the reign of Jesus is in heaven in that nature and in that dynamic.

53:12

That doesn't mean he's not sovereign over all things, but as Hebrews chapter two tells us, you do not now see all things subjected to him.

53:26

And so if we're looking for visuals and if we're looking for Planned Parenthood to crumble, and if we're looking for certain gender ideologies to crumble, if we're looking for the crescent moon to crumble, if we're looking for, you know, the population of the planet,

53:44

I don't know if you've done the work, Jeremiah, but if you look at the population of the planet right now, you take

53:50

Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, I think you have roughly 80 % of the population of planet

53:57

Earth. You take in addition to that Catholicism, all the Christian cults, animism, all the paganism in the third world, together with secularism and atheism, and you have somewhere around 90 or more percent of the planet.

54:17

Now I wanna ask you the question, of that percentage left, what percentage of the visible, being generous, evangelical church do you believe is really elect?

54:34

See, we can play around with eschatology, but these kind of thoughts here is what really puts things, this is the rubber meeting the road, where we have to, as Christians, be self -reflective and realistic and understand narrow is the way.

55:00

Wow, you gave me a lot to think about there. Now, my first question, I love the point about the kingdom is where the throne is, right?

55:09

So Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. So would you say - In that nature. In that nature.

55:14

So help me understand how, obviously God is sovereign here and now, but I know the post -millennial battle cry is

55:22

Jesus is ruling and reigning now, right? The kingdom is upon us in the gospels we read, and we see that being carried out, or how would you kind of critique that position?

55:34

Well, I wouldn't critique it with anything novel or original to my own thinking.

55:42

I would just use the hermeneutics of Edmund Clowney. And Edmund Clowney was the first president of Westminster Seminary.

55:51

Edmund Clowney gave us a very simple hermeneutic for understanding the kingdom. And he said, if you wanna understand the kingdom, just look at the king.

56:00

Whatever question you have about the kingdom, ask that question concerning the king.

56:08

Is the kingdom here? I don't know. Ask the question, is the king here?

56:16

So let's play a little game, if you don't mind, Jeremiah. Let me ask you these questions, because I think you're an astute enough theologian to be able to answer these questions.

56:27

But let me ask you this question. Okay. In all seriousness, is the king here? I don't see him.

56:37

Is that your answer? That is one answer that some people may give.

56:44

Okay, so if you think about it really long and hard, if your answer is he's not here, are you okay with that?

56:54

Yeah, I think this is one of those good questions. You gotta think, I'm coming out of that pre -meal dispensational, where it's saying that Jesus is sovereign, but the

57:03

Davidic throne is something. But he's also omnipresent, right? Mm, yep. And so in one sense, he is here.

57:13

But it all comes down to the sense, right? It all comes down to the sense.

57:20

I'll ask you this question. Uh -oh. Because the Bible says the kingdom of God is within.

57:26

Is the king within? No, because we would say the Holy Spirit is within.

57:31

No, no, no, listen to me. Is the kingdom of God within you, yes or no? Yes. So then is the king within you?

57:40

Yes. Of course. In a sense, yeah. No, emphatically, brother.

57:45

The king indwells you by faith. So these are the questions, and I know they're kind of trick questions, so bear with me.

57:53

I'm like sweating over here. Bear with me. But this is part of the untangling of the confusion that arises today when you have people out there making hard and fast declarations about the kingdom of God, rush -shotting over the categories and confusing the categories.

58:13

And so Christians are left with these false dilemmas and this bifurcation that doesn't even exist where it's like either the kingdom is here or it's not here.

58:22

That's not Christianity. That's not how we operate in Christianity. There is a dynamic.

58:28

There is a principle of the kingdom that adheres to the principle of the king himself.

58:35

And that's what, in my opinion, that's what Hebrews 2 is talking about. God has given him all rule, all authority, right?

58:44

But you don't, he subjected everything beneath his feet, but you don't see everything subject to him now.

58:51

It's that simple. And so to have, to try to argue for a more geophysical manifestation of the kingdom is like putting a square peg into a circle.

59:07

That's like trying to put Jesus physically on this earth. It doesn't work.

59:15

And so if these hermeneutical principles can be understood, we would have less confusion.

59:21

Oh yeah, because, well, I mean, you've kind of touched on this. I was gonna bring up Psalm 110, verse one.

59:29

I know you touched on it briefly, but this is kind of where a lot of eschatology hangs, is saying, doesn't this clearly say,

59:37

Emilio, that things are going to progress until he returns and puts all enemies under his feet?

59:43

And you're saying there's a whole worldview attached to that, right? Yeah, it's a whole worldview.

59:50

There's a whole hermeneutic. There's an entire eschatological tension and dynamic. And it amazes me that people don't see that when we understand from the teaching of Jesus himself, the tension of the kingdom, the already not yet.

01:00:04

There is sort of the inaugural stage of that verse that has not, in a sense, that cannot be confused with the consummate stage of that verse.

01:00:19

And so these issues, brother, are involved. And that's why I try to put people within the framework of what

01:00:26

I call the Reformed Encyclopedia, because connected to all of this is also biblical theology.

01:00:33

Your understanding of protology, meaning the study of first things.

01:00:39

You know what the word protology is, right? So the study of first things, not eschatology, but protology.

01:00:45

And we know, nobody's done more work on this than G .K. Beal, but that eschatology and protology go together.

01:00:53

And so if you misunderstand the nature of protology, if you go on thinking things like the creational commission given to Adam has transferred over to the church, and now it's the church's job to finish what

01:01:07

Adam did not do in taking dominion of the earth. If you've adopted that, right?

01:01:14

All of these points we're making, they're not gonna affect you, because until you see the proper typological connection, not the dominion of Adam connecting to the church, but the dominion of Adam connecting to Christ and his cross work, you're never gonna make the right conclusion exegetically.

01:01:33

You're always gonna keep coming to the false understanding so long as you don't understand protology. So there's a lot of factors involved in getting your eschatology right, as far as I'm concerned.

01:01:47

So where are some good, as we're beginning to wind down, so what are some good passages of scripture that kind of help put us on this right track of eschatology?

01:01:57

Now, remind me of the name that you said for kind of a relabeling of all millennialism.

01:02:04

Onomillennialism. Onomillennialism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we're talking about whole counsel of God, worldviews, hermeneutics, but what are a few good passages, if you can maybe think of some to say, hey, this kind of encaptures what we're talking about here?

01:02:20

I think one of the things that we need to do for people is to immediately define what the nature of the present age is.

01:02:27

Is the present evil age, talking about the old covenant, I think that's completely unfounded.

01:02:33

And you and I were talking a little bit, I think, about what I did with the

01:02:38

John Owen episode we did on YouTube, but I tried to cover some of his understanding, right, that the present evil age was referring basically to the

01:02:49

Judaical Church, the old covenant expiring 70 AD would essentially usher in the age to come, right, and that kind of phenomenon.

01:02:59

I think, man, I think Owen makes some very, very self -contradictory points in his writings on this.

01:03:09

But at any stage, when you get a right definition of the two ages, and I think that that book by Bill Denison is a penetrating study, penetrating, at the

01:03:22

PhD level, where he shows, like, for example, in Ephesians chapter two, right, that this is not sensitive to Israel.

01:03:33

This has nothing to do with Israel and the old covenant when it talks about that people follow what, he uses the

01:03:43

Greek construction to speak both of aeonos and cosmos, age and world.

01:03:53

And when he says that they follow the course or that Greek word there is age, they follow the age of this cosmos, what

01:04:04

Paul has done is he's introduced two dynamics to understand this entire dimension in which we live.

01:04:14

One is age, which is introducing us to a historical time -sensitive issue, speaking of the inner advental period, and then cosmos is gonna speak of an ethical dimension, an ethical and spiritual dimension that is tethered to the present historical age, and that that is what the sons of disobedience belong to.

01:04:46

And so, yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, I just, well, I appreciate that plug. I'm definitely gonna list that book in the show notes.

01:04:54

If you can get it, if you can find it, who knows? I'll try, I'm gonna try. Might be out of print. Well, Emilio, thank you so much for showing your heart and passion for eschatology because essentially the name of this episode is gonna be

01:05:08

The Future of Apologetics Is Eschatology. And so these, hey, when you said that,

01:05:13

I was like, yes, that's so good because this is practical, and I think it's challenging for those within the orthodox of eschatology to say, hey, there's still things that we need to iron out and talk about, and I just wanna encourage the audience, go check out

01:05:31

Emilio's interview with Lane Tipton because y 'all talked about his paper that he wrote in his mid -20s challenging the theonomy, yeah, the theonomy, the theonomic principles of how

01:05:44

Greg Bonson, now, I thought this was an untouchable topic, Emilio, but Lane Tipton shows, you know what?

01:05:52

Greg Bonson actually put out there a standard, by what standard? To critique his view of theonomy by, and Lane did it, right?

01:06:00

Or at least he contended for it in his paper. So I really appreciated that interview that you did with Lane Tipton.

01:06:08

Yeah, I know, Lane is uniquely qualified to talk on those issues, and brother, that paper, you know, it's one that people need to contend with, and as of right now, there is no known rebuttal to Lane's argument.

01:06:24

I think it's irrefutable, and it shows, kind of like what you said, eschatology matters, you know, and it showed in Bonson's works that Bonson actually, because of his misunderstanding of the eschatological framework of the

01:06:39

Bible, ended up actually articulating a, I don't wanna use the word, but a false doctrine of a proper

01:06:48

Christian theory of knowledge and reality, and ended up articulating something closer to Kantian philosophy, which was totally shocking to me, but it's accurate, and Lane documented it, so it's actually accurate.

01:07:06

So there's a lot at stake there, brother. This is a deep conversation, and I hope, I hope at least maybe

01:07:12

I perked people's interests in some of the points that we covered, so.

01:07:18

Hey, you piqued my interest. You even got me in the hot seat on some of those questions, so I appreciate that.

01:07:24

I'm a learner at heart, Emilio, and so these are deep, important issues that I wanna encourage brothers that maybe disagree with you right now to just understand that this is a brotherly reminder and encouragement to sharpen one another, and sometimes there's gonna be sparks flying within that.

01:07:41

And so, Emilio, before you leave, is there any last words, any last thoughts, once again, where people can find you in some of the upcoming work that you're doing?

01:07:50

Yeah, absolutely. You know, they can just go to the Red Grace Media YouTube channel to watch the episodes,

01:07:59

Red Grace Live, and also Christ in Kingdom. We cover a lot of these topics through podcast, and if they're in Frisco looking for a church,

01:08:07

City View Church Frisco, they can just go right onto the website there and listen to sermons and whatnot, but I appreciate you doing that, and I look forward to seeing you at G3, and I'm sure we'll run into a lot of friends that we both know, so it should be a great time.

01:08:23

Appreciate the time, brother. Absolutely, Emilio. We're gonna have to do this again. I'm gonna come back with questions, and I can't wait to pick your brain about those things.

01:08:32

And once again, just thank you so much for your ministry and contending for the faith and pointing people back to King Jesus.

01:08:38

So take care, brother. You got it. Well, I just wanna thank everybody for listening in to that.

01:08:46

Man, I learned a lot, and I'm definitely gonna read a lot of those books that Emilio recommended. And so eschatology's important, and if you've been following my ministry,

01:08:55

I've been focusing a lot on those essentials of eschatology, about the future bodily coming of Jesus, who's gonna restore all things and judge the living and the dead, and to show how full -preterism is heresy.

01:09:07

And so with talking to Emilio, he is putting forth a reformed eschatology, saying, look, this is an altogether system of thought, how you look at the triune

01:09:19

God, not only with protology, like he's saying with the beginning, but God has sovereign, extensive purpose in all things, even leading up to the end.

01:09:30

And so if you haven't already, please subscribe and like the Apologetic Dog just to help the ministry circulate more content.