The Millennium, Christendom, & Church and State | Theocast (w/ W. Robert Godfrey)

Do the Dutch Reform accept applause? No. Do they accept applause?

No. He's not even smiling at that. I'll ask for forgiveness. Can we thank

Dr. Godfrey for that? For God's glory, brother.

For God's glory. You need to watch who you hang out with. Indeed, this is true.

This is true. I can't go anywhere with him. Can't go anywhere. Can't take him anywhere. I don't know. Okay, well, we just have a handful of questions, so we'll go through a few of these.

Sorry if we didn't get all of your questions answered today. Some of them, we wanted to kind of stay on point with what the conference theme was.

Some of them were good questions, but didn't really fit what we were trying to do. So if you want to ask Justin or John after, please do so.

Chris is going to answer them all in his podcast next week, so stay tuned. All right, so I'll just ask a few of these here that were in the box during the last talk.

But what is your response to historic premill and Jerome's view on Christ's premill return?

I think some of the other fathers, too. God bless you. And that's history. Dr. Godfrey.

You probably know who Jerome is. Don't they know? They probably mean Justin Martyr rather than Jerome.

Don't you think? I'm sure. It is certainly true that there were historic premillennialists in the ancient church, but some more modern premillennialists have claimed that was sort of the majority or characteristic view of the early church.

That's probably not true. That view was already somewhat debated, even then,

Justin Martyr in the second century. So, yeah,

I mean, you read the book of the Revelation, there's a reference to a thousand years. What are you going to do with it? And different theologians have done different things with it.

I happen to know what it really means. Because you were there, right, when

John wrote it? Is that what you're saying? You set yourself up for that.

I'm sorry. Maybe not entirely. I've already had to hear the short joke. But, yeah,

I was on Patmos with John, and he explained it to me. The interesting thing to think about with a thousand years is that every time reference in the book of the

Revelation is a short time reference. Three and a half years being the longest anywhere in the book of the

Revelation until you come to chapter 20 with a thousand years. When everything in the book of the

Revelation is described as going to happen soon, and all the time references are short, what does the thousand years mean?

It should shock us that the thousand years are there at all. That should be the first shock.

It doesn't ever seem to shock anybody except me and John. And I think whatever else you say about the thousand years,

John's first point, I think, is this. Christ is giving to his people plenty of time to do what they need to do.

One of the great Scottish missionaries to Africa in the late 19th, early 20th century is

Mary Schleser. And one of the great things she said as she reflected on Christ and her

Bible reading, she said, Christ was never in a hurry. I've always loved that. Christ was never in a hurry.

He knew that God would give his people time to do what they needed to do. That didn't mean you could be lazy or inactive.

And I think that's what the thousand years in the first place is about. Christ gives his church plenty of time to do the work that it needs to do.

Very good. We only have a few questions here, so this has kind of been done today.

How about this one? This one's for Dr. Godfrey. What are your thoughts on sharing the pulpit with dispensationalists?

I shouldn't set you up like that, but we only have like three questions. Chris, you can't ask your own questions.

Fair enough, fair enough. I don't share the pulpit with anyone.

When I'm preaching, no one else is allowed to preach. It's a funny image, right?

Two guys standing behind the pulpit. Who's going to preach? I've spoken at conferences with John MacArthur.

Usually, since they're Reformed conferences, he's asked to speak about something else.

But one of the very finest lectures I ever heard on election was

John MacArthur. There is in dispensationalism an antinomian wing that can be radical and very disturbing.

That would be different, I think. But I think we should see dispensationalists as brothers in the

Lord who just haven't stumbled upon a Dutch Reformed church yet.

That's right. There is an interesting movement happening in the dispensational world.

I happen to have colleagues that I went to school with that are still wrestling as dispensationalists.

And they're very much starting to use law gospel language, covenant of works, believe it or not, and covenant of redemption.

And so they are listening, and they are wanting to engage. And I think we should be excited and really encourage that, as we all are still learning about what

Dr. Godfrey already knows. Well, you know that Darby, the father of dispensationalism, he visited

America a number of times to try to promote dispensationalism in the 19th century. And he said the only people in America who understand grace are the old school

Presbyterians. So Darby himself said that the sharp distinction he wanted to draw between the church and Israel was in order to draw a distinction between the law and the gospel.

So when Dr. Machen left Princeton in 1929, the first job he was offered was by Schaeffer at Dallas Seminary, saying

Dallas is now the only Calvinist seminary left in America. That's part of dispensational history that dispensationalists prefer to forget.

We've kind of gone through the summary of them. I guess there aren't too many questions here really to go through.

Maybe we could just engage some of the talks today. And then I'd like to, on the abounding grace discussion that we had together, which is one of our,

I think, in terms of downloads, that was our largest one last year.

Ten or twelve people? Ten or twelve. Yeah. Those may have all been me. Yeah. You did touch on, and I appreciate the approach tonight, of all these groups are trying to be biblical.

I do think it's interesting in our time that what is sort of the older version of post -millennialism, it doesn't seem to be what we're dealing with today, our father's post -millennialism.

So there's sort of, we've mentioned a pop post -millennialism, now a sort of theonomic post -millennialism that's very reconstructionist, that's very aggressive.

Are there distinctions to be made in post -millennialism with sort of the, I don't know if you have any insights on the sort of Rush Dooney crowd, the

Gary North crowd, because you were an editor on a very excellent book on theonomy, a reform critique, and I've referred to that book many times.

But I don't, some people struggle with that. Is there a difference between sort of the classic historic post -millennialism and what we're seeing develop now post -Rush

Dooney? Yes, I think so. You know, labels are difficult, sometimes illuminating, sometimes not.

But I would distinguish what I would call, I think, a gradual post -millennialism that sees, you know, the classic post -millennial verse was, a knowledge of the

Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. But that was always conceived as a gradual growth of the church throughout the world, and the church and the knowledge of the gospel spreading and spreading gradually and peacefully.

But Rush Dooney and some of his followers, I think, introduced what I would call a more catastrophic post -millennialism, that instead of gradually things getting better, things get worse, and then there's a catastrophe that leads to a glorification of the church.

So, you know, some people have said that perhaps

Rush Dooney was in part influenced by his own ethnic and social background as an

Armenian who, you know, whose thought and life was very much influenced by the

Armenian Genocide, that sense of catastrophe and salvation coming out of catastrophe. We have to remember, this is why

I'm a historian and not a theologian, is not all people are exclusively motivated by theology.

There are other factors in life that occasionally, not often, but occasionally motivate people.

And I think Rush Dooney maybe was influenced that way. And I think now that there are a lot of Christians who are very distressed by what's happening in our culture, this attraction of, you know, redemption coming out of catastrophe is attractive.

If you guys have any questions too, if you want to jump in. How do you see, and now you've presented an excellent series on, at least here in the adult

Sunday school class at Escanito on the end of Christendom, and what do you see, this is a big question,

I'm just trying to formulate some as I go here, but what do you see are the challenges for the church now in this new sort of world in which we find ourselves where we're not, slowly finding ourselves not the accepted religion in law and in order?

What does this mean for us going forward? How are we, what are some of the challenges you see? Well, one of the books that has really influenced me recently is a book that you'll all want to run out and get.

It's only about 800 pages long, and it's entitled Christendom, the

Triumph of a Religion, 300 to 1300. You know, which is the time frame we're all interested in.

But what it argues very convincingly, I think, is that Christendom was established by civil government embracing

Christianity, or at least a form of Christianity, and enforcing it in law. Now that's not to say lots of people didn't embrace it, it's not to say there were a lot of genuine

Christians in Christendom, but the essential definition of Christendom is that it's

Christianity enforced in law. And I think what you see on the part of Christian nationalists is probably a somewhat romantic desire to go back to Christianity being enforced in law.

And, you know, some people have criticized me for saying that Christendom is over, and I say

I'm saying that purely descriptively as a historian. I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad, I actually think it's probably good.

But it's simply a fact. Now, maybe you can think

Christendom can be restored. If you're a post -millennial, you probably do think that. But the huge difference that makes,

I think, for the church is that we have to realize that we have a whole new burden of being persuasive rather than coercive.

And I don't think that's bad, because I don't think Jesus was ever coercive. He'll be coercive when

He comes again in glory. But for now, there's really not a coercive moment in the

New Testament, I don't think. The New Testament is all about trying to persuade people that Jesus is who

He says He is, that the gospel is what we have to believe. And what that will mean, of course, for us is that we have to be a lot clearer about who we are and what the gospel is and how we can seek to persuade people.

We know, of course, no persuasion can succeed unless the Holy Spirit uses it, but we have to be prepared.

I'm intrigued, and I don't say this critically, but I'm intrigued that from time to time I see

Franklin Graham, you know, do an ad on TV for a minute or two in which he tells you to pray to be saved.

That may be helpful to people. You know, I'm glad he at least gets people thinking about things. But I think that notion that I can speak to you for a minute and then teach you a prayer and you can become a

Christian, it is an assumption of Christendom. It's the revivalistic assumption of America.

Everybody knows the gospel. They just need to be called to believe it. Well, the problem is most people don't know the gospel anymore.

The even bigger problem is a lot of people think they know the gospel, and they don't. And so we have a whole new level of challenge to be clear and communicative and persuasive with the gospel.

And I think we ought to see it as a great challenge. It'll be frustrating because a lot of people won't be persuaded, but the

Lord will use us to gather His elect. So you made a pretty powerful statement about you think

Christendom, which it would be probably good for you to define what you mean by that. And then number two, you did a little bit, yeah, but number two, you made a statement of it's probably a good thing.

It doesn't exist anymore. That's a powerful observation. I would love for you to talk a little bit more about what you, as a theologian, historian, what are you thinking about in that statement?

Well, before you go, and I'm going to dump everything on you right now because in light of that, what would, if we achieved

Christendom again, what kind of problems has coercion brought in the past? Well, think for a minute of the coronation of King Charles III.

I'm a sort of junkie for those sorts of things, so I regretted that he shortened the coronation from five hours to two.

I was ready for five hours, but very near the beginning of the coronation, you know, if you're a bunch of rebels and didn't watch it, the

Archbishop of Canterbury and the moderator of the Church of Scotland come to the king before he's crowned, and they say, will you solemnly promise to uphold the

Protestant Reformed religion? And he says,

I will. How many people of the 2 ,000 in that abbey believe in the

Protestant Reformed religion? What will the king do to uphold it?

You see, Christianity in Europe, I think, was greatly weakened by governments pretending to uphold

Christianity when they didn't. And in that process, Christianity was weakened, not strengthened.

I happen to believe that Queen Elizabeth II was a sincere Christian. I don't know anything about Charles's heart.

But government support establishing religion, I think, everywhere in Europe ultimately weakened religion, weakened both its orthodoxy and its appeal to the people, so that in European history, the church came to be seen as the defender of privilege and status quo rather than the defender of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it was worse, probably, in Roman Catholic countries than in Protestant countries.

But yeah, I mean, you know, in the

Netherlands, the Reformed Church had a state church quality to it.

But the Netherlands, arguably now, is one of the most secularized countries in the world.

It hasn't worked, the merger of church and state. And I think

Christianity, for all of its craziness in America, is much more vital in America. It's in trouble in America now more than it has been.

But Christianity was much more vital in America by the church having to support itself, try to persuade people.

Regrettably, the people who really took advantage of that were the Baptists. Yeah, we feed all the

Presbyterian churches, though. Well, you know, if you're Dutch Reformed, your attitude is, you know, if you don't know you should be here, you really don't belong here.

No, just kidding. Sort of like this conference. You had to know about it before you could be invited.

Anyway, so, you know, I think that call to having to be persuasive is a very good thing.

And to say, we can't expect anybody else to do the church's job for it.

And you said, under Christendom, one of the challenges that we faced with a sort of coercive approach was formalism.

Well, yeah. I mean, there was a time in the 17th century where if you were not an attending member of the

Church of England, you were fined. Well, nobody had money to be fined, so everybody went.

But they didn't pay attention, necessarily. Calvin complained about that. In Geneva, they had to go to church.

So Calvin said people sat in the pews and made rude noises while the preachers tried to preach because they resented being forced to be there.

So, you know, the problem becomes everyone is formally a

Protestant, but have hearts been engaged, and that's really where the revivalist tradition comes from.

We want to try to get the gospel through to the hearts. These people are theoretically

Protestants, but they're not sincerely Protestants. How do we bridge that gap? But they sure did sing

Psalm 23 well, didn't they? They did. They did. The Crimson, too, your favorite.

Crimmond. Oh, Crimmond, sorry. That's all right. You should sing that once in a while.

Okay, maybe just one or two more. Thinking a little bit about suffering in your talk, it's a really powerful point in 2

Thessalonians 1 that our suffering is actually vindicating the righteous judgment of God.

I think that's not something we've heard a lot about. And it seems to be something that I've always found in 2

Thessalonians 1, a very unique presentation of that point, that you don't find that as widespread.

I mean, you do, but he says it very point blank there. He does, yeah. And even the commentators find the

Greek just a little puzzling as he transitions from commending the Thessalonians to talking about the second coming.

And this discussion of the evidence of righteous judgment kind of links those two halves together in a way that's a little unclear.

But I'm pretty sure what I said is right. But it's also what the commentators pretty much read it as saying.

But it gives us a whole different perspective of suffering, I guess, a value to it we rarely think about,

I thought. I think one of the things that was helpful, when you're talking about the righteous judge coming and all of us feel that sense of injustice and we want that, if post -millennialism and culture transfer, all of this, even us, this moment of like we want the world to be better, in order for it to be better, justice has to be served.

Well, we don't really want that because then that means everybody dies and then we have no value anymore because the value we present here is we're the proclaimers of the gospel.

So it's healthy and wonderful to think, okay, the gospel creates hope, which then creates rest in the midst of suffering so that the work can be done because he's withholding his wrath for the day of judgment.

And this world will never feel right because justice is not yet served.

Once it's served, we'll feel comfortable here. I think that's extremely helpful in light of this entire weekend because it makes the proclamation of Christ week in and week out logical because without him,

I'm going to want justice. But with him, I can be patient. Super helpful.

Well, that's 9 o 'clock. It's been a long day. So there was one last question for Justin.

It really isn't for Justin, but I'll just throw this one at you since it's here. I really love you guys, but I just have to know who's the greatest guitar player of all time?

Who's the greatest guitar player of all time? Bob Godfrey wouldn't know the answer to that. I think you should weigh in on this too.

I mean, this is going to be definitely a preference thing. I don't know why anyone would ask that, but it just seemed like the one to end on.

Joan Baez. What do you think? I mean, by American consensus, it's going to be

Jimi Hendrix. I mean, Jimi's the answer, I think. I think Clapton's great.

I mean, there's others. But if you're going to ask me, it's Van Halen. All right.

Well, we would like to thank all of you for coming today. It's been a wonderful day.

I'd like to close in prayer. And we hope to maybe do this again sometime. Yeah, we'll see.

So thank you, Dr. Godfrey, for coming tonight and speaking. And brothers, thank you for coming out. You're about to pray.

One of the most encouraging things I heard today is I'd not quite thought about it the way that you put it, that Christ's resurrection is one of the things so that he can hear our prayers.

Amen. Amen, brother. It's a sweet thought. The ascension is part of the gospel. That's right. His resurrection, ascension, his reign, he hears our prayers.

Let's rise together and pray. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful day of studying the scriptures, a day of singing to you and receiving your wonderful word that gives us life and understanding.

We thank you, Lord, for the blessing of the messages that we heard today. Pray for all those in attendance that,

Lord, your truth would bless them on their way, that you would strengthen them in the knowledge and the truth of the

Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel, that you would encourage them in these times of difficulty, that they would be able to see clearly,

Lord, the promises of the gospel, to rest in them, to know your steadfast covenant love, to know your covenant promise that you will never leave us nor forsake us and that you are indeed with us wherever we go.

And so bless us now as we go home. We ask for safe travels. Thank you, Lord. We anticipate and look forward to the great day.

And so we say, as the scriptures call us to pray, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Deliver us.