Covenant Theology pt 5

Cling to the cross. Then put both arms around it. Hold to the crucified and never let him go. Come afresh to the cross at this moment and rest there now and forever. Then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross.

Covenant Theology and the Shape of Eschatology

Welcome to the Labors Podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight. Tonight will probably be our last episode in this series looking at Covenant Theology,.

Covenant Theology part five. Stick with us. Welcome to the Laborers Podcast, which is a part of the Truth in Love Network. Join us as together we strive to grow up together in all things into Christ. Subscribe and follow the Truth in Love Network on Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and iTunes.

Now, let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast.

Welcome back. Just to let everybody know the comment line is now open. Let us know that you're watching. Say hello. Ask a question. Join in the conversation. We would love to hear from you. We've got Troy, Jay, Josh, Big John, and Tyler.

What's up, guys? Doing good. Yep. Good, good, good. Let's jump right in. If you're looking at your sheet, it is question number eight. We've been looking at different things as it relates to Covenant Theology.

This question takes us to eschatology. I'm curious your all thoughts on how Covenant Theology. Let me just read the question as it stands. What are the distinctions in eschatology in times and the fulfillment of God's promises in Presbyterian Covenant Theology, Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology, and New Covenant Theology?

Of course, we've been talking about dispensationalism too in this. How do we view eschatology? Does Covenant Theology even.

Help us to understand eschatology? Yes. Eschatology is not a disconnected concept. Sometimes we tend to put it in a box on its own that what we believe about the end of times is like the last chapter of a systematic theology book.

Ideally, eschatology is interwoven with several other core doctrines of Christianity. It's not just what we believe about the end. It is what we believe God is doing, what he's building now, and what he's going to continue to do until his appointed time.

Ultimately, eschatology flows out of what we believe about the church, about what we view about the gospel, the kingdom of God. These are all interwoven concepts. It's more like a sweater with the different threads than it is a singular.

Isolated concept. Anybody else? As you study Covenant Theology and eschatology,.

How has Covenant Theology shaped your eschatology? I'll go ahead and say that it should and that it a lot of times don't. Your Covenant Theology should shape the way that you see your eschatology. You should be using the same hermeneutic, your same bible, how you make sense of what the bible says.

You're interpreting hermeneutic to establish both your Covenant Theology along with your eschatology. Sometimes it doesn't happen that way, but if you're being consistent in the way that you're interpreting the bible, it will deliver both your eschatology along with your Covenant Theology.

It'll all be.

Founded together. Troy said something that I was thinking about, and it was basically the idea that if you understand, if you have a certain hermeneutical perspective for how all of scripture plays out and what is God doing throughout scripture, then inevitably you should have the same hermeneutic or at least a very similar one that leads you to what ultimately God will do.

While there can be differences in eschatology, I do think that your Covenant Theology should be one of the main driving forces behind that. You can't just do eschatology in a vacuum and try to build an eschatology because, oh, it's like a buffet.

This looks good, so I'll leave that. If you're doing that, you're not being consistent, and honestly, you're treating the Word of God as just something that you prefer versus not prefer. We're supposed to take all of what God is telling us and trust Him.

Now, we might misinterpret that at times. That's why we have different eschatological views and different hermeneutics and things like that. If you take the Word of God seriously, you will be consistent in that area.

If you don't, then you will just pick and choose, just kind of like some people do with, well, you know, God's law here sounds good, but this part over here about denying myself, taking my cross, I don't like that, I'm not going to take that.

But this part about Jesus saving me, that sounds great, so I'll take that. That's not taking the Word of God seriously, and it's the same thing with our hermeneutic, if you have a covenantal hermeneutic, and your eschatology.

Let me ask you as a prequel question to another question that I want to ask. So, how many of you would say that we are currently in the Church Age? Most people are familiar with that language when it comes to eschatology.

Would you say that we're in the Church Age?

Are we differentiating between the Church Age and the Millennial reign?

Do you? Okay, let me ask a question. Let me ask a clarifying question. Are we talking about the Church Age as dispensationalism defines the Church Age? I think that's how most people.

Are familiar with the term. So, if you want to make that distinction between a dispensational view of the Church Age and then how you would view the Church Age, if you use that terminology.

Okay, so I would say we are in the fulfillment of the Church. The fulfillment of God's people, which is the Church. Hopefully that makes sense. So, let's see, how do I do this without getting in trouble?

God had a plan, and it wasn't a plan B, right? It wasn't a, well, I want to save my people Israel, but since they rejected the Messiah that I sent to them, let me go to the Gentiles, and then I'll establish a second people for myself, which I will call the Church.

That's not what the Bible teaches. Now, some Christians believe that, and that's okay. You have a right to be wrong. No problem with that. We're still brothers in Christ. But that, if you're really consistent with God's overarching plan of redemption and of having a people for himself, you can't really stick with that for very long, especially when the New Testament so clearly interprets a lot of Old Testament prophecies for us, right?

So, when you read things like 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, which talks about how you are a people, right? Like, we are a people. You're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, right? Once you were not a people, but now you're God's people, right?

And you read that, and the audience is both Jewish and Gentile. You say, well, wait a minute, what's going on there? Or like Ephesians 3, 6. If somebody would look that up real quick, because I know it talks about this.

Yeah, but I know it talks about this, but for some reason I can't remember exactly what it says. But while you look that up, I'll cite Galatians 3, 28 and 29, which says that there's neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, et cetera, right?

It says we are all one in Christ Jesus. And then verse 29 is key. It says, and if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. And so it clearly lays out the fact that God's people are Jewish people and Gentile people who have believed in Christ.

Go ahead, Tyler, read Ephesians 3, 6. Ephesians 3, 6, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. There you go. So, you.

Know, I mean, there's a lot more that we could look at, but in terms of answering the question, are we in the church age? I would say we are in the age of the fulfillment of God's people, and God is bringing his people to himself, building the church, which is his people.

If I can jump in real quick, just to kind of clean some things up with dispensationalism. As far as if they have, and this will be a good talking point to understand even where we're going to launch off of this, even though currently right now in our group there's no dispensationalist here, in that one thing about them being consistent in their hermeneutic of how they see the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and how they see the divisions of the Testaments, and how they're interpreting them has had meaningful changes to their eschatology and meaningful changes of how they interpret the Old Testament.

And so when they say that Israel and the church are not the same thing, therefore we are in this thing called the dispensation of the church age, to where God will go back to dealing with Israel because there were promises over there.

You see, they fit Israel into their eschatological position after a premillennial, after a pre-tribulation rapture for most of them, and then God goes back to dealing with the nation of Israel because that is their interpreting hermeneutic.

They are seeing Israel, the promises made to Israel, promises made to Abraham, they're seeing that as that's the land promise. That's the promise to Abraham's offspring, the physical offspring, the physical people of Israel.

I would agree that it's done incorrectly when they're talking about an heir, Galatians 3 .16. It is talking about Christ and those that are in Christ, but yet their covenant theology, if you call it, right, because it has to deal with the covenants, how they talk about, they just call them dispensations, and how they're dividing them is changing the way that they see eschatological events from it causes a pre-trib rapture, it causes a tribulationary period where God is dealing with ethnic Israel, and I would also argue for a millennial reign of Christ as well.

Well, you kind of took me where I wanted us to go.

I was going to bring in, using covenantal language, we would say that we are in the covenant of grace, and so you brought up the fact or the dispensational view that you have the church age, and then God will deal with, after the rapture, he will deal with ethnic Israel again, and so that seems to be an opposition, a dividing point between covenant theology and dispensationalism where we say the covenant of grace continues throughout, but then I don't see how the covenant of grace would continue in after the rapture when they say the tombs will be rebuilt, they're going to have sacrifices again.

Somebody clarify me if I'm going in the wrong direction, but I'm seeing a distinction there between the covenant of grace and what dispensational say happens with the church age and then the.

Time. You said something, I'm sorry, go ahead, Troy. So a lot of them, whenever there's talk of the third temple being built, they're just going to point you to the Olivet discourse, Matthew 24, where there's a temple there, and because a lot of them, they don't believe that a good portion of Matthew 24 was fulfilled in 70 AD in the destruction of the temple, and they go, look, this is the end times, and there's a temple there.

That temple does nothing efficacious. A lot of them will say no one's going to be saved through temple sacrifices. The only way to be saved is in Christ, even in the tribulationary age. Basically, the Jews rebuild a temple, Israel rebuilds a temple, and they start doing sacrifices, and then you have the 144 ,000 that would be preaching, you know, this is wrong, you must believe in Christ.

All of these that you're seeing being done today were all to point to Christ. They shouldn't be going on now. Antichrist comes, sits in the temple, you know, declares himself to be God. Jesus comes back, cleans house, takes names, and that's the same in all of our views, and, you know, millennial kingdom, eternal state.

Did that kind of help your answer or your question on how they view the temple? It's not necessarily that the believers are going back to the old covenant. The believers are still going, that temple sacrifice is idolatrous, but they just say that the temple will be rebuilt because, due to their interpreting hermeneutic, where they read Matthew 24 very literally, that there's going to be a temple.

They also read it back into Daniel 7. They go, look, there's a temple, and we know Jesus Christ didn't come when the second temple was destroyed, so he must be talking about the third temple, and so that's kind of their interpreting hermeneutic of how, you know, which kind of goes back to the point to, you're interpreting hermeneutic of how you read the scriptures is going to have eschatological implications.

The Covenant of Grace and the New Testament Reading of Israel

Yeah. How does.

Anybody else's view of covenant theology shape your eschatology? Well, I think, for me personally,.

Because I started out not a full dispensationalist, but after talking with Troy and learning a little more about that, probably somewhere in the realm of a leaky dispensationalist, a huge emphasis on ethnic Israel being in the land.

There's a time clock that's only counting down when they're in the land, you know, kind of thing. It was a central component of them being in the land of Palestine, but when I came to a covenantal understanding, and I became post-mill before I had come to covenant theology, and my covenant theology's still a little squirrely.

I've had extended conversations with a handful of you, and I don't really fit into any camp at the moment, but I'm definitely covenantal and not dispensational, but like what's already been highlighted tonight with Troy and Jay, what you understand about God's covenants, specifically regarding the physical offspring of Abraham, it has to affect what you believe is going to happen at the end.

You can't be a covenantal dispensationalist, not with any sort of consistency, and so for me, and there were some other issues that contributed to it, but for me, looking at it and saying, no, God's covenant people has always been there, right?

Gentiles were grafted into something that was already existing, right? That covenantal olive tree that contained all the patriarchs, all of the apostles, the Gentiles were grafted into that, and those who did not believe, the children of Abraham who did not believe were then broken off, like Paul says in Romans 11, to make room for the Gentiles.

That has to affect the way you look at God's relationship post-Christ, so after Christ has died, raised, and ascended to heaven, that has an effect on the nature of God's relationship with the physical offspring of Abraham.

It has to, and that would also, of necessity, would have an impact on what the last days will look like. I think it's important that as we come to.

Talking about this issue, as we lay aside a covenantal interpretation, a covenantal hermeneutic, whenever we read in the New Testament, the New Covenant, which are very didactic texts, right? These are straight to the point.

If you're reading in the epistles, it's pretty much black and white a lot of the time. It's very decisive, but also in that, there is no shortage of Old Testament quotations, and so whenever we're given an Old Testament text, a lot of times it is telling us how to interpret that Old Testament text, and so we will take that back to the Old Testament and plug it in, if that makes any sense, right?

I'm sure I could probably explain this better, but if you're reading an Old Testament text, say you're reading Zechariah 14, right? And you're like, okay, whoa, all of this is going to happen? How did this happen?

What does this mean for us? And you read in the New Testament, oh, oh, okay, this is fulfilled in the coming of Christ, right? Some of it attends to his first coming, some of it to his second, but the overall picture of Zechariah 14 is both of his comings, is the Messiah that's come, and so it's going to lay out that framework by interpreting the Old Testament scriptures through the way the New Testament tells us to, which is that all of these promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and so that's how it's going to affect our, that would be, most of our here are hermeneutic.

It would be whenever it says, you know, wait, does this passage really mean this, or is this an allegorical language that shows a heavenly reality that we don't, you know, it's speaking of.

Something physical but relating to us something spiritual? Right, right, and so dispensationalism will read those Old Testament promises and take them woodenly, literally, right, in a very wooden sort of way, like when it talks about temple, it's like it has to be a temple, right, whereas Jesus says my body is that temple, right, and so the way that covenantally you would interpret scripture is you allow the New Testament to interpret the Old and tell you what these Old Testament prophecies meant.

So classic example, right, Matthew 2, 13 and 14, or actually I think it's just 13, or maybe like 13 through 15, let me look it up, Matthew 2, 13 through 14, here it is, so it says, now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him, and he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, out of Egypt I called my son. Now, that's referencing Hosea, and if you go to Hosea 11, Hosea 11 says, starting in verse 1, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

If you keep reading it, it doesn't sound like it's talking about Jesus Christ. Look, it says in verse 2, the more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to the idols, yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, so on and so forth, right?

So if you read Hosea 11, you think this is talking about the people of Israel as a nation. The New Testament is actually telling us, no, that was about Jesus Christ, and so that is a big component of the covenantal hermeneutic.

It's let the New Testament tell you what the Old Testament was talking about, and as Troy said, that it's ultimately all about Jesus Christ, whereas the dispensational hermeneutic will take that Hosea 11 and say, but this has to literally be about Israel, the people,.

Right, the nation. Does that make sense, Rob? Absolutely, yeah, and let me continue to lead that line of thinking with this question. So why do you see those who are postmill, amill, and probably historic premill in the covenant theology camp, and then your pre-trib, rapture, premillennial folks, they're in the dispensational camp.

I mean, that's a pretty clear line there. If you're this, you're in the covenantal camp. If you're this, you're in the dispensational camp. Why do you see that, these particular eschatologies in the covenantal camp?

Are you asking why we hold to the eschatology that we do based on our covenantal theology?

Is that what you're asking? How do we see it? Yeah, because you typically don't see a postmill, amill, or historic premill, I don't think, in the dispensational camp.

Well, dispensationalism, the eschatology is tied in because it only works with the distinction. If your eschatology is pre-trib, premillennial, then the only way that you get to that is seeing that strict definition between Israel and the church, and so there are covenantal people that are premillennial.

I believe Big John's here. Big John right here, right? You're premill, right? I'm premill all day long. Somebody's got to be right. He is seeing it through a covenantal framework. I don't know if I am or not.

I'm still trying.

To figure out how the word covenantal in all of this makes sense. That's why I'm listening. I got two ears and one mouth. I'm going to exercise my ears this evening.

Carry on. Oh, he's done put you in the middle, buddy. My wife brought me a milkshake. I'm listening. She wasn't toasting sandwiches, though. And so to get to the eschatology, you have to have the interpreting framework versus whenever you start talking about covenantal theology, whether it's Presbyterian covenant theology or 1689 federalism, new covenant theology, they're going to be closer together.

But I will say, you know, it's not it's not as dialed out that that this eschatology fits best within this covenantal framework. And honestly, it's probably due to some inconsistencies on on our parts.

You know, everybody would be 1689 federalists, a millennial idealist if, you know, they they just read their Bible right. But, you know, we're we're kind of going back and forth at that point.

We can't let them. So here's the deal. No, no, no. Hold on. There's no deal. There's no deal. No deal. The bad deal. Josh and I, we have to respond to to these blasphemous.

Slanderous accusations. I mean, Josh, are you Postmill? All day. Absolutely. His Bible only contains Psalm two and Psalm 110. Would you stop that? The rest is all from Jeff Durbin.

Oh, my word. You know, one of the things that we're supposed to be discussing God's law, and I actually think that that ties even further into why I'm Postmill than just covenantal theology, because a lot of the Old Testament prophecies about eschatology tied the law into Isaiah two, Isaiah two, Isaiah 42, Isaiah nine.

So, I mean, Zechariah, for example, is all over it. And yes, Isaiah two, I would say is probably the strongest case. But it talks about, you know, the law of God into the nations, right? Them coming up to Mount Zion, that they would learn the ways of the Lord.

And so when you look at my covenantal framework, it is absolutely tied, not just to my eschatology, but to my view of the law. Like, those three things are actually completely connected to one another.

It's not like, well, you have an eschatology over here, and then I have my hermeneutic over here, and then I have my view of the law over here. Like, it's all interconnected. So, you want to talk about just being.

Consistent, Troy? I just think you need to spend more time in Hebrews and Galatians.

Oh, but, I mean, absolutely. You know, in fact, would you agree also in Romans? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it all fits together. Okay, yeah. So, I mean, like, Romans 331, right? Like, do we do away with this law?

By no means. Rather, we reestablish the law, right? So.

Hebrews 7 .12, for the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the.

Law. Well, sure, a change. But what kind of change is what we're talking about? Well, Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Jesus is God. So, he is talking.

About. We could quickly turn this into a post-meal, all-meal debate. We could, but we're not.

Troy, you started this, by the way. I just want to lay the blame where it belongs. Troy started this with an empty glass thrown from across the room over here. I knew it would end up here. So,.

I was prepared for it. So, go right ahead. Okay, Ephesians 2 .15. I'm joking. Ephesians 2 .15.

I was like, all right, hang on. Let me get my Bible. I got to be prepped for Troy. But no, so really what it gets down to is these things. It's like I was saying at the beginning, right? You can't just pick and choose.

Well, I want this eschatology, but I want this hermeneutic, and I want, it's not a buffet, right? You have to be consistent if you're taking.

The word of God seriously. Can I ask you a serious question about that? Sure. So, now, we all know that I'm the most uninformed in the room when it comes to eschatology, right? I spent less than no time studying it the way that y 'all do.

I mean, I have studied it, but nothing like y 'all have based on mostly personal conviction, which I'd be happy to share at a time when we've got more time. But my concerns is that if we're going to be consistent with an eschatological worldview and use the same hermeneutic consistently throughout, then how do you fall down on all these hyper-preterists who start out seemingly enough where you and Rob lay, but before it's over with, have already had the Lord returning in 70 AD completely, and I can't remember what the guy's name is, but I listened to him break this down.

And then I was another guy I was listening to who God had saved out of this, according to his own words, that God had shown him the error of his ways from what he referred to as full preterism. And he has since come to a historical premial view.

So, I'm curious as to where he come from was that to consistently apply the same hermeneutic that brought him to post-millennialists is also the same hermeneutic that took him to full preterism. So, is that a.

Concern at all to you or are you already leaning that way? No. It is to me, yeah. Wait, are you answering the first question or the second question? Well, I was asking you,.

But I heard Troy say something, so I was kind of trying to figure out what he was answering.

I think that it's dangerous in certain ways because to be full preterist is to be legitimately a heretic. Correct. Because you are denying the return of Jesus Christ, right? You're saying that it happened in 70 AD, and I mean, it leads to absolute heresy.

You can't say the Apostle's Creed is a full preterist. No. That's what I was about to say,.

Is that this is why it's important to understand and hold to the historic creeds and confessions, because they are guardrails that keep you within orthodoxy. Well, my question specifically was.

That if what I'm hearing Brother Jay say is that his consistency to the same hermeneutic is what brought him here, and I don't doubt you at all, Brother Jay. I'm just saying that if that's the case, then what stops this hermeneutic from pushing itself all the way to full preterism?

Is that something that you're afraid of at all? Well, for myself, no. I would be afraid of somebody else going to that conclusion. But I mean, we can have all kinds of extremist views from orthodox views, right?

This is not exclusive to just preterism. But what I would say is, why can't I be a full preterist? Well, Josh nailed on the head, right? First of all, there are historic creeds and confessions that we have to hold to, to kind of keep our guardrail, you know, to work as guardrails to keep us in orthodoxy.

But ultimately, where does that authority come from? It comes from Scripture itself. And so, for example, when you read like 1 Corinthians 15, right? When the last enemy to be defeated is death in verse 25, I look around and people are still dying.

So Jesus Christ has not yet returned, right? You can look at those things and say, obviously, we're still waiting on the second coming of Christ. And that's just one example. I mean, you know, the Scriptures make it clear that he comes to establish new heavens, new earth, there will be no more suffering, no more pain, none of that.

And we still are waiting for the return of Jesus Christ to establish all of those things,.

For the resurrection of the body, etc. And I agree with that. Would you concede to the fact that if not careful, the same, because here's the thing, the same hermeneutic you use for some things is the same hermeneutic someone else uses.

And if we're going to be consistent, this is why, this is one of the biggest reasons why I don't allow women to hold authority over men in my church. Because when the Methodist church went down this road, some whatever, 70 years ago or whatever, it was the same hermeneutic that they used to allow homosexuals to lead in their church.

It was precisely the same hermeneutic. So like we had a women's conference at my church this weekend, and I've got no problem with those, right? If women want to teach women and have a fellowship together, I'm all about it, whatever, you know, use my church if you want to.

Totally fine with that. But the Bible says they're not to hold authority over men. And it couldn't be more clear. It just couldn't be more clear. So the people that use the hermeneutic that allow women that position are the same people that wind up using the hermeneutic that says, well, there's no more man, no more woman, no more male, no more female.

Now we start crossing the line as to whether or not someone can be in fact transgendered. So if we're going to be, we have to be careful when we use the terms that we're going to be consistent with same hermeneutic and realize that, yes, we have to always use the same hermeneutic, understanding that our minds aren't always understanding everything correctly.

We don't lean on our own understanding. And if we lean on our own understanding and continually press into one, we continue with the same word, one hermeneutic, the way that we have, if we're not careful, the logical conclusions may take us to a direction that the Bible wouldn't take us to based on the use of our own human logic, as frail as it is.

Is that fair? That's fair.

But here's here's what I would say to that is, OK, I believe in solo scriptura. Right. Scripture alone is the highest infallible authority for all life and godliness. But I also believe in total scriptura.

And so I'm not going to to read a text of scripture in isolation from what the rest of scripture is saying. I may say, OK, this text, maybe it's saying this, maybe it's saying that, but I'm not going to hang my head on an interpretation of that text without allowing scripture to interpret scripture.

I'll give you that. Kind of like my background right here.

What is that? Oh, this is a visualization of the cross references in the Bible that they've drawn a line between every verse that is connected. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. Jay, I have a question for you. Would you see the partial preterist approach to interpreting scripture as different from that of a covenantal theology interpretation of scripture? And so whenever someone is reading as a as a partial preterist, right now, of course, this is going to be dealing with a lot of certain texts breaking it down.

But there is that partial preterist approach versus someone that is covenantal.

Would you see that distinction there? You're saying, would the partial preterist interpretation be different from a traditional covenantal approach? Is that what you're saying?

If we go to Matthew 24, right, and someone reads it as a partial preterist, I'll kind of throw out Jeff Durbin, right, Jesus returned in judgment against Israel, versus whenever I read that text, I'm going to say, this is future, right?

Like, yes, AD 70 happened. He was talking about AD 70, but he's talking about both and at the same time, right? He's talking about that, and he's also talking about his future coming. There's hints of both in there.

Would you see a sharp distinction in those, or would you go, okay, partial preterism, you know, whenever you're reading such and such passage, you're going to see this as 70 AD, 70 AD. This is 70 AD. This was 70 AD.

Yeah, I was just going to pick your.

Thoughts on that. So I think it depends on the context and what it's talking about, right? Like, Matthew 24, I think the key, I know that people don't like for me to say this, don't like when partial preterists say this, but the key is this generation will not pass away.

I mean, that's why I hang my hat on now, not entirely, right? It doesn't mean that I don't consider the rest of the text, but do I see that same kind of language in other places in the Bible? And if so, what did it mean?

And so, you know, you have Daniel and I think it's Zechariah as well, where God is coming in judgment over Israel, things like that. And so you compare the text and you say, well, hold on now, if this generation is not going to pass away and he is coming, like he says not one stone will be left upon another when he's talking about the temple of Jesus, right?

You look at that and you're like, hmm, yeah, this really doesn't sound like he is really referring to his second coming to earth to establish new heavens and new earth. But it really does sound a lot like that Old Testament language coming in judgment.

Now I take you back.

To verse 30, right? Because verse 34 is verily I say unto this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. You know, verse 30, and then shall appear the sign of the son of man in heaven and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he shall send his angels with the great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. You know, that's two verses beforehand, 30, 31.

And so I was just kind of curious as to, you know, whenever someone's reading it, do you think that they would interpret that differently if they were holding to a strict partial preterist view as a, would there be a distinction in there?

Because that sounds like second coming level.