Truth in Love- Postmillennialism: Proofs and Objections

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We continue our conversation with Dan as he writes his paper for school on the end times view of Postmillennialism.

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Welcome to Truth and Love. Thank you for watching. This is Dan and I'm Rob.
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Welcome to the podcast. I hope you will join us. Stay tuned for or right after this.
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I'm getting tongue -tied. Welcome again to Truth and Love.
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I'm Rob and that's Dan. We are so thankful that you could join us. Tonight we're going to continue walking with Dan as he talks about his class, his paper that he's writing, focusing on post -millennialism.
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And we really want to share with you our conviction about post -millennialism.
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That's just another interpretation of eschatology in times that we see in Scripture that we think is the most accurate, the most biblical.
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And part of our aim is, I guess, to convince you of that or to at least be willing to take an opportunity to say, yeah,
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I hold this view. This is popular view. I'm pretty convinced of this view, but I'll listen.
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I'll listen to what you guys have to say. We can ask that at the very least, that you would take a listen to what we have to say and be open to it.
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We want to start with a current event and Dan is going to surprise me. Sometimes I like to throw curveballs at folks who are with me and throw in another question, a new question that I didn't write on the questionnaire, question guide, podcast guide.
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So Dan's going to throw it at me tonight. He's going to surprise me with a current event topic to talk about before we get started.
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What do you got for me, Dan? All right. So concerning American politics and religion, we hear a lot about people who say you should leave your religion out of politics.
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And then they'll even point to an amendment in the Constitution that says that Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of basically an official religion.
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No law establishing an official religion. So they can't come out and say we're a
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Christian nation. They can't say you must be Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist. You can't say that we're
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Jewish or Buddhist or whatever. I've heard a lot recently, especially people arguing about Christians who want to say, well, you need to follow the law of God.
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We're going to try to bring the word of God to bear upon the government saying that our Constitution doesn't allow for that.
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You have to completely throw away your Christian ideals when you come to the sphere of American politics.
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So that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because you can be an atheist, which is a religious position, a position that believes you do not believe in God, and bring that in and make that the official religion.
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But why not Christianity?
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So I think I've pinpointed the problem here, but I want to hear your thoughts on it, and then
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I'm going to guide you in a certain direction. So go on ahead. Give me your thoughts on that. You know, easy softball or whatever.
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Yeah. I mean, that's really a lot. I know. And I kind of wish that I hadn't asked you to surprise me so I could think about it for a second.
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Yeah, so some of my thoughts that are coming back to my mind are coming from my university education because of how they led us in our thinking.
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And I'm sympathetic toward it because, I mean, just a simple example.
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You think about a high school football game, and you've got a variety of people there.
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Or you think about your classroom, a public school classroom, and would you want someone of another religion to force you to pray with them?
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Of course, they can't force you, but would you even want someone of another religion to be praying, leading your classroom in a prayer, or leading the football game in a prayer, leading the county commissioner's meeting in a prayer?
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And the answer that I would come up with would be no.
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And I think that would be pretty common amongst most people. So there is this push towards neutrality to where, you know, we're not going to honor one religion above the other because you wouldn't want them to force that on you.
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So therefore, you can't force yours on them. So that's kind of how my thinking was directed, being in the university.
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And I'm sympathetic to that because I wouldn't want somebody of another religion to be leading me.
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And if there was a pause there for a second, we were reading Brother Andy's comment here, at least
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I was, huge difference between establishing a law and basing laws on biblical worldview, neutrality is a myth.
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And that is accurate as well. Because our morality is based on something.
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You know, we're getting our morality, which is what we base our laws on, you know, eventually you peel back all the onions, it's coming from somewhere.
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And so it just depends on where it's coming from. So why not
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Christianity? Is our constitution set up to where,
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I mean, you have on one hand, most people would agree that we were set up at least sympathetic to a
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Judeo -Christian worldview, sympathetic to the
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Bible as scripture. There's no mention of Jesus in the founding documents, in the declaration of independence constitution, no mention of Jesus.
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So it's not that narrow, but you have, should have been, and I would have been okay with that.
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You just have words like our creator, which is very, to me, that's very general.
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So is there any other way that I can answer that specifically, direct me and I'll...
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Sure. All right. So specifically speaking of, let's say abortion, people go to, the legislators come together in order to go and make a law concerning abortion, whether we should have it or not, or what point we should cut it off.
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People are saying, we can't listen to you and your argument because it is a purely
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Christian argument. And we can't listen to that Christian argument because we have a part in the constitution that says that Congress shall make no law as regarding the establishment of a state religion.
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Is that a valid interpretation of the constitution?
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One. And number two, are they understanding or conflating some words there?
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Which I, if you'd like me to answer my own question, I can do that too. Oh, you froze.
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He froze very serious. If you're looking, he froze very seriously. Let me answer the question while he is unfreezing and going away and coming back or whatever it is that he's doing.
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I think that the main issue here is that those who say that you can't bring your religious beliefs into making laws in the country, they don't understand the difference between what a religion is and the morality that's derived from it or the morality that comes from it.
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So they think that by us saying you shouldn't murder babies, infants, little children through abortion, they think that because we're saying that we're trying to establish our religion as their religion, which really through in that instance is not the case.
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You're not trying to establish Christianity as a religion of the land. What you're trying to do is bring your morality to bear upon the laws of the land.
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Now, they'd say that you can't bring your religious beliefs into it, and yet they will bring their religious beliefs into it, that God doesn't exist, and that they are able to make up and determine what is right and wrong.
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So like our brother over here in the comments said, there's a difference between establishing a law based upon a morality and a law that establishes a religion.
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So neutrality, like he said, is a myth. You can't just come to a situation, look at a law and not bring your overarching worldview with it.
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So while you might bring Christian values to the abortion debate or an abortion topic, you're not actually establishing
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Christianity as the law of the land. Because you're not forcing people to believe that Jesus is
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Lord, that God is their creator, or any of the other truths that really make our religion. We're simply bringing in the morality from our religion to inform the laws of the land that are around us.
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I think that's the issue. The people who make that argument don't understand what a religion is.
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They think that a religion is simply a set of rights and wrongs.
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While we do have a set of rights and wrongs, that is not what establishes our religion. Our religion is based upon the truth and the validity of Christ's claim of being creator,
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Lord, and Savior. So because He is those things, that is the core of our belief, is belief in God as He's revealed
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Himself to us. We're not pushing those things on anyone when we're advocating for, say, abortion reform, or any of the other different laws, laws against infidelity, or theft, or even breaking of the fourth commandment.
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Which, I mean, that one may be pushing the balance, but still, I'm okay with that. Which would be maybe his question down here, how do we square theonomy with the possibility of another worldview, forcing their beliefs on us?
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It all comes down to the fact that the biblical world is the only way to account for morality, and I believe that that's true.
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We have to run the risk of being taken over at some point in order to truly disciple the nations.
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So if we're going to be, because neutrality is a myth, because you can't just stand in the middle and have absolutely no pull one way or the other from, we have to work to disciple the nations by establishing
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Christianity as true, as real as the basis for our society.
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And that runs the risk of one day having other people come in, overpowering us, taking the land, and perhaps setting up their own
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God, but we know that that won't stand forever. Well, I think you're right. I think it has a lot to do with mindset.
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That would be one mindset that we would have moving forward. We're doing this at the risk.
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And here's another mindset that we move forward with. So it's really no risk. It's really no risk.
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Because even if someone does come in and take us over, it's not going to be permanent. Jesus is
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Lord, he's coming back, he's going to take over, he's going to rule from sea to sea, and we don't have to worry.
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I mean, even if in our time we see, well, backwards and forwards, it's not really risk. So I don't see what the big issue is.
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Potential. The potential for that to happen. We know it's not going to ultimately continue eternally that way, but the potential for that to happen is there.
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And what you're saying leads me to my point number two concerning our mindset. It's exactly what you're talking about.
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It first starts with bowing the knee, submission to Christ. And then a lot of it comes from our interpretation, our eschatology.
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He rules and reigns from shore to shore. It's just a matter of our obedience to him, our submission to him.
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And so we should move forward despite,
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I don't know, potential risk, potential hazards, the way the world looks.
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If we truly believe that Jesus is or was, is, and will be victorious, then we move forward in that direction.
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That's our second mindset. So we, just put it simply, all odds are stacked against us.
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We still obey. We still move forward. Even if it looks like there's no hope for us, we move forward.
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Our God is our God. Even if you throw me in that fiery furnace, I do not care. My God can deliver me.
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And if not, he's still going to be my God. That's right. Exactly. That's exactly right.
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All right. So is it segue time? Because I got one for us. Segway away.
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Segway away. All right. So while we may have some some disagreements and talking past one another in debates about what role religion plays in the establishing of laws in our country, there is also some talking past one another, misunderstandings between different various theological camps.
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That is the point of the chapter that I'm writing that we're gonna go over this week, next week, maybe even a third week.
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I don't know. I'm at 30 pages right now. I'm not even done with it yet. But really, what
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I plan to do in this particular chapter that we're going over is to establish a
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Bible -based reasoning for why we take certain passages to be fulfilled already and why we believe that some of them are still dealing with with the end times.
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So where this comes into play with talking past one another, there are, especially in the dispensational pre -millennial camp, several passages of Scripture that they'll point to saying, look, this is clearly pointing to a future event, something that's off in our future from from now.
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It's beyond. It's something we're looking forward to. But what I want to say is that we can look to the text itself and establish that these things, using a sound grammatical historical interpretation of Scripture while valuing inspiration of Scripture as well, we can understand that these texts actually tell us that while these events were future to the writers, they've already been fulfilled.
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We can do it without playing fast and loose with the text, without just making stuff up. You can actually go to the text, look at the way that things were put together, and come to these conclusions.
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So it's kind of a way to help interact with, talk with, and answer some objections to people who may view things a little bit differently than you.
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Why do we think the way that we think? What is the basis for you saying
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Daniel 2 has been fulfilled, or is mostly fulfilled? Or what about Matthew 24?
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Or what about the book of Revelation? How can you make the claims that you're making? Well, we make them by looking at the
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Bible. There, so I segued away. Well, see, that's an important distinction between us and our approach and the approach of the others,
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I think, is we could do newspaper eyes of Jesus as well.
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That's what we would want to claim that some of those do. We could do that as well. So we, you know, these passages like Matthew 24,
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Daniel 2, Daniel 7, 8, 9, those areas, we could do newspaper eyes of Jesus.
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Yeah, all of Daniel. Newspaper eyes of Jesus for us would look like, okay, so this was in the future of the author of the book.
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Where can we prove that? Let's look at the current events of 70
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AD, or between, you know, within that time period, and say, look, here it was fulfilled. Let's look in Josephus.
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Let's look at the horse historian. Here's where it was fulfilled. That would be our newspaper eyes of Jesus.
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History book eyes of Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what you're saying is, with this point of view, we don't have to do that.
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We can say this is future to the author, but already fulfilled based on Scripture.
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Right, right. Which, at the very least, now, I don't know if it would convince anybody, you know, one thing, two things, you know, but at least if you can show a consistent form of biblical interpretation through all of these different things, you can at least open up the conversation and say, see,
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I'm not just using an allegorical method. I'm not just making stuff up. I'm not just trying to spiritualize the text.
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I'm pulling these things directly from the text of Scripture. The grammatical historical method is still alive and well here.
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I believe that God inspired the Bible and that we can listen to what he tells us about it. So you can actually go to Scripture instead of using those external sources, because those external sources might be good to confirm some things, but we should never go to them first.
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Yeah. If we go to them first, we can, you know, read anything we want to in there and find the right set of circumstances.
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You'll be wrong, but you can read it in there if you want to. Well, that was one of the other things that for me was so convincing about post -millennialism, partial preterism, is here's a way of interpretation, a theological system that is actually consistent all the way from cover to cover, and it makes sense, and I'm not trying to do a lot of juggling to try to make it make sense and try to put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together that don't really fit.
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When I try to understand pre -millennial dispensationalism, I know there's guys out there that, but all the guys, all the big guys that can explain it, and this is just based on my experience, all the guys that can explain it and explain it real well and explain it over, it's because they've explained it over and over, and each one of them, they've never met each other, they're explaining it in the same way, and of course you would want to because you would want to show some consistency in interpretation, but it's just the same things over and over again, and it just, to me,
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I don't see the biblical support, and if you try to take what they say, take it to Scripture, I get lost,
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I get confused, I in no way see the consistency that I see with post -millennialism.
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Yeah, no, I will say this, there has been a push, especially recently, the guys, especially coming out of the
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Master's Seminary, to be more consistent, more biblically based, to try to make their arguments from the
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Scripture and not try to chase arguments throughout Scripture, but actually stick with the text and pull it out.
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I've actually got a guy here, Michael Vlock, I think is how you pronounce his name, there's his book,
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Has the Church Replaced Israel? He is a strong supporter of dispensational premillennialism.
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I don't know, maybe you could call him a kinder, gentler sort of dispensational premillennialist.
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There was a time there where those guys and our guys would go head -to -head and throw some not -so -nice things in print, and we all could have acted better.
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Another reason why I'm writing this paper at a strongly dispensational college.
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Let's jump into your questions that you sent to me. Okay. It's our favorite thing to do, jumping into the text.
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Why do we use different texts than those of the dispensational premillennial folks?
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Right. We use different texts because we believe that some texts have been fulfilled and some have not yet been fulfilled.
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So we take the ones that we believe have already been fulfilled, and we don't include those in our understanding of eschatology as most would think of it.
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Eschatology meaning the end of the present age that we're in, coming up upon the last things.
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Now whether you believe that to be a rapture, a seven -year tribulation, a millennium, and then the end, or if you think it just being
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Christ's return to judge the living and the dead, all of that other stuff happening at one time.
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So we've seen some things have already been fulfilled, and it's not that we're afraid of dealing with the text that they put forward.
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Some may say, hey, you just don't want to deal with what Matthew 24 says. You just don't want to deal with the fact that there's ten toes on the statue.
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So no, we do. We just see it differently because of looking through the text and understanding the text as it arises.
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Instead of trying to loop through many passages over and over again until we arrive at a conclusion, we want to be able to just pull directly from the page a clear eschatology that stands alone from its interpretation in one passage, instead of maybe having to go to several places to prove a point, or making assertions about the nature of Israel and the church that really can't be proven.
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I mean, they might be assumed, but they can't be proven. So I keep on trying to see if Robert is just angry with me, or not.
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I think he froze again because he's not blinking. I don't know exactly where he was at, but we will move on through these technical difficulties and see what is going on.
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So the first text that we're actually going to examine tonight is
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Daniel 2. There we go. We're going to look at Daniel 2.
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Daniel 2 is a story of Nebuchadnezzar. He has a dream. He tells the people there as wise men, people who see into the future, wizards, sorcerers, whatever they are.
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You guys need to tell me what my dream is. Here, tell me what this is.
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Tell me what this means. And so Daniel comes to him and says, hey, you've had this this dream. You've got a head of gold on a statue, silver across through here, midsection of bronze, and then your legs being of iron with feet of iron and clay.
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So what does this mean? And so Daniel tells him, says the head.
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He tells him that these are kingdoms.
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In verse 36, he says, this was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation.
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You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and to whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the birds of the heaven make you.
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Hey, look who's back. This is going to go down as one of our best episodes. So we're in Daniel 2 now.
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I went ahead and just moved on because I saw you not blinking for a while. Yeah. Yeah.
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I appreciate you covering for me and continuing on because my wife is telling me it's not the signal strange.
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Something's going on with our internet right now. So I apologize upfront to everybody.
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North Carolina. It's one of those things. So he tells him, he says, you are
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Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold. So he identifies him as being the head of gold.
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And then he says, another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you. So you've got Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, another kingdom coming after him.
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That's going to be the Medo -Persian Empire. We'll get there. We'll identify them all. Yet a third of bronze shall rule over the earth.
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So a third kingdom is coming. And in verse 40, and there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron.
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Now listen to this description. It's as strong as iron because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things.
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And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay, partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom.
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But some of the firmness of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. Now this is really important because people will try to say that because there's now iron and clay, that is going to be two separate iterations of the same kingdom.
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However, this text is not saying that. This text is telling us that the description of the fourth kingdom is encompassing the iron and the iron and clay.
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It's giving us the nature of what that kingdom is. So if you look back and we'll go through it again, the fourth kingdom, strong as iron, it's strong.
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Why? Because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And in verse 41, as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it, now what does it refer to?
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One of the coolest things about the Bible and pronouns and stuff is if you follow the pronouns all the way through, it can solve a ton of different interpretational questions.
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It's just fantastic. So the only thing really mentioned there is the fourth kingdom.
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The fourth kingdom, which is referred to as iron and referred to as iron and clay, it shall be a divided kingdom.
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Now, how is it going to be divided? Is it going to be divided in time by thousands of years?
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How is it divided? It says, but some in the firmness of it shall be, firmness of iron shall be in it.
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And just as you saw, the iron mix with soft clay. So there's a mixture, iron and clay. There's going to be a, some sort of a division, some sort of a separation there in the kingdom.
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What is the nature of that separation? Look at verse 42. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom, the kingdom, which would be the same as the it, same as the fourth kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.
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Now here's how the partly strong, partly brittle, how the division comes into play. Verse 43, as you saw the iron mix with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together just as iron does not mix with clay.
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What it's getting at here is that there's a, there's a division, there's a separation, there's a, a non homogenization to the kingdom.
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In most places, you like think of Europe, you've got the German people, you've got the
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Italian people, the French, the Russians. Now imagine if you have a, there we go.
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Now imagine if you have a kingdom where say the Germans were to take over Poland and Czechoslovakia and France and all those things.
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I'm not referring to World War II, but imagine that they were to take over those nations.
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And when they took over those nations, they said, okay, we're going to allow you to keep your national identity.
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We're going to intermarry, intermingle with each other, but we're still going to be one people. You would have the strength of all of those nations fighting together.
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They'd be able to smash whoever came up against them. However, you would have a weakness because they would still identify as I'm British, I'm German, I'm Polish, I'm French.
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It's the same thing that happened with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire took over different places all throughout the known world.
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And so you had those different tribes that were able to keep a bit of their national identity, but intermingle and intermarry with the
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Romans so that they would all have the full might and power of the Roman Empire to back them up, strength, the iron fist of the
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Roman Empire to smash and crush all of their enemies out there. But there were never really a cohesive whole internally.
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And that's what it's describing here. And as you see through here, it says fourth kingdom divided it, which is referring to the fourth kingdom, the kingdom.
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And so you've only got here four different kingdoms running down through verse 43.
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Remember it said Nebuchadnezzar started head of gold, right? The next empire that came after him was the
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Medo -Persian empire, the silver. Down below you had the bronze empire that's referring to the
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Grecian empire. And then the iron and iron and clay is referring to the fourth kingdom would be the
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Roman Empire. That's what happened throughout history. And really that part is largely agreed upon by just about everybody.
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The identification of the four kingdoms that are there. The problem comes with what you do with the
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Roman Empire. Is it going to be split up or is it not? Now look at verse 44.
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I'll let you read that because otherwise it's just me talking in the days of, in the days of those
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Kings, right? God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed. And that kingdom will not be left for one another for another people.
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It will crush and put an end to all the kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. Right? So what, when is the kingdom of God going to be established?
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It's going to be in the days of those Kings of those Kings. So the identification of the empires, the four empires is crucial because in the days of those
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Kings, when the fourth empire is on the earth, it's going to have a little stone hit it a little bitty, little tiny, almost like the size of a mustard seed or something else is small.
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Maybe just a little bit of yeast or something that would, that would hit, crush those kingdoms of the earth and endure forever.
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That's also why a lot of the, the people in Jesus day thought that he was going to be a political
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Messiah because they understood this prophecy in this fourth kingdom would come a
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Messiah would come one who had established the kingdom of God. And he did just not the way that they were, they were expecting him to.
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It was completely different. Uh, now I've heard an objection to this, uh, the, in the days of those
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Kings refers to a, a thing called the times of the
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Gentiles saying that there is going to be a, a division here, that the fourth kingdom that's divided is going to be divided in such a way that there's going to be a separation in time, a gap, if you will.
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Um, one thing that we don't put in Genesis, a gap right there that you're going to teach them to.
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Um, and that that is going to be the time of the Gentiles. And after the time of the
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Gentiles is when that fourth kingdom is going to be revitalized, revamped, brought back.
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And then the Messiah will come strike, establish his kingdom, which will be the thousand year reign leading on into the eternal state afterwards.
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Now we don't believe that because we believe that the kingdom of God was established at Christ's first coming. So what about this time of the
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Gentiles? Well, where do they find that? Do you know where they find that?
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Um, you should, I put it in the notes. Uh, Romans. No, Luke, Luke 21, 24.
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Yes. And this is, this is really a, uh, it's a fun passage,
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Luke 21, 24, because if you can, if you can understand Luke 21, 24, you have got a whole bunch of stuff that you can, uh, it really brings together a lot of the
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Bible. I want you to read that for us. And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations.
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And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
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Right. So what's that describing? Um, Jerusalem is going to be trampled underfoot.
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I mean, that's the language of, um, of destruction. Somebody is going to be coming after Jerusalem. Um, what, what doesn't make sense if Jerusalem, Jerusalem is a, is a main subject here.
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If, if they're going to be trampled underfoot, if this is directed towards Jerusalem, their main character, their main part of this, then this trampling, if this other interpretation is true about the time of the
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Gentiles until all that's fulfilled, and that's not going to be fulfilled for after this gap is over and this gap has been going on for 2000 years and it's still going on this trampling of Jerusalem, it's, it's a long war.
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Um, now here's the thing. This is a, this is a parallel passage to Matthew 24 and Mark, uh, was it 13?
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Oh, it's right there on the screen. Uh, yeah, they're, they're parallel passages. Um, so what's happening here is
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Jesus is talking about the end of, or he's talking about some destruction that's coming.
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Um, and it makes you wonder, I mean, like we don't, we don't want to do what we're accusing others of doing, right?
38:59
That's right. Accused is really a harsh word. We don't want to do what we have noticed others doing and have a problem with because accused is kind of harsh.
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Well, I mean, I wouldn't want somebody to say, accuse me of doing something, but no, this is what they're doing.
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We're, we have a problem with it. And here's why reason why I have a problem with it is because while I view this as being the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
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AD, just me understanding that or thinking that that's what this is about doesn't prove anything.
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This text has to say something about it being taking place at the time of the people who are within earshot of Jesus telling them this.
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If that's in the passage, then we can understand it to be something to do with 70
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AD. If that's not there, then we at least have to take a step back and try to understand what is it that we're looking at?
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What is it that we're trying to understand here? What is that we have before us? However, there is that, uh, run down to verse 32.
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Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Right.
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This generation will not pass away to all these things take place.
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Which generation is that Rob? The generation to whom Jesus is speaking.
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It is. And, and now here's the thing. People will have problems with that interpretation as well.
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They'll look at the phrase, this generation and say, well, of course it's going to say that he's saying that the generation that's on earth, when those things occur, will not pass away to all of those things taking place.
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But that to me doesn't make any sense because that's true of any event that's ever happened on the face of the planet.
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You know, the generation that's alive, when this thing happens, won't die until this thing happens.
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Well, of course, otherwise it happened in a different generation. It makes no sense.
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Uh, but what's really interesting here is that those, that phrase, this generation in, in the
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Greek, um, it has a, this is a demonstrative pronoun, meaning this specific, it's an identifier generation.
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So it has to go back to, um, his audience.
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Yeah. It's not that generation, which would point to something outside of his immediate context, but this generation.
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So when he says this generation, he's speaking of the group of people who are alive in earshot of his words.
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Otherwise it would have been a different pronoun, which would have said that, which were referred to something from a different context from what he was sitting in himself.
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So it says this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, which means that the times of the
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Gentiles is going to, uh, run amok until the things described there to place.
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And that is the establishment of the kingdom of God, which is also what we were reading about in Daniel two.
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Right. So I don't see how, I don't see how it can be more, couldn't be more clear.
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Um, this is, this is just a, another interpretation, um, method, um, instruction, you interpret the unclear in light of the clear.
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So what does the time of the Gentiles mean? You know, we could dig into that.
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What does that mean? How do we understand that? Let's go with unsure right now, but what we're concerned about is when, when is the time of the
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Gentiles? That's really the question. And so, well, let me just pop something in here real quick.
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Um, and then I'm gonna let you finish. I'm sorry. Um, I really think that when he says the time of the
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Gentiles, I think he's referring back to Nebuchadnezzar's vision of those four Gentile kingdoms.
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I believe that when he says the times of the Gentiles, it is the times in which these four
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Gentile nations are on the earth. Take that for what you will, but it just makes sense to me.
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Yeah. Well, it does make sense. Um, and w you know, we're wanting to figure out some kind of timetable, um, because we, we've got several different timetables and we've got several, because we have this several different positions, but when you try to understand it within the context, um, and you do what
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Dan is doing, you, you start in, in verse, uh, 20, where are we at?
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21 or 24. Yep. We started in 24 and Dan takes us down to verse, um, verse 32.
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I mean, we're trying to understand the context. You look at verse 32 and all you have to do is go up one more verse.
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Um, and something being crystal clear. I can't think of anything more crystal clear.
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Jesus is speaking. He's speaking to somebody and that somebody he's saying to them.
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So you also, you, you also, when you see these things happen, recognize the kingdom of God is near.
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I mean, how much more clear could you get? And so therefore we take that to verse 33 or 32.
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Trulia, I said to you, this generation, what generation, the generation that he was speaking to in verse 31, you also, when you see these things.
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And so the, he's the, he's talking to the people that standing in front of him, that's this generation that he's referring to.
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And so therefore we take that back up to the verse 24. When is this time of the
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Gentiles within that generation? Um, to me, that's where I see the consistency in this particular eschatology.
45:42
Um, right. Then I don't see in the other ones. Right. And the, the, the, the thing that we could do when we go back to the idea of talking past one another, the main thing that, that I would hope our dispensational premillennial brothers could see here is that this, this interpretation, this understanding was arrived at not by allegorizing or spiritualizing the text, but by looking at the text, examining the, the indicators within the text, understanding what was written, the audience has written to the ultimate inspiration of scripture.
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And that's how we arrived at the position that we arrived at. It wasn't through anything weird, fast and loose.
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We just looked at the text and this is what we came up with. Because I think if that can be admitted and we don't hear the, the, you're just spiritualizing the text, or you're just, um, you know, using the allegorical method.
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If we, if we can quit hearing that, um, accusation, we might be able to move forward in, in talking to one another and maybe actually make some headway.
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Maybe we are missing something. Maybe they can point it out to us, but at the same time, maybe they're missing something.
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We can point it out to them. We should, we should be open -minded with the text as our guide because we're fallible, but the scripture is not.
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Yeah. I really think if they would take just a few minutes and listen to somebody explain this position, uh, the, the accusation that you, you just spiritualize the text, you just allegorize the text.
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They would back off on that. I really believe they would back off on that accusation just a little bit.
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Um, if they would let someone explain to them how we get what we get and we would go to places like this, where we are examining the text.
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We're not spiritualizing this. We're not allegorizing this. We're letting the scripture speak for itself.
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We're letting Jesus tell us what he says, what he means and going from there. Right. And so I love the way
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Gary DeMar puts it. We take this scripture literally, literally, literally according to the literature.
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And so if, if Jesus tells us if, if something in particular is used allegorically or figuratively, figuratively in scripture, then that's how we're going to use it.
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But if it's not, then we don't. And we let scripture tell us that. Sure. You know what?
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We're not making it up. Right. Right. We don't ever want to come to a text and say, well, this doesn't fit my eschatology or this doesn't fit my whatever.
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So it must mean something a little bit different than what it means at face value.
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And I see that taking place. The reason, the reason that I don't adhere to the other position, particularly the premillennial dispensation, because I see that their accusation against us, their claim against us is what
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I see happening on that side. And it comes from passages like Luke 21 or Matthew chapter 24.
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So you, you go over the context of, I'm, I'm more familiar with Matthew, Matthew 10,
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Matthew 16, Matthew 23, Matthew 24, all the places in Matthew where Jesus says this generation, he's always speaking, referring to the generation to whom he's speaking.
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He's referring to that audience every single time. Now, if you, if you're from the premillennial dispensational view, you get to Matthew chapter 24, verse 34.
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Every other time it means that generation to whom he's speaking, except for this particular verse.
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Why change the inconsistency? Because it's got to fit with my understanding back in Daniel, where I've inserted this gap that Daniel never inserts.
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Because if you take the Bible literally, you understand that there's not a gap in Daniel.
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And when you understand there's not a gap in Daniel, you don't have to take Matthew 24, 34 out of context.
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You can leave it in context and say, if all the other places that say this generation is referring to the people to whom
50:32
Jesus is speaking, then this also means the same. And you don't have to take it out of context to make it fit a certain belief that you find in Daniel.
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Does that make sense? It does. It does. Yeah, it, it almost seems like, like the, the dispensational premillennial position is like one where you start reading through the
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Bible. You lock in certain preconceived notions that you have of what the text is going to say.
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And then no matter what the rest of the Bible says, you hold on to those preconceived notions and force the text that comes later to fit around your interpretation.
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No, for instance, the, the land promises to, to Israel.
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And they're absolutely given to Israel, given Israel as a perpetual thing. But we know in Romans that those who are the heirs of Abraham are those who have faith like Abraham.
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We also know that those who are heirs of Abraham are not just heirs who will inherit the land that was promised to them in, in Genesis, but it was also the entire earth that promise was expanded.
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So they, they don't allow for what comes later to inform what comes earlier, which is really goes back to what we, we got bunny trailed on a couple of weeks ago, when we talk about a consistent application of the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture, where, where we talked about how these folks absolutely believe in the inspiration of Scripture.
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But what does that mean when we apply it? Will we allow what God says about another passage later on to inform how we interpret one previously?
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So if he says it, well, for instance, the passage I preached out of tonight, you look into Psalm 34, at the end of Psalm 34, it talks about one, not having their, their bones broken.
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You don't really know what that's about when you're talking, when you just read the Psalm, but you go to John 19 and it says, it quotes that passage and says that those things right there are about Christ, that he was the fulfillment of, you shall not have your bones broken.
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So we go back into the passage and we read what it says about, about Christ. And it's just absolutely filled with hope because you see, well,
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I'm going to go back and start preaching again, but, cause I mean, it's just, it's just good stuff.
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Here, let me, let me get there. 34. Yeah. If, when you insert
53:38
Christ into that passage where it actually goes from speaking in plural to speaking in singular, then back in the plural, the part where it's in singular quoted in John, speaking of Christ, many of the afflictions of the righteous, but the
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Lord delivers him out of them all. Who is that speaking of? Well, it's in the singular quoted in John as being about Christ.
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So many of the afflictions of the righteous, who's the righteous? Many of the afflictions of Jesus. He's the one who had our, his, his, the nails through his hands, the spear through his side, the crown of thorns, the, the whipping on his back, carrying his own cross, the weight of sin upon his shoulders that he had never felt before a day in his life.
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All of it sitting there, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps his bones.
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Not one of them is broken. And then it says, it's the affliction will slay the wicked. Those who hate the righteous
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Christ will be condemned. But what is the result of it all?
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The Lord redeems the life of the servants, plural again, because what
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Christ did upon the cross puts away sin, death, and the devil. It puts away all the affliction, all the trouble.
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So just because it's good stuff for you, go back up into verse 17.
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It says, cry for help. The Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. And we know this because Christ, when he was afflicted, the affliction didn't end in his destruction.
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He was preserved, bones unbroken, laid in the grave, saw death cover him up.
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And yet God woke him up, or he raised himself. Not going to get lambasted for that.
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On Sunday morning, you can almost imagine the conversation where God the
55:45
Father said, I told you so. He looked, I never doubted you for a minute. Now that's the same sort of hope we can have when no matter what happens, even if death itself comes and covers us, that our
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God has us and our God is going to preserve and restore us.
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You don't get that just coming from that Psalm. You have to allow the
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Bible's interpretation of the Bible to let you know what it actually means. And it's such an incredible message of hope in the salvation that we find in Christ that I don't want to go back to reading it in Old Testament context.
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I want to read it in the context where God is doing something wonderful for us.
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Just as he did to David in this situation, through Christ, we have a greater and better hope.
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So when we interpret stuff, when we remember the inspiration of scripture, as we go through these things, we shouldn't be afraid to allow the
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New Testament to determine what the Old Testament says. That's right. So yeah,
56:56
I've rambled on there, but it was good stuff going. Well, let's see if we can do one more thing, and I don't know how far we can trace it back, but part of the question that you ask is looking at different texts.
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The two different views, we look at different texts, and there's accusations of, well, you just want to avoid that text, and you talked about that earlier.
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But you made the comment, are we afraid of them? Do we not want to handle those texts because we're afraid of our inconsistency?
57:32
For whatever reason, we're afraid to tackle certain texts. Let's trace back, go back to what we were talking about earlier, and let's do some tracing just to see where they get what they get.
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So where I was talking about, we were in Luke 21 and Matthew 24, verse 34, this generation.
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So they've got to make this generation different than every other use of this generation within the context of the book of Matthew.
58:06
Right. Because it's got to fit this gap we find in Daniel between the 69th and 70th week.
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Allegedly. Allegedly, right. So why do they need to, that's what
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I wanted to do. So what's next? Why do they, we know why they need this generation to mean something different because of the gap they find in the 69th, 70th week in Daniel.
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So why is there a gap? Why do they need a gap in 69th, 70th week in Daniel? Come back next week.
58:47
Let's look at it. Daniel 9.
58:56
The reason why they need a gap there, part of the reason why they need a gap there,
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I'm not going to say it's the whole reason, part of the reason why they need a gap there. Starting in verse 25,
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Daniel 9 .25. I don't know if I even said the book. Daniel 9 .25. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build
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Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, anointed one,
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Messiah, prince. There shall be seven weeks.
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Then for 62 weeks, it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a time of trouble.
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And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one, a Messiah, shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
01:00:10
And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
01:00:17
Its end shall come with the flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
01:00:25
Now, here's why they need a gap. Look at verse 26 again.
01:00:34
It says, And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. That across the board is understood to be
01:00:41
Christ, our Jesus, dying on the cross, cut off, having nothing.
01:00:48
And then when it says, and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, it shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war.
01:01:03
Desolations are decreed. They believe that that prince, the people who are to come, how does it say it exactly?
01:01:11
The people of the prince who is to come, the ones who are going to destroy the city and the sanctuary, they believe that that is someone other than Jesus.
01:01:20
So it says here that there's an anointed one and a prince. It mentions no one else.
01:01:26
Then speaks of the prince who is to come, the anointed one who will be cut off, and then his people, an anointed one who is also a prince, his people will make that destruction.
01:01:37
Since they believe that the one who's going to make destruction upon Jerusalem, the city and the temple, is someone other than Jesus, verse 27 doesn't make sense.
01:01:50
And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half a week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.
01:01:58
And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.
01:02:06
They think that they're looking for a future event because they don't believe that that has happened.
01:02:15
Now, if we had time to get into the abomination of desolation, I believe
01:02:20
I can prove otherwise, but we just hit an hour. Well, yeah, let's start there next week.
01:02:28
Well, we'll start in Matthew, but definitely with the abomination of desolation stuff. Yeah. And so you start seeing this familiar language, abomination of desolation.
01:02:38
Oh, where have I heard that before? Okay. So this must be where that is talking about.
01:02:44
And since it hasn't happened yet, we've talked about the Jerusalem, rebuild
01:02:50
Jerusalem, restore, rebuild Jerusalem. So therefore there's got to be a, there's got to be something for him to destroy.
01:02:58
So therefore we're looking for another rebuilt temple. Right. Now here's the thing.
01:03:06
Since the abomination of desolation is mentioned in Matthew, you have to look in Matthew to see if there are time indicators that will tell you when the events that are prophesied in Matthew are going to take place.
01:03:20
Yeah. Spoiler alert, it's the exact same one we looked at in Luke. This generation will not pass away until these things take place, but we'll go into that in depth next week.
01:03:33
We'll actually look at the passage in Matthew. We'll come back to Daniel 9. We'll look at Daniel 11, which has,
01:03:40
I believe, a different abomination of desolation. And then you have the one in chapter 12 that I believe is speaking of the same one in chapter 9.
01:03:49
I'll explain all of that next week because it's getting late. I have to go to work tomorrow.
01:03:55
That's right. Me too. Me too. And I'm really looking forward to it because it gets good when you speak of Christ and you speak of his consistency and learn about who he is and what he's done.
01:04:09
It gets really exciting and you get filled with joy when you're speaking of Christ and thinking on his things.
01:04:15
That's what happens to me when we look at these things. I hope we can share that with our audience as well.
01:04:25
A lot of people talk about eschatology and times being a secondary issue, maybe even a tertiary issue where we don't need to divide.
01:04:36
But these things are important. These things are important because they determine how we live out many of the things in our life, how we approach things in life.
01:04:51
They may be secondary issues that we don't divide over, that they're not hills that we die on, where we can't have fellowship with one another if we hold different views.
01:05:02
That's true. But they are important because of the effect that they have on how we live.
01:05:10
And plus, God's consistent. And we want to know what he tells us.
01:05:20
And so that's the most important reason why we study it. But none of it is important.
01:05:28
If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, he's Lord regardless, but we must submit to him as that Lord, as that King, and trust in him as Savior in order to be his child, be adopted into his family, inherit this kingdom, be living in this kingdom.
01:05:52
And this is an eternal kingdom, a kingdom that will endure forever. That's what God tells us in his word, a kingdom that will endure forever.
01:06:00
And that goes back to the promises Dan was telling us about, this kingdom that will endure forever, that will continue on.
01:06:10
And so we can bank just as the hypothetical conversation that the father had with the son where the son says, never doubted you for a moment.
01:06:22
We can trust completely in those promises for us as Jesus the son did with the father.
01:06:31
We can bank on those promises for us as well, that his kingdom will endure forever, that if we repent of our sins and put our trust in him, that we will be in and a part of that enduring kingdom and live with that joy forever.
01:06:47
And there's joy in the here and now being a part of that kingdom, that God has plan and purpose.
01:06:56
And we can be fulfilling that plan and purpose. It's his glory and it's his kingdom and not our own.
01:07:02
But we must realize that we have completely ruined our lives with sin, broken all of his laws, and that's why we need to repent.
01:07:12
And we must trust in Jesus and what he did, his life, his death, burial, and resurrection, his ascension.
01:07:19
And when we receive that gift, God will look at the life of Christ and the victory of Christ in our place so that we can enjoy him forever and that so that we can give him glory, the glory that he deserves through the life and work of his son,
01:07:45
Jesus Christ. So we encourage you, trust in Jesus today if you have not.
01:07:51
We'd encourage you to like and follow, subscribe, and share the podcast. We know it was kind of off tonight because of the internet and other things.
01:08:00
And we apologize for that, but we really appreciate you watching. Dan, would you mind to close this in prayer? Sure. Heavenly Father, we thank you for tonight, for looking into your word.
01:08:11
We pray that we would take the time to do our Bible interpretation well, knowing that you were the author of it, that you have written these things for us to know, that we would take our time, we would trust in your spirit, that we would believe every word that we read.
01:08:28
We pray that you would guide us, direct us, and draw us closer to you and to those who you have called yourself.
01:08:34
We love you, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for watching. We really appreciate it.
01:08:40
As always, we'd encourage you to remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ.