Truth in Love- Postmillennialism: Proofs and Objections

Welcome to Truth and Love. Thank you for watching. This is Dan and I'm Rob. Welcome to the podcast. Hope you will join us. Stay tuned for or right after this. I'm.

Getting tongue-tied. Welcome again to Truth and Love. 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. And we really want to share with you our conviction about post-millennialism.

That's just another interpretation of eschatology in times that we see in Scripture that we think is the most accurate, the most biblical. 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, I hold this view.

This is popular view. I'm pretty convinced of this view, but I'll listen. 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.

Religion, Morality, and Public Law

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.

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. 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. 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.

No law establishing an official religion. So they can't come out and say we're a Christian nation. They can't say you must be Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist. You can't say that we're going to be 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. 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.

You have to completely throw away your Christian ideals when you come to the sphere of American politics. 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.

But why not Christianity? So I think I've pinpointed the problem here, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. And then 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.

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. 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.

And I'm sympathetic toward it because you think, just a simple example, you think about a high school football game and you've got a variety of people there. 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? 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?

And, you know, the answer that I would come up with would be no. And I think that would be pretty common amongst most people. So there is this push towards neutrality to where we're not going to honor one religion above the other because you wouldn't want them to force that on you.

So, therefore, you can't force yours on them. So that's kind of how my thinking was directed being in the university. And I'm sympathetic to that because I wouldn't want somebody of another religion to be leading me.

And if there was a pause there for a second, we were reading Brother Andy's comment here, at least I was, huge difference between establishing a law and basing laws on biblical worldview. Neutrality is a myth.

And that is accurate as well because our morality is based on something. 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.

And so it just depends on where it's coming from. So why not Christianity? Is our Constitution set up to where, I mean, you have on one hand, most people would agree that we were set up at least sympathetic to a Judeo-Christian worldview, sympathetic to the Bible as scripture.

There's no mention of Jesus in the founding documents. The Declaration of Independence Constitution, no mention of Jesus. So it's not that narrow, but you have...

Should have been.

Should have been. And I would have been okay with that. You just have words like our creator, which, you know, is very, to me, that's very general. So is, is there any other, any other way that I can answer that specifically direct me and I'll...

Sure. All right. So specifically speaking of, let's say abortion, people go to the legislators come together in order to, to go and make a law concerning abortion, whether we should have it or not, or what point we should cut it off.

People are saying, we can't listen to you and your argument because it is a purely 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 regarding the establishment of a state religion.

Is, is that a valid interpretation of the constitution? One. And number two, are they understanding or conflating some words there? Which I, if you'd like me to answer my own question, I can do that too.

Oh, you froze. 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. 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 our religion is and the morality that's derived from it or the morality that comes from it.

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, through in that instance is not the case.

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, um, the laws of the land. 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.

So like our brother over here on the comments said, um, there's a difference between establishing a law based upon a morality and a law that establishes a religion. 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. So while you might bring Christian values to the abortion debate or abortion topic, you're not actually establishing Christianity as the law of the land because you're not forcing people to believe that Jesus is 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. I agree with that. But I think, I think that's the issue that the people who make that argument don't understand what a religion is.

They think that a religion is simply a, a set of rights and wrongs. And while we do have a set of right and wrongs, that is not what establishes our religion. Our religion is based upon the truth and the, uh, the validity of Christ's claim of being creator, Lord, and savior.

So because he is those things, that is the core of our belief is belief in God as he's revealed himself to us. We're not pushing those things on anyone when we're advocating for say abortion reform or, um, any of the other different laws, you know, laws against infidelity or theft or, um, even breaking of the fourth commandment, which, I mean, that one may be pushing the balance, but still I'm okay with that, which would be, uh, maybe his question down here.

How do we square theonomy with the possibility of another worldview forcing their beliefs on us? Uh, it all comes down to the fact that the biblical worldview is the only way to account for morality. And I believe that that's true.

Uh, we have to run the risk of being taken over at some point in order to truly disciple the nations. So if we're going to be, uh, and 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, we have to work to disciple the nations by establishing, um, establishing Christianity as true as, as real as the basis for our society.

And that runs the risk of one day having other people come in, overpowering us, taking the land and perhaps setting up their own 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 that, that would be one mindset that, that we would have moving forward. We're doing this at the risk. And here's another mindset that we move forward with.

So it's really no risk.

It's really no risk. Uh, cause, cause even if, even if someone does come in and take us over, it's not going to be permanent. Right. Jesus is Lord. He's coming back. He's going to take over. It's going to roll from C to C and we don't have to worry.

I mean, even if in our time we see well backwards and forwards, it's not really risk. So I don't, I don't see what the big,.

Big issue is potential, the potential 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. And, and what you're saying leads me to my point number two concerning our mindset.

Um, it's exactly what you're talking about. It first starts with bowing the knee submission to Christ. And then a lot of it comes from our interpretation of our eschatology. Um, he's gonna, he rules and reigns for, you know, from shore to shore.

Um, it's just a matter of our obedience to him, our submission to him. Um, and so we should move forward. Um, despite, despite, um, I don't know, potential risk, potential hazards, the way the world looks.

If, if we, if we truly believe that Jesus is or was, is, and will be victorious, then we move forward in that direction. That's our second mindset. Um, so we just put it simply, all odds are stacked against us.

We still obey.

We still move forward. Even if it looks like there's no hope for us, we move forward. Our God is our God. Even if you throw me in that fiery furnace, I do not care. My God can deliver.

Me. And if not, he's still going to be my God. That's right. Exactly. That's exactly right.

Postmillennialism, Partial Preterism, and a Consistent Hermeneutic

All right. So is it segue time? Cause I got one for us. Segway away. Segway away. All right. So, um, 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.

That is the point of the chapter that I'm writing, that we're going to go over this week, next week, maybe even a third week. I don't know. It's, I'm at 30 pages right now. I'm not even done with it yet.

Um, but really what I, what I plan to do in this particular chapter that we're going over is to establish a 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.

So where this comes into play with talking past one another, there are, uh, especially in the dispensational premillennial camp, uh, several passages of scripture that they'll point to saying, look, this is clearly pointing to a future event, something that's often our future from, from now 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, um, interpretation of scripture while valuing, um, 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 and 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. So it's kind of a way to help, um, interact with, talk with, and answer some objections to people who may view things a little bit differently than you, you know, what is, why do we think the way that we think, you know, what is the basis for you saying Daniel two has been fulfilled or is mostly fulfilled or what about Matthew 24 or what about the book of revelation?

You know, how can you make the claims that you're making? Well, we make them by looking.

At the Bible there. So let's segue the way. Well, see, that's, that's an important distinction between us and the, our approach and the approach of the others, I think is, um, we could do, we could do newspaper eyes of Jesus as well.

That's what we would want to claim that some of those do. We could do that as well. So we, you know, these patches like Matthew 24, Daniel two, Daniel seven, eight, nine, those, those areas we can do.

Yeah. 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. Where can we prove that? Let's look at the current events of 70 AD or between, you know, within that time period and say, look, here, it was fulfilled.

Let's, let's look in Josephus. Let's look at the horse historian. Here's where it was fulfilled. That would be our newspaper eyes of Jesus, but what history book eyes of Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So what you're saying is with this point of view, we don't have to do that. We can say this is future to the author, but already fulfilled based on scripture. Right. Right. Which, which at the very.

Least now, I don't know if it would convince anybody, no one thing, two things, no, 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, I'm not just using an allegorical method.

I'm not just making stuff up. I'm not just trying to spiritualize the text. I'm pulling these things directly from the text of scripture. The grammatical historical method is still alive and well here.

I believe that God inspired the Bible and that we can listen to what he tells us about it. Right. 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.

Yeah. If we go to them first, we can read anything we want to in there and find the right set of circumstances. I mean, you'll be wrong, but you can, 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.

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, I don't see the biblical support, and if you try to take what they say, take it to Scripture, I get lost.

I get confused. I in no way see the consistency, and that I see with post-millennialism. Yeah, now, I will say this. There has been a push,.

Especially recently, the guys, especially coming out of the Master's Seminary, to be more consistent, more biblically based, to try to make their arguments from the Scripture and not try to chase arguments throughout Scripture, but actually stick with the text and pull it out.

I've actually got a guy here, Michael Vlock, I think is how you pronounce his name. There's his book, Has the Church Replaced Israel? He is a strong supporter of dispensational pre-millennialism. I don't know, maybe you could call him a kinder, gentler sort of dispensational pre-millennialist.

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. Another reason why I'm writing this paper at a strongly dispensational college.

Let's jump into your questions that you sent to me. It's our favorite thing to do, jumping into the text. Why do we use different texts than those of the dispensational pre-millennial folks?

Right, we use different texts because we believe that some texts have been fulfilled and some have not yet been fulfilled. 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.

Eschatology meaning the end of the present age that we're in, coming up upon the last things. 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 Christ's return to judge the living and the dead, all of that other stuff happening at one time.

We've taken some things that have already been fulfilled, and it's not that we're afraid of dealing with the text that they put forward. 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 10 toes on the statue. No, we do. We just see it differently because of looking through the text and understanding the text as it arises. 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.

I mean, they might be assumed, but they can't be proven. I keep on trying to see if Robert is just angry with me, or not. 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.

Daniel 2 and the Kingdom of God

The first text that we're actually going to examine tonight is Daniel 2. We're going to look at Daniel 2. Daniel 2 is a story of Nebuchadnezzar. He has a dream. He tells the people there, his wise men, people who see into the future, wizards, sorcerers, whatever they are.

You guys need to tell me what my dream is. Here, tell me what this is. Tell me what this means. Daniel comes to him and says, hey, you've had 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.

So, what does this mean? Daniel tells him, says the head, he tells them, these are kingdoms. In verse 36, he says, this was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. 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.

Hey, look who's back. This is going to go down as one of our best episodes. So, we're in Daniel 2 now. I went ahead and just moved on because I saw you not blinking.

For a while. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you covering for me and continuing on because my wife is telling me it's not the signal strength. Something's going on with our internet right now. So, I apologize upfront to everybody.

North Carolina. It's one of those things.

So, he tells him, he says, you are Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold. So, he identifies him as being the head of gold. 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.

That's going to be the Medo-Persian empire. We'll get there. We'll identify them all. Yet a third of bronze, which shall rule over the earth. So, a third kingdom is coming. And in verse 40, and there shall be a fourth kingdom strong as iron.

Now, listen to this description. It's as strong as iron because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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, what is it referred to?

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. It's just fantastic. So, the only thing really mentioned there is the fourth kingdom.

The fourth kingdom, which is referred to as iron and referred to as iron and clay, it shall be a divided kingdom. Now, how is it going to be divided? Is it going to be divided in time by thousands of years?

How is it divided? It says, but some in the firmness of it shall be, firmness of iron shall be in it. And just as you saw, the iron mixed with soft clay. So, there's a mixture of iron and clay. There's going to be a, some sort of a division, some sort of a separation there in the kingdom.

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.

Now, here's how the partly strong, partly brittle, how the division comes into play. Verse 43, as you saw the iron mixed 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.

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. In most places, you like, think of Europe. You've got the German people, you've got the Italian people, the French, the Russians.

Now, imagine if you have a, there we go. Now, imagine if you have a kingdom where say the Germans were to take over Poland and Czechoslovakia and France and all those things. I'm not referring to World War II, but imagine that they were to take over those nations.

And when they took over those nations, they said, okay, we're going to allow you to keep your national identity. 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. 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.

It's the same thing that happened with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire took over different places all throughout the known world. And so you had those different tribes that were able to keep a bit of their national identity, but intermingle and intermarry with the 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 Roman Empire to smash and crush all of their enemies out there.

But there were never really a cohesive whole internally. And that's what it's describing here. And as you see through here, it says fourth kingdom divided it, which referring to the fourth kingdom, the kingdom.

And so you've only got here four different kingdoms running down through verse 43. Remember it said Nebuchadnezzar started head of gold, right? The next empire that came after him was the Medo-Persian empire, the silver down below you had the bronze empire that's referring to the Grecian empire.

And then the iron and iron and clay is referring to the fourth kingdom would be the Roman empire. That's what happened throughout history. And really that part is largely agreed upon by just about everybody.

The identification of the four kingdoms that are there, the problem comes with what you do with the Roman empire. Is it going to be split up or is it not? Now look at verse 44. I'll let you read that because otherwise it's just me talking.

In the days of, in the days of those Kings, the 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. 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? 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 Kings, when the fourth empire is on the earth, it's going to have a little stone hidden, a little bitty, little tiny, almost like the size of a mustard seed or something else is small, maybe just a little bit of yeast or something that would, that would hit, crush those kingdoms of the earth and endure forever.

That's also why a lot of the people in Jesus day thought that he was going to be a political Messiah because they understood this prophecy in this fourth kingdom would come a 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. It's completely different. Now I've heard an objection to this, that in the days of those Kings refers to a, a thing called the times of the Gentiles saying that there is going to be 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.

One thing that we don't put in Genesis, a gap right there. And that that is going to be the time of the Gentiles. And after the time of the Gentiles is when that fourth kingdom is going to be revitalized, revamped, brought back, and then the Messiah will come strike, establish his kingdom, which will be the thousand year reign leading on into the eternal state afterwards.

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 Gentiles? Well, where do they find that? Do you know where they find that?

You should have put it in the notes.

Oh, Romans? No, Luke, Luke 21, 24. Yes.

This is, this is really a, it's a fun passage. 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, it really brings.

Together a lot of the Bible. Why don't you read that for us? And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Right. So what's that describing? Jerusalem is going to be trampled underfoot. I mean, that's the language of, of destruction. Somebody's going to be coming after Jerusalem. What, what doesn't make sense if Jerusalem, Jerusalem is a, is a main subject here.

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, the time of the 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.

Now, here's the thing. This is a, this is a parallel passage to Matthew 24 and Mark, was it 13? Oh, it's right there on the screen. Yeah. They're, they're parallel passages. So what's happening here is Jesus is talking about the end of, or he's talking about some destruction that's coming.

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? 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.

Well, I mean, I wouldn't want somebody to say, accuse me of doing something, but no, this is what they're doing. We have a problem with it. And here's why. The reason why I have a problem with it is because while I view this as being the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, just me understanding that or thinking that that's what this is about doesn't prove anything.

That's right. 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. If that's in the passage, then we can understand it to be something to do with 70 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? What is it that we're trying to understand here? What is it that we have before us?

However, there is that. Run down to verse 32.

Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Right. This generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Which generation is that, Rob?

The generation to whom Jesus is speaking.

It is. And now here's the thing. People will have problems with that interpretation as well. 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 until all of those things are taking place.

But that to me doesn't make any sense because it's not that's true of any event that's ever happened on the face of the planet. The generation that's alive when this thing happens won't die until this thing happens.

Well, of course, otherwise it happened in a different generation. It makes no sense. But what's really interesting here is that phrase, this generation in the Greek, it has, this is a demonstrative pronoun, meaning this specific.

It's an identifier generation. So it has to go back to his audience. It's not that generation, which would point to something outside of his immediate context, but this generation. So when he says this generation, he's speaking of the group of people who are alive in earshot of his words.

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. So it says this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, which means that the times of the Gentiles is going to run amok until the things described there take place.

And that is the establishment of the kingdom of God, which is also what we were reading about in Daniel two.

Right. I don't see how it can be more, couldn't be more clear. This is just another interpretation method, instruction. You interpret the unclear in light of the clear. So what does the time of the Gentiles mean?

We could dig into that. What does that mean? How do we understand that? Let's go with unsure right now. But what we're concerned about is when is the time of the Gentiles? That's really the question.

And so let me just pop something in here real quick and then we'll let you finish. I really think that when he says the time of the Gentiles, I think he's referring back to Nebuchadnezzar's vision of those four Gentile kingdoms.

I believe that when he says the times of the Gentiles, it is the times in which these four Gentile nations are on the earth. Take that for what you will, but it just makes sense to me.

Well, it does make sense. And we're wanting to figure out some kind of timetable because we've got several different timetables and we've got several because we have just several different positions. But when you try to understand it within the context and you do what Dan is doing, you start in verse 20, where are we at?