March 11, 2020 Show with Gary DeMar on “Eschatology & Its Relationship to Government” PLUS Eli Ayala on “The Dangers of Minimizing or Inflating the Role of Eschatology”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

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We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 11th day of March 2020.

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And I'm thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests to interview, Gary DeMar.

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He's going to be on with us for the first hour. Gary DeMar is the president of American Vision, author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 35 book titles.

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And he's a featured guest on nearly every major news media outlet. We are going to be discussing, during the first hour, eschatology and its relationship to government.

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We're also going to be giving you the exciting news about an upcoming conference where Gary is speaking on Long Island, New York, where I will also be in attendance.

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Looking forward to that, God willing, of course. And then the second hour, we're going to be joined by Eli Ayala, also known as Elias Ayala, a

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Christian apologist and team member at the Historical Bible Society, which is a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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He's also founder of Revealed Apologetics, and we're going to be addressing the dangers of minimizing or inflating the role of eschatology.

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But first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Gary DeMar.

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Good to be back, Chris. I always enjoy our time here. I have to tell you, you're one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. Well, I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Well, if you could, tell us just a little bit about American Vision.

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You've been on this program many times, but there may be some stragglers who have not yet heard of you who are perhaps tuning into this show for the first time.

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Tell us about American Vision. American Vision had its beginning, and it goes along with our topic today about government and eschatology, and it had its beginnings in the late 1970s, 1979.

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And, of course, you have a lot of people. I mean, think about 1979. That was, what, 40 years ago.

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And Jimmy Carter was president, and it was really the first time that Christians were considered to be a voting bloc, and the moral majority had gotten started and so forth.

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And American Vision got started along with Marshall. I don't know if you know Marshall Foster, but Marshall Foster was also involved in America's Christian Heritage.

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In fact, he still does that sort of thing today with conferences and cruises and so forth, and came out with a film not too long ago with Kirk Cameron called

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Monumental. And Christians were reassessing their heritage.

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Jimmy Carter had won as a born -again Christian president. That was kind of the first time that that had happened.

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And a lot of Christians voted for Jimmy Carter because of this born -again idea, and it was amazing that the media didn't even know what that was.

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And a lot of Christians didn't know what being born again meant. And Billy Graham came out with an interesting book with the title

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How to Be Born Again, which is not really something we have anything to do with, either physically or spiritually.

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So American Vision started in late 1779, and it was about America's Christian history, introducing

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Christians to their rich Christian heritage. And then as I began to survey this and what was happening in our country and with Ronald Reagan coming in as president,

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I thought it was necessary to introduce Christians to a biblical view of government, that government is not synonymous with politics, that government isn't synonymous with Congress, with the

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Supreme Court, with the civil dimension of government, that in biblical terms, government is multifaceted, that God is the governor of all things, and that he has established the three essential governments among his creation, and that is the family government, church government, and civil government, and all of those are in fact decentralized.

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And then undergirding that is the idea of self -government, that none of these three governments can function properly unless the people who are involved in them are self -governing under God.

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And so that's what I've been doing since 1980 until today, is 40 years trying to get

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Christians to understand what the Bible has to say about the topic of government. Well, why don't you tell our listeners also,

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I know it's basically very much involved in what you were just talking about, tell our listeners about the upcoming conference coming up on Friday and Saturday, March 20th and 21st at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York.

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I know that the first night at 7 p .m. you're going to be speaking on God and government with a

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Q &A following, and then the second night, Saturday night at 7 p .m. as well, you're going to be discussing the

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Olivet Discourse with a Q &A and following. Why don't you give us a little bit more details on both of those sessions?

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Yeah, and on Sunday I'll be teaching Sunday school, and I believe I'll be delivering the sermon for Sunday morning as well.

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Oh, great. Well, I'm glad I'm sticking around on Sunday then. Yeah. And, again, the relationship between government and eschatology, which goes back to what

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I had said earlier, that I had actually wrote three books in the 1980s called

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God and Government, and there were three volumes of God and Government, what the Bible had to say about government, and it started with God's government and self -government, family government, church government, civil government, and I dealt with also economics and education, separation between church and state, dealing with the poor in three separate volumes.

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That's now in one volume today. And I would go out to speak on that particular topic to get

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Christians to understand that reliance upon politics as a way to transform a society is a huge mistake, that civil government has a very specific and limited dimension to its place in society.

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It's supposed to be a minister of God, and it's not supposed to be the savior of men and women and children and every other institution.

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It's a very specific thing to do. And invariably I'd go out and speak, and there'd be a couple of people in the audience who would say, why are we getting involved in politics?

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And they would bring up at least two reasons why we're not supposed to be involved. And one of those reasons was that all the evidence is pointing to the fact that Jesus is coming soon and that we are living in what

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Al Lindsay called the terminal generation. We have to remember something. And this is, again, this is in the 1980s.

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And Al Lindsay had written The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, and he made something of a prediction based upon Israel becoming a nation again in 1948.

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And then he went to Matthew 24, verse 34, where it says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

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And Lindsay maintained that it was the generation alive at the time that Israel became a nation again, and since that was in 1948, and a generation was 40 years, you can do the math.

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1948 plus 40 was 1988. And so a lot of people were expecting some eschatological event to take place before the year 2000.

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And actually many of them pointed to the year 1988, and this rapture of the church would have taken place before 1988.

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There was even a book that came out in 1988 by Edgar Wisnett, 88 Reasons Why the Raptures in 1988.

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And so I figured what I needed to do was to really come out and deal with the eschatological aspects of all this, because it was affecting the way

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Christians were engaging the world, the culture in which they lived, in terms of an eschatological position that said that we were living on some sort of prophetic horizon, and that it was all going to go down, there was nothing we could do to stop it, because Jesus had predicted he was going to come back and he was going to rapture his church, and literally all hell was going to break loose on planet

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Earth. And so I got involved in dealing with the eschatological aspect of it, and that's where I am today.

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It's kind of been a hobby of mine to deal with eschatology because it's so impacting in so many

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Christians' lives. I'm going to give our listeners the email address where you can join us on the air with a question of your own.

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It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous.

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If your question involves a personal or private matter, let's say you disagree with your pastor, or even the official statement of faith of your church, you don't want to identify yourself, we can understand that.

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Perhaps you're even a pastor yourself, you disagree with your fellow elders, or your congregation in general, or even the denomination.

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We would understand why you would want to remain anonymous. But if it's not a personal and private question, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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And keep in mind, Gary is on only for the first hour of today's show, so if you want a question for Gary, I would send it in as quickly as possible.

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In fact, we have to get to our midway break about five minutes before the top of the hour, so just keep that in mind.

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The issue of government is not only something that causes great division in the body of Christ, but misunderstanding, fear.

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You have people who see especially the penal codes of the

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Old Covenant involving the death penalty for things even beyond murder.

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And you have Christians who are frightened about the notion of the

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Old Covenant penal codes returning to the

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New Covenant, which they would believe would be not in accordance to the design of God.

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And they seem to have more of a sharp contrast between Old and New Covenant than many post -millennialists, theonomists, and Christian reconstructions do.

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So if you could tell our listeners about why perhaps they have misplaced fears.

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I'm not sure that there are actually that many Christians who are in that category.

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I mean, there are people who are aware of those distinctives who might bring those things up. I'm just trying to get

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Christians to understand that civil government is, number one, not their savior.

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Number two, we need to quit empowering the civil government beyond its stated purpose.

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And number three, to get back to its limited function.

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And number four, to decentralize it, that is, return power and authority back to the states.

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I mean, that is what the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution are all about. But you go out there and you listen to politicians, and they're promising, well, we're going to pay for your health care, and we're going to pay for your college education, and we're going to take the freedoms related in the

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Second Amendment away, and we're going to curtail speech, and we're going to force you to comply to anything related to homosexuality.

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That is, if someone comes in and wants a cake and wants it in terms of a homosexual marriage, that you're going to be forced to do that.

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Those are the things. We want the government to educate our children. We want the government to pay for all of that.

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That's where I am in all this. We are so far away from any concept of even dealing with the penal sanctions of the

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Old Testament. And generally, you find unbelievers bringing that up.

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And what's kind of interesting about that, you don't really find any instances of that taking place in the

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Old Testament. Of course, you have the woman caught in adultery.

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In the Book of John, you have Joseph, who wants to put

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Mary away secretly. It's interesting that he didn't call for the death penalty for her.

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We're so far from dealing with the Bible in those terms, and I think a lot of people use that as an excuse to stick with this idea that we want the government to do more things for me.

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We want more free stuff from the government. We want our health care taken care of.

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We want more money for education. We want the courts to micromanage our lives and so forth.

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And then a lot of Christians just say, well, we just shouldn't get mixed up in politics because Jesus didn't get mixed up in politics.

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The Bible says there's a separation between church and state. We're not supposed to judge anyone.

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We can't impose our morality on anyone. Our citizenship is in heaven.

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You go down a whole list of excuses that Christians use for not being involved, and, of course, the big one related to what

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I do is we're living in the last days, and Jesus said things were supposed to get worse and worse, so why are we rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking

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Titanic? I mean, if you can't even get Christians to get involved at the very basic level of what the

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Bible says about civil government, then essentially all things are lost.

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And I think these people bring up this idea of the penal sanctions of the Old Testament. I doubt that that would ever be something that would be implemented because if we ever get to the point where we actually get

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Christians involved, we're going to see a changed society from the bottom up and not from the top down from the state.

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Now, it's interesting that you have repeated something that is very true, that we should not be looking at the governments of men as our savior.

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And, ironically, I think that is the very thing that many who are outside of your camp of theology and eschatology accuse you of believing.

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Yeah, right, I know. And it's ironic that you happen to be theologically reformed, and very often those who are opposed to your theology and eschatology, well, even though they might not use the words

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Arminian and Pelagian, but they're basically saying that you believe that the church, according to our own human effort, is going to bring about this great transformation in the world and so on, seemingly putting the gospel in a backseat of importance.

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But I know that that's not where you're coming from at all. No, no, that's why if you read my book,

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God and Government, you'll see that the first government there is is God's government over all things.

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The government shall be on his shoulders. God is the governor of the world. God created the world.

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It's his. The laws are his. The world runs by his laws. You break his laws, you're going to be broken by them, by the implications of them.

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But the next government is self -government. That is, the transformation of the individual through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

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And self -government is just that. You govern yourself. You don't need and you don't require an external governor to tell you what to do.

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The transformation of the individual Christian transforms that Christian's life.

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And so they apply God's word personally, and they apply it in terms of, you know, church government and family government, their business, education, wherever the case might be, outside of the jurisdiction of the state.

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So that is the essence of biblical government, self -government. In fact, if you go back to Noah Webster's 1828

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Dictionary of the English Language, it's interesting to see how he defines government and compare that with a modern -day dictionary.

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Today a modern -day dictionary begins with the political dimension of government, where Noah Webster's definition begins with the individual's definition of government.

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It's the individual governed by God's law under the jurisdiction of God's government.

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And it mentions family government. It mentions ecclesiastical government. And then it brings in actual civil government later on.

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And early textbooks of the latter part of the 19th century, early part of the 20th century, they were the same way.

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Government begins in the home. Your parents are your first governors. We have completely flipped that definition of government.

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When we now hear the term government today, we think of Congress. We think of the

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Supreme Court. We think of the President of the United States. That's not the way government was understood biblically for centuries, well, actually for millennia.

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Well, it seems that secular society and even much of what is professedly the church,

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I'm not saying that these would be regenerate people that I'm going to describe, but there are many voices out there who are trying to destroy the very notion of the biblical family that you were just mentioning.

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Oh, yeah. Oh, there's no doubt about it. They want the government to be their family. And so we have room to tomb security for everything.

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And so you've got the United Nations redefining the family, making it almost impossible for families to educate their children.

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I mean, when I went to college, when I graduated from college, I had very, very little debt.

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And today you've got young people who have $40 ,000, $50 ,000, $60 ,000, $70 ,000, more than that worth of debt.

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Why is that? It's because we turned to the state and the people said, help us finance our children's education.

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And so the government was very happy to do that, because the government knew that if they helped fund something for parents, that they would get their vote in the end, and that's exactly what's happened.

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The same thing with the welfare system today, with the Great Society program of the 1960s that Lyndon Johnson brought in.

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Oh, it was just a great idea that we were going to help poor people. Well, and this war on poverty ended up being a war on the poor.

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And now you have a class, you know, a kind of multi -generational dependency of people on the state.

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People on welfare, they don't call it that anymore, of course, or food stamps, they don't call it that anymore.

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And to create an economy where those people are actually being taken off, you're being described as a racist.

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And yet in decreasing the power of the state, you increase the freedom of the individual to make a living in society, and they're no longer a slave to the state.

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But their politicians love people in dependency, because they know they'll always have their vote in order to keep them in power.

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So this is a multi -generational, what's the word

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I'm going to use here, dimensional understanding of all this. You can't change just one thing.

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Everything has implications in terms of what it's going to mean to the individual, the family, the church, society at large, education, art, music, politics.

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When you think about it, the government has its hand in everything, and the Christian should be involved in the civil dimension of government to get the government out of our lives and get it back to only those things in which the

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Bible says that the civil magistrates should be involved in. We have

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Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says, are you promoting

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Christian libertarianism? I am not talking about the kind of libertarianism that stands for the so -called freedoms of citizens to commit atrocities like the murder of abortion.

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But I am talking about a very limited government where only the laws of God apply, and we are not to become, as you were saying, slaves to a government that is human -made.

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Well, of course, there are libertines, somebody who basically says you can do anything you want.

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Those are libertines. And the idea of liberty is an

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American principle. And the idea of liberty was a very limited civil government, national government.

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And there are a lot of things within libertarianism that I agree with, and there are some things within libertarianism that I don't agree with.

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And I do believe that you need biblical definitions of things. For example, on marriage, the idea that the state should not recognize that marriage should be between a man and a woman,

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I think, is a faulty idea, but there are some libertarians who essentially say, the state should just stay out of marriage.

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Well, it's obvious in the Bible that marriages don't necessarily be sanctioned by the state, but they were recognized by the state, because there were inheritance laws related to that, dealing with children, the responsibility of parents with their children.

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So there is a civil dimension to all that. But then to say, well, we should just let everybody do what they want in terms of a marriage, and now you've got people saying, well, we need homosexual marriages, and now we're going to sanction laws that say that men who claim to be women are going to be forced, schools are going to be forced to take those women in and have them compete in sports, which has happened in a number of states.

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Definitionally, we've got to understand that the civil magistrate is involved with those biblical definitions.

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Those definitions are going to come from somewhere, and if we give them to the state autonomously, then we as Christians and everyone else is now going to come under the jurisdiction, the power, and authority of the civil government to comply with those.

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But if you go back to two Supreme Court decisions in the 19th century, the

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Supreme Court ruled on polygamy, and essentially looked at the biblical model, pointing out, of course, polygamy was taking place in the

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Bible, but it was never sanctioned as equal to one man and one woman in marriage, which the account of Genesis 1 and 2 and Matthew 19 spell out.

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So here you have the Supreme Court defining marriage in terms of biblical absolutes. But yet today, there's this slippery slope.

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You can define what you mean by marriage. You've got homosexual marriage and transgender marriages.

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And now I think Utah, I don't know all the specifics of this, possibly passing laws saying that now we can have polygamous marriages that should be sanctioned by the state.

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We have, let's see, John in Bangor, Maine, who wants to know, does the

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Bible have anything to say about strict border control in our day and age?

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Oh, wow. All these questions. I think, look, if you go back to the

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Old Testament, and it's obvious that Israel did not have open borders, let anyone come in, because Israel starts off by God commanding them to kick the people out of the land.

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Right, and in fact, the opposite, as you may know, is regurgitated frequently by secularists claiming to know the

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Bible. Yeah. I mean, the first command is to throw the people out of the land, and I think what you have now, that didn't mean that there weren't sojourners and so forth, but those sojourners who came into the land had to abide by Israel's laws.

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They weren't forced to become Israelites. They could become Israelites if they wanted to, and the law applied to the

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Israelite as well as it did to the sojourner in the land. And the sojourner in the land was to be treated righteously, that is, in terms of the law.

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They couldn't, the sojourner couldn't come in and say, oh, we're now here in your land, now we're going to set up a different set of civil laws, and we're going to run them our way.

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That was not permitted at all. So I think

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Israel was selective in terms of who would be permitted, and those who broke God's law were punished just like an

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Israelite was. And there was, you know, look, they've got good reason to put walls around their city.

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I mean, one of the first things after the exile that took place, a wall was built. I don't think that the

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Israelites could police their border like we can today, but Israel was in control of its border, and Israel was in control of the people who were there, and Israel was in control of the way that God's law applied, and it applied to an

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Israelite and a sojourner in the same way. The laws against murder, the laws against rape, the laws against homosexuality, all those laws were applicable to those who were born in the land who were

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Israelites and those who came in as sojourners and who worked in the land.

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They had to abide by God's laws that applied to everyone. By the way, folks, a book that you might find interesting that addresses some of these issues is a book by David Dykstra, who's a friend of mine,

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Yearning to Breathe Free, Thoughts on Immigration, Islam, and Freedom, published by Solid Ground Christian Books, and their website is

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Solid -Ground -Books .com, and you can look up Yearning to Breathe Free, Thoughts on Immigration, Islam, and Freedom by David Dykstra.

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We're going to be going to our first break right now. If you have a question for Gary of your own and you want to submit that before he departs from the show, since we have a second guest today for the second hour, please send that question in as quickly as possible to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

30:55

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gary DeMar. This is

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen, and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Coram, Long Island, New York.

34:31

I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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New York debates. I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the

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Holy Scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

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I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram for the recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net,

35:09

that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

35:16

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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And that's the church where I will be, along with my former co -host, Buzz Taylor.

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Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, March 20th, 21st, and 22nd.

35:45

The 20th and 21st, specifically, are the dates of the God, the Government, and the

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Last Days conference featuring our guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron, Gary DeMar. And then

35:56

Gary will be preaching Sunday morning at Hope Reform Baptist Church.

36:02

And I hope to see you there. You can find out more details on the conference at reformedrookie .net, reformedrookie .net,

36:12

also .com. And you can also, as the ad just said, as James White said in the ad, you can call 631 -696 -5711 for more details about Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York.

36:26

631 -696 -5711. We are now back with our guest today,

36:32

Gary DeMar, President of American Vision. And we are talking about, specifically today, the government and its relationship with eschatology.

36:43

And we do have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, should the church be viewing the government of the

36:53

Old Testament as something that we should desire to imitate merely because it was something that came from the very mind of God, it was

37:04

God -breathed, and a blueprint created by God Himself, and therefore this would just be a very wise thing to do, or is it a command, in your opinion, for the church to reestablish

37:17

Old Covenant penal systems? Well, if you look at 2

37:24

Timothy 3, verses 16 -17, it says, all scripture is God -breathed, and as your caller pointed out, and the purpose of that is it's valuable for us, and it makes us actually adequate to deal with issues related to what's happening in our world today.

37:49

I don't think there's, and I don't know anyone who would believe this, I don't believe that there is a one -to -one relationship between things in the

37:58

Old Testament and things in the New Testament. A number of things have changed dramatically.

38:04

That's what the book of Hebrews is all about, and of course Paul brings up some of these things in the book of Acts and some of his epistles. And if you look at Romans chapter 13, there is the summary of the law in the

38:17

Ten Commandments There's a fundamental list there. Also, if you look at 1

38:24

Timothy chapter 1, we're taking back to the

38:30

Old Testament laws. Now, does that mean that every law in the Old Testament should be applied in a direct one -to -one manner?

38:41

I don't believe so. I think every law has its circumstances surrounding it.

38:47

Every infraction has to be evaluated in terms of God's law.

38:54

And what you find in 1 Timothy chapter 1, it says here, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, which is kind of an interesting idea that you actually use the law to determine how to use the law lawfully, realizing the fact that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their mothers or fathers for murderers, and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed

39:34

God with which I have been entrusted. So here you see,

39:40

Paul isn't separating the law from the gospel. And I'll give you a couple of really good examples related to this.

39:48

If the laws regarding kidnapping in the Old Testament had been followed to the letter, we never would have had chattel slavery in the

39:57

United States. Because what was practiced in the United States was kidnapping, going to another country and stealing men, and being sold to profiteers, shipped across the

40:13

United States, and then being forced into slavery. The Bible can condemn that with a vengeance.

40:20

And the majority of what is positively said about slavery was really kind of an indentured servitude.

40:28

And also there was a deal related to paying restitution, where Zacchaeus said he would pay back four times.

40:36

So you take that aspect of the law and apply it today, so much would have changed for the better in our society.

40:43

And another thing you have in the Old Testament is just weights and measures, which, by the way, are applicable in almost everything we have today.

40:52

Pick up a box of cereal, it'll tell you, you buy this box of cereal, you're not buying the volume of what's in here, you're buying the weight.

41:02

Just weights and measures. And that applies also to the judicial process.

41:09

You can't have two different ways of evaluating people based upon their station.

41:15

This person's rich and this person isn't rich, so we're going to give favors to this person over against this person.

41:21

And yet we have that in our society today, where politicians, it seems, get a better deal in terms of jurisdictional application.

41:30

And we've got the idea of two witnesses. Two witnesses are actually written into the

41:38

Constitution, which is a very biblical idea. It's quoted in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that's what the

41:44

Kavanaugh hearing was all about. It was the idea of dealing with witnesses. Who was an eyewitness to these things?

41:51

And they were put under scrutiny as to were you really there, or was it hearsay evidence? These concepts are built into our legal system today.

42:02

And, unfortunately, we're getting away from them because we no longer have a standard by which we can determine what's right and what's wrong.

42:10

So going back to the beginning again, I don't believe there's a one -to -one relationship.

42:17

Circumstances have changed. We do lots of things today that were never done in the Old Testament. But there are applicational ways of looking at the law in terms of things that have changed in our society today.

42:29

We even have cell phones and computers and all kinds of things that have changed. And trying to make that application from God's Word to God's law can be difficult, but I believe those principles are there in seed form.

42:44

And if you could, especially for those of our listeners who are tuning in late and didn't hear anything you said in the first half hour, if you could, perhaps in a bit more detail, explain the relationship between government and eschatology.

43:00

Well, I think one of the reasons Christians stay out of government, it's twofold. They think government politics is secular, and they're dualists.

43:09

They believe that they live in a kind of spiritual circle, and politics is not spiritual, so they stay out of politics.

43:19

And the other one is because they believe we're living in the last days, and as a result, they don't think that we can make any changes in society because Jesus is coming back soon, because the things that we're seeing today taking place are indications that Jesus must be coming back soon because of that homosexuality, like we didn't have that in the

43:37

Bible, Romans chapter 1, and what I just read, verse Timothy 1. Homosexuality was going on back then as well.

43:43

We have abortion taking place today. Well, abortion was taking place in the Roman Empire as well as taking place today.

43:50

And so everything that Christians are using today to try to make the case that we're living in the last days, and that's one of the reasons why

43:58

I bother getting involved in politics because it's all going to come to naught anyway, you will find every single generation face those same types of issues.

44:08

But within the generation of the United States, we beat back a lot of those moral indiscretions, but we used to have laws on the books against homosexuality.

44:20

We used to have laws on the books against abortion, and Christians have kind of given up because they have this sacred secular divide.

44:28

Well, we can't impose our morality on other people. I can assure every Christian out there, somebody's morality is being imposed on them.

44:36

There is no neutrality. Somebody is always imposing morality. At least the

44:42

Bible defines for us the limitations of civil government in terms of what it can and cannot do.

44:49

The Bible actually teaches a jurisdictional separation between church and state. The idea of a separation between church and state is not a new thing.

44:58

It wasn't invented by Thomas Jefferson or anyone before them. It was invented by the

45:04

Bible. There was Moses and Aaron, and they had two separate jurisdictions. They could not cross the boundaries of those jurisdictions, and that was built in the very concept of our society.

45:18

The Constitution is very clear. It's not dealing with the separation between church and state, because that was a given.

45:24

What it's dealing with is the relationship between the national government, the federal government, and the state.

45:30

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

45:37

It has nothing to do with the jurisdictional separation between church and state. It had to do with what limits

45:42

Congress had in dealing with the states regarding religion. And the very thing, again, that your opponents would hurl at you is that you are trying to destroy the concept of the separation of church and state.

46:01

Of course they are. Because they want their own control over the church.

46:10

They want to reinvent what the First Amendment has to say so they can control the church and they can control religion.

46:17

That's why they almost never quote the First Amendment. They always say the separation between church and state. And they say, well, what is that in the

46:24

Constitution? Well, it's not there. Well, what does the First Amendment actually say? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

46:34

It's a prohibition of what Congress can do. And the prohibition is it can't get involved in what the states are doing regarding religion.

46:43

And then what about the states? Well, the states then implement their own principles related to church -state issues.

46:53

And the same thing with the Second Amendment and the rest of the amendments. That's why the

46:59

Constitution is such a small, short document. Because the Constitution is a document of enumerated powers.

47:08

It's only a list of those powers that the federal government actually has. We've gone far, far beyond that.

47:15

We want the government to do this. We want the government to do that. But the secularists, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the

47:21

ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, they want to use the power of the state to prohibit anybody from exercising their religion publicly.

47:33

And they also want to take over the institutions in which the secular religion is taught and forced on people, that is, the public school system.

47:45

Now, you will frequently hear, liberal politicians especially, or perhaps even some that profess to be some brand of conservative.

47:58

But they will say things like, and I'm thinking immediately of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, where you will have people say, oh,

48:06

I'm a Roman Catholic. I strongly agree with my church that abortion is wrong, that we are not to participate in that as faithful Catholics.

48:19

But I would never want to impose those kind of regulations of my cherished religion upon the citizens of a nation where I am serving in government.

48:33

So these are two different things. Now, first of all, this is, I think, a charade.

48:39

Don't you think that they are confusing what might be called an ecclesiocracy with a theocracy?

48:48

They are treating things like abortion, which is infanticide, as if it were a denomination reaching heights of authority where they are imposing their own understanding of baptism or other things upon the citizens.

49:06

Yeah, look, they're slippery. This was the argument that Mario Cuomo gave with the

49:12

Notre Dame, and he made this speech that would be, oh, this was terrific, terrific, terrific.

49:18

If you were to follow that same speech, and just every time you saw the word abortion, put the word slavery in there, it was the same argument.

49:25

There were those in the 19th century, oh, we can't get involved in this abolition of slavery, because we have our own little enclave over here.

49:38

This is a sacred issue. This is an ecclesiastical issue. Well, so is thou shalt not murder.

49:45

So is thou shalt not steal. Those are found in the Bible as well.

49:50

Thou shalt not kidnap. And so if you start taking this idea, and by the way, it all comes down to what's being aborted.

49:58

What is being aborted here? And you notice how this has all changed. It doesn't matter anymore that you could say that an unborn child was a human being.

50:06

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you label whatever is growing inside a woman.

50:13

It is not a human being. And even if it is a human being, the woman has a right to kill it.

50:20

So this is just preposterous with Nancy Pelosi getting up and, oh, she's a good

50:25

Catholic. She goes on with the Catholic Church. Well, again, you're just left with, you're making the same argument that people who continue to hold on to slavery said, you

50:34

Christians cannot impose your morality in an area that has civil ramifications to it.

50:41

You can't bring your religious beliefs regarding slavery into the secular realm and into the courts because that is, there's this supposed wall between church and state.

50:54

It depends on murder and the rest of it as well, which is ridiculous. And in closing, post -millennialists such as yourself do not view the future return of Christ as something that is going to be happening very soon, maybe even centuries away.

51:18

Obviously, there's going to be a point in time when we are very near to the return of Christ.

51:25

So what should the Christians of the future be looking for around them that would be signaling to them, now we can say

51:33

Jesus is coming very soon, his return is imminent, etc.? I don't think there's any such thing in the

51:41

Bible that deals with that at all. So the church would always be in some realm of ignorance about that?

51:48

The church should just be doing its work. You have a job to do.

51:53

Well, what's going to happen when I get here at 5 o 'clock? You're here to do a job. When your job is over, then you can go home.

52:01

And we have to just do our job. Whatever God decides to do in the future is his business. I don't think there's anything you could look at.

52:10

I think this was part of the problem of the post -millennialists of previous generations. They saw this change taking place in society and they said, oh,

52:18

Jesus is going to return now because we just made all these changes. I don't think the

52:23

Bible deals with that whatsoever. All we're supposed to do is work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and we just follow

52:33

God's law, do our business, and just keep on going. And if God decides when he wants to make a change, that's up to him.

52:41

We need to get off. I think we need to get off the whole eschatological roller coaster with this and just do business until he returns.

52:50

Amen. Well, I want to make sure our listeners have your website. It's AmericanVision .org,

52:57

AmericanVision .org. Also, don't forget about the conference on Friday and Saturday, March 20th and 21st.

53:05

And also, Gary's preaching on the Lord's Day on Sunday, the 22nd of March at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Quorum, Long Island, New York.

53:14

And God willing, I will be there. I hope to see you there. For more details, go to ReformedRookie .net,

53:21

ReformedRookie, R -O -O -K -I -E .net. You can also call Area Code 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

53:31

Gary, it's always a joy to have you on, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, God willing, from the 20th through the 22nd of March.

53:39

I'm looking forward to it as well. Great. And folks, please don't go away because Elias Ayala is our second guest today.

53:46

And Elias is going to be continuing the theme to a degree.

53:52

He's going to be addressing more specifically the theme, the dangers of minimizing or inflating the role of eschatology.

54:01

If you have a question for Eli Ayala, who is a Christian apologist and team member at Historical Bible Society and also founder of Revealed Apologetics, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

54:14

Chris Arnson at gmail .com. This is our longer than normal break. Please be patient with us because we have to accommodate

54:20

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God willing, because we depend upon our advertisers to exist. And also send in questions for Eli Ayala to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

54:55

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

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Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sherpa and Zion podcast. I consider

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01:07:19

Before we introduce to you our second guest today, we just have a couple of announcements to make.

01:07:27

The one, first of all, that we've been already mentioning, we hope that you will attend this conference, if at all possible, if you are able to get there by train, plane, automobile, parachute, however you're able to get there.

01:07:41

The God, the Government, and the Last Days Conference is being held Friday and Saturday, March 20th and 21st at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, featuring our guest speaker,

01:07:56

Gary DeMar, president of American Vision and author of Last Days Madness. He was our guest for the first hour of today's program.

01:08:05

He's also going to be preaching, I understand. This is news to me, good news to me, Sunday morning on March 22nd at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York.

01:08:16

The sessions include the Friday session, March 20th at 7 p .m.

01:08:22

God and Government with a Q &A following. There's going to be a prayer breakfast

01:08:27

Saturday morning on March 21st, and then in the evening at 7 p .m.

01:08:33

Gary's message will be on the Olivet Discourse with a Q &A following.

01:08:39

And as I said, on Sunday morning Gary will be preaching, God willing, at the

01:08:45

Sunday morning services at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York. For more details you can go to reformedrooke .com,

01:08:56

reformedrooke .com, also .net, and you can also call Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York at 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711, and I will be there,

01:09:10

God willing, and I hope to see you there too. And my friend and former co -host of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Buzz Taylor, will be there with me as well,

01:09:20

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01:10:38

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01:11:12

If you need help finding a church wherever you live in the world, I can help you find a church. I do have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet, and I have helped quite a number of people find churches wherever they live.

01:11:24

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01:11:38

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01:11:51

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01:12:03

You don't have to believe identically with me to advertise, but you need to be promoting something that's compatible with what we believe here.

01:12:11

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. We now introduce to you a person who

01:12:20

I have grown very fond of. I have been blown away hearing him give public presentations at a recent

01:12:31

Bible conference at Hope Reform Baptist Church, actually, in Coral Mill Island, New York. I sat in utter amazement, glued to his every word, as he very eloquently and humorously and expertise -ly, if that's even a word, presented one of the five points of Calvinism, which the conference was focused on when

01:13:00

I was there. Eli Ayala, also known as Elias Ayala, he is a Christian apologist and team member at the

01:13:07

Historical Bible Society and founder of Revealed Apologetics. He is going to be discussing for the second hour today the dangers of minimizing or inflating the role of eschatology.

01:13:19

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trap and Zion Radio. Eli Ayala. It's a pleasure to be on.

01:13:25

Thank you so much for having me. Why don't you tell our listeners about the

01:13:31

Historical Bible Society, first and foremost. The Historical Bible Society is a society that is headed by Daniel Bonifuco, who is a trial lawyer and a

01:13:42

Christian, and he has great interest in the history of the Bible. He has a great collection of biblical manuscripts and old

01:13:49

Bibles that he brings to churches and different venues to talk about the accuracy and reliability of the

01:13:56

Bible, all the while having these wonderful manuscripts and old

01:14:01

Bibles on display. That usually catches people's interest, so they can actually see what these manuscripts look like and just kind of get a real feel for the antiquity of the

01:14:11

Scriptures and the rich tradition by which it has been handed down to us. And so I think he does an excellent job giving those presentations.

01:14:19

He's very knowledgeable in that specific area. Yeah, he does an absolutely phenomenal job. I've seen many of his presentations, and they've never been identical.

01:14:27

Of course, the facts don't change. But he always puts a little different spin on what he highlights or focuses upon when he does these presentations.

01:14:40

It's not given in a rehearsed robotic fashion in any way, shape, or form.

01:14:46

And what's always amazing to me is to see how long people linger after his presentation is over because they just want to find out more about the transmission of Scripture.

01:14:58

They want to find out more about the Historical Bible Society. And there's usually a long line of people waiting to speak to Dan after he has officially concluded his presentation.

01:15:10

Yeah. Obviously, if you've seen his presentations, it is very clear that he is very passionate about the topic.

01:15:16

And so you're right. He doesn't lay it out in a boring way. He's very excited to talk about each and every piece of his collection.

01:15:23

And I think it's vitally important, not just for educational purposes, but just within the context of apologetics,

01:15:29

I think the Bible is the number one thing that is attacked. And so it is very important to understand where the

01:15:34

Bible came from, how we got it, what did that process look like. And so the Historical Bible Society is very much dedicated to educating folks on how it all works and why it's important.

01:15:44

And that website is historicalbiblesociety .org. Historicalbiblesociety .org.

01:15:51

Now tell us about Revealed Apologetics. Yeah, well, I'm the founder of Revealed Apologetics, which is a

01:15:57

Christian apologetic organization which tries to promote apologetics in general and presuppositional apologetics in particular.

01:16:03

I am Reformed in my theology, and I'm very much Reformed in my apologetic methodology. I believe it is the biblical approach, and so I try to promote that.

01:16:13

That being said, I do have guests on that come from a wide range of theological and apologetic traditions.

01:16:19

And so I do try to give a genuine appreciation of what the wider body of Christ has to contribute, even though there may be some differences there.

01:16:28

But my focus is presuppositional apologetics. That's what I teach. That's how I engage in debate.

01:16:34

I have a couple of debates that are available both on my YouTube page, Revealed Apologetics, which I encourage people to subscribe to, and my

01:16:40

Facebook page, Revealed Apologetics. I put up content there as well, and then I have a podcast on iTunes,

01:16:47

Revealed Apologetics, in which they can listen just to the audio of many of my videos and debate discussions and things like that.

01:16:55

And the website is revealedapologetics .com. We are working on the website currently, so it's not up just yet, but we definitely will be having a website up where the primary focus would be on apologetic methodology and applying that to almost every area that we could imagine.

01:17:13

Great. And if you could, in a nutshell, give our listeners a summary definition of presuppositionalism.

01:17:21

Yeah. Presuppositionalism is an apologetic methodology which focuses on worldview foundations, and so it really focuses on the issue of our assumptions.

01:17:32

What do we bring to the table? Everyone has presuppositions, ultimate foundational commitments, or rather, they act as a lens through which we interpret the world around us, and so the presuppositionalist is unique because it is different than other methodologies that start from what we would call a bottom -up approach.

01:17:53

They'll start with some facts and work their way up to the conclusion that God exists. For example, you have the classical approach, which is a two -step apologetic approach, in which you try to demonstrate the existence of God by appealing to what they call the theistic proofs, cosmological argument, teleological argument, moral argument, things like that.

01:18:10

And then the second approach is to provide historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus to conclude that the

01:18:16

Christian worldview is true. The presuppositional method is a top -down approach. We argue, rather, that if you do not start with the

01:18:23

Christian worldview, you do not have a foundation to even argue. The Christian worldview is the necessary precondition for anything that is to be intelligible, and so we argue kind of from a top -down approach, starting from Revelation, and then arguing for its necessity to even engage in argumentation.

01:18:40

So it's unique in that regard. And when you say starting with Revelation, you're just talking about the revealed, inspired

01:18:47

Word of God. You're not speaking specifically of the Book of Revelation. That is correct. We start with God's Revelation as it is in His Word, and the worldview that is promoted in the

01:19:00

Scriptures, we start with that as our framework of looking at and seeing the world and interpreting the world.

01:19:06

And so we would argue, you know, a presuppositional argument, colloquially speaking, would be something like this, as the late

01:19:12

Greg Bonson used to say. He said that the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all.

01:19:20

And of course we would hash that out and demonstrate that if you do not assume what the Bible says about the world, you couldn't make sense out of argument, you couldn't make sense out of history, philosophy, uniformity, philosophy, you know, any aspect of philosophy, mathematics,

01:19:33

Christianity is the foundation for all of it. And I think that that can be argued quite effectively. Yes, and we're all looking forward with bated breath to the publication that Gary DeMar is working on.

01:19:47

He's probably raced right back to his study to continue working on a new compilation of the works of Dr.

01:19:55

Bonson, who you just mentioned. So we're looking forward to getting that book and getting

01:20:01

Gary back on to discuss the life and legacy of Greg Bonson. Yeah, Greg Bonson has been the greatest intellectual influence over me outside of the

01:20:12

Bible itself. I've learned a lot from him. His methodology is thoroughly biblical, and so unlike studying regular apologetics books, which focus on argumentation, when you read

01:20:23

Bonson's work, his work is soaked in scripture. And so you're not only learning how to defend the faith, but he's using biblical principles.

01:20:31

And so you are personally edified in the midst of studying those intellectual arguments. Amen. And we are discussing the theme today for the second hour, eschatology.

01:20:43

I actually have to go forward here a little bit. I was just about to repeat

01:20:48

Gary DeMar's topic. The dangers of minimizing or inflating the role of eschatology.

01:20:56

If you could, first of all, begin with a definition of eschatology. Yeah, eschatology is the study of last things, and it usually deals with anything.

01:21:07

If you're taking a look at it in terms of systematic theology, when we do systematic theology, we learn things like, you know, pneumatology, the study of the spirit, harmitology, the study of sin,

01:21:19

Christology, the study of Christ, and so on and so forth. When we get to eschatology, we're dealing with the question of what does the

01:21:25

Bible, in its entirety, have to say about the topic of the last things? And so that would incorporate issues like the coming of Christ, the events that lead up to that, the different perspectives which are involved in those sorts of debates, you know, issues of premillennial dispensationalism, amillennialism, the different, you know, millennial views, tribulational views.

01:21:43

And so eschatology really encompasses what the Scriptures point to. When all things are said and done, what are we moving towards, what are we expecting in the future, and how does that all hash out?

01:21:56

Eschatology deals with those things, and the specifics of those things really are hashed out in the different competing eschatological positions, which, as you know, a good way to start a ballroom brawl between pastors and Christians is you talk about the age of the earth, you talk about Calvinism and Arminianism, and then you talk about eschatology.

01:22:13

And of course, if it's a ballroom brawl, you're speaking about Lutherans and Presbyterians. That is correct.

01:22:25

Well, I believe, and of course there may be those out there who disagree with me,

01:22:31

I don't know how you could actually disagree with me on this, if you really have eyes and ears and have conversations with people, but there are people out there within the body of Christ who fall under the category of one of the following dangers.

01:22:50

They either minimize the role of eschatology by saying it really has no importance at all, these are just things that are fascinating to speculate about, these are things that might produce robust and interesting conversations, but in the long run, our view of the last things is really not very important at all.

01:23:19

And then, of course, on the other end of the spectrum, typically manifests itself in a more ugly fashion, where you have professing

01:23:31

Christians, sometimes even completely alienating or dismissing their brothers and sisters in Christ as being lost in a worst -case scenario.

01:23:44

They're lost, they're heretics, they are not Christians at all if they disagree with one's understanding of eschatology.

01:23:52

So those are two obvious dangers that we should avoid. Let's start with, why is it dangerous to minimize the role of eschatology in the worldview and thought process and life of a

01:24:04

Christian? What is entailed by over -emphasizing or under -emphasizing is just imbalance.

01:24:11

When you think about it, the key ingredient to every heresy is an imbalance. If you take a look at the early

01:24:18

Christological heresies, you have a view like Dophetism, which over -emphasizes the divinity of Christ to the exclusion of his humanity.

01:24:26

You have the heresy of Dophetism, that Christ was not, he didn't come in the flesh, rather he appeared to be in the flesh.

01:24:34

And so you deny the humanity of Christ to the detriment of other areas of theology like the Atonement, and things like that.

01:24:40

And so you apply imbalance to any area within the theological spectrum, you're going to run into some form of heresy.

01:24:47

And if you believe in a heretical view, of course that is going to affect how you live out your faith, since we act upon that which we believe.

01:24:58

And if we're believing falsely, then that's going to affect how we live those things out. And so I would argue that if you have an over -emphasis, for example, on the second coming of Christ, and that every time someone stubs their foot in the

01:25:11

Middle East, you think that's a sign at the end, and so we all have to now get canned goods and packets of water and hide it in the basement just in case.

01:25:19

You can see how that would affect and create kind of an atmosphere of paranoia, which

01:25:25

I don't think is a very healthy thing for anybody in general, and Christians in particular. Yeah, and I'm sure you would agree that even those, and of course everybody thinks their own eschatology, if they indeed have a firm and fixed and convinced position of eschatology, they think they're right, of course.

01:25:47

But even if we believe we are biblically accurate in our eschatology, must we not be very careful not to be overly harsh and judgmental and dismissive of our brethren who disagree?

01:26:04

I know people who would share my personal eschatology, amillennialism,

01:26:11

I consider myself an optimistic amillennialism, amillennialist I should say, and unlike many amillennialists,

01:26:19

I'm also, at least at this point in my journey, I am a partial preterist, but I know amillennialists who totally dismiss postmillennialists and historic premillennialists and dispensationalists just as unlearned, off the wall, just dead wrong, and they will use the harshest of criticism to dismiss them.

01:26:47

And I think that that's dangerous. I think that that's not in the spirit of Christian brotherhood, because for centuries, even though the

01:26:58

Church has always viewed the visible physical return of Christ in the future, and the resurrection of the dead as key elements of Christian eschatology, there has been throughout history, as you know, much room for disagreement on secondary and tertiary matters.

01:27:21

Yeah, that's correct. I think it's very important to make a distinction between essential doctrine and non -essential doctrine, and I think we tend to bring to the level of essential those doctrines that are of greatest interest to us, which

01:27:33

I think is ridiculous. A lot of people say, well, how do you make the differentiation between essential and non -essential doctrine?

01:27:40

When we say, for example, that a particular doctrine is non -essential, we're not saying that it's not important, right?

01:27:46

If a doctrine is derived from the Word of God, the Word of God is the honest stuff, it's God -free, it's either all equally important, whether it's essential or non -essential.

01:27:53

But there are aspects of Scripture that don't have the qualifier that if we deny it or affirm it, that we are no longer in the faith.

01:28:02

And then you have those essential doctrines, which have the Scriptural qualifier, that if you believe such and such, then you're cut off from Christ, rather than the

01:28:09

Book of Relations. If you believe you're justified by the works of the law, you are cut off from Christ. Unless you believe that I am

01:28:14

He, you will die your sins. So you have the deity of Christ as an essential doctrine. And when you get to the area of eschatology, again, it's important to be sure, but there are no qualifiers in Scripture, and there's no systematic position that is laid out in the

01:28:30

Scriptures themselves in a sense that we categorize these things and draw different areas of Scripture together.

01:28:36

So you have to be very careful how we raise certain doctrines to the level of essential.

01:28:43

And also, I think, getting back to what you asked prior, the danger of minimizing. I think sometimes we minimize eschatology to the extent that we avoid getting in any depth in the

01:29:00

Book of Revelation, because it's a book that is, you know, it's a book of symbols, it's a book of metaphors, so who can really understand it?

01:29:06

Even John Calvin himself avoided it. Yeah, well, yeah. But the people become so scared of the

01:29:12

Book of Revelation because of what they think it implies or teaches, or they think that it is so ambiguous in its meaning that they just don't touch it with a nine -foot pole.

01:29:22

And I think that is any view that one holds that keeps one away from a portion of Revelation is a dangerous doctrine, since we are to hold the

01:29:33

Scriptures in regards to, you know, it includes the whole counsel of God.

01:29:38

And so Revelation still has, whether we come to certain eschatological conclusions or not, it still has great importance and relevancy to the life of a

01:29:46

Christian. I'm just thinking here, too, in Revelation chapter 1, verse 3, we're told that it says,

01:29:52

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near.

01:29:57

Notice what it says. Blessed is he who reads. We are to be blessed by reading this.

01:30:03

It has benefit for the Church. And we can be benefited by the Book of Revelation without necessarily adopting one of the eschatological camps and kind of getting into these little debates that are, you know, whether it's through literature or online, you know.

01:30:17

We are not promoting unity when we start bringing to the level of essential things that the

01:30:23

Scriptures don't teach are essential. And I think when we try to boast our eschatological system is superior than other competing eschatological systems, sometimes we can engage in that and actually show our weakness in our theology of Christian conduct.

01:30:38

That's theology, too. What about these 1 Peter 3, 15? To set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, always being ready to give a reason for the hope to continue, and doing so with gentleness and respect.

01:30:48

Why do we engage in these kinds of debates in a cutthroat fashion which really undermines the strength of the position that we're trying to defend?

01:30:56

Because you can be defending truth, but doing it sinfully. And I think we need to look to be consistent, not just in the, quote, interesting parts of theology like eschatology.

01:31:06

We need to be consistent with the not -so -interesting, as popularly understood sometimes, the doctrine of proper conduct.

01:31:13

And so sometimes we come at these things in a very imbalanced way. I'm going to read a question for you from an anonymous listener, and then we're going to go to a break, our final break of the show.

01:31:24

And you can answer the question when we return. This anonymous listener asks, Should a difference on eschatology, as long as one believes in a literal, physical, bodily return of Christ in the future, ever bar someone from membership or leadership in a local church?

01:31:43

And we'll have you answer that when we come back. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:31:49

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, and I would do so as quickly as you can, because we've only got about 25 minutes or so left in the program.

01:31:59

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name, city, and state and country of residence.

01:32:06

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

01:32:11

We'll be right back with Eli Ayala after these messages. As host of Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

01:32:32

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Bible, an actual page of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455, the first book ever printed, the

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Geneva Bible, the 1611 King James Bible, and much, much more. Visit historicalbiblesociety .org

01:42:31

today. Thank you, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, for your faithful support of Iron Shrub and Zion Radio.

01:42:56

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:43:08

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:43:15

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

01:43:39

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

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For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net

01:43:54

That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711

01:44:03

That's 631 -696 -5711

01:44:08

Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:44:18

And don't forget, folks, the conference with Gary DeMar is being held at Hope Reform Baptist Church on Friday and Saturday, March 20th and 21st.

01:44:29

Hope Reform Baptist Church is located in Coram, Long Island, New York. I intend to be there, as does my former co -host,

01:44:37

Buzz Taylor. And not only is Gary going to be speaking at the conference on God, government, and the last days, but he's also going to be preaching

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Sunday morning. I'm not sure what topic they have planned for him or that he has planned.

01:44:56

But I'm thrilled to hear the great news that Gary is going to be speaking there as well on Sunday morning, preaching,

01:45:02

I should say. And if you'd like to join me there, you want more details about the conference at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, featuring

01:45:14

Gary DeMar of American Vision, go to ReformedRookie .net, ReformedRookie, R -O -O -K -I -E, .net

01:45:22

or .com, and there you will see all the information that you need.

01:45:27

You can also call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

01:45:34

And we are now back with our final segment of today's show with Eli Ayala of the

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Historical Bible Society and Revealed Apologetics. We are discussing the dangers of minimizing or inflating the role of eschatology.

01:45:50

And Eli, as you may remember, we have an anonymous listener who wants to know, as long as one holds to the historically understood view of the return of Christ, which the

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Church has universally agreed includes the visible, physical, bodily return of Christ and also a future bodily resurrection of the dead, as long as one's eschatology holds those crucial elements, should someone be barred from either membership or leadership in a church?

01:46:27

Obviously, those are two very different things. There are some things that a church might rightly agree would bar somebody from leadership.

01:46:39

And there are, you know, some churches disagree on the severity of eschatology involved in the decision -making on who is appointed to be a leader.

01:46:51

And, of course, being a member of a church, that's something that is altogether different. Well, not altogether different, but very different, because I know that many of my

01:47:01

Reformed brethren disagree with me on this, but I don't believe that a

01:47:07

Reformed church should even have Calvinism as a litmus test for membership, as long as somebody recognizes that the leadership of this church that they are joining believes in the doctrines of sovereign grace, that they hold to a confession of faith, etc.,

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and they are not to undermine it. They are not to seek to destroy the content of messages being presented in sermons and Bible studies by immediately running to the sides of those in the congregation to undermine what they have heard, that kind of a thing.

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But I think that we who are Reformed need to be patient with people as they grow in the knowledge and understanding of the

01:47:54

Word and their sanctification and so on. But I don't know, you may disagree with me on that as well, but if you could, if you could answer specifically the listener's question about eschatology barring somebody from either membership or leadership.

01:48:09

Yeah, I think in regards to membership, I think the standards should be a little more flexible, right?

01:48:15

Because you're going to have greater diversity with the wider congregation. People might believe any number of things, but if they hold to orthodoxy in the areas that were mentioned,

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I think that membership should not be barred. And I think to bar membership for eschatological reasons,

01:48:32

I think is going a little overboard, especially if the person still holds to those basic tenets that you mentioned within the question.

01:48:42

In regards to leadership, I think it still should be somewhat flexible, but of course leadership is going to represent what the

01:48:49

Church's principles are. I would say that in leadership there is room for making standards of holding to particular non -essentials that you would want the leaders to hold to.

01:49:00

Not that you're defining them in and out of Christianity, but if you strongly believe in certain biblical principles that may be in the area of non -essentials but very important,

01:49:11

I think that a Church is free to have a standard in which if they're going to have leadership, they want to be in uniformity on specific areas that they think are important to emphasize.

01:49:21

As long as they're not kicking people out of the Kingdom because they're differing over non -essential issues. Again, now, eschatology is a very, very broad topic, and so even in answering this question,

01:49:35

I guess I can conceive of an example of someone holding to some weird eschatological view in which they affirm those essential tenets, but then they also affirm certain things that undermine or at least begin to impinge upon essential doctrine.

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I think the Church leadership in examining that person for leadership roles should proceed with wisdom and weigh the situation as they come.

01:50:01

So again, people have all sorts of different views. We want to be flexible and loving, but not in a way that compromises the firm convictions of Scripture, and especially when someone's holding to views that spill into essentials.

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For example, I have a friend, Matt Flick, over at karm .org, which is a great apologetics website.

01:50:20

People should check out. It's one of the largest apologetics websites online, and the oldest. But he talks about the essentials of the faith, and then he talks about what he calls secondary essentials, namely the points of doctrine that don't have the qualifier that if you accept or reject, you're not of the faith, but that they impinge upon essentials.

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And so they have great ramifications for accepting them or rejecting them. And so I think the Church leadership should cautiously examine the specific views before they allow someone on leadership.

01:50:57

Sorry about that, folks. I was pouring myself a cup of coffee, and obviously I didn't time it exactly right, according to Eli's...

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I was waiting for you to say, I didn't catch anything of what you just said. Can you say it again?

01:51:15

Well, thank you, anonymous listener. That was an excellent question. And, of course, there are very sad situations where you have even churches disfellowshipping entire congregations because they might disagree on pre -trib versus mid -trib versus pre -wrath, and they will view their brothers and sisters for whom

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Christ died as being outside of the Christian faith because of those differences. And that's a very sad commentary.

01:51:51

One of the most influential books that I've read, believe it or not, and some people might say, really, that's the most influential book you read?

01:51:58

I mean, other than the Bible, of course, right? Was Gary DeMar's Last Day's Madness.

01:52:04

I won't get into the details, but when I read Last Day's Madness, it challenged me so foundationally that it affected what

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I believed in other areas. And, of course, through Dr. DeMar's books, I was introduced to Greg Bonson, of course, and then the whole apologetics world opened up to me, and that was kind of a history, you know, the rest of history, as they say.

01:52:23

But when I began to read Last Day's Madness, The Obsession of the Modern Church, it so radically changed my view of eschatology that when

01:52:33

I interacted with Christians within my own circles, and at that time I was going to a Pentecostal church, and, of course, a lot of the

01:52:40

Pentecostal churches are premillennial dispensational, I was accused of teaching the doctrine of demons because I was teaching that a lot of what we expect in the future is not necessarily the case.

01:52:52

There's good reason, biblically, to think that many of the things that we're expecting in the future were, in fact, fulfilled in the past, in the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem.

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I still affirmed orthodoxy in regards to the bodily return of Christ, the judgment of both the living and the dead, the creation of the new heaven and the earth.

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I just denied a future seven -year tribulation and the whole dispensational outlook, and I was accused of preaching the doctrine of demons.

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And so you have these people who are imbalanced, right? They're bringing to the level of essentials something that is nonessential.

01:53:24

And I think it's incredible that someone could be so drastic with regards to this topic. Yes, I agree.

01:53:32

And before I ask another listener question, I think that it would be wise for us to say something about an eschatological danger that is still relatively small, it's still a minority voice, but it seems to be gaining traction, unfortunately.

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And I'm speaking of hyperpreterism, also known as full preterism.

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It's also been called covenant eschatology and realized eschatology. There are many different labels for it.

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But this has really become an annoying voice within professing

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Christianity. And it seems that the people who adhere to this eschatology, which denies the future visible physical return of Christ and denies the future resurrection of the dead, both those who are saved and those who are damned, this has become their gospel, it seems.

01:54:36

But if you could comment with your own impression of this. Yes, you're referring to hyperpreterism, which of course full preterists or consistent preterists wouldn't call themselves hyper since the hyper has kind of a prejudice.

01:54:51

Just like you're not going to typically find people calling themselves hypercalvinists. That's right.

01:54:58

What theological position do you hold? I'm a hypercalvinist? You're not going to see people describe themselves like that.

01:55:06

But hyperpreterism or full preterism or consistent preterism is the belief that all of the so -called end -time prophecies that we usually associate with, you know, studies in eschatology have been fulfilled mainly during the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

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And so what I think the danger, among many dangers of this position, is that when you say that all the prophecies in Scripture were fulfilled in that event, you then have to break hermeneutical rules to spiritualize a lot of the things in Scripture that talk about these important events, you know, the judgment and things like that.

01:55:44

So you have to break hermeneutical rules and interpret passages that don't...

01:55:49

It seems at face value and contextually it's not teaching what it teaches in a metaphoric sense.

01:55:56

And so you have that interpretive issue. You also have the issue, as I see it, this is kind of a personal qualm I have with it, is that it actually undermines sola scriptura.

01:56:04

Because when you take, for example, the prophecies in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, where you have the

01:56:11

Olivet Discourse, which I believe is referencing the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem.

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But when you take all of the prophecies of the Bible and shoehorn them into an event that is itself not recorded in Scripture, you now have an extra -biblical historical event that becomes the lens through which you interpret

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Scripture. And I don't think that doesn't follow the principle of interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture.

01:56:38

And you're using an outside principle, outside events, outside the scriptural redemptive history to interpret everything within the

01:56:47

Bible. I think that's problematic from a theological perspective, from the perspective of sola scriptura, and hermeneutically.

01:56:55

I think that's just a bad way to do a biblical interpretation. We have Grady, one of our most loyal listeners, and also one of our most loyal financial benefactors.

01:57:06

Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. Hi, brothers Chris and Eli. In my Christian walk,

01:57:12

I have gone from dispensationalist to covenant theology, from pre -Trib to pre -Wrath to Ah -Mill.

01:57:20

Don't you think as we grow in our sanctification that our eyes are opened to new truths?

01:57:28

And if you want to answer that? Yeah, it depends what you mean by new truth.

01:57:33

We want to be very careful that we're not talking about... Here's the thing. Here's a very, very important distinction.

01:57:40

If your eschatology involves Abraham Lincoln being the Antichrist, then there's something wrong.

01:57:46

Right. I think there's a very important distinction to be made between the concept of revelation and illumination.

01:57:53

I do not believe that God is giving new revelation and so that you are gaining new insight through divine inspiration, a brand new understanding of a text that has never been held before.

01:58:06

I think we need to be very careful with things like that. Rather, I believe that God, through the power of the

01:58:11

Holy Spirit, can illuminate our understanding for that which has already been revealed. And so through our spiritual journey,

01:58:18

I think that God can illuminate certain scriptures to us and give us understandings that perhaps we didn't have before, but I'd be very cautious in calling it brand new.

01:58:29

It might be new only in the sense that we didn't hold to it before. Perhaps we didn't know about it. But I wouldn't say it's brand new in the sense that it's revelatory and this has not been taught at all.

01:58:39

Right. It might be new to you. Right. Right. And, of course, we are always to be berean about all these things.

01:58:47

That's right. And, again, I'm not famous to hamper studying the

01:58:53

Scripture and possibly coming to different conclusions on something. I just think that as we seek answers to our questions, whether it be areas of soteriology, creation, or eschatology, we do not want to disconnect our interpretations from the broader body of believers and literature and considerations that have been explained throughout

01:59:16

Church history. So we want to make sure we're not adopting some weird view that is peculiar to ourselves only.

01:59:23

You see what I'm saying? Yes. We don't want to come up with novel interpretations and things like that. Right.

01:59:29

But I do encourage the growth in terms of we're digging in the Scriptures and, yeah, we can have our eyes open to things that perhaps we didn't understand in the

01:59:37

Scriptures before. And we are out of time. And don't forget you can find out more about the

01:59:42

Historical Bible Society at historicalbiblesociety .org, historicalbiblesociety .org.

01:59:48

You can find out more about Revealed Apologetics on Facebook. Just look up Revealed Apologetics.

01:59:56

And don't forget about reformedrookie .net, reformedrookie, R -O -O -K -I -E .net for more information about the

02:00:03

Gary DeMar Conference on Long Island, New York on Friday and Saturday, March 20th and 21st, and also a

02:00:10

Gary DeMar speaking engagement on Sunday the 22nd. I will be there, God willing, and I hope to see you there as well, reformedrookie .net.

02:00:17

Thank you so much, Eli, for being on the program today. I want to thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater