Eschatology Matters? | w/ Dr. Joshua Howard

The Apologetic Ministry’s Aim to Contend for Truth

Hello and welcome to The Apologetic Dog. This is an apologetics ministry where it's our heart's desire to contend for truth, the faith, the deposit that's been entrusted to the saints. And we wanna be obedient to scripture that tells us to make war against any knowledge that rivals the truth of God's word.

I want people to be more familiar with what Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 6, verse 20. He said, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you. He's talking about the gospel of grace. We hold onto this because this is so precious.

This is what has given us salvation. Then he also says, avoid irreverent babble. Think about pagan philosophy that tries to rival the Christian worldview. And then he also says, and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

And so our heart's desire is to stand on truth, to stand on God's word. Jesus said, Father, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. And so that's our aim here at The Apologetic Dog. And so I wanna tell you a quick announcement.

Here at the end of January, January 31st, there's gonna be an episode coming out on Cultish where I had the pleasure of coming on along with my friend Trey Fisher. And we talked about the Church of Christ.

We examined what we believe is a cult that can go all the way back to Alexander Campbell with the Restoration Movement. And so be on the lookout for that episode that will be released in just a couple weeks.

And so I also wanna ask you to like and subscribe to this ministry. This, when you do that, this allows our content to be able to be circulated and for more people to view our episodes. And so with that being said, this is a special episode.

We're actually going to have a guest that is new to The Apologetic Dog. It is Dr. Joshua Howard. And so you told me not to call you doctor. So I know you're super cool and super humble, so I won't say that.

But Josh, if you would, tell us a little bit about who you are and where people can find your ministry.

Joshua Howard’s Ministry and Background

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And thanks for having me on. This is a lot of fun. And I'm psyched to hear that you guys are going through eschatology and trying to cover it biblically in your context, because honestly, that's what I wanna see more of, and I'm encouraged by that.

No, I'm a local pastor. So I pastor in Battle Creek, Michigan. We've been here for about two years. So I come from the South. I come from all over, but most recently the South. And so local church pastor, and I enjoy and love the ministry here.

I've always had kind of an academic bent. So I did a little bit of, as you mentioned, a little theological education. I was privileged to study under some men that really helped me grow in my faith. And so yeah, that's essentially teaching and preaching God's word is kind of my joy in life.

And I do a little bit of writing on the side. And yeah, that's about the gist. You mentioned about where to find me. Obviously, I think you connected with us through Eschatology Matters, which I refuse to claim that as my YouTube channel.

That's Brandon Wood's doing. He's the guy that has that whole thing pulled together, but I'm thankful to be a part of it. I'm on Twitter and Facebook, but I'm not good at social media.

So I'm not either.

I'm on the old man camp of all that. I'm on there, but I'm not sure what I'm doing. So I'm the kid in the deep end of the pool on that.

But yeah.

The Orthodox Boundaries of Eschatology

Well, thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, through some mutual friends, we connected. And at 12 .5, I'm teaching on eschatology. And something, Josh, that I'm really trying to emphasize is eschatology is very broad.

You have many good views that are orthodox. You have pre-millennialism, you have all-millennialism, and you have post-millennialism. And there's features that all three orthodox views share with one another, the essentials of eschatology, namely that Jesus Christ is going to return bodily.

He's going to return and set up his eternal kingdom. He's going to restore this sin-cursed world. He's going to give us resurrected bodies for eternity. He's going to judge the living and the dead. And those that are in opposition to Christ that don't have their sin forgiven, they will be resurrected, but unto perfect justice, right?

They will go to hell and they will have to answer before a holy God. And so these are the essentials that bind the orthodox views together. And I'm really trying to emphasize that, Josh, I just got done preaching last night on pre-millennialism, which here in the South, everybody just says, yes, give me that pre-trib rapture.

And I'm trying to explain how that is a view, but that's not the only view. And we shouldn't look down upon other opposing views that fit within orthodoxy. We should be able to sharpen one another. But I want to tell you something a little bit in our local context is we have a couple of churches that teach something that's called full preterism.

Now, I believe that's outside the bounds of orthodoxy. And so maybe other people have heard us call it hyper preterism. Are you familiar with that teaching at all?

Yes, yeah, a little bit.

So I was hoping, since eschatology does matter, a lot of people will say, oh, the book of Revelation, Daniel, the Olivet Discourse is so confusing, we shouldn't even worry about it. Well, I don't like people, them saying that, because when you study the book of Revelation, this book perhaps magnifies the majesty of Jesus Christ being a conquering king.

And it promises blessing for those that read and obey the things that are written in it. And so I don't want people to run away from eschatology. I want them to study it. But I want them to study it in a healthy way, to study the orthodox views and allow for some level of mystery.

I've also encouraged people by saying, Jesus said, no one knows the day or the hour. In Acts 1, he told the apostles the times and seasons, the things concerning this kingdom aren't for you to really know.

So we need to be okay with a level of mystery, but that shouldn't deter us from studying God's word. What do you think about that take on trying to exhort people to say, hey, eschatology does matter, and we should pursue these things?

The Already and Not Yet in Biblical Eschatology

Yeah, no, I 100 agree with everything you just said. So one of the shames with eschatology is that because it's so much and it's broad, that people do get scared by it. And typically when we think about eschatology, typically people are looking to, not even necessarily eschatological passages, people are looking to apocalyptic passages.

So you mentioned the book of Daniel, the Olivet Discourse, which would be Matthew 24, and you've got parallels in Mark 13 and Luke 21. And then you've got the book of Revelation. And typically when people look at those, and you might include like maybe First Thessalonians 4, something like that in there, people look at those and they say, ah, that's eschatology.

Well, no, technically speaking, that's the genre of apocalyptic literature, right? Like, so these are things that are kind of in the same realm, but that's not the whole of eschatology. When I think of eschatology, one of the things that I've really tried to advocate, and this isn't anything I came up with, one of the guys that I stole this from was Charles Scobie, but there's been a lot of guys that have written on this, is drawing out that whole Bible theme of eschatology.

So if you're thinking of eschatology being that kind of way that God is bringing all things back to himself, consummating this great redemptive plan that he has, that's an overarching story that kind of envelops all of scripture.

Now, sometimes if you're thinking about that and you're new to scripture, you can say, okay, I can kind of see how that works out in the big broad scope of things, right? Like, you know, Adam and Eve fall, Genesis chapter three, there's a curse pronounced on the serpent, but there's this hope of the one who will come and crush the head of the serpent.

So I can see that, and I can kind of try to tie that to the end, but then we get lost with all the stuff that happens in the middle, right? All the, you know, the Leviticus passages and the parts of Deuteronomy that we just don't understand and all those things.

We think, well, how does that all connect to that big eschatological story? I think that's where people get bogged down and lost a bit when they get to things like revelation. When we read scripture, if we recognize, and as conservative Bible reading Christians, I think we should recognize this, that there's one divine author behind scripture, right?

So although there's human authors that put pen to paper, God is the one who is actually speaking these words, then we should expect a unity in that big story. There may be different styles of writing, there may be different, you know, different chapters and verses and that type of thing, but overall, we're looking at one cohesive story.

That should change then the way we read scripture. My gripe, and it's not just a gripe, it's an unfortunate and a saddening trend for Christians that typically when we think of eschatology, they're gonna do kind of what you were talking about with those passages.

Now, I'm not saying you were doing this because I know you're on the same page with me here, but they'll say, oh, eschatology, I wanna learn about that. I'm gonna skip to Revelation chapter 20, verse one through, you know what I mean?

And isolate that from the rest of the story, and that should not surprise us then that those things don't make a whole lot of sense and that we come up with some things that are very incongruous with the rest of that story that's been building.

Yeah, no, thank you for saying that. A mutual friend that we have is Lawson Harlow, and he told me that you are a genius. And I said, I cannot wait to talk to Josh, Dr. Howard.

Lawson's too kind.

He's a dear brother.

Well, he is awesome. And shout out to Lawson and Mercy Hill out there,.

By the way. Absolutely.

So eschatology matters because it has to do a lot with our blessed hope, the things that we rest in, that Christ is going to restore all things, and we're gonna see him face to face. And yes, he has given us a clear word, a revelation to know him truly, but that's still, there's a type of veiling right now.

We don't, we see Jesus by faith, but one day that faith will be turned to sight. And so, Josh, I have to combat hyper-preterism in my neighborhood and guard the saints that God has entrusted to me. So I take these things very seriously.

So I was excited to be able to talk to you about some of these dangers, and maybe you can offer some wisdom and insight to people that are studying this and maybe are on the fence. And recently I was talking to somebody and they said, well, hyper-preterism, and they wouldn't say this, but full preterism seems really compelling because of the time indicators found in the text, right?

We see verses that say the time is near, things that Jesus says that I'm gonna come soon. Essentially, these things are soon going to take place. And on my channel, I've had Dr. Sam Frost on a number of times.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work, but he was a leading advocate for about 10 years in the hyper-preterist movement. He came out of it. And so we have discussed many, just many gaps, many gaping holes in full preterism.

And so he's been super helpful for me. And so I didn't know if you wanted to speak a little bit to the problems of full preterism. Obviously, they take all the essentials of eschatology. I'm looking to Christ's second return, coming future, coming bodily, and our resurrected bodies fit for eternity and a transformed heaven on earth, a new heavens, a new earth.

They take all that away and they shoehorn it and cram it back to 70 AD. And so what do you say to the person that's contemplating full preterism says, well, those timing indicators seem to point to a big event that's about to take place soon to this generation, which would have been the destruction of the temple.

Preterism, Hyper-Preterism, and the Four Eschatological Views

Yeah, no. So you mentioned preterism. And so for those who are not familiar with preterism, preterism, as with so many terms that we use, that term comes from the Latin praetor. So it's referring to things that have happened in the past or been fulfilled in the past.

So just in general, preterism is taking biblical passages and specifically either prophetic or eschatological passages, if we can use that term, and saying those things have been fulfilled in the past.

So when we look at preterism, typically when people think of eschatological views, they think of pre-millennialism, post-millennialism, amillennialism, those type of camps, which those are interpretations of the millennial period primarily, more so than they are just simply eschatological views.

But if you were to kind of look at the broad eschatological views, preterism is one of those four major eschatological views. So if I was to just quickly list them out, there's one view called the historicist view.

The historicist view was especially popular among the reformers, I believe, but it's looking at the entirety of the church age and then taking specifically the book of Revelation to be an interpretation of the entirety of that church age.

There's another view called idealism, where they're looking for a primarily idealized or spiritualized fulfillment of those things that we see, again, primarily in the book of Revelation. There's another view called futurism, where we're looking for future fulfillment of things that are occurring, again, primarily in Revelation.

And then there's the fourth one, which is preterism, which is looking for things in the book of Revelation to have been fulfilled then in the past. So preterism, if you were to just look at just preterism, not hyper preterism or any of those qualifiers, but just preterism, it would fall into one of those four views.

Now that's important for the Christian because typically when we approach scripture, we're approaching it with a certain eclectic view. And what I mean by that is we're not gonna just take just futurism, just historicism.

Most Christians, when they read scripture, including those who spend their lives studying eschatology and are pretty consistent with the way they approach it, they're gonna have little nuances of different ones of those views within their broad category of that view.

So I think most Christians would be surprised to realize that most Christians interpret scripture with partial preterist views. And what I mean by that is most Christians recognize that there have been certain prophetic fulfillments that have already occurred in the storyline of scripture.

Now, the reason I think that's really important, especially for Western Christians is a lot of us, if you grew up in evangelical circles, and I'm not picking on evangelicals, but if you grew up within those, like the backyard Bible study type of settings or maybe VBS settings, you might've grown up singing that song, every promise in the book is mine, right?

And you're singing, every promise in the book is mine, every, oh goodness, I'm forgetting the lyrics, every line, every verse, I'm messing the lyrics all up, but that's simply the gist of it, right? You can go Google it on your own time.

But a lot of us started to read the Bible that way. And then all of a sudden we realized like, that's a really, number one, it's just a wrong way of reading scripture. But number two, scripture wouldn't make a whole lot of sense if every promise in the book is mine.

There's a lot of promises made in scripture, which have already been fulfilled. In fact, scripture sometimes makes much of that and says, look how these things have been fulfilled. You think about the time of Christ's first coming, that's half the apostolic messages.

Look back to everything that has been fulfilled that was prophesied, that has come now in the person of Christ. So when we read scripture, a little bit of preterism, and by a little bit of preterism, I mean a little bit of prophetic fulfillment that has occurred in the past is what most Christians will encounter in their own Bible study.

But what you're talking about is something, a good bit removed from that. You're talking about all things having been fulfilled in the past. Right, all the eschatological hope. Typically

The Already-Not-Yet and the Future Consummation

Mainly those essential things, because like you said, I love how you said, there's an eclectic nature, and I try to encourage people that are like, really futurists, really dispensational pre-Millennials.

I'm like, take a deep breath. You believe that many things have happened in the past, so apply charity there. And to the partial preterist credit, they have those essential things that we long to look forward to that are still future.

And so I liked how you brought up the idealist and the historicist view, because those are principles that I think do flow from these big grids, these systematic understandings of how the blessed hope's gonna come about.

And we do see recapitulations of the church going through tribulation and trials, right? We do see this cosmic warring between God and the enemy. Enemy's gonna lose, right? So we know how those things are going to pan out, because you've heard the, at the end of the day, I'm a pan mill.

It's all gonna pan out the way that God wants it to. Oh, you're like, no, don't say that.

We'll talk about that later.

Okay, fair.

No, when you're looking at those fulfillments, though, and I'm glad you brought it up that way of looking of, so when we look at scripture, there are certain ways that things are fulfilled now and not yet.

That's typically the way we refer to that in eschatology is the already not yet paradigm or the already, right? So you can see certain things in scripture which are fulfilled now, and yet they seem to be indicating a future full fulfillment.

I don't know of a great illustration for this that's coming to mind, but the technical term for a lot of those fulfillments would be a proleptic fulfillment. It's something that is now happening. We are given something now, and yet we're looking forward to its eventual fulfillment.

What you're pushing back with, if I'm hearing you correctly on like full preterism is a denial of the not yet part of that. So if you were to look at something like eternal life with Christ, Christ says quite clearly in the gospel of John, you have eternal life now.

You as a Christian possess eternal life right now, and yet you get the undeniable expectation that there is going to be eternal life granted to you in a way that it is not yet fulfilled. And that doesn't mean you don't currently possess it, but it does mean we wanna push back really hard on the fact that there is a fulfillment, a consummation coming when Christ returns, and those things are escalated and fulfilled in a way that is glorious.

When you think of anything that we're given now, we're told that we have passed out of judgment from death to life. We're told that we have new life in Christ, that we're nothing short of a new creation.

We're told that we are nothing short of having been resurrected from a dead soul to a living creature in Christ. And yet all of those things I just mentioned are but foreshadowings of what's gonna be fulfilled when Christ comes.

So that's what we mean when we talk about the already not yet. You're given something now, and yet that now is going to be fulfilled in Christ. What full preterism would deny then and kind of subvert is that expectation of the not yet.

It would essentially deny the not yet and say, no, we live in the now. And that's obviously, that's super dangerous in ways we can talk through, but.

Eschatology as a Historic Christian Faith

Yeah, no, I appreciate you laying that out, because like I said, I've been interviewing Dr. Frost a whole lot, and what I've been encouraging my people is, okay, so how do we approach eschatology? And one of the entry points is I say, well, Christianity is a historic faith.

And so as we begin to study some of these prophetic passages, Daniel, all of it, discourse, and the book of Revelation, many other things, we do this by saying, okay, what are the essentials, right? And then I think a good point, it's not like the end all be all, but how has the church historically understood these points to our blessed hope?

Well, it's a unified front. And I just, it encourages me to know that Christ is building his church. He has gifted the Holy Spirit to guide the apostles and those that come after them with the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.

And so we can, I think, I think it's actually unthinkable, Josh, for the church to have gotten our blessed hope wrong for 2 ,000 years. And like I said, that's not an end all be all defeater, but to me, it's just unthinkable.

And so for many people, they wouldn't even entertain the idea, oh man, all of our wonderful creeds and confessions that look forward to this future blessed hope, we can rest in that. And I know, I think we should be able to provide exegetical arguments to then back up what we have confidence in being true.

And so I've been encouraging the people here at 12 .5 is that's the entry point, right? And so then you have the orthodox perspectives that we've been talking about and some of those methodologies like preterism, futurism, idealism, and historicist view, those different takes on the book of Revelation.

We can talk about those things, but we actually have a dividing line. We know where it all stops and we know it goes too far. And it is full preterism, those things that take away those essentials. And this is how I do it.

Tell me what you think here. So full preterism, when you start denying those essentials, you actually have to paint an entire worldview, one that has to take into account Isaiah 65, Daniel 12. And you have to start painting a picture of, okay, well, if the second coming already happened, well, this also means the resurrection of the dead essentially has happened.

And then you have to account for this world as we know it, the new heavens and new earth. You have things like people procreating into infinity. Everything that you see, all the gross evil, everything that you see continues on and there's no end in sight.

One of their kind of mantras is anytime you read the end or the last day in the New Testament, it's referring to 70 AD. Well, if you're gonna say that, you're saying that within a particular worldview.

And so there are catastrophic consequences for affirming this, because it actually is going to contradict necessary attributes of God. So when you have people procreating on into infinity, that really takes away God's sovereignty and omniscience.

Because he never knows truly those who are his. You can't say God knows all of his elect because you could always add one more. Well, now God is omniscient. You could always add one more. And so that really destroys God's omniscience.

He doesn't truly know anything that goes on into infinity. What we say is God is omniscient and he knows the end from the beginning in his created world, right? And God is transcendent, he's eternal. So we're understanding infinity is kind of a self-defeating, right?

It's an incoherent concept altogether. A lot of the ancient Greeks were aware of infinity just not being able to work out. But God exists eternally outside of the paradigm of time. And so what I'm getting at, Josh, is full preterism begins to paint an incoherent, illogical worldview and destroys passages that say all of one day will come under judgment.

Well, in full preterism, you don't get the benefit of understanding the word all because all is non-existent when you have things going on into infinity. The scriptures clearly tell us that every knee will bow to Jesus Christ as Lord.

Well, in full preterism, not every knee because it keeps going on into infinity. And so I tell people, especially here in my apologetics ministry, it's like, look, we avoid those systems that profess to have knowledge but contain internal contradictions because that can't possibly be knowledge.

That can't possibly be telling us things about truth. And so that's a good way, and I wanna know your thoughts, that's how I've encouraged people to approach eschatology. Approach it with an open mind, a humble heart, willing to study these orthodox perspectives, but we've been given the proper markers of what's essential and where full preterism just totally jumps off the abyss into the abyss and can't logically work.

What do you think?

Full Preterism, Historical Christianity, and the Olivet Discourse

No, I think, Mayne, you said a lot there that I have thoughts on. No, it's so interesting that you're dealing with this specific problem because just quite honestly, that's a problem that I have not tackled is dealing with full preterism to the extent that you're describing.

So typically when I've had discussions with people who may tend toward hyper-preterism or consistent preterism or full preterism or however you wanna describe that, they'll still preserve essentially the last three chapters of the revelation to John, right?

And say, okay, so we've got the resurrection, the final judgment, the new heavens, new earth, like those things are still future, but literally everything else is already fulfilled. That's at least within the realm of orthodoxy, right?

Like that's not something that you're talking about. And it is a deeply pastoral concern. And again, I'm hearing this from you because eschatology is supposed to be, it's the message of hope for God's people.

We may quibble over whether something's already been fulfilled or not, but it's supposed to be the overriding message of hope for God's people. And ultimately that message of hope that is within orthodox Christianity to direct our eyes to the coming Lord who will write all things and gather his children home.

So if you rob your people of that, you have massive pastoral concerns, but you also just have definitional orthodox concerns. You mentioned kind of departing from the historical faith and as far as it not being within historical Christianity, I think we could say easily that it is a departure from the dominant position of every major faith stream within Christendom for 2000 years to go toward a full preterist approach, right?

Like the predominant preponderance of the church when we study scripture, we're expecting a second return of Christ, which is consummative. And I think that's because scripture is so clear there. Now that doesn't, just because something historic, that doesn't necessarily make it right, but it's certainly up for us to consider that.

If we have something, one thing I've always tried to admonish our people is if you have something which is a kind of a historical aberration, something that's just popped up within the last 100 years, that should make you question it.

It doesn't mean it's wrong, but it definitely means you should question it because if it is brand new to Christianity, it's probably brand new to scripture and that means it's something we shouldn't believe in.

So that's one thing I would point out, but I would also add though, you're mentioning kind of this blossoming of that belief within your area. And I don't know why that is and I'm sure you've got a much better beat on that than I do.

And it would probably come down to each individual person why that might catch on. But I could say this, that I think a lot of Christians could feel the tension when we come to passages, for example, in Matthew 24 or other passages, Matthew 24 is a good example, right?

So let's just look at all of it, of course. When you look at passages like that and the timing indicators seem to so stress, this will happen within this generation. And then, and I'm saying at least for part of its fulfillment, right?

Again, we could walk through the all of that discourse, but at least for some of it, it seems like it's pointing to now and you would hear preachers or teachers or Bible commentators, and they would walk in such wide circles around that text and try to explain away what this generation meant that I think for a lot of Christians, they just recognized they're not dealing with this text.

This text seems to have a near indicator as far as the timing goes, what do I do with that? And then for whatever reason, they may come across a preterist author or they may watch a video that has them convinced.

But I think for a lot of Christians, it was grappling with those timing indicators and also with the fall of 70 AD. I think for many evangelical Christians, and again, I think this is one that most eschatological views could agree with.

Most evangelical Christians have no concept of the magnitude of the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in 70 AD and what that meant to the biblical writers. I think that most of us just grew up thinking like, even if we knew of it at all, we didn't think it was that big a deal.

And we assumed, well, most of these things must apply to me or to my generation and just kind of skipped over that. So all that to say, I think there is a good and proper pushback hermeneutically reading our Bibles that we want to give the stress where the stress is given.

And we also wanna give historical stress to something like the temple destruction in 70 AD, but that does not necessarily equate to what you're describing with, obviously, full preterism and those type of moves.

Do you mind if we look a little bit at the Olivet Discourse and you might can kind of show some of the things that maybe are skipped over? And I'm with you. Like, I've been guilty of reading the Olivet Discourse and just assuming, oh man, these are things, all of this is talking about something future.

And there are arguments. I personally really love and appreciate Dr. John MacArthur. And so I kind of grew up with this dispensational pre-millennial understanding. And I'm the first to say orthodox, right?

I love the red flag thing that you said earlier, like when we see a whole methodology like dispensationalism, it's kind of new and fresh on the scene. And I've listened to MacArthur actually say, well, Paul used the word dispensation twice in the book of Ephesians.

I'm like, good point. There's a reason why the early church, that second century, were typically futurists, right? This pre-millennial understanding. And it's like, that doesn't mean it's right. But that just kind of keeps people in check like, hey, we need to continue to have these conversations.

And I think before we even start on the air, you mentioned Gary DeMar. And he was one of the first people that I read, I think his Last Days Madness or something like that, really challenged my understanding when Jesus talks about this generation.

And then he started talking about Daniel 7 with the Son of Man, right? And the implications of when that is being fulfilled in the New Testament and links it to the Great Commission where Jesus said all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.

And so I'm with you. I've been guilty of just kind of glossing through all of the Olivet Discourse and just thinking, oh, this is something that is in the future and there's no stress on some of the perhaps immediate events that could take place.

So are you okay if we spend a little bit of time on the Olivet Discourse?

Yeah, sure. I mean, it's one of the most difficult passages in all of scripture, but yeah, okay.

Josh, that's why we have you on, to settle the debate for the last 2 ,000 years.

Once and for all. Once and for all.

If you don't care, let me read just kind of the opening dialogue that Jesus is having here in the Olivet Discourse. Sorry, Ma, I'm trying to have the scriptures ready for people to see, but if not, they can just kind of follow along.

Okay, I think I got it. So we'll see here. It says, let's start, we'll just start from the very beginning in verse one. Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to the point to point out to him that the buildings of the temple.

But he answered them, you see all these, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. And he said on the Mount of Olives, and the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when will these things be?

And what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age? So this is real interesting because, you know, being kind of a dispensational premillennial, I always thought, okay, he's talking about something that's future.

We'll look at the passage that he's talking about this generation in verse 24. And I remember the argument was, maybe this is a future generation that's of the stock of Israel, right? And so that's what's being talked about.

And so I read a little bit of Gary DeMar. I read Ken Gentry's book on Have We Missed the Second Coming? And this is something that I ran by Dr. Frost just to get his thoughts is perhaps there's really two questions being addressed here.

And I know not all commentators and everybody sees it this way, but I was really impressed with kind of this take. Maybe it's not an all or nothing approach here in the Olivet Discourse, but he's addressing two questions.

And so that would be, he just talked about the destruction of the temple, right? Not one stone will be thrown down, left unturned upon one another. And then in verse three, so he sat down on the Mount of Olives and his disciple says, tell us, when will these things be?

The destruction of the temple. And then you got and, and what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age? And so Ken Gentry makes an argument of saying, okay, Christ was asked two questions.

And so he answers two different questions. And to kind of conclude the thought, the verse 34, let me pull that up real fast. Verse 34 says, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass until all of these things take place.

And so all of these things starts talking about, you know, the moon, a lot of tribulation, hardship, war, rumors of war. And so the theory goes, or at least asking the question, what did Matthew mean when he wrote this recording Jesus' message?

Something that Damar pointed out to me a long time ago is this generation, if it is talking about this people that Jesus is talking to, what are some context clues that we could look to for them? And he would simply point out to chapter 23, the chapter right before in verse 36, Jesus is giving this scathing rebuke to the Pharisees, right, probably the worst kind of rebuke we see in scripture.