Eschatology Matters? | w/ Dr. Joshua Howard

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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.

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And we want to be obedient to scripture that tells us to make war against any knowledge that rivals the truth of God's Word.

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I want people to be more familiar with what Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 verse 20.

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He said, Oh Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you. He's talking about the gospel of grace.

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We hold on to this because this is so precious. This is what has given us salvation. Then he also says, avoid irreverent babble.

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Think about pagan philosophy that tries to rival the Christian worldview. And then he also says, and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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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.

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Your word is truth. And so that's our aim here at The Apologetic Dog.

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And so I want to tell you a quick announcement. Here at the end of January, January 31st, there's going to be an episode coming out on Cultish where I had the pleasure of coming on along with my friend

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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

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Restoration Movement. And so be on the lookout for that episode that will be released in just a couple weeks.

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And so I also want to ask you to like and subscribe to this ministry. When you do that, this allows our content to be able to be circulated for more people to view our episodes.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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I want to see more of. And I'm encouraged by that. No, I'm a local pastor. So I pastor in Battle Creek, Michigan.

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We've been here for about two years. So I come from the South. I come from all over, but most recently the

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South. And so local church pastor. And I enjoy and love the ministry here. I've always had kind of an academic bent.

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So I did a little bit of, you know, as you mentioned, a little theological education. I was I was privileged to study under some men that really helped me grow in my faith.

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And so, yeah, that's that's that's essentially teaching and preaching. God's word is kind of my is my joy in life.

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And I do a little bit of writing on the side. And yeah, that's that's that's about the gist.

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You mentioned about where to find me. Obviously, you know, I think you connected with us through Eschatology Matters, which

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I refuse to claim that as my YouTube channel. That's Brandon Wood's doing. He's he's the guy that has that whole thing pulled together.

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But I'm thankful to be a part of it. I'm on Twitter and Facebook, but I'm not good at social media.

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So I'm not either. The old man camp of all that I'm on there, but I'm not sure what I'm doing.

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So I'm the kiddie. I'm the kid in the deep end of the pool on that. But yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

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Like I said, through some mutual friends, we connected. And at twelve five, I'm teaching on eschatology and something,

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Josh, that I'm really trying to emphasize is eschatology is very broad. You have many good views that are orthodox.

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You have premillennialism. You have all millennialism and you have postmillennialism. And there's features that all three orthodox views share with one another.

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The essentials of eschatology, namely that Jesus Christ is going to return bodily.

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He's going to return and set up his eternal kingdom. He's going to restore this sin cursed world.

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And 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.

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But unto perfect justice. Right. They will go to hell and they will have to answer before a holy

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God. And so these are the essentials that bind the orthodox views together. And I'm really trying to emphasize that,

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Josh, as I'm teaching. I just got done preaching last night on premillennialism, which here in the

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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.

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And we shouldn't look down upon other opposing views that fit within orthodoxy. We should be able to sharpen one another.

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But I want to tell you something a little bit in our local context is we have a couple of churches that teach something called that's called full preterism.

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Now, I believe that's outside the bounds of orthodoxy. And so maybe other people have heard us call it hyper preterism.

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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

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Book of Revelation, Daniel, the Olivet Discourse is so confusing. We shouldn't even worry about it. Well, I don't I don't like people that's them saying that because when you study the

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Book of Revelation, this book perhaps magnifies the majesty of Jesus Christ being a conquering king.

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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.

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I want them to study it. I want them to study it in a healthy way to study the orthodox views and allow for some level of mystery.

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

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So we need to be OK 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?

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Yeah, no, I 100 percent 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.

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And typically when we think about eschatology, typically people are looking to not even necessarily eschatological passages.

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People are looking to apocalyptic passages. So, you know, you mentioned the Book of Daniel, the

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Olivet Discourse, which would be Matthew 24. And you've got parallels in Mark 13 and Luke 21.

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And then you've got the Book of Revelation. And typically when people look at those, and you might include like maybe

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First Thessalonians 4 or something like that in there, people look at those and they say, oh, that's eschatology. Well, no, technically speaking, that's the genre of apocalyptic literature, right?

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Like these are things that are kind of in the same realm, but that's not the whole of eschatology.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Now, sometimes if you're thinking about that and you're new to scripture, you can say, OK, I can kind of see how that works out in the big, broad scope of things, right?

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Like 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.

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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?

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All the Leviticus passages and the parts of Deuteronomy that we just don't understand and all those things.

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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.

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When we read scripture, if we recognize and as conservative

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Bible reading Christians, I think we should recognize this, that there's one divine author behind scripture, right?

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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.

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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.

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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 going to do kind of what you were talking about with those passages.

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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,

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I want to learn about that. I'm going to skip to Revelation chapter 20, verse one through, you know what I mean? And isolate that from the rest of the story.

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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.

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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.

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And I said, I cannot wait to talk to Josh, Dr. Howard. Lawson's too kind. He's a dear brother.

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Well, he's awesome. And shout out to Lawson and Mercy Hill out there, by the way. 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.

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And we're going to see him face to face. And yes, he has given us a clear word, a revelation to know him truly.

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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.

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And so, Josh, I have to combat hyperpreterism in my neighborhood and guard the saints that God has entrusted to me.

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So I take these things very seriously. So I was excited to be able to talk to you about some of these dangers.

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And maybe you can offer some wisdom and insight to people that are studying this and maybe are on the fence.

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And recently I was talking to somebody and they said, well, hyperpreterism, and they wouldn't say this, but full preterism seems really compelling because of the time.

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Indicators found in the text, right? We see verses that say the time is near, things that Jesus says that I'm going to come soon.

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Essentially, these things are soon going to take place. And on my channel, I've had

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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 hyperpreterist movement.

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He came out of it. And so we have discussed many gaps, many gaping holes in full preterism.

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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.

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Obviously, they take all the essentials of eschatology, 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.

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They take all that away and they shoehorn it and cram it back to 70 A .D.

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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.

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Yeah, no. So you mentioned, you know, you mentioned preterism. And so, you know, for those who are not familiar with preterism, preterism, as with so many terms that we use, that that term comes from the

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Latin praetor. So it's referring to things that have happened in the past or been fulfilled in the past. So 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.

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So when we look at preterism, you know, typically when people think of eschatological views, they think of premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, those those type of camps, which, you know, those are those are interpretations of the millennial period, primarily more so than they are just simply eschatological views.

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But if you were to kind of look at the broad eschatological views, preterism is one of those four major eschatological views.

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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,

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I believe. But it's 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.

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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.

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There's another view called futurism, where we're looking for future fulfillment of things that are occurring again, primarily in Revelation.

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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.

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So preterism, if you were to just look at just preterism, not not hyper preterism or any of those those qualifiers, but just preterism, it would fall into one of those four views.

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Now, that's important for the Christian, because typically when we approach scripture, we're approaching it with a certain eclectic view.

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And what I mean by that is we're not going to just take just futurism, just historicism. Most Christians, when they read scripture, including those who who spend their lives studying eschatology and are pretty consistent with the way they approach it, they're going to have little nuances of different ones of those views within their broad category of that view.

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So I think most Christians would be surprised to realize that most

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Christians interpret scripture with partial preterist views. And what I mean by that is most

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Christians recognize that there have been certain prophetic fulfillments that have already occurred in the storyline of scripture.

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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, you know, like the backyard

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Bible study type settings or maybe VBS settings, you might have grown up singing that song,

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Every Promise in the Book is Mine, right? And you're singing, every promise in the book is mine, every, oh, goodness,

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I'm forgetting the lyrics, every line, every verse, I'm messing the lyrics all up, but that's essentially the gist of it, right?

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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.

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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.

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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 message is look back to everything that has been fulfilled, that was prophesied, that has come now in the person of Christ.

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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

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Christians will encounter in their own Bible study. But what you're talking about is something a good bit removed from that.

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You're talking about all things having been fulfilled in the past, right?

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All the eschatological hope. Typically, mainly those essential things, because like you said,

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I love how you said there's an eclectic nature, and I try to encourage people that are like really futurist, really dispensational pre -Millennius.

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I'm like, take a deep breath. You believe that many things have happened in the past, so apply charity there.

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And to the partial preterist credit, they have those essential things that we long to look forward to that are still future.

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And so I like 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 is going to come about.

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We do see recapitulations of the church going through tribulation and trials, right?

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We do see this cosmic warring between God and the enemy. Enemy is going to lose, right?

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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 going to pan out the way that God wants it to.

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Oh, you're like, no, don't say that. We'll talk about that later. Okay, fair.

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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.

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You know, that's typically the way we refer to that in eschatology is the already not yet paradigm or the already, right?

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So you can see certain things in scripture which are fulfilled now, and yet they seem to be indicating a future full fulfillment.

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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.

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It's something that is now happening. We are given something now, and yet we're looking forward to its eventual fulfillment.

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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.

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So if you were to look at something like eternal life with Christ, Christ says quite clearly in the

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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.

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And that doesn't mean you don't currently possess it, but it does mean we want to push back really hard on the fact that there is a fulfillment, a consummation coming when

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Christ returns, and those things are escalated and fulfilled in a way that is glorious.

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When you think of anything that we're given now, we're told that we have passed out of judgment from death to life.

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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.

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And yet all those things I just mentioned are but foreshadowings of what's going to be fulfilled when Christ comes.

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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.

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What full preterism would deny then and kind of subvert is that expectation of the not yet.

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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.

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But yeah, I appreciate you laying that out, because like I said, I've been interviewing Dr. Frost a whole lot.

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And what I've been encouraging my people is, OK, so how do we approach eschatology? And one of the entry points is

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I say, well, Christianity is a historic faith. And so as we begin to study some of these prophetic passages,

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Daniel, all of it, this course and the book of Revelation, many other things, we do this by saying,

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OK, what are what are the essentials? Right. And then I think a good point, it's not like the end all be all.

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But but how is the church historically understood these, you know, these points to our blessed hope?

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Well, it's a unified front. And I just it it encourages me to know that Christ is building his church.

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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.

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And so we can I think I think it's actually unthinkable, Josh, for the church to have gotten our blessed hope wrong for 2000 years.

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And like I said, that's not an end all be all defeater. But to me, it's just unthinkable.

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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.

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We can rest in that. Now, I think we should be able to provide exegetical arguments to then back up what we have confidence in being true.

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And so I'm encouraging the people here at twelve five is that's the entry point. Right. And so then you have the

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Orthodox perspectives that we've been talking about and some of those methodologies like preterism, futurism, idealism and historicist view that those different takes on the

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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.

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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.

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So full preterism, when you start denying those essentials, you actually have to paint an entire worldview, one that has to take into account

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Isaiah 65, Daniel 12. And you have to start painting a picture of, OK, well, the second coming already happened.

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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.

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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.

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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

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A .D. Well, if you're going to say that, you're saying that within a particular worldview.

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And so there are catastrophic consequences for affirming this because it actually is going to contradict necessary attributes of God.

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So when you have people procreating on into infinity, that really takes away God's sovereignty and omniscience.

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Right. 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.

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Well, now God is omniscient. You could always add one more. And so that really destroys

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God's omniscience. He doesn't truly know anything that goes on into infinity. What we what we say is

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God is omniscient and he knows the end from the beginning in his created world. Right. And God is transcendent.

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He's eternal. So we're understanding infinity is kind of a self -defeating.

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Right. It's an incoherent concept altogether. A lot of the ancient Greeks were aware of infinity just not being able to work out.

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But God exists eternally outside of the paradigm of time.

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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.

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Well, you don't 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.

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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.

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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.

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And so that's a good way. And I want to 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.

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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.

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What do you think? 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.

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So typically when I've had discussions with people who may tend toward hyperpreterism or consistent preterism or full preterism or however you want to describe that, they'll still preserve essentially the last three chapters of the

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Revelation to John and say, OK, 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.

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That's at least, you know, within the realm of orthodoxy, right? Like that's not something that you're talking about.

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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.

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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.

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And ultimately that message of hope that is within orthodox Christianity to direct our eyes to the coming

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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.

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You mentioned, you know, kind of departing from the historical faith and as far as it not being within historical

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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?

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Like the predominant preponderance of the church when we study scripture, we're expecting a second return of Christ, which is consummative.

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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.

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If we have something, you know, 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 hundred years, that should make you question it.

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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.

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So that's one thing I would point out. But I would also add, though, you know, you're mentioning kind of this blossoming of that belief within your area, and I don't know why that is.

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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.

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But I could say this, that I think a lot of Christians, they could feel the tension when we come to passages, for example, in Matthew 24 or other passages.

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Matthew 24 is a good example, right? So let's just look at the Olivet Discourse. When you look at passages like that and the timing indicators seem to so stress this will happen within this generation.

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And then, and I'm saying at least for part of its fulfillment, right, again, we could walk through the

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Olivet 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.

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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.

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What do I do with that? And then for whatever reason, they may come across a preterist author or they may, you know, watch a video that has them convinced.

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But I think for a lot of Christians, it was grappling with those timing indicators and also with the fall of 70

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AD. I think for many evangelical Christians, and again,

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I think this is one that most eschatological views could agree with. Most evangelical

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Christians have no concept of the magnitude of the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in 70

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AD and what that meant to the biblical writers. I think that most of us just grew up thinking like if even if we knew of it at all, we didn't think it was that big a deal.

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We assumed, well, most of these things must apply to me or to my generation and just kind of skipped over that.

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So all that to say, I think there is a good and proper pushback hermeneutically reading our

28:07

Bibles that we want to give the stress where the stress is given. And we also want to give historical historical stress to something like the temple destruction in 70

28:16

AD. But that does not necessarily equate to what you're describing with, obviously, full preterism and those those type of moves.

28:23

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?

28:31

And I'm with you. 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.

28:41

And there are arguments. I personally really love and appreciate Dr. John MacArthur.

28:47

And so I kind of grew up with this dispensational pre -millennial understanding. And I'm the first to say orthodox, right?

28:55

I love the 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.

29:03

And I've listened to MacArthur actually say, well, Paul used the word dispensation twice in the

29:08

Book of Ephesians. I'm like, good point. There's a reason why the early church that second century were typically futurists.

29:15

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.

29:22

Like, hey, we need to continue to have these conversations. And I think before we even start on the air, you mentioned

29:28

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

29:37

Jesus talks about this generation. And then he started talking about Daniel 7 with the

29:44

Son of Man, right? And the implications of when that is being fulfilled in the New Testament and links it to the

29:50

Great Commission, where Jesus said, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. And so I'm with you.

29:56

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.

30:05

And there's no stress on some of the perhaps immediate events that could take place.

30:11

So are you OK if we spend a little bit of time on the Olivet Discourse? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's, you know, one of the most difficult passages in all of Scripture.

30:19

But yeah, OK. Josh, that's why we have you on, to settle the debate for the last two thousand years.

30:24

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

30:34

Olivet Discourse. Sorry, Maia, I'm trying to have the scriptures ready for people to see, but if not, they can just kind of follow along.

30:41

OK, I think I got it. So we see here, it says, let's start this. We'll just start from the very beginning of verse one.

30:48

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.

30:55

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.

31:04

And he said on the Mount of Olives and the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when will these things be?

31:11

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,

31:24

I always thought, OK, he's talking about something that's future. We'll look at the passage that he's talking about this generation in verse twenty four.

31:33

And I remember the argument was maybe this this is a future generation that's of the stock of Israel.

31:40

Right. And and so that's what's being talked about. And so I read a little bit of Gary DeMar.

31:46

I read Ken Gentry's book on Have We Missed the Second Coming. And this is something that I ran by Dr.

31:52

Frost just to get his thoughts is perhaps there's really two questions being addressed here.

31:58

And I know not not all commentators, everybody sees it this way, but I was really impressed with kind of this take.

32:05

Maybe it's not an all or nothing approach here in the Olivet discourse, but he's addressing two questions.

32:11

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.

32:19

And then in verse three, so he sat down the Mount of Olives and his disciple says, tell us, when will these things be the destruction of the temple?

32:28

And then you got and and what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age?

32:34

And so Ken Gentry makes an argument of saying, OK, Christ was asked two questions.

32:39

And so he answers two different questions. And to kind of conclude the thought, the verse 34, let me pull that up real fast.

32:48

Verse 34 says, truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass until all of these things take place.

32:57

And so all of these things starts talking about, you know, the the the moon, a lot of tribulation, hardship, war, rumors of war.

33:07

And so the theory goes, or at least asking the question, what did Matthew mean when he wrote this recording

33:13

Jesus message? Something that Demar pointed out to me a long time ago is this generation.

33:19

If it is talking about this people that Jesus is talking to, what are some context clues that we could look to for them?

33:26

And he would simply point out to chapter 23, the chapter right before in verse 36, Jesus is giving the scathing rebuke to the

33:34

Pharisees. Right. Probably the worst kind of rebuke we see in Scripture. And then verse 36, he says, truly,

33:40

I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation, which all the

33:45

Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, those that are hearing him. And so the full

33:51

Preterist wants to say, oh, you see, it's talking about this generation and it's kind of this all or nothing approach.

33:57

And so they go into verse 36 that says, but concerning that day, right, the return of the coming of the

34:06

Son of Man, concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the sun, but the

34:12

Father only. As for the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

34:17

OK. And so this is where the full Preterist says, see, it's all package deal. This generation has to be those people that Jesus is talking to.

34:26

And I think for the sake of argument, we could say fair. But if Jesus is answering two questions, where's the transitional text?

34:32

And so Gentry points out this is the transitional phrase, but concerning that day, that day is being contrasted with this generation.

34:42

And so I love that because it makes sense to me because I think there is immediacy with the destruction of the temple and the catastrophic effects that that would have on Jews and Israel.

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But but we understand that the coming of the Son of Man, this involves our blessed hope, the surety that we have, that Jesus is going to return and restore all things and then resurrect the dead.

35:07

All of these things. But what do you think about that? Like I said, we may not have, you know, differing takes.

35:13

I kind of claim that that pan meal flag and I'm just I'm a student of eschatology.

35:19

I've really loosened my grip on the premillennial view. And I'm like, I'm I want to I want to be a student.

35:24

I want to study the all millennial perspective and the post millennial perspective. And so I just I was really

35:30

I was really intrigued. I liked how how Gentry was pointing out these things and all of that discourse.

35:36

What do you think? Yeah. No, my goodness, you just kind of gave my whole answer.

35:42

No, I agree with you on nearly nearly everything you just said. No, I think I think

35:47

I think it's spot on. Let me let me kind of fill in just a little bit of of what I would say.

35:53

But but in general, I would just say yes and amen to everything you just said. So you've got you've got

35:58

Jesus. And I say that with this. This does not mean I say that with humility.

36:03

Like we can all recognize this is a tough chapter. Like I joked at the beginning. But like, honestly, this is a very tough chapter.

36:09

So I'm not acting like this is just easy or simple. But you look at the at that chapter. First of all, you have

36:15

Jesus leaving the temple and his disciples kind of in their typical, you know, just kind of earthly minded fashion.

36:21

And they're looking up there and saying, hey, look how impressive this temple is. And and Jesus says to them, I tell you this, not a stone will remain unturned.

36:29

And then they come to him and ask for clarification. So you at least have to recognize the primary overriding referent there or we could say, you know, based on what you just said, that that starting or initial referent is the temple destruction.

36:42

Most Christians, again, just have no have no real grasp or no real appreciation for the temple destruction.

36:49

Although I think I think a lot of a lot of there's been a lot of kind of retrieval of that history. But when you look at the temple destruction, just if you read some of the accounts of what happened and we see it through the lens of God says he's bringing judgment on Jerusalem.

37:03

And yet the actual on the ground physical manifestation of that judgment, it was horrific. You have, you know, widespread groups like it's post -apocalyptic type, the type of stuff they'd make a

37:14

Mad Max movie about happening inside the city of Jerusalem. There's packs of roving bandits. There's rape.

37:19

There's there's murder. There's cannibalism, all those things. And then on the outside, you have the Romans who, according to Josephus, and we know

37:27

Josephus was, you know, we can say he was a bit prone to exaggeration. But still, he says they stopped crucifying people in front of their relatives, you know, on the on the slopes outside the city.

37:37

They only stopped because they ran out of trees to nail people to. So you read things like that, and it's horrific bloodshed.

37:44

And that's what Christ is referring to here. And we know it did take place within what would have been considered a generation.

37:51

So that would be kind of the kind of fill in on the front end. I agree. It seems to me, and I've studied this one as best as I know how, and with my grasp of Greek, this seems to be a two pronged question.

38:06

When will these things be? Question one. And what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age?

38:12

It's kind of blurred together into one sentence, but the Greek seems to separate those two into two distinct questions.

38:19

And then Christ then gives them this two pronged answer. Now, the two pronged answer is a little bit tough because the two pronged answer seems to flow together a bit.

38:27

So you've got this initial description that you run down and typically where people will have the issue, unless they're saying it's all been fulfilled or something like that.

38:36

Typically, people will have the issue of when does it then transition? When does Jesus then transition from answering about the temple destruction to these things of that day and that final time?

38:48

I agree. Verse 36 to me seems the most likely candidate in there. Somebody might push it back to verse 32.

38:55

I've seen some people campaign for verse 34, 35. They're all about in the same area.

39:00

And I don't think you really lose or gain a significant amount because most people would agree it's right in that section.

39:07

I think 36 is a good one for everything you just pointed out with. But concerning that day and that hour, which is a clear eschatological term in my mind, if you were to just do even a simple word search through scripture and you look for that day and hour, you're going to start to see a lot of passages that are indicating a final time of judgment.

39:27

Not just a here and now time of judgment, but something final. I think one of the things that makes it difficult for us when we read this is the fact that because they're blurred together, it seems hard for us to differentiate those things.

39:41

But I would say that when we read, especially with these passages that talk about this final fulfillment, with all that context in the background of the already not yet, wrongs being fulfilled now, and yet things being not yet consummated or completed, you get that same flavor here with the

39:58

Olivet Discourse. Was God's judgment being fulfilled there in that day and time of 70

40:06

AD upon Jerusalem and upon those? Yes, that was clearly a pouring out of God's judgment. But it was a pouring out of God's judgment that's pointing to the ultimate pouring out of God's judgment, the final, the consummating pouring out of God's judgment.

40:19

That's what I meant when I was talking about proleptic fulfillment or a foreshadowing of a greater future fulfillment.

40:26

And I think you get that in a lot of these passages, because, again, if you're reading a cohesive story, you should expect little flag markers showing you what's coming down the pike, so to speak.

40:38

Bad stories, if I can just speak literally, bad stories are the ones that throw you a curveball in the final chapter, and you're wondering, where did that come from?

40:47

None of this character development has appeared until now. I don't even know why he would make that decision. Scripture is not written like that.

40:53

We're not given the entirety of God's own perspective on things, but God in His providence and in His mercy and grace toward us,

41:03

He's giving us little flag markers that are supposed to direct us along the way. And I think this is one of those indications, an outpouring of judgment in 70

41:10

AD that is a foreshadowing then of a final consummative judgment that's yet to come.

41:17

Yeah, that's wonderful. I remember Gentry, when he was talking about the Greek for but concerning, you may have to check me on this, but I believe it was peri day.

41:27

Your Greek's way better than mine, but he pointed out that this is found earlier. What? No, I said

41:33

I'd have to look that one up in my Greek, but you can do it. He made the argument that this is used in different places in the book of Matthew, earlier in Matthew 22.

41:42

He's talking with the Sadducees about the resurrection, and he's making an argument, and then when he builds on that argument, this is the transitional phrase that he uses.

41:51

And as for the resurrection of the dead, he says, have you not read what was said to you by God?

41:58

And so he builds on his argument, rebuking the Sadducees there. And I believe that was the same phrase in the

42:05

Greek that he's using in verse 36. So I liked what you said. Maybe there's other places that kind of at least allude to that transition, to this kind of two -pronged question.

42:16

And so I want to actually go back to the first part of this again, because my last talk with Dr.

42:24

Sam Frost, we spent a little time talking about the end of the age. And you can tell me if this makes sense, or maybe if you've not talked with full preterists that make this argument.

42:35

But they say the end of the age is the end of the old covenantal age with Israel.

42:41

So you can see their push is, this is language, you know, consummating in 70

42:48

AD, right? This, that's the end of the age. And so my problem with that is multifaceted, but the writer

42:56

Matthew, he uses the end of the age many times. He might be the only one in the New Testament to say it like this, but he also brings this out in the

43:04

Great Commission, and lo, I am with you even to the end of the age. And I think only the ontological trinity can truly make sense of, well, how is

43:13

Christ going to be with us to the end of the age? Because even with the disciples, Jesus ascended before the, you know, before the destruction of the temple.

43:22

And so this would be by virtue of the Holy Spirit. And so this has massive implications for our

43:28

Christian life. And so I didn't know if you wanted to speak to the end of the age. Like I said, I had

43:33

Dr. Frost on, and he's amazing. I love hearing his thoughts, and he's hashtag all male. So I love hearing his perspective on these things too.

43:41

Absolutely. No, yeah. The age, that's, I'm glad you brought it up.

43:47

It's, that to me is one of those neglected little biblical categories within eschatology is this age and that age.

43:56

You know, when you read the Old Testament, you get a little bit of the age language. There's a little bit of references to this age and that age, typically not with those words translated in the

44:06

English, but you get those little markers. But it really becomes clear when you hit the pages of the New Testament. There's usually two references.

44:14

There's this age, there's that age or the age to come. Both are referred to.

44:19

Sometimes you get both in one sentence. You know, Christ, when he was talking about marriage and he's answering the questions of the

44:25

Pharisees, he talks about, you know, angels and in this age, this happens in that age or the age to come, this will happen.

44:31

So you get, sometimes they're put together. But like you just pointed out, in some of those high points of scripture, where we don't really focus on it, like the

44:38

Great Commission, you know, Matthew 28, you've got, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. And we just kind of read that and we think, oh, okay, well,

44:44

Jesus is going to be with us. No, no, no. He's referring to something specific. So the way

44:50

I have read scripture and the way a lot of Amillennial authors, especially would read scripture, since you mentioned

44:56

Amill, would be that there are two ages that are referred to. Postmill, I think they would find a lot of commonality in this as well.

45:04

They would point a lot heavier towards 70 AD but still, you're looking at this age and you're looking at the age to come.

45:11

This age being described in scripture, when you get those descriptors and it talks about this age. And again, a simple word search will reveal just such a wealth of insight into this.

45:21

You get things like this age is the age of sin. This age is the age of death. And in this age, there is suffering.

45:27

In this age, there is persecution. Those types of things. It's a temporal age too, maybe? Yes, absolutely.

45:33

It's an age that's passing, right? It's referred to as passing away. It's something that is, like you said, temporary and fading.

45:40

And yet it's not gone. Even with the work of Christ, this age seems to still be persisting to some degree.

45:47

But then you get the age to come. And the age to come is that age of expectation. That's the age of hope. And when you start reading about what happens in that age to come, you start hearing things like eternal life, fellowship with God.

45:58

All those blessings and promises are fulfilled in the age to come. But when you start applying that, you start recognizing, like we talked about earlier, some of those seem to have already begun.

46:08

Like we have fellowship with God. We experience eternal life already. Not as full and finally as it will be consummated when

46:14

Christ returns. And yet it's begun already. And it's almost like the ages have overlapped.

46:20

And again, I don't want to get too specific on when that would be. I take it to be, you know, Christ's first coming is when we see this overlap begin of this age still persisting.

46:29

And yet it's not done away with. And yet the blessings of the age to come have begun in Christ. If I was looking for model markers of when the blessings of the age to come began and when this age finally passes away,

46:42

I think you could do worse than looking at Christ's first and his second coming. That when Christ came, he inaugurated or brought the blessings of the age to come, blessings which will continue on into eternity in all of their fulfillment.

46:55

And yet he also began, I guess, the death knoll or like that funeral march of this age.

47:00

And it will finally and fully pass away when he returns. And to go back to your original point, though, you know, you were you were talking, maybe not original point, but, you know, we're talking at the front end of this about full preterism and the lack of expectation of consummation.

47:13

You miss all of that if you go that route. If there is no final consummating return of Christ, this age must then persist.

47:21

There is no consummation of the age to come. All you have is just a continuance. So that would that would rock so much depth.

47:27

And people get mad when I try to get philosophical on how that's an incoherent worldview.

47:33

I'm like, no, no, no, that you can't just say things like, oh, yeah, this world continues on as is forever without avoiding the necessary consequences of the worldview you just painted yourself into.

47:45

And we're saying if you're consistent with that, if you believe that all the gross evil and everything that we see continues on forever, well, that has necessary implications about who

47:55

God is, right? Because they would want to say like we would. Well, yeah, Jesus dealt with sin at the cross, the judicial penalty of sin.

48:05

But you and I hold to, you know, that we're being sanctified, being conformed more into the image of Christ in the power of sin.

48:13

We're being sanctified, Romans six, right? We war against these things. And so did Paul, right?

48:18

He wanted to be delivered from his body of death. You know who can do these things. And then when we're glorified one day in the future in our blessed hope, then we will be removed from the presence of sin, right?

48:32

So that's a lot of times how I look at justification has to do with the penalty of sin. Sanctification has to do with the power of sin.

48:39

And the glorification is talking about the presence of sin being no more. And so, but yeah,

48:45

I just try to encourage people to look into the incoherence of full preterism.

48:51

And even if it sounds philosophical, I'm like, hey, God made us in his image. He is the God of truth. No lies of the truth.

48:57

And so we're supposed to use logical categories to understand the scripture. And that's what

49:02

Jesus did. He predicated on certain principles and said, God's not the dead or the

49:07

God of the dead, but of the living, right? And extrapolated that principle off. He is present tense, the

49:12

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yeah, so I appreciate it. I was going to add,

49:19

Jeremiah, because I'm going to get up on a soapbox if I'm not careful. But no, like everything you're hitting on, though, like that's when

49:25

I talk about eschatology or when we talk about eschatology being that message of hope, that's it. And, you know, like, for example, you mentioned the ages and I just pulled up two verses.

49:34

When we think about what that encouragement looks like and what is robbed by a worldview, because we could call it that, right?

49:42

Like this is a worldview or perspective that is robbing us of that hope. First Corinthians 10, 11,

49:47

Paul says that these things have been written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.

49:53

So in other words, when Paul is giving us, and that's just, you know, one example. But when Paul is giving us then by the inspiration of the

49:59

Holy Spirit, that encouragement, he says you're to have this encouragement because the end of the ages has come upon you.

50:07

Because of those things, Paul then turns around and Titus 2 is a good example. Titus 2 in verse 12 says that it is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self -controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

50:22

It's the language of the New Testament to give the believer hope that you're in this age, you're called to live and thrive in a certain godly way in this age.

50:30

But you're also to remember you're living in a time on which the end of those ages has come. There's a forever age that is dawning and it is dawn in Christ.

50:38

What a beautiful picture and what a shame to rob Christians of that hope. And I am speculating, but I imagine when the full

50:47

Preterist looks at those things, this age, maybe they're thinking about this Jewish age that, you know,

50:53

Paul is writing a lot of these letters before 70 AD. So he's kind of talking about the Jewish age and then the age to come is kind of post after 70

51:03

AD. And I think that's how they interpret it. Because it's interesting. They claim to be like the biggest enemies or not enemies, but just mutually exclusive from dispensationalists.

51:16

And yet they make a lot of the same exegetical moves. They have this hard divide between Israel and the church.

51:24

And they'll call it replacement theology. And I'm noticing, well, dispensationalists do that and the full

51:30

Preterist does that. So that kind of changes their whole hermeneutic. And by the way, they usually start with eschatology.

51:36

The time indicators and conclude 70 AD. And they interpret everything else in the Bible in light of that.

51:42

And I'm saying it's totally backwards, right? You don't start with the end.

51:47

You let God's progressive revelation guide us into these things, right? Hmm.

51:53

Okay. No, that's interesting. Yeah. I know a lot of this probably sounds kind of new.

51:59

Like who believes this stuff? Well, it's popping up in my neck of the woods. And I've been forced to study more into these things.

52:08

I've been happy with just either, you know, being hashtag that pan meal. And I'm like, well, that's not going to pay the bills.

52:13

That's not going to actually help my people, you know, combat against heresy. Right. And tell you what you think about this,

52:20

Josh. I know Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 2. He talks about hominus and felidus that denied the resurrection.

52:27

And you got to thank full Preterism. They believe the resurrection and the second coming are one event. The way they interpret

52:33

Daniel 12 and Isaiah 65. And so the way that Paul rebukes hominus and felidus, he says, you've caused many people to swerve from the truth.

52:43

What you're teaching is like gangrene, this poison. And so I've tried to encourage people. If we are right that we have this blessed hope and Christ's second coming future and a resurrection of the dead to, you know, rule and reign with him for eternity.

52:57

How would Paul treat people that teach full Preterism? Would be identical in that passage, right?

53:04

He'd say he would anathematize them essentially, right? To swerve from the truth is to miss the gospel completely.

53:10

Do you think that's fair? No, I think you're onto something there. Because number one, we can recognize that, you know, if Paul were, you know, making the circuit trip, he would not be invited to most conference circuits in modern evangelicalism.

53:23

Most pulpits would say he's being divisive, right? Like, so we can recognize that. There's a place for strong language.

53:29

And if you're looking at those type of things, those little Orthodox components of eschatology,

53:35

I think you're on the right track. You know, you mentioned resurrection, and I think that's a great one to bring up.

53:40

Because for most Christians, if I can just speak bluntly for a minute, as if I haven't been doing that the whole time, right?

53:47

No, but think about resurrection. You know, you've been to Christian funerals, which you can never say something when it's said at a

53:53

Christian funeral, right? Because you're at a funeral and that's not the place or time. But you've heard people say either, you know, he's an angel now, right?

54:00

Like the recently departed is now an angel in heaven as he was meant to be. Or you'll hear them say something like he's finally rid of that body.

54:07

You know, that, you know, kind of evil, you know, earthly body. And now he's a spirit as God wants him to be.

54:15

And you think about those things. You think, okay, so this is one tenet of Orthodox eschatology is that we are raised body and soul.

54:22

So God made us body and soul. And one day, and I'm not trying to make a dichotomy, trichotomy argument necessarily, but, you know, to recognize that there's a spiritual and a body component then that God is going to raise us and he's going to make us new in the way that he originally intended.

54:37

That's a matter of primary importance for the Christian. Because like you pointed out, Paul ties that to our identity as image bearers, to our headship under Adam, to our identity in Christ, to Christ's own resurrection and victory over the cross.

54:50

That's not just something of, oh, it'd be nice if Christians believed those things. No, Paul, you know, under the inspiration of the

54:57

Holy Spirit, God says that's a defining characteristic of our hope and identity in Christ. So that's a major issue for us to recognize.

55:05

No, I think you're exactly right. Because, you know, this gets back into Genesis 2. And like you're saying, we're not making a hard distinction of dichotomy and trichotomy, but man is at least a dichotomy, right?

55:16

A material aspect and an immaterial aspect. And so in Genesis 2, you see that God created man from the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life.

55:26

And so, Josh, when I've talked to full Preterists, they'll go back to Genesis, I believe it's Genesis 3, or whenever God told

55:33

Adam, the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.

55:39

And so their point is, well, he ate and he didn't die. So he was merely talking about spiritual death.

55:46

And I'm saying, time out. You can't do that because of who man is, right? When he says you will die, well, think about who man is.

55:54

He is both material and immaterial. Now God, I believe, you know, the case could be made that God was merciful and man deserved to die physically that day.

56:03

And yet God prolonged Adam's life for almost another 900 years. And then, you know, depending on how you view creation, young earth, old earth, a young earth model would say when sin entered in the world, now you have decay, kind of this

56:18

Romans 8 mentality that all creation is longing for the restoration of the sons of God because they're cursed by sin.

56:26

And so I'm just saying, no, you don't get the benefit of saying that was merely a spiritual or covenantal rift between God and man.

56:34

No, because man, like you said, is made in God's image and he is both body and soul.

56:41

Yep. No, it connects. And this is really kind of, it's kind of exemplary of why eschatology is so challenging for Christians to walk through because like we just kind of walked through there.

56:52

We're talking about issues of body and soul. We're talking about creational issues. We're talking about all those things. And yet it all connects.

56:58

I think that a huge pushback against a full preterist view would be the expectation that all of creation, like you said, is groaning.

57:09

That there was a cosmic consequence of the fall. Yeah, I remember hearing somebody one time and he said something to the effect of, you know, when it comes to matters of Christ reclaiming all things to himself, he's talking about people because Christ isn't really concerned with what happens on Mars, right?

57:27

And that was kind of his pushback. And then I just happened, and it's one of those situations where you wish you had been reading this passage that morning, but in God's providence,

57:36

I wasn't. You know, a couple of days later, I was reading Ephesians 6, and it's talking about us wrestling against cosmic powers over this present darkness.

57:45

Literally, Paul, when he paints that kind of glorious picture there in Ephesians 6 of the spiritual battle in which we're engaged, he says, he doesn't say this is just a spiritual battle of, you know, your heart over your flesh or something like that, or this world.

58:01

He says, this is something that is cosmically happening. I'm looking at, yeah, verse 12 there.

58:07

We wrestle, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, and the

58:12

Greek word there is just spectacular, over this present darkness. When Scripture paints the picture of what

58:19

Christ has done, he's reclaiming, you know, and you could think of Colossians 2 or other passages, he's reclaiming all things to himself, everything that was made.

58:29

So if you believe in a God that makes all things, you believe in a God who's restoring all things. And if that's the case, then we're talking about orthodox eschatology.

58:38

Yeah, so I'm so glad you brought up Ephesians 6 here, because this is one of those byproducts of full preterism.

58:45

Well, since everything is shoehorned at 7 AD, and I would actually say the consistent hyper -preterist makes everything back at 7

58:54

AD. So you get into splits of not everything, like some people still want to evangelize, but a big bulk of them says, no, this is a realized eschatology.

59:02

We're living post -redemption. And so you have a lot of these people on the crossfire that are just being inconsistent, in my opinion,

59:08

Josh. Okay, yeah. This is something, this is something that I've noticed. So, but what they want to do is have

59:14

Satan judged Matthew 25 style. He's already in the

59:19

Lake of Fire and the Gehenna. And so this, once again, has pastoral implications for how

59:25

I want to guard my people, because full preterists almost all across the board say, well, Satan's not just bound, not in an all -millennial sense, but he is already bound, literally, and thrown into the

59:36

Lake of Fire. And he is not, you know, on the earth now. And so I listened to one of those pastors in my local area.

59:44

I mean, I know he holds this. And so believe it or not, he was actually talking about Ephesians 6 and putting on the whole armor of God.

59:51

And this is what he did. He knows, and his entry point is, can we all agree that Satan and demon, evil spirits are not being cast out today like they were in the

01:00:04

Gospels? Can we all agree that spiritual warfare is different now than it was back then? And then most people would say, okay, yeah, maybe there is something different.

01:00:11

You know, a lot of people experience, especially in our, in the South, we don't see everything going on like we see in the

01:00:17

Gospels and the Book of Acts. So it's kind of an easy point to get agreement on. But what he's doing is he wants to say, well, not only is there difference now, but there's difference of right now and then the time of the

01:00:29

Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter, right? Because Paul tells us that Satan is the god of this age that is actively blinding the eyes of unbelievers.

01:00:37

And Peter would tell us that, yeah, Satan's roaming around like a lion, trying to devour whomever he can. But what their paradigm is, yeah,

01:00:43

Paul and Peter wrote that before 70 AD. And so they're going to say the spiritual warfare for Paul and Peter is different for us now.

01:00:51

And so how does a Christian now understand Paul here? And so this is what he does.

01:00:57

He says, well, we still have a war, but we have the war against our own sin, right?

01:01:03

James 1, the appeal to James 1, like we still struggle with our own flesh, right?

01:01:08

And sin gives birth to death, right? And I'm over here saying that actually undermines what the

01:01:14

Apostle Paul is saying here in Ephesians 6 because our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against these cosmic powers of darkness.

01:01:23

Ultimately, it's against Satan, right? That, you know, tantalizes the flesh, right? The whole world lies in the power of the wicked one.

01:01:31

So you can hopefully hear my pastoral concerns when I hear people, you know, trying to say to me, this is the worst thing.

01:01:39

This is what Satan would want for people to think that he's not even around, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, believe that I'm not here and it's all been settled, right?

01:01:47

And a lot of full preterists, and I want to throw it back over to you to get some of your thoughts. A lot of full preterists believe that the devil,

01:01:53

Satan, is metaphorical for the carnal human mind. And so I just want to tell people, run away from full preterism with all you can because it has its hands in everything.

01:02:08

Wow, that's quite the picture you're painting. Honestly, that's amazing.

01:02:13

And I can't get past the fact that it seems to do, I want to be charitable and just say that it sounds like some hermeneutical gymnastics, but honestly, that's doing significant damage to,

01:02:25

I'm not so sure what you would do with so much of the scriptural hope that we're given. I think that for a lot of, you know, one of my favorite authors has been

01:02:36

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was always just a huge influence on me and I loved his writings. I don't agree with him on everything, obviously, but still just so good.

01:02:45

And Bonhoeffer in kind of good German fashion would always rage against the enthusiasts and, you know, we could talk about exactly what he had in mind there, but Christendom in general, there's always been enthusiasts.

01:02:58

So you take one maybe good corrective and you swing a bit wide. I think one way of doing that would be to take eschatological hope and say, oh, there's an already and a not yet.

01:03:09

Well, an enthusiast may hear those promises in scripture and say, well, no, I want it all now and apply all those things to the present, right?

01:03:16

A certain type of enthusiasm. Just all cards on the table here, just to be upfront.

01:03:22

I've written significantly on how Satan is in my humble estimation from scripture, defeated and bound now.

01:03:31

Not just a, you know, kind of esoteric defeat or anything, but an actual tangible defeat that has occurred.

01:03:37

And yet his activity is ongoing through those who serve him, right? So you still have evil, you still have the influence of Satan, we could say.

01:03:46

And yet in a very real way, he has been restrained. And one of the passages I would go to, you know, without getting too sidetracked would be the passages in the synoptics where Christ talks about the binding of the strong man.

01:03:58

He says that he has bound the strong man. You know, he uses the same verb that's used there in Revelation 20.

01:04:04

But the reason I bring up enthusiasm is it would be to take something like that, which I think is a good and proper corrective for the

01:04:10

Christian to say, okay, Christ has said he has bound this enemy. I look around and I see evil.

01:04:16

So maybe to me, it doesn't appear that this enemy is bound in any real way. And yet what does scripture say and how does scripture define that binding?

01:04:23

That's a good corrective, right? That's something that a Christian should do. It's enthusiasm. And when I say enthusiasm,

01:04:29

I mean, something that's unbridled and untethered to scripture. And instead it's just something of our own whims and making to take that then and to say, ah, that means

01:04:38

Satan is no more, right? That has very little to do with scriptural witness at that point. And it has a whole lot more to do with you forcing something onto the text, which is something you brought up earlier,

01:04:48

Jeremiah. So, well, and in my study of all millennialism, to me, that has been the move of Revelation 20.

01:04:55

Satan is bound in the pit, no longer receiving nations and kind of marries that to when Jesus talked about binding the strong man.

01:05:02

And so would you say that he is still not yet thrown into the Gehenna, the lake of fire?

01:05:09

Yes. Yeah, no. So when my understanding of Revelation 20, which again, I don't say this as if it's just, easy to come across that passage, but from study of that passage, it seems that at the front end, it's describing what

01:05:22

Christ did in his first coming, that he bound Satan, the word there being Deo. Satan is prevented from doing as he would.

01:05:30

And I think a lot of that marries with what you talked about with the great commission. Christ says he holds all authority and then he sends his disciples out into the world to make disciples of all nations.

01:05:38

So you've got that, but then you have that full and final defeat. So it would be really improper for us to blend those two together and say that they'd both already occurred.

01:05:48

There's something that is already accomplished, and yet there's something that is not yet fulfilled with that defeat.

01:05:54

Absolutely. I was going to pull up a passage. I think it's Romans 16 that mentions, it might be around verse 20, but essentially the church is partaking in that crushing blow of Satan.

01:06:08

So verse 20 says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

01:06:14

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And so I love that because this is

01:06:20

Christians today. I know the full predators would just say, oh, Paul's writing this to the Roman Christians before 70

01:06:25

AD. But to put that to the side is saying, yeah, there's something that we participate in.

01:06:33

And I believe it's like you're saying, like we're taking those keys that Jesus promised the apostles that just said go into the world and make disciples.

01:06:40

Well, we've been given authority from the one who has authority over all things to proclaim his gospel of grace.

01:06:46

And we have the Holy Spirit indwelling in us. And so, yeah, no,

01:06:51

I think it's interesting. So when we read that Satan is bound in the way that you're saying, does that also go for like the rest of the demonic horde?

01:07:01

No, I think that Satan is a real spiritual being.

01:07:07

And that's something that a lot of Christians are just very uncomfortable with grappling with Satan as an actual figure.

01:07:14

They may be comfortable talking about a force or maybe an influence, but Satan is an actual spiritual being as scripture describes him, makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

01:07:24

Most of my study in that was just from the gospel narratives and just walking through what does Jesus say?

01:07:30

And Jesus actually talks quite significantly about Satan. If you were to think of like John 12, 14 and 16, you get these little passages where he talks about the ruler of this world being cast down, now being cast down, like at that time of his public ministry.

01:07:44

He sends out his disciples, I'm thinking Luke 10 territory. He sends out the disciples two by two, right?

01:07:51

And he says, you're gonna go out there and tread on serpents and even the powers of darkness have no hold over you.

01:07:58

So like you said, there's a very clear referent that Christ says,

01:08:03

I've bound Satan and I've done so in my work. And because of that, I'm now commissioning you into the nations.

01:08:09

I'm the serpent shredder, we could say Christ is claiming, Genesis chapter three, he's the one who crushes the head of the serpent.

01:08:16

And yet then he sends us out as his representatives in that victory, which is again, that's not to say there's not evil.

01:08:22

Of course there's evil. And yet it does. I would just worry that for the Christian, we do injustice to Christ's words.

01:08:28

If we don't at least try to grapple with what did Christ mean when he said he defeated Satan? Because he clearly says that in many places.

01:08:35

So what does that mean? And how then can that lead us to worship and adore Christ more for this victory he's accomplished on our behalf?

01:08:43

Yeah. No, that's so good. Well, hey, we're just a little bit over the hour mark.

01:08:48

And Josh, I really want to respect your time. Yeah, it went by super fast.

01:08:54

And I would love to have you on again. And maybe we can have some more discussions about these things.

01:09:00

Now you kind of know Jonesboro, Arkansas in the South. You're not too far from Arkansas, are you? I was born in Little Rock, brother.

01:09:07

That's God's country down there. You're a friend to me. Oh man, that's awesome.

01:09:12

Well, we'll have to get together soon. And my last question is, is when is the rapture going to happen? When Christ returns in glory.

01:09:21

We're caught up and we're with him forever. Sorry to my millennialist pre -trib friends out there.

01:09:28

Absolutely. Well, hey, thank you so much. Dr. Howard, I got to give you some credit there.

01:09:34

Thank you so much again for coming on. And we'll do this again, okay? Well, I just want to also thank you all for tuning in to the

01:09:42

Apologetic Dog. If you like what you're hearing, please like and subscribe. That really helps our content be circulated more.

01:09:50

And I want to encourage you to go over to Dr. Howard, where Josh does a lot of his work. I know he works with the

01:09:56

YouTube channel called Eschatology Matters. And you can find some more of his work over there. And I just want to thank you all again.