A Response to Joel Webbon & ‪@RightResponseMinistries‬ (Defending Pre-Mil Christians vs Post-Mil)

Hello, thanks for watching this video. This is a response to Pastor Joel Webben of Right Response Ministries. I'll say this up front, this is not an attack video. I appreciate much of what he does. But the reason I'm doing this is because I've noticed that Pastor Joel, he likes to put the blame on pre-millennial dispensationalists for the modern, you know, the state of affairs in evangelicalism today.

So much of what's wrong in the church today, he likes to blame pre-millennial dispensationalists. So what is a pre-millennialist? It's somebody who believes that Jesus comes back before the millennium.

That is before the thousand-year reign of Christ. A pre-millennialist also believes in the rapture of the church. So his argument seems to be that pre-mill Christians think, you know, we all just think we're going to get raptured out of here tomorrow.

So we sit back, we do nothing, we don't plan for the future, we don't build anything, we have a loser mentality. And he likes to refer to Pastor John MacArthur's statements that we lose down here. And this is all part of his argument against pre-millennialism.

Now, Pastor Webben is a post-millennialist. He thinks that Jesus comes back after the kingdom age. So obviously he's going to be opposed to pre-millennialism. Well, here's the thing. Why is he doing this?

Obviously, I can't read his heart. I don't know his motivations. Obviously, he believes what he's saying. But I think part of it is that pre-millennialism has been the dominant view within the evangelical church for 50, 60, 70, 80 years or more.

So in order for post-mill Christians to rule the day, they need to knock pre-millennialists down a few pegs. That's my take on it. Right or wrong, that's my take. Okay, now really none of that should matter.

What Scripture Teaches About Christ's Return

The only thing that should matter is what does the scripture teach. Jesus said in Luke 18 verse 8, he says, When the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? And the clear implication is that Jesus is saying that he won't find very much faith on the earth.

That clearly goes against the post-millennial position. Jesus' words that he won't find much faith on the earth, it's perfectly in line with the apostasy passages by both Peter and Paul. Paul in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 talks about the return of Christ.

He says that day cannot come until the falling away comes first. Peter in 2 Peter chapter 3 says, Knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, saying, where is the promise of his coming?

So it doesn't sound like things are going to get better and better. Jesus, Peter, Paul, they all seem to talk about apostasy at the end of the age, which is what pre-millennialists believe. So the reason I'm doing this video, again, Pastor Webben seems to want to blame.

He blames the liberals more than anyone, which, you know, all God's people said, Amen. But he likes to blame pre-millennial dispensationalists a lot. So I'm not looking to defend the whole dispensational system.

Larkin, Schofield, there are plenty of things I wouldn't agree with that they taught. I'm more in line with John MacArthur, who considers himself a leaky dispensationalist. But he makes this point that the church and Israel are different.

Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church

So in Pastor Joel's last video, I think he uploaded yesterday. He's talking about dispensationalism. He's disagreeing with it. And he said the church is Israel. The church is the new Israel. Well, that's not the case.

Here's the thing. The Bible never once, never once says that the church is the new Israel. The church is never called Israel, not a single time. That's an interpretation based on Ephesians 2, 1 Peter 2.

So I don't believe that's the case. The church and Israel are distinct entities. The Apostle Paul called the church a mystery. The Greek word mysterion refers to something that was previously hidden or unknown.

Paul also calls the rapture a mystery. So in the Old Testament, God's people didn't know about the rapture because they didn't know about the church. Jesus said in Matthew 16, I will build my church. So the church is something new.

It is different from Israel. So this idea that the church is the new Israel, or however they define it, the new spiritual Israel. The church has replaced Israel. You know, we typically call this replacement theology.

I know people don't like that term, but that's what it boils down to. I believe this is a holdover from the Catholic Church. This is a doctrine, I believe, created by the Catholic Church. The early reformers, many of them didn't reform enough.

So they held on to some of these Catholic teachings. So going back to my original statement and why I'm making this video, Pastor Webben seems to want to blame pre-millennial dispensationalists for the sorry state of affairs in the evangelical church today.

Liberalism and the Historical Rise of Dispensationalism

Well, I disagree. I think the main issue in the church today is liberalism. And here's the thing, liberalism was not brought in by the pre-millennial dispensationalists. Liberalism, to a much greater degree, was brought in by the reformed churches, many of whom were post-Mill.

And I'm just going to end with a video put out by Ligonier Ministries, sort of the premier reformed ministry in the United States, where they basically admit this much. Watch.

A question that's been given to us in many different forms, and that's, what is the difference between what we call covenant theology and what's called dispensational theology? Where did dispensational theology come from?

And are the differences between those two approaches to biblical understanding important, significant, critical? What's your judgment on all this? I want to make another historical point that we alluded to earlier.

There was a time when it was almost the case that the only people who believed in the Bible were dispensationalists. That liberal theology had come into the mainline denominations. The evangelical church was really either non-existent or almost exclusively dispensational.

Then the language was modernist and fundamentalist. And these fundamentalists were utterly heroic.

Conclusion and Final Appeal to Right Response Ministries

Okay, so again, this is not an attack against Right Response Ministries. I appreciate much of what they're doing. It's just my appeal to Pastor Joel. It's really not our fault. So I think placing the blame on us, I think, is misguided.

But he believes what he believes. He's going to say what he's going to say. And I've said what I wanted to say. So thanks for watching. And until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.