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Well, good morning, Bill. Andy, will you open us up with a word of prayer?
Yes, sir. Father, again, we are so thankful that we can know you, that we can study your word, and pray to the Lord that you can open our ears, open our hearts, open our lives, Lord, and change us. Thank you, Brother Mike.
We pray the Lord that these words will be your words and these thoughts your thoughts. In Christ's name, amen.
Now, after these things, he must be released for a short time. Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or his image or had not received the mark on their forehead or on their hand.
And they came to life, and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has part in the first resurrection.
Over these, the second death has no power. But they will be priests of God and of Christ, and he will reign with them for a thousand years. When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and he will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war.
The number of them is like the sand of the seashore. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.
And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. And then I saw a great white throne, and him who sat upon it, from whose presence the earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And the books were opened, and the other book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged from the things that were written in the books according to their deeds.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and the death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged in every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone's name was not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Hey, just out of, just for, I'm just curious, how many translations say death and hell?
Anybody? Anybody's? Or does everybody say death and Hades? Yours says Hades? What about, what does King James say? Does it say Hades? That would actually be better. This will get to your question a few weeks ago.
Yours says hell. Yours says hell? But yours is the, yours is 1611. The text is for satanists. Yours is a King James, not a good King James. We'll get to that in some, Hades, yeah. Yeah. That's the, yeah.
I'm working on it. Hang on, let's back up. What is premillennialism? All right.
Christ returns at the millennium of the millennium.
Okay. The millennium is the thousand years, okay? Let me back up. Millennium is, from the Latin, mille, annus, annual, thousand years, okay? And if anybody has any commentaries, if you've been checking up to make all the corrections to what I've been saying, and yours says cilius, or cili, ciliism, that is the Greek word for millennium, okay?
Fine. So, millennium is a thousand years. Pre means that the return of Christ will come, pre meaning before the thousand years. There were two positions. You had the historical and, what was the other one?
Distantationalism. Distantationalism. And there is, we can talk about, when we do our timeline in the nature of the thousand years, we'll hammer out some more differences. Technically, I'm going to, because there is a subset over here.
Post-mill, what does that mean? After. After, all right. There was, we started last week looking at the positions of post-mill. Remember the first one I put up? Off. Off. I would say that's a subset, but there was two types of post-mill.
Omil is the nature of the, you're really only going to be one of two positions, okay? This is not confusing, and I'm not trying to be confusing. You're only going to be one of two positions. Either Jesus comes before, or he comes after.
That's the only two positions you can have, okay? It's just, where do you land in the nature of the millennium, and the omil position isn't after the thousand years. Everybody understand? Okay. And we'll talk about that.
But, you had reconstruction. Reconstructionism. And anybody remember the other one? General equity. And, I'm going to put theonomy here, but I do want to, do I have any Baptist brethren in here that are post-millennial?
You are? Okay, so I need to at least be fair. There is a way to be a post-millennial and non-theonomic. There is. It's difficult, and we'll talk about the difficulties, okay? Major guardrails. Major.
Okay. Reconstructionism. Anybody remember we got partially through that? What does that do? Anybody remember?
It tries to enforce Christian values through government control.
Correct. But reconstruction, I think that is the totality of what you just said, I think is a good way of describing post-millennialism. But then when you have these other positions, how you get to the post-mill position is, Reconstructionism wants to take the Mosaic legislation, some of them even want to impose all of the Mosaic legislation, into reconstructing the society based on judicial and civil, and ultimately the judicial and civil become part of the moral law.
Just so everybody in here probably knows by now, I understand why you have the tripart distinction of the law. The ceremonial, civil, and moral. I think that's a man-made way of understanding the law of Moses.
It's nowhere in Scripture. Hey, if you, I've said this a thousand times, every violation of the Mosaic law was a moral infraction. If you sewed two fabrics together that weren't the same, you know that was a violation of the Mosaic law.
That was a sin. Now, was it different than murder? Of course it was, but both of them are moral violations of the law because all of God's law reflected his what? Yeah, and you said right, his purity, and that's why he didn't want you eating shellfish, because they ate basically the crud off the bottom of the ocean.
They ate, you're supposed to eat things that struck, strikers. Well, this Reconstruction is basically reimposing Mosaic legislation and to become a theocratic government, society. That's the goal. R .J. Rush Dooney, Christian nationalism, some brands of Christian nationalism, got to be fair.
This would be Stephen Wolfe, as bad as Joe Levin claims to be a Baptist, he would fall into this category, the Christian nationalism. I'm trying to think who else would, I'm trying to think of someone y 'all might know.
Anyway, those names. All right, general equity theonomy. That means you look at the law of God, and then you draw general principles from the Mosaic legislation, and then you make your laws accordingly.
Biggest known proponent for this, everybody knows this guy here, right? Anybody know who Doug Wilson is? Heard of him? Okay. He would probably be the biggest known proponent of that, and a lot of guys do lean this direction that are post-millennial, and I probably think that's the direction that you go.
You just have to have some major guardrails, because what happens, this here, by nature, I'm not saying always, but by the nature of how they understand the millennium, this, and I think this is kind of where we stopped last week, this leads to sacralism.
Anybody know of sacralism? Anybody know? Joining of the church and the state. Sacral. That's right, and just to let you know, every civilization practically since the beginning has been some form of sacralism.
You say, well, what is all, okay, we'll just take the Islamic Republic. What is that? That's sacralism. You're born into Islam. Take modern-day Israel. You're born into Judaism. They're Orthodox Jews.
The state and the church are wedded together. What was Roman Catholicism during the Middle Evil time? What was that? That was sacralism, okay? So you weren't, it, the reconstruction and the more radical part of Christian nationalism is they're not really concerned about Christianity in the sense of conversion.
They're not really concerned about it. They want a moral Christianized society. Hey, don't take my word for it. You can just read the massive book from Stephen Wolfe. I mean, his definition of Christian nationalism is national action taken with laws and customs for a Christian nation by a Christian nation for the earthly and eternal good of those there.
That's the definition. Not mine. That is his by definition. And he says, just to want you to know, that his massive book on Christian nationalism says, I'm not here to say that I've developed my position from exegesis.
Everybody know what that is? Which means I have not developed my position from the Bible. And then he goes on to say, right after that, I am no theologian. I am a political theorist. Case closed. It's not exegesis.
It's then I want to make moral code, which leads to forced conversions, leads to the state imposing the law of God. Okay. Everybody understand? We'll make sure you are. Yeah, but we'll have to, we'll get to that in a minute.
Well, because that's where the guardrails come in.
I want to be fair to. It's just the people like Doug would still believe in evangelism. Like they would still believe in going out and sharing the gospel. Like I would just be careful that Doug is not a, you convert the point of a gun.
He is still sharing the gospel. He shares the gospel openly in his town of Idaho. He's here. Right here. Okay. I'm just saying like. Here. Let me. You were saying generalized with theonomy leads to sacred.
And I said, and it does.
Doug Wilson wants a sacred state, but that's not, that's his own words.
But I'm saying he still, he still believes in evangelism. Yes. Right. He doesn't see those two things as being opposed to each other.
No, but he, anytime you say I want the state to impose the law of God, You have crossed a line. Now, and I think me and you've had this conversation very briefly. It was a guy that was in here at one time.
He came up to me and he said, do you believe that homosexuality should be against the law? And I answered his question. What's the penalty? I've said that to you as well. What's the penalty? Because if you go, hey, it is against the law.
Okay. Now that we have agreed it's against the law, then that penalty can be whatever. What's the penalty? He said, I think they should be put to death. Really? I said, you were homosexual before you got saved.
Should they have killed you? Now we want to, I want to back up. This man came out of a homosexuality. So it's like, all right, now that you're on the other side of it, you see the problems that have caused from immorality.
Now you want to go, all right, so what are you going to do? I said this last week. What do you do about adulterers, adulteresses, and fornication? All those two are to be put to death by the Mosaic law.
So what do you do? So when you go to, you get to these, that they want to sacral state, how they enforce the law of God is by the state. How does the state enforce any law? What does Paul say? They've been given what?
Okay, hang on. Now you have a man that's dictating, that's going to dictate his understanding of how to enforce the law of God. That leads to, I know you disagree. I'm fine with it. That leads to, and it doesn't matter because he believes this, and he believes this too.
That leads to a Christian prince. What is that? It leads to a Christian prince as long as he's benevolent. How long do men stay benevolent? Thank you. How long? And to let you know this, this is just a fancy word for theocratic monarchy.
That's all it is. And when you begin to pinpoint them down on that, okay, so you want a theocratic monarchy? Hmm, sounds like the pope.
Sounds like the pope. Now, yes, sir. Yes, so the military also imposes a type of moral law inside of, it's UCMJ, where it tells you that, you know, no sodomy, no adultery, that kind of thing, right, and you can't get in trouble or kicked out of the military for that kind of stuff if they would impose it, yeah.
But that's civil religion. That's much different than we want to take this here, we want to stick it back into, you know, this is, okay, we want to take this and we want to slide this back into society, and we're going to impose it.
Okay, yes.
I'm a very simple person, okay? This way of thinking as far as we're going to enforce these set of rules or laws or whatever, doesn't that do away with salvation by grace?
Well, and that's when you say, okay, that's no longer grace, Mike. I am opposed to homosexuals, adulterers, and all that being put to death. I still think it should be, and I think it is, and it's a civil law, if I remember correctly, I know it was a few years ago, slander, adultery, sodomy, that stuff in the state of Florida was on the books as being against the law.
Now, how do they enforce that? And I'm for that, okay? I'm for let's have laws that put guardrails that we can live together in society, have a moral component to it, okay? Is that what you're, I'm asking.
I guess, but we're talking about enforcing morality and laws to make a nation or a people.
More Christian, that's it. And that is what this here, this here is designed to do. This here looks at the laws of Moses and then draws a general principle, which I would imagine every person in here would agree that we should, that our laws should have some moral component to it.
We make laws, all of our laws and systems from that when we came, when our forefathers came across on the boats, okay, the Mayflower and all of that, when they came here, they used this principle to do that because when they came here, most of them were Presbyterian or Anglican, and they were using general equity.
It was in their confessions. We should use general equity, general principle equity, meaning to bring out the principle and then to apply it across that. So the easiest one to do is we don't build paraffin walls in our houses anymore.
Why? Mosaic wall did. Why? We don't party on the roof. But why did they build a paraffin wall around the roof? To keep people from falling off. Yeah, when either they drank a little too much wine or they were just walking around.
It gets dark. There's no overhead lighting, and somebody falls off. You put a paraffin wall up there. It's to keep them from falling off. I had a Christmas party at my house last year. People came over for dinner.
There was a hole in the front yard. So what do you do? You put something over the hole in the front yard or you put cones or something around that so that when Bert comes over, I'm not saying, hey, Mike, Bert fell into the cavern in the front yard because I love my brother.
That's the reason why you build a paraffin wall. If you love your brother, you'll do things to protect him. Same thing. Put something over the hole so Bert don't fall in it or whoever else is coming over.
That's general equity.
It's just a small way of doing it. Now. Mike, can I interrupt you with a couple of things? No, you go. Good. First of all, I agree with Grace, but the difficulty is we have death penalty crimes. Are you not showing them, Grace?
So what about the murder?
Hang on. I think what his. I'm talking about salvation. I'm talking about, are you saying that this is a way to force people to be Christians? It leads to that.
That's what sacralism does. So it could lead to that.
That's the natural logical conclusion. I'm going to talk about the guardrails, okay, because I would say, and I know you'll agree with this. I know for a fact, because if a person's post, and I don't know what you are in that.
I mean, you might not know yet either, but I'll have you straightened out by the end of the day. But hey, just as this, since the 1930s and 40s, blew up and has been spun out of control for 80 years or whatever.
Okay. Almost 100 years, we'll say. You know what's catching on now? This. Every, buddy, all you got to do is just read. Every church, every church, 100 years, 200 years, something picks up and it goes and goes and goes.
And just to let you know, the vast majority of the reformers were all this. Okay. It was all this. So all they do, and I say regurgitate. It's not in a bad way. It just, some famous guy comes along. There you go.
You know why post-millennialism grabbed on in the first Great Awakening? Natural, huh? A lot of people getting saved. That's right. Yeah. And didn't you know who came along and articulated, basically, the architect of what we would say today is the post-millennial doctrine?
Jonathan Edwards. Sinner's in the hands of an angry God. So when those guys are seen preaching and it seems like the whole nation's getting saved from coast to coast, okay, the natural conclusion is, oh, wow, we're in that golden age.
I mean, we're looking back and going, okay, well, they missed it. And the second Great Awakening comes along. People thought that, too. But then look at all the heresies that came out of the second Great Awakening.
Now, I'm not saying dispensationalism was a heresy, but you know all the heresies that blew up out of that? You know what burst out of that as well? Dispensationalism. Okay. So I do believe we should show people grace.
I do. And we should. But in his case, if a guy commits murder and if it says if a man commits murder and he takes the life of another man in malicious intent, he should be put to death and he should be taken out and done immediately just like Ecclesiastes Chapter 8 says.
What does it say? It says, because sentences, this is a paragraph, because the sentences are not carried out swiftly, men's hearts are bent on continually doing evil. You take them out and you hang them high.
I think I've said this to some of you in here. Me and Sybil, when I was pastoring that other one, the pastor of the other church, a guy was building in United Arab Emirates, someplace in Egypt, Bahrain, he was building ships.
And he was a contractor for the government. And he said he walked through the market, like a flea market. He said, man, there would be gold and diamonds everywhere. And just people? No covers? Just people walking?
And he said, hey. He says, hey, you worried about anybody taking any of that? Nah. And the lady says, just walk around the corner and you'll see. JGL lifts with people hanging for steel. Or hands chopped off.
You remember, Sybil? I was like, well, that'll cure it. You see a couple of people dangling from a JGL lift, don't tell my platform lift, that'll fix it. So we should show grace to those who have been, just like Paul said, Paul didn't say you should have been executed.
He says, four, do not be deceived. Liars, thieves, fornicators, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, adulterers. And he sums it up with, in the end, being unclean. Such were some of you. But you have been washed and you have been sanctified.
So there is an extension, okay, of that. Where there's laws on the books to punish evil that's deserving of death. And I don't think there's anybody in this room that if somebody murdered their child, their family member, their mother, their father, that wouldn't say I want that person put to death.
That's when you know the internal component of justice comes out and you say that person should be punished. Agree? Okay. Now, all of this.
Mike, let me interrupt you one more time. I didn't answer your question. Well, no, you answered that question, sort of. But the question that I have, and it's from a couple of statements that you made, is that when you are wedding the government and the religion, that you're crossing the line.
Can you show me where the scripture condemns government and religion being combined? Under the New Testament.
Well, under anything. Okay, hang on. Under the New Testament, here's explicitly, explicitly, and I didn't say it was sinful. Okay. I did not say that. Okay. Okay? Because you want to say the scripture condemned.
Okay. I've never said, because I do believe what we're wanting in this life, and I am going to answer that first question. Okay. What this is, hey, look, this is my conclusion, my exegetical conclusions, is an over-realized eschatology.
They're wanting in this life, they're wanting a theocracy in this life, which God's only promised in the new heavens and the new earth. Okay? That's just me. That's my conclusion. So we're trying to create that heavenly utopia of Christian.
Would that be awesome? That would. But the problem with, and I'm getting ahead of it, the problem is even under any position that you hold, any postmill, any premill, there's still going to be a revolt at the end when Satan, however you understand what that's happening, Satan pulls people away, they come in, and they fight against Christ and his people.
Christ ascends, lays waste, and it's all over. Every position has that component that there's going to be, all right, well, if this is to Christianize the whole world, and the whole world's Christianized, then who does Jesus return to kill?
Because, hey, the postmillennial position is this. Jesus returns to a Christianized world. Don't take my word for it. Go read them. Okay? He does not return to a Christianized world. He returns to a world that has gone rebellion against him again.
That's the postmillennial position. He returns to a Christianized world. No, he doesn't, because when he returns, he returns. We read it. We read it. It says, as how many? The enemies had come against around the camp of God as many as the sand of the seashore.
I've got to be careful when I read that, because it sounds like sand, which is the seashore. Sand, which is the seashore, okay? That's who he returns to. So if it's been Christianized, where'd all these rebels come from?
And from the premillennial position, if they've all been killed when he returned, who's going to rebel at the end anyway? Understand? All right. Now, Jesus said, before the giving of the Spirit. I'm not pointing at you as a, okay.
And it's an interesting statement. His guys come to him and say, hey, is this the time? This is an ax. Is this the time you're going to restore the kingdom? And what did Jesus tell them? It ain't none of your business what the time.
You're going to go make disciples. Do you know what the giving of the Spirit is given? That is never mentioned again. Never. It's because that ain't what it's about. It's about making disciples of the nations, not making a Christian government.
Now, do I want to see moral components to our law? Yes. Now, the argument is, how do you do that? I'm a natural law person. Okay? I believe there's natural law that's given to us in the heart of all men.
Some guys want to call it the moral code. Whatever. Okay? Whether you're in, and I had this conversation with Scott Phillips, whether you're in the tribes of Indonesia who have never heard the name of Jesus, never heard the Bible read, they can't even read because they don't have a written language when he gets there.
He says he could point to them and say, Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. They knew. You take another man's wife, you're going to die. Yes, sir. You don't take another man's wife in any culture.
Why is that? Because that? Bust you with a lip. Because God's written on the heart of man so he can't say, so that he can't say, what does Romans say?
He ain't going to be able to say, I didn't know.
You did know because God wrote it on your heart. Okay? They didn't have to know how to read to know that. That's right because God's put it within them. Look, we can even go back to Cain. When Cain slayed his brother, did he know he murdered his brother?
Yes, he did. Why did he know that? Because of the moral reflection as an image bearer, you know the difference between right and wrong. We're not talking about knowing the difference between what mom and dad says from a mom and dad preference of what you not to do.
Okay? We're talking about the impression of God on the image bearer to know, you don't take another man's wife, you don't deceive, you don't lie, or you don't steal, and you don't murder. Okay? So that is the natural law that every civilization has made their laws around.
Does that not answer your question?
You prefer the moral law. No, no, no. I am not necessarily of that position. I'm just trying to understand the arguments against it. Against sacralism?
Yes. Okay. Because sacralism is being born into this is the definition. Sacralism is the wedding of the state and church together. Right.
Which we all as Americans think is a terrible thing.
It is terrible, and I'm going to tell you why right here. Okay. Because when Charlemagne came along in 800 A .D., you had christened him. How many other people in here have heard of somebody's child being christened?
Everybody. Everybody. You know where that comes from? You're being baptized into Christianity. Charlemagne, 800. Okay? Now, he did some great, and then Charles the Hammer did some great things, and all of that.
Okay? They kept the Muslim hordes on the other side. But what happens is you're then born Christian. You're baptized into Christianity. How do you become a Christian? One, I'm not talking about from a soteriology thing.
Okay? We know that. Electing God and turning you back, all that. That's what I was thinking. It's an act of the volition of the will of the person to go, I'm going to turn from unbelief and turn to belief in Christ.
That is becoming part of the community of the new covenant. When you're born into a society that's Christian, you're not Christian. You're just born into society. If I was to go over into Iran today and Sybil got pregnant, which she did, that would be a miraculous thing, and she got pregnant and we had a baby over there, would that make him a Muslim?
Huh? Well, by their standard it would. Not by mine. By their standard, he was born on their property. Therefore, he's a Muslim. People that are born in Germany, you know what they are? Sure. Lutheran.
That's the difference. Now, when we came across, our forefathers came across the water to set up a religious worship system. Okay? That religious worship system was to, one, get away from the Roman Catholic Church, and what was almost a mirror image of the Roman Catholic Church?
Church of England. Okay? And when they came over here, the intent was to be able to worship because Presbyterians were drowned in my forefathers. Do you understand my favorite reformer, Ehrlich Schwingle?
Okay? My favorite reformer, he would drown me. He drowned everybody in this room. Because you weren't Presbyterian. Okay? So when they come across, it was to be able to worship in a way that as long as we believed in justification by faith alone, far from any works, basically the soul was, and we could have some religious differences and still not be persecuted.
Matter of fact, it was so important, and a lot of people don't know this either. We talk about our Presbyterian brothers. They want to use, well, we're the 1647 and 46 London Baptist Convention.
No, you ain't because you're in America.
You're using the 1788. Go and look there. You got religious freedom because, you know what they did? They took the component that wanted the state to enforce the law out of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and they removed it and put in a more Baptist position.
So if you go and you have some Presbyterian church today, whether it be PCA, PCUSA, the only way you're going to be able to tell the difference is the guy probably a little light in the loafers is preaching.
Okay? You reach in the back, and the edition that you're going to have is going to be the 1788. 1788 being year 1788. It's because they got rid of the sacralism part of that. You couldn't be born into the Anglican church, or you're not going to be born into Presbyterian.
You're not going to be born into the Baptist church. It was so important that when the Danbury Baptist, Danbury, Connecticut, it was either eight or nine Baptist churches sent a letter, and this is where the separation of church and state came from, sent a letter to Thomas Jefferson saying, look, they're wanting a state church here.
And he says, I assure you, it was a letter. It wasn't something in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It was a letter to Thomas Jefferson, and he affirmed them there would be no state church in the United States, none, so that you wouldn't be born into a state church because the whole reason why they left was they didn't want to be ruled by the church.
They wanted to have religious freedom, not freedom from religion, but be able to, if you were a Baptist, be able to worship without being persecuted. We were being persecuted. They tried to drown us all, okay?
And the Presbyterians didn't want to be persecuted by the Catholics. So when we came across, that was the reason for it. Now, the post-millennial position that uses general equity can be non-theonomic, but they have to have the guardrails of what we would call 1689 Federalists.
That's probably where you're closer to. Are you not sure of that either? Which put guardrails to keep the state out of the church business, not all of the church business, okay? I think we all would agree that there are times when the state should step in and do stuff for the church.
We got ripped off here for what, 60 grand, Andy? We were happy that the state stepped in and helped. Matter of fact, those of you that don't know this, one of the prosecutors didn't even want to handle it.
I had to get on the phone and say, hey, hey, hey, hey, we ain't doing this. Got to send it to another judge. I said, no, no, no, no, this ain't going to work. We have a confession letter here. This ain't going to work.
So they sent it to another judge. That judge then began to work through all of that, and that judge put the hammer on it.
Matter of fact, that restitution is still coming. It is, that's correct.
Yep, that restitution is still coming today to the church. So there are times when the state should step in. If a man molested a girl in this church, besides the deacons and the elders coming out there and beating the brakes off of him in the backyard, we'll do that, and then we'll call the police to come get him.
So we don't want no union at all, in the sense of we want the state to stay out of the affairs of telling us what the Bible should say, and that is where the non-theonomic position comes in and says, okay, we're going to see, and this is where I would say the Baptist, even 1689 Federalists, are more amillennial, just because every amillennial in here wants to see the gospel go forward, don't we?
Of course we do. How are people going to be saved by us opening up our mouths and preaching? Jesus never said, hey, go create a freedom caucus and go evangelize all the blue states. No, he said you go to the nations and you preach the gospel, you let me worry about it.
You go preach, I'll send forth the spirit, my word will not come back void, you do what you're supposed to do, and you just let me handle that. Now, are there times where you see, like the first great awakening?
Yes, but is that normal? Is that normal? Is Pentecost normal? No. It's not normative to see that. Those are miraculous acts of the spirit. Buddy, I have open air preached. My preaching ministry began under an overpass.
I have never had somebody in the middle of me preach and say, hey man, what do we need to do? That was when Peter preached.
That would be awesome. Matter of fact, I've never seen anybody converted.
As I've been preaching under those overpasses or up in a median or whatever. Never. But you don't know that as you're preaching the word and yet God just, he's launching them darts like this to the heart.
You don't know what happens. You don't know. Preaching is just the means by which. You don't know what God's going to use. God could use anything. He could use anything. I know this is a little bit off topic, but they wanted me to go down and preach at the Marilyn Manson concert one time.
I was like, well, I kind of liked him. Okay.
I was like, yeah, well, now I've got to go out and condemn the guy.
Well, he, it was just on that first record. He got, he took a Bible and he tore it and he threw it out into the crowd. And the guy was complaining about what he did and I said, hey man, I need you to pump the brakes.
I said, were you passing out tracks down there? He said, no. I said, shut your mouth. He just passed out more of the word of God than you did. Now what you need to do is repent and pray that one of those kids that pulled that piece of paper, page of the Bible up, took it home and put it, said they got that from Marilyn Manson concert that one day they'll go by and read it and God would prick their heart.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. That's what you need to do. Pray that God would use that word that that poor boy pulled up off the floor and to convict his heart. How'd God do it? So we don't know.
Not everybody that hears the word is going to be converted. But you're not born into Christianity. You're born again into the Christian community. As far as an act, do I see a condemnation against it?
No, because I believe we all want a theocracy. I think we all want a theocracy. Because as a believer, we want to live under Christ's rule. Do we not? That's not happening in this life. So that then gives us a desire to look forward to the eternal state.
That's why I don't believe the pre-millennial position is that thousand year reign where Christ is ruling and reigning is the best way of understanding it. Because they're wanting the same thing that they're wanting, which is what God's only promised in the new heavens and the new earth.
The omniposition, and we won't get there today, but there are two lines that run together. These run together in the omniposition. They run parallel. Hey, in the post-millennial, and this is not to beat up on the post-millennials, but the post-millennial position was not really articulated well and probably to the last 70, 80 years, and we really began to be systematized.
It was basically what everybody wanted to see, which meant we want to see every community, we want to see people come to faith in Christ. It's when it became systematized, but most of the post-millennial had this position too.
Hey, as the gospel goes out, we know that evil is still there, and it's going to go forward too, but in hopes as the gospel is proclaimed, hearts would be changed, community would be changed, right? That's the goal, and then as hearts are to change, communities are changed, the Baptist post-millennial would say, well, then they begin to vote differently.
They begin to put godly politicians, which I think that's an oxymoron, godly politicians in power. I mean, that's kind of hard. I mean, then you begin to make more laws that are more beneficial to the totality of the community, but as you do that, you get men that get power.
That's why I say you got to have those guardrails. As those men get power, what happens? Power corrupts. And you go, well, wait a minute. We've made decisions to try to make community better. Well, when the proclamation of the word reaches a plateau and people aren't being converted, you now have a political social device to continue your progression, which turns to sacralism.
I'm not saying everything turns to sacralism. This is possible. Major checks and balances, and that's from a political standpoint. Major. Now, we got to go. Next week we will deal with the automobile position, and then we will look at the nature of the millennium, because that's going to be how we understand verses 1 through 11 of Chapter 20.
We good? All right.
Bert, you'll close us? Once again, we thank you, especially the day that we discussed these things. We ask you to prepare our hearts as we go to worship. God is the Spirit. Amen.