Left Behind? (A Conversation on Eschatology) | Theocast

Hi, this is John and I'm with Justin and we're still in Maryville finishing up a couple more episodes and we thought we would do one on the boogeyman eschatology.

John's idea. Yeah, my idea. We definitely had a good time talking about it. We want to be graceful, but we do talk about the different millennial views and how we should approach them as Christians when we disagree and thinking through doctrine, millennial views and a literal interpretation of scripture.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

So nice. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

Pastor Justin Perdue from Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm John Moffitt from Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

And as you can see, for those of you watching on the YouTubes or video, however you're watching this, we are actually together in Maryville, Tennessee, which is a suburb of Knoxville, Tennessee.

We have been recording all day for various reasons, and some of that will come out later, if not has already come out.

But once in a while, Justin and I get together in Knoxville to plan about the future, to record together, spend time together.

And so it is at the end of our day. It is. It is at the end of our day. We're pretty weary. This is our fourth intro.

Thankfully, we only got a few seconds in. I could not get my words out clear enough because we've been talking all day.

True. So I am the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. You just said I was from Asheville. Apparently, I'm the pastor of a city.

You are the pastor of a city church. We talk a lot about this when we try to make membership plain, about how

I'm not a pastor like everybody in South Asheville, but I'm a pastor for people who are members of CBC.

Anyway, there you go. So, Justin, today we wanted to stop, and we do this often.

What are we going to talk about? What can we talk about in the podcast that will be helpful, clarifying? So today is a fun one.

So it is the end of a long day. It is. Right. We've had plenty of coffee, plenty of laughs.

We've gotten a lot done, so we're thankful for all of that. And so, yeah, we were like, what do we want to do here?

We need to get another episode recorded before we depart from one another. What do we want to talk about?

And basically, where we landed is that John wants to talk about eschatology. And so that's what we're going to do.

That might not be the clearest way of putting this, but. Well, no, I. So I. Specifically, there is an area of eschatology.

We're going to talk about. This is what I'm doing. You gave it to me to set the topic up, and now I'm pivoting it back to you. There you go. So that you can tell the dear people who listen to this show why you want to talk about eschatology, and then that's going to get us rolling.

Yeah. We hope. When new people find reformed theology, as they start discovering it, the probably most popular subject that we get, or the most questions that we get are centered around, what are your views on eschatology?

All right. Brief interjection. We usually get the vast majority of our correspondence is about assurance. And safety in Christ.

But when you're talking about, people are curious about doctrinal positions that we have. No, what

I mean is they start making the transition into a reformed perspective. Like they're new to reformed theology. Most likely, anybody who's not reformed comes from a dispensational background normally.

True. Normally, not always. Because the U .S., the conservative church in the U .S. is more or less dispensational by default.

That's right. We could maybe talk about why that is. Yeah. So when people start making this transition, the first question they ask is, what is your view on eschatology?

Because in the reformed world, there are varying views throughout history. In the dispensational world, it seems to be pretty dominant in one perspective, which is the pre -Trib, pre -Rapture view of the dispensational ilk.

So I thought it would be fun and I think helpful to talk about eschatology from a historical standpoint and specifically how there has been a confusion where one view of eschatology has been pitted against the other views.

And it has created, I think, some very strong confusion and animosity in this particular area.

And maybe offer some helpful guidelines as one is journeying through this and they are developing their theology, how the church has viewed eschatology, how the

Bible, I think, presents eschatology, and how we should probably pay attention to history and maybe utilize some observation of how it's been done wrong, which is really what this podcast is.

And we're going to be talking about how eschatology has not been used in a healthy manner. So I'm going to set it up and then

I'll let Justin kind of join in on this. My history and background is different from Justin's.

I grew up in a very dispensational background that had a lot of heavy views on eschatology, specifically a pre -Trib, pre -Rapture view of eschatology, where we are pre -millennial in this nature.

Just explain what you mean by pre -millennial. Right. So this is where things can get complicated, especially if you don't come from a dispensational background or if you're new to Christianity.

This is probably all new. You may have heard some things about that. I mean, when you've got famous Hollywood stars making movies about the end times, it kind of draws the attention of some people.

You know, thank you for Mr. Cage for doing that for us, which I have personally never seen Nicholas Cage's view of a movie, but I heard it was not one of his best movies.

Surprisingly on the subject, I'm not surprised. But so pre -millennial, what there is, is there a belief that there is a time period when

Christ comes back. So there's two returns of Christ. The first time Christ comes back, he comes back and he sets up this millennial age where for a thousand years, so millennium meaning a thousand, right?

So for a thousand years, we are going to see the reestablishment of the nation of Israel.

We're going to see the reestablishment of the temple and the sacrificial system. And they use different passages, things like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation to kind of come to these conclusions.

And sorry, go ahead. And then prior to that millennial kingdom of Christ. Right. I'm sorry. Thanks. Yeah. So yeah, so that's the millennium.

Right. So when I say pre -millennium or pre -trib, pre -rapture, that's kind of like the focal point of what's going to happen before that happens.

There's a seven -year tribulation. And so when someone says, I'm pre -millennial, pre -rapture or pre -trib, what they're saying is

Christ comes back. He takes the saints with them. When he does that, then there's going to be kind of like this trial period.

Seven years of great tribulation. Right. Right. And we're not going to, this is not a full explanation of eschatology, but for those of you that understand this particular view, it's a terrifying thing to realize that you may be a part of that seven -year tribulation, that seven -year trial that happens before the millennial age.

And then again, after the millennial age, after the thousand years, we go into the new heavens and the new earth. So I will say all eschatology, no matter what view you hold, all -mill, post -mill or pre -mill, we all agree that one day

God is going to restore the earth and King Jesus is going to be the ruler and we're going to all be in new bodies celebrating in this new creation.

Everyone agrees on that. So what I love to talk with someone is that it doesn't matter where their history is, where their heart lies,

I always stop and say, I need to make sure that you understand that we all agree that one day, no matter when we get there, if it's right after the return of Christ's first return or after all of this other stuff that's going on, we're all going to be in the new heavens and new earth.

Every theological position, which I would say the dominant views are going to be all -mill, post -mill and pre -mill, you can put in there a, well,

I'm not going to get in there. We're not going to go there. Those are probably the dominant views. They all agree that there's a new heavens and a new earth, and we're going to be celebrating with Christ.

I think it's important to understand that those are all very much Orthodox in view. Yes. Now, what

I was taught, and many of you have probably experienced this as a pre -millennialist, is that if you hold to any other view, you're really denying the

Bible and you're denying the gospel. Explain how you would be denying the gospel.

Right. Well, and really denying, I mean, I've literally been taught, like, I don't understand how someone can hold to an all -millennial view and still be a

Christian, because what has been taught is that you basically are going to end up denying the book of Revelation.

You're going to be denying the literal hell. And so, in my mind,

I thought, well, if you deny pre -trib, pre -mill, you're probably denying other areas of the

Bible. Therefore, I'm going to start questioning your salvation. But you meet a lot of people who are in this world, and it's true.

They're like, I don't understand how you could hold all -millennial or post -millennial views and call yourself an orthodox

Christian, because somehow orthodoxy became associated with pre -millennial view of the entirety.

And in particular, not a historical pre -mill view, but a pre -trib view. Right. Right. Yeah. And we're not going to get into that.

There is a distinct difference between the dispensational view of pre -millennialism and the historic view.

And so, some of this comes down, I think, the issue that you're highlighting comes down to what we would call hermeneutics, which is how we interpret the scripture and the charge on the part of dispensationalists towards folks who are not, especially when it comes to this matter of eschatology, is that other individuals, people who would be all -mill or who would be post -mill or whatever, are not taking the

Bible literally. That's right. They're not taking the Bible as seriously as we should. And what we are prone to do is to spiritualize everything, turn everything into metaphor, and so we have gutted the scriptures in their authority.

That's right. That's some of the argument. Right. The amillennial perspective or amillenarian perspective is one that would teach that the millennium is not a literal thousand years, but that that's a metaphorical way that the scriptures communicate the last times.

And so, we would understand. I mean, I think it's fine for us to say that that's where we find ourselves.

Along with the majority of Reformed believers, we would find ourselves in the amill camp, a brief historical insertion.

Many times people in this debate will reference older Reformed theologians and will say, well, so -and -so was post -mill in his theology.

Understand that the term amillennial or amillenarian is only about a hundred years old, but the quote -unquote post -mill theology of old is really an articulation of what we would now call amill, and so the post -millennial theology or post -millenarian theology that you hear articulated by many these days is a relatively newer thing, especially this very optimistic version where we're going to kind of usher in the return of Christ that's kind of associated with Reconstructionist views and the like.

We may be getting mired in the weeds here. Right, a little bit, and I'm not a huge fan of the name amill because literally amill means none, no, no millennium.

So, instead of taking a position on the millennium, I'm taking a negative position, which is really not what

I want to do, but what I'm saying is I associate as there being no millennial reign, therefore,

I'm an amillennialist because I believe when Christ comes back that he is going to usher in the new heaven and the new earth, and so it's almost like people who are atheists, they have to take their a -theist, meaning they're anti -god, so what we're saying is anti -millennium, and the only reason that that became a necessity was because of the historical explosion of dispensational theology.

So, the dominant theological position exploded when you started to have two things older, revivalism, revivalism was very dispensational in its nature, and then we'll talk about this in a minute, but then you started to have books that were exploding, talking about the

Left Behind series, and the Left Behind series became one of the top, I mean, to this day, it's one of the top selling books in history in the

United States and even worldwide, but the era that I grew up in, there was even Left Behind movies, and I remember watching them as a youth group, and as you watched them, it was about the seven -year tribulation and all the different bulls and all the things that happened, but the sense was you did not want to get left to have to go through the seven -year tribulation.

It was like the worst experience you could possibly have. So, they would use these books and this theology as an evangelistic tool to convince people, you don't want to be left behind when

Christ comes back. When he comes back and he takes us all to bounce out of here, you don't want to be here to go through that.

So, in my mind, I was like, how could you ever believe in a post -mill position? Why would you want to go through? As if what

I believed about the tribulation would make it true, but I was convinced theologically that I needed to guarantee my salvation so that I didn't have to go through this horrendous experience of the seven years where no one could die,

I mean, you had to endure the entire seven years without dying. The way in which it was presented to me, and I think a lot of people still struggle with this, is that if you really hold any other position, you are weakening the theology of the scripture.

You are not taking it seriously and really you are being light in your preaching about holiness and you're being light in your preaching about taking seriously the return of Christ.

Because most people, when they think about it, if they've grown up in a pre -mill dispensational background, or even if they don't even understand those words and they think about the return of Jesus, most people are not excited about Christ coming back.

Because it's frightening. It's frightening. The conversation about why and how an amillennial perspective is legitimate biblically is not what we're doing.

So that's another conversation for another time. There are all kinds of biblical, theological, and hermeneutical reasons why we are proponents of that view.

We could talk about passages and we could talk about high -level theological categories and how scripture works and hangs together and how there's various kinds of revelation in the

Bible and all of this stuff. Anyway, that's another conversation for another time. I think what I want to latch on to that you just said is it's very clear that the dispensational framework, this kind of pre -trib rapture view, is very fear -based in the way that it works.

I was not steeped in it the same way that you were because I grew up in a very, you were talking about amillennial, meaning non -millennial view.

I grew up in an a -theological environment, but I still went to the judgment house every

Halloween. That's really the extent of my experience.

My church upbringing was strange in that the church that I spent the most time in, that I remember the most from my young years, was duly affiliated.

It was a Baptist church that was duly affiliated with the SBC and something known as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is very liberal.

It was a very schizophrenic theological upbringing. You had some of this moralism that was still inherent, and then you also had this kind of lean towards a liberal theology.

But yet we would still, as a youth group, go to the judgment house at whatever Baptist church across town because it was good that we would basically have the hell scared out of us, quite literally.

So I think the ways that we might tether revivalism in that project and then dispensational theology in that project, and even just the way that it went about trying to evangelize and how you would work people up into a frenzy,

I think all of this is just part and parcel of the American church experience for many people. To be super clear on revivalism, there were revivals and there was revivalism that was a

Calvinistic, non -dispensational kind of thing that happened even in the first Great Awakening, as it's so -called, which we could talk about at another point in time.

But then certainly the second Great Awakening and beyond and the practices that became associated with that sort of movement were very much informed by a dispensational framework eventually.

That's right. And so many of the people that were conservative, that thought that conversion was necessary, who became a mainstay of particularly

Baptistic life in the United States, they were dispensational. And so this became the predominant view.

And it was very fear -based, very conversion -driven, very revivalistic in its nature.

And that's not the greatest thing in the world, let's just be frank, to be frightened into faith in Christ because you want to escape punishment.

Inherently, that's a very legal way to look at things. To be motivated by escape of punishment is not actually the way that the

Scriptures will talk about living the Christian life. We want to be motivated by love and joy and gratitude and the like, not scared into obedience to Christ.

Right. And then that point was, what is Christ going to find you doing when He returns?

As if that action is going to boot you out. Right. Could literally damn you. Right. As if, all right, well, you weren't doing the right thing, so now you have to go through the tribulation or you're not going to be saved at all.

But there was always this, what are you going to be doing? What is it going to be find you doing?

And, you know, the old grandma saying, you know, you better have clean underwear on when he gets here.

You know, it just, it bleeds through it. And a little bit where I want to go, I don't want to just spend the whole time picking on this, but Justin, a little bit where I want to kind of, this to lead to, is it, the view of, your view of eschatology ends up becoming a grid by which we put on the text.

And that it influences the priority of the text as well. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called

Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

slash primer. Well, John, I want to pivot slightly and we'll just see where this takes us and we can obviously pivot a different direction if we want to do that.

We've been working on a catechism for our church recently. And so we've been using a number of historical resources and the like.

We've also obviously been using our Confession of Faith, the 1689 London Baptist Confession. And the last chapter, chapter 32 of that confession is on the last judgment.

And one of the things that the confession is clear about is something that the scripture is clear about. Jesus himself told us that no one knows the day or the hour when he will return.

The apostles echo this kind of language. We anticipate the Lord's return. I think often in the dispensational framework, that uncertainty about the return of Christ is always parlayed into this kind of fear -driven thing.

You don't know when he's coming back, so you should be afraid and it should scare you from disobedience or it should frighten you away from this.

I do think it's very clear in the mind of Christ, if we think about the Olivet discourse and some of the parables around it, even in Matthew's gospel, for example, it's clear that one of the reasons why, and our confession bears this out as well, that we don't know the day or the hour is that we would be vigilant.

We would always be expecting the Lord to return and that that should inform our living.

We ought to be intentional. I mean, absolutely. Amen. We should be. We should live in such a way, not because we're afraid, but we should live in light of what

God has said. I mean, in light of what the Lord has told us is true, in light of the fact that Christ is coming back, and we even pray that he may come quickly.

So be vigilant always. Amen. But that's not a frightening proposition. Here's the other thing, though.

The confession kind of implies this, and we articulated this clearly in the catechism that we've written for our church.

One of the other reasons that Christ doesn't tell us the day or the hour and says that no one knows it is so that we might live.

Think the end of Revelation. We might live with hope that today might be the day. This is one of the things, too, because in that dispensational framework, there's this fear -driven thing, but there's also a lot of charts and stuff about trying to predict, and we're going to chart out when

Christ may very well return based upon a very sort of codified, kind of like, let's crack the code in Daniel, and let's crack the code in Revelation, and let's figure out what these weeks are and what this means and all of this stuff, and then we're going to insert like half a week here, and that means a long time.

There's just lots of things that are there, but we're going to try to figure out when the world's going to end and when Christ is coming back.

It's like, yeah, I don't think we ought to do that. I think we should be anticipating the return of Christ, that He will usher in the new heavens and the new earth, that when

He returns, it's going to be obvious to everyone. It's going to be glorious. It's going to be personal. It's going to be visible.

It's going to be bodily, right, when He returns, and it will be at that moment.

I mean, we will be raised imperishable, and it will be the consummation of our redemption. The marriage supper of the

Lamb will occur, and this is what we need to be living in hope of. Like, we need to live in anticipation of this, and it's like, my goodness, let that be your eschatological position, that we live vigilantly, and we live hopefully, as we look forward to the return of Christ, as He will finally deliver us from all suffering, and as we'll be with Him and see

Him as He is. Right. It's almost as if, instead of reading Scripture for the hope of the believer, which is the return of Christ should be, we read it with a newspaper in one hand and the

Bible in the other, as if somehow we can find hope in knowing the nearness of God's return.

Literally, the disciples were saying 2 ,000 years ago, Christ's return is imminent. It's going to happen soon.

We're in the last days. Every generation has rightly said, since Christ, His ascension, every generation has rightly said that we're living in the last days, because that's the language of the

Scriptures. We watch this, I mean, right now, if you're listening to this podcast years from now, we were watching this war between Russia and Ukraine, and the news and the text that I'm getting, oh, we're in the last days, we're in the last days.

Well, we thought that about World War I. We thought that about World War II. I mean, how many predictions has there been about Christ's return in the eighties,

Christ's return in the nineties, Christ's return in the two thousands, in the sixties, right? But the point of it is, is that we're somehow trying to time it as if that's what we've been handed to do as Christians, and if you don't take it serious, then you don't take the

Bible serious. So I just want to stop for a moment, and people could say, oh, you guys are just picking on this, you're not taking the

Bible serious, and I guarantee there's a lot of people who probably already shut us off by now, and I hope that's not true, because I want you to hear what

I'm about to say. I want you to stop and think about what the Bible emphasizes. Like, if you want to know, does

John and Justin historically take the Bible serious? Just hear this out for a second. If you were going to read the

Bible from cover to cover, and you're going to write down massive categories of what the Bible covers in general, you're going to start with the sin of men.

You're going to start with the sovereignty of, you're going to talk about the sovereignty of God, and there's going to be one massive story that's told over and over and over again,

God's grace towards sinner, and the promise of the restoration of what was lost in the garden made better in the future, right?

It's one big story about how sinners continue to prove they cannot save themselves, and how

God was faithful from Genesis all the way to Revelation. He faithfully kept his promise. What is the book of Revelation?

It's the final times, it's the final stage, and what's the last chapter and the last few verses about? He wipes away every tear, because why?

It is finished. He completed what he said he would do. So, when you read the

Bible from start to finish, you walk away with one big story, God's faithfulness towards sinners.

What is implanted in that is definitely some big picture ideas.

This is normal in prophetic language. This is normal in prophecy, right? Where he's trying to describe to a people the unseen world, the unseen realm, that which is not yet.

In doing that, I'm just going to say this right now. There was something that just fell and totally distracted me.

So, there's that. That's podcasting in the professional world right there. And we don't edit it out. No, we're not going to edit it out.

But the point of it is that in time theology is, first of all, hyperbolic in language, it's big picture, it's unclear because it's describing something in a metaphor, and it's very little part of the

Bible. By and large, Justin, the percentage of what scripture talks about in detail as far as the actual details of Christ's return is that we know he's coming back.

We know he's going to restore us to new bodies. We know they're going to live in a restored world, and it's all done by the power of God.

That part is clear, but the rest of the details is very unclear because we're not supposed to know that much about it other than the hope that is to come.

Percentage -wise, it's a very, very small portion of Daniel and a very small portion of certain epistles and Revelation, which

Revelation deals with more than just in times, there's other theology that's going on in there. Yet we seem to want to make it the point of the

Christian life and we want to make it the study of almost everything we do.

Every time we go to scripture, we're trying to figure out where are we at in times and when is Christ coming back?

I would just, in a word, maybe say that so much of what is in the book of Daniel regarding prophecy is actually about the coming of Christ in the first place.

It's messianic in its nature. We could unpack that maybe at more length in a different venue.

Rather than looking at this as some prophecy of the end of the world, there's actually a lot in terms of even the 70 weeks and all those kinds of things.

It's about Christ coming the first time to rescue us. That's huge. But then what's the book of Revelation about?

It's about the final victory of the Lamb. It's the final victory of Christ. Effectively, I've said this a bunch, whenever I preach

Revelation at Covenant Baptist Church, I can't wait for that time. It's going to be great. That's kind of one of those series that I've got a pen in, in my mind.

That's going to be a thing. But the sermon series title is Jesus Wins, because that's the point of the book.

The book, I think we have overcomplicated it, which is something that I think charitably, humbly, I would say, that is true of our dispensational friends.

It's a very formulaic and often complicated way to interpret the scriptures.

There's a reason why you need all the charts and all these kinds of things, when in reality, we would say that, yes, the scripture has a lot of stuff in it, and some of it is easier to understand and harder to understand than other places.

That's true, but the main message of the Bible is very clear, and we want to maintain that.

The book of Revelation is no different. I'm just going to go ahead and raise it.

It's not as complicated as we have often made it sound like it is. One of those things that I think is helpful is when we, instead of just reading it chronologically, realizing that what we're getting is different presentations of the end of the world and the return of Christ, the final judgment, the marriage supper of the

Lamb, and the consummation of redemption. I want to take the last few minutes, the last 10 minutes that we have together here before we go into the

Semper Firmata podcast, and we'll probably have to continue this into that podcast as well. But I want us to deal with this statement.

One, people will say, well, guys, you just do not take the text literal. You're being symbolic. You're being mystical with the text.

So I want to say this. Whatever millennial, whatever view you take on eschatology, your view on eschatology needs to not contradict other clear -cut views of scripture like the sufficiency of Christ's death and resurrection.

When Justin and I say that we hold to an amillennial position, I will say on the podcast that I find it to have the least amount of errors and struggles contradicting other theological positions that I found very dear.

An example of this, and this has been a modern criticism of dispensational view of premillennialism, is that when you look at the lay of the land and those who are,

I think, prominent, conservative, well -thought -through, educated dispensationalists, just like, listen, there are a lot of people who hold the

Reformed theology and say some wacky things that I wouldn't hold to. So I'm not going to throw every dispensationalism out there.

But a very common view is in the thousand -year reign of Christ after the tribulation, we have the re -establishment of the temple and the re -establishment of the sacrificial system.

And this is from Ezekiel, mainly. Right. So I'm getting ready to preach Ezekiel. I've been studying this a lot. What a great book. Right. It is an amazing book.

Chapter 36, right? Just a high pinnacle view of the new covenant. But one of the things that, criticism that's been out there, and I think it's a healthy conversation, and everyone should sit back and say, the position that I'm holding,

I need to be careful that I hold it loosely, especially if it's going to cause me to contradict other parts of scripture.

We say, no, it clearly says this here. It's plain in the text. Okay. Again, the

Bible does not contradict itself, specifically, like for instance, the book of Hebrews comes later, right?

So we have Hebrews. Hebrews has been accepted in the canon. It is a clear document used, written, so that it would clarify the work and the sufficiency of Christ, right?

So one of the problems that we have is that in Hebrews, it says that Christ is the final sacrifice, all for all sacrifices, sufficient, and there was no other sacrifices needed because Christ is the final ratification of the new covenant, right?

So what the old system pointed to, which is a type and a shadow. If you don't know what a type and a shadow is, it is not the substance, but it's pointing to the substance, right?

A good example of this is a shadow. I mean, everybody knows what a shadow is. The shadow is not the substance, but it's a reflectant of something that is to come.

Or a type is, we always like to use this illustration. You go to a Mexican restaurant, open up that laminate photo of that burrito there.

That's a type of the burrito, but it is not the burrito. So the sacrificial system is definitely the type, not the anti -type.

The sacrificial system, the priesthood, the temple, fill in the blank. The New Testament is very clear that Christ is the fulfillment of all of those things.

And that all of those things only existed in the first place to point to Christ. And to teach God's people about the

Christ who would come to save them. It was not that the blood of bulls and goats could atone for their sins, right?

It was not that human priests could be the mediator between them and God. It was not that in the temple, there would be this one place where the presence of God would dwell, and that's how it's going to be forever.

And we can only have access to it occasionally. Like the goal of all of this was that there's one coming who will be the once and for all sacrifice for the sins of God's people, who will be the one mediator between God and man, and who will actually be

God on earth. He will literally tabernacle among us so that we might be resurrected, imperishable, incorruptible, and actually live with God forever and see

Him, see the Lord Jesus as He is, and we will be with the Lord. All of this is so clear in terms of the trajectory that to deny this is crazy.

So I'll say this, when it comes to prophetic literature, I think you've got to really stand the scripture on its head to argue, well, we need to take these things just deadly literally if we're going to be faithful in our exegesis.

That's just clearly not true because prophetic language is illustrative in nature, it's metaphorical in nature often, it's depicting a reality using this figurative language.

I think any reasonable, responsible scholar of the Bible has to admit this.

And there's all kinds of other places where a literal hermeneutic doesn't work, and we know it, and we know it doesn't work.

When Christ says that I am the door of the sheep, it's like, well, we don't think that Christ is literally a door, right?

We understand that, no, He's using a metaphor. Or I'm a shepherd.

I mean, the fact that the Lord is a shepherd in general. And our dispensational preeminent brothers would agree with those types and shadows, would agree with those metaphors.

But we need to take the text literally, John. Right. And I'm not here to pick them up, but to go back to your point, the reason why

I pick out this particular one, and this is true of any theological system that you choose, we want to dry and make sure that Scripture is harmonious and that we're being—

Right, and then you're not contradicting clear doctrines taught in the Bible. That's right. And so the reinstitution of the temple is taken from Ezekiel, that's right.

The sacrificial system is taken. And so if you were to take it literal, there's a couple of issues that you're going to have.

One, there's nothing in Ezekiel that lets us know that it is part of the millennial reign. There's nothing in the text there.

And there's nothing in the text that says it's a memorial. This is what a lot of my friends and my brothers will say is that, oh, those aren't to be taken as a literal sacrifice as if they were for sins.

It's memorial. Again, I agree with you. If you're going to take the text literal, let's read

Ezekiel literally. There's nothing in the text that says it's a millennial reign. And there's nothing in the text that says it's a memorial.

It literally says for the remission of sin. It's what it says in Ezekiel chapter 40 through 48.

So the only reason I say that is that of the millennial views, this is the one that causes me the most pause because when you're talking about reinstituting something that the writers of the

New Testament say plainly, there is no more need for animal sacrifices and those animal sacrifices as if Christ is ruling and reigning in the millennium.

So we have the actual substance. And you're telling me we're going back to looking at the menu. We're going back to looking at the picture of the type.

Why would we do that when we already have the substance? We don't need the memorial. We can look at the scars in his hands.

We can look at the scars in his feet. I don't need to go look at animals in order to do that, mostly because Hebrews tells us plainly that is not the case.

So, I mean, there's a lot of other obvious technical issues, but the one that I think most of the reform world has struggled with over the years has been this idea that we are re -sacrificing that which has been done away with.

I'll just say on that whole section of Ezekiel, our contention is in order to not contradict the clear teaching of the

New Testament, the clear teaching of Christ, the clear teaching of the apostles, the clear teaching of the book of Hebrews, perhaps it's better to understand this prophetic language as pointing to the consummation of redemption and salvation.

For example, just read Ezekiel 47, 1 to 12, and then read the first five verses of Revelation 22.

Then give us a call, like sincerely. I'm not trying to sound jerkish in saying that, but the language is shockingly similar about that water that flows from the sanctuary and the river of life that flows from the throne of God at the end of all things.

I mean, there's a reason why that language is so similar in places. Perhaps what the prophet is trying to do is depict the fact that we will be saved, and the book of Ezekiel ends with the most beautiful words, talking about the city of God, the circumference of the city shall be 18 ,000 cubits, and the name of the city from that time on shall be, the

Lord is there. Good grief. Perhaps that's what he's trying to communicate. Jon Moffitt, J .D.: Well, I think you have to understand we read scripture from beginning to end.

So Ezekiel is prophesying and writing to a people who are in exile. That's right. They only know the sacrificial system.

They don't have all of scripture to look at. They have the law and they have some of the prophets.

So Ezekiel is writing to them and he's trying to use language they're going to understand. And as you read it, you know that he is talking in figurative language because he talks about how the army dies in three different ways.

It's like, well, which way did they literally die? Was it they drowned? Were they burned up by fire? He talks about Ezekiel's wheel.

I mean, there's so much that's going on. So he's trying to prophesy. He's like, all right, it's kind of like this. So when we describe experiences that are new,

I remember the first time someone tried to explain cryptocurrency to me, they had to use other things that I knew. And then

I was like, oh, OK, now I kind of understand that because they were explaining to me something I had no idea what cryptocurrency was.

And in the same way, Ezekiel's like, well, it's kind of like the stock market, but not really. And so you so because cryptocurrency is not like the stock market.

It's very different. And we're not getting into that. But the point of it is, is that he has to use familiar language to predict something that there is a place that exists that we're going to, and this is the economy of the place.

And then, of course, we're going to affirm that we need to take biblical revelation on its own terms, and we need to understand all of this in light of the entire canon of Scripture.

And so then when you start to read the prophets through the lenses of the apostles, we get some clarity. That's right.

And that's just a helpful way to approach the Old Testament. The most reliable guide for us in terms of Old Testament interpretation is the

Holy Spirit speaking to us in the New Testament. Well, Justin, I hope people hear our heart. We do not think this is the end all be all.

Our desire was for some people who I mean, you wanted to talk about it. I know. I think for some people who struggle and think, man, if I hold to any other view, am

I denying Scripture? Am I going to be questioning my faith? And my encouragement to you is that the gospel is very clear about how we are saved, the return of Christ.

You must believe this, that He is going to return and He is returning bodily and physically, and He will restore all things.

That is the most important thing you need to believe. Whatever position that you take, I think you need to be studious.

There's a lot of resources that are available, but make sure whatever position you take does not contradict very clear passages of Scripture, like the atonement of Christ.

Amen. Two thoughts from me along the same lines, and then you can take us over to Ezra. I would say, make sure that the tail does not wag the dog when it comes to your theology.

Make sure that your doctrines that are the clearest in the Scriptures, I think this is kind of what you're saying, the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.

Make sure that those main, plain, clear doctrines in Scripture are driving your understanding of eschatology, not the other way around.

That's huge. Two, be charitable, because godly people through history have disagreed on these issues and have taken different positions on this.

That's okay, as long as we're agreeing on the main thing about the return of Christ, which we've made clear,

I think, a number of times here. May we all live with vigilance and may we all live with hope that today may be the day.

That's right. Amen. Semper Firmata is another podcast Justin and I do. We love doing this podcast.

It's a little bit shorter, but it's packed full of content and it's for those who would like to partner with us and support us through donation in our ministry.

We have a whole community called the Semper Firmata where there's an app and we hop in there and we have fun discussions and ask questions.

Justin and I are even answering more questions, so those come in to us via voicemail.

You can send those in as a member and Justin and I do our best to get to those. If we don't get to your question, don't be upset. It's not because we didn't want to, but sometimes we have so many that it's hard.

Just throw that out there, John. I will say that as we go into the Semper Firmata, what I'd like to continue to talk about is that part of eschatology, there tends to be a form of orthodoxy connected to it, that basically you're denying orthodoxy.

And so if that is the case, then we need to look at part of the, we're going to really continue and flesh this out on a deeper level about how

I think that there are millennial views that do deny very important parts of orthodoxy.

So if you'd like to learn more about that and you'd like to join that conversation, go to theocast .org. And for those of you who are listening, we'll see you next week.