TiL Interview with Josh Howard

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Welcome to the Truth and Love podcast. We hope you will stick around with us this evening. Tonight we have a special guest, a

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Truth and Love podcast interview with Dr. Josh Howard from Eschatology Matters.

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We're going to be looking at amillennialism and postmillennialism. Stick with us. Welcome back to the

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Truth and Love podcast. Just want to remind you that the comment line, as I refer to it, is open. We would love to hear from you.

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Let us know that you're watching. Ask a question. Give us a critique. We're open to all that, but we would just love to know that you are with us.

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Dan, how are you doing? Good. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm Rob. That's Dan, and above us is our special guest,

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Dr. Josh Howard. Josh, I was corrected at the

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Laborers Conference the last weekend of April this year. We had a special fill -in pastor that I think you know,

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Michael Schultz. Yeah, yeah, I know Michael. Yeah, he filled in for us last minute because we had a dropout, and we were thankful for that.

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Out of respect, because I know that it takes a long time, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication and sacrifice, so if someone has earned their doctorate degree,

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I like to give them honor, and so that's why I refer to you as Dr. Josh Howard.

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I refer to him as Dr. Michael Schultz, and he said afterwards he preferred

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Brother Michael Schultz, so I should have previously asked you.

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I should have learned my lesson from the conference, but do you have a preference?

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Is Dr. Josh Howard okay? I'm fine with whatever. I think most people just call me

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Josh, but yeah, I appreciate the honor. Absolutely, you deserve it.

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It's a lot of hard work and sacrifice. So yeah, we're gonna talk about amillennialism and postmillennialism, which is,

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I believe, right up your alley based on the podcast that you've been doing for a while now.

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Would you let everybody know who you are? Give us a little bit of intro about yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

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So I'm a father and a husband. We're celebrating 19 years in about a month, so I was just making plans earlier today for how to honor my wife, speaking of honor.

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We have four kids. I pastor a local church here in Battle Creek, Michigan, so we're in the southwestern part of the

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Mitten, if you're familiar with the topography up here in Michigan, but I've been up here for about three years.

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I mentioned before the show, I have the southern accent. You'll hear it popping through. Not as strong as Michael, as you mentioned a minute ago, but still there and lingering on.

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So I pastor a church here. I'm the primary preaching and teaching elder. I do some writing. I've written some books, been able to contribute some articles.

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In fact, I'm one of the contributors to a new venture called Clear Truth Media, so I would commend anybody that's watching to check that out.

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It's an excellent venture, but yeah, it's about how I keep busy, and then Eschatology Matters obviously is a side venture.

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I'm one of the co -founders of it with a guy named Brandon Wood, so I always am sure to tell people that you see my face on there, but what you don't see is

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Brandon Wood holding the entire thing up on his shoulders almost single -handedly, so yeah, that's what we do on the side.

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There's the Lord. Let's step into it, Dan. Yeah, let's do it.

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So just start broad. Why does Eschatology Matter at all? First, I guess, define what

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Eschatology is for folks that may not know the word, and then why does it matter? Yeah, so Eschatology, you know, if you get your systematic theology book or, you know, whatever reference guide and you flip open and you look up the word

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Eschatology, you'll find some definition of, like, the study of the end things or the last things or the final things.

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Generally, that's the word, you know. Etymologically, if you break down the word, that's where it comes from is eschatos and logos, so it's pretty much a breakdown of the study of the final or ultimate or last things, but if you start to look at Eschatology, one of the things we've tried to kind of commend on our channel is to think of Eschatology less so as some sort of checkbox or some sort of nuance of a systematic theology text, and instead think of Eschatology as a sense of story, because I think that's really the way

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Scripture sort of teases this out, you know. When you encounter Scripture, one of the things that I think frustrates a lot of us that have kind of an analytical mindset is that God does not give us a textbook.

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It's not a systematic theology. He doesn't give you, here is your chapter on angels, and now we can move on. Here's your chapter on soteriology, etc.

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He gives you a story, and He gives you a story because He wants you, I think, to think in terms of story, and I think that's something that all people really do is we think in terms of story.

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The question is, are we thinking in terms of the right story? You know, I've heard a lot of guys recently make much of the fact that there are certain ontological or, like we could say, creational truths that are true whether we do well with them or not, and just to give you an example,

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I mentioned that I'm a father. I am a father, which means I lead in my home. The question isn't whether I'm going to lead my family.

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The question is really, am I going to lead well or am I going to lead poorly? There's many other ways we can work through that, right?

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If you're a child of God, you are a child of God. He considers you a child of God, and nothing can change His opinion of who you are in Him.

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The question is, will you be a faithful child of God? Will you be a child of God who is not faithful? So if you're to look at eschatology, then the question is, what story are we really talking about?

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Are we talking about God's story, and hopefully biblically truthful, or are we talking about the story of the world?

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That's one thing that I think has become very apparent for many of us, is that the world has its own eschatologies.

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Obviously, false religions have their own eschatologies. We're familiar with that, but just the world itself that swirls around us, the culture around us, has an eschatology.

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If you turn on the news, if my kids flip on, heaven forbid, Disney Channel without me monitoring it very closely, whatever that looks like, they're going to be told a story of, here's what we're a part of, here's where this thing is going, and here's who you are in this story.

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They're being told eschatology. Here's where it's all headed, even. So one of the things we want to be sure to do as Christians is to promote a biblical eschatology, and we recognize that's tough, right?

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There's parts of Scripture that are tough. Revelation is tough. Ezekiel is tough. We understand that, and we can have a lot of charity and patience with each other, but we want to be sure to communicate, especially those big tenets of that big story.

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We want people to be thinking in terms of the story that God has made, even if we might have some substantive disagreement on some of the details.

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The fact that Christians have a story to proclaim and a direction to proclaim, I think, is something that's very vital in the world around us right now.

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Sure, yeah. So you have a podcast called

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Eschatology Matters. Obviously, you believe it does matter, as you just explained.

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I'm sure hoping so, yeah. Yeah, right. It makes sense that you would. So explain a little bit more about your podcast and what y 'all hope to do in showing,

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I'm guessing you're trying to show people why and how eschatology matters. Explain a little bit more about how the podcast plays a role in that.

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Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So I won't bore your listeners with the origin story of Eschatology Matters.

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We've told a few times, but the general gist of it was that Brandon, my co -founder, hosted a conference.

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He pulled several of us together presenting on eschatology, that sort of thing. And the channel was sort of a kind of birthed out of that initial conference.

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And so since then, we've had conferences and small things that we've done here and there. But the channel has been the mainstay of this.

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We started with YouTube. We branched out into our website, EschatologyMatters .org.

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We have podcasts. We joined Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. So it's kind of grown from there by the grace of God.

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But our aim was pretty simple. We wanted to look at eschatology and really try to not only encourage

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Christians, as you just pointed out, Dan, that eschatology does in fact matter. And it matters beyond just some

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Thanksgiving dinner table argument over when the rapture is or whether there will be a rapture event in the way people conceive it.

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Something beyond that, right? And this broad conception of eschatology. We wanted Christians to know that it matters and it's good.

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When you read these passages, if you were to think of like any eschatological passage, like those key passages, so to speak, usually they're given with encouragement.

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And I think that's what's so unfortunate about the way we read those passages oftentimes is we read them and we're confused, we're discouraged, we're divided over it.

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When they were given, not for our confusion, they were given for our hope. So I think our approach to eschatology should even be when it's like,

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OK, I cannot quite remember what's going on at Daniel 11 right now. I just I haven't studied this in a while, but I remember it's for my hope.

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So I'm not going to let that discourage me. I'm going to remember there's a story about which Christ is winning. I may have forgotten some of the details along the way or be confused about them, but I know this is a story meant for my encouragement.

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So that was kind of the impetus of the channel. We set out to do that. One of the things that we approached it from was we titled it just sort of from a broadly reformed perspective.

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And we did that for a specific reason. When you when you look at eschatology, there's a lot of very similar approaches to eschatology, but there's some covenantal differences that come into the mix that make things a bit difficult.

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So when you're talking about amillennialism, postmillennialism, even historic premillennialism, there's a whole lot of continuity, a whole lot of similarity between those views that you have kind of a common working ground from which to then kind of walk through these issues.

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And from there, you can kind of make the differences and the similarities more clear, because, again, that's one of the things we want to do is provide clarity.

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We don't want people strawmanning each other and misunderstanding each other as much as we can. We want to make those differences clear when it comes to the dispensational view, dispensational premillennialism.

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We have brothers who are dispensational. We have, believe it or not, guys on our team at eschatology matters that are dispensational, and we're grateful for them.

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It's difficult to engage that view sometimes because the approaches are so radically different. So it's one of those things where we have we have graciously just said, hey, we're going to try to focus on the more covenantal or reformed viewpoints of eschatology and kind of try to walk through some of those things.

10:50

Sure. So in the light of what you were just talking about, if you could touch on this for just a moment, you talked about when you're reading

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Daniel chapter 11 and remembering that it's it's for our hope. A lot of times when we think about eschatology, we're thinking about either an imminent hope or a far off hope, and it's the end of all things.

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But eschatology has an impact on our everyday living.

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So so how have what have you learned that teaches us that eschatology plays a factor in our everyday life?

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Yeah, there's there's a lot of things that I think, you know, I remember we a dear friend of mine, he went he went to church plant up in New England, and I remember we reached out.

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We were helping him out with a with a need they had had. And it was it was one of those unexpected, you know, God's sort of orchestrated the events.

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But he reached out and was just thanking us for it and just praising God for God's timing in this whole matter. But I remember he used a phrase and it's always stuck with me.

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He said that he and his wife had been struggling right before this whole, you know, all these events took place with us. And he said that they were preaching the gospel to one another.

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And I thought that was such an interesting phrase, and it kind of tripped me up when I read the letter. I was thinking myself like preaching the gospel to one another.

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That phrase has stuck with me since then, because I've experienced that in my own marriage and in my own family. I wouldn't have framed it that way then, but I certainly do do now is that you're reminding each other of what is what is truly true.

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So so when things are tough, when when a relative dies, when sickness hits your house, when financial difficulty, whatever those those challenges are in the immediate, you know, day to day life of the

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Christian, you preach the gospel to one another. Hey, hey, wife, remember, Christ has saved us, redeemed us.

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Christ has bought us with his blood. Christ has counted us as sons and daughters. We have a hope that's eternal even beyond this.

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And Christ will certainly see us through no matter what those struggles may look like. It's, you know, reminding one another of the hope that we have.

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That's sort of what this eschatology thing is about. You know, we're in an election year. This is twenty twenty four.

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I don't have to say a thing controversial on here. Everybody, when we say it's an election year, you have all the worries of what could happen, what's already happening, what might happen.

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There's there's plenty to look around and be genuinely discouraged about, genuinely upset about.

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But the Christian has that hope of eschatology, which is not like you pointed out. It's not just a future hope, although it is, praise

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God. It's also a hope of right now that Christ is actually victorious right now, that he is actually reigning and ruling right now and that he is actually that he's actually bringing us through victoriously even right now.

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Now, within that, there's a lot of differences in the way we might suss those details out. But I think most Christians would agree on on those things, that Christ is actually bringing his kingdom through, that we will be triumphant.

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Mm hmm. So digging in, starting to begin the actual topic for tonight,

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I'll meal and post meal and people like to talk about dates. And I'm sure most people would would you're going to talk to different people with different opinions on dates.

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But from your study, your perspective on millennials, on millennialism and postmillennialism, when when did they begin as a as something that was a major theology of the church?

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Yeah, so so my sarcastic answer would be that they began with the New Testament.

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But I'm sure I'm not the first one to yeah, to make that that's that's the claim.

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That's one of the it's one of those interesting things. So when you look at when you look at the Old Testament, there's a certain eschatological hope.

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Sometimes it gets a little bit hard to suss out what that exactly looked like, especially if you look at some of the like Second Temple Judaism writings and pseudepigraphical writings, things that were swirling around that were not necessarily scripture, but but sort of help us maybe see what they were thinking in the background of the situations.

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But there's a clear hope in the Old Testament right there. There will come a serpent crusher. He will crush the head of the serpent. We know this from Genesis three on where there's there's the hope of the coming one and that there will be a final kingdom of some sort.

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Right. Christ will or the Messiah would reign forever in some form. But as with many things in the

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Old Testament, things are just a bit hazier than praise God. We get more clarity within the New Testament with with with the mystery being revealed, as Paul talks about in Galatians.

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So when you get the New Testament pages, then it's a little bit tough to suss out, I think, what some of the early church fathers were thinking.

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I know a lot of people say a whole lot of things about the early church believe this. Typically, the the the general rule is to say that the early church was generally historic premillennial.

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There's been some really great works written, sort of challenging some of those assumptions and walking through what exactly were the early church fathers saying, what was the context.

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It's difficult sometimes to read what they said and anachronistically sort of read what we are hearing back on to what they said.

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And that's just not the categories they were working with. There's a book called Regnum, Regnum Caelorum, that's really helpful with that.

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I think Charles Hill, I believe, is the guy that wrote that one. But but in any case, when you when you see the early church, it's a little bit of a mixed bag.

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You see you see an expectation of a kingdom, but you can kind of pick out different elements throughout the early church.

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When you when you look to the then kind of future development of the church, really from from, let's say, the four to five hundreds, the time of Augustine and some of the early church fathers on into the

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Reformation, one of the one of the dominant views would be the post -millennial view. And when I say post -millennial,

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I'm including post mill and mill in that view. And I can explain what I mean by that in a minute if you'd like me to.

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But it's sort of that the view that when Christ returns, he's returning finally and fully.

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There won't be any sort of, you know, taking away of the church in a in a secret rapture, but instead that the church will rise to meet

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Christ. Christ will return. He will he will consummate his kingdom and he will be with us forevermore.

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That sort of that sort of viewpoint. And you see that really hold into the Reformation when you read the reformers.

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Several of them talk very much about this sort of viewpoint. But when you move on down through down through the kind of more recent, more recent centuries, the premillennial view starts to take off.

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And especially in the West, you see it really dominant with with a lot of those during the Great Awakenings here in in the

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United States specifically. It's tied quite frequently to dispensationalism, although that's not the only expression of it.

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But you see a lot of premillennial thought recently within the United States. But if you were to look at sort of like the dominant perspective of church history,

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I think that most would agree it falls in the generally postmillennial category. And again, in that I'm including postmill and Amill together, but generally postmillennial from there where you see the two diverge.

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I hope I'm not talking too long on this one, but it's kind of a lot. Yeah. OK, it's kind of a lot there. OK, so when you see postmill and Amill begin to to be referred to differently, because if you were to look back to the 700s and ask some

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Christian, hey, who's postmillennial and who's Amill, they wouldn't have any frame of reference. You really start to see those into the 1800s, early 1900s.

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I would be real hesitant to put a sort of pen in the map on that one and say exactly what year we could credit it.

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But you can certainly see it if you look back to the the sort of old Princeton crowd. You have the

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Hodges, both of the Hodges. And then you have B .B. Warfield coming after them, sort of those those three

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Princeton, old Princeton guard. You start to see from them and then that generation that comes after them a divergence in broadly postmillennial thought.

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So if you're to think of postmillennialism as simply the fact that Christ returns post or after the millennium.

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So we are in the millennium now. And then Christ returns to inaugurate all or to consummate all things.

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He returns to consummate the kingdom and be with us forever. If that's postmillennial thought, you start to see

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Amill and Postmill sort of start to diverge there. And like I said, in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

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So by the time you get to especially some of the Westminster crowd that comes after that time, your hardest boss and some of those guys that were writing at that time, you start to see real distinctions pointed out between what we now refer to as Amillennialism and Postmillennialism.

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Prior to that, they would have just called it all postmillennialism and been like, oh, he's one of that kind of postmill or that other kind of postmill.

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It's so interesting to me when we when we think about dates and how we approach what we believe in the study of scripture when it comes to dates, by what we've learned and how we've been taught to learn.

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So we want to be we want to match what we believe with scripture, with the confessions and what what the church has held to for years to make sure that we're not off in some other world based on what churches taught throughout the centuries, what confessions have taught.

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So. So when it comes to dating and theological belief, it's funny how sometimes we think about how, well, ours was first, so ours must be right.

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But that's not I don't think that's always the case. And it's so interesting with eschatology that, you know, we've had so many gatherings of great minds to flesh out these things and and give responses to this confession or that confession.

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But when it comes to eschatology, it's almost like we're I mean, there are some truths that, you know, we don't negotiate on, but we're still fleshing things out along the way.

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Right. Yeah. Anybody that reads, you know, you go back and you read, you know, Athanasius and Arius and some of those early church controversies and you see, like, number one, just the difficulty in categorizing people into these neat categories.

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But you also read some of the just widespread disagreement, not that like everybody's completely off base, but there's there's widespread substantive disagreement on some of these issues.

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Just reading some of those early church debates, I think it should give all of us a little bit of just healthy humility, I think, with with trying to be too too quick to just brush stroke, you know, who was in what camp and who can claim what century.

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It's usually not quite that neat, neat and tidy. I think anybody anybody that's in local church ministry can can attest to that these things aren't aren't as neat and tidy as we would like to to remember them by.

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So when you see these these two popping up today, where are they popping up?

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What denominations are are holding to these views and which ones are more popular?

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Where? Yeah, yeah, between between Post Mill and Amill, there's a really there's a really interesting swath.

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So I would think toward if you just think toward American, the American context, I think you could you could probably say, number one, amillennialism is definitely the dominant view.

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Postmillennialism would be in the minority as it stands right now in the categories that we're working with.

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Right. You can find a lot of postmillennial scholarship coming from primarily within reformed ranks.

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And I would I would even push in a little bit farther and say many of them within Presbyterian circles. But you could push back and say much of the same with with amillennial thought.

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The broad swath of modern evangelicalism within the US is premillennial is premillennialism.

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I would say you could probably push that a little further and say there is a there is there's been a dominance of dispensational premillennialism within the last, let's say, 140 years within the

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United States. But a lot of that is a little bit hard to suss out again, because once you get down to the details,

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I think the categories become a little bit a little bit swimming. But again, when you look to denominations, many

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Baptists would confess some form of premillennialism, many within the reformed camps.

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And by that, I mean Presbyterian Reformed Church in America, those those sort of denominations,

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Christian Reformed Church, many of them would fall into the more amillennial or postmillennial thought. Sometimes you can find some some interesting nuances.

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I know we've touched base with with Myles Christian, who has his own channel and he does a lot studying

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Seventh -day Adventism, which which I'm not counting within Orthodox Christianity.

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But at the same time, he's looked at some of their eschatological beliefs. And a lot of times eschatology is a huge driver, especially with some of those, we could say, more fringe movements that sort of are at the edges of Christendom.

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But yeah, that would be kind of my my general take on on where eschatology stands in America. I think I think for most people, this has been our experience at the channel anyway.

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Most people come out of what I would gently and lovingly describe as an unstudied dispensational premillennialism.

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And by that, again, I say that gently because I'm not I'm not trying to throw shade unnecessarily. I just mean that many of us just grew up.

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We sort of knew of the Left Behind series or some other media presentation of a premillennial pre -Trib rapture.

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So we sort of assumed that was it. But if you'd asked me, you know, like, hey, where is this in scripture? Like nobody's really at least in many circles, nobody's really studying through those things.

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It's sort of just the the zeitgeist or the kind of common conception that many grew up in.

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So but that again, that's that's sort of a recent thing within the U .S. So kind of along with that, you talked about earlier on, there was and you you put together on meal and postmeal as postmeal.

24:16

And then there was kind of a fork with those two. And then there was the rise in dispensational premillennialism that most most of us probably grew up with.

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And just in my case, personally, I didn't even know what it was called, but that's the only thing

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I was taught. And that was the only thing I knew ever existed until I began to, you know, branch out and study for myself.

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So the rise and fall, why do you think that there was there was a rise and fall?

24:46

The the ideas of post and on meal kind of took a back seat and there was a rise in premillennialism, dispensational premillennialism in your estimation, what kind of happened there to cause that?

24:59

Yeah, there's there's things. So I think the two the two mile markers that I would point out and I point these two out just to just to emphasize why

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I kind of disagree with with with some of these mile markers sometimes, because, again, history is really complicated, right?

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Like the way people arrive at convictions is it's not so neat and tidy a lot of times. But most people, if you were to ask and you were to ask, why did dispensationalism take off?

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They would point to key speakers, key evangelical voices, especially that held the dispensational thoughts.

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They may very well point to the Schofield Reference Bible, which was famously dispensational. And the

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Schofield Reference Bible for quite some time within the U .S. became sort of the standard with with the rise of modern liberalism.

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Those who were actual Bible believing Christians, what we would consider today like conservative Christians or those who took the scripture literally even, you know, with with with brackets around that word literal.

25:59

They were the ones reading the Schofield Reference Bible. So it became kind of a litmus test or a shibboleth for who's actually taking the

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Bible seriously. If you had the Schofield Reference, you were probably good people. You probably believed what what the Bible confessed about creation and those sort of things.

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If you rejected the Schofield, you're probably one of those, you know, those browbeaten liberals who was who was denying the incarnation.

26:20

So that's one of the contributing factors. You look back to that, you say, well, that sounds really neat and tidy. And I don't doubt that played a huge role.

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I don't know if that was like the key contributing factor that really drove those things, but it's certainly interesting to look at some of those key features with the rise and fall of post -millennialism or its or its popularity.

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The one thing I typically hear and it's typically targeted post -millennial thought is that post -millennialism was grand right up until the

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World Wars. So the general conception is that it was it was popular with the Puritans. You had this coming to America, this land of promise and all the manifest destiny and all the sort of these grandiose visions of what

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God might accomplish through this new land that they were coming to. You had the awakenings that happened, but really that it came down to the

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World Wars and that the horrors of World War One and the trench warfare and the chemical weapons that were being used. And then that sort of repetitious horror of World War Two and atomic weapons and all of this horror sort of shook people out of their stupor with believing post -millennialism.

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That's one of those things, again, and I'm pointing these out to show like I don't really agree with those mile markers that much. I think they're compelling.

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I don't think they tell the whole story because with post -millennial thought were some shaken by the

27:38

World Wars and maybe abandoned their confession of post -millennialism. I'm sure that probably did that did happen.

27:44

And I'm sure there's there's many examples that we could point to. But in general, if you were to look back to the Puritans and you were to say,

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OK, where can we find some of the most eloquent or at least the most long winded and long, long versed expositions of post -millennialism, you could look to the

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Puritans, right? This is the Puritan paperback series. And, you know, some of the publishing publishing houses out of Grand Rapids have made these things very widely available.

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So we're reading the Puritans and we're recognizing, oh, they've got this this heartbeat of post -millennial hope.

28:12

They have an optimistic approach to things and especially with what God might accomplish in this world.

28:19

And that sounds real good as if they had things so keen and so neat. And then you read about their lives and it's like, oh, they had 17 children and 15 of them were dead by the age of four.

28:28

And then he loses his wife by the time she's 25. And then his house gets burnt down like these aren't people living in just easy times where where one might kick back one's feet and think,

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I think things are very easy. I'm going to munch a donut and assume God wins in some sort of post -millennial vision.

28:45

So I don't think it's really doing much justice to what that heartbeat was. The truly compelling presentations of eschatology, and I say this,

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I say this with all the views, even the ones that I firmly disagree with. The compelling ones to me are always the ones that are born from biblical exposition.

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Those that are born not from our looking outside and not from what the world looks like, but instead born from what we think that God is confessing he is truly doing in this world.

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I care very little. In fact, when it comes to my eschatology, I care nothing for what I read on the news.

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If 2024 is a dumpster fire and the world looks darker than we could have ever imagined in a few months, it's not going to shake my eschatological hope any more so than I think it has shaped

29:25

Paul's eschatological hope when he's in a prison cell with Silas and he's in the inner cell and he's in uncomfortable chains and he takes to singing because his hope for what

29:35

God is actually accomplishing is not dependent on how dark the walls are, how tight the chains are. So I think

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I think I think we do each other a little bit of a disservice when we assume that the winds and the waves of culture what determine true belief in Christians.

29:50

There's always Christians who are just kind of swept along by winds and waves. We know that from the New Testament warnings. Right. But for those of us who are serious and those who are of us who are trying to ground our faith in what

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God has confessed in his word and we recognize we falter and we recognize we fail. We also recognize God knows the true truth of things, even when our vision and our scope of things is quite limited in this world.

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That eschatological hope is something that's born from what God says and not from what the world around us looks like.

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When I think of some of that eschatological hope, one of my favorite stories is of Robert Louis Stevenson, which many, many grew up with him and are familiar with his works.

30:29

But as a child, he is famously sickly. And he's he's there in that that upper bedroom window.

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And he's looking out on the streets of London late at night, you know, by all accounts, in a place where he could could well have been despairing or could have been a poor hope and poor cheer.

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But he looks out his window and he sees the lamplighters about their trade, you know, down there on the streets, lighting the lamps at night.

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And he you know, in the way only somebody gifted by God with such such artistic language could say, he described it as those lamplighters punching holes in the darkness every time they would light a candle.

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That to me is what eschatology looks like. It's God punching holes in the darkness. And sometimes those holes look very small.

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After World War One, yes, the hope in this world and and in God accomplishing things, it might look very small, but but the hope is not in the size of the holes being punched.

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The whole the hope is that there is a lamplighter who will punch the holes that he has promised to and that that light is glorious and it is shining and the darkness has not overcome it, to to paraphrase from John a bit there.

31:33

So, yeah, that's kind of my overview of like where I see some of those events, why I think that the true eschatological hope is something that's much more deeper and much more grounded than those world events may indicate.

31:46

Yeah, so when you look at on millennialism and post -millennialism, we look at their actual beliefs.

31:56

Obviously, they were lumped together for a while, so they're they're fairly similar, but there's things that distinguish them.

32:02

So what are some of those major similarities and differences? Yeah, well, I mean, one of them is right and one of them is really wrong.

32:09

I mean, I think it's the major. No chuckle on that one, guys. Come on, you're in a safe place.

32:17

Are we all safe? Are we friends still? I'm I'm I'm Presbyterian, so I chuckle quietly. I'm totally stealing that.

32:26

That's gold. OK, so, yeah, some of the major differences. So I'm millennial, post -millennial. Both of them are expecting

32:34

Christ to return post -millennium. Right. So the millennial reign, which famously is in it's in Revelation chapter 20.

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It's mentioned six times there. I think it's six times, but it's in those like mainly in the first six verses there in Revelation 20.

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But really it's that section of one through 10 is where we get the the thousand year reign, the Kili 'ete that's mentioned.

32:56

But really, everybody's trying to grapple with that. And obviously that that's not just by itself. These things tie from the

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Old Testament. They tie from the New Testament. There's there's much to inform that passage. But all millennial and post -millennialism both says

33:08

Christ is going to return after that millennial reign, after that thousand year reign, Christ returns. And when he returns, he raises the dead.

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He judges the wicked. He vindicates the saints. All will stand before his throne. All will be raised from the grave.

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He will consummate the kingdom. He will bring in the eternal state. Everything comes when he returns.

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This is this is the event we look to. So both both of those views would agree there's not a secret rapture.

33:34

And when I say secret rapture, I mean a rapture that comes unbeknownst to some prior to Christ's return.

33:40

All millennialism and post -millennialism are both in agreement that Christ returns and that catching up of the church that we read about in the letter to the

33:48

Thessalonians. That's a catching up to meet him in the air, but that we return with him. In other words, it's a greeting in.

33:53

It's a welcoming in of our Savior. So all of those are similarities. Most millennials and post -millennials, if I can.

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And this is where it gets tricky, guys, because I'm going to use some broad brush strokes and probably offend somebody.

34:07

But most millennials and post -millennials would agree that Satan, in some form or fashion, is bound or restrained or defeated during this age.

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Most would agree that Satan is in some form or fashion defeated because of the work of Christ in the cross and resurrection.

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Satan now is defeated, yet his final and ultimate defeat is waiting for that time when Christ returns.

34:28

So again, Christ returns, he vindicates the saints, he judges the wicked, and he judges Satan himself and casts him into the lake of fire for all eternity.

34:37

The views also have some other nuances within post -millennialism. You find some that will look for that thousand year reign to begin in the future at some point.

34:47

Usually you'll hear that referred to as like a golden age post -millennialism. That's that's not very popular right now.

34:53

In fact, there's very few that are currently around and writing that would hold to that view. But you find it some with the

34:59

Puritans and some with those that have come before. But in general, most post -millennials, especially those today that are writing, would say, no, the millennium is begun at Christ's first coming.

35:08

It ends at his final coming. With all millennial authors in the same way, most of them would look for that millennium to begin when he comes and that millennium to end when he returns fully and finally.

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One of the big differences between post -millennialism and amillennialism is not the timing of the kingdom.

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It's the nature of the kingdom. So both of them agree that the kingdom comes or I should say came when

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Christ came. So Christ came. He set up his kingdom here on earth and that kingdom is continuing and he will consummate or finalize, complete his kingdom when he returns.

35:44

Amill and Postmill agree on that. One of the major distinctions between those two views is what is the nature of his kingdom?

35:51

And again, this is very broad brushstrokes, but most amillennials will make much of the kingdom being a spiritual reality.

35:59

Sometimes you'll hear some of them refer to it as almost purely a spiritual reality. It is something only heavenly.

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Sometimes it's more like, no, it's a heavenly reality, but it kind of spills down with its effects into this world. But in any case, they're agreeing that it is a spiritual kingdom.

36:14

Postmillennials would say, no, it is a spiritual and or excuse me, heavenly and earthly kingdom.

36:20

So they would point to not the fact that it is solely an earthly kingdom, but that it is both a heavenly and an earthly kingdom.

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So that, for example, postmillennial authors will often point to when Christ taught us to pray and he said to pray for his kingdom to come, his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Those sort of passages indicating that the kingdom is not something solely spiritual, but instead that it is this worldly as well as spiritual.

36:44

So that would be, I think, one of the major distinctions between the two views. There's other things that play in there.

36:50

There's there's issues of what's called preterism or partial preterism, which is sort of like how prophecies are fulfilled.

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And usually it's talking about the Olivet Discourse or the Book of Revelation. There's there's issues of the application of God's law.

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There's issues of typology and how to how to interpret prophetic discourse within scripture.

37:12

There's lots of nuances within the view still that you could walk through. But I think that's one of the major mile markers is just what exactly is the kingdom of God and where is it being established and expressed?

37:25

Speaking of on earth as is in heaven, Brother Nathan Anderson, we appreciate you, brother, and all the work that you're doing.

37:33

I just recently watched his new documentary, Honor the Sun, and I'm going to have to rewatch it again several times because there's there's so much good, deep information that I was not able to digest completely, completely the first time.

37:52

But there was a quote in there that I was hoping that you could elaborate on and maybe fill us in on what you think

38:01

Joel Webben was trying to say. His comment about Amil was that it's now, but not really.

38:09

And his comment on Postmale was now and not yet. What do you think

38:15

Joel was trying to get out there in those comments? Yeah. Yeah. So so Joel, Joel and Nathan, both both friends of our channel, too.

38:22

We've had both of them on in the past. So I've heard I've heard Joel use this before, and it's one of those catchy phrases that just it just rolls off the tongue.

38:33

Yeah. What do you what Joel's angling at? If I can try to speak for him on this, I think I'll I think I'll hopefully represent this well, is that he's saying that especially with the modern expressions of millennialism and postmillennialism, because, again, it's really important to kind of frame exactly what

38:49

I mean by Amil and Postmale, modern expressions, specifically modern Western expressions of Amil and Postmale, that Amil's are frequently expressing that the kingdom of God, they're frequently pushing back on the kingdom of God having this worldly consequences or effects now.

39:09

So a good and excuse me, I'll finish I'll finish this thought and then then I'll define what

39:14

I mean. He's saying, though, Postmale's are saying it is now, but not yet. Those things are actually happening now, but but not yet in the future.

39:23

So let me let me explain it with two examples and hopefully this kind of clears it up. But it's eschatology.

39:28

So this might just muddy the water more. So I'll just give it a shot. Number one, there's a dynamic that most of us agree on called the already and the not yet.

39:36

OK, so that phrase is often often attributed. Anyway, it's kind of a longstanding dynamic, even if the phrase is somewhat of recent usage.

39:47

But it's saying that there are things that are already happening that are not yet fulfilled. So if you're to think of just a really simple example,

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Christ tells you, well tells you, tells us believers that you have eternal life now, that that's a now promise.

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You believer, if you've never heard this and you're watching this channel, you believer have possessed eternal life right now.

40:09

Christ also says you will have eternal life when you're with him forever. That that's something that has not yet occurred as something that's in the future.

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So if you're to say, well, well, do I have eternal life now or will I have eternal life in the future? The answer is yes and yes.

40:22

You have it now, but it's not yet consummated, made full, made made whole in the way that it will be for eternity.

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So it's it's like you have this foretaste, you're already experiencing it. It's true and it's real, but it's not yet as it one day will be when we are glorified and we're with the

40:40

Lord. That's an important one in eschatology. There are things that are already occurring already here that are not yet consummated.

40:47

I keep using that word consummated. Usually they'll refer to it as something inaugurated, begun and consummated or completed.

40:54

So that's one dynamic. The second dynamic, though, this is just an example from scripture. I mentioned the defeat of Satan, the defeat of Satan, something

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I wrote on quite a bit and was published in print a few years, years back.

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But it was talking the book and the study that played into it was talking about the binding of the strong man.

41:16

So one of my contentions was, is that long before you get to the book of Revelation and particularly within the gospel narratives that Christ talks much of his defeat of Satan and that even if we were to only have the gospel narratives and the

41:31

New Testament epistles long again before you get to the book of Revelation, you should already have a conception. No matter how you kind of suss out the details, you should have the conception that Satan has actually been defeated in the work of Christ.

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He's actually been cast down and he's actually been bound and his goods and house are being plundered.

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So that's that's the argument. Here's the way postmillennials and amillennials would differ on that passage.

41:55

And I think this is what Joel Webben was getting to with that quote that you brought up a minute ago, is that many amillennials,

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I'm going to try to use real careful language, many amillennials would say, yes, Satan is bound, but not really.

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He's bound, but you're not actually going to see anything different. So in other words, Christ came, he bound him.

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And that's a glorious, true spiritual reality that will have consequences. But if you were to look around in this world, that's not actually going to have a whole lot to do with what happens here in this world.

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It's a spiritual reality that actually have a whole lot to do with with how it touches down, down here. The postmillennial would answer quite differently.

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The postmillennial would answer, no, no, no. If Satan is bound, it will have heavenly consequences, but it will also have earthly consequences.

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Things will look a bit different down here. Things will play out a bit different down here. With all the walking through what that means and with all of the the details that we have to work out on that, that it is a that it is a this worldly reality.

42:53

I think that's what Joel was getting to when he talked about amill now, but not really. And postmill now, but not yet, is one of the complaints against some modern amillennial scholarship is that the the glorious already realities of what

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Christ has accomplished don't seem to have a whole lot of this worldly consequences. In other words, what

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Christ said he did seems to have glorious heavenly consequences, but not much to do with what's happening down here.

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That's one of the pushbacks against a lot of the modern amillennial scholarship. And there's a lot that goes into that, obviously.

43:26

But that would be the broad brushstrokes of it. Gotcha. Oh, and don't worry about using the word consummation, because it's reminded me every time that you use it, it reminded me what a good

43:35

Ken Hamite I am and the seven C's of history. So I'm thinking about consummation and all his seven

43:43

C's of history every time you said that word. So awesome. Sorry, Dan, I didn't know you're good.

43:51

Ken Ham gets gets gets references every once in a while. It'll be all right. Very good.

43:58

So but both of these positions, the Amillennial and Postmillennial believe in a victorious second coming of Christ.

44:04

Right? Right. So does that look the same for them or are there differences even in the second coming?

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What does that look like? Or are they pretty much on board with each other at that point? It has less to do,

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I think, with his coming than what he comes back to. So both Postmillennial and Amillennial would agree

44:23

Christ is coming. He will be victorious. He will conquer all his enemies. I think

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I think the whole question is, what does he return to and how many enemies is he going to be conquering when he returns? Again, broad brushstrokes.

44:36

I'm just going to stop saying that, by the way, just assume everything I say from here on out is broad brushstrokes. I should have said that at the beginning and got done with all the the nuancing.

44:44

Amillennial scholars will say the world's going to get worse and worse and worse. Things are going to look quite grim there toward the end.

44:50

Christ is going to return. He's going to return victoriously. But there's there's going to be a lot of enemies running around for him to to crush.

44:56

There's going to be a lot of evil for him to wipe out. Not that that's a challenge for Christ or anything, but you understand what

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I mean. There's going to be there's going to be quite a bit of evil that he will crush when he returns. Postmillennial scholarship would say, no, when he returns, he's actually going to find far more.

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I say he's going to find he will return to a victorious church in this in this world.

45:16

There will be many Christians, if not most Christians. Some some Postmillennial scholars have even gone so far as to say there will be all

45:23

Christians, although that's a real, real minority position. Most most Postmillennial scholars would say, no, we're going to find quite a bit of Christians.

45:30

That may take quite a while or it may take quite a magnificent work of God to accomplish. But when Christ returns, he returns to a

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Christianized world in general. In other words, that the gospel influence is going to be predominant and not a minority.

45:44

So I would say I think that's that's the the better way to look at it with with Christ return is is what does he return to and what does the world look like upon his return?

45:52

More so than the nature of the return. Sure. That's something mostly answers the next question, especially the what does it look like five minutes before Christ's return?

46:03

So you basically answer that question. Does it look the same for both on on Postmill five minutes after his return?

46:12

Five minutes after his return. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. For most all mill and Postmill, yes.

46:21

There again, because a couple of a couple of strange examples are popping in my head.

46:28

Most all mill and Postmill will agree five minutes after his return. It looks the same and it looks glorious. And we're we're united with the

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Lord. The five minutes before gets a little tricky because typically most all mill and Postmills will agree there is a releasing of Satan.

46:43

There is, you know, again, this is looking to Revelation chapter 20. There seems to be a future release of Satan.

46:49

I'm one that holds to that view that Satan is released for a short time. He gathers up a rebellion against Christ and that is when

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Christ returns and crushes that rebellion. Sometimes that's referred to as the little rebellion. Sometimes it's referred to as the great apostasy.

47:03

There's a lot of different names for it, but it's just a releasing of Satan for a quick time. And he makes a rebellion, but it's crushed in short form by Christ.

47:12

Some some all mill and Postmill would disagree on that and say, no, they don't actually see that. We just did an interview with a

47:18

B .B. Warfield scholar who was kind of contending that from B .B. Warfield's writings. But most would agree on that.

47:25

I think the difference there is, again, it's it's what does that look like for most all millennials? That rebellion of Satan looks like a global revolt of already pagan nations.

47:35

For the postmillennial, that looks like typically a limited revolt of only a rebellious few that arise right at the end to an otherwise

47:43

Christianized, mostly Christianized world. But that's where the five minutes before kind of comes in.

47:52

Dan, could I give a preface to this next question, if you don't mind? And the reason why I ask it.

47:59

Yeah, man, run. Well, the reason why I ask it is and the question is, when was the

48:06

Kingdom of Christ inaugurated? And when I watched your video, you touched on a little bit on all the postmillennial a year or so ago when you did your video.

48:17

But in my studies and listening to different people and I don't think that I've ever heard anybody touch on this as this point.

48:25

But I mean, you have Christ at the beginning of the Gospels saying, you know, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And then you have maybe a beginning point at at the crucifixion, the defeat of Satan and the resurrection.

48:40

And then you have a point that could be the beginning or inauguration at the

48:45

Ascension. And then you have this overlap of the Old and New Testament period, intertestamental period.

48:53

And then you have 70 A .D. when some say that's the inauguration. Do you have an opinion on that?

49:00

Does it matter or is it just I know you kind of referenced earlier in this podcast that and you kind of you broad brushstroke and said his first coming and his first coming was the inauguration of the kingdom.

49:15

Can we nail it down to one of those points in history or is it just his first coming?

49:23

So my contention, the short answer, my contention is I made the argument again in the

49:30

Binding of Satan book that it is it is the entirety of his earthly work in the first coming. And I suss out in there.

49:38

It's just simply because you get language that seems to indicate all of those being formational events that found the kingdom, whether it's whether it's his incarnation, his death, burial and resurrection or his ascension to the throne.

49:52

You know, many, many today have have retrieved Psalm 110 and made much of the fact that Psalm 110 is, you know, one of the most quoted

50:00

Old Testament passages in the New Testament. It speaks of Christ's enemies being made a footstool under his feet that this is victorious language.

50:09

But you have to grapple with the language that's used in the gospel accounts, which is like, you know, you just loosely quoted from Mark 115, right?

50:16

The kingdom of God is at hand. But then we also recognize that, you know, we even do this, you know, with the kids in the catechism questions here at our church.

50:24

When he ascended on high, he was seated at the right hand of the father to reign. So you have you have language that sort of makes much of all of those formative events to the point where I felt

50:35

I felt discomfort placing all the emphasis on one over the other. And I've said, no, it seems to be the entirety of his work is his incarnation through his ascension was the inauguration of the kingdom because the kingdom is of Christ.

50:48

So it is it's just indelibly tied to his person. There's been some there's been some good, good work on that, by the way, if anybody is interested in looking further in that, many, many would point you to Herman Ritter.

51:04

Boss wrote one of the foundational pieces on that. There's been some recent short studies in biblical theology that have dealt with kingdom.

51:11

I think Crossway just recently recently released one. But the kingdom is a huge, huge theme in all of biblical theology, but especially in eschatology.

51:21

So it's worth grappling with. Can can you explain for us the difference in position between those who view a literal thousand year reign in a figurative thousand year reign between these positions?

51:38

Yes. So when you get to the chapter in Revelation, which this this generally swirls around,

51:49

John refers to Achillea, which is just, you know, a thousand years and you have to grapple with with symbolism and typology and figurative versus literalistic use of language all throughout the revelation.

52:04

But that's not the only time a thousand years occurs and it occurs figuratively or at least we could say non literalistically before, you know, one of the the

52:13

I guess sort of social media responses to this is that the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

52:20

Old Testament reference. Right. But it just shows that a thousand years or a thousand in general can can be used non literalistically.

52:28

I personally sort of have an issue with the language being used there. And I'm using the word literalistic because if you were to think of what is literal literal and this isn't to try to be like pedantic or like overly precise, but what's most important when you read things like the revelation is what is the natural reading of that text?

52:47

If we use words like literal versus figurative, I think most of us would say, well, I want the literal meaning.

52:53

But if we use the literalistic meaning, which would just be stripped of any sort of symbolism or metaphor, it is what is what is what the words are on the paper.

53:05

We would we would be encountering things like the seven spirits before the throne of God or any number of passages within the revelation that when we read those, we say,

53:13

OK, seven, you know, a number of completeness, the number of God, the seven spirits before the throne of God representing most would agree the

53:20

Holy Spirit emanating forth from the throne. That's not a non literal reading. That's the natural reading,

53:26

I would say, of that text. It's in keeping with the genre of revelation being an apocalyptic sort of genre of book.

53:35

Now, there's other nuances in there. It's got epistolary features and prophetic features, but apocalyptic, at least in genre, the natural reading is really important.

53:44

We know this when we read Old Testament apocalyptic, when you read Ezekiel, when you read

53:50

Daniel's visions, it's not not literal to read those in keeping with the style in which the author is writing them.

53:57

That is the natural reading of the text, which hopefully is the truest reading of what scripture is conveying to us.

54:03

So when you encounter those, you know, the wheels and Ezekiel and there's eyeballs and there's fur flying out everywhere and you're thinking, what's going on here?

54:10

It's not not literal to say what is this communicating about those angelic beings beyond just some some wheels spinning in the heavens.

54:19

So when you come to the thousand years, this is a really roundabout way of answering. But I hope that might be helpful in the way

54:25

I'm answering this with a thousand years. Then the difference is when we are told that that Christ will reign for a thousand years or rather that his kingdom will last for a thousand years, is that referring to a literal thousand year stretch in the way we would measure that thousand years?

54:42

Or is it referring to a very lengthy and completed time in the same way as a thousand years is used in other passages throughout scripture that give us this conception, much like the seven spirits before the throne, give us this conception of what it's communicating?

54:58

I would argue for that reading. I think the natural reading is to take that thousand and take it as a very long period, but a complete period, one with a definite ending that's being communicated there in scripture.

55:09

That hasn't been the case, by the way, for either Amil or Post Mill scholars on both sides have disagreed over whether to take that as an actual thousand years or whether to take that as a.

55:22

Symbolic number for a completed time period, those that you referenced before that that are post mill that hold to the golden age, would they hold to a more literal thousand years instead of a figurative thousand years?

55:38

Many of them, yeah. Yep. OK, what about the literal versus spiritual reign of Christ?

55:47

Yeah, the literal verse spiritual reign of Christ. When we think of Christ reigning.

55:55

Because, again, the words are tricky, aren't they? Literal verse, verse spiritual. We understand that Christ is not reigning insofar as he's not physically walking on the earth, exercising dominion as he did in the

56:10

Gospels when he walked on this earth. He was he was literally walking and talking.

56:16

We know that there will be a day in which Christ does descend and he is with us forever and he will be walking and on this earth.

56:24

So there's there's that literal component. But to speak of a spiritual reign of Christ, everyone agrees that Christ, I say everyone, most everyone agrees that Christ is reigning spiritually.

56:34

I think the question is, does his spiritual reign extend to this world? Is Christ reigning essentially only in the heavens or is

56:43

Christ reigning in heaven and on earth? And for this, again, my plea to the listener would be not not what does it seem like if our conception of this is as you know, to look outside and to say, you know, things look quite dark.

57:00

I just saw Oakland replaced their traffic lights with stop signs like things are getting weird. This is the Christ's reign is clearly a spiritual thing.

57:07

We know it will come to earth. But, you know, Oakland doesn't have stoplights anymore. This can't be an actual this worldly reign.

57:14

That's never been that's never been the responsible conduct for the Christian. Imagine you as a North Korean Christian.

57:19

You're looking outside after decades of persecution, only knowing the boot heel of an oppressive government that quelches

57:26

Christian the Christian faith. Your eschatological hope can't come from what it looks like outside.

57:32

That's not the true truth of what God's accomplishing in the world again. So if you're to think of the reign of Christ, then the question is, how does

57:38

Christ say he reigns? When Christ describes his reign, what sort of reign does he describe?

57:44

We're not we're not saying he's some sort of militaristic earthly victor that's going to march around like those are crass.

57:50

Those are crass comparisons. We're saying, does he say that his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven?

57:56

My argument would be that absolutely. Christ says that his rule and reign is not secluded to a corner of our heart, that his although it definitely is in our hearts,

58:06

Ephesians chapter three, but it's not only there. His rule and reign is not only in the heavenly places, although, again, it most certainly is there as well.

58:14

Colossians one, but instead that his reign is heavenly and earthly and that he says he's exercising dominion over all that he has created.

58:24

I think I think this pairs really well. If somebody is thinking like, oh, this this this isn't the way I've heard the reign of Christ.

58:30

Christ came to undo what Adam failed to do. He's called the second Adam. This is this is a very common biblical reference in the

58:37

New Testament is that he is the second Adam, not not that he is just a duplicate Adam. He's the true and greater

58:43

Adam. He's come to do what Adam failed to do, but on a much grander scale. So what was Adam given charge of?

58:49

Adam was given spiritual responsibilities. He was to worship God. He was to lead his family. And ostensibly, if he had not fallen all of the world in worship of God, he had a spiritual component to his reign.

58:59

But he was given dominion over the things here have dominion and exercise. It was part of God's command to him.

59:06

We get a very similar command in the New Testament and the Great Commission when we're told to go into the world and disciple all the nations.

59:11

This is a very similar, almost reiteration of what was given to Adam, but escalated.

59:18

And the question is, why was it escalated? Because Christ has come to undo what Adam failed in.

59:24

He has come to correctly follow the law in all the ways that Adam failed to. He's come to correctly atone for the sins of his people that Adam plunged us all into sin and death because of Romans chapter five.

59:35

He's come to undo what Adam did and to correctly exercise that rule and reign on the scale that Adam could have never foreseen because Christ is the

59:43

God man, the second person of our triune God who has come to do this thing. So what kind of reign does that look like then?

59:49

And I would say, you know, with all humility, that seems like a reign that is over all things in heaven and on earth and not secluded to one or the other.

59:59

Sure. Robert, we're coming up on an hour, you want to skip to the good one at the end?

01:00:07

I was thank you for asking that, because I wanted to ask Josh that I want to be respectful of your time as it was with everyone.

01:00:16

Do you want to finish out the question? Let us know what your time frame is or. I'm good, brother.

01:00:21

OK, all right. I'm OK with that. All right. So where does that leave us, Robert? I don't understand what you're saying.

01:00:29

So we so we're on the subject of ages, so we'll combine the next two questions together.

01:00:37

Does the does the understanding of ages when the Bible talks about the different ages, does that have a bearing on eschatology?

01:00:47

And then the second question related to ages, I won't

01:00:52

I won't divulge because then Dan and I refer to this podcast as the one we shall not mention.

01:01:00

But I heard this concept from from that podcast, the the concept of two ages and the age of Adam and the age of Christ.

01:01:10

Have you ever heard of that? And what are your thoughts on that? So so tell us what you think about ages and how that relates to eschatology.

01:01:17

Yeah. So so ages that this is one of the I'm glad we saved the time for this because this is one of the ones that that's fascinated me since I ran into this in seminary.

01:01:28

I'll say on the front end, I've heard of the age of Adam and the age of Christ. I'm not super conversant in that.

01:01:34

I'm aware of it. And I'll leave it there. But the typical way

01:01:39

I think most people that listen to your show might have heard the two age conception is one of two ways.

01:01:45

Number one, there is the one of the more popular views right now within post millennial thought. You'll hear this if you listen to Doug Wilson or or some of the other ones kind of coming out of out of that sphere would be of a

01:01:56

Jewish age and a Gentile age. Doug didn't come up with this, but but he's one of the ones that I think a lot of people have run into this through.

01:02:03

So that would be to look to a Jewish age, which, again, kind of looking to 70

01:02:08

AD is one of those huge mile markers transitioning over into a Gentile age. It's it's it's a two age view.

01:02:15

And so far as you have two ages, there's there's an overlap of those ages. And so far as that Jewish age runs through to 70

01:02:22

AD. But the Gentile age has already begun in Christ's work, you know, in the 30 ish, the 30 ish mile marker.

01:02:29

So you've got like a 40 year overlap of those two ages where one is giving way into the other. I'm more comfortable with a view that's usually more associated with amillennialism than with postmillennialism, although it's compatible with both.

01:02:43

But it's the two age view of this age and the age to come. So if if if you've ever studied your hardest,

01:02:49

Voss was one of the ones that I think really popularized this in a book called The Pauline Eschatology.

01:02:55

But it's essentially just the view that scripture uses the language of this age and the age to come quite frequently.

01:03:01

There is this age. This age is usually associated with things like sin and death. And then there's the age to come, which is associated with things like life and blessing, communion with God, those sort of things.

01:03:13

The Jewish conception, if you look to like the Old Testament writings, especially some of those those writings we refer to as Second Temple Judaism and pseudepigraphical writings, they had a very flat trajectory.

01:03:22

It was two ages like this and they had a clear division between the two. And that division was when the Messiah came.

01:03:28

I think the way that the Bible refers to it is a little more of an overlap, because when we look to scripture, we have this age which stretches through from the

01:03:36

Old Testament into the new, and that's the age of sin and death. We know these things. Paul talks about these things, right? This is the groaning of our flesh, the groaning of creation.

01:03:44

But then you also get the age to come and these blessings that are associated with the final state, these things have already begun.

01:03:49

Eternal life, union with Christ, the new creation, you're you're called new creations that God has made for a new creation that that's age to come sort of language, but it's begun now.

01:04:01

And I think what scripture presents is sort of an overlapping of those two ages in which we live.

01:04:07

I'm sympathetic to the view that would kind of push that back to 70 AD. I think there's a lot to say there, but I think there's a lot to say for the overlapping that we experience in our lives.

01:04:17

And I think a lot of the tension that Christians experience is that we are redeemed and as good as glorified, according to Paul in Ephesians chapter one.

01:04:25

And yet we still have that old man that Paul talked about sort of hanging on to us. We feel the draw of our flesh. We see the decay of our bodies.

01:04:32

And yet we know even now we are being made new creations to inhabit an eternal kingdom with Christ. So that's that's sort of the general overview of the two age model.

01:04:42

And I think I think it does a really, really helpful job if you're thinking to yourself or if somebody is watching this and thinking to themselves, you know, what does this what does this matter for me?

01:04:49

I'm not a scholar. I don't care about Gerardus Voss. It helps you understand your place again in that big story, that big story that God is writing.

01:04:58

What are these new blessings? And whether you adopt the two age model in the way I've just described or not, I think it's good to grapple with the fact that the things of the end, they've begun now and there's still those dragging on things of the old creation.

01:05:10

We're told creation itself is groaning with expectation. And yet there's a new thing that's already begun.

01:05:16

And that's what to age is really getting at is explaining that. If I could just ask a follow up question.

01:05:22

So most of us who primarily grew up with the dispensational premill view, what we are most familiar with when it comes to the ages is we'll hear part of when you have the diagrams and the charts and the whiteboards and all that stuff and you're and you're going through the timetable of history and you have the gap, you often hear the word church age.

01:05:46

So do the do the Amil and Postmill, how do they relate to that concept of the dispensational premill church age?

01:05:55

Yeah. If the terms are used, it's very different. So and I'm inwardly cracking up a bit that you mentioned charts and graphs because we can't talk about this much love to our dispensational friends.

01:06:07

You can't talk about it without talking about some charts and graphs at some point. But yeah, typically what dispensationalism is referring to with the church age is a parenthetical dispensation, which by that I mean a parentheses, something that begins and ends within God's plan.

01:06:25

Like this is not something that's going to be eternal. It's something that happens for a time. And that's what they're referring to with the church age.

01:06:31

If you hear somebody from Amillennial or Postmillennial camps talk about a church age, that's not what they're referring to.

01:06:37

They're referring to that second age that we just described, something that has begun, whether they refer to as church age,

01:06:42

Gentile age, the age to come, whatever that is. They're talking about something that began with Christ that stretches on into eternity.

01:06:48

So very different. But yeah, that's a good point, because you might hear those terms and become confused. It's good clarity.

01:06:55

Yeah, thank you, Robert. I don't know what your question means. Can you ask the next one?

01:07:03

That is not surprising, although I don't think that we touched on this when it comes to the difference between Amillennial and Postmillennial.

01:07:17

I think we've kind of hinted at it, but there's one view that believes that there's going to be a rise of persecution and then there's a rise in triumph.

01:07:26

You've used different language, but can you clarify which one holds to which view and what they mean by that?

01:07:33

Yes. So in general, Amillennialism would say that there's going to be a progressive increase in persecution worldwide for Christians until such time as Christ returns.

01:07:45

And when we make those little bar graphs, we all understand that's not a straight line. That doesn't mean persecution is just going to consistently go up.

01:07:52

There's good times and bad times, right? It's kind of a little jagged stock market type graph. But still, there's increasing persecution until such time as Christ returns.

01:08:00

That's most Amillennials. Postmillennials would say, no, it's actually a time of victory. This is a time in which the victory of the gospel is actually winning more souls and more souls.

01:08:11

And there's becoming more Christian influence in this world until such time as Christ returns. What I want to emphasize with both of those is on the

01:08:19

Amillennial side, they're not saying the church is necessarily ineffective insofar as like the church is just not doing anything.

01:08:27

We're just huddled up. I think it's a little bit of a caricature. You can find some guys that sound a bit like that, but that's not most

01:08:33

Amillennials. They're saying, no, the church is still fighting strong, as Christ has called us to, and yet they're going to be a persecuted minority.

01:08:41

On the same side with the postmillennials, I have yet to find a postmillennial author who would say that there is no persecution, that we're simply just going to not have that anymore.

01:08:50

I know people have described postmillennialism as just sort of this nursery conception of we're just going to skip into the eternal state and nobody's going to bother us along the way.

01:09:04

That's simply not true. And guys like Greg Bonson would be one that I would point to.

01:09:09

Greg Bonson made much of this. Marcellus Kick, who wrote An Eschatology of Victory, he talks much of that.

01:09:14

Ken Gentry, who just published a dual set on Revelation, has written much about this. But yeah, that would be the general conception.

01:09:22

I think one of the big arguments comes in when you get the descriptions of the early church and you're told that there will be persecution in this world and we're told that the world will hate you.

01:09:31

We know there's certain truths. I think some of the question comes down to, are we told in the

01:09:37

New Testament that that minority status of Christians will persist? Or is this encouragement given to the early church, who is then asked to go out and to spread the gospel and to expect to see souls won and to expect to see the nation's discipled?

01:09:53

That might be a little bit too much to bite off for tonight since we're already a little bit over on time. But I think that that's a huge one to consider is when you read those

01:09:59

New Testament admonitions, we all agree persecution will be there. There will be sin in this world until such time as Christ returns.

01:10:07

But are we to expect that that minority status of Christians, that persecuted minority status must continue, must continue until such time as Christ returns?

01:10:17

Or is that something given to the early church? Yeah, well, and you have to take into consideration, too, the fact that there was some application for them and then there was, you know, future applications.

01:10:28

So they were they were told to when you see this coming, flee. So they were to expect immediate persecution of Jerusalem.

01:10:35

Right. And then there's this idea of what's going to happen after 70 AD and what to look forward to.

01:10:41

So there's all those things to take into consideration. Yeah. Do you know where I was going, Dan, with the next question?

01:10:49

I really don't know you're going somewhere. And I got the last one when

01:10:54

I heard you ask it the way that you did, but I did not know it as written. So this is a question that I asked you,

01:11:03

Josh, when I reached out to you. I have personally observed some flipping where I've seen some folks who who hold maybe the post -meal position and now they are on meal.

01:11:17

And you say that you've seen some of that as well in your estimation, your opinion. And maybe you've not even formulated a thought why this is taking place.

01:11:25

But if you have, what is your what are your thoughts on why that may be taking place? Yeah, my my thought and hope and and this is one of those where I have to be real careful that I'm not just analyzing things from the circles that we run in.

01:11:43

We I mean, we have a we have a podcast called Eschatology Matters. We talk about eschatology quite frequently and with people that like to talk about it.

01:11:50

So so I know that there's a little bit of myopic kind of tunnel vision going on there. But at the same time, it seems that there's been a reinvigoration of eschatological thought.

01:12:01

There's a lot of Christians digging into eschatology, maybe just examining their views and remaining unchanged, but still examining and challenging those views that weren't previously.

01:12:11

There's been a lot of scholarship in eschatology. I mean, the amount of on my bookshelf, the amount of solid eschatological works, even ones

01:12:19

I disagree with, but still that do a solid job of presenting their viewpoint. We've been really blessed with that over the last couple of decades in a way that just wasn't wasn't true previously.

01:12:28

So I think a lot of that, not to mention the influence of media, the availability of this stuff that I can go on apps and and things on my phone and pull up just countless resources that would have been unavailable.

01:12:41

I think there's been a lot of burgeoning eschatological thought. And so when you get that, you have a whole lot of people.

01:12:47

I mean, I know I know ministers who have been faithfully serving in God's church for decades.

01:12:52

And when you ask them, hey, you know, tell me about your convictions with eschatology. Their general answer is like, look, this is what

01:12:58

I was trained in seminary. And I really haven't had time to really dig into these matters that happens with a lot of Christians.

01:13:04

Right. And again, that's not from a sinful place necessarily. It's just that those were unexamined beliefs for a lot of Christians.

01:13:11

And I think you got a lot of Christians right now that are examining those beliefs and shifting around a little bit and having a little bit of of sifting within that.

01:13:18

One of one of our hopes has been and I hope this isn't too grandiose a hope, but I think this is the sort of direction we should be heading in with anything within Christendom.

01:13:26

We were hoping for a sort of nice moment within eschatology. When you look to those phases within the church, there was times at which we really bit off some some key doctrinal issues and made a lot of hay with them and had a lot of consensus.

01:13:40

There were still outliers, but there was a lot of consensus within those things. You say it with soteriology and in the first couple of centuries of the church, they're grappling with who is

01:13:47

Christ. But then you work on down through the church ages and there's battles over ecclesiology. There's the there's the

01:13:53

Reformation and all of the light that came through it. There's times in which the church can gain clarity, even when there's still discussions and ongoing disagreements.

01:14:01

There is a unification that didn't previously exist. One of our hopes is that with this reinvigoration of eschatology, we would like to see that within the

01:14:10

Christian church, not unanimity. I think that's that's sort of a pipe dream in a fallen world, but still a cohesion and a unification that we didn't enjoy previously.

01:14:20

That would be our hope out of all this. Yeah. So a big part of doing eschatology, obviously, is reading the scriptures.

01:14:32

With that comes hermeneutics and different interpretation of texts and whatnot.

01:14:42

Obviously, one of the major interpretative methods for looking at passages of prophecy and end times things is the preterist, partial preterist interpretation of the scriptures.

01:14:55

So inside of that camp, if one were to take, say,

01:15:02

Matthew 24 and 25, the Olivet Discourse and say the last two chapters of Revelation and believe that those were fulfilled completely, entirely in the past, is there still biblical evidence to support a second coming and a bodily resurrection?

01:15:22

Yeah, there's a lot there. So swirl around till you find whatever you want. I'll swim till I find an island that I can land on.

01:15:31

I do that frequently. No, this is this is an important question. We've grappled with full preterism on our channel.

01:15:42

Full preterism just being the belief that essentially that there is no bodily return of Christ, there's no bodily resurrection of the dead, and there's no future final judgment that is yet to come.

01:15:56

That would fall into the camp of, in my opinion, heresy. That's denying one of the core Orthodox truths of our faith.

01:16:03

But when you look to when you look to how Christians grapple with this sort of thing and you would look to the

01:16:09

Olivet Discourse and Revelation 20, Christians must confess a hope in a future bodily return of Christ.

01:16:17

This is this is core to our to our faith that Christ will return. He will vindicate the saints.

01:16:22

I think you get that even if you have a preterist understanding, if I don't want to say a full preterist understanding, but if you have a preterist understanding of Matthew 24 and 25, the whole of the

01:16:33

Olivet Discourse all the way down to I think it's like verse, what is it, 35 or 36 there in chapter 25.

01:16:39

You've got that. And you also see it in Revelation right up until, let's say, the last three chapters or even those might be debatable for you.

01:16:48

You still have other biblical evidence that would point to a future return of Christ. My opinion as a partial preterist is that that's a little bit weakened.

01:16:56

So when I look at Matthew 24, I see a lot of it fulfilled. I see a little bit of it pointing towards something future.

01:17:02

When you look to Revelation 20, again, I'm a partial preterist on that. I see some of it having been fulfilled.

01:17:08

I see some of it yet to come. I think there's a lot to be said for that. If people, by the way, are watching this, one of the best books

01:17:14

I think that's walked through this is Marcellus Kick. He has a book called Eschatology of Victory.

01:17:19

He's writing from a post -millennial perspective, a pretty moderate post -millennial perspective. And he looks at those two passages, the

01:17:26

Olivet Discourse and Revelation chapter 20, and just walks through what that looks like. But if somebody's watching this and they're wondering, well, hey, there you go.

01:17:35

That's a good one with dog ears on it. So you've read it. Good for you, man.

01:17:40

Many times. There you go. Yeah, I think I think one of the things that people really wrestle with with these passages is the language that's used.

01:17:49

You know, how can you read the Olivet Discourse? And it's talking about the heavens shaking and things falling out of the sky and the earth quaking.

01:17:56

Like, how can you how can you read that and say that's not pointing toward the second coming without going down a kind of partial preterist rabbit trail?

01:18:05

I would just say you see a lot of that language already in scripture. So one of the ones we're going to be referring to on Sunday here, just because it happens to fall into our our preaching plan, working expositionally through through Ephesians, is we're going to be tying

01:18:17

Joel chapter two to Acts chapter two. So if you read Joel chapter two, it's like verses,

01:18:23

I think, twenty twenty eight through thirty two in Joel two. It talks about earth shaking cosmic events, something that if you just read that and had no context for it, you'd think, oh, this must be the second coming.

01:18:34

Well, then you get to Acts chapter two. Peter quotes from Joel two and says this is being fulfilled in your presence through the pouring out of the

01:18:40

Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It's here now. That's one of those passages that I think should help

01:18:46

Christians understand how can we talk about such cosmic language referring to something cosmically shaking and yet something that's actually occurred in time and space?

01:18:56

And that's what we're grappling with, with all of that discourse in Revelation 20. But yeah, my short answer on that is, yes, you still can get there from from elsewhere in scripture.

01:19:04

I am sympathetic as a partial preterist to that, to saying, yeah, I get why those look weakened if you sacrifice the entirety of those two passages.

01:19:14

Got you. Well, we made it to the end and we appreciate you so much, Josh, for being with us and having this conversation and what you're doing, and we hope to remain brothers and friends throughout our time here as we as we work forward and toward the kingdom of Christ.

01:19:32

But as you brought up earlier in the podcast, you thought you talked about the gospel and folks preaching the gospel to each other.

01:19:40

Well, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have victory here if it were not for Christ and his gospel.

01:19:49

And we wouldn't have a hope of victory if it wasn't for Christ and his gospel.

01:19:54

So we we try to make it a habit every podcast to share the gospel.

01:20:01

And we would like for you to share the gospel with us and to our audience before we leave.

01:20:07

Absolutely. I'd be I'd be pleased to. And I appreciate you guys having me on. Thankful for your for your friendship and for for working through these topics.

01:20:15

This is it's it's deep waters. It's challenging waters for all of us, but it's encouraging waters and it's it's it's hopefully hope giving waters.

01:20:23

When I'm when I was thinking about the gospel just now, I'm preaching through Ephesians chapter one.

01:20:29

I think I referred to that a minute ago. But so that's kind of where my mind is going right now. So one of the one of the beautiful things that Paul does in Ephesians, he does it in this breathless fashion.

01:20:39

And when you read the Greek, he's not even throwing in periods. He's just it's almost like he can't stop himself in these sentences that just drag on and on with all of this weight and depth to what

01:20:49

God has done when he presents the gospel. He starts in creation past or rather, I should say, an eternity past before creation.

01:20:56

He says that there was a God who was good and perfect, who from eternity past predestined to save a people to himself, knowing that he would create all things, needing nothing and yet choosing to create a creation for himself, that he saw that there would be a need because of our sin, because of our plunging ourselves into sin and destruction, there would be a need for him to send a savior.

01:21:19

So before he had ever formed all the things that were before he had formed a people to himself, stamped us with his image, given us dominion over his creation, had long suffering patients when we rejected him and fell into sin, even extending the promise of a coming savior to us and then all down through the law and the prophets pleading with the people unto himself.

01:21:39

Even before any of those things happened, he committed to send his son, the second person of our triune

01:21:46

God, Jesus Christ, would come in the flesh into space and time that he'd be born of low estate, that he'd be born to a virgin, that he would live a perfect law abiding life, that he would die a perfect sin atoning death on behalf of all of his people, and that he would burst forth from the grave because no grave could hold him and even then rise victoriously into heaven, be seated at the right hand of the father as Lord and savior, as king of kings, and that one day his glorious promises,

01:22:17

I will never leave you for nor forsake you. But one day I will return and call all of my people unto myself and where I am, you will be with me also.

01:22:25

That's that's the promise of the gospel. And the reason I'm emphasizing the Christ part of it is the call of the gospel is that we might repent and believe in this message, that we are our message to the world is turn to Christ and in him find a perfect savior.

01:22:41

But the gospel is really less about that call and far more about who Christ is and what he has done for us.

01:22:48

The gospel is all about what Christ has done and what his work is on our behalf.

01:22:54

So that would be that would be the gospel. If somebody is listening to this channel and you're a Christian, preach this gospel to yourself daily.

01:23:01

But if you're not a Christian, I think you guys would echo my plea. Turn to Christ, turn to him and see not your own sins, but see what he has done because he is good and because he is merciful that you might find in him a perfect savior.

01:23:17

Amen, and praise the Lord. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, everybody, for watching. We really appreciate you.

01:23:22

We appreciate your support and watching the Truth and Love podcast. And remember, as always, that Jesus is

01:23:27

King. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ.