85. Your Eschatology Matters (End-Times Series Part 34)

The Mission of the Podcast and Why Eschatology Matters

Hello everyone and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 85, your eschatology matters. If you've been following along with our more recent episodes, then you will know that we've been in a mini series in the book of Acts, looking at all of the eschatological passages that are contained within.

It's also a part of the larger macro series on the end times where we began in the book of Malachi and we crossed the intertestamental gap. Then we looked at the eschatology of John the Baptist, the eschatology of Jesus.

We examined critical texts in the book of Matthew as well as the tremendous eschatological mountain that is the Olivet discourse. And then today is our 34th episode that has been dealing with eschatology.

Now with that, you may be wondering out of 84, sorry, 85 today, total episodes of the Why would we devote 34 of them to eschatology? Well, that question is easily answered because your eschatology will dictate the way that you engage with culture.

To say that differently, what you believe about the destination of human history will shape your thoughts about its direction. If you believe that the world is basically barreling over a cliff's edge, going from bad to worse, ready to implode at a moment's notice, then you will either try to save as many people as you can before the collapse, or you will huddle away in your bunker until the commander returns to rescue you.

You will not be interested in fighting any losing battles. You will not put any energy and effort into preserving anything or building anything because what moron would waste their time arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship?

No. If that is the destination that we are all heading to in the eschaton, then you will aim all of your efforts at making as many converts as you possibly can before the imminent rapture overtakes us, and you will leave the time-consuming things like making disciples and building the next Christendom to fall by the wayside.

And that would be actually the right approach if the world were moments away from catastrophe. But what if on the other hand, you believe that history is the story of great victory. It's his story of great victory, and that over the last 2 ,000 years, he is the one who has been building his church, and his kingdom has been growing.

And it will continue to grow until his reign of peace covers the entire earth with his glory and with his covenant blessings. If you believe that, and there are good reasons for doing so, then you would not bury your head in the proverbial sand.

You would not frantically seek to make a litany of shallow converts. Instead, you would want to build churches. Churches that preach the gospel and plant new churches that make disciples. You would run like you're running the Iron Man instead of the 60-meter sprint.

You, my friend, would get up and build. Well, this is especially important to me, and it's central to the mission of the podcast because I began this show as a way of invigorating Christians. The tagline that we say at the beginning of every episode, to prod the sheep and to beat the wolf, is my admission that the church in America has been in a state of gross lethargy.

And we need to wake up. We actually need to shake things up and to get on with building the kingdom that we have been commanded to build by God Almighty wherever we're called to live. Because many churches, however, and many people within those churches have been in full-scale retreat mode, hiding from culture for the last several generations instead of engaging it.

Three things, though, have inevitably occurred. Number one, a legion of savage wolves have multiplied like rabbits without fear of reprisal. This is because weak-kneed pastors, shallow churches, and uninvolved Christians have allowed the hounds of hell to proliferate unchecked in both the church and in culture.

Number two, because the church has overwhelmingly abandoned culture, society around us has decayed like a year-old ribeye left out on the counter that now stinks to high heaven. And then number three, because the church has focused so much of its energy on making converts instead of making disciples, the vast majority of Christians today are spiritually malnourished, immature, and incapable of even lifting the sword of truth, much less wielding it in any sort of battle.

That is why a salty little show like this exists. And that's why we focus on a topic like eschatology. Because we want to see the church get prodded into faithful activity. We want to see the wolves and the enemies of God beaten into submission.

The Great Commission, Salt and Light, and Cultural Engagement

But to do that, we need to be focused on the right kind of eschatology. Because as we said before, your eschatology matters while also the kind of eschatology that you hold to really matters. Now there's no debate on whether Jesus wants you and I to be engaged with culture.

When he told us to make disciples of all the nations in Matthew 28, 19, he was basically telling us to transform the world. That work would continue until all the nations bow their knee to King Jesus and joyfully obey him.

Furthermore, by calling us to be salt, Matthew 5, 13 -16, Jesus is intending on his church being the agent of preservation in a culture that would decay and would rot without us. In the same way that meat would be packed with salt before the dawn of refrigeration, the nations of this earth must be packed full of Christians who will act for the preservation and for the renewal of the world instead of running away from it and hiding in it.

This is why Jesus called us to be lights that shine in a crooked generation, Philippians 2, 14 -16, as a lampstand, Revelation 2, 5, set on the top of a hill for all the world to see, Matthew 5, 14. Yet, as we've seen before, certain eschatological schools of thought will invigorate our cultural engagement and cause us to be saltier, not in a bad way, but in a good way, and more brightly shining, and then there's other schools of eschatology that will stifle it.

While a full-scale treatment of this topic is most definitely impossible here, I do want to break down the primary schools of eschatological thinking, and I want to do so in two different ways. The first, I need to be able to show you when does the millennium happen, and when will Jesus return happen in relation to that millennium.

That's the first thing that we need to focus on. The second is we need to understand what the hermeneutical framework underneath these eschatological positions are so that we will understand not only how they interpret the scriptures, but how you're going to hear from us at this show how we interpret the scriptures, because when you see that, you'll see, oh, okay, that makes sense.

This is how they're seeing and understanding the text. I believe we're right in that. I believe that we have a good and faithful hermeneutic in that, but I want to be transparent that this is how we think.

So we're going to get to that. We're going to do two things. We're going to show you what the three major positions in the millennium are, and then we're going to show you what the four major hermeneutical principles, or the ways that people interpret eschatological text, and by the end of it, you will see exactly where this show lands, and hopefully you'll be convinced.

The Millennial Challenge: Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism

So with that, let us begin with the millennium. The millennial challenge. Now, if you're still getting familiar with these categories, the millennial kingdom is the 1 ,000-year reign that Jesus speaks of, or that John speaks of in Revelation 20.

It's Jesus's reign over the whole earth, where the entire planet comes under the banner of his lordship, when Satan is bound for 1 ,000 years, and when Jesus's kingdom of peace reigns among the nations without opposition.

Now concerning this passage, as I said just a moment ago, there are three primary schools of thought. We'll begin with premillennialism. Premillennialism holds that Jesus's return will happen in the future, where he will rapture his church out of this world, and he will crush Antichrist's seven-year reign of terror with a battle of Armageddon before he sets up his literal and physical 1 ,000-year millennial kingdom.

Now, according to premillennialists, Jesus is not currently reigning at the right hand of God as earth's king, but is instead sitting at the right hand of God, awaiting the time when he can return and set up his millennial kingdom.

This punts the reign of Christ into the uncertain future, and it allows premillennials to view the world pessimistically, since they believe that it is still under the rule and the authority and the control of the devil.

While it is essential to recognize that various dreams and differences do exist within the premillennial camp, i .e. dispensationalism, historic premillennialism, etc., this represents the basic schema.

Satan is in charge of this world. Jesus is waiting to return to set up his kingdom. Now, the second school of thought is amillennialism. This view, called amillennialism, holds that Jesus is currently reigning now, and we would agree with that.

Unlike premillennialism, he is not waiting for this to occur in the future. He is ruling currently, right now, in heaven. And just as the prefix pre in premillennialism tells us something about what they believe, the a in amillennialism tells us something about what they believe as well.

Generally speaking, when the a is applied to the front of a word, it is done so as a negation. For instance, a theist is someone who believes in the possibility of a god, whereas an atheist does not.

The a in atheist negates the term theist. But in this case, the a in amillennialism does not communicate the negation of Christ's millennial reign, but it only negates the literal nature of it being a thousand years.

The amillennialists would believe that it is not a literal period of time. To the amillennialists, Jesus is currently sitting on his throne, he is reigning over the spiritual kingdom in heaven, and it is not confined to a literal thousand years.

Amillennialists also correctly point out that the number 1 ,000 is often used in figurative expressions and it typically signifies fullness. For example, when the psalmist describes the extent of the Lord's livestock, he says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

He does not imply that God only owns the cattle on a specific number of hills, but conveys that God owns all the cattle on all the hills. It would be ridiculous for the psalmist to say that God owns all the cattle that you could fit on a thousand hills, but not on the thousandth and first and not on the thousandth and second.

That's not what the psalmist is saying. He's saying that God owns all the cattle on all the hills. In Revelation's highly poetic and figurative language, the 1 ,000 years there symbolizes the fullness of Christ's reign over all of time.

It is all of Christ's reign over all the years. According to this perspective, Christ is presently reigning spiritually in heaven in a figurative 1 ,000 year reign that will persist until his return. Remember all the years.

Now you come to post-millennialism, the third view. This is the third basic view on the eschaton. It's called post-millennialism, which shares much in common with the amillennial view. However, instead of seeing the reign of Christ as being limited to a spiritual kingdom in heaven, which is what the amillennialists believe, post-millennialists envision Jesus's reign as positively affecting the nature and trajectory of life on earth.

According to the post-millennial perspective, Christ received a never-ending kingdom from the Father when he ascended into heaven, Daniel 7, 13 and 14. This kingdom is described as a global government of peace, Isaiah 9, 6 -7.

It's led by a true and better Adam, 1 Corinthians 15, 45. It's going to fill the entire world with the glory of God, Habakkuk 2, 14. And it's going to take over the entire earth, Daniel 2, 44 -45. It's not just a heavenly kingdom, it's a kingdom that's going to, like a mustard seed, fill the entire world as a mustard seed fills the entire garden, Matthew 13, 31 -32.

It is just like leaven that's going to eventually work its way through the entire lump, and in this sense the lump is earth, Matthew 13, 33, until Christ has put every single one of his enemies, that's earthly enemies, under his feet, Psalm 110, 1.

And then, and only then, will the end come, 1 Corinthians 15, 24 -26. The point is, is that as amillennialists rightly assert that the millennial reign of Christ is not a literal thousand years, but it's really talking about all the years that Jesus reigns until he returns, that's right, but they fail to see that there's so many passages in the scripture that talk about how his reign is not just going to be a heavenly reign, it's going to be a reign that affects, impacts, and wins, and conquers the world.

According to the postmillennialist perspective, and I would argue Holy Scripture, the world is not going to go from bad to worse, the world currently is under the rule and authority of Jesus Christ, Matthew 28, 18, Satan is no longer in charge.

And this reign by Jesus will continue until God's kingdom has come on earth as it is in heaven, Matthew 6, 10. As you may have guessed, it is the postmillennial view that we hold here, and it is the postmillennial view that I think rightly sees Jesus winning over the nations, transforming them for his glory and making this world increasingly conform to his image.

When you see the world that way, and this is why eschatology is important, when you see the world that way, you're going to engage with it. Not like a captain who's going down with a sinking ship, but like men and women who believe Jesus is going to have victory, that he is going to win.

And when you know someone is going to win, you participate. When you know someone is going to redeem the land, you go fight for the land. And do we know from the scriptures that God is going to use the church in order to accomplish it?

Jesus put Satan under his feet, but he also says that Satan is going to be crushed under the feet of the church, Romans 16, 20. This view that I'm arguing for, and that we have been arguing for, invigorates real evangelism instead of frantic conversion making.

We don't believe that we're right at the precipice of an imminent rapture. We just have to pull as many possible people we can out of the fire without making disciples. That's been the view of the church for 50 years, and that's the reason why the church and the world is filled with watered-down converts.

Because we spent 50 years trying to save as many people as we can without discipling any of them, and is it any wonder that the church is immature and incapable of doing what God has commanded it to do?

We have to repent of this sort of shallow, easy-believism, hyper-evangelistic tendencies that never disciple, and we have to do both. Yes, we should evangelize, and yes, we ought to make disciples who will make disciples to the ends of the earth.

That's what Christ commanded. We are not in a pinch for time. We've just believed wrong beliefs that has caused us not to do the vision that Christ has given us, where we're going to bring the world under the lordship of Christ.

That's what the Bible is talking about, and that's what leads post-millennialist brothers and sisters to a godly and a wholesome optimism, seeing how Christ has faithfully built his church over the last 2 ,000 years, and we're going to trust him to continue to build his church over the next 2 ,000 years if he should tarry to return.

Post-millennialism. Just as a summary, post-millennialism is the view of this show, but it's also why we have a positive view of what Christ is going to do in the world. It invigorates evangelism. It invigorates discipleship.

It's the reason I started this show. It's the reason men and women can start businesses, because they believe that Jesus is going to build his kingdom. It's the reason that we build churches that are going to last for hundreds, if not a thousand years, instead of building churches that are just going to be a flash in the pan.

This idea that we're going to be around for a while, and we've got to work, and we've got to build, and we've got to be obedient to Christ, and that we're not on any sort of time crunch, but we're to be faithful over the long term.

This view invigorates real and healthy cultural engagement. So eschatology matters. Now let's get to the second point, the point of the hermeneutics of eschatology, because this is also a very important aspect of eschatological thinking.

The Hermeneutical Challenge: Futurism, Historicism, Idealism, and Preterism

Part 2, the hermeneutical challenge. Along with the millennial question and the timing of Jesus' return, eschatological views differ widely based on a hermeneutical perspective, which means how we read and interpret the biblical text.

With this in mind, there are four basic hermeneutical approaches that can be found in the realm of eschatology, which will dictate what you believe about the end times, and how you read the scriptures about the end times, and ultimately how you engage in culture in our present time.

And just as we did before, we're going to arrange these from bad to better. 1. The worst, Futurism. The first major hermeneutical position that is very popular today but has not been popular throughout church history is called Futurism.

Futurism assumes a future fulfillment for the vast majority, if not all, of the eschatological texts in the Bible. This viewpoint is from the reader's perspective and not from the author's of scripture, since every prophecy is in the future of the one who gave it.

For the Futurist, the prophecy of scripture is not in the immediate future of the men who wrote them or said them, but it is in the far distant future as it relates to us. In this sense, Futurism sees that the majority of the eschatological passages in the Bible, at best, are multiple thousands of years into the future from the ones who wrote them, heard them, and were called to believe them.

This is also precisely why most premillennialists and dispensationalists are future. To believe that Jesus will return in the future, set up a millennial reign in the future after a future rapture and a future beast, you have to have a hermeneutic that views almost all of the eschatological passages in the Bible as being distantly removed from its writers.

This view has led to untold eschatological interpretations and a tremendous amount of speculation over the last 2 ,000 years, with every single generation producing Futurists who sincerely believe that we are living in the last days.

With the passages of scripture being in the uncertain future and no one knowing the day or the hour, then no one can really know when the end times begin. This is why every 10 -15 minutes, a new eschatology book or blog comes out claiming to have solved the end times riddle, proving that we are all about to be zapped out of here, and then in 15 minutes will be added to the growing collection or trash heap of eschatological failed predictions.

As I've said before, with a history of so many failed assertions, failed predictions, flawed prophetic interpretations, with a history of that, why would you trust anything that a Futurist says? You would more likely win the Powerball 100 times in a row than to have anything a Futurist asserts be right about the end being in our day.

Now, with my not-so-pointed opinion stated, I do want to say the major issue in Futurism is it makes the Bible all about us. Every current generation is the generation that these prophecies were written to, and it's up to us and our time to figure out what they mean.

That is a failed hermeneutic. The Bible was not written to Christians in the 21st century. It wasn't. There's application. The Bible applies to us. The Spirit, by His means of grace, makes these scriptures come alive to you and I.

But Paul did not write with 21st century people who lived on the continent of North America in mind. He did not. You were not in his thoughts. He was writing to people at Corinth or Ephesus or Galatia.

He had certain people in mind. Jesus was standing in front of certain people when he gave the prophecies on Matthew 24. You are not the primary audience and Futurism makes you the primary audience. It is a failed hermeneutic for that reason and for that reason alone.

And for that reason, it must be outright rejected. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not events that are going to happen in the future. I certainly believe that there are certain events in the New Testament that are still into the future.

What I'm arguing for is that that the way we approach the text is not with us in mind so that we can see how this defines our future. I'm arguing for we need to have the original author. We need to understand what the original author was saying to the original audience.

And if they believed that these events were still long into the future, we have good warrant for believing that they're still in the future as well. But if they believe that the prophecies that were being given were in their future, in their immediate context, then we have to reject Futurism as a hermeneutical principle and we have to believe that these events have already occurred, but there'll be more on that in just a moment.

The second major view of hermeneutics is called Historicism. Now, Historicism traditionally views eschatological events as unfolding throughout periods of time. Instead of believing that all the events happen in the future in one period of time or that all the events happen in the past in one period of time, Historicism believes that the eschatological passages reveal things about different epochs throughout church history with specific prophecies aligning with various eras and various people that have lived over the last 2000 years.

This approach often associates biblical prophecies with specific historical figures, events, and offers sort of a timeline of fulfillment that spans from the biblical time all the way to the present time.

The classic Historicist text is Revelation 2 -3, if you'll remember it's the seven churches of Revelation, where Historicists describe a unique sequential period of seven eras of world history with the final era being the Laodicean lukewarm age of man where Jesus vomits them out of his mouth right before his return.

Now, while this view was popular several hundred years ago, this view has almost faded into extinction today. The third view is Idealism. Idealism interprets the eschatological passages of scripture as conveying timeless and symbolic truths rather than predicting specific past or future events.

This view, instead of trying to understand when the event will happen, is trying to understand why the event will happen, and it spiritualizes the text. It emphasizes the overarching themes of spiritual conflict, victory, and ultimate triumph of God's purposes in a more symbolic and allegorical way.

This position is common among Amillennialists who tend to spiritualize everything, especially the reign of Christ, who assume that God's reign is a heavenly reign only. Thus, the truths revealed in the eschatological scriptures are not so much about referring to specific events on earth, but spiritually consequential truths that will sustain us until Jesus returns physically and bodily.

The goal of Idealism is not to say when, but to say how. How are we supposed to live in the period between Jesus' ascension and his return? And for what it's worth, this is not a bad approach if you're talking about application.

The Bible does apply to all people and at all times in some way or another, so we should be looking for the application of every text, but from a hermeneutical perspective, there are things that we can learn about the text that aren't necessarily application.

We can learn who they were addressed to, when the events are going to happen, why the events are going to happen, and things like that. And those events are either going to be in the future, they're going to be spread out across time, or they're going to be in the past.

So Idealism is helpful in the sense that it's trying to bring application to the eschatological text, but it still needs to be able to answer, and you need to be able to answer, the when of when these texts occurred.

And that's what brings us to our final view, which is called Preterism. Preterism comes from the Latin word preter, meaning past. In that sense, Preterism considers most eschatological passages in the Bible as having already been fulfilled.

There are some brands of Preterism called Hyperpreterism or Full Preterism, who believe that everything in the New Testament has been fulfilled, but those are rare. And usually those people who believe in that tend to fall into other more severe heresies so we reject Full Preterism or Hyperpreterism.

But yet, even while some wrongly interpret the Bible using Full Preterism, the view helpfully, the partial Preterist view, helps us focus on what the original author of scripture would have believed the original writer meant in the world and the circumstance in which they were living.

In this sense, Preterism, more than any of the other hermeneutical positions, grounds the interpretation of the text into the world in which it was authored. Unlike the Futurists who assume the majority of the end-time verses have no application whatsoever to the people with whom they were written, Preterists assume that the end-time sayings and prophecies were in the future of the men who received them and not in our future 2 ,000 years removed.

This has great practical importance for the way we read the Bible. If the events Jesus is describing in Matthew 24 or the events Luke is describing in the Acts are still hidden somewhere in the cloudy future, then they would have had zero relevance to Peter, to Paul, to the original First Church, none of them.

They would have been texts that were opining about useless material that would have affected them in no way. And if God makes it a habit of pretending like he is writing to a particular people at a particular time, and yet hiding decoder ring messages in it that's only applicable to us, then how can we trust that any passage of scripture is not meaningless?

Because if God does this at all, maybe he does this repeatedly. I think the safer hermeneutical approach is to say, what did the original author intend to say to the original audience? If the original author intended to say that there is a future event that's going to happen in your lifetime, then we ought to believe that it happened in their lifetime.

When Jesus says in Matthew 24, 34 that these things will happen before some of them pass away, before this generation passes away, you will see these things occurring. We ought to believe that. Instead of believing that it's future and that God was somehow misleading them or hiding some sort of secret decoder ring sort of message in there that didn't apply to them, even though they thought it did.

Furthermore, when we remember that we are not the original audience of scripture, and by that, I mean, Paul was not addressing his letters to us, John was not addressing his gospel to us, the revelation was not written and postmarked to us, when we stop thinking that way and stop looking for the biblical prophecies to be fulfilled in our era, and we start looking for the fulfillment to occur in theirs as they believed that it would, then it's going to unlock the Bible's meaning in so many life-giving, exciting ways.

You're going to see connections come alive. You're going to be enlivened to see that the Bible really is trustworthy, that the things that it predicts is going to happen did happen, and that same God who was trustworthy then can be trustworthy today.

As you can tell, this podcast does not subscribe to the foolish view of futurism. Since there are passages in the Bible that are still in our future, yes, but the original author intended them to be, and the original audience who heard them understood them to be.

When you and I develop a hermeneutical framework for how to read the Bible, the standard evangelical method has always been to try to understand what the original writer of that text was attempting to communicate to the original recipient of that text.

And when you do that, when you do that consistently, even in your eschatology, the only viable method of interpreting these eschatological passages is the method known as partial preterism. Partial, because we do not believe everything in the Bible has already been fulfilled.

But when we do come across texts that are still in our future, it is clear that they are. It is clear from reading the scriptures that the majority of its future-oriented text were future for its original audience, and now, 2 ,000 years removed today, they're in our past.

Conclusion: Rejecting Newspaper Eschatology and Embracing Kingdom Building

Conclusion. While it is beyond the scope of this article, or this podcast, or whatever, to prove the post-millennial and the partial preterist view, it should clarify, first and foremost, what view you're going to get here.

It also, if you want a show that helps you discover the antichrist and what the mark of the beast is, and if the locusts in Revelation really do mean Apache helicopters, well, this blog is probably not for you.

We do not read eschatology through newspaper articles. We actually wrestle with the text, and we wrestle with what the original author intended to communicate to the original audience, not superimposing our current moment onto a 2 ,000-year-old text and thinking that we just so happen to be the privileged generation to which all of this applies.

If you want me to come on here and whine about how bad the world is and offer nothing by way of fixing it, well, this show is not for you either. I believe with all my heart that Christ is reigning on His throne, and I believe that reign is not just locked away in heaven, that it will have an impact on this earth, and that reign will continue until the entire world is under the rule and authority of Jesus Christ.

I believe that many of the New Testament passages have already been fulfilled, and that what we are waiting on is the return of Jesus at the end of the age when the entire world is under His authority, rule, power, and is experiencing the peace of His government.

I believe in the meantime, while we're waiting, we're not meant to be twiddling our thumbs. We're not meant to be sitting on our laurels. We are meant to be builders instead of cowards. You will find no eschatological defeatism or passivism on this show while we wait for a rapture here.

No, no, no. Here, you're going to find biblical truth frankly delivered to help prod us to righteous living, kingdom building, and retaking our culture for Christ. If that is what you're into, then absolutely great.

There are 34 other episodes on this topic. There are other episodes on various other cultural topics for you to explore. And next week, we're going to finish our eschatological look at the book of Acts.

After that, maybe we'll dive into some more eschatology of Paul in the writings like Romans or Ephesians or Galatians or some of those. Maybe we'll take some breaks along the way, but no matter what, we're going to engage culture.

We're going to look at what the Bible says, and we're going to encourage Christians to get involved, to be salt, to be light, and to continue building for the glory of God until our King returns. Until next time, let's get to work and God bless you.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the broadcast. If you like what you're hearing, if you like this view that we've been putting forward, if you like being encouraged, if you like being hit over the head with the truth, well, that's great.

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