End Times for Dummies

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Are you an expert on the end times? Well, this show's probably not for you. But if you get confused when people say things like dispensational premillennialism, well, you're in the right place.

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Today, we're gonna talk about eschatology here on Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.

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Today, we're gonna be talking about eschatology. Eschatology is the study of the end times.

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The word eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton, which means last thing. So we're going to be talking about the things leading up to and the things that happen after Jesus returns and how people debate about this subject and what the different positions are.

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And we're going to be doing so, as the thumbnail suggested, we're going to be doing eschatology for dummies.

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And the reason why we're doing that is because that's specifically what was requested for this video. I wanna thank

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Sammy on Facebook for sending me this message. And when she sent me the message, she says, I want you to do eschatology for dummies.

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So I love the idea. I loved that request. And I feel like I'm the perfect man for the job.

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First things first, we need to start with the essentials. What are the things that you have to believe, no matter what camp you're in, no matter what millennial position you take or any of that stuff?

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Well, there are some things that are absolutely essential that all Christians must believe. In fact, if you don't believe these things, it would put you outside of orthodoxy, meaning you would be outside of accepted

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Christian truths that have been held by all believers of all time. And we find those things stated in documents like the

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Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed outlines for us four things about the end times that we have to accept as Christians.

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The first thing is that Christ will return, that that's going to happen. The second thing is that there's going to be a bodily resurrection.

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Christians have always held to and continue to hold to a resurrection. Paul says, if there's no resurrection, then we of all men are most to be pitied.

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So we have to believe Christ will return. We have to believe in a resurrection. We have to believe in a judgment.

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We have to believe that when Christ comes, he's actually going to come to bring judgment. So that is an essential.

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And lastly, we have to believe in eternal life. We can't believe that we're not gonna live forever.

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That's part of what it means to be a Christian. We believe that because of belief in Christ, we are going to be with him forever in the new heaven and the new earth.

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So that is four things that we have to accept as Christians about the end times.

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But after that, it gets really diverse. So that's what we're gonna talk about now, is we're gonna move into those things that are diverse when it comes to our view of the end times.

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And I wanna say from the outset, even though I said this is eschatology or end times for dummies,

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I did bring along a handout that I use at Sovereign Grace Academy. Now, Sovereign Grace Academy is not for dummies.

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We offer classes on a variety of subjects, including hermeneutics and church history and ethics and things like that.

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So we do a lot of classes and we try to do a good job of giving a good overview of these things.

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Well, in our New Testament class, we talk about the subject of the book of Revelation. And so I brought the handout that I use, that I produced for the class, and I wanna show it to you and walk you through these different views, these different positions, so that you have a basic understanding of what these words mean when we talk about things like futurism and idealism and things like that.

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What do those things mean? What are they related to? How do they play a part in our end times view?

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And so I'm gonna bring it up onto the screen now. You'll see it come up here.

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There we go. Now, if you want a copy of this handout, I am going to make it available in the links below if you're watching this on YouTube.

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Now, if you're watching this on another platform and you want the handout, you'll have to go to YouTube and it's gonna take you to a link on our church's website, which will have the handout available to you.

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So this handout is actually two parts. Well, it's top and bottom, so you'll see right now we're just looking at the top, and it begins with four perspectives on Revelation.

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I wanna read to you what it says. It says, this subject deals with how we begin the process of interpreting the content of Revelation.

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Before we can understand what it means, we have to use the proper hermeneutical lenses. Now, hermeneutics is the science of interpreting the

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Bible, and we're saying we have to put on the right hermeneutical lenses if we're going to interpret the Bible correctly.

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Each of these perspectives looks at Revelation differently, and thus the interpretations of the content varies greatly from one perspective to another.

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So these four perspectives outline the differing views on the book of Revelation.

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And again, these are very basic understandings of these views, and there are much deeper and wider explanations.

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I am just going to give you the most basic so that if you heard somebody say, I'm a partial preterist amillennialist, like me, or if you heard someone say, well,

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I'm a dispensational premillennialist, like many of my friends, or if you heard someone say,

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I am a postmillennialist idealist, you might say, okay, what does that mean?

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Well, we're gonna talk about those now. So let's begin by looking at the four perspectives on Revelation.

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The first one is preterism. Now, preterism is defined on the handout as most of the content of Revelation was fulfilled during the lifetime of the original audience prior to and during the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

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So this is called preterism, but you'll notice on the handout, there is an asterisk.

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I love asterisks because they allow me to make distinctions and that's what this does, it makes a distinction.

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So if you go down to the bottom, you'll see the asterisk that says a distinction should be made between full preterism and partial preterism.

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Well, what is that? Well, full preterism, sometimes called hyperpreterism or consistent preterism, argues that all the prophecies regarding Jesus' second coming and resurrection of the dead were fulfilled in the first century.

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Now, here's the problem with full preterism. Full preterism would deny some of those essential things that we talked about in the

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Apostles' Creed, such as a future return of Christ and a future resurrection of the dead.

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Those things are essential and in full preterism, those things at least can be denied.

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The argument is those things already took place in AD 70.

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So full preterism is often labeled a heresy.

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It's labeled as being unbiblical. Now, if you are a full preterist and you're watching this video and you want to blast me in the comments, have fun, but understand that many people think full preterism is heresy.

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Now, partial preterism is different and I label it in the handout as orthodox preterism.

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Orthodox simply means something that is in line with the truth, orthos meaning straight.

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We think about orthodontics, right? Orthodontics is straightening the teeth. Well, orthodoxy refers to having straight doctrine.

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So something that's right. So here's how preterism can fit into orthodoxy.

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Or partial preterism or orthodox preterism argues that many, if not most, of the prophecies of Revelation were fulfilled in the first century, but there are some still yet to come.

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And that's where the key to partial preterism is. Many things were fulfilled in the first century, many things were fulfilled such as partial preterists often argue that the beast of Revelation 13 was actually

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Nero and that he is the one that's being referred to there. So that is an example of partial preterism.

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Partial preterism says most of the book of Revelation, not all, but most of the book of Revelation was fulfilled in Jerusalem in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

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All right, so that is preterism. Hopefully that makes sense to you. Now let's look at the next one, which is historicism.

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Historicism says this. Most of the content of Revelation is being fulfilled gradually throughout church history and is still being fulfilled today.

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So just like the word would seem to indicate historicism, it's being fulfilled throughout history.

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That idea is that, yeah, Revelation is being fulfilled and will continue to be fulfilled until Christ returns.

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And so that is a view which is held by a lot of people. In fact, historicism was the view that was held by many of the reformers.

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And so you'll see this a lot in their teaching. The next one is called idealism.

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Now idealism is defined on the handout like this. Most of the content of Revelation is meant to be understood as symbolic.

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That's actually worded incorrectly there. It should be understood as symbolic, not as symbolically or allegorically, or we can just take out the word as.

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Most of the content of Revelation is meant to be understood symbolically or allegorically. I'm gonna correct myself.

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Again, it's my handout, so it's my error. Portraying the ongoing cosmic conflict of the spiritual realm.

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So this idea is similar in a sense to historicism in that it's about the ongoing conflict, but this spiritualizes much of Revelation and puts it into an allegorical sense.

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And one of the things that often is an allergy to many of my friends who want to argue for a strict literalism is anytime they hear the word allegory, they begin to have an allergic reaction.

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So idealism is the allergic reaction position for many people who want to take a very literal approach to the

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Bible, particularly the book of Revelation. And just in case you're wondering, yes, I take a literal approach to the

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Bible, but I tend to argue, though, more for a literary approach to the

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Bible where we interpret every book according to its literary genre. For instance, if a book is historical narrative, we interpret it according to a historical narrative hermeneutic.

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If a book is like Revelation, if it is written as a book of prophecy, then we use the rules for interpreting prophetic books for interpreting

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Revelation. So idealism is a much more allegorical approach to interpreting the book of Revelation.

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Then we have futurism. Now, futurism is the view that many people hold to because to them, it is the only position they've ever heard.

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I've told this story before, but I remember very specifically talking to a lady. I was leading a

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Bible study at a high school. When I used to work at a high school, I worked with the Bible Club and I led Bible studies.

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And something was said about the end times, and she said, well, we know this and this and this about the end times.

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And I said, well, that's one view. And she said, no, that's the view.

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That's the only view. And I said, what do you mean? And she says, there is no other view. This is the view.

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This is what the Bible teaches. So it was apparent to me that while she was confident in her position, which is fine, she was also somewhat ignorant of other positions, which is not good.

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It's okay to be confident, but it's never good to be ignorant. So the futurist position basically says that most of the content of Revelation is yet to be fulfilled.

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And depending on who you talk to in the futurist camp, a lot of the positions would say that after chapter four are things that still have to be fulfilled.

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Obviously, chapters one through three refer to the seven churches, and there's some different interpretations about how the seven churches are to be understood.

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But literalists, again, would believe often that they were seven literal churches, as I do believe there are seven specific churches and literal churches, but that after chapter four, everything after chapter four is looking forward to something that hasn't happened yet.

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Therefore, the idea of futurism, it's still yet in the future. And so that's a very common view.

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That's a view that is held by many people who would talk about things like raptures and things like being left behind.

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And the Left Behind series was an entire series of books written from the futurist perspective. So when we talk about the

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Book of Revelation, there's four different views of the Book of Revelation, and each one of these views would take a different approach to interpreting the content.

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Preterism, or impartial preterism specifically, would say that most of it has been fulfilled in the past.

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Historicism would say it's being fulfilled throughout time. Idealism would say we take an allegorical approach to interpreting it.

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And then the futurist position would say these things are going to happen in the future.

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They haven't started yet, they haven't happened yet, but there's a future tribulation period, there's a future end coming that is related to that tribulation period and how that works.

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And so the futurist position often would argue that it's the most literal position, as we'll see in a little bit, but that's the four positions on the

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Book of Revelation from this handout. So now we're going to switch to a different portion of the handout.

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We're actually going to talk about millennial positions and how those interact with each other. But before we do that,

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I want to talk about something else real quick. First of all, I want to thank you all for watching, particularly those of you who are a regular audience of the show.

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You are a blessing to me and I appreciate it. And I'm thinking about doing something and I wanted to get your opinions in the comments.

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I've been doing this podcast for over three years now, and at the beginning it was called

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Coffee with a Calvinist because it was an everyday program. Now it's a weekly program and it's called

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Conversations with a Calvinist. And sometimes I do interviews, sometimes I don't. I've been doing some more individual shows recently.

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Simply because of time, it's a lot easier to do a show by myself rather than having to schedule an interview. Plus I've been getting a lot more audience questions and I appreciate the audience questions,

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I love them. It gives me the opportunity to interact with you all and to answer questions, so I'm thankful. But here's what

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I'm thinking about doing. Again, it's been three years in the show and I'm thinking about changing the name of the show.

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I'm thinking about simply going with The Keith Foskey Show. And my reasoning behind that is my audience is growing a little bit, but I have a larger audience in my funny videos and all of the things that I do, such as the denominational videos and the

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If They Were Churches series and on Twitter and things like that. People know me by my name. They know me by Keith Foskey or your

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Calvinist. And some people don't make the connection with conversations with the Calvinist. Some people don't even know it's my show.

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So I thought about simply rebranding to The Keith Foskey Show. So I'd love your thoughts on that.

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And if you hate it, tell me you hate it. If you think it's a great idea, tell me you think it's a great idea. If you don't care, tell me that too.

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But also don't forget, your likes and your comments do help the show. So if you like what I'm doing, hit the thumbs up button.

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And if you don't, hit the thumbs down button twice. Okay, now we're coming to the part of the show where we're going to be talking about the millennium.

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And this is where the big words often start getting thrown around. You'll hear words like pre -millennialism, post -millennialism, amillennialism, and even some other phrases like realized millennialism or nunc millennialism.

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And you'll hear things like dispensationalism. So I'm hoping that throughout the rest of the show,

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I can help bring some clarity to some of those words and help you understand what they mean and at least put them in a context so that you'll be able to understand them if they come up in a conversation that you're having or your pastor uses them when you're at church.

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So I have on here three perspectives on the millennium. And this particular section deals with Revelation chapter 20, verses one to 10.

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And so because we're talking about the millennium, I actually do want to read to you the biblical passage that is in relation to this conversation because there is only one passage that specifically relates to the subject of a thousand years and it's in Revelation chapter 20, beginning at verse one.

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And it says, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.

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And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended.

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After that, he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed.

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Also, I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and the word of God and who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.

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They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.

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This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection.

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Over such, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

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So there we have it. We see the reference specifically to a thousand years in the

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Bible. So when we talk about the millennium, that's what millennium means, it means a thousand years, this subject deals with how we understand that thousand year reign of Christ mentioned in Revelation chapter 20, verses one to 10.

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And I'm gonna read the handout. It says, naturally, the perspective one takes on Revelation, see above, will have impact on the way one interprets this passage.

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However, there is not necessarily a parallel between all the perspectives on Revelation and the perspectives on the millennium.

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So it's not as if all futurists are going to believe one thing, or all idealists are gonna believe one thing, or all, specifically partial preterists.

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Like for instance, I'm a partial preterist and I'm an amillennialist. Someone like Doug Wilson is a partial preterist and he is a postmillennialist.

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So it's not as if one directly is going to connect to the other, but there's usually some relationship that you'll see.

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So we're gonna talk about premillennialism. That means that if you think about Christ returning, this is saying

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Christ returns before that millennium that we just read about begins, therefore premillennial.

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The next is postmillennial. That means that the millennium happens first and then

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Christ returns. And then there's amillennialism, which says that the millennium is not to be understood literally, but rather is to be understood figuratively.

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Now let's go through this a little more, a little more holding to the handout.

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So under premillennialism, the priest stands for before and indicates that the millennium is yet to come.

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This view would understand the thousand years as a literal reign of Christ, which would begin at his return.

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So if you can imagine a timeline of history, Jesus returns at a certain point, and at that point, the moment he returns, a new age begins, and it is the millennial age, and it lasts literally a thousand years from the time he returns to the end of the millennium, which then begins the eternal state.

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So that is premillennialism. And you'll notice another asterisk. As I said,

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I love asterisks. At the bottom of the handout, it says a distinction should be made between historic premillennialism and dispensational premillennialism.

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I have friends on both sides. I'm thinking of two people in my mind right now, Mr. Andrew Rappaport, who's dispensational, and Mr.

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Michael Schultz and Greg Mooring, who are both premillennial, but they're historic premillennial.

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So what is the difference? Well, historic premillennialism says that the return of Christ will happen just before the millennium and just after a time of great apostasy and tribulation.

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So that's historic premillennialism. There's going to be a time of tribulation and apostasy.

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Christ will return, the millennium will begin, and there's your thousand years. Dispensational premillennialism, however, is a different view.

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While it does hold that Christ will return and the millennium will begin, it is preceded by a seven -year tribulation, very literal, seven -year tribulation, which itself is preceded by an invisible rapture of the

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Church. And here's where we start to get into some of the nomenclature that gets a little bit confusing, because you'll hear someone say,

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I'm a pre -tribulational rapture, dispensational premillennialist.

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And that is a mouthful. But what it's basically saying is that I believe Jesus is going to rapture the

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Church. The word rapture simply means to take away. Jesus is going to take the Church away, and the tribulation period is going to begin after the rapture of the

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Church. It's going to last for seven years, and then at the end of that seven years, Christ is going to return with His Church, and when

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He returns with His Church, He will set up the millennial kingdom, and that will last for a thousand years.

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If you've ever seen End Times charts, oftentimes I always tease the dispensationalists on my videos that they love their charts, and they do, and their charts are really cool.

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They outline everything very specifically. Now, I also have to say this, and this is noted in the handout, that some dispensationalists don't believe in a pre -tribulation rapture.

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Some believe in a mid -tribulation rapture, meaning they believe that the Church is gonna be here through a portion of the tribulation, but at the point before God's wrath is poured out, the

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Church is going to be removed, since we are not objects of God's wrath, therefore the Church will be removed prior to God's wrath being poured out.

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And then there are some, well, actually, I may be mixing that a little bit. There's mid -tribulation rapture, and then there's pre -wrath rapture.

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So there's some different views on the rapture, but the point is, there's a certain point where the

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Church is going to be raptured out, the Church is going to be taken out. If you've ever seen movies like Left Behind, or even the older movies,

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I did a video where I went through Thief in the Night, if you've never seen my video on Thief in the

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Night. It was comedic, I was teasing and joking about it because it was made in the 70s, and it was very, very 70s in the way it was filmed.

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But if you go back and watch that video, you'll see it's all about people being raptured. And that's been like a fear, well, maybe not a fear, maybe that's a bad word, but that's been a point among many dispensationalists is to get people prepared for the rapture.

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So you've gotta be ready because Jesus could come at any time.

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And that movie was sort of feeding into that, sort of that almost fearful anticipation.

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And honestly, when I watched it, I was making the point, it almost comes off like a horror movie.

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And even the name, A Thief in the Night, which I know is a biblical word, that idea sort of fed into a little bit of that, sort of the rapture fear that some people had.

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But of course, if the dispensationalists are right, and there is going to be a pre -tribulation rapture, if you believe in Christ, you shouldn't be afraid at all, because it just means that you're going to be taken away and you're going to be with Him going into the

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Millennium. So that's the view of dispensational premillennialism. And again, historic premillennialism is a little simpler because even though it would hold to a tribulation and a time of apostasy prior to the coming of Christ and the beginning of the

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Millennium, it's a little simpler in the way that it shows everything.

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And rather than several stages of Christ's return, Christ has one return where He comes and sets up the

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Millennial Kingdom in historic premillennialism. So that is a, like I said, basic overview of premillennialism.

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And I would say, even today, that continues to be the...

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Well, the majority of the report among confessing evangelicals, well, let me back that up, not confessing evangelicals, the majority report among sort of the rank -and -file evangelicals in America is that position, especially

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Baptists, very popular in Baptist circles. And it also, let me just take a real quick side note, dispensational premillennialism also comes with a specific understanding of Israel as being distinct from the

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Church, particularly ethnic Israel as having its own promises within the plan of God and how the nation of Israel and the land of Israel continue to be significant, eschatologically, even today.

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And you'll hear people say this all the time. They'll say, well, what's happening in Israel, man? That's showing Jesus is about to return.

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That's a dispensational view. Well, that is often related to a dispensational view because people are saying, here,

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Jesus is gonna return because of what's happening in Israel, because God's going to take the Church away and he's gonna focus his attention back on Israel.

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By the way, shameless plug, I am working on a dispensational episode of the Bowtie Dialogues, and I've got some really, really good men who are considering being on the show.

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So again, if you're a fan of the show, you continue to watch, be on the lookout for the dispensational episode of Bowtie Dialogues.

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It's gonna be great. And I'm gonna be able to ask them questions about their views on things like Israel and the

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Church, and what do they think about the pre -trib, mid -trib, all that, and see if there's any distinctions or differences between them.

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So that's premillennialism. Now let's look at post, or excuse me, post -anomillennialism. And here's the thing about this, and I talked about this in my conversation with Doug Wilson.

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I don't really call it a debate. We had a 30 -minute conversation where we both got to sort of talk to each other.

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It was called a debate, but it was really just a conversation. But the conversation that Doug Wilson and I had was

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I was taking the amillennial position, he was taking the post -millennial position. And two things

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I said at the beginning to sort of even the playing field a little bit, but also to point out to the audience, that amillennialism and post -millennialism are both post -millennial, because both of them see

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Jesus returning after the millennium has completed. The difference is in expectations, not in the time of Christ's arrival.

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The other thing is that they're both amillennial, because neither post -millennialism nor amillennialism would argue for a literal thousand years.

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We would see that number as figurative for simply a long period of time.

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And so there is a lot of similarities between amillennialism and post -millennialism.

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And I would simply say that post -millennialism is amillennialism with extra steps.

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Ha, I've said that before. But as I said, I jokingly call post -millennialism fancy amillennialism, and Doug Wilson called amillennialism grumpy post -millennialism.

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So we both kind of poked at each other in that regard. But here's the thing, we'll read it off the sheet.

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Post -millennialism, the post stands for after, and indicates that Christ will return after His reign, has established for an era, not necessarily a literal thousand years, through the expansion of gospel progress in the world.

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So often post -millennialists will talk about how things are getting better, and how the gospel's continuing to grow, and continuing to have success.

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And they'll talk about how it's like the mustard seed, it was small, but it's growing now into this large tree, which the birds of the air can come and make nests in its branches, right?

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The leaven that goes in leavens the whole lump. They reference things like that, and saying, look, the gospel is succeeding throughout the world.

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It's going out into all the world. It's changing the world. And because of that, they're looking forward to a time when

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Christ, who is reigning from heaven now, will see that the nation's bowing down to Him, and that He will reign until all

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His enemies are under His feet. And so that is the idea of the post -millennial hope, that there is just going to be this continued great evangelical success, great, or excuse me, evangelistic success of the gospel all around the world.

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And this is why a lot of people say post -millennialism is very optimistic, because the idea is

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Christ is gonna reign, and it's gonna continue to reign and grow, and it's going to succeed throughout the world.

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And some people say pre -millennialism is pessimistic. I think that's a little unfair, but this is the reason why.

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They say because pre -millennialism is often focused on the thousand years, not on the now, and therefore it's like, you know, this is gonna end, and then the thousand years is gonna begin, and there's really no hope for the now.

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The hope is in the millennium. And so some would suggest that pre -millennialists would be less likely to be involved in things like social change, or political activism, or things like that, because their expectation is that there's going to be tribulation, and apostasy, and all these things, and essentially it's like rearranging deck chairs on the

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Titanic, it's all going down anyway. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that has been said about pre -millennialism, that it's pessimistic.

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I'm not agreeing, I'm just saying this is one of the things that's been said. Please don't light me up in the comments. Just because I said that,

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I'm parroting things other people have said, and in regard to post -millennialism, the idea is it's more optimistic.

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So what about amillennialism? Well, I made this joke when I was talking to Doug Wilson. I said, if pre -millennialists are pessimistic, and post -millennialists are optimistic, then amillennialism is realistic.

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That's my position, amillennialism, and I'm not gonna argue for it, because that's not my reason for doing this video, to argue for amillennialism.

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But amillennialism is the position that I hold. So I think I should put my cards on the table, and I don't think anybody doesn't know that.

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I've identified myself as the king of the amillennialists, as a joke, so I think people know my position.

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But amillennialism says that the kingdom of God was inaugurated at Christ's resurrection, and Christ is currently reigning from heaven during this present age, the millennium, which will last until he returns to usher in the eternal state.

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This is also called nootmillennialism, realized millennialism, or inaugurated millennialism, all those words simply meaning that we're here, we're in the millennium now.

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And so that is the approach that says when the book of Revelation is talking about the millennium, it's not talking about something in the future, but it's talking about something that started when on Christ's first advent, and it will be completed at his second advent, and therefore the millennium is also referred to as the interadvental period, meaning the period between the two advents.

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And so amillennialism simply says that we're in the millennium now, we are ruling and reigning with Christ as the gospel goes forth and sees success in the world, that we are going to continue to see those things, and that's where we would agree some with postmillennialism, we see gospel success in the world, and we're thankful for that, and we're happy for that, we're optimistic, we say that sometimes, we're optimistic amillennialists.

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Where we would differ though, I think, and I mentioned this in my debate with Doug Wilson, is that we would say that evil and good grow together, like the parable of the wheat and the tares, and that there's always gonna be opposition to Christ and to his

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Church, and that that opposition will remain until Christ returns, and at that point, his enemies will be vanquished, as we see like in Revelation 19.

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So that's probably the greatest distinction, is while we see the gospel flourishing, while we see the gospel having success, we would say that the kingdom of darkness will continue to battle against the

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Church, will continue to hate the Church, and continue to have places around the world where it seems to be succeeding, like we see places where it seems to be succeeding today.

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But ultimately, the gospel will have success when Christ returns and he ushers in the eternal state, and that will fulfill all the promises when the eternal state is ushered in, and we are with him in the new heaven and the new earth.

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So that is a basic, very basic understanding of how to understand the book of Revelation and how to understand the different millennial positions.

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So I hope it was helpful. Last but not least, I wanna answer a question that I get asked all the time, and that is the question, hey, pastor, do you think we're in the end times?

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And my answer is, you are. And what I mean by that is

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Jesus may return very soon, or Jesus may return 500 years from now. Jesus may return 1 ,000 years from now.

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But you are not gonna be around 100 years from now. And so every man, in one sense, has to deal with eschatology in a personal sense, because we all live in our own personal end time.

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I could die tomorrow, or I could live for another 40 years. Either way, 100 years from now,

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I'm going to be with the Lord. And so I need to live my life, whether I believe in a premillennial view, whether I believe in a postmillennial view or a nonmillennial view, whether I have an idealist approach, a futurist approach, or whatever the revelation,

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I need to always consider the fact that my life, this life, is very short.

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And so if I have not prepared myself to meet my Lord, then

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I'm not ready for my own personal end time. So I would ask you this question. If you were to die tonight, and you were to face

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Christ, and he were to say to you, why should I let you into heaven? What would you say? Many people

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I've asked that question to will answer something to the effect of, well, I did good things, or I'm a good person.

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The problem is, we're not. The Bible says there's none good, no not one. The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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Sin is breaking God's law. Sin is lawlessness, the Bible defines it. And so we stand as having broken

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God's law. And if we stand before God having broken his law, and we don't have an advocate, we're going to spend an eternity in hell.

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But the Bible says God sent his Son into the world to pay the price for everyone who will believe. And the

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Bible says if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. You'll be saved. Jesus came into the world and he preached.

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He says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He called us to repentance of sin and faith in him.

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So if you've never repented of your sin and trusted in Christ, I urge you to do that today.

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We don't know if we're going to have another day. Thank you again for watching Conversations with a

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Calvinist. I appreciate you as an audience being out there and continuing to support the show. I asked some questions during this show specifically about the name of the show.

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And if you have a comment that you'd like to leave, please leave that below. Or if you have a question you'd like me to address in a future episode, please leave that in the comments below as well.

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You can also interact with me on Facebook at the Conversations with a Calvinist Facebook group page, or you can send me an email directly at calvinistpodcast at gmail .com.

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I want to thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your