Postmillennialism Defended

This is Apologetics Live.

To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Psych!

It is not Andrew Rappaport.

It is Drew flying solo tonight, although not really, because I have a couple guests that are backstage that

are going to join us.

But before we get there, welcome back to Apologetics Live.

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and the Bible.

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You can also submit your questions live on YouTube and on Facebook, but just remember, as

Andrew likes to say, I don't know is a perfectly acceptable answer.

Now tonight, we are going to be discussing the dreaded topic of post -millennialism.

So we are going to address some questions that you have, maybe some myths

about post -millennialism, but we're going to be looking at that particular view of eschatology.

And, with one of my guests, we will also be hitting on the topic of theonomy as

well.

But now before I get to the actual topic, I want to say that this

episode is only happening because Andrew gave the go -ahead.

And I just want to throw that out there because if you're a regular listener and a regular viewer of the

show, then you know that Andrew and the other members of Striving for Eternity, they hold to the view of dispensational

premillennialism.

And when given the opportunity to host, I never want to give the appearance that I am in

any way attempting to undermine their teaching.

So with that, I will bring in my first guest, Mr. Jeremy Collins.

Jeremy, welcome to the show, brother.

Thanks for having me on.

So for people who don't know you, which I feel like that's probably everyone in

this, in our chat, anyone that watches this show, they probably don't know you.

Tell people who you are.

Yeah, so my name is Jeremy.

I have a Theonomony under my name there.

That's a podcast I do that talks about economics from a more theonomic standpoint.

Now, granted, with that, a lot of it is just biblical economics.

So I think most of what I say is people who even disagree with theonomy will still agree with what I have to

say about economics.

That's a little bit about that word theonomy underneath there, theonomony.

So that's the podcast.

You can find that on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all that stuff.

I am married and I have one kid right now.

She is almost eight months old.

She'll be eight months old next week.

So hopefully many more to come in the future.

And yeah, I've met I met Rappaport, Andrew Rappaport and Dr. Silvestro a

couple of times each now, and I really love them and enjoy talking with Dr.

Silvestro about health stuff.

I'm sure he's talked about that on at least a few occasions in past episodes.

Yeah, it's always funny because whenever I if I post something on Facebook, right, that's kind of health related

or a question, anything like that, Dr. Silvestro will call me.

He'll text me and then he'll call me and then he'll want to talk about it.

And it always turns into, you know, like a an hour -long conversation, which is great because he gives me all this knowledge

and all this wisdom that I need.

And he just gives me a bunch of stuff that I never thought about before, you know, about what's in our things that are in our

food and things that we consume that we just don't think about that that has an effect

on our health.

So I love talking to Dr. Silvestro about that stuff.

But it looks like we have a comment for you.

It says, What's up, Collins?

This is Haps, Haps Addison.

So, you know Haps?

Yeah, I know Happy.

Happy stayed at my house before.

It's been a while since I've seen him.

So so there you go.

Someone does recognize you.

Yeah.

And, you know, we you and I, we are also a part of Cruciform, Cruciform

Media, Cruciform Ministries, which is actually how you and I got acquainted because I was

coming on as a part of Cruciform and you were a part of that.

So we've just been, you know, keeping in touch ever since.

But I'd actually listened to an episode of your podcast before then, although I don't think you were on that episode.

That was Chris and a guest, I think, the one on Reckless Love, Reckless Worship.

Oh, no, that was that.

Oh, you were on that one.

OK.

Yeah, that was that one.

And then like four months later, we met through Brandon.

It was like, oh, I listened to your podcast.

Yep.

So that's that's pretty funny that you that you listened to it before before you actually met me.

That's yeah.

Bethel Church in Christianity.

That Facebook page shared it.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

I remember that now.

But we do have some comments that have come that actually came in pre show that are

pretty funny.

So let's see.

Brother John Elving, the one who always sends me post -meal questions every time I'm on here.

Love you, brother.

He says post -millennialism defended.

Sorry, I find that is so funny.

Looking forward to the show.

Well, I hope that we can deliver, brother.

I hope that we can deliver.

What else do we have?

Let's see.

I got to explain one of the comments there.

The he's a Zoda warrior comment is in relating to this, my legend of Zoda Master Sword.

Oh, nice.

OK, there you go.

So he must have he must have remembered that from when he stayed at your house.

Yeah.

There's a meme that shows up every once in a while of me holding that.

OK, OK.

We have bond servant for Jesus, Melissa.

And at some point, I'm actually going to be on Melissa's podcast.

We just haven't been able to to work out a time.

I was supposed to be on there this past Sunday.

And then my family decided that, well, hey, we're going to go have Father's Day dinner at 630.

And I was supposed to be on at seven.

So it didn't quite work out.

But we're going to work out a time for sure.

But she says, I used to be pre -trib rapture.

Now I'm all millennial.

Well, you're headed in the right direction.

So not quite there yet, but headed in the right direction.

Yeah, I myself went from dispensational pre -meal to.

I'm not sure what I am.

Post -meal seems really cool, and I want to be that.

But like, I don't know if there's enough scripture to support it.

And after like a few years being there, I landed on post -meal solidly.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Yep.

And so Bible Care and Share Fellowship says I'm so pre I don't eat post toasties,

man, no love for the post -meal guys, you know, no love at all.

Brother Johnny in, he says, I am 100 percent pre -millennial.

Maybe Drew can change my mind.

That's the goal.

That's the goal.

I'm just kidding.

That's actually not the goal.

That's not the goal at all.

We just want to present the position, answer any questions that people have about it,

that that's that's really what we're here for.

To that, I think I got to say, though, I think a big reason of why I'm post -millennial is that

I'm 26, which means I'm not millennial.

I'm Gen Z.

So I literally am post -millennial.

See, I'm technically a millennial because I was I was born in 86.

So I'm technically a millennial.

My parents are Gen Xers, so I was raised by Gen Xers.

And my entire life was everything Gen X.

So I think I should be an honorary generation Xer rather than a millennial.

But I do have this kind of goes with something you were saying, Jeremy.

Question for Drew, how long have you been post meaning post -meal?

I have been post -meal for, I think, about the last five years or so.

And it came about just, you know, I really I never really looked into eschatology.

I never really looked into it at all.

And then I was hearing some podcasts, of course, by Apologia.

They turned me on to some Greg Bonson and then Gary DeMar, which that's a whole different

subject nowadays.

But I was listening to some of their arguments, their biblical presentations.

And it just struck me as this is the most consistent view

in scripture.

So so that's how I how I landed, how I landed there.

And I just had a lot of questions about the dispensational pre -meal camp.

And and to be fair, my my criticisms of the dispensational

pre -meal was more about regarding the left behind aspect, that

kind of group of people.

So so I had a lot of questions about them.

And I and what they were saying just didn't quite sit right with what what scripture was saying.

And so I really bypassed all meal and went straight to post -meal.

And that's kind of how I how I ended up there.

So, Jeremy, what what about your how did you end up in

post -meal?

Yeah, so I grew up being taught dispensational pre -trib pre -meal.

Like to me, the pre versus post debate was pre -trib versus post -trib, not pre -meal versus post -meal.

I grew up in the Baptist Bible Fellowship International.

I don't know if a lot of people know what that is, but it's it's somewhere towards the direction of a kind of IFB.

It's not like Steven Anderson or anything like that.

It's not like extreme IFB, but it's in that direction, you know.

And then I went to the college of the BBFI and it was at the dispensational pre -meal college that I

stopped being dispensational pre -meal.

And.

I if you had me explain my eschatology when I left, I would probably explain something more or less post -meal, but it

would probably be about another year or so after I graduated before I would actually like say that's where I stand.

But yeah, I remember like listening to or reading John MacArthur, why every Calvinist should be a premillennial

list and like at the time thinking that was really good.

And then like a year later, listening to some people like Jeff Durbin starting to realize like, OK, post

-meal wasn't as crazy as MacArthur made it sound like it is.

Leaving dispensationalism was like I was listening to the dividing line with James White or sheologians with James

White's daughter, Summer and Joy, and starting to question dispensationalism there.

But I was still thinking Israel and the church were two separate peoples of God, not basically

different terms for the same thing.

And then it was actually reading a book to help explain Romans.

I was like reading through this two volume book going through the Book of Romans.

It wasn't exactly a commentary.

It wasn't that in depth and it focused a lot more on application.

But when I got to Romans 11 and that that the second volume of that book, I was just looking at

Romans 11 like there is one olive tree.

How can these be two separate peoples of God if the church is grafted into the same olive tree as Israel?

And that kind of just did it for me.

And then I remember the next time I read Ephesians after that, especially in Ephesians two, you see that word one

over and over again.

And I'm looking at this thinking, how did I never notice this before?

When I read Ephesians before this, it was like it just opened my eyes to how many times you are one group now is in the

Book of Ephesians.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a thing that always kind of struck me.

The idea of the the the church in Israel as two separate entities.

And of course, like you're talking about the being grafted in.

It's like, well, they can't be two separate and they can't be dealt with two separate ways if you're grafted in to

the same tree.

Mm hmm.

And then one one argument I heard from Dr. Ken Gentry was.

When we look at the result of AD 70, this the the destruction of the

temple, and he said he related that to Israel, as we see in the Old

Testament, is always portrayed as the adulterous, the adulterous wife.

Right.

And so the stoning of the or the destruction of the temple was the symbolic

stoning and putting to death of the adulterous wife.

Whereas now you have the church that is the bride of Christ.

Right.

And then we see what do we see in Revelation?

We see the the the the bride coming or the

the church coming down from heaven adorned as a bride.

Yeah.

And so it just started to make sense with me.

And I was like, it just it just fits together too well for it to not be, you know,

for that to not be the case.

But we did I do see a comment here that that I think is really good.

Melissa Owens, she says the left behind series does not represent

genuine premill disbees.

And I highly recommend Michael Vlock.

You know, I would actually highly recommend Michael Vlock to I've heard a lot of good things about

his teaching, even his his book.

What's it?

What's it?

Dispensational hermeneutics.

I'm not sure.

Something like that.

I know I know Darren has read it or he's read parts of it.

And he said it's actually, you know, a pretty, pretty decently written book.

He liked it.

But yeah, thank you, Melissa.

I would agree it doesn't represent true dispensational

premillennialism.

I have a friend who's dispensational, and he once told me, even just from a fiction standpoint, left behind isn't very good.

Right.

Right.

But, you know, really, I think we've really gotten ahead of ourselves a little bit, because let's explain kind

of and we've done it here before on the show, kind of the different views.

Right now, when we say premill, all mill, post mill, what

we're discussing is the return of Christ.

When will Christ return?

Will it be before the millennium, pre?

And the millennium is what we see in Revelation 21, 22.

I'm just going off the top of my head.

But it mentions the thousand year, the thousand years, and the question is,

when is Christ going to return?

Is it going to be before the millennium?

Is it going to be after post the millennium?

Or as all mills would say, there there is no literal millennium.

It's figurative.

It's it's a it's a great span of time and that we are actually in

that span of time.

So really, all millennialists would technically be post millennialists because

Jesus returns at the end of that millennium, what they call the millennium.

But I see our other guest is here.

Darren, sorry, I'm having a very non post millennial day.

You hear me?

We can hear you.

Good.

Yes, I can.

I'm having one of those days where everything is just not working.

Even right now, my camera's not working very well.

My microphones, all of my microphones, I have five of them.

They all won't work.

So but the Lord is good.

And here we are.

So praise God.

That's right.

So our listeners and viewers, you should know Pastor Darren Stid.

And I like how you have Jeremy pointed it out pre show.

You have Operation Save America under your name.

Tell us what you do with Operation Save America.

What is it?

What do you do with it?

Yeah.

So I'm the assistant national director of Operation Save America.

Operation Save America is a gospel of the kingdom organization.

So what we're about is bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ and his kingdom in the

conflict with the wickedness that exists in our culture.

And so right now, the bulk of what that revolves around is opposing the slaughter of innocent children.

And so we do a lot of abortion, male ministry.

We raise up Christians all around the country to get active, coming out of the four walls of the

church and going to the streets with the gospel.

And then we do some political stuff.

And we're basically working among the church, the family and the state, striving to bring about an end of the shedding

of innocent blood.

So but very gospel centric.

We believe the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is the answer to the problem.

So awesome.

Awesome.

And I do have an announcement now that you you have explained that.

I have an announcement that Andrew wanted me to say.

I was going to save it for the end.

But he says next week, Mark Spence is going to be on the show to discuss

the new Living Waters film.

What is it?

And it's a it's a film on abortion.

Nice.

And so Mark.

They they did a film on abortion.

What was it called?

One eighty.

One eighty.

And that was one of the best things that's ever been released.

And so I'm excited to see.

I'm excited to see that it's going to be called.

What is it?

That's exciting.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So Darren, you're Post Mill.

I am.

Yeah.

Darren's also my pastor.

Wanted to get that in there before we got too far away from his bio.

Yes. Right.

So now, Darren, where do you pastor?

Harmony Baptist Church.

So we're about an hour north of Indianapolis in Frankfurt, Indiana.

That's where I'm at right now, which I believe that is part of the reason I'm having so many problems, because this office seems to

have the prince of the power of the air seems to have extra

ability in this office.

You know, none of the technology, the power of software.

Callie, a guy named Callie and I used to do a podcast and I would try to do live from this office and it would never work.

I'd always have to go somewhere else.

So but so, yeah, Harmony Baptist Church, about an hour north of Indianapolis.

And Jeremy is a member here.

We're Reformed Baptist 1689 congregation.

And I would say I would not say that our church is post -millennial.

There are a lot of post -millennial people in our church, but there are people in our church that are not post -millennial as well.

So and then there are, frankly, a lot of people in our church that just don't care.

So, yeah.

Yeah, that seems to be the case a lot of times.

The those pan -millennialists, you know, it'll just pan out in the end and I'm not going to worry about it.

But but Jeremy and I were also talking where you are also a part of Cruciform Ministries

with us.

So basically, this is a cruciform takeover of striving for.

Is what it is.

So we kind of talked about our journey, how we arrived at post -millennialism.

How did you arrive at the view of post -millennialism?

Well, so I started so a couple of different things happened.

I've been post -millennial for about seven years now.

And I have some friends who were post -millennial, a guy named James McDonald, not the one that

everybody's heard of, but he's popular up in Peoria, Illinois, and a good

brother that I love.

And he started talking to me about post -millennialism maybe 10 years ago.

And I thought he was nuts.

And so but he would share Doug Wilson books and different things like that with me.

And so I started reading up on it.

And the thing that actually ultimately changed my mind, though, and this is again, it's been about

seven years ago as I was reading through the Gospel of Matthew.

And I kept noticing this discussion about the kingdom of God and the Gospel of Matthew and the thing

that really the day I still remember the day I became post -millennial.

I was reading the Lord's Prayer in there in Matthew chapter six.

And I was thinking through this.

So we're Baptists, so we don't repeat the Lord's Prayer all the time.

Maybe some of you guys who are more high church folks that have one of those types of liturgies.

If you don't know a lot about Baptist history, Baptists are very against vain repetition.

And so but I was thinking about the Lord's Prayer.

This is the pattern Jesus has given us for prayer.

And I was reading through it in Matthew chapter.

I think it's chapter six there.

And, you know, so I was going through it.

You know, our father who art in heaven.

I have memorized in the king's English because I'm spiritual.

You're more holy.

Our father, yeah, who art in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.

And then what's that's the first.

There's six petitions in the Lord's Prayer.

The second petition is thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And I was reading through it.

And that phrase stung me.

At that point, I was premill.

I was what they call historical premill, which is just to say that I believe that there was there was

still a great tribulation coming and then the rapture after that.

And I believe the church would be here for the tribulation.

And so my my theology was always, you know, that things are just going to get worse and worse.

And then, you know, praise God.

You know, Jesus is going to come back and, you know, then he'll have victory at the very end, but

not in time, space and history.

And I look at Matthew chapter six in the Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And this is the pattern that Jesus has given us for prayer.

And those words stung me.

And I began to think to myself, if my theology is true, I can't pray

that.

I can't pray that as a historical premill.

I can't pray thy kingdom come.

I will be done on earth as it is in heaven today.

I can pray that maybe that might happen someday, but I can't pray that today because in

my theology, that's not going to happen.

It may happen eventually, but it's not going to happen.

And really, quite honestly, that was the thing that I literally I became very convinced,

at least in my premillennialism, and I became a millennial for about four days.

And then after that, I became I as I was continuing to read through the Gospel of Matthew and

what it says there, so much of what the Gospel of Matthew says about the kingdom of God.

And then I became I became post -millennial.

And then at that point, I began to devour everything that I could find from Bonson and Doug

Wilson and some of those guys about post -millennialism.

But it was funny.

After I went through that journey, I still would say I've read many books about post -millennialism now,

stacks of them, Ken Gentry and so forth.

I think the book that offers the best defense of post -millennialism is the Gospel of Matthew.

And I think it is very, very hard to read the Gospel of Matthew and

not to see.

From my perspective, I know there are men that do it, and I'm not trying to take anything away from those men.

But from my perspective, I think that the the post post -millennial theology is all through the Gospel of Matthew.

So that's sort of the thing that brought me to the dark side, so to speak.

Yeah, we definitely are the minority.

That's right.

Yeah.

But minority right now, but we weren't the minority a couple hundred years ago.

That's right.

That's right.

I was going to say we're on the rise.

That's right.

Yeah.

So so we've got a we've got a couple of questions.

And let's just jump into it, because this you know, this episode was going to be one of

answering questions and then, you know, maybe dispelling some myths about post -millennialism.

So let's get into our first one.

This is D.

She says, Do post -mill folks think that the Book of Revelation already happened?

Oh, man.

You want me to take a shot at that first?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You go, Darren.

It's kind of a complicated question because the answer is both yes and no.

Post -millennials people are like every other theological camp.

So if you think about pre -millennialism, there's about 500 different versions of pre -millennialism, right?

There's historic pre -mill, there's dispensational pre -millennialism, and then there's all the variety of different places that

people put the rapture.

It's the same thing with post -millennialism.

So there are many there are many post -mill scholars that believe that the entirety of the Book of Revelation

already happened.

I am not one of them.

I do not believe that the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation have already taken place.

I believe those things are still future.

Having said that, one of the things that post -millennialists do not believe, and this is very important to understand,

post -millennialists do not believe that all of the prophecies in the New Testament have been fulfilled.

That is heresy.

That's called full preterism, and we do not believe full preterism.

We do believe that there is still yet to come a future resurrection from the dead

and a future physical bodily return of Christ.

There are some post -millennials that don't believe that those passages at the end of the Book of Revelation

are talking about those events, but they still believe those events are going to come to pass in the future.

Anybody who denies that those events are coming to pass are actually not post -millennial.

They're full preterists, and that's heretical.

But so some scholars do believe that the whole Book of Revelation

has been fulfilled, and some scholars do not.

And I wouldn't call myself a scholar, but I would say I land in the camp that I don't think those latter two chapters

have been fulfilled yet.

I think they're talking about the future.

Gotcha.

Yeah, and you know, it's good that you mentioned full preterism because Melissa Owen says, the

full preterism view seems to be on the rise.

I wonder why that is, and that's actually true.

The full preterist movement used to be kind of a fringe movement along the outskirts, and now it

is gaining more traction.

And I just found this out about a month or so ago, talking to my father -in -law, and he said, there's

actually a group in our town that is full preterist.

And I was blown away because I had no clue that that was going on in our own town.

Crazy, man.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, it is.

And a lot of people want to attribute that to post -millennialism, that full preterism is on the rise because of post -millennialism.

But if you ask any full preterists, they're not post -millennial.

Their view of the millennium is completely different than the post -millennial view of the millennium.

And so post -mills tend, and especially the most prominent position

among post -mills in our day, is the sort of partial preterist post -mill position, which is the belief

that most of the prophecies in the scripture have been fulfilled, though there are yet those, there are

those that are yet to be fulfilled.

But full preterism denies the bodily return of Christ and denies the future resurrection of the

dead.

And that's not post -millennialism.

That's completely the opposite of what post -millennialists believe.

And so full preterism is heresy.

The thing that all the other views have in common, whether you're pre -mill, amill, or post -mill, and whatever variety of any of those

three things you want to call yourself, the thing that we all agree about is the physical return of Christ and the future bodily

resurrection.

Those are the essential doctrines of the Christian faith with regard to the return of Christ.

And full preterists reject those, and so that's the reason why we say it.

And they would tell you they're not post -millennial because they don't believe the same thing about the millennial reign of Christ that we do.

Yeah, and one thing with that, I think even Todd Friel, who's dispensational pre -mill, and I

believe a friend of Andrew Rapoport's, said recently in his podcast, we're all to some extent partial preterists.

I was really surprised to hear him say that, but he said that recently in his podcast because if nothing else, you think most

of the Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled because most of them were just about Jesus and his death and resurrection.

Yeah.

So a popular position among the historical pre -mill at this point is this

concept of the multiple fulfillment.

It's the multiple fulfillment view of prophecy.

And so all of those guys actually would say, well, yeah, I mean, I'm a partial preterist in some sense.

And there's some sense in which you have to believe that because there are some prophecies in the Old Testament that have an

immediate and a future fulfillment.

And so like Isaiah prophesying about the birth of his son, right?

And then, of course, we know that that's ultimately about Jesus, we find out in the Gospels with Matthew and Luke.

That's partial preterism.

That prophecy is both fulfilled at an immediate and at a future fulfillment.

It's been fulfilled twice now.

And so there are some that would take that and say, well, the same thing can happen with current prophecy, and

while there are issues and strengths to that, but in that sense, everybody in some sense believes

in a form of preterism.

Yeah.

All right, now let's get into a question that people love to ask the post

-millennialists.

Brother John Elving, question, what are your thoughts on replacement theology?

Oh, man.

Well, I guess you want me to take that one first?

Jeremy, you want to take that one first?

Both of y 'all are my distinguished guests.

I can say something, and then Darren can correct me if I'm wrong.

Okay.

Yeah, so on replacement theology, I don't like that terminology because, now this

is a question more on covenant theology, not necessarily post -mill, so this might be something where Amill and Postman would both agree.

Replacement theology, like I said, I don't like the term because I'm not saying we don't believe that

God basically kicked Israel to the side and then just replaced them with the church, but rather the

church and Israel always have been the same.

Israel, when you're looking at the Old Testament, you're looking at the Old Testament church, and when you're looking at the New Testament, you're

looking at the New Testament Israel, that they are just one and the same.

One didn't replace the other.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I don't think the church was God's plan B.

I think God's plan was always to bring about the coming of the church through Israel, and the

scripture says that all of God's promises find their yes in Christ.

The scripture says that in the book of Hebrews.

So all of the promises that God gave to Abraham, all of the promises that God gave to Moses,

all of the promises God gave to David, all of those promises find their yes in Christ,

and we are attached to those promises through Christ.

And so in that sense, I don't like the term replacement theology.

Instead, I just think that there are these series of covenants that God has had

with the nation of Israel coming up to the new covenant, and each one of those covenants looks back to the

first covenant, the covenant of works, where Adam failed in the garden, and then looks forward to the new

covenant, where Christ is going to do that which Adam was unable to do.

And so each one of those covenants with Israel is an intermediary covenant that look back to Adam and

look forward to Christ.

And so I wouldn't agree with the idea that the church replaced Israel, but instead I would just say that the church is the

fulfillment of all of the promises that God gave to all of those patriarchs, whether it be

Abraham, whether it be Moses, or whether it be David.

Yeah, and some passages in Scripture that kind of support what Pastor Darin and I were just saying, I would point to

Romans 9 and Romans 11.

Romans 11 I mentioned already a little bit ago, and Romans 9 talks about the spiritual seed

of Abraham, the true Israel.

That would be believers as opposed to someone who is ethnically Jewish, whether or not they're a believer.

Yeah, I think I heard it from Dr. Bonson, one of his lectures, where he says also,

don't like the term replacement theology.

A better term would be continuity.

It's a continuation of the covenant that continues on.

And I would agree with that.

I would agree with everything that you gentlemen said.

Now we have this question here.

This also comes up in talking about Postmale all the time.

Did Christ come back in 70 AD?

Yes, he did.

I think this comes to our interpretation of Matthew 24.

I think much of what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24 is his coming return in 70 AD.

And there are actually many premillennial theologians that agree with that as well.

And so that's that multiple fulfillment idea that I've talked about already.

But I think it's hard actually to avoid the idea that Jesus came back in 70 AD.

Because he says, if you start in Matthew 23, you really get that when you read.

I would encourage everybody that's listening right now to sit down with the Gospel of Matthew.

Take two hours.

Okay.

And sit down with the Gospel of Matthew and read it from beginning to end in one sitting.

Okay.

Regardless of your millennial perspective.

And that is not just going to enrich your theology or end times theology.

But that will enrich your whole theology of the kingdom of God if you do that.

But one of the things you see when you do that is in Matthew, Jesus begins to bring his condemnation

on the Jews.

And by the Jews, here it means the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all of the Jewish religious leaders that are coming

against him.

He begins to bring his condemnation of them all the way back in Matthew 23.

And he tells them that he is going to bring judgment upon them and that judgment is going to come upon the nation of

Israel.

And then when you come to Matthew 24 and you look at all of that discourse, people say, well, how could Jesus have come back in 70 AD?

We didn't see him come in riding on the clouds.

We didn't see the moon turn blood red and so on and so forth.

And what I would say to that is that is apocalyptic language.

What we're reading when we read Matthew 24 is we're reading apocalyptic language.

It's the same thing we read when we read the book of Revelation.

It's apocalyptic language.

Daniel has apocalyptic language.

Isaiah has apocalyptic language.

But apocalyptic language, one of the misunderstandings about apocalyptic language is that it only points to the

end times.

That's not true in the Bible.

The Bible has apocalyptic language that does not point to the end times but points to a different coming or a

different judgment of God.

And we see this in particular in the book of Isaiah.

This language is used previously in the scripture, the moon turning blood red, God coming in the

clouds and so on and so forth, not to describe his future coming at the end

but to describe his coming in judgment against either a nation or against the nation of Israel.

And so what Jesus is talking about there in Matthew 24 when he's using that apocalyptic language, I

believe, is now there are parts of Matthew 24 I also still don't believe are fulfilled.

That's a debated topic also among post -millennialists whether you follow a guy

like a Ken Gentry or a Gary North.

And I don't remember which side Greg Bonson came down to on that.

But I don't think everything there in Matthew 24 has been fulfilled.

But when he's talking about coming on the clouds and he's talking about the moon turning blood red and all that sort of

thing, what he's talking about is his coming in judgment in 70 AD.

And Jesus did come in 70 AD and he brought great judgment on the nation of Israel.

And much of what Jesus describes there in Matthew 24 we see

fulfilled when you look at the destruction of

Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Yeah, well, you also have to consider one, the apocalyptic language.

Yes, because all of that can be taken back to the Old Testament where you see the same language and it always

represents a military destruction or a military army coming

against Israel.

Right.

It's the same exact language that you see.

But when you go to Matthew 24, if you just look at verse 1, right, well, no, let's do

what you mentioned.

Begin in 23.

Where are they?

They're inside the temple.

And what does Jesus say?

Your house will be left to you desolate.

They go outside the temple then in Matthew 24.

And what do the disciples say?

They say, look at this temple.

And Jesus says, yes, get a good look now because it's going to be destroyed.

Not one stone will be left on another.

So the context of Matthew 24 lends itself to saying that it

means the destruction of the temple that happened in AD 70.

Yeah, yep, absolutely.

Amen.

And that's why I tell people it's such a tremendous value.

So I'll say it again here.

Take two hours, sit down in Matthew chapter 1 and read it from Matthew 1

all the way through the end of the book of Matthew, all the way to Matthew 28.

And you see Matthew 22, 23, 24, 25.

You see the development of this theme begin.

You can't just read Matthew 24 as though it comes up in a vacuum.

It doesn't.

Jesus is in the middle of a discussion.

The Olivet Discourse is a discussion with the disciples about a bunch of things that Jesus

has already been talking about in the previous two chapters.

And so I think that's a very important aspect of interpreting the Olivet Discourse.

Right.

So to answer the question, did Jesus come back in 70 AD?

Yes, he came back in judgment, but this wasn't what we would refer to as his second coming.

Yes, right.

He is still coming in the future.

His physical return is still yet to come.

And we can turn over to 1 Corinthians 15 and see what that's going to be like.

Right, yes.

And I think most theologians agree that those verses in 1 Corinthians 15, those are

future.

In fact, just about all Orthodox theologians agree that what's being discussed there in 1

Corinthians 15 is a future resurrection.

It begins with the resurrection of Jesus as the firstfruits and then carries forward as

he makes his defense of a resurrection and ends up with our resurrection of the future at the time of the

return of Christ.

And that's very important.

So when we say Jesus came back in 70 AD, we don't mean his bodily

return in which he is going to have his ultimate victory, right, so to

speak.

We don't believe that, not the ultimate judgment and all those things.

That's in the future.

When we say Christ came back in 70 AD, he came in judgment.

And some people say, well, you have multiple comings.

It's like, well, dispensationalists have multiple comings too.

You've got Jesus coming to rapture the church, and that's a partial coming.

And then you've got Jesus coming again later on after the second renaissance.

So you have multiple comings there as well.

So that's actually a prominent view among multiple of the different positions that Jesus is coming back,

not just the one time, but multiple times.

But also look in the Old Testament as well.

You see the coming of the Lord, and it's always in reference to judgment upon

Israel.

We see that as well.

So the coming of the Lord, we can also say, yes, did Jesus come back?

Yes, in judgment, because we see it all over the place in scripture.

We see it in the Old Testament.

We see it in the New Testament.

I think with that is where it can be helpful to use the terminology first and second advent of

Christ instead of first and second coming of Christ, because then it can easily get confused with the comings and judgment in Old

Testament and New.

Yes, that's a good point.

I like the way you said that too, Jeremy.

We do not believe that 70 A .D. was the second advent of Christ.

The second advent of Christ is yet to come in the future, and that is a very important distinction.

The reason it's important is because there's a difference between heresy and not heresy.

If you believe Jesus came in 70 A .D. and that was the end, that was his advent, that was the second advent, and

there is no future coming.

I keep coming back to this point because, as a previous question noted, there is a

great falling away happening right now of people embracing this idea of

full preterism.

Every time I discuss this topic publicly, I just hit this point over and over and over and over again.

Yes, we believe Jesus came in 70 A .D., but that's not the second advent.

The second advent, the second coming in that sense, is yet to happen still in the future.

Yeah, that's a good point of clarity, Jeremy.

Thank you for saying that.

Along the same lines, I think this is haps still.

When Jesus returned in 70 A .D., did that fulfill.

When Jesus said, not a generation will pass away?

I think that's one of the reasons that you have to conclude that that's what Jesus is talking about there.

I know that there are men that I have tremendous love and respect for that say that that's talking about the

generation that would see the reestablishment of Israel in our day.

So that generation that saw the reestablishment of Israel in the 1940s.

But the problem with that is that that phrase, this generation, is used multiple times.

Again, I'm going to go back to you have to read Matthew 24 in a unit with Matthew 23.

And then also Jesus uses this phrase this generation multiple times in the book of Matthew.

Every time Jesus uses the phrase of this generation in the book of Matthew, it is referring to the present group

of people that he's talking to.

So that's one thing, the literary context within the writing of Matthew.

The second thing is the immediate context of the usage of the phrase.

Exegetically, there is nothing other than us imposing our interpretation, our

homiletical principle, which there is a sense in which we all do that.

I readily admit that.

But there's nothing in the context of that passage that would cause us to think

that Jesus means anything other than that.

He's speaking with the people that he's presently talking to.

And as a matter of fact, you have to do what I would call ecclesiastical gymnastics to get around

the idea.

So it is not ecclesiastical, hermeneutical gymnastics.

Yes, thank you.

You have to do hermeneutical gymnastics.

Sorry, brain injury moment there.

You have to do hermeneutical gymnastics to get around that.

And now I want to be I always want to be fair to the other side.

There are some verses in the Bible that postmortems have to do hermeneutical gymnastics to get around as well.

And I want to say I readily admit that.

But here in Matthew 24, to get around the idea that Jesus is talking about anything other than the generation

of people that are presently talking to him in Matthew chapter 24.

You've got to deal with the fact that Matthew uses that phrase multiple times in the same way.

And you've got to deal with the immediate context, which indicates it dictates that he's talking about the present generation

that they're in.

Yeah.

And I've heard the semantic domain basically meaning all of the possible meanings of that Greek

word.

If that scares anyone, English has semantic domains as well.

I've heard someone explain this before by saying the word trunk has 17 possible meanings.

So if you say put the trunk in the trunk, there are technically 289 different things you could be referring to.

But in the semantic domain of that word, generation can also mean race.

So some people try to say, oh, well, Jesus meant that race as in like the Jewish ethnicity

will not pass away until all these things come to pass.

And I think Darren already explained why, though people respond with that.

That's not a very good argument.

Right.

Well, because I've heard that as well.

And what I usually tell people is there's a different word right between race and

and generation.

Now, they have the same root word, but it's Guinea versus Gnos.

And one of the one of the things we see in in scripture is that scripture

never speaks of people in terms of race.

They speak of them in terms of ethnicity.

So the term that would have been used if that was the case was is ethnos.

Yeah.

Not not Guinea.

And but another thing we can look at in that passage is the utilization of the second person pronouns.

When you see these things, when you see these things, head for the hills.

When you see these things, don't go back to your home.

Right.

You know, it's very specific who he's talking to.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, you talk about semantic domain, which we always when we get into these passages, we always end up in discussion

about semantic domain.

There are things I'm going to point to toward the end of Matthew 24 where I'm going to deal with the issue of semantic domain and say this word

is translated.

This may, but it could mean this.

How do we determine which of those words to use?

All words have a semantic domain.

All words have a range of meanings.

Right.

My wife came.

I sent a message to my wife asking her if she needed me to pick anything up on the way home.

And she said, get some Coke.

That can mean a couple of different things, you know.

And, you know, it could mean get some Coke.

I mean, get some Coke.

Right.

And the context, you know, I know in the context of the conversation, you know, my wife's talking about get some

Coke.

Right.

And how do we determine which one of those meanings to pick?

That's one of the things that Andrew does a lot on the show that I think is important is this kind of teaching ministry that you do.

The context dictates which one of those words that we pick.

And when you look there and you see the pronouns which were used there, they're all first person pronouns.

There's a reason that everybody now I'm going to argue against myself probably in a little while here when we go to Matthew 24.

And I realize that there's a certain way in which I'm talking out both sides of my mouth here.

So I just readily admit that because later on, I'm going to say, well, that word could mean this, you know, and so forth.

But when it comes to this generation, that phrase, this generation, there's a reason why there is

no Bible translation, not one that translates that this race.

And the reason why is because that particular meaning of that word does not

make any sense in the interpretation of that passage based on what's said there in the context.

And that's very important from an apologetical standpoint.

And the reason I'm taking all the time to talk about this, we talk about doing apologetics on apologetics live.

Right.

That's very important from an apologetic standpoint, because the cults often will do that.

They'll say this word has a range of semantic domain.

It has a large range.

And you guys say it could mean this, but really it could mean this over here as well.

And you see false teachers do that with any time you run into a person that a lot of their

theology rests upon semantic domain, a variety of different words in the New Testament.

And the scholars always translated it wrong and so forth.

Always be suspect of that person that they think they understand the Greek better than the thousands and thousands

of scholars that have been involved in translating the translations that we have in the English today.

Yes, there is a semantic domain, but don't fall into the trap of the cults.

There's a semantic domain, but we choose the word that fits the context.

And that's how we go about doing that.

And an important principle with that and an important principle in hermeneutics in general is cross -referencing, letting Scripture

interpret Scripture.

And if you're at a passage that's really difficult or the semantic domains of some of the words can make

it a little bit vague.

Start with the easier passages that address similar topics or use similar words and try to use those easier passages to help

you understand the more difficult ones.

Yeah, that's good.

That's a good word, brother.

So that's just good Bible study methods.

So here, brother John Elving question, do all Post Mill believe Jesus

already returned in 70 AD other than Matthew 24?

Do you have any other scriptures that say Jesus already returned?

Well, first, you know, we do want to clarify.

We believe that this was just a coming in judgment.

This wasn't his second advent, his bodily return, which is going to take place at

the end.

This this was a coming in judgment.

So but.

So do all Post Mills believe Jesus returned in judgment in 80, 70?

Yes, that is a sort of a central tenet of post -millennialism.

I got my MacArthur Preacher's Bible here.

Are you allowed to use that?

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use it for this discussion or not.

But I would say what I would reference, brother John, if

it's OK, if I call you brother, John, I would.

The other passage I would look at is actually in the book of Revelation.

If you look at Revelation one, if you look at what it says in verse one, there it says the revelation of Jesus Christ, which

God gave him to show to his bondservant the things which must soon take place.

He sent and communicated it by angels to his bondservant John.

Now, verse two, who testified to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all

who saw.

I'm sorry.

Verse three.

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy

and heed the things which are written in it for the time is near.

Now you see that there.

What is what is being described?

John is saying here we see in the preamble or the introduction of the book of Revelation, the things that I'm getting ready

to write about here, the bulk of them are going to be things that are coming.

They're going to soon take place.

It says the time is near.

I also would point to then you come to the end of the book of Revelation.

I don't know if I underline these words.

I did.

Revelation 22, verse 12, coming to the end of the book of Revelation, it says, behold, I am coming quickly.

My reward is with me.

The book of Revelation is written to be an encouragement to the church that's going through persecution right now.

You see that in the preamble and you see it in the conclusion.

And the encouragement is that Christ is coming back to judge the people that are persecuting them right now.

And so my question is, how is the book of Revelation an encouragement to a persecuted church?

If it's talking about things that aren't going to happen for another 2000 years?

Instead, I think a better interpretation of the book of Revelation is that the overwhelming majority of these

things are referring to stuff that already happened.

And then there's room in apocalyptic literature.

This happens actually a lot in apocalyptic literature.

The prophecies are mixed together.

Right.

And so there's room to interpret Revelation 21 as not having happened yet and 22

as not having happened yet.

While you also realize that there's a transition to the proscript here in verses 11 and 12 and

acknowledge that these are the overwhelming majority of what Revelation is about.

It's about a coming of Christ that's going to happen very soon, not very far.

And so that would be the other passage that I would point to.

But those would be my main two would be Matthew 24 and all of that discourse, which

I don't think you can get out of interpreting that that is talking about the immediate

generation that he's talking to.

And then the second would be those, the use of those time, that time language in Revelation is all near.

None of it is ever far.

You don't read anything in the book of Revelation that talks about something happening years down the road.

It's always immediate.

Jeremy, do you have anything to add?

I think right there we should not use Aslan as a defense and say all time as soon so it can be 2000 years later.

Yeah.

Thank you for the laugh.

That would have been disappointing if neither of you would laugh.

That was a good joke, brother.

It was kind of niche, but it was a good joke.

But, you know, let's so people's view of the millennium really goes

back to how they view the dating of the book of Revelation.

Yes.

So, so you have an early dating, which would be around

68 AD.

And then you have the late dating, which would be around 90 to 95 AD.

And so most people who are historic premillennial, dispensational premillennial would hold to

that late dating, 90 to 95 AD.

Now, why do they believe, why do most of them believe that

the book of Revelation was written that late?

Okay, so I'm going to reference a book here, which I think is a better thing to do in this type of discussion because this is a

complicated topic.

It's hard to cover something like this in a short discussion.

I would point people to the book called When Jerusalem Fell by Kenneth Gentry.

It's a pretty long book.

It's his doctoral dissertation is actually what it is.

And he offers his defense in there.

It's not just postmillennials that I believe the early date.

Many reformed scholars over the course of recent church history have attested to even some that

were amillennial and a few that were premillennial have attested to the latter or to the earlier

date of the book of Revelation.

Whereas many interpreted as later because they believe that John was on the island of

Patmos later.

And so there's that that's part of the interpretive aspect of it.

And then many believe that it was written after 70 AD.

And there are some different reasons for that, which I don't have the brainpower.

I'm just being honest to get into in this podcast.

If one of you guys want to get into that, you can.

But they believe that it happened after 70 AD because they believe that it references some things that happened in

70 AD.

And so Gentry makes a strong case that, no,

there's all kinds of internal evidence, the book of Revelation that actually demonstrates the earlier date

rather than the later date.

But I have not spent as much time studying that as other postmill guys have.

So there's a lot to discuss here.

And I have certain areas I put in a lot of time.

For me personally, that's just not what I put a lot of time into.

It is important, though, so I probably should put more time into it.

There might be other arguments, but I think the main argument for the later date in the 90s comes from Eusebius'

church history.

And I might be missing something here, but I think it was Eusebius said, Irenaeus said it

was written in the 90s.

And Irenaeus was mentored and discipled by the Apostle John.

So that's where that comes from.

He was discipled by Polycarp.

Polycarp was discipled by John.

And now that is a kind of a Eusebius said, Irenaeus said.

So there's a little bit of a weak argument there.

But also when we're talking about early church history, so many works just didn't

survive the time until now for archaeologists to find them.

And also when Christians are getting persecuted and parchment was really expensive, they weren't writing a ton of stuff.

So there are times with things in church history, the only evidence we have for something is this one guy said that another guy

said this.

So if we had no other arguments against a later date of Revelation, then that

would be the only argument we have for any date of it.

But like Darren said, I think we have some arguments in Revelation for an earlier date.

I don't remember all the details off top my head, but at one point it's talking about like the

seven Caesars, or I think it's using some metaphorical language, but it's referring to seven Caesars.

And it's talking about a sixth one, which looking at, you know, the seven Caesars after like,

you know, Julius Caesar dies and then you get like the three people rolling together.

And was it Antony that kind of was the first Caesar of all of Rome and then counting from

there.

And that's kind of how we get that data when the sixth Caesar was reigning in the 60s.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there you're absolutely right.

Talking about Eusebius quoting Irenaeus.

And then the quote from Irenaeus is just such an obscure quote that it's even

hard to translate itself as to what it means.

But whenever we're referencing Irenaeus, you also have to be careful.

Now, we wouldn't say Irenaeus was a heretic, you know, by any stretch, but he also taught some

things that he said were apostolic teachings as well.

Like Christ had a 15 year ministry and lived to be 50 years old.

Well, we would never agree with that.

Right.

But like Darren was talking about, the internal evidences of Revelation, I think, lend themselves to

a earlier dating, maybe 67, 68 AD, because one of the

things that we see in the book of Revelation is that the temple is still standing.

John is told to rise and go measure the temple.

So if the temple is still standing, that means it hasn't been destroyed yet.

So this can only have been written before 70 AD.

And there are, that's a good example of, there's a whole laundry list of internal evidences to the book of Revelation that

you look at and you think it's hard to, there's a few things in the book of Revelation that are

actually very hard to interpret if it was written post 70 AD.

That's one of them.

And a lot of people look at that and they say, well, that's just metaphorical.

And it's easy to do that with the book of Revelation, because there is so much in the book of Revelation that

is written in the form of word pictures and so on and so forth.

Well, there's a reason for that, you know, and Kenneth Gentry has talked about this.

It's because John is writing using Old Testament imagery.

Exactly.

And that's why it's important to understand that the temple likely was still standing and that there's much

reference to the temple in the book of Revelation.

And if the temple was not standing, there are some important aspects of the book of Revelation that actually make very, very little

sense.

So, and that the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, which, by the way, if you go back to Matthew

24, is exactly what Jesus said was going to happen when judgment came upon

the nation of Israel.

That's right.

We have this one here by Kathy.

She says, but all the apostles taught Christ was coming in their time, even as Paul wrote in

these last days.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know.

There's a prominent teaching in the church today that the apostles all thought that Jesus was coming in their time,

in particular because of some of the things that are written in the book of 1st Thessalonians.

But I don't actually know if that's the right interpretation of some of those passages.

Now, I do, when you talk about these last days or these latter days, there's this idea in the New Testament

of the previous age and the age to come.

And we have been, I think all Bible scholars actually would agree, whether you're pre -mill, post -mill, or on -mill,

all scholars would agree that we have been in what are called the last days

since the resurrection of Jesus.

So this time, post -resurrection of Jesus, is the last days.

And I think if you want to interpret those passages that talk about us being in these last

days as these must mean that there is an imminent return

to Christ, and my question to that is, what do you mean when you say imminent?

Because you're using those passages to assert a point that Jesus is going to come back any day

now, 2000 years after they were written, and you're making the case that they were written as though the return of

Christ was imminent then.

That's not a good, that's not a great hermeneutical method, and a lot of pre -mill folks hang their hat

on that argument.

But if that's talking about, if those passages are talking about the imminent, the immediate return of Christ to that time,

the immediate, when I'm talking about the immediate return of Christ here, I'm not talking about His coming in 70 AD, but the

immediate advent of Christ, the immediate bodily return of Christ.

If that's what those passages are talking about, that's actually a bigger hurdle for you than it is for me,

because it's been 2000 years since those words were written, and Jesus hasn't come back yet.

So I don't think that's what that phrase means when it talks about the last days.

I think what the phrase means is that we've come into this new covenant.

We're in the final covenant.

We're under the new covenant.

We're under the covenant of grace.

Christ has come.

He's died.

He's risen from the dead, and these are the last days.

And the last days have been everything since the resurrection of Jesus, and they will be until

the return, until the ultimate return of Christ.

That's my understanding of the meaning of that phrase.

Yeah, I've heard Voti explain it as there's a difference between the last days and the last

day, right?

So we are in the last days, which are leading up to the last day, which is Christ's

second advent.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's hard to interpret that phrase, last days,

to insist upon the idea that homiletically we

must come to the conclusion, hermeneutically we must come to the conclusion that this phrase means that the return of Christ is

imminent.

Because then you have to ask the question, if we're going to be intellectually honest, imminent to what?

It wasn't imminent to them.

It's been 2 ,000 years since those words were written, so why would it be imminent to us when it wasn't imminent to them?

I think that's an important question to consider or to discuss with regard to that.

And if last days refers to the time immediately preceding the rapture, then we really don't

know if we're in the last time until after the fact, when the rapture happens, if dispensational premial

is true.

I mean, people might point to COVID a few years ago and say, look at this worldwide plague.

That means the rapture's gotta happen because things are so bad.

But like, I hope this doesn't get kicked off YouTube.

COVID was not that bad.

Look at the bubonic plague 800 years ago, where literally a third of the continent of Europe died.

They had way more of a reason to think they were living in the last days than we do, and here we are 800 years later.

Yeah, I said that actually several times when COVID was happening, and there were a few people that got mad at me.

I don't mean to be flippant about it because people did die.

And, of course, we want to extend compassion toward those people that lost loved ones and so forth.

But there's a very real sense in which COVID was a very post -millennial plague.

What I mean when I say that is people were complaining about the problems with COVID while they were sitting in their air -conditioned

houses, typing on their computers, posting on the Internet.

Here we have all this technology.

We have all this ability to protect ourselves from the element.

We have all this ability to hide from whatever this plague may be and so on and so forth.

And in that sense, it's like even our plagues are light in that sense.

I don't know if that makes sense or not, but comparatively speaking, in

comparison to what people were facing prior

to having clean running water and air conditioning and shelter and so on and so forth.

Or even more recently, when we were starting to get some of those things, the Spanish flu immediately following World War I.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that idea can take us into another question that people usually have for

the post -millennialists, which is—.

Hey, give me a quick second.

Sorry, Drew.

I'm going to be here.

I got to plug my phone in.

It's dying.

Very anti -post -mill, what's happening with my technology.

I'm going to be here.

I'm just going to take my camera away, but I'll be right back.

I'm listening.

All right.

So that takes us into another question that people have for post -millennialists, and that's,

shouldn't things in the world be getting better and better?

But when we look out at the world, it seems that things get worse and worse, and people will always say, well, we've

had two world wars, the Holocaust.

We've had all these things.

Shouldn't the world be getting better and better?

Yeah, there are two ways I like to generally go about responding to that.

One is this idea that the world is getting worse and worse, and things are so much worse than they used to be,

is a very American -centric way of looking at things.

Because, like, sure, in America, things are getting worse and worse because we are casting aside our

Christian heritage and going headlong into everything Paul talks about in Romans 1 and

then some.

And so if you're looking just at the United States and the last 250 years, or a little bit further back, going into

the colonies, too, then sure, things look like they're getting a lot worse.

But if we look at the world as a whole over the last 2 ,000 years, I don't think you can really make an

argument things are getting worse and worse.

Now, sure, there are up and down times.

Like, you look at the stock market.

This is the other way I like to take this.

Look at the stock market.

You have a lot of up and downs, but generally things are up.

You know, you have this stock is worth $50 a share today, but then some

bad publicity really hits that company hard and their stock drops 20%.

But then 10 years later, it's worth $100, twice of what it started at.

Like, the general trajectory is up.

And I think that's kind of how we should look at world history through a post -millennial lens is there are dark times.

There are times where things do look pretty bleak and for a short period of time do get worse, but the

general trend is upward.

Yeah, I agree with what Jeremy just said.

I would say two things in response to that.

One is no.

As a from a hermeneutical perspective, from our understanding of the teaching of the Bible and

why we became post -millennial and so on and so forth, no.

Post -millennialism does not teach that the world is always going to get better and better.

And that is the reason that that's a misunderstanding is because post -millennialists actually, quite frankly,

often are not very careful about our rhetoric.

We talk about these sorts of things when we're on social media and the like.

Post -millennialism teaches that the kingdom of God is ebbing and flowing in the earth, and as the kingdom

of God advances, things get better.

But sometimes the kingdom of God seeks to advance and goes backwards, and then things get worse.

But when you look over the trajectory of thousands of years, not dozens of years,

then you see that as the kingdom of God advances, ultimately the trajectory is

better, right?

The trajectory is going in a better direction over the course of thousands of years.

But there are times in which a nation that was previously a Christian nation goes into

rebellion against God, and God brings judgment upon that nation.

That does not mean that post -millennialism is not true.

Post -millennialism does not teach that there's going to be a direct march from the resurrection

of Christ to the conquering of the world through the gospel, and it's just going to be this big

victorious thing from beginning to end.

That's not what post -millennialism teaches.

The church is going to be, to a certain extent, more or less victorious over the course

of the time between now and when Christ ultimately returns, right?

But the trajectory is going to be toward more when you look at it over the course of thousands of years

rather than hundreds or tens of years.

But it does not teach that things are always going to constantly get better all the time and never, ever,

ever get worse.

That's not what post -millennialism teaches, one.

So then, two, if you take sort of along the lines of what Jeremy just said there, if you take that framework that I just laid

out and you say, okay, so we're saying that things are going to get better over the course of thousands of years, but

not necessarily over the course of dozens of years.

And then we put that framework on it and we say, well, are things getting better over the course of thousands of years?

And the answer to that question is, heck yeah, they are getting better over the course of thousands of years.

And people who say that it's not have a very narrow view of they

say there are things happening in America that have never happened in the world before.

That's hogwash.

They didn't look at what happened to Rome when Rome finally fell.

They didn't look at what was happening in Greece during the time when Rome was falling.

There have been many times that were very dark and bleak.

And even in this dark, bleak time that we're in right now, you can go post and

complain about how terrible things are from your air -conditioned house and your keyboard on your

social media platform, and nobody is going to come take you and behead you.

Nobody is going to drag you off and throw you into the emperor's dungeon, whatever else the case may be.

Now, there may be some that want to do that, but they're not able to do that.

Why?

Because over the course of thousands of years, not hundreds of years necessarily, but over the

course of thousands of years, even our tyranny today is lighter than the tyranny

that has existed at previous times in the world.

And so the idea that things are getting worse and worse doesn't check out historically.

And the idea that things are not getting better and better when you look over the course of thousands of years, not hundreds of years,

actually ultimately does check out when you think about it historically.

You know, I've said this to people before about what you said about

technology, right?

You just referenced a whole bunch of technology.

And I've said, yeah, even John MacArthur, a dispensational premillennialist,

can preach from his pulpit in California on dispensational premillennial

eschatology, give the gospel, and it can broadcast throughout the entire world,

and people can come to know the saving grace of Christ, right?

What a treasure that is, you know?

What a great getting better of society we have with just the utilization of technology,

where someone as whom we all respect, John MacArthur, can broadcast the gospel

to the four corners of the world.

Yeah, and I would say that one of the things that I'll say about that is that I'm thankful for a blessed inconsistency there.

And I don't know really that it is an inconsistency, actually, to be honest.

You know, John MacArthur and the guys at Grace to You have a desire to get the gospel to the nations, which we

all should, regardless of our eschatological perspective.

We all should have a desire to get the gospel to the nations because that's what we're committed to do.

And so here with the technology that we have, the guys at Grace to You can put

MacArthur's sermons in an app, and in that app, you can listen to his sermons translated into I

don't even know how many different languages there are on there now.

And then you can project that out.

You can broadcast that out to the whole world, many, many places in the world.

And man, what a tremendous blessing that is because there was a time when the only way you could get

the gospel to those places where MacArthur's sermons can go now is to get on a

plane and fly.

And then there was a time before that, the only way you could get the gospel to those places was to get on a boat

and brave the sea and all that comes with braving the sea and spend, you know,

months worth of your life traveling by sea to get to that faraway land so that you could

get off of that boat.

Hope that you don't die of scurvy in the process.

The stories of missionaries dying on the way to the mission field is vast in the course of church history.

And that was the only way to get the gospel to those places that now Pastor MacArthur's sermons can go to

with just a click of a button.

And that is, I mean, I think I don't think that's evidence of post -millennialism.

I don't think we should do theology reading the newspaper.

I don't think that's evidence of post -millennialism, but I do think that it's evidence that it's really hard to make the case

that things are harder for Christians now than they were 100 years ago or 200 years ago

or 500 years ago.

I think that's a very historically questionable position to try to make.

And honestly, I'd like to see somebody defend that position in a debate where

they have to answer questions by an opponent, because I think that's actually a relatively indefensible

position.

Well, here's we've got a couple of comments.

Well, can I say two more things with that real quick, Drew?

Yeah, go for it.

One thing, this is something I said to a friend before I officially claimed post -mill, and about three times I was explaining it, I

go, but I'm not post -mill.

And at the end, he goes, that sounded really post -mill.

But look at the development of farming.

Like, what did Adam have?

Maybe a stick or something.

At some point, people invent a hoe, and over centuries, there are improvements on the hoe.

And then eventually someone invents a plow.

You know, again, eventually someone has the idea of, oh, hey, let's have animals pull the plow.

That'll be a lot easier than us trying to pull it ourselves.

And then, you know, fast forward, you eventually get the tractor invented.

And now we have, like, air -conditioned GPS tractors where the farmer can sit in his tractor reading a

book, and he just grabs the wheel in case the GPS gets messed up.

Now, that's like what Darren said.

We don't want to do newspaper exegesis.

Yeah.

And then I'm trying to remember the...

Oh, yeah.

That's the other thing I was going to say.

When it comes to persecution, I'm going to say something maybe a little bit shocking.

But, like, what's going on in China right now?

In a certain sense, that's what it looks like when the gospel is winning.

Yeah.

I paused there for people to kind of take what I just said.

Let it sink in.

Yeah.

Look at Pastor Wongi.

He's been in prison for, like, three or four years.

Hopefully he's still alive.

But the reason he's in prison is because a few centuries ago it was said, Mary, Queen of

Scots, fears the public prayers of John Knox, more than 10 ,000 troops of the British.

Xi Jinping believes that statement today about Wongi, and that's why Wongi is in prison.

The communist dictatorship leadership of China is afraid of Christians, and that's why they're doing what they're

doing.

And Christianity is soaring there, and give it a century or two, and Christianity will take over China.

Like, Jesus' death and resurrection saves us, but God also uses little pictures of death and resurrection -like

stories throughout the world.

You know, all of the insects that are caterpillars and then become, like, a moth or a butterfly or something.

And then in church history, when things look really bad for the church, persecution is horrible.

And then through the faithfulness, the blood of the martyrs being the seed of the church, that nation that was

murdering the Christians ends up being one for faith in Christ, like with Jim Elliott.

Yeah, I agree with everything you just said there.

I think that was a powerful comment that you made there, Jeremy.

Yeah, so let me put up this comment as you're saying that.

Brother John says, over 360 million Christians suffering persecution in the world right now.

Yeah, so I don't want to belittle that persecution in any way, shape, or form, and I don't think any of us are trying to do that.

But in the places where most of the places, not all of them, especially there are exceptions

in some places like the Middle East, certain places in the Middle East, many of the places that those Christians are

facing persecution, the gospel is advancing.

We don't consider persecution to be evidence that the kingdom of Christ is not being

victorious.

In fact, the Bible teaches us just the opposite of that.

It teaches us that when the kingdom of Christ is being victorious,

that Babylon is always going to be coming against the kingdom of Christ.

And so persecuted Christians is not evidence that the gospel is not advancing or that the gospel is

not being victorious.

My answer to that, if we were in a debate, is I would say I don't accept that as evidence because I don't think that's what the Bible teaches.

It doesn't teach that persecuted Christians is evidence that the gospel is not being victorious.

And the interesting thing about that is guys like MacArthur, we keep going back to

MacArthur, I think, because we all have so much love and respect for him.

Guys like MacArthur would agree with us about that, actually.

You know that guys say things like, you know, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the gospel, right?

It's the seed of the church.

And so the way that this is going to happen, I think it was Doug

Wilson I heard say it, but I want to say he was quoting somebody else.

I don't remember who ultimately said it, but he said, you know, the way the gospel advances as that unfolds

over the course of history is that it's a series of events that look like losses in the

beginning, but ultimately turn out to be victories.

And so we don't want to belittle the suffering of those 360 million Christians that are being persecuted

worldwide.

In fact, what we want to do is we want to praise God for their faithfulness.

And we also want to assert that their suffering is not meaningless, but it's meaningful.

And one of the ways in which it's meaningful is that the gospel is being advanced through their suffering.

And so we don't count suffering Christians as evidence that the gospel is not being victorious.

Yeah, yeah.

Jason said, praise the Lord.

Melissa says, amen.

And Bond Servant for Jesus says, I think it usually thrives, meaning the church, in persecution.

And, you know, that's something we teach about persecution is that

nothing grows the church more than persecution.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

And I think to go back to what the previous brother said, he may have been responding to something I was saying when I was talking about

Christians being carried off into dungeons and that sort of thing.

And he's probably he may be to be fair to him.

He may be saying, well, there are Christians being carried off into dungeons, places.

And to that, I would say, yes, you're right.

I that point, I grant.

But what I would say to that point is that that is still not evidence.

The kingdom of Christ is not advancing.

So we see the kingdom of Christ advancing in two ways.

We see it advancing in cultures like the West, where the Christian principles and Christian worldview have taken a

foothold.

And a Christian way of life, at least previously among the ruins of Western

civilization, there's evidence of a previous way of life that still has

meaning today in some sense, although they're doing everything they can to take that away right now.

But it still has meaning today in some sense, such that even amidst persecution, the

persecution that we're facing in the West is very light.

That's what I meant to say when I was talking about that.

And part of the reason it is is because the gospel has so advanced in this culture.

On the other side, the other way that the gospel is advancing is through the persecution of the church and persecuted Christians.

And people say people might hear that and they might say, well, you want to have your cake and eat it?

And I would say, yes, that is the way the gospel advances.

It advances both of those two ways.

And what I mean to say when I say that, and this is part of what makes me post -millennial, is that whether there's peace or whether

there's persecution, the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is always advancing.

And that's actually one of the core tenets of our theological position.

It's always at the center of that.

Yeah, right.

Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead, Jeremy.

One thing on all of this, Dr. James White, he hasn't been post -millennial for very long.

But when he first became post -millennial, he said something that has stuck with me and I've recited it.

I don't know how many times since then.

There are more people today who profess faith in Christ, whether genuine converts or

unfortunately, some false converts.

There are more people alive today who profess faith in Christ than there were people on the planet in

the days of the apostles.

That's right.

That's right.

That's a good point.

Kathy says, yes, in John MacArthur, one book he writes, Evangelism and

Persecution Preserves the Church.

Yeah, that's right.

Amen.

That's it.

Now I want to go to a comment that Dee made.

To be more exact, John MacArthur calls himself a leaky dispensationalist.

And I always have a joke about that because I've worked in plumbing.

And I say, anytime you find something that's leaking, it's probably broken.

With that, I do have to say with that, I much prefer John MacArthur's leaky

dispensationalism over a lot of the classic dispensationalism you get from guys like Ryrie.

Yes, MacArthur's version of dispensationalism versus the Dallas Seminary guys.

And then it gets even worse than that, right?

Because then you've got the John Haggis of the world.

And I do think it's valuable to say on this podcast that we as post -millennialists,

we do want to be careful and fair to make a distinction between those different groups of

dispensationalists.

We don't lump John MacArthur in with John Haggis.

Heavens no.

And we actually don't lump Charles Ryrie in with John Haggis either.

There are some things in the more charismatic—although there are many solid brothers that are

charismatic that have more of a John MacArthur -type dispensationalism.

I still wouldn't agree with their view, some of their theology of the Holy Spirit.

But we're talking about end -times theology here.

But when we're talking about dispensationalism, there are streams, and there's

less—there's error that we don't—just that we don't agree with, but it's secondary or tertiary.

And then there's severe error.

And so I would say among those that hold to the severe error would be the idea that the temple is going to be re -erected.

There's going to be a third temple and that there'll be sacrifices made at that temple.

I think that is very dangerous theology.

Versus with John MacArthur's sort of leaky dispensationalism, he doesn't believe anything like that.

And so given the choice between a MacArthur and a Ryrie, MacArthur's

dispensationalism to me is far more agreeable than a Charles Ryrie,

or worse than that, a John Haggis.

Absolutely.

Melissa says, The view of the world getting better tends to come from the New Apostolic Reformation

and their Seven Mountain Mandate.

I think Postmills mistakenly get lumped into that group.

And I would absolutely agree.

On this show, I know I have discussed the Seven Mountain

Mandate and how it's actually not postmillennial.

Postmillennials would—we would reject the Seven Mountain Mandate.

And if you look at where the Seven Mountain Mandate comes from, it began with the

Kansas City Prophets, Mike Bickle, Bob Joiner.

I think—no, Bob—I can't remember the guy's name.

But anyway, Kansas City Prophets, Mike Bickle, which now has bled into Bethel because

Bill Johnson and Mike Bickle are homeboys.

And if you look at their teaching of eschatology in their schools, it

is—the vast majority of the diet of their eschatology is dispensational premillennialism.

That's what they teach in their schools.

That's what they—the books that they sell in their bookstores, that's actually what they teach.

So, yes, postmills do get lumped in with the Seven Mountain Mandate, and we wholeheartedly

reject that idea.

Yeah, some of those—oh, go ahead, Darren.

No, you go ahead.

You go ahead, Jimmy.

Some of those NAR people, you'll even hear them make comments—they probably don't say this as much because it sounds so bad,

but I've at least seen one quote from one of their big teachers saying, like, evangelism isn't necessary to

their optimistic view of the future.

That's completely against postmill, because postmill doesn't say things get better because they just get better.

We say things get better because there will be a larger and larger percentage of the world

population who are believers, and as those believers are sanctified, it is as if the world itself is being

sanctified.

Yeah, I agree.

The gospel is the thing that's going to make things better, so to speak, not—.

There's two streams in the—so a lot of people don't know this, but there's a whole stream

of charismatics that were discipled by Gary North that are postmillennial, and they often

get lumped in with the Seven Mountain Mandate folks as well.

Seven Mountain Dominism, so to speak, Dominionism, and postmillennialism.

I think Drew gave a talk at Cruciform about this, which I would encourage everybody—.

Jared Ebert gave a talk about it.

It's on the Cruciform YouTube channel.

I'd encourage you guys to go check that out.

It's a great talk.

Jared's a great preacher.

He's a young guy here in Indiana that does a lot of stuff with Cruciform.

I would encourage you to go give that talk a listen on the YouTube channel, the distinction between the two.

But drawing that distinction is very important.

We are not Dominionists in the same sense that they are Dominionists.

We do believe that we should take dominion in creation.

We should fulfill the Dominion Mandate, which is—the Great Commission is included

with the Dominion Mandate.

But our Dominionism is very different than their Dominionism because of what Jeremy just said.

We have a different worldview.

The gospel is at the center of our Dominionism, and the gospel is not at the center of their

Dominionism.

And that is a very, very, very important distinction.

And so I would say, no, we are not Seven Mountain Mandate people.

I haven't really done a lot of research into it, but anything that's associated with a

new Apostolic Reformation is obviously deeply flawed and deeply problematic.

They're also very top -down, like take the top structures and then kind of force

it.

And one of their Seven Mountains, I believe, is like news and entertainment.

I don't watch Fox News, but I hear that there are a lot of NAR people on Fox News lately.

But as Post Mills, we're very bottom -up.

Now, occasionally, there might be something like Nineveh where, like, the king repents and says, like, everyone put on

sackcloth and ashes.

But that was kind of top and bottom at the same time as Jonah preached to the whole city.

Yeah, it was the people that went to the king first.

And so you have two things happening there.

And I think that's an important distinction.

The guys that are really, quote, unquote, rocking the boat or moving the discussion with

regards to post -millennialism right now are pastors, Jeff Durbin, Doug

Wilson.

And you may agree more or less with either one of those two guys.

And there are several other people also that we can point to.

Those are probably, like, two of the more, like, bigger names, post -millennial people.

But you can agree more or less with different aspects of their theology and so forth.

But those are pastors.

They're not political leaders.

They're not platform builders.

I actually know both of those men.

They often get accused of building platforms.

But I don't think actually either one of them are, quote, unquote, platform builders.

I think they're just gifted men that God is using to spread this theology.

But this is a local church grassroots movement, as Jeremy was talking about.

And I think that is an important distinction.

We're not trying to build something top -down.

We are trying to build institutions and so forth.

But as a grassroots movement, we're trying to build institutions.

So it's not the church is not building these societal institutions in the sense that we're talking about the local

church.

The church is building these institutions in the sense that it's like you and your family go start that business.

Right.

You and your family go start that school.

You and your family go start that fill -in -the -blank.

And the church will cheer you on and come alongside you and support you as you do it.

And that's very different than what the folks in the Seven Mountain Dominism believe that should be happening.

Right.

All right.

Let's for a moment take a break and recognize our

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Now I have Logos.

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Jeremy, do you use Logos?

I like print stuff, so I do not have a Logos account.

Okay.

But the searching feature of online stuff is nice and is tempting.

I'll tell you this.

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My favorite feature on Logos, though, is the sermon delivery software.

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But they just recently updated everything with it.

So you can type your sermon on your computer, and then it's right there on your iPad.

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So if you're a pastor, man, and you don't have Logos, I would strongly encourage you, if

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It's super helpful and helps me not to get distracted at all.

Yeah, their guided process on there.

They have one of those for expository sermons too.

It's a whole guided process.

Just work through it little bit by little bit.

And then they also have another tool on there.

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So, yeah.

Great programs.

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But so back to back to our discussion on post -millennialism.

Now, one of the things, one of the arguments I have made

a couple years ago, I did a Matter of Theology episode where I

was actually responding to an Apologetics Live episode.

And one of the arguments I made was one that says there's actually no place.

And the reason I say this, because Brother John jokingly said, I'm even more

pre -Trib now.

That's all right.

It's still lovely.

Yeah.

But so one of the arguments I made was that there's no place to insert

a 1 ,000 -year reign on Earth after Christ returns.

And so the argument I made for that is what Greg Bonson calls the unity of the eschatological complex.

Yeah.

And so what that means is that the eschatological events that we are anticipating, they're unified

in the Bible.

So the resurrection of the saints happens at the same time as the resurrection of the wicked.

The judgment of the saints happens at the same time as the judgment of the wicked.

And so the reason I say that, we have a general resurrection.

And we can see this in John 5, verses 28 through 29, which reads,

Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice

and come forth.

Those who did good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed evil deeds to a resurrection of

judgment.

And so verse 28 says, all who are in the tombs.

Right.

And so we see a general resurrection.

We see this in Acts 24, verse 15, a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

And then we also see the general judgment, Matthew 25, verses 32

and verse 46.

All the nations will be gathered before Him and He will separate them one from another as

the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

They will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

So I don't know how

would the premillennialists refute the idea of the

general resurrection and the general judgment.

And we can also go to 1 Corinthians 15 as well, which is talking

about the resurrection of the wicked and of the saints.

And then in verse 24, it says, then comes the end when Jesus

hands over the millennium to the Father, or not hands over the millennium, but hands over the kingdom

to the Father.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with everything that you just said.

Well, I think there's two things there is.

So this is I'll talk just for briefly about this and I encourage people to go look into it.

A lot of people don't know this, but.

There are actually multiple, so I mentioned earlier, there are multiple streams within postmillennialism.

There actually is a stream of postmillennialism that does believe in a literal thousand year reign.

So if that's your thing, that's your big thing.

Right.

There has to be a literal thousand year reign in your interpretation of scripture.

There could be a place for it, but it's very important that you understand everything that Drew just said.

There could be a place for it.

And this is the version of postmillennialism that the Puritans actually believe.

It's called historical postmillennialism.

And if you actually look right above my head, this white three books, that's the

revelation commentary of James Durham, which he believes

this historical postmillennial view that you're about to explore.

So if you're a historical premill, and you're thinking through postmillennialism, this would

actually be the quick, it would be a quick jump for you.

Because there's a lot of correlation between historic postmill and historic premill.

But in the historical postmillennial perspective, there is, there's going to be a,

there is the church will continue to be victorious in the earth as it ebbs and flows over time.

And then usher in a literal thousand year reign, at the end of which there will be the judgment

that you were talking about and so forth.

And so that is a stream.

I wanted to mention that on the tail ends of what you were just talking about, that there is a stream of postmillennialism.

I've actually considered it myself and thought and read about it and so forth, because I do think there's a lot of good

arguments for that position.

But it's not the prominent position today.

Like the Bonson postmillennialism tends to be more of a partial preterist type postmillennialism.

And that also has a lot of good arguments for it as well.

But some of you guys that like your big thing is that it says a thousand years in the book of Revelation.

So there has to be a thousand year reign, which I don't really understand that from a

hermeneutical standpoint.

Because there's so many things that everybody agrees are figurative in the book of Revelation.

But if it's your perspective, there has to be everything Drew just said.

You can kind of understand it.

But in your mind, there's just got to be a thousand year reign.

You just can't get around that.

There can be a thousand year reign within postmillennialism.

It's a different version of postmillennialism, but there's actually a lot of merit to it as well.

Jonathan Edwards held this view of postmillennialism.

I want to say John Owen held this view.

I don't remember that for sure, though, so don't quote me on that.

But what's his name?

My brain just went blank.

The best Bible commentary that there is.

What's the guy's name?

Calvin?

Matthew Henry.

Calvin was not postmillennial.

Matthew Henry believed this version of postmillennialism and on and on.

So I just wanted to throw that out there as a point of discussion.

All right.

This will get right into kind of Jeremy's wheelhouse.

Melissa says, do any of you gentlemen in your postmill view ascribe to theonomy?

I'm actually interested to hear how you answer this question, Jeremy.

Yeah.

So I talked a little bit about theonomy at the beginning, and it's from a theonomic standpoint.

Some episodes of the podcast don't really address economics at all.

They're more just focused on theonomy.

Some episodes don't really address theonomy.

They're just focused on economics.

And as much as I can, I like to try to do both at the same time, looking at something from a theonomic standpoint

or just from a biblical standpoint.

Like I said in the beginning for people maybe tuned in partway through.

I think a lot of what I would call biblical or theonomic economics is just biblical economics, and

Christians of all stripes would agree with it.

But I am a theonomist.

I think a lot of postmills are.

I don't think theonomy means you have to be postmill or vice versa.

That being postmill means you have to be a theonomist.

There are a lot of people that hold to one or the other.

Like, I think there are a lot of aumil people who hold to a theonomy, and there are probably a lot of

postmill people who do not hold to theonomy, like going each way with that.

But I do think that holding the two at the same time helps it out.

I've called postmill the engine of theonomy because, you know, if I'm theonomic, if I think that

like Psalm 2 is a reality, nations that disobey Christ will be crushed.

Like not just at an individual level on the day of judgment if they're not saved, but on a national level, Christ will judge

and crush nations that disagree with him.

If I'm not postmill, what's my hope that will ever actually happen?

More than just it's the ideal that will never happen until eternity.

So that's why I call postmill the engine of theonomy.

It makes it possible.

It makes us able to get there.

And so, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, kind of merit to taking both ideas together.

And possibly a big reason why a lot of people hold to both is because a lot of the big teachers of

the two views held to both.

Jeff Durbin holds to both.

Greg Bonson held to both.

Doug Wilson holds to both.

And so I think those are some of the reasons why the two get held together.

Also, Andrew Rappaport might not like this because he's presuppositional, but I think that

theonomy is the presuppositional approach to politics.

What presuppositional apologetics is to apologetics, I think theonomy is to politics.

And a lot of postmills do also happen to be presuppositional.

I don't think being presuppositional means you have to be postmill or vice versa.

Once again, Greg Bonson and Jeff Durbin are both presuppositional as well.

But I think it makes sense for people who are presuppositional to hold to theonomy.

And so those three things, presuppositional, postmill, and theonomy kind of go hand in hand.

Though I don't think just because you hold to one means you have to hold to the other two.

That's a good answer.

I agree.

There's a lot of postmillennialists out there, especially more early.

One of the first books I ever read on postmillennialism was by a guy named Lorraine Boatner, who a lot of guys today have never even heard of.

But he was a great theologian.

He wrote in the 1940s.

Brilliant scholar.

And I would encourage you, some of his works are coming back into publication.

I would strongly encourage you to get his book.

He was not a theonomist, but he was a great, brilliant theologian that wrote about postmillennialism.

And there are guys like that out there.

For me, it's complicated, is what I

tell people when they ask me if I'm a theonomist.

I say it's complicated.

I'm a 1689.

I ascribe to the 1689 Confession.

And technically speaking, by the strictest letter of the law, the 1689 Confession

does not jive with theonomy, the full -blown theonomy.

So the question when we're talking about theonomy is the law of God.

And Jeremy made a good point when he talked about the Second Psalm and Christ ruling among the nations.

And you have to ask yourself the question, what would it look like for Christ to do that?

And one of the things that would look like is the establishment of God's law in politics.

Not, and I want to clarify a few things here.

We're not saying the church should govern over the state.

The concept of separation of church and state is actually a theonomic concept.

It is consistent with God's law.

God made a distinction between the priests and the Levites and the

kings and the governing authorities.

And so there's nothing about that whole idea in theonomy that the church, we're not talking

about an ecclesiocracy or anything like that.

But the thing you have to deal with when you're talking about theonomy is what do we mean when we say the law of

God?

Some people say the law of God has no place in politics and profess to be Christians.

I don't know how you get there from a biblical worldview.

Some people say, well, the Decalogue or the natural law should govern over

politics, but not the case law, the Levitical and Deuteronical

law, not the case law.

And others say, no, the whole law should be considered.

So I am a what I would call what people would call a general equity theonomist.

Theonomist hate it when you use that phrase because they say all theonomist are general equity.

But what I mean when I say that is something very specific.

Most people would call me a theonomist, but I'm not technically a theonomist in the classic sense.

I believe that the case law should be considered in the establishment of what

constitutes moral law in civil society.

And what I mean when I say considered is that the moral principle in the case law should be extrapolated

and applied to civil society.

But I would argue that that is sometimes going to look very different in our culture today

than it would back when the Levitical law was originally given or when the civil law was originally given

in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

And so I am a theonomist in some sense.

I'm getting off into the weeds here.

I am a theonomist in some sense because I do believe the law of God.

I believe that both the church and the state have a duty to submit themselves to the Lordship of Christ

and then their own jurisdictions to govern their jurisdictions in a way that honors Christ.

And I think every Christian should agree with that.

That's a basic tenet of having a biblical worldview.

OK, the question that needs to be debated and a lot of people don't understand this question needs to be

debated is what does it look like for the civil sphere to honor Christ?

And I would argue you for the civil sphere to honor Christ.

You must look at the law of God because that is the the law of God is the

exposition of God's moral character and God's moral character does not change.

So you may not bring it over and apply it 100 percent exactly the way that it was in the Old Testament.

But you would bring it over and you would consider it in the institution and the structuring of the civil

laws in our society today.

And the reason that that ties in with post -millennialism is because we would say in Germany, I think explain this point very

well.

And I just want to put a finer point on it.

We would say, what does it look like for Christ to reign in the civil government?

Well, it looks like the establishment of laws that are consistent with his law word that

recognize and exalt his lordship.

And the only black and white standard we have for what that would look like

is found in the law word of God.

Yeah, there's Jason right here says the whole basis of law and morals and ethics

all comes from from God's holy word and how we were created in his image.

Yeah.

And then Jason also sends a question in, he says, in a post -mill view, when is Satan

bound for the thousand years?

Man.

What do you think, Jeremy?

I would I hold to the more modern view of post -mill that kind of takes

the thousand years as metaphorical for everything, for like all of church history.

You know, when it says, I think it's Psalm 52, that God owns the cattle in a thousand hills.

It means all of them, not he doesn't own the cattle in the thousand and first hill.

So I don't think it's bad to take the thousand as metaphorical.

So I think when it says Satan's bound for a thousand years, it's referring to all of church history.

Now, you might say, OK, but I think it's first Peter five where it describes Satan as active,

like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour.

And I say, yes, Satan is bound, but he's also active.

And how is it not contradictory because of how I understand the word bound?

It says Satan is bound that he can no longer deceive the nations.

It's not I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think in Scripture it says Satan is bound that he can't do anything.

So Satan is bound in a sense that he doesn't have the power he had in the Old Testament

and the New Testament.

Jesus has bound the strong man and is now plundering his house.

And so now Satan still has a lot of power, like Satan can still wreck

any single Christian he wants to because he has a lot more power than a human does right now in our non glorified bodies.

But he is bound so that way he can't deceive the entire world.

Christianity can't be limited to one small nation.

That's apostate half the time, like it was with Israel in the Old Testament, because Jesus is on his

victory march across the whole world over the course of thousands of years.

And so Satan is bound in a sense that he's limited more than he was in the Old Testament, but he is still

active to some degree, just not as much as before.

Generally speaking, I agree with what you just said there, Jeremy.

I don't think that what the Scripture means when it says that Satan is bound, that it means that he's inactive.

I think there's still a great spiritual battle happening in the world.

I would point people to my sermon audio page for Harmony Baptist Church.

I just preached a series of sermons about this going through Ephesians 6.

And we talked about spiritual warfare.

I think spiritual warfare is still a very real thing.

I think the enemy wants to oppose the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.

And what the Puritans believe is that inasmuch as the kingdom of Christ is advancing in the

church, that Satan is more and more bound because Jesus is,

as Jeremy said, Jesus is binding the strong man.

He's plundering the strong man.

And then sometimes it ebbs.

It doesn't flow.

Sometimes it ebbs.

And as it ebbs, Satan is less bound, and he's more able to accomplish certain things in given cultures

because the strong man is not being bound as much because the kingdom of Christ is not advancing in

that way.

And so inasmuch as the kingdom of Christ is advancing, the strong man is being bound, and his house is being

plundered.

And as much as the kingdom is not advancing, then the strong man is less bound, and his kingdom and his

household is less being plundered.

That's the way that I would understand that.

So what that means is that when the kingdom advances, the enemy is pushed back.

The gates of the enemy are pushed back.

As the light advances into the darkness, you push back the camp of the enemy.

And so Satan was bound at the resurrection of Christ, and the strong man has

been bound, and his house is being plundered.

I keep going back to this because I think it's so important, and people don't understand it about post -millennialism.

That ebbs and flows over the course of history with a trajectory toward victory,

but it still ebbs and flows.

And as that kingdom ebbs and flows, there's a sense in which

his house is being plundered more and a sense in which it's being plundered less.

We're seeing in America today, it's ebbing, not flowing, and the enemy is able to do more,

and he's able to hide in plain sight because the church is not advancing the kingdom of Christ in the earth.

And so you always have to look at that, but that doesn't mean the strong man hasn't been bound.

I don't know if that makes sense to you guys or not, but that's the way I would explain that.

Brother John says, a lot of metaphorical scriptures in the post -mill camp, very interesting.

I think all of the major views of eschatology have passages they take metaphorically.

I think Amel does the most taking things metaphorically, and I think post -mill does a lot of taking things

literally, perhaps even more than the pre -mills do.

I mean, does Brother John Elving, does he think that when

the Tribulation is going on, there will be a literal whore riding a literal dragon around?

If not, he's taking that metaphorically.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with what Jeremy said there.

I think that dispensationalists oftentimes like to accuse amels and post

-mills of being too metaphorical, and that's because they're hermeneutic.

So the synchronon of dispensationalism, according to Charles Ryrie, is a historical grammatical hermeneutic,

a hard and fast distinction between Israel and the Church, and a pre -millennial, pre -tribulational view of end -times

theology.

In his book Dispensationalism, he said that's the synchronon of dispensationalism.

And a lot of times, since that is such an important part of dispensationalism, dispensationalists hang

their hat on the historical grammatical interpretation of scripture.

But the reality is we all believe in a historical grammatical interpretation of scripture.

Now, we in the post -mill camp also tend a lot toward a

historical redemptive interpretation of scripture.

But historical grammatical is a part of historical redemptive.

They go hand in hand with one another.

So we believe in a historical grammatical interpretation of scripture.

But what do we mean when we say grammatical?

We mean that when we look at the passage, there are some passages in the Bible that are meant to be taken

figuratively.

Some are poetry.

Some are history.

Some are letters.

And how do we determine how we should read that passage?

We consider the cues of the context, and we determine what should be literal and what should

be figurative or poetic or whatever on the basis of the context.

That's what historical grammatical interpretation of scripture would have us to do.

We don't take everything literally.

Nobody takes everything literally.

The literal meaning of a passage, when we're talking about literal when it comes to Bible study methods, the literal meaning of

the passage is actually the meaning that the author meant when they wrote those words down.

That's the literal meaning of the passage.

Let's go to Revelation.

If, for example, John meant for that, and God, by the power of his spirit through John, meant for that

discussion of a thousand -year reign to be an actual thousand years, then the literal interpretation would be a

literal thousand years.

But if John meant for that to be figurative, then the literal interpretation would be what John originally

meant.

That's what we mean when we say literal when we're talking about historical grammatical.

The literal is not always the wooden literal definition or meaning.

It is the meaning that was originally intended by the author when they wrote the words down.

That's what we're trying to discern.

And so any place where the context dictates that we

should take the passage metaphorically, we take it metaphorically.

And that's what everybody does.

We all do that.

It's just the dispensationalists choose to take other things metaphorically than we do and so on and so forth.

And we need to have that argument based on the context.

What should be metaphorical?

What should not be metaphorical?

But this idea that only the dispensationalists are the ones that take the Scripture literally, and the rest of us all

constantly appeal to metaphor, is just not the matter of the fact.

It's not the case of what actually happens when we approach the text.

Yeah.

Yeah, very good.

I think that's a good answer.

Let's go to, as we're wrapping up, let's go to one of Brother John's

other questions.

He does say, question for Darren.

Are you expecting the soon return of Jesus?

Do you believe Jesus will return soon?

No.

Not in the sense that you're talking about there.

I think he did return soon.

I think he came in 70 AD and brought judgment on the nation of Israel.

Which was not what he says here, a metaphorical return.

It was an actual return in judgment.

Yeah, and this is something that oftentimes our premillennial brothers will do is they'll try to accuse us of

speaking metaphorically when we're not speaking metaphorically.

When Jesus came in 70 AD, he did not come metaphorically.

He came literally.

He came in the sense that he said that he would come in Matthew 23.

And he brought judgment upon the nation of Israel.

And I would challenge Brother John, I would just challenge Brother John back and say, when

you read the words, this generation in Matthew 24, does that mean this generation?

Or does it mean something else?

Are you expecting, did you expect that Jesus would return in that generation?

Do you take those words literally?

Or do you take them metaphorically?

That's the question that I would ask back to that.

Do I, am I expecting Jesus to return soon in his, when we're talking about the second

advent of Christ?

No.

Because I think when Jesus was talking about I am coming soon in the book of Revelation, and the students of his turn in

Matthew 24 was talking about the coming judgment that he was talking about with regard to the nation of

Israel.

That already happened.

And I hang my hat on that.

I think that's the most consistent interpretation of scripture.

And I would ask Brother John, if we were having a debate right now, I would ask him, what do the words this

generation mean?

Because we can both do that, right?

We can both discuss the topic in that way.

And we should.

That's the way we should actually have the discussion.

So I actually appreciate the question.

I think that's a good way to proceed with the discussion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John asks a lot of, he brings a lot of good questions and he's thinking about these things a lot.

Yeah.

It seems very sharp.

And a lot of the questions he's asking are, I think good questions and they make for good discussion.

So, and that's the way I'm receiving them.

I think they're good questions.

I mean, if we could go for another two hours, I'm sure, I guarantee John would have a lot

more things to add just to keep the conversation going.

Because he does ask a lot of good questions and bring in a lot of points to talk about for sure.

I want to give a little bit of pushback on him talking about literalism there and the return of Christ being soon.

I think it was him who asked that question.

If we take a very literal understanding of several passages in the Old Testament,

most if not all of them, and the Pentateuch, the Torah, then we have to think that the

second coming of Christ is more than 30 ,000 years away.

Where do I get at that?

Because we see, I think about two or three times through like Exodus and

Deuteronomy around there that it says God is faithful to a thousand generations.

The biblical definition of a generation is 40 years.

And so if we're going to take that literally, then we have to see a thousand generations from the