January 3, 2018 Show with Brian Godawa on “Tyrant: Rise of the Beast”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this third day of January 2018, the third day of 2018 as well, and I am excited about my interview today.

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I have a first -time guest today. His name is Brian Gadawa and he is a professional writer, award -winning screenwriter, including his first feature film,

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To End All Wars, starring Kiefer Sutherland. You may recognize that name.

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He is not only a renowned actor in his own right, but his father is Donald Sutherland, also a very renowned actor.

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And he, Brian, is a director of feature films, documentaries, and video promotionals.

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He is an international speaker on art, movies, worldviews, and faith, and author of the

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Chronicles series of novels, which are his most important contribution by incarnating his worldview and theology in narrative, unlike anything you've read before.

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Today we are addressing his latest book, Tyrant, Rise of the Beast. And just to give you a little blurb to whet your appetite about this book,

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Gary DeMar of American Vision says, if you're looking for some great history with compelling storytelling, you need to read

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Tyrant. You'll also learn the role of this beast of a ruler plays in God's prophetic timetable.

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And as I said, that was Gary DeMar. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and Zion, Brian Gadawa.

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Hey Chris, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. Got a lot of cool stuff to talk about. Great. And if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if you're asking about a personal and private matter. Perhaps your eschatology is different than your own pastors, or perhaps you're a pastor who has different eschatology than your own denomination, or something like that.

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I can understand you want you're wanting to remain anonymous. But other than that, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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USA. Well Brian, what I usually do with first -time guests is I usually have them tell us something about the religious upbringing of their childhood, if any, and how our sovereign

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Lord drew you to himself. What providential circumstances arose in your life that the

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Lord used to draw you to himself, awaken you to the truth, and caused you to embrace

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Jesus Christ, his word, and his gospel? Wow, good question. Yeah, I was in high school many, many decades ago.

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I don't want to reveal my age, because I'm in Hollywood. But many, many years ago,

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I was in high school. I was raised in a Roman Catholic home, and while I do certainly believe there are true believers in the

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Catholic Church, my family was not particularly, and my parents were not, but we just went through the rituals, and we went through, yeah, you know, we went to church and all that kind of stuff.

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So I kind of had that background in ritualized religion and such, and I had a strong antipathy towards it, because I'm also an artist, always been an artist, had that artistic mentality.

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I think a lot about death, not in a suicidal sense, but really more in a sense of it's the one thing that has always really caused me to evaluate my life, make sure

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I'm doing the most I can with my life, because life is very short, and I want meaning and purpose.

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And so as an artist, I always strove for that meaning and purpose, and but I, fortunately, my parents allowed me to go and visit this youth group out in Chicago many, many decades ago called

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Sun City, and it was actually the original ministry of Willow Creek Community Church, and through my experience with that,

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I was introduced to the Gospel in a very simple sense, and you know, they did a lot of teen games, and they had drama, and they played rock music, which was something that I didn't get in the context of my other church experience, and so it kind of, it made

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Christianity relevant to my own world as a young teen, you know? So I basically learned the basic story of the

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Gospel, and I had no big emotional, you know, transformation or anything, it just, it made sense and it seemed like the truth, and I realized that, you know, even though I was a good person actually,

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I was, I've never really been a bad kid, I never did drugs, I didn't even smoke, you know, I just didn't care to, and didn't drink, didn't have sex and all that kind of stuff in school, but I realized that I was full of pride, you know, and so the way that God kind of drew me was,

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I thought of this desire to have purpose and meaning, and I thought, man, you know, I want to have a life that leaves a legacy.

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I wanted to be like Michelangelo, but I started realizing, you know, when I'm dead, wherever I went, wherever I would be, it certainly wouldn't be of any help to me, and it doesn't matter what, how famous I may have been, you know,

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I would have no connection to that, whatever was going on in that world, you know, just like Michelangelo doesn't care how highly we value his art now, it doesn't matter to him wherever he is, that kind of a thing, and so it caused me, and it made me realize that I'd be dead a whole lot longer than I was alive.

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Just basic truths, you know, that made me sort of go, well, you know, I really need to consider what's going to happen to me when

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I'm gone, and you know, I had been introduced to the basic notions of it, you know, I was a sinner and I was a person who violated

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God's law, and like I said, even though I didn't do anything bad, I knew I was bad inside, because I knew

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I'd broken all God's laws, at least in my heart. You know, Jesus said, if you even lust after a woman, you've committed adultery, right?

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So, in your heart, and so I realized that truth, that I was as black of heart as any other wicked person, and I needed forgiveness just as well, and so I put my faith in Jesus Christ, what

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He did on the cross for me, and you know, I just basically prayed a basic prayer. Like I said, nothing big, nothing big dramatic happened to me, but over from that time on,

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I started having a new, I started seeing my own life differently. I started seeing even the little things that I did were important to God, and the little sins, whether it's a lie here, or you know, watching an inappropriate movie there, whatever, you know, it started to concern me.

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I started realizing that my life was changing from the inside out. God's Holy Spirit had actually, I soon learned, you know, theologically,

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God's Holy Spirit had come into my life, and that began my journey in high school, and my personal journey has been heavily influenced by Christian apologetics.

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For some reason, I just hunger to know answers to questions, I hunger to know truth,

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I hunger to know what is real, what is true, that kind of a thing, and so I was driven heavily by Christian apologetics for a lot of my life.

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That's why I learned a lot about doctrine, and eventually, you know, I went through a sort of a typical evangelical experience, you know,

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Billy Graham sort of campus crusade Christian, and later on in my life, and after my college years, and actually after I got married,

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I started to read, well let's put it this way,

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I pursued all kinds of theological understandings, and I ended up becoming

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Reformed in my faith, and that, from then on, you know, a lot more that happens after that, but that was sort of a big transforming time in my life, because that was when

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I feel that I began to understand a little bit God's sovereignty, which is more than just this sort of like, yeah, he's king over all, and he's accomplishing his will.

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It's like, no, no, I mean, he drew me to himself, and my salvation does not rest in me.

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You know, he even gave me my own faith, and that was a transformation for me that really took my self -reliance, it ripped self -reliance out of my soul, and I cast my heart at the feet of Christ's sovereignty, and I don't count that as my true redemption.

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I believe I was redeemed when I believed in Christ, you know, but I guess what I'm saying is, you know, we all have journeys where we grow and learn things and shed them, and that was what happened to me.

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Amen, and I'm sure, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure that you would agree that even though from an outsider's point of view, nothing dramatic or radically transformational occurred in your life, spiritually it did.

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I mean, obviously there was, you came from death to life, that's a pretty remarkably dramatic and radical transformation there, but I understand what you mean by, in the way that someone might view you, like, for instance, there are many children who are raised by ministers, for example, or in Christian homes, and they have been preserved from overtly scandalous and rebellious behavior for their whole lives, and they at one point realized they needed a savior, even though by the standards of men on earth, they were good people, quote -unquote, but I'm sure that's what you would view in regard to your own conversion or salvation.

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Yeah, no, absolutely, in fact I think that, you know, the wickedness in our hearts, you know, it's original sin, it's the, you know, the sinful nature that is in all of us.

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You know, it can be fed or it can be anorexic, you know, you can feed it or not, and so we are all capable of doing heinous evil, it's just a matter of are we going to feed it, are we going to pursue it or not.

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So I don't consider myself above, you know, a serial killer or a rapist or the most wicked things we can think of.

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I see that that same evil is in all of our hearts, and so we need Christ to cleanse us daily, and, you know, it's not that you can overnight just turn around and murder someone, but we can definitely feed that sinful nature, and it's a process, and it's not this, like, oh well,

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I'm not bad, but those people over there, really, they deserve hell. It's like, no, when you really come to understand the nature of God's holiness, you really see how depraved you are and how you need

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His grace every single day. Yes, in fact, I believe that if God and His sovereignty were not restraining the evil hearts of men, not only would it be totally unsafe to leave your home, it'd be totally unsafe even to stay in your home, you wouldn't be safe anywhere.

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Exactly. And the fact that we are not all serial killers and rapists is because of that fact, that God is restraining evil of men.

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Well, could you give us some of your heroes of the Reformed faith that led you in that direction?

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Well, very good question. You know, I read a little bit of Calvin in the beginning, but to be honest,

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I was introduced to a lot of it through apologetics, and I discovered a man named

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Greg Bonson, and of course he's passed away since then. Yes. And he was actually kind of a lightning rod as well for some controversial things, but I'll tell you, he was the most brilliant apologist

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I had ever heard that transformed my understanding of the nature of our faith, and how it's more, you know,

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I'm more Augustinian in the sense that, you know, I used to believe that if I could just win the arguments and prove to someone the reliability of the

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Bible and, you know, Christ's Resurrection, then they'll have to believe. But, you know, I've come to realize that, no, you can do all that, and someone can even raise from the dead, of course, and they'll still not believe because their heart is not regenerate.

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And so we do our best to, you know, trust in God, communicate the gospel, defend it, but realize that God is the one doing the work in their hearts.

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And Bonson sort of changed my viewpoint on that, and that led me into the Reformed faith as well.

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And then I, you know, I read a little bit of Quintin Lewis Van Til, but I still felt that Bonson was better at actually describing that viewpoint than Van Til was himself, you know.

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And, you know, then I, and then through him I discovered some other guys like Ken Gentry and Gary DeMar, and these guys are not the, you know, they're not the theologians of the past, but I read more of the contemporary guys, and then that's, those were the ones that I then started discovering a different way of understanding eschatology, you know.

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And I had been typically brought up as, you know,

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I was into Hal Lindsey, you know, because we're talking like the 70s, late 70s, I became a Christian, and so Hal Lindsey was really super big at that time, and of course his late

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Great Planet Earth sold, gosh, I don't know, like 30 million copies all by itself. I mean, he was the hugest phenomenon.

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In fact, in some ways he was even more influential than Left Behind is today, because his single book sold 30 million, and Left Behind sold 60, but that was like 12 books, right?

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And that's at a much later date. So I was heavily influenced by that, expecting that the, you know, Lord could, or the

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Rapture could happen at any moment, and there's gonna be a seven -year tribulation with the Antichrist, and so I, you know,

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I lived a faith that was sort of, you know, I would go out and, you know, talk to people about that, say, you're ready to meet

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God, you know, and judge me, because, you know, the Antichrist is gonna come, and, you know, a Christian's gonna be left off the

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Earth. And of course at that time in the 70s, it was not well known. That whole theory was known in the

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Christian world, but not in the secular world, you know? It was still something they weren't familiar with. But by now, of course, even the secular world is very familiar with that whole scenario, because it's been pumped out and has made a gazillion dollars, and that's how people have gotten to know it.

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Well, that's what I believed at the time. So when I started reading Damar and Gentry, who were also Reformed, and in that same school of thinking, and it started to open my mind, because at first what they were saying,

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I reacted against it as if it was, like, heresy. Matter of fact, I thought it was heresy. I, you know,

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I considered it heresy, and that was only because I was never taught that there are multiple different views within the

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Orthodox body of Christ through history, right? Amillennialism, premillennialism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism, they're all legitimate views, because godly, scholarly men have held them.

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But it was just very common in that world of dispensationalism that I was raised in, that believed in this sort of picture of, you know, the seven -year tribulation and Antichrist and all that kind of stuff, that was in our future at the time, that the

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Rapture could happen in any moment. It was really common for them to say, this is the basic, this is the basic Bible view, and all of the views, they ignored all of the views, right?

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And so when I started reading it, it was shocking to me, but it was very fascinating, because they addressed this historical time period that is very crucial to both

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Judaism and Christianity that nobody was teaching on, and that was the time period from the end of the

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Book of Acts to the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. So from, like, say, you know, 40 or 50

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AD to 70 AD, this generation, where this massive

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Jewish revolt occurred, the Roman armies came under Titus, destroyed the

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Temple, and just destroyed Jerusalem, and of course the Temple hasn't been built since, right? And this event, they went into the historical aspect of it because they were trying to argue, you know, that it was fulfillment of biblical prophecy, like in the

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Book of Revelation, and that was the thing that drew me to say, wow, this is fascinating history, even if I don't agree with it.

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But then over time, as I read it, I became persuaded by their arguments. Yes, and I have had the privilege of interviewing at least three of the names that I remember you mentioning.

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First of all, I had the great honor of interviewing, years ago, before I had my own radio show,

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I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Greg Bonson in the study of Steve Schlissel, pastor of Messiah's Congregation in Brooklyn, and Steve and I have been friends for many years, although I am in stark contrast or in very strong disagreement with him over federal vision, but we have had a friendship for many years, and back then

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Steve was not a federal visionist, because I don't even think they existed back then, when I had the privilege of visiting

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Messiah's Congregation when Greg Bonson was preaching there, and he preached on the ascension of Christ, something that I very rarely have ever heard preached on, and then afterwards

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Steve gave me the privilege of going into his study and interviewing him on an old -fashioned portable cassette recorder, because that's all they had back then, and tragically

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I lost the cassette. So I hope that one day it somehow miraculously turns up, but I also interviewed

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Ken Gentry and Gary DeMar, and I may have forgotten some of the other names that you mentioned that I that I have also interviewed, but it's been a very rich life that I have had the honor of having to interview such great guys, and in fact we just interviewed

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Gary not long ago on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. I heard it. Oh, you did?

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Oh great. And we have a listener question already, and I think it would be wise to ask it now, because it kind of helps set the stage for the rest of the interview.

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Dear brothers Chris and Brian, is the Chronicles of the Apocalypse, I guess that should have been written are the

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Chronicles of the Apocalypse, the partial preterist views answer to Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series, and then he says, laugh loudly

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Chris, that's meant to be a joke. But actually I think it's a very good question whether or not he meant it to be a joke.

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Is this a partial preterist answer to Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series? Well you know the short answer is yes it is, but I would like to qualify that by saying, you know,

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I do not like likening it to Left Behind as if it's derivative, you know, like oh

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I'm just gonna try to make money off or I'm gonna try to rip them off and do my version with my, you know, because that's not at all the basis or the foundation of me writing the novels, you know,

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I wanted to make that important. But in truth what it does end up becoming is, yeah, it's basically a partial preterist

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Left Behind, so to speak, and sometimes I do an advertisement for the series and I say, this is not your mother's

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Left Behind. That could be taken in many wrong ways.

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The origin of that was, I have to say, it's from that old commercial,

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Not Your Father's Cadillac. Right, right, well that also, those are fighting words actually.

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But, you know, this is where this is where we come into that unique, that crossroads in that what

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I have is a very unique approach to this very world of eschatology because, how can

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I put it, I've written a lot on this myself in other books, but sadly I think Reformed and even more and other traditional

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Christian, you know, viewpoints are sadly lacking in appreciation for the arts and for imagination, you know.

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Sometimes we tend to over - oh, are you still there?

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Yeah, that was just the computer making weird noises. So, yeah, so we have the tendency to sort of over -intellectualize and over -elevate the, you know, the scholarship and such, which is of course all good stuff,

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I read that stuff, I'm drawn to it myself, but we tend to downplay the creative side of our faith and the creative side of the

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Bible, too. And so I'm kind of this unique person where I've got this love of theology and philosophy, but I'm also an artist.

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And so what happened is, you know, I've been a screenwriter in Hollywood for many years and, you know,

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I've made a few movies. The only correction I have to make to your description of me is I've only directed documentaries, but I have not directed feature films.

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I've only written feature films, but I haven't directed them. But, whatever, that's neither here nor there.

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Did I say that in your introduction? Yeah, yeah, that's okay. I thought that I was reading right off of your website.

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Well, I'll double -check that, make sure I didn't say features. I mean, I've written features, but I haven't directed them because features are more like, you know, the movies, the theaters.

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Right, right. The movies are more like the things on PBS or whatever. So, but anyway, so, you know,

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I have this background. I love storytelling, and I'm a professional storyteller and an expert at it.

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But, you know, years ago, you know, five, six, seven years ago now, I kind of had a couple tough years in Hollywood, and I realized

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I needed to do more than just trying to do screenplays because it wasn't paying the bills enough. And that's where I finally launched out in writing novels.

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And that's what opened the door for me, where now I am both a novelist and a Hollywood screenwriter, but my novels are, what

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I wrote was, I wrote stories that I wanted to read myself for that, that, you know, I study all this stuff, and a lot of times it's arcane to a lot of normal Christians, and I can't talk to it.

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They don't care to hear about it, but I just, I love it. And so I realized that, hey,

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I could put this stuff into story form that could make it more understandable and more enjoyable, and I could basically write theological novels that would be entertaining for people, and they would learn theology, so to speak, through the narrative, through storytelling itself, maybe a kind of a narrative theology, you could call it.

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And I think that that's my unique contribution, I think, to the body that, because I bring both of those sides to the page.

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And so even though I had studied, you know, I'd studied for decades, you know, this was like 20 years ago.

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I met Gary DeMar and Ken Gentry and got into their work, and I studied it for years, but I couldn't hardly tell it to anybody, because most people just, it was so bizarre, you know.

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But put it aside, I pursued more of my other creative stuff, and in recent years, it suddenly struck me as I was writing my novels that I had written all these novels called

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Chronicles of the Nephilim, and I won't go into too much detail, but just to say that was sort of a creative exploration of the sort of supernatural side of the

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Bible that I tended to disregard through a lot of my faith. And as I sort of rediscovered this aspect of it, and a storyline to the

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Bible that I hadn't seen before, I wanted to retell these fantastic warrior stories, you know,

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Joshua, Abraham, David, but tell the stuff that hasn't been told before while being consistent with the

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Bible. So I did a little bit into the giants, you know, like the giants in the land of Canaan, and that's not just this weird, arbitrary thing in the

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Bible. There's actually a storyline that connects a lot of giants. A lot of Christians don't even realize that there was, in the

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Bible, it says that there were literally five giants who were hunting down King David.

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And while that's in the Bible, yes it is. So I try to tell those stories that we don't know a lot about, and I fictionalize them, but I try to make it consistent with the

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Bible. And I ended the series with Jesus triumphant. So it starts with Noah primeval,

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I start with a flood, and there's eight novels and ends with Jesus triumphant, and of course, you know,

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I end with the Ascension. But, and then I suddenly realized, I thought I was done with the series, and then I realized, wait a minute,

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I've studied this this partial preterist eschatology for years, and the end of this story is not the ministry of Christ.

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I've realized the most supernatural book in the New Testament is, of course, Revelation, and since I believe that that was all, you know, that was basically focused on the fall of Jerusalem, and that I believe that it was the culmination of Messiah's, you know, victory over the powers, you know, the principalities and powers,

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I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not done yet. And that's what launched me on Chronicles of the Apocalypse, which is this new series.

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And even though you can read it apart from Chronicles of the Nephilim, definitely, but it is also rooted in the same sort of storyline.

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And that's when I realized, I looked and I thought, hey, wait a minute, no partial preterist has ever written a novel series on it.

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And I did discover, wait, there was one Hank Hanegraaff, and he wrote that about a decade ago, I think it was called the

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Last Disciple series, but it never took off, and it never, you know, it just wasn't a good seller.

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So I think most people don't even know about it, you know. So maybe there's only one other guy who did this, and I thought, we really need this, because I think it's still a controversial view, partial preterism, because the dominant view is still, you know, a futurist sort of scenario, and quite frankly, the loudest voices are dispensationalists.

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We could talk about what those are, you know, I guess, but the loudest view is really anti -preterist.

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And so I thought, well, you know, we've got some guys out there like Gary and Ken, and many more now, who are making the theological arguments, and they're far better theologians than I am,

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I'm just, I'm more of an artist. But I realized, maybe we can connect with people, maybe our viewpoint can connect with people in a dramatic, dramatic narrative way, in a way that theology can't, you know, because there's a lot of Christians who don't want to get into all that in -depth theology, right?

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And so that's what sort of inspired me to write the story of Chronicles of the Apocalypse, where I'm incarnating this view, and the goal is to tell the story from AD 64 to AD 70, this time period that was the

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Jewish Revolt and the fall of Jerusalem, and to show how, you know,

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I believe John wrote Revelation, there's controversy, but basically I believe he wrote it around AD 65 in the midst of the persecution, neurotic persecution.

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So I start in AD 64 with the great fire of Rome, and then what I want to do is, I want to show how, in the context of the ancient first century, while John's writing the book of Revelation, how they would understand that language as being applied to them.

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By just simply acting that out, it helps people understand it in a way that, you know, theology doesn't.

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Right, we have to go to our first break right now, and when we come back we will have to have you define partial preterism, and preterism for that matter, because a lot of our listeners may be scratching their heads wondering what that means.

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And by the way, I have to hook you up or introduce you to Pastor Doug Van Dorn of the

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Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, who has written on the Nephilim, and he is possibly of a different eschatological persuasion than you are, but you still might get to enjoy a developing friendship with him because of the fact that he has a published work on that subject and many others, and nobody or very few people seem to be writing on that.

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Of course, I know that yours is a work of fiction and his is a work of theology and church history and history itself,

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Old Covenant history, Old Testament history, but I would love to have you exchange contact information.

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There's no need, Chris, we're already good friends. Really? Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, I didn't know that, oh that's great, praise

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God. And so we're gonna be going to our first break right now, if anybody wants to join us, and by the way,

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Joan Slovenia, who asked our first question, he has a when we return from the break, so be patient,

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Joe and Slovenia. And if anybody else wants to join us, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and remember, always give your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away,

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God willing, we'll be right back with Brian Goddowa. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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And now we are back to our guest Brian Gadawa. He is a novelist, and he has written a book that we are discussing today that is a part of a series of books.

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This specific book is titled Tyrant, Rise of the Beast. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And before we go to the second part of Joe in Slovenia's question,

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I want you to define both preterism and partial preterism, because sometimes partial preterists don't use the word partial in their description of themselves, and that could be dangerous because people may lump them together with those who would just merely describe themselves as preterists, who we would call hyper -preterists, whom we would think are dangerously delving into some heretical waters, who do not believe in the physical, visible future return of Jesus Christ, and they also reject a future resurrection of the dead for both those who are saved and those who are lost.

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So we have to make sure that we are clear when we describe ourselves, or others, with these labels.

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So if you could, let us know something about preterism and partial preterism. Sure, before I define that,

40:45

I'll just quickly define that, you know, futurism, which is the dominant belief in eschatology, also has a wide berth of different varieties, but it basically is the notion that the prophecies of the last days are in our future.

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And so preterism comes from the Latin word preterist, which means prior or beforehand, so preterism is the belief that last -days prophecies happened in our past.

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So the difference between, and there are varieties, some believe they're all fulfilled, some believe that most all of them are fulfilled.

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So those who believe that all the last -days prophecies occurred in the past would be full preterists, and partial preterists believe most of them are, with yet,

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I would say, the three striking differences is there's still a return of Christ, a resurrection, and a judgment.

41:37

But it's important to understand that the notion of last days is very important, because when we hear that word, we impose on it our own cultural assumptions.

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And what I discovered studying the New Testament and the Old Testament was, if you study the phrase last days, or the end of the age, or the end of the ages, you'll actually discover explicitly in the text of the

42:04

New Testament that the last days are not the last days of the earth, as futurists believe, but the last days of the

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Old Covenant, as preterists tend to believe. So when you see that phrase, last days and end of age, people are shocked.

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How can you say it happened in the past? Because it's obviously the last days of the earth. No, last days is a phrase in the ancient

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Jewish economy and religion that basically meant the last days of the

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Old Covenant, which means that preterism and partial pre - or, let me back up here.

42:42

So futurism would believe that there is, in our future, there's going to be a rapture of the

42:47

Christians, seven -year tribulation, an Antichrist that rises up to save the world and, you know, makes a covenant with Israel and then turns his back on them and puts a statue of himself in the temple or something like that, and then he seeks to kill all the

43:05

Jews, and then there's Armageddon, where all the nations come to send upon Israel for this big battle.

43:10

And that's the scenario that's going to happen in our future, whereas preterists, even though we believe that there is still a future resurrection judgment and Second Coming of Christ, it's not tied to that, because all that stuff, the tribulation, the

43:24

Antichrist, whatever you want to call him, the beast, that has happened in the past. That's the shocking controversy that Christians are not used to dealing with.

43:34

But there's very strong scriptural basis for that belief, and we can go through some of those details, but essentially those are the two big differences.

43:44

And so the purpose, then, of Revelation in the

43:50

Futurist scenario is to tell the end of the earth, and the Second Coming of Christ, and the final judgment of mankind.

43:58

But that's what a Futurist believes. But a preterist believes, no, actually it's not about that.

44:03

It's about the coming judgment on Jerusalem, and it's described in very cataclysmic, hyperbolic terms, but basically the purpose of Revelation in the preterist system is that John is telling, it's written before the

44:21

Temple of the Stripe, around AD 65, right? Jesus had predicted, He said, you know, look out for these things, because within one generation,

44:29

I'm going to not leave one stone upon itself in this temple, right? And so He's saying, in Matthew 23,

44:37

Jesus says to the Jews around Him, He talks about this long history of how you killed the your ancestors killed the prophets, and now you're going to reject

44:47

Messiah and kill Him, so all the blood guilt of all the prophets are going to be on you. Why?

44:52

Because you're going to kill Messiah Himself, see? So Jesus pronounces a judgment on the generation of Jews that rejected

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Him as Messiah. And so, and that hadn't happened yet. So John is now telling that picture that Jesus described in Matthew 24,

45:07

John is telling, here's what's going to happen in our near future, because two things.

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Rather than the Revelation being about the end of the earth and the Second Coming, it's actually about the end of the

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Old Covenant and God's judgment on the Jews, the first century

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Jews particularly, for rejecting Christ. And, you know, you can find that in the very beginning of the book of Revelation, where John actually literally says, in the very first chapter, you know, he says, the time is near, it's going to soon take place, what?

45:41

Chapter 1, verse 70 says, Behold, He's coming on the clouds, every eye will see Him, even those who pierced

45:47

Him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. And it's really fascinating, because there's a lot of these kinds of verses in Revelation that have been poorly translated and poorly interpreted by Christians to make them assume it's the end of the earth.

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The phrase there, all the tribes of the earth will wail. Well, what does that mean?

46:08

Is that all the earth? Well, no, the word for earth is actually ge, which is

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Greek, and it most often means land or a localized plot of earth, not the globe as we understand it.

46:23

And so it's really better translated, all the tribes of the land. But don't take my word for it, or don't take

46:30

Greek lexicons' word for it, look at the verse that he's actually quoting from, which is in Zechariah.

46:37

Zechariah 12, 10 through 10, 10 through 12, talks about Him pouring out in the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace, which is of course the gospel.

46:49

So that when they look on Me, whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him as one mourns for a child. And on that day, the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as, and he goes on to say that all the families of the houses of Israel.

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So he's clearly, Zechariah is clearly saying it's about the tribes of the land, the land of Israel.

47:08

So if you go back through Revelation, and you reread those words, wherever it says earth, and makes you assume it's the globe, retranslate it as land, and realize that the ancient

47:20

Jews, when they said the land, they most often thought the land of Israel. Now you can start to see how

47:27

Revelation is really more about a judgment, not on the earth, but on the land of Israel. And why?

47:33

Because they killed Messiah, they rejected Messiah, and God says, I'm going to destroy the city.

47:40

You know, Jesus gave parables, I'm going to go and come and destroy the city because you rejected Him, and the cornerstone will become the cornerstone of the building, right, of the new temple of God.

47:48

And then He said, and then secondly, this is very, very crucial to understanding what's going on, and that is that the destruction of the temple was a crucial historical verification of the spiritual truth of the

48:06

New Covenant. What I mean is, God is not a God of abstraction. He's not just a

48:11

God of philosophy. He doesn't just say, oh, you know, Jesus died, and trust me, He died and went to heaven,

48:16

He died for your sins, and the New Covenant's in, and the Old Covenant's gone. Because all the

48:21

Jews, imagine all the Jews being told that, and they're looking, they're saying, but the temple's still here. So how can it possibly be, if the temple, which is the embodiment and incarnation of the

48:31

Old Mosaic Covenant, it's still on earth, how can you say that it's not valid? And so the way that God verifies or validates historically what

48:42

He does spiritually, God is a God of history. So within a generation of the cross and the

48:47

Ascension, cross, resurrection, and Ascension, right, within a generation, like Jesus said, this generation will see these things, right?

48:55

By the year AD 70, God destroys the temple and the Holy City, because He's destroying, historically, the historical and physical embodiment of the

49:06

Old Covenant. Which is interesting, that the temple has never been able to be rebuilt in history.

49:12

I don't find that a coincidence. I think it's God saying, I'm never going to let that happen again, because the

49:18

New Covenant is here, and He destroys that Old Covenant symbol in order to validate the

49:25

New Covenant. So it's sort of like, this is where you get the now and the not yet, right? Christ does spiritually,

49:32

He dies for our sins, He ascends to heaven, seated on the throne of God in the heavenlies, and the

49:37

New Covenant has arrived. It's been inaugurated, but not yet fully consummated until the old system has been completely wiped out.

49:46

That's what the book of Hebrews talks about, right? So this is the different worldview, the different picture of approaching

49:54

Revelation, the Preterist path. It's really not that, once you start to study the language of Revelation and see how it's connected to the

50:03

Old Testament and not to our future, it's really not that shocking or controversial to see that Revelation is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the

50:13

Temple in AD 70, for this final culmination of the New Covenant and God's marriage, or let's put it this way,

50:22

God divorces the harlot of apostate Israel, who rejected

50:27

Him, right? He divorces the harlot, executes her, so to speak, and marries the new bride, the bride of Christ, which is the

50:35

New Jerusalem. And that's the New Covenant! So it's really a picture that makes sense when you start to interpret it through their eyes, not through our modern,

50:46

Western, post -scientific eyes. And one thing, though, that I want you to make clear, because you told me, you informed me before the program, that you do believe in a physical future return of Christ, you do believe in a future bodily resurrection of the saved and the lost, that you are not what has been called a hyper -preterist or a full preterist, etc.

51:16

Correct, I am not. So I believe there are passages like 1

51:21

Corinthians 15 that do clearly talk about Christ's coming, so what I believe the picture is is that much of what

51:28

Christians think is about the second coming isn't about the second coming, it's about a judgment coming of Christ.

51:35

So in other words, there are fine distinctions within their context that we don't understand within our context.

51:42

So when, in Matthew 24, when Jesus says that, you know, and this is the classic, you know, passage that makes it so hard for people to see, you know, well doesn't it clearly say that in Matthew 24, verse 30, there will appear the sign of the

51:57

Son of Man, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. Oh, there it is again, the tribes of the land will mourn. They will see the

52:03

Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. This is the phrase that trips up so many

52:09

Christians, because on the surface we look at that and assume it's got to be the second coming.

52:16

But I would argue it does not, because that imagery is rooted in poetic language that is very prominent in the

52:23

Old Testament, and I can, you know, give you a couple of examples of that in a second, but my main point is just because I believe that Christ's coming in judgment, coming in the clouds of heaven in judgment, is a coming, but it's not the second coming.

52:40

It's a spiritual coming. And the reason why I say that is because you look back in the Old Testament, and there's many examples that describe whenever God visits judgment upon a tribe, a city, or a people,

52:56

He describes it as coming on the clouds of judgment. And so for example, and by the way, this is not just against Israel, it's against any nation.

53:04

Like when He destroyed the first temple in Israel using

53:10

Babylon, God, whenever God uses pagan nations to judge another nation, He describes it as coming on the clouds.

53:18

So in Jeremiah 4, we read, behold, Yahweh comes like the clouds, His church the whirlwind, warn the nations

53:26

He is coming. Besiegers come from a distant land, they shout against the cities of Judah.

53:32

So He equates God coming with the coming of pagan nations. So God uses these nations to judge

53:39

His people Israel. There's another classic passage in, let's see, there's just so many of them,

53:46

Isaiah 19. When God comes in judgment, around 700

53:51

BC, God used the Assyrians to judge Egypt. All right, we're gonna have to go to a break right now, so you can pick up where you left off about the

54:01

Assyrians, but also keep in mind that we have a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered as well, so you want to leave room for them as well.

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If anybody else wants to get in line and ask a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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and we will be back in about 12 minutes. This is our elongated break because of the requirements of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, who needs a 12 minute gap between the two hours. So why not take advantage of this time and write your questions for Brian Gaddawa to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Brian Gaddawa after these messages from our sponsors.

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Brian Gadawa, by the way Brian, I forgot to mention to you that I forwarded Joe Insulvini's email to you, so you could have time to look over the second part of his question while I read a couple of announcements for special events that are coming up.

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Got it. Okay, great, but coming up just in a couple of weeks, the

01:05:42

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, and I am so excited about returning to this conference.

01:05:50

I had such a blast the last time I was there. Thousands of people will be at the

01:05:56

G3 Conference, and I'm so delighted I'll be manning an Iron Trip and Xyron exhibitors booth there.

01:06:02

I met so many of you for the first time there last year. Not only people who have been sending in questions for my guests, but even people that I never even knew existed who told me that they had been listening for years to the program, and also

01:06:18

I met a lot of you who were introduced to the program for the very first time, and I also had the privilege of interviewing a lot of guests that I previously only met by phone and interviewed by phone, and I was it was such a joy to interview face -to -face some guests that I have known going back to the 1990s, but I'd never met before in person, such as Phil Johnson of John MacArthur's Grace to You Ministries and others.

01:06:43

But if you would like to register for this conference, it begins on the 17th of January.

01:06:51

A Spanish speaking edition of the conference will be available to those who speak

01:06:57

Spanish in the daytime. Then on Wednesday night, the 17th of January, the

01:07:03

English portion of the conference begins by being launched with a debate that Dr.

01:07:11

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries is having with a Muslim apologist. Then on Thursday the 18th of January, the actual

01:07:19

English -speaking conference begins with Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P. Charles Jr.,

01:07:25

Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Matheny, and Michael Krueger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.

01:07:36

If you'd like to join me there, go to G3conference .com G3conference .com.

01:07:43

And by the way, the G3 stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory, in case you're wondering. And the theme this

01:07:48

January, or should I say this month, is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.

01:07:54

And you can not only register to attend, but you could also, if you want to man your own exhibitors booth for your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, you can register for your own exhibitors booth, just as I am going to be doing there,

01:08:10

God willing. So go to G3conference .com for both reasons. Please, please, please tell them that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:08:21

Now comes that part of the program that I hate doing, but it must be done. I have to beg you for money because we are in a very precarious situation financially on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:08:31

We are truly on the brink of going off the air. Thanks to you and the listeners and the listening audience who have responded to my urgent call for help.

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We have bought some time and we are feeling a little bit safer here, but we are still in a perilous situation financially.

01:08:53

Please, if you love this show, if you don't want it to go off the air, if you look forward to the topics and the guests every day, please go to Iron Trip and Zion Radio dot com, click on support, and then mail us a check for any amount you can afford made payable to Iron Trip and Zion Radio to the address that you will see there when you click support.

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01:09:23

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01:09:42

We really appreciate all of you who have already done that and continue to do that, and if you want to advertise with us, just send me an email to ChrisArnson at gmail .com

01:09:51

and put advertising in the subject line, as long as whatever it is you're advertising is compatible with the theology we express on this program.

01:09:58

Doesn't have to be identical, just needs to be compatible, and also obviously there are many things that are theologically neutral like grocery stores and shoe stores and all kinds of things that have no religious bearing upon them.

01:10:16

You may feel free to launch any kind of an ad campaign like that, but please email us and we really could use those advertising dollars.

01:10:24

That email address again is ChrisArnson at gmail .com and that is also the email address to send a question to our guest

01:10:31

Brian Gadawa, that's ChrisArnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:10:39

Before we go to the second part of Joe and Sylvinia's question, you were discussing right before the break the

01:10:45

Assyrians and if you could pick up where you left off. Yeah sure, just really briefly

01:10:50

I was addressing probably the most difficult point for futurists to understand that the second coming of Christ is not the same thing as the

01:10:58

Christ's judgment coming in AD 70 on Israel, but nevertheless Jesus came in judgment, but it wasn't,

01:11:05

He didn't come literally or physically, He came spiritually in the armies of Rome. And you know,

01:11:10

Jesus said that, right? In Matthew 24 He said, you know, when you see the abomination of desolation, flee the city.

01:11:17

What does that mean? Well in Luke 21, Luke tells us what it means when

01:11:23

He resays the same sentence, but He explains it to His Greek listeners. He says, when you see the

01:11:28

Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem, flee to the city. And so God uses the

01:11:34

Roman armies to judge Israel and He wants to get His Christians out of there. And so this notion of judgment coming, of Christ coming in the clouds, is so easily misunderstood because we impose on it our own vision of, oh we see

01:11:49

Him literally surfing in on a cumulus nimbus, but also at the Old Testament, the Jews were very familiar with the fact that whether it's

01:11:57

Isaiah 10, where God is judging Egypt, or Isaiah 19, or Ezekiel 30, where God is using

01:12:04

Nebuchadnezzar to judge Egypt, or when He's using the Medes to destroy

01:12:10

Babylon in Isaiah 13, He always says, I am coming on the clouds of judgment to judge that nation or that people.

01:12:18

And so this is a phrase that actually meant that God literally comes surfing in on a cumulus nimbus?

01:12:24

No. Whenever God judged a city, that's how He described it. So when we see that phraseology in the

01:12:30

New Testament, when Jesus says that, it makes more sense. Oh yes, of course, Jesus is going to judge by using the

01:12:37

Roman armies to judge Israel for rejecting Him as Messiah. Now that means a lot of these passages have to be understood in their context, not our own, but that doesn't mean there aren't other passages that also speak of a return of Christ, a physical return of Christ.

01:12:53

There are fewer of them than they think, but it's still there. And I would argue, you know, 1

01:12:58

Corinthians 15 talks about that. Traditionally, I think 1 Thessalonians 4 has been traditionally understood to be that, the

01:13:07

Second Coming of Christ and the Resurrection. So there are fewer passages that may indicate that, but that doesn't mean it's no longer existent.

01:13:16

But I do think that when we start to re -understand these passages, like Matthew 24, which is the classic passage, you know, the end of the ages and the coming of the

01:13:25

Son of Man, and realize that He's actually talking about that judgment on Israel, it really starts to clarify,

01:13:31

I think, the meaning of the New Covenant versus the Old Covenant, and how serious and yet how beautiful it is that God is replacing this old system with this whole new system, you know, based on faith in the

01:13:46

Messiah, right? And so that's the picture that many futurist Christians have a hard time dealing with, and I understand that.

01:13:53

So one of the things that I do in my books, so I write this novel series,

01:13:58

Tyrant Rises a Beast, and Remnant, Rescue the Wreck, the first two books in the series are already done, but it's basically called

01:14:05

Chronicles of the Apocalypse. What I do is, because I knew a lot of modern Christians might not be as educated on this understanding the ancient

01:14:14

Hebrew context of these phraseology, of this terminology, so what I did was, in the novels,

01:14:20

I actually footnoted it, so that I knew that Christians would be reading this and they'd be going, oh, come on, really?

01:14:26

They believed that back then? Yeah, they did, and so the way I wanted to prove it to them, to Christians, would be to footnote it, and you can go back, and I have as many footnotes,

01:14:36

I have as much text of footnotes in the novels as I have of the novel. And I did that because I knew a lot of Christians who understand or might appreciate a creative fictional story based on history, would still have this desire to know the scriptural basis, and I wanted to provide that for them, should they want to look it up.

01:14:56

And that's what I did in all the novels. But I also wrote another book called End Times Bible Prophecy, where I explain all this in theological terms for those who want to go with just the theology, and I explain my own personal journey from, you know,

01:15:12

Dispensationalism into Preterism, and I also go through Matthew 24, verse by verse, and I show how each verse was fulfilled in history, in the past, so that Christians can see this isn't just fancy footwork, it's rooted in Old Testament language, and that's the beauty of it.

01:15:31

Okay, before we go to the second part of Joe and Slovenia's question, and we'll have to keep this brief, but I am also, at least at this point in my life, a partial

01:15:43

Preterist. I happen to be an Amillennial partial Preterist, unlike yourself most likely. I know that most partial

01:15:48

Preterists are postmillennial. I happen to be an Amillennial partial Preterist. In fact,

01:15:54

I learned much through the writings of John Bray before he became a hyper

01:16:01

Preterist, which I believe was an very unfortunate development in his understanding of eschatology, but his earlier years

01:16:09

I gleaned much from him, and there was even a Church of Christ commentator on the book of Revelation, Arthur Ogden, who is now with the

01:16:20

Lord, that I learned much from his commentary on Revelation, the avenging of the

01:16:25

Apostles and Prophets, and of course Ken Gentry really convinced me that the Beast of Revelation was in fact

01:16:31

Nero in his book, The Beast of Revelation. But, having said all that,

01:16:38

I don't know if you would agree with me, but I wanted to have something clarified when you were talking about the last days in the

01:16:47

Scriptures, referring to the last days of the the economy of Judaism, when the temple was destroyed, and by the way,

01:16:57

I agree with you on the early writing of the New Testament, because of the fact that there is never a mention of the destruction of the temple other than Jesus's prophecy of it, and I would think that if the

01:17:11

Scriptures, the New Testament Scriptures were written after the destruction of the temple, it would have been mentioned somewhere.

01:17:18

That's such a cataclysmic event in the history. But, I believe that one mention of the last days, or last day, that is referring to a future event is

01:17:32

John chapter 6 verse 40, where we read, for this is the will of my father, that everyone who beholds the

01:17:41

Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

01:17:48

I believe that that is a reference to the future resurrection of the of the dead.

01:17:55

Sure, I can see that. And, you know, I realize that there are different ways of interpreting that, even within the preterist camp, and so what you're indicating is there are some who will say, well, the last days began with the resurrection and ascension, but they go on into history until Christ returns.

01:18:13

And I recognize, in fact, I think 10 gentry even believe that. So I'm aware that that's definitely a possible way of interpreting it and the scenario.

01:18:22

I make sense of it as I gather all the verses. It does make sense to me that the context, you know, the consummation of the ages, the last days, is when

01:18:33

Messiah comes, but I acknowledge that, nevertheless, when he comes, things aren't completely finished.

01:18:41

So that could justify believing that there might be, you know, last days that continue on.

01:18:46

So, yeah, I'm the camp that thinks the last days is basically about the last days of the

01:18:53

Old Covenant. However, I can certainly see that using a phrase, last day, as a different sort of creative word, what do they call it, sort of a phrase or a,

01:19:06

I can't think of the word, you know, we come up with these different phrases, and last day could be a specific reference to the resurrection at the end.

01:19:15

Are you talking about allegorical, or is that what you mean? No, no, I was thinking, like, you know how we come up with different phrases, like, you know, the end of the world, or like, you know, 9 -11 happened, it was the end of the world.

01:19:25

We use those phrases to sort of depict different things at different, in different times.

01:19:31

So that's why I can see last days as being an actual technical term that they used a lot, but then the last day becomes a different term in reference to the resurrection itself.

01:19:41

Okay, let's try to get to some of our listener questions now. As I was saying, you should have in front of you

01:19:47

Joe in Slovenia's question. The second part of his question is, for those of us raised on dispensationalism who are new to and relatively uninitiated in preterism, please explain specifically and clearly which of the apocalyptic prophecies of both the

01:20:06

Old and New Testaments are still yet to be fulfilled, which prophetic fulfillments are still left behind, and wait completion.

01:20:15

Thank you very much for thoroughly addressing an interesting and challenging topic, and you really already addressed a lot of that, so...

01:20:23

Yeah, yeah, I did. I would say, just as a brief recap, is that that which is yet to be fulfilled is

01:20:32

Christ will be returning, there is a future final judgment and a future resurrection, but that's it, and there's not much more we know about that, because it's not tied to anything else like the

01:20:46

Tribulation and all that, because that stuff happened in the past. We have Eddie and Hapag who also have just asked the same questions, so Eddie, if you want to send us another question that our guest has not addressed, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:21:01

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Send us another question on a different topic if you'd like, but you and also

01:21:09

Joe in Slovenia have both won a free copy of Tyrant, Rise of the

01:21:15

Beast, compliments of our guest Brian Gadawa, and they will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:21:25

cvbbs .com at no charge to you or to Iron Sharpener's Iron Radio.

01:21:31

We have a listener who is also one of my favorite guests.

01:21:40

She is a friend of mine, she is a brilliant woman and a published author herself.

01:21:46

She's also not only a published author who has written on theological issues, she is a former

01:21:53

Mormon who came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, the true

01:21:58

Christ and the true gospel of the Holy Scriptures. Her name is

01:22:03

Dr. Latane Scott and I am going to be interviewing her very soon on her departure from Mormonism because she has co -authored a new book that's in print published by Kriegel that is the testimonies of several

01:22:22

Christians who have their doctorates who are former Mormons and she is one of them.

01:22:29

But Latane, let's see, her writing is, her font size is very small so I apologize if I struggle with this a bit because even with my glasses on I'm having a difficult time with this.

01:22:43

Let's see here, Latane says, what is the biggest challenge that you have as a novelist and filmmaker in trying to get unbelievers to read or view your work?

01:23:01

What have you done to try to help with that situation? Well, very good question.

01:23:10

Number one is I seek to be true to myself, true to my own passions, and what

01:23:19

I mean by that is I don't try to write something I think, oh this will this will persuade them, or I'm gonna try to convert people.

01:23:27

I just want to write a story that I think is very entertaining or that I think is very important or meaningful to me because I believe that the stuff in which writers and storytellers are most passionate about is the material that tends to connect with people even if they disagree with you.

01:23:44

So for instance, I've got a lot of people I'm writing this series, you know, Krakow to the Apocalypse, Partial Preterist, right?

01:23:50

There's a lot of people who read my series who are futurists and don't agree with it and they'll even say I don't really agree with this interpretation, but he writes a great story and he tells a great story and that's enough for me.

01:24:02

Why? Because I believe that the power of storytelling is not in some, as you're reading it, you're gonna get a rational, oh

01:24:09

I can see and now I change my view. What you're gonna do is, the power of storytelling is the ability to incarnate my message and my theme or my meaning into my characters and the choices they make in life is how

01:24:23

I communicate my worldview. And that's not always consciously noted or aware of it, but it will still affect people.

01:24:30

And it takes time for things to get into your heart, to get into your mind, and so what I do is

01:24:36

I just write a good story and I studied for many years on how to incarnate my meaning of my story or my theology or whatever you want to say, my worldview.

01:24:47

I've studied how to embed or incarnate my worldview into those characters and choices that they make.

01:24:56

And if anyone wants to read more about that, my book Hollywood Worldviews is still a good seller and I explain a lot about how that works and it clarifies for Christians, which will give them a better understanding of how storytelling really does affect us, even if we're not really aware of it.

01:25:12

And that's because storytelling connects with our humanity in a deep way, in a different way, than rationality.

01:25:19

Now, listen, hear me clearly. I'm not saying either or here. It's both and. Of course we want to have rationality, but we are not just rational beings.

01:25:27

We are also emotional and relational beings. And so storytelling connects with us on that relational side.

01:25:35

And so that's how I incorporate my worldview. So for example, my very first movie that got made was

01:25:41

To End All Wars. That's about, you know, about 16 years old now, but it still is great.

01:25:48

I highly recommend it. It still works. It's on Amazon Prime for anybody who wants to watch it, I think. But so what

01:25:55

I did there was that was a true story of World War II POWs under the Japanese. And what it was is a true story based on how the

01:26:04

Bible came into this prisoner of war camp and transformed the camp. That they began as like, you know,

01:26:10

Westerners who were focused on survival and fitness, protecting themselves. But as they learned from the

01:26:16

Bible, they actually became self -sacrificial with each other. And in the end, they also learned how to love their enemy, not just their neighbor, but their enemy, the

01:26:25

Japanese. A very powerful spiritual story. And yet, it was a basically a secular world, secular movie, but it had the

01:26:34

Christian worldview embedded within it. And we had, you know, secular people loving the film and having no problem with some of the spiritual imagery in there, because it was germane.

01:26:44

It was embedded within the story, rather than how so many of these Christian storytellers and Christian filmmakers, they feel like they have to preach, like it has to be a sermon.

01:26:55

And so they don't understand how to tell stories in such a way that it grabs people's hearts.

01:27:02

They feel that they have to explain everything very explicitly, like a sermon. Now, of course, there's a place for sermons, obviously, but art is not a sermon.

01:27:11

And so that's how I play the difference, where I don't try to preach explicitly.

01:27:20

I just try to embed the worldview within the characters and the choices they make.

01:27:27

Well, thank you so much, Letain. And by the way, for those of our listeners who want to mark this down on their calendar,

01:27:35

I will be interviewing Dr. Letain C. Scott and also Dr. Lynn K.

01:27:41

Wilder on their book, Leaving Mormonism, published by Kriegel Publications.

01:27:48

That interview will take place, God willing, a week from tomorrow, Thursday, January 11th, 4 to 6 p .m.

01:27:55

Eastern Time. And then the following day, two other contributors to that book will be on the program as well, giving their testimonies of leaving

01:28:05

Mormonism. And thank you very much, Dr. Letain C. Scott. You've also won a free copy of the book we are addressing today by Brian Gadawa, Tyrant, Rise of the

01:28:18

Beast. So I hope to hear from you soon with other great questions for our guests, and also look forward to many more interviews with you yourself.

01:28:26

We're going to our final break right now. If you'd like to get in line and ask a question of our guest, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:28:36

We will get to as many of you as time will allow. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

01:28:41

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01:33:59

Our guest for the last 90 minutes and the next 25 minutes or so to come is

01:34:04

Brian Gadawa. We are discussing his book Tyrant, Rise of the Beast. If you'd like to join us on the air, please do so immediately with an email at chrisarnsen at gmail .com

01:34:15

before we run out of time. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll get as many of you, we'll have as many of your questions asked and answered as we can while time permits.

01:34:26

And we have Eddie from Hauppauge, Long Island, New York who has submitted another question because the last one that he asked was already answered by you.

01:34:35

He also is an amillennial partial preterist, just like me, and he says, do you place all of Revelation and Matthew 24 in the past?

01:34:46

That's an interesting question because I know that our mutual friends Gary DeMar and Ken Gentry disagree on that and they are both partial preterists and postmillennialists.

01:34:54

Yeah, yeah, I'm on Gary's side on that one. I definitely do think that Matthew 24 is the first century and most all of Revelation is also the first century, except Revelation 20.

01:35:09

And that's where, but actually I have, I want to point out that I've read Ken Gentry's new commentary on Revelation, which is not out yet, it will be out next year, but because I know him, he allowed me the privilege of being able to read the advanced copy of his commentary and that's pretty much how he indicates it, apart from things like, you know, obviously the kingdom of God will grow and fill the earth.

01:35:36

That's obviously in the future, but I mean in terms of what the basic prophecies are about in Revelation, it's pretty much all about that first century, but Revelation 20 is where it jumps into the future and it talks, it hints at the second coming of Christ, and of course, the final judgment and resurrection.

01:35:55

So yeah, I'm in that camp with Ken, I'm sorry, with Gary about Matthew 24, but interestingly

01:36:03

Gentry also is pretty much in that camp with Revelation. And I wanted to tell people that my series of Chronicles of the

01:36:12

Apocalypse is actually, I'm utilizing Ken's Revelation commentary as my major source.

01:36:18

I do, of course, refer to other sources, but his source of Revelation, he's sort of like my foundational scholar.

01:36:25

So I like to think of my novel series as a kind of dramatic narrative of Gentry, mostly

01:36:34

Gentry's eschatology, but I also incorporate stuff about the supernatural that Ken might feel a little bit more uncomfortable with, because for instance,

01:36:46

I have things like angels and demons engaging in warfare and stuff, and that's not to say that he doesn't believe in that, but I definitely use some creative license in my novel series to say, oh, what would it look like to show these angels and demons at war?

01:37:02

And you know, whenever you fictionalize, whenever you try to speculate about the spiritual world, you know, necessarily it's going to be guesswork.

01:37:09

But I still try to be, like I say, as consistent as possible with what little we do know that's revealed in the book of Revelation.

01:37:17

Well, this might be an area, again, where you and I disagree. Do you believe that Revelation chapter 7 -9 is referring to something that's already fulfilled, or something future, where we read,

01:37:31

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the

01:37:44

Lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches, were in their hands?

01:37:51

Do you believe that that's something that's already fulfilled, or do you think that's a future reference to heaven and the elect that have been saved from every tribe and tongue and people and nation?

01:38:00

Well, this would be a case where I would argue that that's something that occurs in the first century, but of course goes on into history.

01:38:07

And the reason why I say that is, if you read further on down, John says to the angel,

01:38:13

Sir, he says, who are these clothed in white? He says to me, these are the ones coming out of the

01:38:21

Great Tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. So I think that that's basically rooted in the first century, because John, in Revelation 1, verse 7, said,

01:38:34

I, John, your partner in the Tribulation. So he thought that the Tribulation was going on in his time period as he was writing

01:38:42

Revelation, and that Great Tribulation, I believe, is rooted in the neurotic persecution, you know, where Nero threw the

01:38:51

Christians to the lions and blamed the great fire of Rome on the Christians, and so it starts out there.

01:38:57

But of course, you know, a multitude without number means that there's so many you can't count, and of course

01:39:05

I believe that that's going to grow throughout history. So that might be an example where it begins in the first century, but it goes on into history.

01:39:13

But I wanted to make this other point that one of the, you know, in my series, like in the first book,

01:39:21

Tyrant Rides the Beast, what I wanted to do was I wanted to show why I thought Nero, as you mentioned this earlier,

01:39:28

Nero was the beast of Revelation. And so I actually pull out a lot of historical facts about Nero, I tell a bit of his story,

01:39:38

I tell what he did to Christians, and I'm drawing from a lot of historical sources, as well as some

01:39:43

Christian legends, you know, because though we don't know all the facts, and sometimes they make legends, but you're not sure.

01:39:50

And but I draw from all these different sources to try to recreate that, what happened under Nero, what it was like to be a

01:39:57

Christian in Rome, as well as in Asia Minor, as well as in Jerusalem, and how they were persecuted.

01:40:03

And so sometimes I want to warn people that it gets a little brutal at times, because if you read the historical facts, you'll find that Nero did just brutal, barbaric things, like for instance, he didn't just throw them to the lions, he also would hang

01:40:18

Christians on poles, cover them with pitch, and light them up on fire as like candles in the night.

01:40:27

And he did lots of stuff like this, and I bring that stuff to light because I want to show people how truly horrible it was, and why

01:40:34

I believe that was the Great Tribulation that the Bible talks about, and that Jesus himself prophesied, you know.

01:40:41

And so that's where Tyrant Rides the Beast begins, but then

01:40:46

I take the protagonists of the story are actually a

01:40:52

Christian, a Jew, and a Roman, and the Roman is sort of this warrior guy, and he has the Jewish doctor with him, and a

01:40:59

Christian is one of their servants, and they, the Roman gets, this is the fictional part,

01:41:05

I'm telling the fictional story in the context of a historical reality. So I have the Roman is tasked by Nero, Nero hears that there's this secret subversive letter that's being passed around the

01:41:18

Empire, right, that's talking about the end of the world and the assassination of him. So he goes, I want you to find out where it is, who wrote it, and kill him if you can.

01:41:27

And so that's kind of the storyline of my book, it's kind of like a Da Vinci Code with supernatural elements in it, you know, and as our heroes try to track down the letter, they ultimately find out it's the letter of Revelation, and they find out it's written by John, they go to the island of Patmos, and so it's this journey that ultimately leads them to Jerusalem, where they then have to try to help the

01:41:52

Christians to get out of the city because of the prophecy. Jesus said that Rome is coming to destroy it, and this letter from Revelation, John is confirming that they're coming, so you've got to get out so the

01:42:07

Christians won't be judged along with the rest of the Jews in the city, right? But the problem is, the

01:42:12

Christians are having a hard time believing that the letter is from John, and that's where my book, Remnant, takes up the story.

01:42:19

And so I'm trying to tell this picture so we journey through Rome, Asia Minor, and end up in Jerusalem, and we get exposed to all these historical things that are going on.

01:42:30

And that's why I try to depict what the Great Tribulation may have looked like back then, how those people in that time may have seen

01:42:36

Nero as the beast. In fact, there's a lot of historical references, I have some of them in my footnotes, where they referred to Nero as a beast.

01:42:45

So this wasn't a unique term, you know. If you look back at Daniel, Daniel used the term beast for any godless ruler or empire that was against God, and a very common word.

01:43:02

And I recall from Ken Gentry's book, The Beast of Revelation, that Nero wore the skins of animals, and he would walk on all fours up to Christians tied to stakes, and gnaw off with his teeth parts of their body, cannibalizing them.

01:43:23

You're absolutely right, and I have that in my novel. I absolutely have that as well. Just in time for the holidays, folks.

01:43:32

Beware, this is not for the squeamish, but I try to be, you know, I try to be, oh how should

01:43:38

I say, not, I don't try to be gross and too explicit, but I definitely try to deal with the real sin and evil that was going on in that time period.

01:43:49

So, but it's definitely not for the squeamish of heart. And by the way, I want to make a point that in all this talk, you know, we've mentioned

01:44:00

Amel, Postmale, I try, you know, look, I have a definite viewpoint that I think it is, and I've got to tell a story, so I have to choose a pathway.

01:44:08

But even in my books and novels, I try to bring other viewpoints in as much as possible, to sort of show the fact that there are different ways of seeing things.

01:44:17

And so my goal, my hope is that futurists can read the novels and still appreciate the entertainment, and maybe learn a thing or two from a view they disagree with, but also, you know, amillennials who might tend to believe that a lot of the imagery is more about general, you know, allegory or images about history in general, that are repetitive through history, they'll still be able to look at this and say, oh yeah,

01:44:43

I can see he makes that connection, and I can see that as well, but I happen to believe it also is related to other, you know, points in history as well.

01:44:52

So my goal is to try to, you know, make, have something in there that everyone can draw from and appreciate.

01:45:00

Yes, and I'm imagining if this is about the days of Nero, that the other future differences between the eschatological positions wouldn't even be coming to bear, but I might be wrong about that,

01:45:13

I haven't read your novel yet. Well, you know, even a lot of different viewpoints will often agree that the first few chapters of Revelation where he's writing to the seven churches, right, in Asia Minor, a lot of people agree that that part, whatever you agree about the rest, think about the rest of Revelation, I think many scholars really do believe that that is about that first century, and he was writing to real churches of that time period, at least

01:45:42

I think most people do. Now some people believe that's also symbolic of the church at different times in history, yes, but I think most people can also see the historical reference in there.

01:45:54

So I actually have, I actually have Satan as well going to each of those churches in Asia Minor and confronting, trying to deceive and draw down the people in each of those cities while the angels are trying to sort of protect them at the same time.

01:46:12

So, you know, I bring a little bit of that in there as well. And then there are people that believe in double fulfillment, that yes,

01:46:18

Nero may have been a beast of Revelation, but there is another beast waiting to come and all that. That shouldn't be a problem for those people.

01:46:25

Right. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who has a question that may shock and sound very bizarre to many of our listeners, but Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania says, correct me if I'm wrong, but I have heard that Nero was involved in the one of the first sex change operations that has ever been recorded in history.

01:46:56

Yes, he was. I heard that from Ken Gentry also. Yes, and I have that in my novel, because I think that it's very interesting that a lot of the stuff that we are experiencing in our society, as bad as it is, it was way worse in Rome, and man has always, you know, history is cyclical, and what goes around comes around, but I also think we can learn a lot if we see what things led to the fall of Rome, and that was one of them, we can maybe learn lessons from history.

01:47:26

But I have Nero, he actually married two different guys.

01:47:31

One guy, he married, his name was Sporis, and he was a servant who reminded him of his previous wife,

01:47:39

Poppaea, the Empress, and interestingly, Nero kicked Poppaea to death, because he had these temper tantrums, but he still loved her, he had this weird twisted love for her, right?

01:47:49

So Sporis kind of looked like her, so he castrated him and made him look like Poppaea and married him.

01:47:57

And then he also had another guy who was, I forgot his name off the top of my head, but he was more of a masculine guy, and so he married him as well, but interestingly, that was frowned upon by a lot of the people in royalty, because they felt that even though they believed in having all kinds of weird, you know, sexual things, they didn't, they thought that the

01:48:21

Emperor should not do so, because you've got to remember, Rome, ancient imperial

01:48:27

Rome, was founded on paterfamilias, you know, the father as the household, father as the representative of the household, so it was very important for them to have

01:48:37

Caesar be rooted in that traditional paterfamilias. He could do whatever he wants secretly, but they felt it was wrong for him to do it publicly, but he didn't care, so he did it publicly.

01:48:48

Yes, and of course, we as Christians, and of course every scientist will also tell you, if they're being honest, that you cannot really change someone's sex, but I understand, right?

01:48:59

And of course, back then, they could only do what they could do, they didn't have the hormone treatments or anything like that.

01:49:08

But we have, oh by the way, Susan Margaret, you've also won a free copy of the book,

01:49:13

Tyrant, Rise of the Beast. Thank you very much for your excellent question. And we have

01:49:19

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, have you been able to share the gospel with some of these celebrities that God has providentially brought into your path, like Kiefer, Sutherland, and others?

01:49:34

Well, that's a good question. As a writer, they have to understand, writers are low on the totem pole in Hollywood, so we don't in general meet with stars or celebrities or whatever.

01:49:46

We pretty much only work with our producers, and we spend most of our time alone in our room, sitting on our butts, writing in our computer.

01:49:53

So we're not the ones hobnobbing around with celebrities and stuff, you know. So I share the gospel with people that I come into contact with, but as a matter of fact, and we have some of this on the behind -the -scenes footage on the

01:50:07

Twindle Wars DVD, but it was very interesting because when they were shooting the Twindle Wars movie,

01:50:13

I did go on the set to watch for a couple weeks, and I didn't get to interact with the stars, but I interacted with a lot of the people on the staff, you know, and they're standing around doing the background work, you know, stuff like that, like electricity or extras, stuff like that.

01:50:30

So I actually shared the gospel with them because they would say, well, what's this movie about? And then

01:50:36

I would tell them what the movie was about, and I know how to, you know, share the gospel while I'm telling the story.

01:50:41

But I did hear stories about how powerful of an impact some of the

01:50:47

Christians had on the stars because it was being shot in Hawaii, and the director, his dad was the head of Youth with a

01:50:57

Mission. Is that what... yeah, Youth with a Mission. And so he had kids from the

01:51:02

Youth with a Mission serve as, you know, helpers on the set, and they were servants.

01:51:08

They were servants, man. They had servant hearts, and the cast and the crew were impressed by them, found out they were

01:51:17

Christians. But there was one time when Kiefer Sutherland, I heard the story that, you know, he heard some people talking about Christianity and faith, and he said, you know, the only guy

01:51:29

I would want to... I'm never going to listen to this if he has anything to say about religion or spirituality as my co -star.

01:51:36

I can't remember. One of the minor stars was on set with him in some of the scenes, and he got to like this guy.

01:51:43

And it so happens that this guy was a Christian. So he said, the only one I'm going to listen to if they talk about Christianity is going to be this guy, and that guy happened to be a

01:51:51

Christian. And from what I understand, he did share to his own, you know, whatever limited extent he could with the time he had.

01:51:58

So I think that there was a mindfulness on set of everyone involved about living our faith, but also when the opportunity came.

01:52:07

And so there were some of those that happened, but I wasn't personally involved with any of the celebrities. We have

01:52:12

Joey in Clifton, New Jersey. Thanks for sharing a lot of interesting facts today.

01:52:17

I am also a partial preterist. I mean this question respectfully as a sincere attempt to understand.

01:52:27

If you are mixing fiction with both historical fact and scriptural truth, how do you think people can sort out the distinctions?

01:52:36

I am curious as to what feedback you have from people like Damar, Gentry, and others.

01:52:43

More importantly, I am interested in your view of how we help people actually learn and retain what is true.

01:52:50

Well, I guess, Joey, you missed in the very beginning I read a commendation, a very powerful commendation, that Gary Damar wrote for this book,

01:52:58

Tyrant. But if you could answer the other parts of that question. Sure, sure, and if you go to the

01:53:04

Amazon website, I also have a quote from Ken Gentry as well, an endorsement from Ken as well.

01:53:11

I've got both of their endorsements, as well as another guy in that camp, Andrew Sandlin.

01:53:17

Oh yeah, I know Andrew Sandlin. Yeah, I have several of them. So, yeah. What was the question again?

01:53:25

Well, let me read it again. Let's see. If you are mixing fiction with both historical fact and scriptural truth, how do you think people can sort out the distinctions?

01:53:38

Yes, well, but first of all, you start out by having having to realize that all of history is written from singular perspectives, and people add their own fictions anyway.

01:53:48

So even though, you know, I believe we can know what happened, you know, you have to understand that history is mixed with all kinds of bias, and so there's no, you know, there's nothing that's not going to have fiction in it anyway.

01:53:57

But also, I footnote the novel, that if you're reading, you say, did this really happen?

01:54:03

You can go and check it out, and I tell you where I make significant changes for creative purposes, and I'll explain, well, here's what really happened, but the reason why

01:54:11

I did it this way, because it fits better with the story at this point, but it doesn't change the theology, or it doesn't change the history.

01:54:17

So, for instance, there are things like, you know, maybe there were five guys in an event, and I only have one guy or two guys, because I have to simplify.

01:54:24

Or maybe the event took a week, but I have it happen in one day. You know, there's things like that that you do that doesn't really affect the meaning of it, but it just makes the story move quicker.

01:54:33

But for those who wanted that accuracy, I did give the footnotes. And secondly, it's the nature of fiction writing is this.

01:54:41

You want to have your main characters be fictional characters, so that you can tell the story the way that you need to with entertainment purposes, but you place them in a historically true scenario.

01:54:58

So, you know, I also have Nero in there and stuff like that, but what I'm saying is my main characters are fictional, but everyone else is historical, and that allows me to tell my story to my official characters, but they interact with the real historical characters.

01:55:14

And, you know, that's one of the classic ways in storytelling that you are able to mix the two.

01:55:21

And people just have to trust that, you know, you're getting as close as you can to history. You're not claiming to be scripture, you know, but you're just trying to make the point and tell the story as accurately as you can.

01:55:32

But, you know, you have to remember, history itself is also imbued with a lot of fiction, because people try to remember what happened, and they're not always accurate either.

01:55:41

In fact, my main source of history for the entire series is

01:55:46

Josephus' Wars of the Jews. Now, he was a Jew who actually went through the event, but if you study

01:55:53

Josephus, as many scholars have, you will discover that he was very biased, and he had a specific agenda, and he had a twofold agenda.

01:56:02

One is, he wanted to kiss up to the Roman people, because they saved him.

01:56:10

He was actually in the Jewish war, on the Jewish side. He got captured, and then he decided to try to help the

01:56:17

Romans in a way that he could try to convince the Jews to surrender, so that they wouldn't get wiped out.

01:56:23

But they didn't listen to him, right? So he's in between these two worlds, and you see his two agendas coming out as he's writing.

01:56:32

That doesn't mean he's lying, it just means that he has a bias, and you have to realize that everyone has a bias, and so therefore, everyone has a spin on things.

01:56:42

My goal is to be as true to the spirit of what I thought really happened as possible, and then to give my, you know, like I say, give my footnotes and biblical proof why

01:56:52

I believe it fulfills the prophecy. Well, Joey, you've also won a free copy of the book

01:56:58

Tyrant, Rise of the Beast, as has everyone who is still waiting on hold, if you will, to have their questions asked, but we don't have time for that.

01:57:10

If you could, in about two minutes time, no more, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today,

01:57:17

Brian. Well, I guess what I want them to do is to realize that, boy, is to realize that the power of the

01:57:29

Bible is not just a rational, doctrinal truth and propositional truth.

01:57:35

Yes, it's partly that, but there's also an imaginative side in Scripture. God uses a lot of poetry,

01:57:40

He uses a lot of figurative descriptions to describe spiritual realities that we can't see.

01:57:48

And so the more that we study and understand their context, their ancient context, and what their language meant to them, not to us,

01:57:56

I believe the closer we'll get to understanding the intent of the Scriptures. And oftentimes it's not the same as the way modern

01:58:03

Christians often interpret it. So I think that the more you pursue that ancient

01:58:08

Hebrew context and ancient Mary Eastern context, you'll understand the

01:58:13

Scriptures better. And then if you want to learn a little bit more about this, if you're curious about me but you don't want to just, you know,

01:58:19

I don't want to just go to Amazon and buy this stuff. All my stuff's at Amazon. I have audiobooks, Kindle, and paperbacks.

01:58:25

You can get any version you want. But if you want to learn a little bit more about me before you go any further,

01:58:31

Godowa .com, my website has everything. That's G -O -D -A -W -A dot com. I have free scholarly articles.

01:58:38

I explain things. I tell the summary of the story. So you can learn about it, see a bunch of artwork and stuff, and maybe it'll help you get a better handle if you're curious but you're not sure if you want to jump in or not.

01:58:50

And just out of curiosity, what nationality is Godowa? Interesting name. It's Polish.

01:58:56

Oh, I'm half Polish. I'm half Polish. My mother's side. Yeah, my mother's side of the family was, my maternal grandparents were both from Poland, and the name was

01:59:07

Husak. H -U -S -A -K. But thank you so much for being on the program, Brian, and I look forward to your return to the program.

01:59:15

And I want to thank everybody who wrote in today. I want to thank everybody who also listened to the program.

01:59:21

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:26

Savior than you are a sinner. And by the way, tomorrow we have another partial preterist post -millennialist on the program.

01:59:34

We have Jeff Durbin on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio tomorrow, and he's going to be giving us a blueprint for abortion mill evangelism.

01:59:43

So mark your calendars for tomorrow, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time, for Jeff Durbin and his blueprint for abortion mill evangelism.