September 17, 2015 Show with Jeff Durbin on “One Man’s Journey out of Hyper-Preterism”

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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 Arnton. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arnton your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Thursday and I am so delighted that on this beautiful 17th day of September 2015 it looks like my computer problems have finally been resolved.

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Praise be to God and also thanks to Jeff Brown. Jeff if you're listening in Oklahoma, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for invading inside my computer, taking over my mouse and moving that thing around until you discovered what my problems were and I really thank you so much

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Jeff and I look forward to a future friendship and ongoing relationship between you and Iron Sharpens Iron.

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That's Jeff Brown of Sola Business Solutions in Oklahoma and once again

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Jeff thank you very much and another Jeff I'm thanking for being on my show today.

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That's Jeff Durbin. Many of you may remember Jeff Durbin for a couple of interviews

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I've already conducted with him on Iron Sharpens Iron. We did an interview together about the media response to the

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Bruce Jenner gender mutilation and then we did

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Jeff Durbin was a part of my eschatology or end times marathon where he was describing or defending the theonomic post -millennial position along with my friend

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John Otis, founder of Triumphant Publications and today we are going to discuss something that I think was a natural progression from our last interview on theonomic post -millennialism because as we discovered during the interview

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Jeff is a partial preterist as many if not most theonomic post -millennialists are.

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They're not all partial preterists but quite a number of them are but Jeff has a burden on his heart to really differentiate between partial preterism which he would believe would be biblical and orthodox present preterism and what has become known as hyper preterism.

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Obviously it's become known that by its opponents. It's also known as full preterism.

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It's known as realized eschatology covenant eschatology and sometimes it's just called preterism which adds to the confusion but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Jeff Durbin.

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Thank you Chris. I think people are going to start thinking that I'm your new favorite person as much as last couple of months.

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I'm flattered. Well I'm honored and you have become one of my very favorite guests obviously and Jeff just posted his portion of the interview from the

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End Times Marathon on his website that you can hear at apologiaradio .com

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and his church is Apologia Church which can also be found at apologiachurch .com

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and the church is actually located in Tempe Arizona and it is a reformed

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Baptist church although it is one of the very rare reformed Baptist churches that is also theonomic post -millennial and partial preterist and first of all before we go into this very important topic a brief description of Apologia Church and Apologia Radio and TV before we get into the depth of hyperpreterism because many of our listeners may be discovering you for the first time.

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Absolutely. So Apologia Church as I said last time I was on the show started about five and a half years ago going on six years out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility while I was a pastor.

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I was a chaplain there on staff full -time. At the same time I was a pastor of a church in Phoenix and it was really clear that God was calling us to plant a church although I had no plan ever of planning it.

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I had never had any plans of planning a church and God called us to do it and so we went and we were sent and that was five and a half years ago and God's been good to us.

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We've been able to as a church grow spiritually and numerically and we're in an interesting place right now.

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We have all kinds of ministries and outreach to the local Mormon community, to obviously our neighbors, to the abortion clinics.

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We have Apologia Radio which is heard worldwide and it just has an ever -expanding listenership worldwide.

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We also have Apologia Studios which is where I'm talking to you from right now in Tempe and Apologia Studios is producing

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Apologia Radio and Apologia TV. Apologia TV is going to be airing on the NRB network starting in October three times a week and so God has just really blessed us and I don't know if I mentioned this last time or not but we're in the process right now five and a half years into our church plant of planting another church in the island of Kauai.

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There's 68 ,000 permanent residents there on the island and that's dominated by the cults in the new age.

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There's only one reformed church on the island we were able to find. We've connected to that church already and we already have a team that we're raising up right now to go out there to,

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Lord willing, plant a church to bring the gospel to that island. Well, we're going to be excited to hear more updates on that and we all applaud you for your bravery for going into the dangerous jungles of Hawaii and planting a church.

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That's one of the frustrating things about a church plant in Kauai. Everyone goes, you're really stubborn in the gospel, aren't you?

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The truth is, yes, while it's paradise, it is definitely dominated by the cults and unbiblical worldviews and wide open for the gospel out there.

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It's the perfect place to go and preach because everyone's so friendly and they're very family -oriented. Everyone likes to talk story with you is what they say, so you get the opportunity daily in this community to talk to people because that's what they're all about.

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They're all about sitting down and telling a story and that's telling your life, telling about yourself, and so this place is just perfectly wide open for a gospel conversation and we have people at our church that God has been raising up for a while now that are uniquely fit for this, and so it really is going to be a difficult thing.

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At the same time, there's so much potential for the light of the gospel to break into that place.

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It's very encouraging. Amen. I don't want to derail the conversation by talking about Mormonism, but it is kind of timely that you brought that up.

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Last night, I had my first local encounter with a couple of young Mormon elders, as they are called, which they were far from being elders or being of an age that would represent that.

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Here in Carlisle, I've encountered Mormons before, but here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it was the first time I encountered them.

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They were walking down the street and I saw them from about 40 yards away, and I knew that they were Mormons by the way that they were dressed with the white shirts, black ties, and badges on their breast pockets, and I yelled out, are you

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Mormons? And they stopped dead in their tracks and they said, yes. So I had a brief occasion to evangelize them, and it's interesting how the rhetoric has radically changed, where their main pitch was, hey, you've heard stuff that we think that we're the only true church and we're better than anybody else.

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That's not us at all. We just want you to know that we're just like other Christians. We just have some disagreements, and we believe that we're the fullness of the church, but we're

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Christians just like you. It was just a totally different pitch. Yeah. The last decade,

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Mormon apologetics has changed, and evangelism for the Mormon community has become very interesting.

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They have over the last 10 years, just the last 10 years, really shifted in how they approach conversation, and yeah, there's just a marketing device,

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I think, that they have now where they wanted to be seen as Christian, whereas before, they would refer to us as Gentiles, and I remember in 1996, going up to the temple here in Mesa, Dr.

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White was out there, and you would just see Mormon missionaries and young Mormon teenagers and adults surrounding

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Dr. White, surrounding those of us that were out there, really ready to take you to task in the scriptures, and ready to fight.

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And it was encouraging, because there were clear lines drawn. And now, you're right, Chris, I mean, that is the typical encounter today, even with missionaries, representatives of their church, official representatives, that they want to say, no, no, we're

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Christians just like you, you're Christian, you're fine, we're just a little bit different. And I really believe it's a marketing strategy for them.

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I think they found that that works a lot better, considering the free access to all information of all things

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Mormon on Google. I think it's much easier for them to say, no, no, we're okay, we're like you, because people can access their entire history and a lot of stuff very easily.

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Yeah, in fact, whenever I brought up specific Mormon doctrine that was antithetical to Christianity and the scriptures, they just kept saying, well, we don't even like to talk about or think about or study the doctrine, we're just all about Jesus.

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And we received a burning in the bosom, and we know that this is the truth, because God has given us a witness to it and all that stuff.

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But every time I wanted to go into a specific conversation on their teaching, they avoided it like the plague.

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And the irony was, when they said that they had to go, because it was clear they weren't getting anywhere with me as far as conversion or whatever,

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I said, do you mind if I pray for you? And they agreed. And I prayed that the

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Lord would open their blind eyes, unstop their deaf ears, and give them new hearts to receive the true gospel of Jesus Christ, so that they would leave their false religion.

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And when I prayed in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, they both said amen to the prayer.

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Now, I don't think that they said amen, because they really were consciously agreeing with me, they were just doing it robotically, if you will.

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You're so narrow -minded. But anyway, we don't want the time to slip away without giving adequate time to this very important topic, because it seems to be a topic that comes up more and more in conversation amongst

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Christians, and perhaps even especially amongst Reformed Christians, and obviously those in the

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Church of Christ group, the Restorationist movement, headed by 19th century evangelist

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Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone and others, they are also simultaneously experiencing what has become known as hyper -preterism.

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But before we even go into hyper -preterism, what is preterism, what you would call biblically orthodox preterism, and let me hear something also about your journey into it, and obviously describe what hyper -preterism, in your opinion, means as well.

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Yeah, well, preterism just comes from a word that essentially means past, or past in fulfillment, and so in the conversation about last things, and quote -unquote end times, you have different eschatological positions.

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You have people that may look at, say, the Book of Revelation in a more historicist view, and history unfolding over time, and that particular school of thought.

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You have a futurist view of, say, the Book of Revelation, and that would be in terms of, well, these things are basically future to us, and we're to see these things in our very near future, or somewhat distant future.

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And you have the preterist school of thought, just generally speaking, just means past in fulfillment, and you have what

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I think are biblical and orthodox preterists, or people would say partial preterists in this conversation, that would say the majority of things in the

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Book of Revelation are fulfilled in the past, in the destruction of Jerusalem, that is essentially a covenant lawsuit in the

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Book of Revelation against the covenant breakers. You have the destruction of the harlot, and you have the old

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Jerusalem destroyed, make way for the new Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, inviting the world to come and drink.

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But however, a partial preterist, an orthodox preterist, sees at the same time the fact that the entire

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Bible has a whole narrative, a whole story that it's telling, not just isolated pieces here and there that you then force into the rest of the story, but it has an overarching narrative and story about the

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Messiah, about what He's going to accomplish, the Fall enters, sin enters, death enters, and Messiah is promised, and God is essentially restoring the world to what it once had before the

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Fall, and He's doing that through salvation, He's doing that through redemption, but what's going to happen is, and I think the overarching theme here against or contra full preterism or hyper -preterism is 1

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Corinthians 15, which contains within it the most popular verse quoted by the New Testament authors from the

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Old Testament, it's Psalm 1101, that I think expresses the entire story, and I think we need to pay very close attention to it.

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And that's a passage, again, that's quoted the most in the New Testament from the Old, by the Apostles, it's God's favorite

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Bible verse, and that is Psalm 1101, the Lord said unto my Lord, set up my right hand, and I will make all your enemies a footstool for your feet.

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Now Paul quotes that in 1 Corinthians 15, in terms of Jesus is reigning now, currently, and He must reign until He has placed all of His enemies under His feet, and then the last enemy is death, then comes the end, when

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He delivers the kingdom over to the Father after putting everything in subjection to Himself. So there's this narrative in the

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Bible of what God is doing in salvation, it's not just one thing, it's many things. It's redeeming individuals, it's taking the sin upon Himself, it's encountering rebels, it's bringing all the nations to God, it's essentially restoring all that was lost in the fall.

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As God's image is in the world and rebels against God, God is going to reverse all of that, and okay, can

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I just say this, I think it'd be a good way to express it, we sing about it every year, unless you're one of those weird people that doesn't like Christmas.

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We sing about it in Joy to the World, that's the song that expresses it, and the song actually says,

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Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king, and then it gets into the part of the song where it says, as far as the curse is found, that's what

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Jesus is doing, He's demolishing all that was lost as far as the curse is found. So okay, so partial preterism would say that many, if not most, of those judgment passages in the

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New Testament, those apocalyptic passages, refer to the soon -coming destruction upon Jerusalem and the covenant breakers that was promised in the

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Old Testament. But we would recognize that that's not the end of the story, God has much more that He's doing.

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So a full preterist, a hyper -preterist, as some names are called, although they don't like that title, many of them would see that as a pejorative, they wouldn't like it, so for the purposes of the discussion, my wonder is that full preterist, if you're talking to a buddy, you're trying to rescue from this dangerous thing, they would say, generally speaking, that this earth will continue forever the way that it is, with sin, with death, with no ultimate bringing back to what it was in Eden, in the sense of what we would expect to see in the sense of no more sin and death and fall, consequences of the fall, those sorts of things.

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So picture this, in full preterism, it's essentially the view that Jesus has already returned for His official second coming and resurrection, that took place in the first century, that there will be no final resurrection day ahead of us, again, sin will exist in God's universe perpetually, as well as death, physical death, and there's no ultimate final resurrection and last day of judgment ahead of us.

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And so it's a very dangerous view, theologically speaking, I guess that would get me into my own track through it, and this is, by the way, the first time

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I think I've ever spoken about this publicly. Well, I'm honored that you chose Iron Sharpens Iron to do so. Yeah, and it's a difficult subject for me because it's one of the darkest times of my entire life.

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When I reflect on it, it really is one of the darkest times of my entire life. Now, was that because of the eschatology, or was it just something, it was just providential that those two things were occurring at the same time?

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Were there other dark things? It was as a result of these beliefs, and community surrounding these beliefs.

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And so I grew up a teenage dispensationalist,

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I wasn't raised in church, and so when I did hear the gospel for the first time, and I first went to church in a Bible college, it was dispensational premillennialism, that's all

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I knew that really there was, and I thought that that was the view, and so I didn't know there were other views. It wasn't until later that really,

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I think, the scales came off, and I committed to just saying, okay, what does your word say, God? Not, what have

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I been told it says, but what does it say? But I really began to see in the scriptures,

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I think, a consistent position in partial preterism. Matthew 24,

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Luke 21, Mark 13, the Olivet Discourse had to occur in the first century, essentially, and I began to see, okay, wait a minute, that's historically what you can find in the church, and oh, wow, this view

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I have is a newer view in terms of church history, dispensational premillennialism, so I started getting into guys like Gentry, you know,

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DeMar, and even Bonson, and so I essentially became post -millennial and partial preterist, even guys like R .C.

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Sproul, his book, The Last Days According to Jesus, it's a phenomenal book, and I think it's important, and that set me off into partial preterism.

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Now, where I went off the rails, and this is, by the way, goodness, when was this?

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I think it was 2002? I think it was about 2002 is when this occurred, if I can think back rightly about this.

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I began to get influenced by men like Don Preston and Sam Frost, who is no longer a full preterist,

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I need to make sure I make that clear, and other men like that, and really, I was a young, very immature believer that was really not appropriately under biblical authority to be able to check me and really encourage me to get on the right path, and that's another conversation to have there about the importance of the church and local elders and authorities in your life, but I began to get influenced by a lot of the full preterists, and I didn't have a lot of answers to questions, and as a result of not having answers to questions and really being heavily influenced by some of these guys' very, very clever arguments, for a period of a couple of months,

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I forget how long, maybe it was two or three months, I officially said I adopted full preterism, and it was one of the darkest times in my life because the eschatology itself, think about it, a world where there has always been, a world where there is no final confirmation of these things, a world where it just exists as it is today with sin and death, those things start to really, you know, impact the way theology matters.

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It impacts the way that you think and you live, and then I started actually hooking up with some of these full preterists at conferences and things like that, and getting around these communities, and this is around when pal talk was a thing.

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Everyone's on pal talk, talking to each other. This was way back. It's like mentioning cassette tapes now, how fast things have changed.

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The communities that people were talking to, these full preterists and hyper -preterists, just listening to that nothing was off the table in terms of what can be denied, what should be questioned, and things like the

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Trinity, the authority of Scripture, the personality of Satan. I mean, these are the kinds of things that, because you have said the

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Church has been wrong for 2 ,000 years concerning a future resurrection and a final judgment ahead of us, and a bodily resurrection of saints, because the

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Church is so wrong on those things and it already occurred, well, we need to start questioning everything. And so I remember standing in a circle of guys at a conference, and I remember sitting there, and I had at this point essentially adopted full preterism, and I remember that I, listening to these guys,

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I felt this uneasiness. I mean, they were in a circle just talking about everything. The Trinity, again, the personality of Satan, they were talking about the resurrection, everything was like, we need to start questioning that.

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We need to say, maybe the Church has been wrong about that, too, and nothing was off the table. I mean, even questions like baptism and Lord's Supper and the

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Church itself, whether the Church actually is a functioning body today, whether elders and pastors and teachers are actually a functioning thing today.

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Now, by the way, if anyone wants to say, well, you're just saying that because you're an elder and you're a teacher. No, this is before I was in ministry, and these are the things that were being questioned, and, you know, does the

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Church even exist today in a corporate form today, in the sense that when you think about it, about going to worship locally with a governing body of elders and teachers with, you know, assigned roles and function in the

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Church and meet good things, you know, all of this was being questioned, and so I really fell into a dark, dark place, and God began to use that to really open my eyes to this movement and danger.

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I began to see people in this movement, they were just these rogue kind of guys opposed to all authority.

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I mean, somebody in the movement that may be listening to this now, please understand, I am not overgeneralizing here, trying to simply misrepresent you or hurt you.

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I want to say, this was my experience. I saw men in this movement that were just rogue.

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I mean, they were absolutely alone for themselves, and again, let me stress, I'm not saying that everybody who's in this movement is that way.

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I'm saying this is my experience, and that began to really open my eyes. I mean, there are hardly any churches that I'm aware of that are actually hyper -preterist as a part of the constitution or statement of faith of the whole

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Church. The hyper -preterists that I have become acquainted with, for the most part, are just individual members of a

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Church, or no Church, that are not in leadership anywhere, and that is not the confessional belief of the entire congregation anywhere other than an isolated few places that I'm aware of.

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I mean, do you know of a different situation, or are there a number of... No, there's not a number of them.

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It's a highly fragmented group itself, and I want to say this because I was in the group, because I know people are saying this right now as they're listening.

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Well, you know, the Reformed community is fragmented as well, and so, you know, use that argument presuppositionally against yourself.

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Now, listen, I'm not saying that the fact that there are disagreements and, you know, it's a fragmented group, that that means it is necessarily untrue.

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I am saying that my experience in this movement, and I fully repented of it and all the rest, my experience in this movement showed me something in that movement, and I think

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Jesus' words here should be taken to heart, "...by their fruit you shall know them." And I think that when you look at the fruit, and I was on the ground in this movement, when you look at the fruit of what it produces, these rogue, you know, people that, again, are opposed to authority, many of them, not all of them, but many of them, and questioning every doctrine you can imagine.

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I mean, the Trinity itself, and I mean, everything is up for grabs, because if the

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Church can be so wrong for 2 ,000 years about this major issue, then how do we know they got it right on anything else?

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And you just see them acting sort of in this really, again, rogue way in all these groups and communities, and I sat down with guys, and I mean, every conversation was essentially that the

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Church is wrong, and she's got it wrong, and we need to question this and that, and these conversations always devolved into this, and again, a full preterist might be listening to this right now and saying,

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Jeff, that's not my experience, but I'm just telling you, that's my experience in the movement. I was a full preterist, and I accepted it wholly.

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I even wrote a response to a brother of mine that was something like 200 pages long or something like that.

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He wrote a letter warning people about what I had fallen into, and it was like a page long, and I wrote like 200 pages or something in response to it, like going into passages.

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I mean, I was fully committed to it, and so being in that movement, I'm telling you, it was one of the very darkest times of my entire life.

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I don't even think about it often. Now, the thing that strikes me about hyper -preterism is that it is so pessimistic.

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I mean, it's ironic that some people who are post -millennial partial preterists, which is an enormously optimistic eschatology, would ever fall into a pessimistic, horribly pessimistic, and depressing eschatology like full or hyper -preterism, but it seems that the only reason someone would find any enthusiasm or joy in this is that they believe that they have some gnostic understanding of the scriptures that nobody else has or that few others have, and they have some kind of a pride of being in an elite group who have the secret keys to unlocking all the passages of scripture that seem to contradict and conflict and so on.

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I can't even imagine any other reason why somebody would want to be a hyper -preterist or a full preterist.

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Yeah, I can tell you that, again, I was in this movement and I did see, and again, this is not the force of my argument.

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I know how full preterists talk. I know what they would respond to say to this. It's not the force of my argument here against full preterism, but again, my experience in the movement,

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I think it's consistent with what you're saying, Chris, is a lot of guys that essentially want to be the next

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Luther and trying to write books and trying to put out articles and trying to... And it's very much, yeah, like, who's the next leader?

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Who's the next leader in the full preterist movement? And who are our leaders? And who's the next up -and -coming one?

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And, you know, who's going to be the next Luther that nails the 95 -feet -deep door at the church? And that sort of thing, that was what

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I experienced, and praise God that there was a book,

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When Shall These Things Be, by Gentry, Wilson, Matheson, and I think

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Scroll, Jr. wrote the foreword to it or something. Yeah, and Keith Matheson was the editor for that. Yeah, and that book really challenged me.

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Now, I do find as a post -millennial, it's obviously some issues that I would say, oh, no, it's not really consistent.

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Not all the arguments are perfect, but there were issues in that book that really cut me, and it brought me to a place of total repentance.

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I repudiate full preterism now. I see it as a very dangerous, dangerous movement.

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Well, let's pick up right where you left off there as we go to a commercial break, and we'll be right back with Jeff Durbin as he describes his journey out of hyper -preterism.

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If you have any questions, you can email us at chrizarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Please give your first name, at least, the city and state where you live and the country where you live if you live outside the

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USA, and we eagerly look forward to receiving emails from those who vehemently disagree with Jeff, those who wholeheartedly agree with Jeff, or those who are just not certain.

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Perhaps they are on the fence over this issue. They've just never heard of it before, perhaps. Whatever your opinion is on this or whatever your question is on this, we would love to hear you at chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

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chrizarnsen at gmail .com, and if it's a personal and private matter, perhaps you're raising a question that you don't want anyone else that you know to know that you are raising about this or what have you, you may feel free to remain anonymous, but please try to at least give us your first name if it's not a personal and private issue.

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We'll be right back with Jeff Durbin of Apologia Church, Apologia Radio, and Apologia TV, and his journey out of hyper -preterism right after these messages.

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That's nasbible .com. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. Before we return to our interview with Jeff Durbin and his exodus out of hyperpreterism,

34:02

I do have a couple of announcements to make by those who have sponsored this broadcast. Join your friends at Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, New York on September 19th, that's this

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That's W -O -T for Word of Truth Church dot com. W -O -T church dot com.

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And we hope that you can make it to that debate and please mention Iron Sharpens Iron if you do.

35:16

When we last came to your final statements for the first half hour of the program,

35:24

Jeff, before we took our commercial break, you were speaking about how Keith Matheson's book, the book that he edited featuring a number of authors, about, well basically refuting hyperpreterism.

35:39

If you could pick up right from where you left off of how you were fully convinced at that point that this was heresy and you abandoned it.

35:48

Yes, so having been committed to it and written stuff and I even had an article or something posted up on one of the most popular plethorist websites at the time and I have since actually have had that article removed.

36:06

Thankfully the owner of the website was kind enough to do that for me. I publicly repented of what

36:13

I consider to be heresy and something that is extremely dangerous and turned away from it.

36:20

And again, this is a very, very long time ago. I was a young man that just wasn't walking in wisdom and didn't have a lot of accountability in my life.

36:30

And it's something that I think about a lot. But I did learn a lot through that and that is to be very cautious, be very careful not to move fast in theological discussions and decisions, to really take time with God's Word and think about the whole picture and not just isolated parts and pieces here and there, to be very cautious about who influences me and who

36:54

I allow to teach me, to take very seriously the church, the church itself.

37:01

And God -ordained, the God -ordained institution of the church and shepherds that care for your soul and speak into your life and encourage you.

37:09

And I'm not to say that the church is the source of ultimate authority, it's just a God -ordained institution that is meant to bless you and to guard you, to be a rail around you,

37:17

I think, in these issues. And again, when I look back at my life and I look at this very brief period of time

37:23

I had in hyper -preterism or full -preterism, I do see it as one of the darkest times spiritually of my life, and it was because, like you said, it's depressing.

37:33

The theology, the eschatology itself is depressing, and seeing what it actually bred with the men who adopted it, seeing the sort of things that they were challenging and believing in and trying to question, really brought just a lot of light to my eyes.

37:53

And I want to speak, if anybody's listening to this now that has adopted full -preterism or hyper -preterism, you've adopted it,

38:03

I want to speak to that person and encourage them to really reconsider the entire narrative of the

38:13

Bible, not just simply isolated parts and pieces here and there, but the entire narrative of the victory of the

38:19

Messiah over sin and death in the world, and to really consider, deeply consider, the community of people who actually adopt full -preterism and hyper -preterism, and the sorts of things that are questioned, and that the basic attitude that sort of like militates many times against any authority in the

38:37

Church itself, and ask yourself, is the community that I'm living in, is the life that I am now living as someone who's adopted this, is it consistent with what

38:46

I see in the Scriptures of the Biblical community? Is what I believe about the future consistent with the entire narrative of the

38:54

Scriptures? I mean, can I really fit 1 Corinthians 15 into my system? Can I really fit the idea, really, that Jesus would put every enemy under his feet and death, and that all things would be in subjection to him?

39:10

Can I really put that in 7 AD? Is it done? Now, the primary thing that those who are millennialists, whether they are amillennial, premillennial, or postmillennial, the primary thing that they all embrace, that hyper -preterists reject, is a future, visible, bodily return of Christ, and a bodily resurrection of the dead, a physical resurrection of the dead, both the saved and lost, that is still awaiting us in the future.

39:52

Those are the primary things that millennialists of all varying stripes believe in that hyper -preterists reject, am

40:03

I correct? Yeah, they would, and again, the hyper -preterist movement is deeply divided in many respects, and so you have differing views as to what exactly resurrection is.

40:16

Now, they'll put it in the first century, they'll put it surrounding the events of the fall of Jerusalem, so either it's a corporate body resurrection view, or if we actually will get, when we die, a resurrected, glorified, actual, tangible body, there's differences there, but yeah, a full preterist put the resurrection, whatever it was referring to, in the first century, essentially surrounding the destruction of the fall of Jerusalem.

40:46

So again, yes, historic Christianity has always believed in a future, day of judgment, bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, and that is of course consistent with the confession of the

41:03

Church, and I think it goes beyond that, when you think, I mean, consider this for a moment, and it's a compelling argument, and again,

41:10

I know the full preterist says, but the scriptures are our standard, the scriptures are our standard, I'm going to say yes to that, amen to that, Sola Scriptura, all the way,

41:17

I'm like militant black coffee Calvinist, okay, that's me, I'm seriously,

41:22

I mean, I absolutely, you know, I love Calvinism, I'm a Calvinist, I preach Reformed theology and the pillars of the

41:28

Reformation, Sola Scriptura, but Sola Scriptura did not mean Solo Scriptura. The Spirit of God is not at work in the body of Christ, the people of God, and it's compelling, if you think about it, to think that in the second, we have a writing of the disciples of the disciples, of the disciples of the apostles.

41:52

We know what they said, we have their stuff, and it's compelling to think that we would actually suggest that the disciples of the apostles, they didn't get it.

42:03

They still look forward to a future resurrection, they still look forward to Christ actually returning to wrap all this up.

42:10

Isn't it amazing to actually suggest that the disciples of the apostles didn't get it?

42:18

I mean, we're talking about not just official creeds of the Church, but in the writings of the Fathers, those who knew the apostles, they just didn't get it.

42:26

Now, I think you can demonstrate in the second century partial preterism, and Christians arguing early on for the destruction of Jerusalem and the return of Christ and judgment upon that generation, you can see that stuff.

42:39

But what you don't see is people actually denying wholesale a future resurrection and judgment of Christ ahead of us.

42:46

I mean, the Church has historically always believed in a future bodily resurrection and final coming of Christ, and Jesus wrapping all of this up.

42:54

In other words, the narrative of the Bible actually happening, that Jesus actually fixes all this stuff, like His redemption is all -encompassing, that He actually restores

43:04

Eden and man's place with God to what it was when it began, that there's not going to be any loose ends.

43:12

The historic churches always believed in the narrative of Scripture that actually there's going to be a consummation, and when you think about, and you said it,

43:21

Chris, it's interesting that, you know, Gnostics believed in sort of this secret knowledge, and I don't want to say it's an absolute parallel to full preterism and its belief, but there's something there to think that, you know, that for 2 ,000 years, the

43:37

Church, the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, and dwelt by the Spirit of God, didn't get it.

43:43

This massive thing about the resurrection and future coming of Christ and God wrapping all this up again, bringing all things in subjection to Jesus.

43:50

The Church just didn't get it. The Spirit of God was not aped, in some sense, in full preterism, to actually equip the

43:57

Church to know about this vitally important thing, and that says something. I mean, it really does.

44:03

The full preterist is going to say, I know what they're going to say. They're going to say, the Scriptures are our standard. No Church follows. They're going to say,

44:08

Jeff, you're a Reformer that's not acting like Luther. For him, it was the Scriptures. I mean, the

44:14

Diet of Worms, right? And you're not being like Luther. I'm going to say, well, that's a real mischaracterization of Luther and his belief in the

44:21

Reformers. I mean, it's important to recognize that the Scriptures are our sole infallible rule of faith, but the

44:29

Scriptures don't exist in a vacuum. God is indwelling His Church, equipping

44:35

His Church, teaching His Church. That's what Jesus told us about the Spirit of God. And Jude 1 .3,

44:42

we are to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

44:49

This hyper -preterism wasn't a part of that. Yeah, and again,

44:55

I want to encourage somebody who might have been like me, swayed into this direction, to take a step back and to think very, very hard and to not ignore these issues.

45:07

These issues were on my mind, and they did gnaw at me, and so I want them to gnaw at the person that's struggling with us right now.

45:15

Listen, take a deep breath and stop and think. Those are vitally important issues, and they cannot be just tossed to the wayside.

45:23

They're important. When you think about the fact that the Bible has a whole narrative about the victory of Jesus over all of sin and death, and you think about the early

45:31

Church, the disciples of the Apostles did not see what you are saying.

45:37

And that says something, and I think we need to pay close attention to that. And you might say, well, what's the real consequence?

45:43

Well, they're dramatic. The consequences are dramatic. I mean, again, aside from everything else

45:48

I said that I saw in these communities and these groups of men and these kinds of things they were talking about, you think about the fact that hyper -preterism has led, in some respects, to accepting universalism.

45:59

When you think about the fact that many hyper -preterists have denied the role and function of a local

46:05

Church with elders and pastors and teachers, baptism is up for, you know, talk that out.

46:12

That may not be very important anymore either. I mean, is that part of where we're at now? Is baptism even necessary right now?

46:19

Is it something we should actually be doing? You know, the Lord's Supper? Now, baptism and the

46:25

Lord's Supper are essential in most Church of Christ or Restorationist circles, and Don Preston comes out of that movement.

46:33

Is he still holding to a view of baptism especially that would be even more important than you and I would hold to it?

46:46

Yeah, yeah. I mean, baptism being necessary for salvation, right? To do this act is not simply just faith, but also this act we have to add tribute to the work of Christ.

46:56

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important, and I think that came up in a recent debate with Don Preston and with Jason Wallace, the issue of baptism.

47:05

He didn't really address it though, did he? No, he didn't really address it, I think, with clarity, and I think it's because it's detrimental to his position in terms of the full -preterist movement.

47:14

You do have full -preterists that are saying, hey guys, we are fighting for consistency, right? Amen? Okay, we've got to consider, is baptism a part of this new age of the

47:24

Messiah? Is that something you do here? And you've got guys saying, well absolutely not, that was an ordinance for that particular time, it's not part of what we have to do now, and you've got guys in the movement that are stars of the movement, guys like Don Preston, that he's highly committed to water baptism at the

47:40

Church of Christ Minister, and you have that conflict going on there between him and that movement, and you say, well okay, where's the consistency, guys?

47:49

I mean, is it necessary for salvation, or is it not part of what we're supposed to do today? I mean, these are important things, and we think about the fact that there are consequences to what you believe, and this movement of hyper -preterism has dramatic, dramatic consequences in terms of actual

48:07

Christian practice. Well, other than what we have just been speaking of, about the starting to question a lot of things, the snowball effect, if you will, of starting to doubt anything that you've ever heard from any preacher, or writer, or pastor, or theologian from the past, or even present, what are some of the specific tangible things that made this a dark time for you when you were hyper -preterist, and what are the dangerous fruits of this, other than perhaps questioning everything, because you might have some who are self -professed full preterists, or covenantal eschatology adherents, as some of them call it.

48:58

What are some of the tangible examples of how this is damaging to the faith?

49:05

Well, I think that if you connect all of that, think about the movement itself, what they did not, how they're constantly questioning the fact that it's a very dark view of the future,

49:13

I think there's no final confirmation in dealing with all that's been destroyed in the world, that begins to take root within you, and you have sort of like this separation that happens between you and the body of Christ, and for me, you know, being someone that's truly saved and forgiven and knows

49:30

Jesus, to be separated from God's people in a fundamental way, in terms of like, the view of the future and even fellowship and church and that's a necessary thing, and all these different things, that begins to destroy you as a believer.

49:45

If you're truly in Christ, you can't exist outside the fellowship of the saints and worship of God's people, and you think about this puts you in an isolationist kind of position, where, you know, you have the secret knowledge that the

49:56

Church of God does not have, never, it was just missed it, and that begins to erode at your spiritual life, and you start to see these guys that are not under any kind of authority, and they're, in many ways, again,

50:10

I'm not generally saying that this is just what I can say, it's what I saw in the movement, generally speaking, opposed to authority in many respects, and you begin to just get into this vicious cycle of constantly questioning, not trusting, not having hope for the future, and it begins to really gnaw at you and destroy hope and accountability and teachability and, you know, again, it's sort of these rogue guys that oppose and question virtually everything, and I gotta say this,

50:45

I don't want to mention his name on the air, but I had a friend, a friend that actually went into this as well, and I saw it have the same kind of dramatic impact on their lives that it did mine, and this is in separate, these are separate issues, and we weren't necessarily together completely,

51:04

I saw it rough them up, and so I got to see the fruit of what takes place when someone actually enters into this movement.

51:12

It destroyed me, it destroyed men that I love and that were close to me, and I think that that should say something to us.

51:19

Again, by their fruit you shall know them, I think that there's fruit here that needs to be examined, and, you know, when people ask me today as a pastor,

51:27

I've had people actually write me and say, hey, Pastor Jeff, I have a guy in my church that, you know, he's a hyper -preterist, and I'll usually say something like, is this person trying to convince others in your church of hyper -preterism?

51:37

The answer is always yes, they're trying to create little small groups and little groups of people and trying to create a movement within the church, and what

51:44

I generally say is, you need to take this very seriously, you need to get the elders of your church involved, and not be mean -spirited and just crush this person, but try to restore them and see it as very serious and very destructive.

51:59

See it as something that will destroy your whole church. See it as something that will destroy the faith of people in your church, and take it very seriously.

52:08

This is not something that we should take lightly. I think hyper -preterism is so destructive to the body of Christ, we should be very, very serious and concerned about it, and I think if it's in your church and somebody is in your church, love that person.

52:21

Be gracious to them, don't mistreat them, try to restore them with gentleness, bring the elders of your church in, and make sure that that person understands that this will not be allowed to be taught and promoted within the body, and try to restore that person.

52:37

I think one of the things I will say is, the men who were around me when this occurred, one of the ways

52:43

I think that they were right was to be very alarmed about this, and one of the ways

52:49

I think they were very wrong was, instead of trying to restore me and to try to help me along the way, they immediately just, you know, severed communication and wouldn't talk and wouldn't even, you know, really attempt to help, and there were just a lot of things that surrounded that that made it more difficult for me, and again, this is in no way a condemnation upon them, but I think something that I learned, that we need to love these people, because it is possible for someone to be truly in Christ, to fall into this, and they need help, they need instruction, they need encouragement, they need accountability, they need to be taught, and I think we need to see it as a vitally important issue that's very, very serious, it's very dangerous.

53:30

If somebody falls prey to this, we need to try to rescue them and encourage them and restore them to come around them, but if they continue perpetually down this path, and they just are fully committed to it, they adopt it, and they will not let go of it, and they're trying to go and teach others, then yeah, we need to separate from them, and we need to not allow them into the assembly until they repent of it, and I think that we need to see this as, again, an important issue that we need to hold near and near to our heart, but we need to try to restore people.

54:04

One of the things that was encouraging to me, I'll just tell you in light of that, is in the book, When Shall These Things Be?,

54:10

the opener that R .C. Sproul Jr. had in the book, he actually says near the end of his opener of the book, that he hopes that this book will be used by God to rescue people that have gotten into this.

54:28

Here he goes, he says this, he says, my prayer is that those who have been ensnared by this error will, in reading this book, come under conviction and so be set free.

54:39

Now, when I read that, I remember this, when I read that, my heart settled.

54:46

Like, when I read that, I remember that I went from this place feeling the weight was on my life, and I felt like I was in such a dark hole.

54:54

I remember that I read that, and I actually felt loved, like for the first time in a while, and it was what

55:00

God used to really open my eyes to the fact that, look, you know, you're still loved by me, you're still loved by my people, and you're in error.

55:10

Come home. And so as I read through this book, and I really began to allow myself to be taught again, that's where I was able to get set free from it.

55:21

God used this book to set me free, and I'm so grateful to these men for this work.

55:27

And my heart's desire, honestly, is, if anybody is listening to this ever, know this, that I see this as a very difficult moment for me.

55:37

I don't talk about this very often. I have never talked about it publicly like this, but I wanted to do this show with Chris, specifically to speak to those who might have fallen into this, to say that there is hope, you are loved, and you can come out of this.

55:54

It's okay to abandon it. It's okay to admit you are wrong. It's okay to have written stuff on this and adopted it.

56:01

It's okay to say, I repent, I was wrong, God forgive me, and to come out of it, and to come home.

56:10

And I do want the person who is in this right now that's in that very dark place to know what

56:15

I'm talking about. I do want you to realize that there is hope, there is light, and it's just a matter of repentance, really.

56:23

Now, just out of curiosity, what is the view, and I know that it's a fragmented group, as you said, but is there any relatively consistent view of what heaven and hell are in the hyper -preterist view?

56:38

Well, again, it's fragmented, but I will say this. Again, you have guys like Max King and his son,

56:47

I think Tim King, you have that movement moved its way into universalism and things like that, so you have a question of does hell even exist, or Romans 5, they'll even try to adopt what universalists have said, you know, all who are in Christ are made alive, that means all, and there you go again, squeezing it all in together and all will be made alive, and so you have the idea that, you know, there's essentially everybody saved, and so in that part of the movement, you wouldn't have, ultimately, obviously, a hell, but then you also have, in that movement, you have people that will obviously look at the apocalyptic text and say, well, because we recognize that there is

57:24

Jewish hyperbole and graphic judgment language used, and it didn't literally mean something, it was just grammatical language used to express judgment, well, then we need to look at hell and say, is there really an eternal lake of fire, and is that lake of fire literal, is there a literal place of eternal torment, or is that just judgment language, judgment motif, and is that, so again, the movement's fragmented, so you'd have people questioning whether hell exists, and I know the full printers will say to this, well, there are

57:55

Christians who are annihilationists, you know, people like John Stott that denied a literal hell, but again, these things are all connected, and when you look at how the hermeneutics work in that movement, how you begin to cram and force everything into this paradigm, and everything has to fit into this eschatology, you begin to see that that's where the consequences come from.

58:18

And again, and this is important, people have noted this, that in full preterism, hyperpreterism, eschatology drives everything.

58:27

I mean, it drives everything. The eschatology is what you lay over every single text.

58:35

You're laying it over all the texts, and forcing that view into all these different texts to see how those texts can fit into this view.

58:43

Rather than doing exegesis on each thing, fitting that into the whole narrative as you individually work through these texts, it does become the overarching thing that everything has to squeeze into.

58:57

All right, we do have some listeners who have emailed questions, and we're going to get to them right after this brief station break, and if you haven't written in yet, you can join them with your question of your own at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

59:14

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and we look forward to hearing from you right after these messages, so don't go away.

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Thriving Difference. Welcome back.

01:01:49

This is Chris Zarnes of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you just tuned us in, we have been interviewing for the last hour Jeff Durbin of Apologia Church, Apologia Radio, and Apologia TV.

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We've been discussing his journey out of hyper -preterism, and we're going to continue on that theme and then eventually get into a defense of partial preterism or what

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We return to our discussion on hyper -preterism and eventually we'll be getting back into partial preterism or orthodox preterism.

01:04:07

But Jeff, during the debate that we both saw last Saturday between Jason Wallace, who is an orthodox

01:04:15

Presbyterian pastor in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he debated Don Preston, who is a hyper -preterist, or he would call himself someone who believes in covenantal eschatology,

01:04:27

I believe is how he phrased it. When Jason Wallace brought up the fact that no one has believed in this hyper -preterist view until Max King in the 1960s, it seemed to go unchallenged by Don Preston.

01:04:43

Are you aware of anyone before the 1960s, before Max King, who had this view at all?

01:04:54

Yeah, I mean, you have Russell's work. That was in the 19th century that essentially gave a full preterist view.

01:05:06

And so, yeah, you would have it, you know, at least in the last 200 years, you would have that as a possibility.

01:05:14

Again, I would strike at the fact that historically, as you go back, you do not find this particular view as something embraced by the church at all.

01:05:29

So, if it wasn't the 1960s, it wasn't long earlier than that, or long before that?

01:05:36

No, I think you can, obviously, Russell's book. Now, by the way, there's some good stuff in Russell's book, and you have,

01:05:42

I mean, R .C.'s first book, The Last Days According to Jesus, is almost like a book report on Russell's book. There are very helpful things in that book, but that doesn't mean that the whole book is helpful.

01:05:53

And you do have Russell's work, and the parousia, and you also, I believe, have

01:05:59

Milton Terry's book on biblical hermeneutics, and some of the things there, arguing for some of the same things.

01:06:04

But no, this would be a very, very new view. And did it gain much of a following from Russell or Terry, or was

01:06:13

Max King really the champion that got more of a numeric following in hyperparousism?

01:06:20

I think a lot of it gained, in the sense of this movement getting legs on it, was from Max King and his book,

01:06:27

The Cross and the Parousia, and those sorts of things. And so, a lot of the gain was there. And so, in more modern times, and this movement really getting legs on it,

01:06:38

I think a lot of it comes from there, he has a challenge with this question, is that throughout church history, you've got

01:06:46

Christians looking at particular passages and having a preterist or partial preterist view of particular texts.

01:06:54

And so, the challenge is that you can look in history and you can see particular

01:06:59

Christians giving a particular interpretation of a passage and giving a partial preterist view. And so, that is used oftentimes by full preterists to actually say, well, look, this has been seen by the

01:07:13

Church before, but it's scattered. Well, the problem is that no, the system of full preterism has not been seen by the

01:07:21

Church, has not been embraced by the historic Church. And again, I know the responses, but are standard in the

01:07:27

Scriptures? Of course it is. But don't you think it's interesting that Christians historically who had themselves the standard being the

01:07:35

Scriptures did not see this in Church history?

01:07:41

They didn't see it in the Bible. And again, in the 2nd century, the disciples of the Apostles didn't see this particular position, didn't understand it, didn't hear it from the

01:07:49

Apostles. I think it needs to be paid attention to. And this movement, interestingly, this movement is popular on the

01:07:58

Internet. It's popular on the Internet. And you have a very scattered group of people who adopt this particular system that can't have any kind of cohesive, coherent unity and message within themselves, and so you have sort of like this kind of inflating that happened over the last 20 years or so, and then like a massive deflating happening as well at the same time.

01:08:28

And so while some might say preterism is gaining legs and really growing,

01:08:36

I would say, no, I think it's actually the reverse. I think it's actually dying, and I'm thankful for that.

01:08:42

It did have sort of a pop to it, but I think people recognize the consequences. You have guys like Max King and his movements, and guys like Preston and Frost.

01:08:53

You've got these guys, and then everything starts to spread out. They're not consistent among themselves, they can't figure out even within their own positions, there's a universalism, it's baptism of the necessary,

01:09:02

Lord's Supper at the Church, even a thing, and you've got people dropping off out of the movement, guys like Sam Frost, who was one of the big proponents of the movement for a long period of time, and then he now repudiates real preterism.

01:09:14

And so the movement itself is very, very unstable and shaky, and I don't see it as ultimately really growing now, and I'm thankful for that.

01:09:23

And I hope that people can see that the fruit of the movement should speak volumes about the movement.

01:09:31

And again, the Scriptures tell a consistent narrative. 1 Corinthians 15, John chapter 6,

01:09:37

I think, militates against full preterism. But we need to pay attention to, besides the narrative, the actual on -the -ground fruit of this movement.

01:09:46

And we do have a couple of listeners who have already written in with questions. We have Bruce from Center Reach, Long Island, New York, and I don't know if this question is in regard to the views of hyper -preterists or your personal views,

01:10:02

Jeff, but perhaps you could answer from both perspectives. His question is, how is

01:10:07

Jesus ruling and reigning on planet Earth today, and when did the Great White Throne Judgment take place?

01:10:15

Well, Jesus is ruling and reigning today, according to Psalm 110 .1,

01:10:22

according to the New Testament Apostles, according to Jesus himself. 1 Corinthians 15, very clearly,

01:10:28

Paul puts Jesus on his throne. We see in the Scriptures he's at the right hand of God, ascended and seated, given all authority in heaven and on Earth.

01:10:38

He is ruling and reigning now in his kingdom. He brings, expands that kingdom forth by his gospel and good news and salvation.

01:10:47

And again, if you look at the narrative, the overarching narrative, it's all the nations coming to God in redemption, salvation, the knowledge of God covering the

01:10:57

Earth like the waters cover the sea, and you see in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says very clearly that where it's going is all things in subjection to Jesus.

01:11:08

He defeats every enemy, and the last enemy is death, and after everything's put in subjection to himself, then he delivers the kingdom over to the

01:11:16

Father, and God may be all in all. And so that's how Jesus is reigning, through salvation, forgiveness.

01:11:23

He is the King. He has all authority. When it comes to questions about the book of Revelation, personally,

01:11:30

I'm working through things myself in Revelation. I want to be a faithful minister, and how I handle

01:11:36

God's Word, and how I actually interpret that book. There are certain elements of the book that I am completely committed to.

01:11:41

For example, the soon coming of Christ in judgment, the fact that it is very much Jewish -Roman persecution of Christians, pre -70

01:11:48

AD, fall of Jerusalem. I'm very committed to the beast, Rome, Neron, Kaiser, 666.

01:11:55

I'm very committed to the harlot, as a clear picture of the covenant breakers is what

01:12:00

God always called his wife in the Old Testament when she apostatized and turned away from him. The covenant -breaking bride is the harlot that's persecuting the saints.

01:12:09

Rome's going to turn on her. I'm very committed to that being the old Jerusalem being destroyed to make way for the new

01:12:15

Jerusalem, the bride of Christ. In terms of specific timing things of how the book of Revelation seems to be running through recapitulation,

01:12:24

I'm still working through personally, so publicly I don't want to come out and say my particular views, because I want to be faithful to God's Word myself.

01:12:32

But I want to say, very important, what would I be saying as is so detrimental to the full preterist position?

01:12:41

And I think it has to do with the reign of Christ, the question being asked. And I still want to address that in the short time we have.

01:12:47

When you look at, say, 1 Corinthians 15, again, there is no real way to squeeze this into the first century.

01:12:56

He says that Christ is raised from the dead. He's the firstfruit. Man, as an animal dies, so in Christ all will be made alive, each in his own order,

01:13:06

Christ the firstfruit, then it is coming to those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the

01:13:12

Father after destroying, and listen closely, every rule and every authority and power.

01:13:20

For he must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for God has put all things in subjection under his feet.

01:13:29

So I want to say this, in terms of the kingdom of Christ, how is he reigning now? That's the answer.

01:13:34

That's the overarching narrative of the Bible that really pulls together every passage about all the nations coming to God, and this is, by the way,

01:13:41

Chris, why I think a thoroughgoing, rugged, biblical post -millennialism is really the only consistent answer to full pletorism, so I invite you,

01:13:50

Chris, to come with me. I'm too depressed.

01:13:58

I think it's important to see, okay, listen, and this is one of the things that gnawed at me as a full pletorist for the short time that I was.

01:14:05

What gnawed at me here is, you cannot really do that. You cannot make sense of that passage, which is

01:14:11

Paul pulling together a Christian -esque apology 101, the whole narrative of the Bible, he's pulling it together.

01:14:17

You can't put that in a sensible way into the first century. Every authority, every rule, every power, all enemies were under Jesus' feet in 100

01:14:29

AD, or pre -100 AD. Really? That we can actually find some way to finesse that text, to put all of that into the first century.

01:14:40

You see, I think when you look at the narrative of the Bible, you see Paul, curse, and then coming redemption, all the nations, salvation, the ends of the earth are his possession, he shall have dominion, he reigns, every enemy under his feet, the last one death, and then he delivers the kingdom over to the

01:14:58

Father as a thing. And I think that that right there, that overarching narrative, that is what

01:15:05

Paul pulls together in 1 Corinthians 15. And I want to say this, no matter who we are, pre -millennialists, amillennialists, postmillennialists, or full pletorists, our eschatology has got to match that.

01:15:17

It's got to fit into that passage, and I think you can't really, in a sensible way, in a coherent way, take that passage and put it into the first century without really offering a lot of very creative finesse to it.

01:15:31

I think if you read it as it is, it fits the entire narrative of the Bible, and it has a consummation, and it has truly every rule and authority and power under Jesus' feet.

01:15:41

And to say that that kingdom, that full authority and final victory happened in the first century,

01:15:49

I think it's stretching, to say the least. Now, the White Throne Judgment, the

01:15:56

Great White Throne Judgment, as far as a hyper -pletorist would answer that, do you know? Or I know that they're fragmented, but...

01:16:03

Fragmented. I've seen different things. And again, I was a full pletorist for a short period of time.

01:16:09

I am not claiming to be an expert in full pletorism and all the things that have happened over the last...

01:16:15

I mean, I abandoned it, I think, in 2002, and so it's been quite a while. So there have been developments and novelties that have come about since then, you're saying?

01:16:24

Yeah. So I wouldn't want to misrepresent them. I think that that is a dishonest way to handle people, and I want to treat them with respect.

01:16:30

And I don't... Most current things, I can tell you that I have read differing views on how to interpret

01:16:36

Revelation in the full pletorist community. I personally wouldn't want to misrepresent them by saying this is what they believe, particularly about that.

01:16:46

I just want to briefly mention Jason Wallace and his website,

01:16:52

Jason Wallace of Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, debated

01:16:59

Don Preston, who was probably the most renowned champion of hyper pletorism, last

01:17:05

Saturday. And if you want to find out more about that debate, go to gospelutah .org.

01:17:13

Jason Wallace is a dear brother in Christ. I've interviewed him on this broadcast, and he's also a close mutual friend of Dr.

01:17:20

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who's a close mutual friend of both my guest today, Jeff Durbin, and myself.

01:17:28

One more thing, Chris. Sure. In light of 1

01:17:34

Corinthians 15, when I say the overarching narrative of Scripture, there's a whole story being told here.

01:17:39

And you and I talked, Chris, a little earlier about proof texts, right? Proof texts that can be seen to challenge an entire system of the

01:17:46

Scriptures, and you pull out a proof text here. You're like, well, I really struggle answering that, because it's a single text. Well, you run into that problem of full pletorism, but you have to remember something.

01:17:55

There's an entire narrative of Abraham's descendants, of numerous of the stars, of all the nations coming, and him having the obedience of the nations, and you have this entire narrative that's picked up by Paul in 1

01:18:05

Corinthians 15. You have to pay attention to the whole story of the Bible and not compartmentalize it or truncate it.

01:18:12

And when you look at a premier text of Jesus, in John chapter 6, where Jesus—and you and I love this,

01:18:20

Chris, because we're hardcore black coffee -drinking Calvinists—in John chapter 6,

01:18:26

Jesus says, in verse 36, but I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe all that the

01:18:35

Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. I've come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

01:18:43

And this is the will—okay, this is a big one—okay, I've not come to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. He says, this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

01:18:59

He says this, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise

01:19:07

Him up on the last day. Now, are we really saying, is it possible to somehow, again, finesse that and put that resurrection, that last day, into the first century?

01:19:19

What about all those that came to Christ after? What about all those who were given to the Father by Jesus today?

01:19:26

What about us? Now, if you say, be consistent, well, that occurred in the first century, well then what about us?

01:19:32

Right. And that's what they say, all. Jesus says, all. That includes you,

01:19:38

Chris, that includes me, that includes everyone who loves Jesus and trusts Him. We're part of that all, given to Jesus by the

01:19:44

Father. Now, a full predecessor would say, well, that occurred in the first century. Well, wait a second. Jesus says

01:19:50

He raises up all that the Father has given to Him on the last day.

01:19:55

Now, how that occurred in the first century? I have no—I couldn't ask it to answer you.

01:20:02

It is, again, it's to stretch the narrative of the

01:20:07

Bible in such a way as to completely break it down. And these are questions that need to be asked by us.

01:20:15

Is that consistent? Because, again, we can proof -text all day long this particular text, that particular text, and it's important to pull them all together.

01:20:22

Amen, amen, amen. I'm all of Scripture. Again, I'm black coffee -drinking Reformed Calvinist, tota

01:20:27

Scriptura, all of Scripture, interpret Scripture. Great. But this is an overarching narrative

01:20:32

Jesus is pulling from. He understood that. And that cannot fit to a preterist position.

01:20:39

Don't let me forget to ask you about the present state of Christ right now and for eternity in regard to His body, which came up during the debate between Don Preston and Jason Wallace.

01:20:53

But I don't want to keep our listener in Australia waiting too much longer before you answer his question.

01:21:00

You seem to attract Australians to this program, Jeff. Last time you had a couple of Australians, I believe.

01:21:07

Hello, my name is Alan from Adelaide, Australia. Thank you for the conversation on hyper -preterism and,

01:21:15

God bless, question. I have become a partial preterist over the past few months, and I have heard a lot about the belief on hyper -preterism.

01:21:24

What would be the most heretical thing about hyper -preterism, and what books would you recommend against the belief?

01:21:31

Well, you obviously already mentioned Keith Matheson's book, but if you could answer those questions.

01:21:37

Wow, tough one. When should these things be? I think it's an important work. And, oh goodness, if you were to say what is the sort of worst consequence of the system,

01:21:47

I think it's what we've been talking about, is that it disrupts the entire narrative of Scripture. You have sin and death existing in God's universe for good, and it just perpetually goes on that way, and so you have sort of like a stunted story.

01:22:02

The Bible has a consistent narrative that ends in confirmation. Full preterism leads to a stunted narrative that essentially leaves all these things open, and again, sin and curse and death and disease and decay and brokenness and sadness existing in God's world perpetually.

01:22:21

And again, disrupting the entire narrative of the Scripture means that as you come to the

01:22:27

Word of God, you are not able to read the Word of God as a whole as it is together, because you are constantly forcing into that text a particular position, rather than letting it speak for itself as a whole part and piece.

01:22:43

Paul You know, it reminds me, this may be an off -the -wall comparison, but in Luke 11 -11, which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?

01:22:58

The promises of Christ are answered in a very anticlimactic way by the hyper -preterists.

01:23:08

When you are revealed, or it is revealed to you, I should say, what they believe the promises of Jesus are, they're a lot more wanting than the actual promises.

01:23:25

They are anticlimactic, they're depressing, they're shockingly bad. It's not a wonderful and glorious thing.

01:23:35

It's like, you mean I missed it? It's already happened? It's what? Chris Right, right, yeah, and you think about that, the last day, the resurrection of all that the

01:23:45

Father has given to him, being raised up, and someone says, no, that already happened, that's done.

01:23:51

And so you begin to, yeah, again, get depressed, you're in a dark place.

01:23:57

And it really does, I think you're right, Chris, calling into question God's good gift and really his power in the world.

01:24:06

And when you look at the state of the world, one of the challenges that I have to face as someone who believes in the victory of Jesus within history, not just simply at the end, people will say, but Jeff, but look at the world, there's all this sin, there's all this brokenness, there's disease and decay, and there's race.

01:24:23

One of the things that I can say is that the Bible says it's progress, it's stone that becomes a mountain, it's leaven in a lump of dough, it's all the nations streaming up to the mountain of God.

01:24:32

That's progress in history. It's going to take time for Jesus to put all things into subjection to himself, and he does so through salvation.

01:24:40

But I can work through those questions, but you still have those questions as a post -millennial, as myself, and we all have that problem, ultimately.

01:24:47

But we have to face those and say, no, there is hope. Jesus will be victorious, right?

01:24:52

That's what we can point to. But in full preterism, I had to face the fact that I'm saying that it will go on like this for good.

01:25:04

And that's destructive. We do have an anonymous listener right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who writes,

01:25:13

I understand that you are a partial preterist. From my experience as being one who has unfortunately dabbled with hyper -preterism for far too long, to a destructive degree,

01:25:29

I have noticed that the books written by the foremost partial preterists, such as Gary DeMar and Ken Gentry, have become constant stepping stones into hyper -preterism.

01:25:46

And I have noticed that even at the hyper -preterist conferences and debates, the hyper -preterists have these works on their own book tables.

01:25:56

How do you respond to someone like me, who says that all of preterism, whether partial or full, is dangerous?

01:26:04

I really appreciate that. And what I would ask the person who asked the question to think through is that it begins to become a non -sequitur.

01:26:15

It doesn't logically follow. For example, say for example in Calvinism, some make the argument, well, you have these hyper -Calvinists over here that say you don't need to evangelize and do anything, and God's ordained it, and they become sort of fatalistic.

01:26:31

And you know what really led to that is guys like James White. You know, have you ever read The Potter's Freedom?

01:26:36

He teaches the full sovereignty of God there. If you take that to its logical consequence, you've got to have hyper -preterism.

01:26:43

We would say, no, that's really an abuse and not taking into consideration the whole story. One doesn't necessarily lead to the other.

01:26:51

You can have solid biblical truth that is just in itself solid and biblical, and doesn't necessarily have a natural consequence to these unbiblical distortions.

01:27:02

And one of the things that I think is a danger in the hyper -preterist movement, or the full -preterist movement, is they do use the very solid, thoroughgoing, rugged theology and eschatology of guys like Gentry and DeMar and Bonson.

01:27:18

They use those sorts of things to sort of bring people along to say, look, look what we've missed.

01:27:24

Jesus had to return in the first century in judgment, do you see? And a person like me goes, oh my goodness, that's clear.

01:27:29

There's no way around that. You've got to accept that. That's what the text says. And then they go, okay, now read this next book.

01:27:36

Look at this next thing. The thought that I gave. And it's sort of like leading you off into something that doesn't necessarily logically follow.

01:27:44

And again, I can see how people might utilize that as a tactic to say, and again, I'm not trying to malign them as deceptive, you know, with fangs and, you know, these evil -spirited people, but I'm saying that it does become a tactic of teaching.

01:28:01

You know, grab hold of these things, okay, do you see all those things? How solid those are? They go, yeah, I see that. And they go, okay, now listen to this other talk

01:28:07

I've given. Now look where we can go with this. Look where we have to go with this by logical consequence.

01:28:13

And I don't think it's logical consequence, I don't think it is at all. I think it's a distortion, it's a disruption. So again, one doesn't necessarily lead to the other.

01:28:22

And I think it's important for someone, you know, somebody could make the same claim about any

01:28:28

Bible teacher that holds to a particular view. You could say, someone like MacArthur, you could say, well, MacArthur is a dispensational premillennialist.

01:28:35

So that naturally leads to how Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and all these crackpot guys, like the guy that just wrote the book on, you know, the world's going to end in September, you know, somebody could say, well,

01:28:46

John MacArthur's eschatology leads to that kind of nuttiness. Not really, no, not necessarily.

01:28:53

There's no real logical connection there, because MacArthur would argue violently against that, and I think he'd have a good case to do so.

01:28:59

He's not arguing to be the kinds of Christians that these guys are trying to be.

01:29:04

Or you could even claim that, to come to the belief in the exclusive claims of Christ and the uniqueness of his church could lead to anti -Semitism or something like that.

01:29:17

Yeah, there isn't a logical connection. And, you know, I think one of the strengths that full preterists have in bringing people along is the very solid position of partial preterism.

01:29:29

It's very solid, it's theologically rich, it's very consistent, and they use that to their advantage,

01:29:35

I think, because in their own minds they're trying to be faithful to God, to lead people along the path and say, okay, now you've got to adopt the rest of this.

01:29:42

But you don't. It really is a disruption. Their position, their system is a disruption in a consistent biblical preterism.

01:29:54

And we're going to go to a break right now. It's our last break. If you'd like to email us, there are a couple of people waiting to have their questions answered, so we'll get to you very quickly.

01:30:03

But if you intend to write to us, do it now before the program runs out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

01:30:10

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01:30:18

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01:31:57

This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been discussing hyperpreterism with our guest

01:32:03

Jeff Durbin, pastor of Apologia Church and founder of Apologia Radio and TV. And we have been discussing in particular his exodus out of hyperpreterism.

01:32:13

And he has also been defending partial preterism, which he would obviously call biblical or orthodox preterism.

01:32:21

And our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com if you have a question.

01:32:27

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01:32:34

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01:32:40

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01:33:06

And if you live in Massachusetts near the Norfolk area or visiting that area, please look up Providence Baptist Church of Norfolk, Massachusetts at providencebaptistchurchma .org.

01:33:20

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01:33:30

Thank you so much, folks, and God bless you. We do have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who wants to know, do you know of any hyperparetorists who actually deny the physical bodily resurrection of Christ?

01:33:46

I know that Don Preston believes that Christ was raised in the same body that he had before he died.

01:33:56

But are there those who believe that it was similar to a Jehovah's Witness understanding, a spirit resurrection?

01:34:03

Because I have heard other hyperparetorists say that we will be raised in the same body that Jesus was raised in.

01:34:09

So if you could comment on that. Now, I do remember conversations taking place with men in regard to the body of Jesus, what he was raised with, and, you know, asking questions like, well, what kind of body did

01:34:22

Jesus really have? That's one of the things that was terrifying to me. You know, did you ever see those passages where it says that Jesus disappeared out of their midst?

01:34:29

You know, they were somehow surrounding Jesus, and then somehow he just escapes from their hands, disappears out of their midst?

01:34:35

You know, what was that? Did he really have a physical body? I mean, these are the kinds of things that happened in those groups that I was speaking with these men.

01:34:44

And so there was even challenges happening in those groups of people saying, did he even have a physical body then, or was it some sort of a special, mystical kind of body?

01:34:52

Now, again, I don't have a finger to point at any particular major proponent right now that would hold to that view today, but these are the kind of conversations that took place in some settings that I was with.

01:35:03

I know that there are rhetorics that debate, and I think this came up in the debate with Jason, you know,

01:35:10

Jesus was raised in a physical body, but what kind of body does he have now? Yes. And asking questions like, does

01:35:15

Jesus have a physical body, a resurrected body today? Now, that becomes very serious.

01:35:22

I mean, did Jesus shed this body? He doesn't have that body, he was raised in today?

01:35:28

You know, asking questions, and I think it's right to ask the question, how does Jesus identify with us today as a representative?

01:35:36

Is he still man today? Right. Is he still the God -man who mediates for us? Right, right.

01:35:42

Is he still God and man? And that's been historically a very closely held, tightly gripped position of the

01:35:51

Church. He's the God -man. And you do see Pope Frederick actually, you know, questioning whether Jesus is man, 100 % man today, that he actually ascended in that physical body.

01:36:05

Wasn't he relegating that, Don Preston, that is, the hyper -preterist in the debate, wasn't he relegating that to the realm of mystery, that we just don't know what kind of body, or if he has a body that Jesus, in regard to Jesus?

01:36:19

Well, I think he did, I think he did, and I think that's because he has to. Right. Given what he's trying to impose upon the text, this has got to be some sort of a mystery he doesn't know.

01:36:29

Whereas a plain reading of the text, Jesus was raised in a physical body, the body that he died in,

01:36:35

Thomas was told to touch him, handle him and see, Jesus actually touched his people, he ate with his people, physically in that body, and then he ascended with that body.

01:36:44

Why would we think anything other than that Jesus is the resurrected God -man, our representative?

01:36:51

Why would we think anything other? Well, we would think something other because we're trying to impose upon the text a system that we've adopted, and we're trying to say, well, no, it must be mystical, it must be beyond our understanding and capacity to understand, and we just don't have information from God.

01:37:06

When in reality, we do have information from God, he's condescended, he's given us his word, this is theonistos, this is

01:37:13

God -breathed scripture, and he's told us. We have the direct word from God, and the only reason you question it is because you have a system you're trying to impose upon the text.

01:37:24

We have Arnie from Perry County, Pennsylvania who wants to know, are there any hyper -preterists who believe there is no afterlife, no heaven or hell?

01:37:35

Not that I know of, not that I'm aware of, I never heard anything like that. Okay, well, you never know what will come down the pike.

01:37:44

Let me tell you, and I don't mean this to be abusive, I was in this movement, I want to love the men that have been affected by this,

01:37:52

I want to respect them, but I want to say that, yes, I mean, nothing is off the table in terms of how

01:38:00

I used to think, how men around me used to think, nothing is off the table. Everything can be questioned, and I mean, even down to the

01:38:10

Trinity, universalism, and I mean, it just goes on and on. I mean, it's not beyond something that can happen.

01:38:19

Christian from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania asks, do you believe this is damnable heresy, and do you share my frustration that more partial preterists aren't being very vocal about how dangerous and damning hyper -preterist is?

01:38:42

That's a tough one, because when you say damnable heresy, there's so much baggage with that word, and I'm not shying away from it, by the way.

01:38:52

I'm just saying, if somebody like myself that fell into it for a period of time, adopted it,

01:38:58

I want to make sure people understand there is a way of And I think that when you deny what these men deny, you are denying essential components of the

01:39:12

Christian worldview and Christian faith, and I think it is detrimental, and I have a hard time believing that God would allow someone, one of His people, to remain in this belief system permanently.

01:39:26

I do believe people get saved in Roman Catholicism, despite Roman Catholicism, and then they come out.

01:39:31

I do believe that someone can be a Mormon in the Mormon community and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus while they're there, and then come out.

01:39:39

So in terms of, I think, hope for someone in that position, but I just find it hard to believe that anybody could ever embrace this stuff permanently and truly know

01:39:48

Jesus, I think it's that destructive. So in some sense, I think I could go there and say that I think that it is damnable.

01:39:55

I think that it's a very serious theological issue that is not a minor issue.

01:40:03

This isn't a infant baptism between Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians issue.

01:40:08

This isn't whether you can smoke cigars or not smoke cigars or have a glass of wine or not have a glass of wine, or whether we should do exclusive psalms in worship or not.

01:40:17

This is like cutting out the heart of the hope we have for the future and the resurrection.

01:40:24

I mean, so yeah, I believe that destroys the witness of the church, the hope we have for the future, and so I don't know how to describe it other than it terrifies me.

01:40:34

Now, would you put in the same category, would you put,

01:40:40

I should say, the hyper -preterists in the same category as those who Paul describes in 2

01:40:45

Timothy 2 .18 as being those who have departed from the truth because they say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.

01:40:58

That sounds pretty damning to me. Is that out of context to put hyper -preterism in this category of the

01:41:06

Himelaeus and Theletus? I think it's not a complete one -to -one comparison, it's not completely equal to, but I think that you can draw out of that passage the same type of conclusion in the sense of shipwrecking people's faith, because it happened to me.

01:41:26

It shipwrecked my faith and men that were close to me, and so, yes, I think there's ways you've got to come up with a text to read it in this context and how it's actually written, but I think that, yeah,

01:41:37

I think it does shipwreck the faith of many. And I know that you want to spend some time actually defending something that you do believe here, and you believe it very strongly, and you have much joy in believing it, and although you wouldn't believe that it's crucial for salvation or anything to that measure, you love the belief of partial preterism, and you do want to defend it and make sure that it is not blurred together with the heresy of hyper -preterism.

01:42:11

If you could spend some time doing that, if you'd like. Yeah, and again, this is, Chris, where I want to invite you to a thoroughgoing post -millennium.

01:42:22

I think when you look at the entire story of the Bible, it's a revelation from God.

01:42:28

66 different books and letters, but it's a single, unified revelation from God.

01:42:34

You do see the Bible opening up with creation, fall, curse, and then you have the

01:42:40

Bible now moving towards full redemption, and you have Genesis, the promise to Abraham, Abraham's descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars, that sounds pretty successful and prosperous as a kingdom, and you have

01:42:51

Genesis 49 -10, you have the promise that Shiloh will have the obedience of the nations, you move along through the story and you see clear indications constantly now of the coming of the kingdom of Messiah, Daniel 7, 13 -14, he comes up to the ancient days, is given a kingdom that will never be destroyed, a dominion never destroyed, and you have

01:43:11

Daniel 2, stone that becomes a mountain, and it's interesting, the timing there is during the time of the fourth kingdom, that's when that stone will come, and that becomes a mountain, a kingdom that God himself sets up, and if you count down from Babylon, that's

01:43:27

Rome, and that's when Jesus comes in, declaring or proclaiming the kingdom of heaven is at hand,

01:43:32

John the Baptist says the same thing, the kingdom is their message, Matthew chapter 4, Jesus proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and so you see that that was expectation, you have

01:43:43

Isaiah 9, the clear passage from 6 and 7, the passage we all quote from at Christmas time, the son is coming, the child who is

01:43:53

El Gabor, the mighty God, the father of eternity, of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end, so there's progression there, and you have the throne of justice, establishing it forevermore, that sounds pretty significant and prosperous to me,

01:44:08

Isaiah 2, the mountain of the house of the Lord is going to be raised above all the mountains, and the nations will stream up to it, the law, the

01:44:15

Torah is going to go forth from Zion, you have Isaiah 42, God's going to establish justice in the earth, the coastlands will wait for his law,

01:44:24

Isaiah 9, I said that one, Isaiah 11, the signal for the nations, they're going to find their rest in him, the psalms, man if we sang the psalms in church, we would be a victorious militant church, because the psalms are all about the victory of the

01:44:38

Messiah, Psalm chapter 2, the father says to the son, ask of me, I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the ends of the earth for your possession, the warning goes out to the kings, obey the son or you'll perish, you have throughout the psalms the constant repetition of the families of the earth coming back to God to worship him, he'll have dominion, again the premier passage,

01:44:57

Psalm 1101, that he puts all his enemies under his feet, and there's more that could be said, but you do also see something else, and that is significant.

01:45:04

In Isaiah, as you get to the last chapters, you see the clear indication that there's going to be judgment upon the covenant breakers, and God's going to call people by a new name, and you have a really amazing thing that begins to sort of happen in the

01:45:19

Old Testament, is that while the promise of the kingdom is coming, you also have indications that as this new covenant comes in, which by the way, the premier passage of the new covenant is

01:45:29

Jeremiah 31 31, and what does it say? That he's going to make a new covenant, not like the one that they broke.

01:45:35

So he was a husband to them, there's that language there of husband and wife, they broke the covenant, he was their husband, again you put that into Revelation, the harlot who is the adulterous wife who is going to be destroyed to make way for the bride, if you can see those things there, covenant changing over, but again it says this in that premier passage of the new covenant,

01:45:56

Jeremiah 31 31, it says that no more shall they teach their neighbor, each one of his neighbors saying, know the

01:46:01

Lord, for they will all know me. I think that that speaks to victory, but you begin to see as the covenant is going to change over in the

01:46:08

Old Testament, you have judgment promised. The passage that promises John the Baptist's coming, Elijah's coming, speaks of a two -fold thing happening, where there's going to be atonement, purification, but also judgment and fire, and so here enter

01:46:25

John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Matthew chapter 3 comes in, the first thing out of his mouth is, repent for the kingdom of heaven is in hand, and then he speaks immediately to these religious leaders, and he says, you brood of vipers, who warned you from the wrath about to come, and he says, bear fruit, the act is already laid at the root, so it's already been swung, it's waiting to eat or meeting the root, it's ready to actually cut.

01:46:50

You have Matthew's gospel, if you just pay attention to that, you have this climax happening where, again,

01:46:56

Matthew chapter 3, John the Baptist, Matthew 10, you will not finish going to the cities of Israel before the

01:47:02

Son of Man comes, that's significant, how can you get away from that, that's powerful, that's something that scroll quotes from in his book, there's just really no out of that.

01:47:11

You will not finish going to the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. Matthew 16, some of them won't die, and you have this kingdom coming in power, and you have, again, the stories of Jesus and Matthew begin to escalate to where you have the vineyard owner that's sending people to get fruit from the vineyard, and he says, what's he going to do when he sends his son, and he discovers they killed his son, and they say, he'll destroy those miserable wretches and give the kingdom to others, bearing the fruit of it, and Jesus says, right, the kingdom of God's going to be taken away from you and given to others, and then you have the parable that Jesus gives of the marriage feast, and you've got the city being burned, and you've got

01:47:49

Matthew 23, the judgment upon Jerusalem, where Jesus proclaims the woes upon them and says that all of God's vengeance, essentially, if you take the fashions together, will be upon that generation, and you have, again, the destruction of the temple there, yet the nearness in the

01:48:08

New Testament of coming judgment cannot be avoided, and it's something that's important to grab hold of, because atheists open their

01:48:16

Bibles, and they look at these texts, and they say, no, Jesus is saying he's coming back in that generation, and the apostles are saying the judgment's about to happen on that generation, and yet we have

01:48:25

Christians who are forcing those texts' future to us, and atheists look at that, and they say, well, that's inconsistent, that's not reading your

01:48:32

Bible, you know, consistently, and they use that to actually come at the integrity of Jesus in the

01:48:38

New Testament, when I think we have a futurist eschatology, we have forces passing his future to us, we are handing texts to the unbelievers to attack the integrity of Christ that we ought not give them, and it doesn't belong to them.

01:48:51

One premier example of this happening, Chris, is in the film Collisions, where you have

01:48:58

Douglas Wilson debating Christopher Hitchens. Now, Hitchens is losing consistently with Wilson, and so he goes to what is one of his chestnut arguments about Jesus, and it has to do with the coming of Christ's passage.

01:49:13

And Hitchens obviously has used this before with Christians, and he tries to use it with Wilson, and all

01:49:19

I'm encouraging you guys to do is go watch that film. Wilson takes his argument away from him in a minute, 60 seconds, it's done.

01:49:27

By interpreting this passage biblically, when he refers to Matthew 24, Wilson shows

01:49:32

Hitchens that, no, that's not referring to the resurrection at the end of time and the final judgment, the second coming, that's referring to the judgment upon Jerusalem.

01:49:41

Jesus is speaking in Matthew 24 like a Jewish prophet, using language that God used about Edom and Egypt, and he's using it now against Jerusalem.

01:49:50

This is language God used, graphic language he used to describe the destruction of a city or state, and now he's using it against Jerusalem consistently as a

01:49:59

Jewish prophet. It's not speaking about the end of the world, but the judgment upon Jerusalem, which happened in that generation before they all died.

01:50:06

And Christopher Hitchens' response to Wilson when he did that, when he interpreted that rightly, was, oh, like, nothing.

01:50:16

He took his argument away from him. Why? Because it's biblical. Why? Because it's consistent.

01:50:22

And I think, why would it matter that we actually pay attention to these things? Because it calls into question the integrity of Christ when you force these texts' future to us,

01:50:31

I think, out of their context. And so, there is no way, out of the fact that the New Testament teaches us, the apostles taught,

01:50:39

Jesus taught, a coming in judgment on that generation before they all died, and the language that Jesus is using in Matthew 24, the stars falling from heaven and all those different things, the moon and the sun, all those cosmic, graphic deconstruction language things, are things that God actually said in the

01:51:02

Old Testament. And he said them against pagan nations, and it wasn't literal. It was speaking about judgment upon a nation, and Jesus is now referring to Jerusalem, and I think that what we can clearly see is that there was an imminent judgment upon the covenant breakers that was promised by Jesus and the apostles, and the

01:51:20

Old Testament at the turning of the covenant, that actually happened. It actually happened, but it does not necessitate a belief that everything happened, because there is more to the narrative than the judgment upon the covenant breakers.

01:51:35

The narrative contains the story of all the nations. The narrative contains the story, 1

01:51:42

Corinthians 15, of every enemy being put under Jesus' feet, and all things, every rule, every authority, every power being put under Jesus' feet.

01:51:51

That's also part of the narrative, and so I think what's important for us is to recognize that, yes,

01:51:57

Jesus and the apostles taught an imminent, soon -to -come judgment upon that generation before they all died, but that does not necessitate a belief that everything happened, because you still have the narrative moving towards confirmation.

01:52:12

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania asks, I just heard your guest Jeff mention favorably

01:52:19

Doug Wilson. Does Jeff also share Doug Wilson's belief in what has become known as the federal vision?

01:52:28

Absolutely not. Praise God, that's a problem for Presbyterians. I am a

01:52:35

Reform Baptist, and so no, that's really, in essence,

01:52:41

I think, more of a problem for Presbyterians in their circles and communities.

01:52:47

Douglas Wilson, I've had him on my show a number of times. I think if you listen to Wilson speak about justification,

01:52:54

I can't, for the life of me, think of any better way to describe justification than the way that he does.

01:53:01

He affirms the crediting of Christ's righteousness and his perfect work to us by faith and by faith alone.

01:53:07

Whatever problems occur in the federal vision in those communities, I don't see those problems in Wilson as something that is detrimental to Wilson and his message.

01:53:17

I do believe that Wilson is a brother in Christ. I believe that he's a solid brother in Christ and a gift to the Church, and I know many people like Piper agree with me on this point.

01:53:27

I think that there's problems in the federal vision. I do not hold to it, but I don't think that whatever problems

01:53:32

Wilson has in the federal vision are the dramatic consequences that can happen with the federal vision with some people that I've read.

01:53:40

Right. In fact, I'd like you to hear at some point an interview I did with a leading figure, at least he was a leading figure in the federal vision movement, where I could not distinguish his definition of justification from the

01:53:53

Council of Trents. So he was clearly violating the Reformation principle of sola gratia and sola fide, in my opinion.

01:54:01

Yeah, and I don't think that Wilson has that problem. Again, I think if you take Wilson's own statements from his own mouth and his own hand on justification, you cannot get a more thoroughgoing reform space than that.

01:54:15

I'm not saying that I am giving a pass on the issues of the federal vision. I'm saying that whatever problems he has,

01:54:22

I don't believe that they're detrimental to the state. We have John in Bangor, Maine asking, do we actually know what the heresy of Hymenaeus and Philetus was, other than that they denied a future resurrection?

01:54:39

Well, first of all, Bangor, Maine, wow. I lived in northern Maine for a year and a half, and that was very cold.

01:54:48

And yeah, I remember Bangor. That's where Stephen King lived. Oh, really? Yeah, I actually visited his house.

01:54:53

I didn't go to his house, but I drove around his house. It's pretty creepy. It's like a haunted house. Do we actually know?

01:55:01

I think that here's the thing.

01:55:07

I've heard Phileterus give a pretty exogenically sound, I want to be fair to them, a pretty exogenically sound response to the

01:55:14

Hymenaeus and that heresy being applied to them. And so I think there is a way to say that that cannot be, again, brought over in a one -to -one example with the full preterist.

01:55:27

And so do we know exactly what they believed and what they were teaching people?

01:55:34

Well, not precisely, because we don't have any of their writings or necessarily any others around them at the time in their writings specifying what exactly were they saying.

01:55:44

And so even when full preterists have to defend themselves against this charge, they have to do so with a lot of conjecture.

01:55:49

So I hate to be so wishy -washy on this point, but I think that's a difficult one to answer.

01:55:55

All right, you have two minutes to really just leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds.

01:56:01

Oh, boy. In summary form, obviously. I want to say,

01:56:07

I strongly encourage you to read Kenneth Gentry's book, He Shall Have Dominion. I think that is an excellent book that can rescue you in many ways, eschatologically speaking, in the sense of putting the whole narrative of the

01:56:20

Bible together and responding to some of the claims of hyperpreterists. I want to say to those who are hyperpreterists or full preterists,

01:56:26

I want to say this, that I want you to understand my love for you, my respect for you, and my desire to see you freed from this.

01:56:36

I desire to see those who have been influenced by this to come out of it, to come back into the body of Christ.

01:56:43

Many of them have separated from the body of Christ. And I encourage you to, again, think about the entire narrative of the

01:56:50

Bible, the whole story of the Bible, which contains the full victory of Jesus over sin and death and all things being put in subjection to him.

01:57:00

And I think, again, John 6 and 1 Corinthians 15 are big passages that you need to pay attention to, and pay attention to that as a whole narrative, a whole story of the

01:57:09

Bible. And I want to encourage those who have been really struggling in the darkness of full preterism to know that there is hope.

01:57:17

There is light. It's okay to admit you're wrong. It's okay to be humbled and say, look, I said this was true.

01:57:23

I believed it was true. It's okay to say, I abandon that now. And there's a lot of freedom, and there's a lot of hope.

01:57:29

And I want to encourage you to abandon these beliefs and to come back to the hope for the future of all things being put in subjection to Jesus and him having final victory over this world.

01:57:41

No loose ends. Everything tied up by God. And I think that that's the hope for the world that we need to embrace, because it's biblical.

01:57:50

And again, I want to express to those who have adopted this my love for you, and my respect for you, and hopefully you've caught from me a spirit of gentleness that I do not want you to be wounded permanently in these comments that I've made, but I hope you'll come home.

01:58:06

And I am not in any way, shape, or form a hyper -preterist, but my interview with Jeff Durbin has been fulfilled and has now passed.

01:58:16

But unlike the hyper -preterist, I do have a future hope for his return to the

01:58:22

Iron Sharpens Iron program. I really loved our program, our interview today,

01:58:27

Jeff, and I really do want you to come back very soon. Thank you so much, Chris. And I want to repeat your websites.

01:58:33

They are apologiachurch .com and apologiaradio .com. That's a -p -o -l -o -g -i -a -church .com

01:58:42

and a -p -o -l -o -g -i -a -radio .com.

01:58:51

And thank you so much. Let me thank you for using the proper pronunciation.

01:59:00

And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in.

01:59:07

I hope you tune in tomorrow as Pastor Mark Allison of the Free Presbyterian Church of Malvern, Pennsylvania, addresses the papacy and the heretical doctrines that associate that because of the fact that the

01:59:20

Pope will be visiting Pennsylvania very shortly. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

01:59:27

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless, and join us tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron.