WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:44.480 Mahler. And I'm still Woe. 00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:48.240 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the subject of 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:53.600 dispensationalism. This is something that's been discussed pretty widely uh online. 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:56.320 Uh we're going to link in the show notes to a number 00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:02.640 of other podcasts from other Lutherans that we commend as not merely 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:06.000 companions to this episode, but in a way, completion of some of 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.120 the things that we're going to discuss here. 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:11.680 We are going to spend you know an hour and a half 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:16.000 or two hours today covering what could easily be a three-part series. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.120 We refuse to do a three-part series on dispensationalism. 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:21.200 Frankly, it's just not worth it. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:25.040 So we're going to have kind of three chunks inside this one 00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:29.040 episode that by themselves each could be a fully fleshed out episode. 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.960 the other podcasts I mentioned, there's going to be uh brief history 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:35.840 of power with Adam Koontz and Willie Grills. 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:40.000 Recently, just this week, did another podcast where the on specifically on 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:45.360 dispensationalism. Willie Grills also has another probably now defunct podcast called A 00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:51.040 Word Fitly Spoken that has three episodes, one dealing with Cyrus Schofield, 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:55.440 one dealing with eschatology, and one dealing again with dispensationalism. 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:59.520 We will We will recommend you listen to at least the first 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:03.360 two of those, one from BHOP, one from WordFitly. 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:05.200 And if you want to listen to all four, they're they're all 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:06.800 great, they're all worth listening to. 00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:10.080 But they were going to include more fleshed out stuff than we're 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:12.480 going to get in here today. 00:02:12.480 --> 00:02:17.600 There are three parts to discussing the subject of dispensationalism. 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:20.720 And the reason that we're mentioning there are these other episodes from 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:23.920 other podcasts is that that they left out one of them and 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:25.200 we think it's the most important part. 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:27.840 So it's the part that we want to tackle here today. 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:31.760 So when you're looking at a subject specifically like dispensationalism and not 00:02:31.760 --> 00:02:34.480 to breathe the lead, it is a heresy, full stop. 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:36.800 There is nothing Christian about dispensationalism. 00:02:36.800 --> 00:02:38.720 So we'll make that case today. 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:44.080 But when you're looking at a subject like this, there's a the 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:45.600 historical context of the thing. 00:02:45.600 --> 00:02:46.400 Where did it come from? 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:48.240 What's the genealogy of this idea? 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:51.840 In the case of dispes, came about in the nineteenth century. 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:54.720 There are bits and pieces that were floating around before that for 00:02:54.720 --> 00:02:58.880 a couple hundred years, but there were newly injected false teachings that 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:03.600 appeared two hundred years ago and have followed an arc until today. 00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:06.960 So it's brand new theology, which if you're a stone choir listener 00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:10.080 by itself, that should tell you full stop, this is not something 00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:11.040 that's Christian. 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:14.640 If it were Christian, it would have been believed before eighteen thirty, 00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:17.440 and we're looking looking at a situation where that's simply not the 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:20.640 case. So the history of the subject, even without getting into the 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:23.600 theology of it, tells you a great deal about what is going 00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:27.360 on. But it's you know, there's names and dates and and timelines 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:28.080 and events. 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:32.080 The other the other episodes about dispensationalism, as well as the Cyrus 00:03:32.080 --> 00:03:36.400 Schofield episode from Word Fitley, we'll get into more details. 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:40.480 Incidentally, the Sword of Christ book review that we did recently also 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:44.400 has a chapter about Schofield, precisely because it's so important to the 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:46.480 arc of of things today. 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:49.440 The second portion of the episode, which again will hopefully be fairly 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:52.240 short, you know, for us anyway, is going to be on the 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:58.240 theology. We're not going to go into debunking dispensationalism line by line. 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:03.200 We're going to give you a few of the highlighted, just brazenly 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:07.920 false things that they teach that are necessarily incompatible with Christianity full 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:12.160 stop. And we're going to go into some of the Bible passages 00:04:12.160 --> 00:04:16.800 that one must necessarily reject in order to be a dispensationalist. 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:19.920 And so that's pretty much going to be the extent of our 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:22.640 theological treatment because what more needs to be said? 00:04:22.640 --> 00:04:25.680 If you have to disbelieve the Bible in order to believe this 00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:28.400 teaching, you know it's not Christian teaching. 00:04:28.400 --> 00:04:30.320 So we're going to make that case in the second part. 00:04:30.320 --> 00:04:31.440 And then the third part that is 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:38.320 not discussed elsewhere is the question of the impact of this stuff. 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:41.040 Where and how is it actually playing out? 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:45.600 Because most people when they want to tackle these subjects just want 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:48.000 to treat it historically, you know, kind of neutrally, don't want to 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:51.120 pick fights or, you know, really call people too bad. 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:53.360 Or you just want to deal with the Bible verses and and 00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:58.000 wrangle it out as though there's possibly a Christian view on both 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:01.120 sides of the thing and so you trade you know shots with 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:03.680 Bible verses or whatever. 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.080 The reason that this is a live issue and the reason that 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:09.680 a bunch of people have been talking about dispensationalism recently is that 00:05:09.680 --> 00:05:14.080 that unlike you know disagreements about baptism or you know election or 00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:20.240 some other things, dispensationalism in particular has geopolitical consequences. 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:24.160 People are dying in the Middle East today because of dispensationalism. 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:27.920 Marines are going to be dying next month in Lebanon because of 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:30.000 dispensationalism. So 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:36.160 this is unique in heresies in terms of getting people killed on 00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:36.960 the ground. 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:38.720 Yeah, we did the baptism episode. 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:41.520 Probably quite a few of you disagreed with some of our conclusions 00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:42.720 about baptism. 00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:46.320 If we disagree about baptism, people don't get killed today. 00:05:46.320 --> 00:05:50.640 There's no downstream state action as a result of those disagreements. 00:05:50.640 --> 00:05:55.040 Anyone who is a dispensationalist is going to be rapidly in support 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:57.680 of the extermination of anyone who gets in the way of the 00:05:57.680 --> 00:05:58.640 state of Israel. 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:02.160 So the reason we're discussing it right now, the reason it's timely 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:05.680 and that everyone is talking about it is precisely for that reason. 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:09.200 That if you believe that the state of Israel as it exists 00:06:09.200 --> 00:06:12.880 today is the Israel of the Bible, well that was the whole 00:06:12.880 --> 00:06:14.000 point of the invention of the thing. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.160 So that's the case we're going to make today that two hundred 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:20.400 years ago a new doctrine was inserted falsely into really just the 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:23.840 Western Church, basically America and Britain more or less. 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:28.560 That has been bearing fruit in the last century in such a 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:31.760 way that it makes it possible for the modern terrorist state of 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:34.640 Israel to kill people pretty much with impunity. 00:06:34.640 --> 00:06:38.240 And a significant portion of the American electorate not only gives it 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:41.280 a thumbs up, but will send their sons and daughters to die, 00:06:41.280 --> 00:06:43.920 will give all their money for it, and will shout you down 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:45.200 if you disagree. 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:47.760 Why? Because they they're defending their God. 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:52.560 And so the theology coming out of history impacting geopolitics is why 00:06:52.640 --> 00:06:55.840 this is a live issue now and is is an ongoing live 00:06:55.840 --> 00:06:58.720 issue for the church and for the world. 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:03.600 So we're going to get into it first with the history as 00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:06.960 dispensationalism today was born in the West. 00:07:07.280 --> 00:07:07.440 And 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:10.320 so to start off, we of course have to start with John 00:07:10.320 --> 00:07:11.760 Nelson Darby. 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:16.000 Born in the year 1800, died in the year 1882. 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:21.840 He is, even by dispensationalists, called the father of dispensationalism, which does 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.800 in fact sort of give away the fact that this is a 00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:26.400 modern heresy. 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:28.480 This is not an ancient teaching of the church. 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:31.360 This is not something that you find in the Church Fathers. 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:35.280 And I'll get into that a little bit more in a number 00:07:35.280 --> 00:07:36.000 of minutes here. 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:40.160 There are some will argue the Church Fathers spoke of dispensationalism they 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:41.120 did not. 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:46.480 They spoke of economies, and sometimes dispensationalists attempt to conflate the terms 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:48.880 economy and dispensation. 00:07:48.880 --> 00:07:52.640 These terms have very different senses as used by the church fathers 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:55.760 and used by dispensationalists. 00:07:55.760 --> 00:08:02.080 Now, Darby was an early member of the Plymouth Brethren. 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:03.520 Essentially, they were a group 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:08.720 that attempted to get back to what they thought were the early 00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:15.280 roots of Christianity, a a simpler church with less hierarchy. 00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:17.680 There have been a number of groups that have cropped up in 00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:24.400 church history that have rejected hierarchy, rejected the formal institutions of the 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:31.280 church. This has never been a marker of solid true Christians. 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:34.400 We are told not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. 00:08:34.400 --> 00:08:39.360 This does not just mean in your small local group, because there 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:42.880 is a larger church, there's a wider church, there is, at least 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:45.200 there used to be, Christendom. 00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:49.440 And the church itself does have earthly institutions and hierarchy. 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:52.160 I'm not saying they cannot err, obviously they can. 00:08:52.160 --> 00:08:54.640 We're recording this on Reformation Day. 00:08:54.640 --> 00:08:59.120 As Lutherans, by all means we know that the church, as an 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:03.040 earthly institution run by men, can err, but that does not mean 00:09:03.040 --> 00:09:06.080 that you reject all hierarchy within the church. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:09.920 So anytime you see a group doing that, you should be on 00:09:09.920 --> 00:09:10.720 your guard. 00:09:10.720 --> 00:09:14.000 Something is wrong there. 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:18.800 But to get into sort of what Darby started to teach here, 00:09:18.800 --> 00:09:21.920 actually before we get into what he taught, we'll talk a little 00:09:21.920 --> 00:09:26.800 bit about Darby himself, just very brief biographical sketch as it were. 00:09:26.800 --> 00:09:29.920 He was born into an Anglo Irish family in London, I already 00:09:29.920 --> 00:09:34.880 said in the year eighteen hundred, but he supposedly had a profound 00:09:34.880 --> 00:09:38.960 conversion experience in eighteen twenty five. 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:43.360 This is something you'll see with a number of different dispensationalists, and 00:09:43.520 --> 00:09:47.440 other men who prop themselves up as teachers like Darby and Schofield. 00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:52.480 Schofield incidentally also had such a supposedly profound conversion experience his in 00:09:52.480 --> 00:09:55.280 eighteen seventy nine. 00:09:55.280 --> 00:09:58.480 I will not go so far as to say that this sort 00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:00.400 of conversion experience 00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:07.200 is necessarily a bad sign, is necessarily an indicator that something is 00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:11.920 off. But I will say that this is not the standard. 00:10:11.920 --> 00:10:14.800 This is not how things are usually done, this is not how 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:18.240 things were designed by God. 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:20.720 Yes, there are exceptions, obviously. 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:25.040 You have the most obvious being Saul who became Paul. 00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:29.680 A special case, as Christ actually appeared to him to call him 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:33.200 to be an apostle, a little different from what happens today certainly. 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:38.400 But the standard for Christians, historically, and what the standard should be, 00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:42.560 and we've made this case in previous episodes, is that you're raised 00:10:42.560 --> 00:10:46.560 Christian. You're baptized as a child, go see the baptism The baptism 00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:50.720 episode. And as you are raised as a Christian, you you don't 00:10:50.720 --> 00:10:53.440 have this profound conversion experience. 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:57.440 You don't have a sudden moment, you don't have an epiphany, and 00:10:57.440 --> 00:11:00.000 in that moment come to be a Christian or come to understand 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:04.640 all things or whatever it happens to be, whatever the claim is. 00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:08.400 And so if you ask a Lutheran, for instance, if you ask 00:11:08.400 --> 00:11:12.320 either of us, although notably I was raised sort of half-Lutheran and 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:15.520 half not, I've explained that elsewhere and before. 00:11:15.520 --> 00:11:20.000 But if you ask someone who was raised as a Christian, he 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.000 will not have this conversion experience. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:27.920 Because it's not part of the normal Christian life. 00:11:27.920 --> 00:11:30.000 It's not how things are supposed to go. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:33.760 If you were not raised a Christian, then there will be a 00:11:33.760 --> 00:11:36.160 conversion process. 00:11:36.160 --> 00:11:40.080 Because God will use the means he has instituted to reach out 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:41.840 to you to give you faith. 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:46.240 That will be the word, it will be baptism, depending on the 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:49.280 order of things, we've discussed this previously. 00:11:49.280 --> 00:11:55.600 But there's a conversion process, it's not this instantaneous epiphany. 00:11:55.600 --> 00:12:00.400 And so that is not necessarily again a sign that things are 00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:04.080 off or bad, but you should perhaps want to look more carefully 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:07.520 at these sorts of claims. 00:12:07.520 --> 00:12:09.360 Because it's not the norm. 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:11.920 This is not how things are supposed to go. 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:16.640 It's notable that at this time and in this place charismaticism was 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:21.520 also emerging where there are preachers saying that the solution for the 00:12:21.520 --> 00:12:26.960 modern problems are people speaking in tongues and having direct revelations from 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:28.080 the Holy Spirit. 00:12:28.080 --> 00:12:32.160 And lo and behold, within a few years, that's exactly what the 00:12:32.160 --> 00:12:33.840 market began producing. 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:37.040 What the preachers demanded, the people in the pews began to produce. 00:12:37.040 --> 00:12:42.080 They began having these experiences just as they'd been taught to. 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:47.040 And And unfortunately a lot of theology is then downstream from this 00:12:47.040 --> 00:12:50.880 sort of self-fulfilling I mean it's not it's not prophecy. 00:12:50.880 --> 00:12:54.080 They just they were taught you should be babbling and they started 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:57.680 babbling. And everyone said, Look, it's a it's a new stage in 00:12:57.680 --> 00:12:59.840 the in the evolution of the church. 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:04.480 That ties in very deeply with Edward Irving, who was a Scottish 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:08.400 clergyman. He was an early influencer of the Plymouth Brethren. 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:12.800 He was an advocate for this revival of Pentecostalism. 00:13:12.800 --> 00:13:15.680 And this occurred in and around Port Glasgow. 00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:18.880 There's another name that I'll bring up in a moment here who 00:13:18.880 --> 00:13:23.760 is particularly relevant to this entire narrative, and those who are familiar 00:13:23.760 --> 00:13:26.640 with the subject will probably already know which name I'm going to 00:13:26.640 --> 00:13:27.680 mention. But 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:34.880 subsequent to the supposedly profound conversion experience that Darby had, he traveled 00:13:34.880 --> 00:13:35.360 extensively 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:42.880 spreading this new dispensationalism, which he had been working on this particular 00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:46.480 view of scripture, this iseges. 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:51.120 But the name that I said I would mention is Margaret MacDonald. 00:13:51.120 --> 00:13:58.240 She is involved in this because this young woman supposedly had visions 00:13:58.400 --> 00:14:05.440 revealing certain truths about scripture and particularly eschatology, and it happened 00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:10.240 in this Port Glasgow area, and the Pentecostalism that was active in 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:13.520 the area at the time latched on to this. 00:14:13.520 --> 00:14:17.920 Edward Irving was one man who thought that she had indeed seen 00:14:17.920 --> 00:14:20.960 something given as a vision by God. 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:27.120 In her vision, or visions, she saw a two-stage return of Christ. 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:31.280 First a secret return that would see the church taken from the 00:14:31.280 --> 00:14:37.600 earth, then the tribulation, and then the final judgment. 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:41.040 I don't personally understand how you can have a secret return of 00:14:41.040 --> 00:14:45.200 Christ in which some number of millions of people disappear, that doesn't 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:47.040 seem very secret to me. 00:14:47.040 --> 00:14:52.640 But nonetheless, this is where we get the pre tribulation rapture idea, 00:14:52.640 --> 00:14:57.920 which is again simply the idea that before the period of tribulation 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:04.800 spoken of in various points in scripture, particularly in Revelation, faithful believers 00:15:04.800 --> 00:15:09.600 will be taken from the earth, then the tribulation will take place, 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:14.160 and then Christ will come back, and I'm not going to get 00:15:14.160 --> 00:15:19.200 into the various ideas of where the millennium literally in this case, 00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:21.840 slots into the timeline. 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:24.720 But eventually Christ will return. 00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:27.120 Which isn't really a second coming at that point, it's a third 00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:30.240 coming because the second coming would be for the church, and scripture 00:15:30.240 --> 00:15:31.600 doesn't speak of a third coming. 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:35.440 But at any rate, Christ returns, and then you have the final 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:40.400 judgment. That's in essence the pre tribulation, or really any of the 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:42.080 various rapture ideas. 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:47.040 It just depends on where in relation to the tribulation this supposed 00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:50.240 rapture takes place as to which term they use pre or post. 00:15:50.240 --> 00:15:54.080 And obviously pre or post millennium is just referring to 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:59.680 their incorrect interpretation of the thousand years in Revelation, we'll get into 00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:03.680 that later, in relationship to where the rapture takes place. 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:04.400 I 00:16:04.400 --> 00:16:07.760 think it's important to note just briefly that all three of the 00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:14.000 ecumenical creeds specifically speak about the end times, and they all use 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:15.840 exactly the same sequence of events. 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:19.680 I'm just going to read it from the Apostles' Creed. 00:16:19.680 --> 00:16:22.400 He ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:25.200 the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:26.240 and the dead. 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:29.760 Now this is the Ascension, which was being confessed because it is 00:16:29.760 --> 00:16:33.200 in Scripture, and this is Judgment Day, which is being confessed because 00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:34.320 it's in Scripture. 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:39.760 There are no other points of activity from the second person of 00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:43.360 the Trinity in any of the creeds, apart from he ascends into 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:45.680 heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and comes again 00:16:45.680 --> 00:16:47.920 to judge the living and the dead. 00:16:47.920 --> 00:16:51.520 The fact that all of these other details that have emerged in 00:16:51.520 --> 00:16:55.600 the last few centuries are omitted from the historic definition of the 00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:58.720 church, of the faith, I think is important. 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:03.040 If you t if you take seriously what the creeds were capturing, 00:17:03.040 --> 00:17:07.680 if there were other steps for God, they would have mentioned them. 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:10.000 And again, we'll get into some of the theology and the history 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.240 down the road, but I think it's just important to note that 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:15.520 as these things are emerging, you know, these things from charismatics and 00:17:15.680 --> 00:17:20.800 pentecostalists, incidentally, who today are the groups most predominantly who hold to 00:17:20.800 --> 00:17:27.120 dispensationalism. It is an overt denial of the creeds by adding a 00:17:27.120 --> 00:17:30.800 bunch of stuff that the church has never believed and the reason 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:34.400 that the church has never believed it is that scripture doesn't contain 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:38.160 it. And so to some extent it's an argument from silence, because 00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:40.880 there's a lot of things in the Christian faith that are not 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:42.080 included in the creeds. 00:17:42.080 --> 00:17:47.360 They're specifically crafted, as we've said before, to dispute previous heresies. 00:17:47.360 --> 00:17:51.520 They never needed to dispute any heresies about this stuff because they 00:17:51.520 --> 00:17:53.120 were not live issues. 00:17:53.120 --> 00:17:56.400 So it's just notable that when you look at the historic definition 00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:00.080 of the faith, it leaves no room for this sort of thing 00:18:00.320 --> 00:18:04.240 unless you imagine that Jesus is just super active doing these really 00:18:04.240 --> 00:18:07.120 important things, and we just forgot to talk about it when we 00:18:07.120 --> 00:18:09.200 define the Christian faith itself. 00:18:09.760 --> 00:18:14.320 In order to ward off, although it will probably not succeed in 00:18:14.320 --> 00:18:17.280 doing so in all cases, but in order to ward off a 00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:18.800 potential critique here 00:18:20.240 --> 00:18:26.240 in fairness to Darby, Darby later in life did reject and declare 00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:29.760 that the visions of Margaret MacDonald were demonic. 00:18:29.760 --> 00:18:33.600 However, by the time he had done so, they had already become 00:18:33.600 --> 00:18:34.320 part of the foundation 00:18:35.200 --> 00:18:40.240 of dispensationalism, and the damage had already been done. 00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:45.440 This is a part of the history of dispensationalism, and his later 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:47.200 in life, condemnation of this 00:18:48.080 --> 00:18:51.120 did not change the reality of that fact. 00:18:51.120 --> 00:18:55.680 This remains part of the history, it remains part of the teaching, 00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:57.440 most importantly. 00:18:57.440 --> 00:19:01.840 That condemnation was good, it is proper for a Christian man, if 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:06.080 Darby was indeed, it is proper for a Christian man to condemn 00:19:06.080 --> 00:19:10.560 false teachings to which he has held earlier in his life, when 00:19:10.560 --> 00:19:12.640 he recognizes that. 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:16.480 But that does not mean that the harm will be undone. 00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:19.440 And so the next man who is relevant is a name that 00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:24.320 is probably better known, more widely known, for various reasons and very 00:19:24.320 --> 00:19:25.760 obvious ones. 00:19:25.760 --> 00:19:29.200 Cyrus Ingerson Schofield, usually just called C.I. 00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:34.000 Schofield. I'll start the same as I did with Darby with a 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:39.280 very brief biographical sketch before we get into what Schofield Schofield did 00:19:39.600 --> 00:19:42.000 and why it matters. 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:48.880 Schofield served, actually, for the Confederacy during the Civil War. 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:50.560 However, he was a deserter. 00:19:50.640 --> 00:19:52.960 He deserted to the North. 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:55.440 He eventually became the U.S. 00:19:55.440 --> 00:19:57.280 District Attorney for Kansas. 00:19:57.280 --> 00:20:02.240 He was forced to resign due to political corruption, including bribery. 00:20:02.240 --> 00:20:06.640 At the time, he also faced charges of forgery and desertion of 00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:07.760 his first wife. 00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:11.200 The latter one, at the very least, is historically proven he very 00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:12.160 much did do that. 00:20:12.160 --> 00:20:14.800 He deserted his first family. 00:20:14.800 --> 00:20:19.920 As mentioned earlier, he also supposedly had a profound conversion experience his 00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:22.000 in 1879. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:27.600 Subsequent to this, he became a congregationalist preacher in Dallas. 00:20:27.600 --> 00:20:31.600 Subsequent to that, he would then take over the Congregational Church of 00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:35.440 Northfield, Massachusetts, a church he had attended. 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:39.200 This church was founded by DL Moody, a name that will be 00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:40.480 familiar to some. 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:44.400 There's a Bible college named after him, after all, one of the 00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:48.960 hellmouths that spreads dispensationalism to this day. 00:20:48.960 --> 00:20:55.760 And so Schofield becomes truly relevant historically because his Because his name 00:20:55.760 --> 00:20:59.200 gets attached to the Schofield Reference Bible. 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:02.320 Many of the notes in this reference Bible, many of the ideas 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:05.040 come from Darby and some others. 00:21:05.040 --> 00:21:05.840 James H. 00:21:05.840 --> 00:21:08.560 Brooks was an early mentor of Schofield, he is the one who 00:21:08.560 --> 00:21:12.400 arguably introduced Schofield to dispensationalism. 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:17.200 And so notes and ideas from these various other men are distilled 00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:20.160 into the Schofield reference Bible. 00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:20.880 And as we mentioned 00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:27.280 in the previous episode reviewing the Sword of Christ, the problem with 00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:31.440 this is that they were appended to the King James Version, to 00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:34.880 the King James translation of the Bible. 00:21:35.600 --> 00:21:40.880 And because of the archaic nature of that language, which was deliberately 00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:46.080 archaic when it was translated in the 1600s, because of that language 00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:52.320 that is increasingly difficult for modern readers to understand, modern readers increasingly 00:21:52.320 --> 00:21:56.880 rely on the footnotes, on the annotations, on the comments added to 00:21:56.880 --> 00:21:59.280 scripture by Schofield. 00:21:59.840 --> 00:22:02.320 I am not condemning study Bibles. 00:22:02.320 --> 00:22:04.560 Study Bibles are fine and good. 00:22:04.560 --> 00:22:07.520 It depends on the quality of the notes. 00:22:07.520 --> 00:22:10.080 Scripture is always good. 00:22:10.080 --> 00:22:13.120 Notes written by men may be good or bad. 00:22:13.120 --> 00:22:17.680 I have on my desk right now a Lutheran study bible. 00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:20.640 I can recommend it for basically any of our listeners. 00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:23.680 There are a few notes with which I would quibble, but very 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:29.040 few, which is impressive for a work of the size and scope 00:22:29.040 --> 00:22:31.360 of this study bible. 00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:36.560 Schofield's study Bible, on the other hand, was chalkful of heresies, and 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:41.360 these heresies over time became the standard understanding in certain parts of 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:48.880 Christianity because the men reading the Bible, reading the King James, could 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:53.120 not understand the English of the King James, so they just repeated 00:22:53.120 --> 00:22:56.080 the notes, they just repeated the footnotes. 00:22:56.080 --> 00:23:00.160 You will even find cases where they are citing the footnotes basically 00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:04.560 as if they were scripture, as if these were words from heaven 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:10.080 interpreting God's words Word because they could not read the actual words 00:23:10.080 --> 00:23:13.680 of Scripture, which is why we have been so very clear in 00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:17.920 previous episodes and will continue to be so that the most important 00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:22.080 thing you do, yes, first and foremost, read Scripture. 00:23:22.080 --> 00:23:27.360 But equally important, read a version in a language you understand. 00:23:27.360 --> 00:23:31.600 We had this fight historically, this I mean again, this is Reformation 00:23:31.600 --> 00:23:35.120 Day. When we are recording, we don't attempt to be topical as 00:23:35.120 --> 00:23:37.040 it were, but it's relevant here. 00:23:37.040 --> 00:23:42.320 One of the major fights was over the use of the vernacular. 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:46.320 Scripture should be in a language that is understood by those who 00:23:46.320 --> 00:23:48.000 are actually reading it. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:51.040 Using Latin in the Middle Ages when the peasantry no longer knew 00:23:51.040 --> 00:23:53.440 Latin was ridiculous. 00:23:53.440 --> 00:23:59.040 Using the English of the sixteen hundreds today today is ridiculous. 00:23:59.040 --> 00:24:01.200 Get a modern translation. 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:03.040 There are many reliable ones. 00:24:03.040 --> 00:24:06.320 Understand what you're actually reading. 00:24:06.320 --> 00:24:12.960 Another name here that is very important, related to Schofield, is Untermeyer. 00:24:12.960 --> 00:24:19.600 This gentleman was a Jewish lawyer, financier, slash banker, who funded the 00:24:19.600 --> 00:24:21.360 Schofield Reference Bible. 00:24:21.360 --> 00:24:25.920 He also helped secure connections for Schofield, got him into many prominent 00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:31.280 clubs and circles, propped up his name, built up his name, and 00:24:31.280 --> 00:24:36.560 got him the publishing contract he would need with the university press 00:24:36.560 --> 00:24:40.160 that put out the Schofield Reference Bible. 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:45.280 Untermeyer was a prominent member of the Zionist movement. 00:24:45.280 --> 00:24:48.400 He, in fact, was one of those who helped to organize boycotts 00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:51.920 against German goods in the latter part of his life. 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:55.520 He died in 1940, he was born in 1858. 00:24:55.520 --> 00:24:58.560 You can see all these men, there's a lot of overlap here. 00:24:58.560 --> 00:25:02.720 But it's all mostly taking place in the middle of the 1800s 00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:06.080 into the very early 1900s. 00:25:06.080 --> 00:25:11.920 And so we see this connection between dispensationalism and Zionism very early 00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:15.920 on. It is Zionists who are funding dispensationalism, and there's no wonder 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:17.360 for that. 00:25:17.360 --> 00:25:20.800 It's very obvious why they would do that. 00:25:20.800 --> 00:25:28.080 Dispensationalism is the necessary prerequisite for supposed Christians in the West to 00:25:28.080 --> 00:25:34.560 support Zionist aims, with regard not just to Israel, so called, but 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:38.880 to the world in general, for the world, because Zionists have aims 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:39.680 certainly beyond 00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:45.680 the historical borders of the Old Testament state of Israel, as we 00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:48.480 see from their rhetoric today. 00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:54.960 But this forms the basic outline of the foundational history, as it 00:25:54.960 --> 00:25:58.480 were, of dispensationalism. 00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:01.520 There are many other individuals involved. 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:04.400 There's one more man that we will a few more men will 00:26:04.400 --> 00:26:08.640 mention, but mostly in passing one more will get into what he 00:26:08.640 --> 00:26:12.320 has actually taught because he is more relevant today and gives a 00:26:12.320 --> 00:26:17.440 real summary of what dispensationalists believe, what they've taught, why they do 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:19.760 the things they do. 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:24.720 But I mentioned that Moody Bible College is one of the institutions 00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:27.040 spreading this particular heresy. 00:26:27.040 --> 00:26:30.160 There are others we could mention, but one in particular is worth 00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:33.120 mentioning, and that is Dallas Theological Seminary. 00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:37.440 Dallas Theological Seminary was founded in 1924. 00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:43.680 The first president of Dallas Theological Seminary was Lewis Chaffer. 00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:46.560 He was a student of Schofield. 00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:50.960 The second president was John Walvard. 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:55.520 He is the gentleman who is largely credited with the development of 00:26:55.520 --> 00:27:00.720 the sort of intermediate or revised version of dispensationalism. 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:02.400 There are essentially three kinds. 00:27:02.400 --> 00:27:05.840 We're not going to get into the details, but just for the 00:27:05.840 --> 00:27:08.480 sake of letting you know what they are. 00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:16.960 There's so called classic dispensationalism or classical, there's revised, and there's progressive. 00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:21.280 Various dispensationalists fall into one or the other of the schools. 00:27:21.280 --> 00:27:26.000 They don't always disagree, but in large part they do. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:29.360 And we're speaking in generalities here because we're not getting into the 00:27:29.360 --> 00:27:31.200 specifics of dispensationalism. 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:32.720 That's not the point here. 00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:36.880 We are not attempting to study the minutia of this heresy. 00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:41.200 We are simply highlighting why and how it is wrong on a 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:42.720 higher level, on 00:27:44.080 --> 00:27:49.920 a scriptural basis, on a foundation of why this conflicts with what 00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:54.720 Scripture teaches and what the church has always believed and professed. 00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:00.240 One other very interesting overlapping name that popped up in looking at 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:02.480 this was one of the 00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:08.240 men who was taught as a child by John Nelson Darby was 00:28:08.240 --> 00:28:10.000 Alistair Crowley. 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:12.880 Crowley's childhood pastor was Darby. 00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:16.720 And so he was raised in an in an environment where this 00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:17.680 stuff was taught. 00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:21.200 Now, I'm not blaming Darby for how Crowley turned out. 00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:24.400 That's what a man does with what he's taught is is in 00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:27.040 many ways completely independent from the teacher. 00:28:27.040 --> 00:28:31.600 So I just thought that was a an incredible overlap because Crowley 00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:37.120 separately went on in a parallel direction to achieve some of the 00:28:37.120 --> 00:28:41.680 same spiritual and political ends that Darby helped to set in motion 00:28:41.760 --> 00:28:43.440 along different lines. 00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:46.160 So their paths crossed early on, and then they sort of went 00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:51.200 in different directions, but not nearly as different as you might think. 00:28:51.520 --> 00:28:55.040 Before you get into the theology proper, I just want to name 00:28:55.040 --> 00:28:58.320 a couple more names that are of modern teachers just to give 00:28:58.320 --> 00:29:00.880 you a sense of how common this stuff is, because not everyone 00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:06.320 necessarily knows who is pushing what and not all these men necessarily 00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:08.800 have all the same beliefs about everything, but when it comes to 00:29:08.800 --> 00:29:12.400 the basics of dispensationalism, they are in agreement. 00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:17.280 Uh John MacArthur, Charles Ryrie, Jerry Falwell, whom everyone knows, uh John 00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:22.640 Hagee and Hal Lindsey, all were working towards the same ends in 00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:23.600 living memory. 00:29:23.600 --> 00:29:26.000 Several of them are still alive today. 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:29.600 I think one of the interesting things to me coming at this 00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:33.120 from a Lutheran looking back at some of these things is that 00:29:33.600 --> 00:29:39.840 the vast majority of people who have fallen for dispensationalism were Baptists, 00:29:39.840 --> 00:29:42.000 not all, but some Baptists. 00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:45.200 A lot of Pentecostalists and a lot of charismatics. 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:50.720 As we mentioned, the Pentecostalist and Paracarismatic movement was also the genesis 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:55.360 for dispensationalism itself, produced other things, but they occurred at the same 00:29:55.360 --> 00:29:59.760 time. The reason that struck me is I know that this will 00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:03.680 probably come across as insulting to some as not intended that way. 00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:05.360 It's simply a demographic fact. 00:30:05.360 --> 00:30:09.760 You can look at some of the pew data, but within Baptists, 00:30:09.840 --> 00:30:15.280 Pentecostalists, and charismatics, you find some of the the least intelligent, least 00:30:15.280 --> 00:30:18.160 educated people in the West, really. 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:21.680 And so I think that's very much kind of what we see 00:30:21.680 --> 00:30:25.120 today. When you look at the folks who are pushing dispensationalism, not 00:30:25.280 --> 00:30:28.800 not necessarily the teachers, but when you run into someone who is 00:30:28.800 --> 00:30:32.640 a a Bible thumping dispensationalist, and we'll get to what the Bible 00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.360 thumping stuff is about, like people accuse me of thumping the Bible 00:30:35.440 --> 00:30:36.640 and I wouldn't reject that. 00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:40.160 So I don't it's not necessarily insulting, but when the When these 00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:45.920 guys come along today, they're generally not intelligent, well-educated men. 00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:48.000 There are a few, but it's rare. 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:52.080 These are denominations that, again, Baptists means a lot of different things. 00:30:52.080 --> 00:30:55.920 A lot of guys that we would characterize as Baptists call themselves 00:30:55.920 --> 00:31:00.560 non denominational, but really when it comes down to a non denominational 00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:04.960 pretty much just means Baptist without, you know, some specific affiliation. 00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:07.440 It's very much a product of the same theology. 00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:10.800 So there are absolutely Baptists who reject dispensationalism. 00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:13.600 There are also a lot of Baptists who are fully on board 00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:14.320 with it. 00:31:14.320 --> 00:31:16.960 And the reason that's relevant today is something we'll get into in 00:31:16.960 --> 00:31:21.280 a third part of this because again, this isn't simply a historical 00:31:21.280 --> 00:31:24.240 quirk that became a theological question. 00:31:24.240 --> 00:31:27.600 This also has modern geopolitical ramifications. 00:31:27.600 --> 00:31:29.840 So the fact that there are teachers today and there are a 00:31:29.840 --> 00:31:32.960 lot of people that believe this stuff, again, it's it's actually getting 00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:33.600 people killed. 00:31:33.600 --> 00:31:36.240 So this is very consequential theology. 00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:41.920 And the fact that it's erroneous explains the nature of the downstream 00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:43.360 consequences. 00:31:43.760 --> 00:31:46.960 And so the one additional name that I said I want to 00:31:46.960 --> 00:31:51.040 mention, not just in passing, well already said the name, but that 00:31:51.040 --> 00:31:52.800 is Charles Ryrie. 00:31:52.800 --> 00:31:57.040 And the reason I want to focus on him for a moment 00:31:57.040 --> 00:31:58.080 here is 00:31:58.960 --> 00:32:03.760 because he really pushed this forward in believe it was mostly the 00:32:03.840 --> 00:32:05.200 60s and the 70s. 00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:07.680 I don't remember when his study Bible came out, but he produced 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:11.440 a study Bible that was essentially an updated version of Schofield's Bible. 00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:16.400 He wrote a number of books, including Dispensationalism today and basic theology, 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:23.200 which was unfortunately anything but but he gives a definition of dispensation 00:32:23.520 --> 00:32:28.000 that is useful and with which I believe most dispensationalists would agree. 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:31.280 And then I also have a quote to read from him from 00:32:31.760 --> 00:32:33.520 an article of his. 00:32:33.520 --> 00:32:36.640 I will put the article in the show notes for those who 00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:39.920 want to go and verify the quote or simply read the rest 00:32:39.920 --> 00:32:41.760 of the article. 00:32:41.760 --> 00:32:48.080 But his definition of dispensation is a dispensation is a distinguishable economy 00:32:48.560 --> 00:32:53.040 in the outworking of God's purpose. 00:32:53.040 --> 00:32:56.160 Now for those who are more familiar with the subject, you're already 00:32:56.160 --> 00:32:58.640 going to see a red flag there. 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:00.960 He's playing games with the word economy. 00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:04.480 And the reason he's playing games with the word economy is that 00:33:04.480 --> 00:33:09.040 dispensationalists have to do this to attempt to tie themselves back to 00:33:09.040 --> 00:33:11.600 the historical teachings of the church. 00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:16.720 Because if you can conflate dispensation and economy You can try to 00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:20.800 argue that some of your ideas are present in the Church Fathers. 00:33:20.800 --> 00:33:24.880 And I will go over just briefly two of the Church Fathers 00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:28.800 who are often claimed by dispensationalists to have taught a form of, 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:31.360 say, proto-dispensationalism. 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:34.800 Very obviously they did not when you actually look at how they 00:33:34.800 --> 00:33:39.200 used the Greek word economy, which is what he's attempting to do 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:44.080 here. But now I'll read a quote from him from this article 00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:48.080 because it touches on many of the issues that we will be 00:33:48.080 --> 00:33:51.920 addressing in the remainder of this episode. 00:33:52.800 --> 00:33:57.680 Progressive revelation is the recognition that God's message to man was not 00:33:57.680 --> 00:34:01.760 given in one single act, but was unfolded in a long series 00:34:01.760 --> 00:34:05.600 of successive acts, and through the minds and hands of many men 00:34:05.600 --> 00:34:06.720 of varying backgrounds. 00:34:07.600 --> 00:34:11.440 God's truth was obviously not given all at one time, and the 00:34:11.440 --> 00:34:14.960 varying stages of revelation show that He has worked in different ways 00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:16.400 at different times. 00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:22.640 The Bible interpreter must observe carefully this progressiveness of revelation, and dispensationalism 00:34:22.640 --> 00:34:25.520 helps promote accuracy in this regard. 00:34:25.520 --> 00:34:31.120 The distinguishing characteristics of the dispensations are, one, a change in God's 00:34:31.120 --> 00:34:36.960 governmental relationship with man two A resultant change in man's responsibility and 00:34:37.120 --> 00:34:41.920 three corresponding revelation necessary to effect the change. 00:34:41.920 --> 00:34:45.600 What marks off a man is a dispensationalist What is the sine 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:47.840 qui non of the system? 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:52.160 1. A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct. 00:34:52.160 --> 00:34:56.640 The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages God is pursuing two distinct 00:34:56.640 --> 00:35:01.600 purposes, one related to the earth, with earthly people and earthly objectives 00:35:01.600 --> 00:35:05.760 involved, which is Judaism, while the other is related to heaven, with 00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:10.800 heavenly people, and heavenly objectives involved, which is Christianity. 00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:15.040 This is probably the most basic theological test of whether or not 00:35:15.040 --> 00:35:18.960 a man is a dispensationalist, and it is undoubtedly the most practical 00:35:18.960 --> 00:35:20.240 and conclusive. 00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:23.680 A man who fails to distinguish Israel and the Church will inevitably 00:35:23.680 --> 00:35:29.120 not hold to dispensationalist distinctions, and the one who does will. 00:35:29.120 --> 00:35:32.640 two, the distinction between Israel and the Church is born out of 00:35:32.640 --> 00:35:36.320 a system of hermeneutics called literal interpretation. 00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:41.840 three to the dispensationalist, the soteriological or saving program of God is 00:35:41.840 --> 00:35:44.960 not the only program, but one of the means God is using 00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:48.160 in the total program of glorifying Himself. 00:35:48.160 --> 00:35:52.560 Scripture is not man-centered as though salvation were the main theme, but 00:35:52.560 --> 00:35:56.640 it is God centered because his glory is the center. 00:35:56.640 --> 00:36:01.760 The basis of salvation in every age is the death of Christ, 00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:06.880 the requirement for salvation in every age is faith, the object of 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:11.440 faith in every age is God, the content of faith changes in 00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:13.600 the various dispensations. 00:36:13.680 --> 00:36:19.520 End quote There are a lot of problems with this quote. 00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:24.000 We will be touching on them in the remainder of this episode, 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:26.960 so I will not go over them specifically now. 00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:30.560 I will however highlight that last part is important. 00:36:30.560 --> 00:36:35.680 The content of faith changes in the various dispensations. 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:37.600 That is simply not Christian. 00:36:37.600 --> 00:36:40.880 The content of our faith does not change. 00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:45.120 And this is related, of course, to his contention that God has 00:36:45.120 --> 00:36:47.840 progressively revealed the faith over time. 00:36:47.840 --> 00:36:49.760 That's simply not true. 00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:54.880 We see that in Genesis three fifteen, Adam understood the fullness of 00:36:54.880 --> 00:36:59.600 the faith back in Genesis three fifteen, even if today we may 00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:04.400 not be capable enough to understand it from those verses, although notably 00:37:04.720 --> 00:37:08.320 we do have the advantage of looking back at the And seeing 00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:15.680 it in the context of living after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, 00:37:15.680 --> 00:37:17.600 after the ascension. 00:37:17.600 --> 00:37:23.600 Adam, who was undoubtedly our superior intellectually and otherwise, knew what God 00:37:23.600 --> 00:37:28.400 was telling him when he spoke to him in Genesis. 00:37:28.400 --> 00:37:30.160 But now I'll address the 00:37:31.760 --> 00:37:37.440 just two we'll do two of the supposed church fathers in whom 00:37:37.600 --> 00:37:44.000 dispensationalists contend that you can find the early roots of dispensationalism. 00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:45.440 They claim others as well. 00:37:45.440 --> 00:37:51.840 They claim Origen and Eusebius and even Augustine they try to claim. 00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:55.760 But we'll go over Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. 00:37:55.760 --> 00:37:58.480 And so starting with Justin Martyr. 00:37:58.720 --> 00:38:03.840 In chapter forty one, Justin Martyr speaks of the economy of human 00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:08.560 birth, in reference to Isaiah's prophecy about the virgin birth of Christ. 00:38:08.560 --> 00:38:11.680 In this he argues that the prophecy is about Christ and not 00:38:11.680 --> 00:38:13.200 Hezekiah. 00:38:14.560 --> 00:38:17.600 There's no way in which you can interpret that as being a 00:38:17.600 --> 00:38:21.840 dispensation, as relating to dispensationalism. 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:26.160 And so in chapter fifty six, Justin Martyr mentions the economy of 00:38:26.160 --> 00:38:30.880 the suffering of Christ, while discussing prophecies in the Psalms. 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:36.480 Again, economy, the Greek word, does not relate to dispensations. 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:39.040 Skip ahead a little bit, chapter eighty four. 00:38:39.040 --> 00:38:43.280 Justin Martyr discusses the economy of the Christians in contrast to that 00:38:43.280 --> 00:38:47.120 of the Jews, referring to the new covenant, and its distinctiveness from 00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:48.000 the old. 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.000 Now perhaps the dispensationalists will go, Aha, here we are this is 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:53.520 clearly a dispensation. 00:38:53.520 --> 00:38:56.880 These are different treatments, but they're not. 00:38:56.880 --> 00:39:01.760 If we are distinguishing between the gospel and the law, that is 00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:05.200 simply proper Christian exegesis. 00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:08.800 No one was saved by the law. 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:10.400 That is the teaching of Scripture. 00:39:10.400 --> 00:39:12.240 The Jews were not saved by the law. 00:39:12.240 --> 00:39:16.240 The ancient Israelites, more properly than Jews, were not saved by the 00:39:16.240 --> 00:39:19.920 law, because by the law no man will be justified. 00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:24.000 They were saved by belief, if they were saved at all. 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:28.080 The same as every single man throughout all church history. 00:39:28.080 --> 00:39:31.920 And that is what Justin Martyr actually teaches, if you read the 00:39:31.920 --> 00:39:34.400 rest of the chapter. 00:39:34.720 --> 00:39:38.800 One more example from Justin Martyr before we move on to Irenaeus. 00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:43.360 In chapter one hundred and twenty-six, he describes the economy of his 00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:46.640 suffering. That's a paraphrase. 00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:52.320 In discussing how Christ's sacrifice surpasses the sacrifices of the old covenant. 00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:54.400 This is speaking of typology. 00:39:54.400 --> 00:39:55.840 This is not a dispensation. 00:39:55.840 --> 00:40:00.400 There is no way you can interpret this to be dispensational, to 00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:02.000 be an early form of it. 00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:05.440 The only way you can get Justin Martyr to seem like some 00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:09.680 sort of proto-dispensationalist is if you twist his words. 00:40:09.680 --> 00:40:13.280 Which is the theme that we will see throughout this entire subject 00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:18.000 when dealing with how dispensationalists argue and how they treat both Scripture 00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:21.120 and the Church Fathers. 00:40:21.120 --> 00:40:27.600 And so second, amongst the supposedly proto-dispensationalists we have Irenaeus, from his 00:40:27.600 --> 00:40:34.400 book Against Heresies, from Book III, Chapter eleven, Irenaeus speaks of God's 00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:39.440 economy in becoming man The Word of God our Lord Jesus Christ 00:40:39.600 --> 00:40:43.600 who did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that he 00:40:43.600 --> 00:40:47.440 might bring us to be even what he is himself. 00:40:47.680 --> 00:40:51.440 You cannot possibly read that as dispensationalist. 00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:55.360 It is a use of the word economy, but again, unless you 00:40:55.360 --> 00:41:00.000 are practicing eisegesis, unless you are trying to be deceptive, you cannot 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:06.000 conflate the words economy and dispensation, they are not the same thing. 00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:10.400 And so Book three again, chapter eighteen this time, Irenaeus speaks of 00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:14.080 the economy of incarnation, explaining how the Son of God became incarnate 00:41:14.720 --> 00:41:18.480 for the salvation of humanity. 00:41:18.480 --> 00:41:21.120 This Greek word economy 00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:28.480 again at risk of ad nauseum does not mean dispensation. 00:41:28.480 --> 00:41:31.840 I will get into the actual word in a second here, to 00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:35.440 give you a better idea of the scope of the Greek term. 00:41:35.440 --> 00:41:38.560 Two more examples from Irenaeus first, though. 00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:43.520 From Book four, chapter 20, Irenaeus mentions the economy of the Lord's 00:41:43.520 --> 00:41:47.920 Passion, referring of course to the salvific purpose behind Christ's suffering and 00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:54.800 death. Again, cannot possibly be translated or conflated with dispensation. 00:41:54.800 --> 00:41:59.520 And, finally, from Book V, chapter one, he speaks of the economy 00:41:59.520 --> 00:42:02.880 of the Son of God in reference to the divine plan which 00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:09.040 culminates in Christ's incarnate life and redemptive work. 00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:11.360 At this point I hope that I don't have to say that's 00:42:11.360 --> 00:42:13.360 not a dispensation. 00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:19.440 But to define the word economy from the Greek economia is the 00:42:19.440 --> 00:42:21.360 actual Greek word. 00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:24.080 It has in essence three senses. 00:42:24.080 --> 00:42:29.120 Pull these from B Dag, the definitive dictionary for these things. 00:42:29.120 --> 00:42:33.280 The first is responsibility of management, typically of a household. 00:42:33.280 --> 00:42:35.680 That's what the term really means. 00:42:35.680 --> 00:42:40.160 The second is the state of being arranged, ordered, or planned, and 00:42:40.160 --> 00:42:44.720 the third is that it can refer to a program of instruction. 00:42:44.720 --> 00:42:51.120 Now the argument from the dispensationalist is that according to these first 00:42:51.120 --> 00:42:56.800 two definitions, they attempt to say that the whole of creation is 00:42:56.800 --> 00:42:59.280 God's household, which isn't necessarily wrong 00:43:01.040 --> 00:43:04.400 to some degree it's an abuse of the term. 00:43:04.400 --> 00:43:07.600 But yes, everything belongs to God, and so he is the manager 00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:08.320 over all of it. 00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:12.400 But the argument is instead that God has created a plan and 00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:16.160 that And that he has made man the manager of that plan, 00:43:16.160 --> 00:43:19.920 and that his plan changes over time. 00:43:19.920 --> 00:43:23.600 Well, this is a problem first because God doesn't change. 00:43:23.600 --> 00:43:27.920 Second, it is a problem because God's plan in Scripture very clearly 00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:28.560 doesn't change. 00:43:28.560 --> 00:43:33.040 It is the same from beginning to end, beginning with Genesis 3.15, 00:43:33.040 --> 00:43:38.080 the proto-gospel, the proto-evangelian, all the way through to the end. 00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:40.560 There is only one way to the Father, and that is through 00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:43.760 Christ. Scripture is abundantly clear on that point. 00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:45.600 And so you can't have this change. 00:43:45.600 --> 00:43:49.840 You can't have the different dispensations, which is what the dispensationalists are 00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:53.520 arguing, what is central to their theology. 00:43:53.520 --> 00:43:57.680 It is the idea after which it is named. 00:43:57.680 --> 00:44:02.160 And so what it actually refers to in the Greek fathers is 00:44:03.520 --> 00:44:07.840 That responsibility of management of the household when speaking of men, as 00:44:07.840 --> 00:44:11.760 we are stewards in creation, that is what we are called in 00:44:11.760 --> 00:44:14.080 scripture, we are God's stewards. 00:44:14.080 --> 00:44:17.040 We are his icons, his idols, in the proper sense of the 00:44:17.040 --> 00:44:18.720 term, in creation. 00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:22.720 But it does also refer to that state of being arranged in 00:44:22.720 --> 00:44:29.280 the specific sub sense of being God's unique plan of salvation or 00:44:29.280 --> 00:44:34.400 God's arrangement in nature if they're talking about the natural world. 00:44:34.400 --> 00:44:37.440 And that is what we saw from the selection of quotes that 00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:40.800 I went through in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and lest anyone think 00:44:40.800 --> 00:44:42.800 that I cherry picked them. 00:44:42.800 --> 00:44:46.880 I essentially pulled out a handful of places in which they speak 00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:49.920 of those and then chose at random the ones that I would 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:53.520 use. I have many others, they're all the same. 00:44:53.520 --> 00:44:56.160 There are no places in either of those 00:44:57.120 --> 00:45:02.160 authors, in either of those church fathers, where you could possibly construe 00:45:02.160 --> 00:45:08.960 their use of economy to be coterminous with the modern dispensationalist use 00:45:08.960 --> 00:45:14.560 of the word dispensation, or sometimes they will attempt to say administration, 00:45:14.560 --> 00:45:17.840 or economy, in order to further conflate, in order to muddy the 00:45:17.840 --> 00:45:21.600 waters. And that's a general takeaway. 00:45:21.600 --> 00:45:26.560 If someone is attempting to create additional gray area, or to muddy 00:45:26.560 --> 00:45:31.840 the waters, or to make scripture unclear, that man is attempting to 00:45:31.840 --> 00:45:33.440 mislead or deceive you 00:45:34.560 --> 00:45:37.760 That is a man you should not follow because Scripture is as 00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:40.960 a general rule abundantly clear. 00:45:40.960 --> 00:45:46.800 And where scripture is less clear because we lack perspective or understanding, 00:45:46.800 --> 00:45:50.720 we have some deficit that makes it difficult for us to understand 00:45:50.720 --> 00:45:52.560 a particular passage. 00:45:52.560 --> 00:45:55.680 We have the entire weight of church history and the clear teaching 00:45:55.680 --> 00:45:57.280 of Scripture. 00:45:57.280 --> 00:46:00.240 You use the parts of Scripture that are clear to interpret those 00:46:00.240 --> 00:46:05.520 that supposedly are not, because God is consistent and the whole will 00:46:05.520 --> 00:46:12.400 agree. You do not use passages that are uncertain in order to 00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:18.160 write your priors, your presuppositions, your theology back into the other passages 00:46:18.160 --> 00:46:19.360 that are clear. 00:46:19.360 --> 00:46:23.280 That's where you get the use of something that is supposedly unclear 00:46:23.440 --> 00:46:26.560 to muddy the waters for something that is abundantly clear. 00:46:27.360 --> 00:46:30.960 That is what false teachers do, and as Christians we have to 00:46:30.960 --> 00:46:34.640 be aware of that and be careful of these wolves. 00:46:34.960 --> 00:46:39.360 In the specific use and an abuse well entirely abuse of language, 00:46:39.360 --> 00:46:42.080 not its proper use that's occurring here 00:46:43.120 --> 00:46:45.600 is a trap that I I think part of the reason that 00:46:45.600 --> 00:46:51.040 in particular some Baptists but other the other denominations, Pentecostalists, charismatics and 00:46:51.040 --> 00:46:52.080 some others. 00:46:52.080 --> 00:46:54.000 I think part of the reason that they fell for it, and 00:46:54.000 --> 00:46:58.400 I think part of the appeal of it, naively, is that one 00:46:58.400 --> 00:47:00.880 of the other things that Ryrie said, which is is part of 00:47:00.880 --> 00:47:06.560 the dispensationalist shtick, is that one must be literal with the sort 00:47:06.560 --> 00:47:08.800 certain words that they pick out. 00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:10.880 And the problem with it is that 00:47:11.760 --> 00:47:13.200 sometimes that's true. 00:47:13.200 --> 00:47:16.480 There's like we made the argument in the six thousand years and 00:47:16.480 --> 00:47:21.360 counting Episode that when God says six days in Genesis for the 00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:23.200 creation, it was six days. 00:47:23.200 --> 00:47:26.880 There's not special kinds of days that only occurred in creation and 00:47:26.880 --> 00:47:28.480 then we get a different kind of day now. 00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:30.800 It was six twenty-four hour periods. 00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:36.480 So that sort of appeal to clarity is very easy to make 00:47:36.480 --> 00:47:38.080 someone adopt in all cases. 00:47:38.080 --> 00:47:43.680 And the particular issue with the dispensationalist abuse of that is twofold. 00:47:43.680 --> 00:47:48.480 One, when they're talking about things like the Millennium, that is language 00:47:48.480 --> 00:47:51.520 that appears almost exclusively in Revelation. 00:47:51.520 --> 00:47:56.480 And the problem with treating Revelation literally is that it itself says 00:47:56.480 --> 00:47:57.680 it is a vision. 00:47:57.680 --> 00:47:59.680 It is it is John's apocalypse. 00:47:59.680 --> 00:48:03.600 He was having a dream, a vision from God. 00:48:03.600 --> 00:48:07.920 Things were revealed to him that were clearly figurative. 00:48:07.920 --> 00:48:09.280 They're clearly figurative. 00:48:09.600 --> 00:48:14.400 There are many dreams in Scripture that are revealed to men of 00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:18.560 God, and it's very clear within the dream and then the interpretation 00:48:18.560 --> 00:48:20.960 of the dream that they're symbolic. 00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:24.880 When Joseph interpreted the dream about the seven fat cows and the 00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:27.920 seven skinny cows, it wasn't about cattle. 00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:30.480 It wasn't about how plump the livestock were. 00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:33.120 It was the seven fat years and the seven skinny years. 00:48:33.120 --> 00:48:39.120 And fat and skinny were an allusion to plenty and famine. 00:48:39.120 --> 00:48:45.840 So that sort of symbolic language is inherent to how God uses 00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:47.520 visions. It's how God does it. 00:48:47.520 --> 00:48:48.960 That's not man-made. 00:48:48.960 --> 00:48:52.800 That's what God has done throughout scripture with visions. 00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:56.320 And so the issue is that when you take a literalist approach 00:48:56.400 --> 00:49:01.360 that in some cases is appropriate, it's not always absolutely necessary because 00:49:02.560 --> 00:49:07.120 different parts of scripture are different types of literature. 00:49:07.120 --> 00:49:13.280 God uses illusion, he uses storytelling, he uses songs, and he also 00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:15.440 uses just the delivery of facts. 00:49:15.440 --> 00:49:18.000 You know, when you go through something like 1st and 2nd Kings, 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:19.440 it's a bunch of facts. 00:49:19.440 --> 00:49:22.400 There's not a lot of illusion there because it's a it's a 00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:24.400 telling of events. 00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:29.200 The events that are told in Revelation are symbolic in a dream 00:49:29.200 --> 00:49:30.080 and a vision. 00:49:30.080 --> 00:49:34.960 And so when you read millennium, which is means a thousand years, 00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:38.880 it's possible that that's one thousand year periods of three hundred and 00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:41.680 sixty 65 days each. 00:49:41.680 --> 00:49:43.360 But it's not necessary. 00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:46.080 And in fact, when you look at the other places where thousand 00:49:46.240 --> 00:49:51.600 is used, it's very clear that that is a symbolic number. 00:49:51.920 --> 00:49:54.960 it's numerological, which is something else that God uses. 00:49:54.960 --> 00:49:57.360 You know, there's some guys who go completely off the rails with 00:49:57.360 --> 00:49:59.840 numerology and try to make everything about it. 00:49:59.840 --> 00:50:02.640 Just there's some guys who go completely off the rails with typology 00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:04.720 trying to make everything typological. 00:50:04.720 --> 00:50:08.000 These are These are tools that God uses, that God enjoys and 00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:10.800 He's given us, but they're tools. 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:14.400 It's not a universal hermeneutic for every single thing in the Bible, 00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:15.840 just like literalism. 00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:20.800 There are places where you cannot possibly accept the literal reading of 00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:23.840 a word when it cannot possibly mean that according to the rest 00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:28.800 of scripture, which is Corey was saying, the unclear passages are interpreted 00:50:28.800 --> 00:50:30.240 by the clear passages. 00:50:30.240 --> 00:50:33.520 And so just as a basic approach to all of scripture, when 00:50:33.920 --> 00:50:39.440 you take something from a vision that that is inherently packed with 00:50:39.440 --> 00:50:43.200 symbolic language, and Revelation, when you look at it, it's the same 00:50:43.200 --> 00:50:47.280 series of events being told three times over in three different ways. 00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:51.680 It's all symbolic through and through. 00:50:51.680 --> 00:50:55.520 That millennium, that thousand-year period has been 00:50:56.800 --> 00:51:01.520 ripped from its context in a vision where it does mean something. 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:02.320 It has a meaning. 00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:06.480 We're not saying it's meaningless, but when they say it must necessarily 00:51:06.480 --> 00:51:09.600 be a thousand years, and then therefore we can put plug it 00:51:09.600 --> 00:51:14.160 into the timeline as that sort of period, there's already an abuse 00:51:14.160 --> 00:51:16.240 of of scripture. 00:51:16.240 --> 00:51:19.040 And the other word that gets abused here, and then the one 00:51:19.200 --> 00:51:21.760 I want to focus on is Israel. 00:51:21.760 --> 00:51:25.120 Now this episode in a lot of ways is a continuation of 00:51:25.120 --> 00:51:27.760 one of the very first episodes that we did of Stone Choir 00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:30.080 on election in view of headship. 00:51:30.080 --> 00:51:33.040 At the time we were shy about doing two hour episodes, so 00:51:33.040 --> 00:51:35.440 that was a two hour episode that we basically called a two-parter 00:51:35.600 --> 00:51:39.840 that we concatenated, the first hour was entirely about the doctrine of 00:51:39.840 --> 00:51:42.800 election. Now, election 00:51:43.680 --> 00:51:46.560 and chosen mean the same thing. 00:51:46.560 --> 00:51:48.640 That's one of the things that we make the case in that 00:51:48.720 --> 00:51:52.800 just linguistically they they they don't even have a lot of daylight 00:51:52.800 --> 00:51:53.440 between them. 00:51:53.440 --> 00:51:55.440 They're completely interchangeable. 00:51:55.440 --> 00:51:58.560 If I say that I elect a man president, I'm saying I 00:51:58.560 --> 00:52:00.320 choose him to be president. 00:52:00.320 --> 00:52:01.520 It's the same thing. 00:52:01.520 --> 00:52:04.480 If you you elect something from a menu, you choose something from 00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:05.680 a menu. 00:52:05.680 --> 00:52:09.680 Now, we might use one term over the other preferentially when depending 00:52:09.680 --> 00:52:13.440 on context, but it's not because the word means different things. 00:52:13.440 --> 00:52:18.320 So when scripture speaks of election, it speaks of it identically to 00:52:18.320 --> 00:52:22.800 how scripture speaks of God choosing and whom did God choose. 00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:26.080 In the old testament, there was a time where he chose the 00:52:26.080 --> 00:52:30.480 people of Israel, where he made specific promises to Abraham and said 00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:34.400 that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and that 00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:37.440 theirs would be the inheritance. 00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:40.640 This is another aspect of of taking literalism from 00:52:41.600 --> 00:52:48.800 Abusively, because scripture is clear, clear as day, that both 00:52:48.800 --> 00:52:51.920 historically in the Old Testament and when it is taught in the 00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:56.400 New Testament, you have passages like this from Romans nine, where God 00:52:56.400 --> 00:53:01.120 says, For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 00:53:01.120 --> 00:53:04.720 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, 00:53:04.720 --> 00:53:08.400 but quote through Isaac shall your offspring be named. 00:53:08.400 --> 00:53:11.120 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who 00:53:11.120 --> 00:53:14.240 are the children of God, but the children of the promise are 00:53:14.240 --> 00:53:16.000 counted as offspring. 00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:21.600 Now note that in that one passage, Paul shifts between descended from 00:53:21.600 --> 00:53:25.360 Israel, belonging to Israel, and children of the flesh and children of 00:53:25.360 --> 00:53:27.680 God. They mean the same thing. 00:53:27.680 --> 00:53:32.720 See, in many cases, especially in the New Testament, most of but 00:53:32.720 --> 00:53:34.480 notably, not all 00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:41.120 statements that refer to Israel are talking about the lineal genetic descendants 00:53:41.120 --> 00:53:42.320 of Abraham. 00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:45.200 A few of them do, and it's clear in context when that 00:53:45.200 --> 00:53:46.160 is the case. 00:53:46.160 --> 00:53:49.520 But over and over in the New Testament, w one of the 00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:52.720 key points of the New Testament, one of the chief arguments that 00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:56.400 that Paul had to struggle to hammer into the heads of the 00:53:56.400 --> 00:54:00.080 stubborn Jews of that day, was that they didn't simply get to 00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:03.600 be saved because they were children of Abraham. 00:54:03.600 --> 00:54:06.000 That's not how it works. 00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:09.200 God said he could raise up children of Abraham from the stones 00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:10.320 if he wished. 00:54:10.320 --> 00:54:13.760 God God can make children of Abraham any way he pleases. 00:54:13.760 --> 00:54:16.640 It doesn't need to be linearly. 00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:20.800 And it says elsewhere that the faith that Abraham was counted to 00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:22.000 him is righteousness. 00:54:22.000 --> 00:54:23.520 It wasn't his own blood. 00:54:23.520 --> 00:54:25.840 It w or even that God had made him a promise. 00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:29.440 The promise was fulfilled in the giving of the gift of faith, 00:54:29.440 --> 00:54:32.240 but it was the faith that God gave as a gift that 00:54:32.240 --> 00:54:35.600 received the salvation that God had intended for Abraham and for his 00:54:35.600 --> 00:54:39.200 offspring. And so And show the children of the flesh of Abraham 00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:40.400 account for nothing. 00:54:40.400 --> 00:54:42.000 They're not children of God. 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:46.880 They don't belong to Israel unless they have the faith of Israel. 00:54:46.880 --> 00:54:50.480 And when that is said, it can only possibly be speaking of 00:54:50.480 --> 00:54:52.560 actual saving faith. 00:54:52.560 --> 00:54:56.960 And so the the I think really the most crucial mistake that 00:54:56.960 --> 00:55:01.280 is in Ryrie's description, which is completely apt, is the definition of 00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:02.480 all dispensationalism. 00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:04.960 It is the defining characteristic. 00:55:04.960 --> 00:55:08.800 I think even over and above all the talk of the dispensations, 00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:14.800 the time periods themselves, the statement, the the we must as Christians, 00:55:14.800 --> 00:55:16.400 you have I don't know you've even said that. 00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:20.400 But he said we must necessarily treat the church as one thing 00:55:20.720 --> 00:55:23.440 and Israel as something else. 00:55:23.440 --> 00:55:26.800 And see, this is something that emerged back in Darby's day 200 00:55:26.800 --> 00:55:30.240 years ago, and it's accelerated and it's continued. 00:55:30.240 --> 00:55:30.560 And 00:55:31.600 --> 00:55:34.160 you know, we did a four-part episode on Jews. 00:55:34.160 --> 00:55:38.160 We've talked numerous times about the various aspects of the history of 00:55:38.160 --> 00:55:40.720 those people. 00:55:40.720 --> 00:55:44.240 One of the things that has occurred in the last century that 00:55:44.240 --> 00:55:47.440 makes this geopolitically relevant, as we're going to get to in a 00:55:47.440 --> 00:55:49.680 bit, is that there was 00:55:52.880 --> 00:55:55.440 There was an inversion of the historic 00:55:57.040 --> 00:56:00.400 nature of Christ's fulfillment of prophecy. 00:56:00.400 --> 00:56:04.640 When Jesus was scourged and he was killed for our sins, and 00:56:04.640 --> 00:56:08.000 then he rose again on the third day, all of the creeds 00:56:08.080 --> 00:56:11.120 and all of our hope and our faith points to the cross 00:56:11.120 --> 00:56:14.880 and to the risen Christ as our hope for our own salvation, 00:56:14.880 --> 00:56:18.720 delivered by God through the faith that we have in that gift 00:56:18.880 --> 00:56:20.480 and in that promise. 00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:26.400 So Jesus, who fulfilled all prophecy and scripture and made manifest God's 00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:31.360 will as God Himself, his death and his resurrection three days later, 00:56:31.360 --> 00:56:34.080 and then his ascension into heaven, sitting at the right hand of 00:56:34.080 --> 00:56:34.960 God, are 00:56:35.840 --> 00:56:38.160 the basis of the Christian faith. 00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:40.000 This is relevant because 00:56:41.360 --> 00:56:45.120 as we went over in the Big Lie episode, there was another 00:56:45.120 --> 00:56:49.600 scourging and death that occurred in the 20th century where the Where 00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:52.240 the six million were sacrificed. 00:56:52.240 --> 00:56:56.400 And then three years later, the state of Israel was resurrected from 00:56:56.400 --> 00:56:57.520 the dead. 00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:01.840 And the state of Israel is used interchangeably with Israel today. 00:57:01.840 --> 00:57:07.360 And so what Darby helped give birth to in 1830, 120 years 00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:10.640 later, after all this work done by Schofield and all the other 00:57:10.640 --> 00:57:17.040 Zionists, this multi-century project that involved people from all walks of life 00:57:17.040 --> 00:57:18.880 with all different agendas of their own. 00:57:18.880 --> 00:57:20.640 Schofield was just a shyster. 00:57:20.640 --> 00:57:21.840 Like the guy was a crook. 00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:24.480 There's n there's n there was an honest bone in the man's 00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:26.480 body. When you hear some of the other stuff that's said about 00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:28.960 him, there's no doubt that he was in this to get rich 00:57:28.960 --> 00:57:32.000 and to be influential and he slapped his name on him because 00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:33.440 he was basically the front man. 00:57:33.440 --> 00:57:36.240 These frauds need a front man. 00:57:36.240 --> 00:57:37.920 That's not the case with all of them. 00:57:37.920 --> 00:57:40.320 There are other men who had other agendas, but they were all 00:57:40.320 --> 00:57:42.720 working inexorably towards the same goal. 00:57:42.720 --> 00:57:48.160 And the fulfillment of the Zionist project occurred in nineteen forty eight, 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:51.040 three years after the end of World War II, the state the 00:57:51.040 --> 00:57:53.120 state of Israel was born. 00:57:53.120 --> 00:57:56.480 And it was very much treated as a rebirth of is a 00:57:56.480 --> 00:58:02.160 rebirth of the historic Israel, the historic Jewry of the Old Testament. 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:03.600 It was completely false. 00:58:03.600 --> 00:58:07.920 False genetically, far false spiritually, false religiously. 00:58:07.920 --> 00:58:09.520 Everything about it is a lie. 00:58:09.520 --> 00:58:12.080 But it was an inversion that was done 00:58:13.040 --> 00:58:17.360 in the vacuum created by this ignorance about confusing Israel with Israel 00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:20.720 in the Bible with these people who just slap the name Israel 00:58:20.720 --> 00:58:21.600 on themselves. 00:58:21.600 --> 00:58:23.040 I think is one of the most important things. 00:58:23.040 --> 00:58:25.680 You know, another early episode was on framing. 00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:32.000 The frame of calling themselves Israel is it's catnip for any dispensationalist, 00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:35.680 for anyone who's been taught their entire life, we must support and 00:58:35.680 --> 00:58:38.320 defend Israel because of the apple of God's eye. 00:58:38.320 --> 00:58:41.840 If you believe that that refers to any Jew who's alive today, 00:58:41.840 --> 00:58:45.200 and any Jew who's alive today has has right of return to 00:58:45.200 --> 00:58:46.560 the state of Israel. 00:58:46.560 --> 00:58:49.840 So they're all Israel, wherever they are on the planet, they're all 00:58:49.840 --> 00:58:51.520 the state of Israel. 00:58:51.520 --> 00:58:56.160 If religiously you adhere to the claim that Israel means these people 00:58:56.160 --> 00:59:01.280 with this passport, then necessarily you are bound morally to follow a 00:59:01.280 --> 00:59:02.960 certain political course. 00:59:02.960 --> 00:59:05.200 And voila, there it is. 00:59:05.200 --> 00:59:09.360 You have no choice as a Christian but to do whatever Benjamin 00:59:09.600 --> 00:59:13.360 Netanyahu says, whoever's in charge at the time. 00:59:13.360 --> 00:59:14.480 That's wild. 00:59:14.480 --> 00:59:16.240 And so the last part of this we're going to talk about 00:59:16.240 --> 00:59:20.800 the the geopolitics, but just keep in mind that that switcheroo that's 00:59:20.720 --> 00:59:24.480 being done that Ryrie described is the key element of dispensationalism. 00:59:24.720 --> 00:59:27.360 If you say that Israel is one thing and the church is 00:59:27.360 --> 00:59:31.520 another thing, which we completely agree with, like that's totally factual. 00:59:31.520 --> 00:59:35.040 The problem is that they say that Israel has a plan from 00:59:35.040 --> 00:59:37.200 God that is separate from Scripture, that's separate from the 00:59:38.400 --> 00:59:41.600 cross. As Corey said at the end of that, they you know 00:59:41.600 --> 00:59:43.760 Ryu is trying to like, well yeah, you know, the cross is 00:59:43.760 --> 00:59:46.640 still there, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. 00:59:46.640 --> 00:59:50.800 And incidentally, this isn't just limited entirely to them. 00:59:50.800 --> 00:59:53.520 Vatican II adhered to this. 00:59:53.520 --> 00:59:58.960 They issued a statement nostrilate referring to the gifts and promises of 00:59:58.960 --> 01:00:00.240 God being inevitable. 01:00:00.240 --> 01:00:06.160 I think about nineteen sixty-five, that more or less reiterated dispensationalism said 01:00:06.160 --> 01:00:10.400 that the Jews alone have a special promise from God and basically 01:00:10.400 --> 01:00:14.320 said it's anti anti Semitic to proselytize to them, to take the 01:00:14.320 --> 01:00:15.120 gospel to them. 01:00:15.200 --> 01:00:17.600 God will take care of them because he made promises thousands of 01:00:17.600 --> 01:00:18.320 years ago. 01:00:18.320 --> 01:00:20.160 You don't need to worry about it. 01:00:20.160 --> 01:00:21.840 They have a separate deal. 01:00:21.840 --> 01:00:23.680 That's what the Vatican put out. 01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:25.520 that's false doctrine. 01:00:25.520 --> 01:00:29.440 And it's crazy false doctrine that came from well outside of Roman 01:00:29.440 --> 01:00:34.400 Catholicism. Like that that's not like that was a development of their 01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:39.920 theology, but it was absolutely an importation of something that again played 01:00:39.920 --> 01:00:41.680 out geopolitically. 01:00:41.680 --> 01:00:44.720 So it's, you know, is this a religion podcast or is it 01:00:44.720 --> 01:00:45.920 a politics podcast? 01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:46.960 Are we talking about race? 01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:48.800 Are we talking about religion or genes? 01:00:48.800 --> 01:00:50.800 It's all those things simultaneously. 01:00:50.800 --> 01:00:52.880 And that's the reason that a lot of the topics that we 01:00:52.880 --> 01:00:57.040 cover kind of muddled because when all these things play out, when 01:00:57.040 --> 01:00:59.040 you look at the history and you look at the theology and 01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:02.160 then you look at the impact, if you ignore one of those, 01:01:02.160 --> 01:01:04.720 you're gonna be missing the whole picture. 01:01:04.720 --> 01:01:06.800 You're really gonna be missing the whole picture. 01:01:06.800 --> 01:01:11.600 And dispensationalism by defining itself is saying that Israel, and whoever calls 01:01:11.600 --> 01:01:15.120 himself Israel is Israel automatically, if it's a Jew, it's Israel, is 01:01:15.120 --> 01:01:16.080 separate from the church. 01:01:16.240 --> 01:01:19.840 We can judge them and we can't proselytize to them, and we 01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:21.520 must do whatever they say. 01:01:21.520 --> 01:01:26.000 Because one of the key elements of of dispensationalist doctrine is that 01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:30.640 they are superiors, that the Jews are first and we are second. 01:01:30.640 --> 01:01:35.200 Now There are passages in scripture that speak to that in a 01:01:35.200 --> 01:01:36.320 f in a fashion. 01:01:36.560 --> 01:01:40.480 In particular, I I commend reading Romans 10 and 11 back to 01:01:40.480 --> 01:01:41.680 back because 01:01:42.560 --> 01:01:45.600 particularly because it's a warning, I think, to many on the right 01:01:45.600 --> 01:01:48.000 today. You know, if you're listening and you think you're kind of 01:01:48.000 --> 01:01:52.240 dissent right or something in that vein, you have certainly seen and 01:01:52.240 --> 01:01:55.920 heard men saying the the glory of Europe is because of our 01:01:55.920 --> 01:01:58.640 genes. And it didn't really have to do with God, where the 01:01:58.640 --> 01:02:01.520 white man were strong and proud and blah blah blah. 01:02:01.520 --> 01:02:04.640 And that's why European history was great. 01:02:04.640 --> 01:02:10.960 When they remove Christianity from European history, they're doing exactly what Romans 01:02:11.040 --> 01:02:12.640 11 warns of us. 01:02:12.640 --> 01:02:15.920 I think that historically there have been many, even in the post-Reformation 01:02:15.920 --> 01:02:20.160 church, including in Luther's Day, who read Romans 11 talking about grafting 01:02:20.160 --> 01:02:25.520 of branches and cutting off of branches as as hope for the 01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:31.360 future restoration of ethnic Jews to come to faith. 01:02:31.360 --> 01:02:32.080 I wish that. 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:34.720 I wish that nothing more than anything in the universe. 01:02:34.720 --> 01:02:37.280 The only cure for a Jew being a Jew and being evil 01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:40.240 continuously is to become Christian. 01:02:40.240 --> 01:02:42.960 The Jew who becomes Christian ceases to be a Jew. 01:02:42.960 --> 01:02:45.840 He's just going to obey God and stop doing all the things 01:02:45.840 --> 01:02:48.560 that I have a problem with and Corey has a problem with. 01:02:48.560 --> 01:02:51.680 We'd have nothing left to complain about with these people if they 01:02:51.680 --> 01:02:52.640 would be Christian. 01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:57.840 So above all men, we heartily wish that Romans 11 were making 01:02:57.840 --> 01:03:01.600 a promise that they would one day become Christian. 01:03:01.600 --> 01:03:04.960 But I think the reason it's important for us today is that 01:03:04.960 --> 01:03:07.920 we should look at that as a warning to the West. 01:03:07.920 --> 01:03:10.800 I think if you look at the warnings Romans eleven, what you'll 01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:14.320 find is that God is saying, I made the promise first to 01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:17.200 the Jews, and when they abandoned me, I cut them off and 01:03:17.200 --> 01:03:18.400 threw them into the fire. 01:03:18.400 --> 01:03:20.320 Do you think you're gonna fare any better? 01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:21.760 That's the gist of it. 01:03:21.920 --> 01:03:26.720 Is a warning from God to the sons of Jasph, to Europe, 01:03:26.720 --> 01:03:30.560 to say you were Christian for a thousand years and then you 01:03:30.560 --> 01:03:31.600 abandoned me. 01:03:31.600 --> 01:03:33.680 Do you think I'm not going to do the same thing to 01:03:33.680 --> 01:03:35.280 you that I did to the Jews? 01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:37.280 And we see the state of the Jews today and we see 01:03:37.280 --> 01:03:38.480 the state of the West. 01:03:38.480 --> 01:03:40.960 I think that it is I'm not going to call it a 01:03:40.960 --> 01:03:43.680 prophecy, but it is certainly applicable. 01:03:43.680 --> 01:03:47.760 What God said is being done to us because we are abandoning 01:03:47.760 --> 01:03:49.440 God just as they did. 01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:54.240 So I don't read Romans eleven and flex on the Jews today. 01:03:54.240 --> 01:03:58.400 I don't that's it's a chastisement to anyone in the West because 01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:01.360 we have done the very thing that God warned us not to 01:04:01.360 --> 01:04:05.600 do. Our fathers inherited the faith and then at some point it 01:04:05.600 --> 01:04:06.720 began to be thrown away. 01:04:06.720 --> 01:04:08.800 And now And now so many in the West today don't think 01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:10.160 it's even even matters. 01:04:10.160 --> 01:04:13.360 And God's warning to us is the same as it was to 01:04:13.360 --> 01:04:15.120 them in Paul's day. 01:04:15.120 --> 01:04:17.600 I'm gonna cut you off and throw you in the fire. 01:04:17.600 --> 01:04:20.480 This is what I do to those who betray me and who 01:04:20.480 --> 01:04:22.720 defy and do not have faith. 01:04:22.720 --> 01:04:26.480 And we should expect to have every bit the same out bad 01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:30.080 outcome that the Jews have had when we continue down this path. 01:04:30.080 --> 01:04:33.520 So theologically, this is a live issue for us. 01:04:33.520 --> 01:04:37.120 I don't think it's about the restoration of the Jews to the 01:04:37.120 --> 01:04:39.120 church, which again would be wonderful. 01:04:39.120 --> 01:04:40.240 I don't think it's going to happen. 01:04:40.240 --> 01:04:42.480 I don't think that Paul is promising that. 01:04:42.480 --> 01:04:46.480 That he specifically says that when he's talking about Israel and the 01:04:46.480 --> 01:04:50.080 promises that God made, he also says that in those days there 01:04:50.080 --> 01:04:53.120 were only seven thousand who didn't bend the knee to Baal. 01:04:53.120 --> 01:04:54.240 God killed the rest. 01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:55.360 The rest are in hell. 01:04:55.360 --> 01:04:57.440 There's only seven thousand who were saved. 01:04:57.440 --> 01:05:00.320 And he says the same in his day, that all the promises 01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:05.360 was were extended to all Jews, only a remnant would have faith. 01:05:05.360 --> 01:05:06.800 And that's always been the case. 01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:11.520 Now there's a substantial remnant in Paul's day who did become Christian 01:05:11.600 --> 01:05:13.840 and basically vanished as Jews. 01:05:13.840 --> 01:05:15.840 They just became wherever they lived in their place. 01:05:15.840 --> 01:05:18.720 They ceased to have their ethnic identity because they just you know, 01:05:18.720 --> 01:05:22.000 they lived in Palestine or Turkey or Iraq or wherever. 01:05:22.000 --> 01:05:24.880 They just became locals and they were Christians in those places. 01:05:24.880 --> 01:05:28.640 I don't think it's coincidental that when you look closely at the 01:05:28.640 --> 01:05:31.520 headlines today, if you can read through the top line stuff, you'll 01:05:31.520 --> 01:05:35.520 find that those very populations are being exterminated today. 01:05:35.520 --> 01:05:38.800 The Christians who trace their roots, the Arab Christians, the you know, 01:05:38.800 --> 01:05:42.880 the the Eastern Eastern, Middle Eastern Christians in those places who have 01:05:42.960 --> 01:05:46.640 roots going back thousands of years, they're being genocided today. 01:05:46.640 --> 01:05:48.400 They're being exterminated. 01:05:48.400 --> 01:05:52.560 They were faithful and they are paying the price for living among 01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:53.760 wicked men. 01:05:53.760 --> 01:05:58.800 So these these promises do plan out pan out over time, not 01:05:58.800 --> 01:06:02.560 in terms of dispensations, and again not in terms of genetics, but 01:06:02.560 --> 01:06:04.800 in terms of faithfulness. 01:06:04.800 --> 01:06:05.040 When 01:06:05.040 --> 01:06:11.040 it comes to hermeneutics, we see a problem with dispensationalists that is 01:06:11.040 --> 01:06:15.680 sort of the inverse of the problem that we see with liberals 01:06:15.680 --> 01:06:19.600 in the academic sense of the term or the theological sense of 01:06:19.600 --> 01:06:24.800 the term, liberals fall off the left side of the horse by 01:06:24.800 --> 01:06:28.880 allegorizing literal books of the Bible. 01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:33.840 The most obvious example, of course, is creation, the days of creation. 01:06:33.840 --> 01:06:37.440 They allegorize those by saying that, oh, well, it's an epic or 01:06:37.440 --> 01:06:41.360 it's an era or there's a gap between the days. 01:06:41.360 --> 01:06:44.640 Whatever it happens to be that they're currently arguing. 01:06:44.640 --> 01:06:47.120 And so they fall off the left side of the horse by 01:06:47.120 --> 01:06:52.160 taking the first five books, say, which are very clearly history books 01:06:52.240 --> 01:06:58.080 written by Moses, almost exclusively literal, and turning them into a metaphor 01:06:58.080 --> 01:06:59.680 or an allegory. 01:06:59.680 --> 01:07:05.360 On the other hand, you have dispensationalists and those adjacent to them, 01:07:05.360 --> 01:07:11.040 who take books like Daniel, parts of Ezekiel, some of the other 01:07:11.200 --> 01:07:18.160 parts of the prophets, Revelation, books that are prophetic, that are metaphorical, 01:07:18.160 --> 01:07:25.040 that are symbolic, and attempt to interpret them in a literalistic fashion. 01:07:25.040 --> 01:07:28.880 And so they fall off the right side of the horse. 01:07:28.880 --> 01:07:33.360 It doesn't matter off of which side of the horse you fall. 01:07:33.360 --> 01:07:34.880 You don't want to fall off the horse. 01:07:34.880 --> 01:07:36.560 You want to stay on the horse. 01:07:36.560 --> 01:07:38.880 Yes, if there's a cliff on one side, you probably prefer to 01:07:38.880 --> 01:07:39.760 fall off the other. 01:07:39.760 --> 01:07:43.120 Sometimes some heresies are worse than others. 01:07:43.120 --> 01:07:47.440 We've seen what liberalism has done to major denominations, but we can 01:07:47.440 --> 01:07:51.760 see what dispensationalism is currently doing to the world. 01:07:51.760 --> 01:07:54.560 So don't fall off either side of the horse. 01:07:54.560 --> 01:07:58.640 You have to interpret the books of Scripture according to the type 01:07:58.640 --> 01:08:01.280 of book it is. 01:08:01.280 --> 01:08:05.360 Because that is something that must always be in your mind when 01:08:05.360 --> 01:08:07.040 you are reading Scripture. 01:08:07.040 --> 01:08:12.080 Scripture is a single book insofar as it is a single work 01:08:12.320 --> 01:08:14.240 from the mind of God. 01:08:14.240 --> 01:08:18.960 It flowed out of the pens of many scribes, of many inspired 01:08:18.960 --> 01:08:25.120 men, but it is the work ultimately of a single mind. 01:08:25.120 --> 01:08:31.600 However, it is a collection of books from that mind. 01:08:31.600 --> 01:08:34.800 God did not write one kind of book. 01:08:34.800 --> 01:08:38.640 God did not write one single book, beginning to end. 01:08:38.640 --> 01:08:42.160 He wrote a collection of books that are intertwined, interrelated. 01:08:42.160 --> 01:08:44.960 We've gone over this previously in other episodes, but he wrote a 01:08:44.960 --> 01:08:49.040 collection of books that are related to each other, but there are 01:08:49.040 --> 01:08:52.320 distinct genres within that collection. 01:08:52.320 --> 01:08:55.920 And so you do not read Genesis in the same way that 01:08:55.920 --> 01:08:57.920 you read Psalms. 01:08:57.920 --> 01:09:00.560 You do not read the Psalms in the same way that you 01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:03.280 read, say, Revelation. 01:09:03.600 --> 01:09:06.720 Matthew is going to be more like Genesis because Matthew is more 01:09:07.200 --> 01:09:10.880 of a literal account, but it contains parables that are going to 01:09:10.880 --> 01:09:15.520 be interpreted differently from the genealogy at the beginning of the book. 01:09:15.520 --> 01:09:19.440 Different genres call for different assessment. 01:09:19.440 --> 01:09:22.960 That doesn't mean that we ignore what the text says. 01:09:22.960 --> 01:09:26.720 In fact, the only way in which you can interpret the text 01:09:26.720 --> 01:09:31.360 literally is to interpret it in the way that God literally meant 01:09:31.360 --> 01:09:34.160 it to be interpreted. 01:09:34.160 --> 01:09:37.360 If you take the text, if you take something that is in 01:09:37.360 --> 01:09:42.640 fact spiritual, or allegorical, or metaphorical, symbolic, what have you, if you 01:09:42.640 --> 01:09:48.000 take that text and attempt to make it a purely literal reading, 01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:50.560 you will get it wrong. 01:09:50.560 --> 01:09:54.640 Christ is not literally a lamb with seven horns. 01:09:54.640 --> 01:09:56.160 That's in scripture. 01:09:56.160 --> 01:10:00.240 You cannot take that in the literalistic sense. 01:10:00.240 --> 01:10:03.600 The same is true, speaking of the number of one thousand, which 01:10:03.600 --> 01:10:07.360 is where we get the millennium supposedly from Revelation, in the Psalms 01:10:07.520 --> 01:10:10.800 it says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. 01:10:11.600 --> 01:10:13.520 God owns the universe. 01:10:13.520 --> 01:10:19.360 God does not own, literally, the cattle on literally a thousand hills. 01:10:19.360 --> 01:10:23.120 You have to interpret that as what it is. 01:10:23.120 --> 01:10:26.000 It is a symbolic use of a number. 01:10:26.000 --> 01:10:30.960 One thousand, of course, just representing complete perfection, God's perfection. 01:10:30.960 --> 01:10:32.880 That is what the number actually means. 01:10:32.880 --> 01:10:35.360 It's ten to the power of three. 01:10:35.360 --> 01:10:40.160 And so that 1,000 years, the supposed millennium, is the church age. 01:10:40.160 --> 01:10:45.360 It is the perfect amount of time from Pentecost to the last 01:10:45.360 --> 01:10:48.880 day in which God will ingather his church. 01:10:49.040 --> 01:10:53.040 It is the church age, that is what the millennium actually is. 01:10:53.040 --> 01:10:57.200 Just as the cattle on a thousand hills is meant to represent 01:10:57.200 --> 01:11:01.600 a number of perfection in that all things belong to God. 01:11:01.600 --> 01:11:05.360 It is a statement of his complete and total ownership over all 01:11:05.360 --> 01:11:06.960 that exists. 01:11:06.960 --> 01:11:08.720 That is how you interpret these things. 01:11:08.720 --> 01:11:11.680 You have to know what they are to know how to interpret 01:11:11.680 --> 01:11:15.920 them. Or else again, you fall off one or the other side 01:11:15.920 --> 01:11:17.680 of the horse. 01:11:19.360 --> 01:11:23.200 Now we'll recommended that you read Romans ten and eleven. 01:11:23.200 --> 01:11:24.480 I would second that. 01:11:24.480 --> 01:11:25.360 Read the entire book. 01:11:25.360 --> 01:11:26.160 Set aside the time. 01:11:26.160 --> 01:11:27.680 It's not that long of a book. 01:11:27.840 --> 01:11:30.960 Yes, it's a very long letter for the era, and it was 01:11:30.960 --> 01:11:35.280 very expensive for the time, but it doesn't take that long to 01:11:35.280 --> 01:11:40.480 read. I will include in the show notes Luther's preface to the 01:11:40.480 --> 01:11:43.440 book of Romans, I believe that is available online. 01:11:43.440 --> 01:11:46.320 I know it's in the Lutheran study Bible, at least in part, 01:11:46.320 --> 01:11:48.160 so if you have that you can just read it. 01:11:48.160 --> 01:11:50.240 But it's worth reading. 01:11:50.240 --> 01:11:54.720 He gives a good summary of how to read Romans, what the 01:11:54.720 --> 01:11:58.400 book of Romans is, why Paul organized it the way that he 01:11:58.400 --> 01:12:02.800 did, how a Christian reads it, and in part it echoes what 01:12:02.800 --> 01:12:07.280 Woe said about the book, because it isn't part of warning. 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:07.600 Part of 01:12:07.600 --> 01:12:11.840 the reason that I said chapters 10 and 11 and not 9 01:12:12.000 --> 01:12:15.040 is I'm going to read most of 9 right now because it's 01:12:15.520 --> 01:12:19.600 there's so many different places in the New Testament where if someone 01:12:19.600 --> 01:12:21.920 just comes along and they have the Holy Spirit, they're a Christian 01:12:22.320 --> 01:12:27.040 and they're reading this stuff, they could never possibly conclude that on 01:12:27.040 --> 01:12:30.400 one hand you have Israel that belongs to God, and on the 01:12:30.400 --> 01:12:35.360 other hand you have the church that also belongs to God. 01:12:35.360 --> 01:12:41.840 Either the is either Israel is the church or Israel is damned. 01:12:41.840 --> 01:12:44.880 Because the church is the whole universe of the elect. 01:12:44.880 --> 01:12:48.240 Period. That's what the elect means, is what the chosen means. 01:12:48.240 --> 01:12:52.880 Those who were chosen in the Old Testament were elected unto salvation. 01:12:52.880 --> 01:12:55.680 They were given the gift of faith and they received the gift 01:12:55.680 --> 01:12:56.880 of salvation. 01:12:56.880 --> 01:13:00.880 Jews, Ninevites, wherever they were, when the word of God came to 01:13:00.880 --> 01:13:04.000 them and they repented, they were saved. 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:06.400 So and read from Romans nine now. 01:13:06.400 --> 01:13:09.200 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known 01:13:09.200 --> 01:13:13.440 his power, has endured much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for induct 01:13:13.600 --> 01:13:17.360 and destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory 01:13:17.360 --> 01:13:21.520 for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even 01:13:21.520 --> 01:13:25.040 us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also 01:13:25.040 --> 01:13:26.320 from the Gentiles. 01:13:26.320 --> 01:13:30.320 As indeed he says in Hosea, Those who were not my people 01:13:30.320 --> 01:13:34.000 I will call my people, and her who is not beloved I 01:13:34.000 --> 01:13:35.280 will call beloved. 01:13:35.280 --> 01:13:37.600 And in the very place where it was said to them, You 01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:41.520 are not my people, there they will be called sons of the 01:13:41.520 --> 01:13:42.720 living God. 01:13:42.720 --> 01:13:46.720 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons 01:13:46.720 --> 01:13:49.680 of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant 01:13:49.680 --> 01:13:53.200 of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his 01:13:53.360 --> 01:13:56.000 sentence upon the earth fully and without delay. 01:13:56.000 --> 01:13:59.680 And Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts has not left had 01:13:59.680 --> 01:14:03.040 not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become 01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:04.560 like Gomorrah. 01:14:04.560 --> 01:14:06.160 What shall we say then? 01:14:06.160 --> 01:14:09.920 The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is 01:14:09.920 --> 01:14:13.520 a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel who pursued a 01:14:13.520 --> 01:14:16.800 law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that 01:14:16.800 --> 01:14:18.800 law. Why? 01:14:18.800 --> 01:14:22.400 Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it 01:14:22.400 --> 01:14:26.320 were based on works, they have stumbled over the stumbling stone as 01:14:26.320 --> 01:14:27.280 it is written. 01:14:27.280 --> 01:14:30.800 Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a 01:14:30.800 --> 01:14:35.040 rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put 01:14:35.040 --> 01:14:37.200 to shame. 01:14:37.200 --> 01:14:42.480 So what is the difference between the church and the Israel of 01:14:42.480 --> 01:14:45.600 the Old Testament that is excluded from the promise. 01:14:45.600 --> 01:14:48.720 It's whether or not they stumbled on the stone of stumbling. 01:14:48.720 --> 01:14:52.640 When Jesus came and fulfilled all of the promises and prophecies, there 01:14:52.640 --> 01:14:55.200 were many Jews who believed and converted. 01:14:55.200 --> 01:14:55.920 They left 01:14:56.800 --> 01:15:00.720 the Phariseaic world and they became Christians. 01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:04.240 But it was a continuation of the faith that they had held 01:15:04.560 --> 01:15:06.240 under a new covenant. 01:15:06.240 --> 01:15:07.760 And that was the shift that occurred. 01:15:07.760 --> 01:15:09.040 It wasn't a new religion. 01:15:09.040 --> 01:15:13.360 It was that Jesus came to fulfill all the law and all 01:15:13.360 --> 01:15:16.720 the testimonies of the Old Testament. 01:15:16.720 --> 01:15:19.840 They were then freed from that, and we are freed from that. 01:15:19.840 --> 01:15:24.000 The burdens there were placed on them, the ceremonial burdens going to 01:15:24.000 --> 01:15:25.760 the temple, were replaced. 01:15:25.760 --> 01:15:27.680 They were removed entirely. 01:15:27.680 --> 01:15:33.360 And God finalized what he said on the cross when Christ said, 01:15:33.360 --> 01:15:34.480 It is finished. 01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:38.080 And remember at the moment that Christ said that, what happened? 01:15:38.080 --> 01:15:38.960 He died. 01:15:38.960 --> 01:15:40.960 There was a great earthquake. 01:15:40.960 --> 01:15:46.640 And I think equally important symbolically with the rest, the temple curtain 01:15:46.640 --> 01:15:47.840 was torn in two. 01:15:48.160 --> 01:15:50.000 Now this wasn't like a curtain in your house. 01:15:50.000 --> 01:15:54.080 This was a huge, incredibly tall, incredibly thick, heavy curtain. 01:15:54.080 --> 01:15:56.320 It was torn into like it was nothing. 01:15:56.320 --> 01:16:01.280 And this is important because that curtain separated the Holy of Holies, 01:16:01.280 --> 01:16:05.440 in which God's special presence on earth in the temple, the reason 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:10.000 for the temple, the reason for the sacrifices, was contained within the 01:16:10.000 --> 01:16:12.640 Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and 01:16:12.640 --> 01:16:16.640 where God's special presence existed. 01:16:16.640 --> 01:16:19.600 God left that place when Christ died. 01:16:19.600 --> 01:16:22.880 Because when He said it was finished, it was over. 01:16:22.880 --> 01:16:26.960 The temple sacrificial system that Jesus had participated in when he was 01:16:26.960 --> 01:16:30.560 alive, he had fulfilled all of those requirements. 01:16:30.560 --> 01:16:34.720 When he died, that ended, and God left the temple. 01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:38.080 And then forty years later he completed it by using Titus to 01:16:38.080 --> 01:16:41.920 destroy and sack the temple and to kill and scatter and destroy 01:16:41.920 --> 01:16:44.400 the Jews who were no longer Christian. 01:16:44.400 --> 01:16:47.920 They were still trying to hang on to something that God had 01:16:47.920 --> 01:16:50.720 said, This is over, this period has ended. 01:16:50.720 --> 01:16:53.760 I've given you a new covenant in Christ in his blood, the 01:16:53.760 --> 01:16:54.240 perfect blood 01:16:55.120 --> 01:16:59.200 for which the blood of all the previous sacrifices were only typological. 01:16:59.200 --> 01:17:03.680 And there are numerous places in the New Testament that specifically says 01:17:03.680 --> 01:17:06.560 that the blood of beasts can never save anyone. 01:17:06.560 --> 01:17:08.160 They can't forgive your sins. 01:17:08.160 --> 01:17:12.400 Those Those were there pointing to Christ's atoning sacrifice. 01:17:12.400 --> 01:17:13.840 It's typological. 01:17:13.840 --> 01:17:16.000 The smaller points to the greater. 01:17:16.000 --> 01:17:19.920 And there's nothing greater than Christ's atoning blood on the cross. 01:17:19.920 --> 01:17:24.800 So when the Jews stumbled on the stumbling block, it was Jesus 01:17:24.800 --> 01:17:28.960 coming to them as had been promised as their Messiah, who for 01:17:28.960 --> 01:17:33.600 us is the Christ, because it's just Greek versus Hebrew. 01:17:33.600 --> 01:17:34.960 It was over. 01:17:34.960 --> 01:17:37.200 No. They rejected it. 01:17:37.200 --> 01:17:40.800 And so to this day, they continue to reject it overly. 01:17:41.440 --> 01:17:45.680 You lose legal standing if you are an Israeli citizen and you 01:17:45.680 --> 01:17:47.360 convert to Christianity. 01:17:47.360 --> 01:17:50.560 If you attempt to proselytize in the state of Israel, you will 01:17:50.560 --> 01:17:54.000 go to prison or you'll be deported because it's illegal to do 01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:58.160 so. They have Muslims there and they'll permit Christians to come and 01:17:58.160 --> 01:18:01.920 to spend lots of money as part of their grift, getting people 01:18:01.920 --> 01:18:05.120 to come as tourists, but you're not allowed to stay, you're not 01:18:05.120 --> 01:18:06.400 allowed to be a Christian there. 01:18:06.400 --> 01:18:07.600 That is forbidden. 01:18:07.600 --> 01:18:11.280 Why? Because they continue to reject Christ to this day. 01:18:11.280 --> 01:18:15.440 And so this dispensationalist stuff that tries to say that there's an 01:18:15.440 --> 01:18:18.320 Israel on one hand, and yet by the way, it's clearly the 01:18:18.320 --> 01:18:19.840 state of Israel today. 01:18:19.840 --> 01:18:22.640 And on the other hand, just forget about the Jesus stuff. 01:18:22.640 --> 01:18:25.360 Like that's that's for us, that's for the church, but it's not 01:18:25.360 --> 01:18:29.120 really even as important as what's going on with these Jews. 01:18:29.120 --> 01:18:31.200 That's a satanic inversion. 01:18:31.200 --> 01:18:34.800 That is that is a complete inversion of the Christian faith. 01:18:34.800 --> 01:18:38.720 And yet there's so many who call themselves Christians today that are 01:18:38.720 --> 01:18:40.080 full bore with this stuff. 01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:43.200 And they're doing it with a clean conscience, which is tragic. 01:18:43.200 --> 01:18:47.440 This is theologically bankrupt, and it's completely at odds with all of 01:18:47.440 --> 01:18:51.120 Scripture. We're We're not going to belabor this by reading fifty verses 01:18:51.120 --> 01:18:55.360 or fifty passages, but we very easily could. 01:18:55.360 --> 01:18:58.160 There's one last passage I want to read because it's it's often 01:18:58.160 --> 01:19:01.200 cited as one of the clear proof texts for for 01:19:02.080 --> 01:19:06.080 for this notion that there's Israel and then separately there's Christianity. 01:19:06.080 --> 01:19:08.560 It's at the very end of Galatians. 01:19:08.560 --> 01:19:11.680 It's after Paul says you can tell I'm writing this with my 01:19:11.680 --> 01:19:12.400 own hand. 01:19:12.400 --> 01:19:14.480 Paul concludes the letter. 01:19:14.480 --> 01:19:16.960 It is those who want to make a good showing in the 01:19:16.960 --> 01:19:20.400 flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order 01:19:20.400 --> 01:19:23.440 that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 01:19:23.440 --> 01:19:26.960 For even among those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the 01:19:26.960 --> 01:19:30.480 law, but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast 01:19:30.480 --> 01:19:31.760 in your flesh. 01:19:31.760 --> 01:19:34.640 But far be it for me to boast except in the cross 01:19:34.640 --> 01:19:38.400 of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified 01:19:38.400 --> 01:19:42.400 to me and I to the world, for neither circumcision counts for 01:19:42.400 --> 01:19:46.000 anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 01:19:46.000 --> 01:19:49.920 And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy 01:19:49.920 --> 01:19:53.040 be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. 01:19:53.040 --> 01:19:55.760 And then there's a couple of lines he finishes the epistle. 01:19:55.760 --> 01:19:57.840 This is the very end of Galatians. 01:19:57.840 --> 01:20:00.960 There's several key things that we've said numerous times. 01:20:00.960 --> 01:20:03.040 I want to just hammer home the point here. 01:20:03.040 --> 01:20:05.440 One, this is at the end of the epistle. 01:20:05.440 --> 01:20:08.080 No one who reads all of Galatians. 01:20:08.080 --> 01:20:09.920 And again, you should just go sit down and read the whole 01:20:09.920 --> 01:20:10.960 thing. It's not that long. 01:20:10.960 --> 01:20:14.560 It you can do it in 15, 20 minutes at the outside. 01:20:14.560 --> 01:20:18.240 You could not possibly read Galatians and come to the conclusion of 01:20:18.240 --> 01:20:22.160 the dispensationalists that when Paul says peace and Peace and mercy be 01:20:22.160 --> 01:20:24.800 upon them and upon the Israel of God. 01:20:24.800 --> 01:20:26.800 That somehow they're talking about two different things. 01:20:26.800 --> 01:20:30.960 That the Israel of God is in one category and then what's 01:20:30.960 --> 01:20:32.240 in the other category? 01:20:32.240 --> 01:20:37.040 Well, if you go back and read, he says, Far be it 01:20:37.040 --> 01:20:40.320 from me to boast in anything except the cross of our Lord 01:20:40.320 --> 01:20:42.400 Christ Jesus. 01:20:42.880 --> 01:20:46.880 Well, is is that the Israel of God? 01:20:46.880 --> 01:20:50.480 Not by the dispensationalist standard, but that's exactly the one and only 01:20:50.480 --> 01:20:53.040 Israel of God that Paul is referring to. 01:20:53.200 --> 01:20:56.880 It's very clear in the rest of the epistle because Galatians is 01:20:56.880 --> 01:21:01.360 also very heavily about the grafting of branches and about inheritance. 01:21:01.360 --> 01:21:05.520 He's talking about how we are heirs of God and co heirs 01:21:05.520 --> 01:21:07.920 with Christ because we have been adopted. 01:21:07.920 --> 01:21:11.440 There's a lot of adoption language talking about Christ being our brother 01:21:11.520 --> 01:21:16.880 and therefore we have legal rights as brothers according to adoption. 01:21:16.880 --> 01:21:20.720 No one can possibly get through this epistle and think that somehow 01:21:20.720 --> 01:21:26.000 there's some other separate version of God's people apart from the one 01:21:26.080 --> 01:21:29.680 that boasts in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. 01:21:29.680 --> 01:21:32.000 It's just it it's it's absurd. 01:21:32.000 --> 01:21:35.600 And frankly they they they hinge the whole thing on and peace 01:21:35.680 --> 01:21:39.040 be and mercy be upon them and upon Israel of God. 01:21:39.040 --> 01:21:42.720 Well, I might say that Cori is my friend and my brother. 01:21:42.720 --> 01:21:44.640 Does that mean that there are two Cories? 01:21:44.640 --> 01:21:47.760 No, it means that there's one man who's two different things. 01:21:47.760 --> 01:21:50.880 And rhetorically when you look at the very end of this letter, 01:21:50.880 --> 01:21:53.360 Paul's just, he's ending with a flourish. 01:21:53.360 --> 01:21:55.840 And for all those who walk by this rule, peace and mercy 01:21:55.840 --> 01:21:57.920 be upon them and upon the Israel of God. 01:21:57.920 --> 01:22:01.760 It's just he's he's raising his hands and saying everybody who's a 01:22:01.760 --> 01:22:05.600 believer, he's not invoking a separate group of people. 01:22:05.600 --> 01:22:09.520 So no natural reading of this passage or the certainly in the 01:22:09.520 --> 01:22:12.560 context of the book would ever cause someone to say, well, actually, 01:22:12.560 --> 01:22:15.520 yeah, this means that Israel is a separate thing, and that's what 01:22:15.520 --> 01:22:17.040 I see on a map today. 01:22:17.040 --> 01:22:18.080 It's retarded. 01:22:18.080 --> 01:22:19.280 There's another word for it. 01:22:19.280 --> 01:22:21.120 It's just, it's, it's dumb. 01:22:21.120 --> 01:22:23.040 It's inexcusably dumb. 01:22:23.040 --> 01:22:26.960 And yet this sort of laziness is the predicate for believing all 01:22:26.960 --> 01:22:29.520 the other dispensationalist beliefs. 01:22:29.520 --> 01:22:32.800 You know, so when we call it a heresy, we're not we're 01:22:32.800 --> 01:22:34.480 not playing games here. 01:22:34.480 --> 01:22:37.840 They reject the plain words of scripture throughout. 01:22:37.840 --> 01:22:39.920 Like I said, we could s we could spend an hour and 01:22:39.920 --> 01:22:43.520 a half just reading the passages that lay bear how stupid it 01:22:43.520 --> 01:22:47.680 is and impossible and faithless to say that there's Israel on one 01:22:47.680 --> 01:22:49.520 hand and there's a church on the other. 01:22:49.520 --> 01:22:51.600 Elect is elect is elect. 01:22:51.600 --> 01:22:52.960 Elect is chosen. 01:22:52.960 --> 01:22:55.920 Chosen are the people of God who are in the church, who 01:22:55.920 --> 01:22:59.680 are the bride of Christ, those are Christians. 01:22:59.680 --> 01:23:00.720 All of them. 01:23:00.720 --> 01:23:03.360 That's why we always make the rhetorical point of saying that Adam 01:23:03.360 --> 01:23:07.040 is a Christian and Noah's a Christian and Mary's a Christian. 01:23:07.040 --> 01:23:12.400 Some of them were also Hebrews by birth, but it was their 01:23:12.400 --> 01:23:14.320 faith in God that saved them. 01:23:14.320 --> 01:23:17.040 And that is why definitionally they're Christian. 01:23:17.040 --> 01:23:21.120 When you start having these other dispensations and these other separate things, 01:23:21.120 --> 01:23:23.280 what are you fundamentally doing? 01:23:23.280 --> 01:23:25.280 You're removing God from the picture. 01:23:25.280 --> 01:23:28.080 You're saying, well, some people don't need God. 01:23:28.080 --> 01:23:30.560 Some people, you know, like God is just delivering it to 'em 01:23:30.560 --> 01:23:32.240 in some other way and they don't even know it. 01:23:32.240 --> 01:23:35.280 And even if they hate and despise God to this day, they're 01:23:35.280 --> 01:23:38.080 still gonna have something because God keeps his promises. 01:23:38.080 --> 01:23:41.360 Well, the passages where God talks about keeping his promises, he makes 01:23:41.440 --> 01:23:45.040 very clear that I'll keep promises to those who are faithful to 01:23:45.040 --> 01:23:46.800 me, but I'll find more people. 01:23:46.800 --> 01:23:49.440 If you don't want to be my people, okay. 01:23:49.600 --> 01:23:52.400 In Hebrews 80 talks about the old covenant and the new covenant 01:23:52.480 --> 01:23:53.840 and it's made very clear. 01:23:53.840 --> 01:23:57.760 When one set of people abandoned me, okay, it wasn't that the 01:23:57.760 --> 01:24:01.360 covenant failed because God didn't do a good job with it, it 01:24:01.360 --> 01:24:02.640 was that they rejected it. 01:24:02.640 --> 01:24:05.600 And so he needed a new people of the covenant, and that's 01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:07.680 us. That's all it means. 01:24:07.680 --> 01:24:12.480 And so all the errors are downstream from abusing and misreading simple, 01:24:12.480 --> 01:24:14.560 clear passages that are reinforced. 01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:17.760 Like it's not like this one this one place here and there's 01:24:17.680 --> 01:24:20.240 one other place somewhere else that maybe you could see them being 01:24:20.240 --> 01:24:20.960 the same. 01:24:20.960 --> 01:24:22.480 It's consistent throughout. 01:24:22.480 --> 01:24:25.360 If you just read the New Testament, you will never reach these 01:24:25.360 --> 01:24:28.240 conclusions. That's why I I say that a lot of these people 01:24:28.240 --> 01:24:31.280 are just dumb and I'm I'm I'm sorry, I don't want to 01:24:31.280 --> 01:24:35.600 be abusive, but like this is not it's not an intelligent position. 01:24:35.600 --> 01:24:39.760 But you know, intelligence aside, it's one that's at odds of scripture. 01:24:39.760 --> 01:24:44.080 And whether you're reading intelligently or you're reading simply, you can read 01:24:44.080 --> 01:24:44.720 scripture simply. 01:24:45.120 --> 01:24:45.760 Please do. 01:24:45.760 --> 01:24:48.800 I I most people should just stick to the simple reading of 01:24:48.800 --> 01:24:51.520 scripture. Even if you make an error, it's going to be far 01:24:51.520 --> 01:24:54.880 less bad than the elaborate ones made by the clever people who 01:24:54.880 --> 01:24:58.400 want to come in and just layer on so many ridiculous things 01:24:58.560 --> 01:25:02.000 that they end up creating more distance between themselves and God. 01:25:02.000 --> 01:25:04.880 That's not why he gave us these words. 01:25:04.880 --> 01:25:11.360 Never underestimate the pettiness and the ability to hold a grudge of 01:25:11.360 --> 01:25:13.360 the Jews. 01:25:13.360 --> 01:25:18.160 And the reason that I say this is to emphasize what Woe 01:25:18.160 --> 01:25:24.080 said about the fact that so called modern Israel is founded in 01:25:24.080 --> 01:25:31.280 large part and sustained by an explicit rejection of Christ and a 01:25:31.280 --> 01:25:33.840 hatred of Christ. 01:25:33.840 --> 01:25:39.120 An example of this in their mathematics textbooks, how they teach math 01:25:39.120 --> 01:25:43.360 to their children, how they write their math, they do not use 01:25:43.360 --> 01:25:44.960 the plus symbol. 01:25:45.360 --> 01:25:49.840 They use what is properly called the falsum or the up tack, 01:25:49.840 --> 01:25:52.480 depending on how you're using it really. 01:25:52.480 --> 01:25:55.120 It's an upside down T. 01:25:55.120 --> 01:25:58.800 They get rid of the lower part of the plus symbol because 01:25:58.800 --> 01:26:00.480 it looks like a cross. 01:26:00.640 --> 01:26:03.440 Doesn't even look that much like a cross, quite frankly, because the 01:26:03.440 --> 01:26:06.640 cross the lower part's supposed to be longer, but it's enough like 01:26:06.640 --> 01:26:09.200 a cross that they get rid of it. 01:26:09.200 --> 01:26:12.880 This is not the only case of this. 01:26:12.880 --> 01:26:19.520 In some cases, when Jews have immigrated, they have been asked to 01:26:19.520 --> 01:26:19.840 sign 01:26:20.800 --> 01:26:23.840 a particular piece of paper because that is what you do when 01:26:23.840 --> 01:26:28.000 someone immigrates to your country, and in some cases they would refuse 01:26:28.000 --> 01:26:30.960 to use an X because sometimes if you're illiterate you just make 01:26:30.960 --> 01:26:34.720 an X, well that also looks too much like a cross. 01:26:34.720 --> 01:26:39.920 This is the level of pettiness and hatred that these people have 01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:41.680 for Christ. 01:26:41.680 --> 01:26:45.920 And dispensationalism says that we're supposed to support them. 01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:48.000 That's not what Scripture says. 01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:51.440 Scripture says that we are to support our brothers, both those according 01:26:51.440 --> 01:26:55.680 to blood and those according to faith, particularly those who are brothers 01:26:55.680 --> 01:26:57.600 according to both. 01:26:57.600 --> 01:27:03.680 Supporting a foreign nation that is hostile to Christianity is observing neither 01:27:03.680 --> 01:27:06.000 of those injunctions in Scripture. 01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:08.880 It is not the Christian thing to do, and yet it is 01:27:08.880 --> 01:27:12.800 what every dispensationalist says that we are supposed to do. 01:27:12.800 --> 01:27:16.560 They all, to a man, particularly amongst the teachers, command 01:27:17.520 --> 01:27:24.640 Christians, basically, to virtually worship Israel because anything that is 01:27:24.640 --> 01:27:30.480 against the so called nation of Israel, is seen as blasphemy, is 01:27:30.480 --> 01:27:33.600 seen as a rejection of the Christian faith. 01:27:33.600 --> 01:27:37.200 And really that's a good working definition of what a heresy is. 01:27:37.200 --> 01:27:40.960 A heresy is a false teaching that rises to the level of 01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:42.560 a litmus test. 01:27:42.560 --> 01:27:46.400 If a false teaching is used as a test of whether or 01:27:46.400 --> 01:27:51.760 not someone is Christian, then that false teaching has become a heresy. 01:27:51.760 --> 01:27:56.560 Now in the broader sense, of course, all false teaching is heresy, 01:27:56.560 --> 01:28:01.120 because it is all blasphemy, but there are different levels of blasphemy, 01:28:01.120 --> 01:28:03.600 the same as there are different levels of sin. 01:28:03.600 --> 01:28:08.720 Certainly the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is more egregious than saying 01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:12.080 something that is a minor falsehood as it were about God, not 01:28:12.080 --> 01:28:14.640 to say that any falsehood is minor, but I have to speak 01:28:14.640 --> 01:28:17.680 in human terms to be understandable. 01:28:17.680 --> 01:28:18.320 But this is another 01:28:19.200 --> 01:28:20.160 case of 01:28:21.120 --> 01:28:26.480 falling off one or the other side of the horse. 01:28:26.480 --> 01:28:30.800 On the one hand, the Israelites thought they were special. 01:28:30.800 --> 01:28:36.160 They thought, Abraham is our father, certainly we are saved by our 01:28:36.160 --> 01:28:41.920 blood. Christ very clearly rebuked them, as did John the Baptist. 01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:46.640 God can raise up for Abraham new sons from these stones. 01:28:46.640 --> 01:28:49.200 They were not saved by their blood. 01:28:49.200 --> 01:28:52.080 They should not have boasted in their blood. 01:28:52.080 --> 01:28:55.760 It was not wrong for them to be proud of their heritage. 01:28:55.760 --> 01:28:58.720 Every man should be proud of his heritage 01:28:59.600 --> 01:29:02.720 in so far as there is good in that heritage. 01:29:02.720 --> 01:29:06.400 And of course you must according to the fourth commandment honor your 01:29:06.400 --> 01:29:10.240 father and your mother, and that includes grandparents, great grandparents, your ancestors, 01:29:10.240 --> 01:29:15.280 all the way back, indeed through Noah to Adam. 01:29:15.280 --> 01:29:18.000 But it does not give you a special place before God. 01:29:18.000 --> 01:29:19.920 You are not saved by your blood. 01:29:19.920 --> 01:29:24.400 We continue to state this bluntly, because it is a problem for 01:29:24.400 --> 01:29:27.680 some on the right, but more than it is a problem on 01:29:27.680 --> 01:29:30.800 the right, because quite frankly, it's not that big of a problem. 01:29:30.800 --> 01:29:34.960 It's a big problem in terms of its import, but not in 01:29:34.960 --> 01:29:37.120 terms of the widespread nature of it. 01:29:37.360 --> 01:29:40.880 Only a handful of people think it. 01:29:40.880 --> 01:29:43.840 But it is more of a problem because it is a constant 01:29:43.840 --> 01:29:47.280 accusation from our adversaries and enemies. 01:29:47.280 --> 01:29:49.520 They say that we think we're saved by our blood, and that's 01:29:49.520 --> 01:29:50.640 the second part of this. 01:29:50.640 --> 01:29:52.560 That's falling off the other side of the horse. 01:29:52.560 --> 01:29:54.880 I won't say which one's right and which one's left. 01:29:54.880 --> 01:29:57.840 You decide that for yourself in this case. 01:29:57.840 --> 01:30:01.040 But the other one would be those who think that simply because 01:30:01.040 --> 01:30:07.280 we're white we are somehow immune to these things, that we're inoculated 01:30:07.280 --> 01:30:11.440 against apostasy or whatever it happens to be, that everything will be 01:30:11.440 --> 01:30:13.840 good simply because we're white. 01:30:13.840 --> 01:30:17.200 And if you just had white people, everything would be great. 01:30:17.200 --> 01:30:18.720 And that's not the case. 01:30:18.720 --> 01:30:23.440 Look at the actual history of various white nations when they were 01:30:23.440 --> 01:30:25.440 not Christian. 01:30:25.440 --> 01:30:29.440 Yes, they were certainly better off than most of those in Africa, 01:30:29.440 --> 01:30:32.640 than basically any of those in Africa, quite frankly. 01:30:32.640 --> 01:30:35.280 But that doesn't mean that things were good. 01:30:35.280 --> 01:30:38.080 Look at how the Romans treated their slaves. 01:30:38.080 --> 01:30:40.400 Slavery itself isn't a sin. 01:30:40.400 --> 01:30:44.320 Abusing your slaves in the way the Romans did certainly was. 01:30:44.320 --> 01:30:48.640 Look at how, in some of the far northern reaches, disabled children 01:30:48.640 --> 01:30:49.680 were treated. 01:30:49.680 --> 01:30:51.360 They were left out to die. 01:30:51.360 --> 01:30:55.200 They were exposed, as it was called, was death by exposure. 01:30:55.680 --> 01:30:59.200 That's certainly not Christian, that's not permissible. 01:30:59.200 --> 01:31:04.880 Euthanasia, of that variety at the very least, is not permissible, because 01:31:04.880 --> 01:31:08.240 that is of course infanticide. 01:31:08.640 --> 01:31:16.880 That is the reality of any human group without God, without Christ. 01:31:16.880 --> 01:31:21.200 It doesn't matter if you're black, if you're white, if you're Asian, 01:31:21.200 --> 01:31:24.880 whatever you happen to be, your nation is going to go down 01:31:24.880 --> 01:31:28.320 the drain if you are not Christian. 01:31:28.320 --> 01:31:32.080 You will get worse with time, you will stray further and further 01:31:32.080 --> 01:31:36.800 from God, the longer you are away from Christ. 01:31:36.800 --> 01:31:42.240 Yes, some will fall farther will fall further and faster. 01:31:42.240 --> 01:31:45.440 But that doesn't mean that you are in a good position if 01:31:45.440 --> 01:31:48.080 you are If you are the ones who fell only a little 01:31:48.080 --> 01:31:52.320 ways, because any falling away from God, in which you do not 01:31:52.320 --> 01:31:55.600 return to him, eventuates in hell. 01:31:55.600 --> 01:31:59.120 And so for those who think that we can save the West 01:31:59.360 --> 01:32:04.480 by just returning it to being ethnically pure or whatever term they 01:32:04.480 --> 01:32:08.960 want to use are deeply mistaken. 01:32:08.960 --> 01:32:13.600 Because if you are just producing more Europeans, and they aren't Christian, 01:32:13.600 --> 01:32:18.320 all you're doing is filling hell with your brothers and sisters. 01:32:18.320 --> 01:32:22.640 And quite frankly, that is a worse future than simply going extinct. 01:32:22.640 --> 01:32:25.600 I would rather there were no more Europeans, then we return to 01:32:25.600 --> 01:32:32.640 paganism. Because filling hell with your own people is the worst possible 01:32:32.640 --> 01:32:35.360 thing you can do. 01:32:35.360 --> 01:32:38.640 Contrast that with what Paul says of his people. 01:32:38.640 --> 01:32:41.600 He would have had his name stricken from the book of life 01:32:41.680 --> 01:32:43.600 if it would have saved his own people. 01:32:43.600 --> 01:32:46.880 That's what it means, to love your own people. 01:32:46.880 --> 01:32:52.880 Damning them all to hell is certainly not loving them. 01:32:52.880 --> 01:32:58.560 But when it comes to dispensationalism and this particular belief 01:32:59.840 --> 01:33:04.080 that there are two ways to God if we're being uncharitable, and 01:33:04.080 --> 01:33:07.040 quite frankly, it's not even that uncharitable, because many of them have 01:33:07.040 --> 01:33:08.880 come out and said that. 01:33:08.880 --> 01:33:11.760 Not in so many words, but they'll essentially say the Jews have 01:33:11.760 --> 01:33:13.440 another way. 01:33:13.440 --> 01:33:17.520 On the one hand, this accuses Christ, accuses God of being a 01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:26.720 polygynist. Polygyny is not morally impermissible for men. 01:33:26.720 --> 01:33:29.120 God is not a polygynist. 01:33:29.120 --> 01:33:30.720 God is God has one bride. 01:33:30.720 --> 01:33:32.720 Scripture is very clear about this. 01:33:32.720 --> 01:33:38.240 God's bride, Christ's bride, is the church. 01:33:38.240 --> 01:33:40.480 She is the only bride of Christ. 01:33:40.480 --> 01:33:42.000 There is no other. 01:33:42.000 --> 01:33:46.560 And that is why when we used to have statuary and proper 01:33:46.560 --> 01:33:52.160 design and aesthetics for our churches, you had ecclesia and synagoga somewhere 01:33:52.160 --> 01:33:54.240 outside the church. 01:33:54.240 --> 01:34:00.000 You had ecclesia, the church triumphant, head held high, holding scripture, and 01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:06.080 you had synagoga blinded with usually the Old Testament falling out of 01:34:06.080 --> 01:34:10.640 her hand, possibly with a snake somewhere incorporated as well. 01:34:10.640 --> 01:34:14.480 Because that is the proper Christian view of these things. 01:34:14.480 --> 01:34:18.640 You have the bride of Christ, you have the wise virgins, and 01:34:18.640 --> 01:34:22.880 then you have the synagogue that rejected Christ, you have the wicked, 01:34:22.880 --> 01:34:24.880 foolish virgins. 01:34:24.880 --> 01:34:28.400 There is no second way to God. 01:34:28.400 --> 01:34:29.840 It is Christ alone. 01:34:29.840 --> 01:34:34.480 Scripture is abundantly clear on this, and so any theology that even 01:34:34.880 --> 01:34:40.480 hints that there is a second way, is obviously false, is obviously 01:34:40.480 --> 01:34:44.960 anti Christian, not merely unchristian, but anti Christian. 01:34:44.960 --> 01:34:49.040 And that is why we call dispensationalism a heresy. 01:34:49.280 --> 01:34:54.080 it is a particularly vile heresy, not only for the damage it 01:34:54.080 --> 01:34:58.320 has done to the church, not only for how many souls it 01:34:58.320 --> 01:35:02.400 has shipwrecked and destroyed, but for also what it continues to do 01:35:02.400 --> 01:35:09.440 in the world, because as Wo stated earlier, it has geopolitical consequences. 01:35:09.440 --> 01:35:13.760 It is not only a damning heresy, if you believe the extreme 01:35:13.760 --> 01:35:16.320 version, I'll call it of what it teaches. 01:35:16.320 --> 01:35:19.200 But it is also a destructive heresy. 01:35:19.200 --> 01:35:23.680 It destroys the church, it destroys nations, it is tearing apart the 01:35:23.680 --> 01:35:26.480 world. And we are not being extreme. 01:35:26.480 --> 01:35:28.640 We are not being hyperbolic in what we are saying. 01:35:28.640 --> 01:35:31.440 If anything, we are understating the case. 01:35:31.440 --> 01:35:37.520 Because without dispensationalism, you would not have the power behind Zionism that 01:35:37.520 --> 01:35:38.400 we see today. 01:35:38.400 --> 01:35:43.360 Without Zionism, you would not have the complete and utter disaster that 01:35:43.360 --> 01:35:47.360 has been the last two hundred years or so in the West. 01:35:47.360 --> 01:35:51.840 We are in the position in which we find ourselves today, in 01:35:51.840 --> 01:35:55.920 no small part due to dispensationalism. 01:35:55.920 --> 01:35:59.120 There are many other factors, of course, and we've gone over those 01:35:59.120 --> 01:36:02.000 in various other episodes, and we'll go over more of them in 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:02.800 the future. 01:36:02.800 --> 01:36:07.680 But dispensationalism has played an outsized role, and it continues to do 01:36:08.320 --> 01:36:14.880 so particularly in the United States, so particularly in our context. 01:36:14.880 --> 01:36:17.280 And so there are a couple of teachings 01:36:18.160 --> 01:36:21.520 of the dispensationalists that I would like to cover. 01:36:21.520 --> 01:36:25.600 I would like to refute what they teach on these specifically. 01:36:25.600 --> 01:36:28.880 As we said, we are not going to go into 01:36:29.840 --> 01:36:31.040 all of the points. 01:36:31.040 --> 01:36:34.000 We are not going to examine the minutia. 01:36:34.000 --> 01:36:38.080 We're not going to take a magnifying glass to what the dispensationalists 01:36:38.080 --> 01:36:41.760 teach. Not least of all because they all disagree with each other 01:36:41.840 --> 01:36:46.080 and there's no coherent statement of dispensationalism to which they would all 01:36:46.080 --> 01:36:49.920 subscribe. It's the same problem we will have when we go over 01:36:49.920 --> 01:36:53.440 the EO in a future episode. 01:36:53.440 --> 01:36:57.760 Because the classic dispensationalists don't agree with the revised or modified, whichever 01:36:57.760 --> 01:37:01.600 term you prefer and they don't agree with the progressives. 01:37:01.600 --> 01:37:05.120 Essentially, what you have there, just for those who want a 01:37:06.480 --> 01:37:12.240 sort of idea of how they differ, you have an increasing incorporation 01:37:12.240 --> 01:37:17.440 of covenantal or covenant theology into dispensationalism. 01:37:17.440 --> 01:37:22.240 You have not so much of it in classical dispensationalism, you have 01:37:22.240 --> 01:37:26.480 more in revised and even more in progressive, which is what you 01:37:26.480 --> 01:37:30.080 see in many of the churches that hold to this today. 01:37:30.080 --> 01:37:33.600 That's essentially how you can think of the difference in those. 01:37:33.600 --> 01:37:35.600 They're all heresies. 01:37:35.600 --> 01:37:40.960 And part of how you can tell that is theology does not 01:37:40.960 --> 01:37:45.840 develop in the sense of development as change. 01:37:46.880 --> 01:37:53.280 And so you you see change in dispensationalism, what it teaches changes 01:37:53.280 --> 01:37:54.000 over time. 01:37:54.000 --> 01:37:57.360 What it teaches from the beginning is a significant change, is a 01:37:57.360 --> 01:38:01.280 break with what the church teaches, what Scripture teaches. 01:38:01.280 --> 01:38:03.520 Theology can be fleshed out 01:38:04.400 --> 01:38:11.520 But those additional details, the fleshing out, does not change 01:38:11.520 --> 01:38:13.920 the core content. 01:38:13.920 --> 01:38:17.840 The core teachings do not change, and they do not change notably 01:38:17.840 --> 01:38:23.040 from the creeds, because the creeds, as we stated before, are based 01:38:23.040 --> 01:38:25.600 firmly in scripture. 01:38:25.600 --> 01:38:28.320 And I will put a page in the show notes for this 01:38:28.320 --> 01:38:32.480 episode that links to a table showing those verses. 01:38:32.480 --> 01:38:34.640 I should have done that in a previous episode, but I'll do 01:38:34.640 --> 01:38:37.120 it in this episode. 01:38:37.120 --> 01:38:39.520 Dispensationalism is false. 01:38:39.520 --> 01:38:43.120 One of the ways you can tell is that it changes over 01:38:43.120 --> 01:38:46.320 time because false theology changes. 01:38:46.320 --> 01:38:50.800 True theology is going to sound the same today as it will 01:38:50.800 --> 01:38:54.320 a thousand years from today if Christ doesn't return in the intervening 01:38:54.320 --> 01:38:57.680 time, and will sound the same then as it did a thousand 01:38:57.680 --> 01:38:59.520 years ago. 01:38:59.520 --> 01:39:06.080 Because God doesn't change, God's word doesn't change, so theology cannot change. 01:39:06.080 --> 01:39:09.280 The core content will not be different. 01:39:09.280 --> 01:39:14.160 And that is why, if you read the theologians of your church, 01:39:14.160 --> 01:39:18.800 if you read the men writing for your church body today, and 01:39:18.800 --> 01:39:22.160 they do not sound like the men from a thousand years ago, 01:39:22.160 --> 01:39:25.440 there is a very real problem somewhere. 01:39:25.440 --> 01:39:29.760 Because again, when men disagree, at least one man is wrong. 01:39:29.760 --> 01:39:33.120 The same is true here, so if you find that you have 01:39:33.680 --> 01:39:38.160 a thousand years, fifteen hundred years, two thousand years, of men all 01:39:38.160 --> 01:39:41.040 saying the same thing about Scripture, and you go and compare that 01:39:41.040 --> 01:39:44.960 to Scripture, and Scripture says the same thing that they are saying, 01:39:44.960 --> 01:39:48.160 and then you look at what your church body is saying, and 01:39:48.160 --> 01:39:52.560 it is different from that tradition in the proper sense of the 01:39:52.560 --> 01:39:53.200 term. 01:39:54.480 --> 01:39:57.760 You are part of a false church, and you need to reconsider 01:39:58.640 --> 01:40:03.280 what you are doing with your Christian life because you are endangering 01:40:03.360 --> 01:40:04.800 your soul. 01:40:04.800 --> 01:40:10.400 As Lutherans Corey and I are both ah millennialists, for the sake 01:40:10.400 --> 01:40:12.720 of clarity for the rest of this, I'm gonna slightly mispronounce and 01:40:12.720 --> 01:40:16.480 say a millennialist just so it doesn't get misinterpreted as a hum 01:40:16.720 --> 01:40:17.760 or something. 01:40:17.760 --> 01:40:22.560 I'm gonna read a passage on amillennialism from Wikipedia just to give 01:40:22.560 --> 01:40:24.960 you a good overview of kind of the history. 01:40:24.960 --> 01:40:27.440 I know some people laugh at me for referring to Wikipedia. 01:40:27.440 --> 01:40:32.240 I'll say again, it's very good generally for theological subjects somehow. 01:40:32.240 --> 01:40:33.200 They don't mess with it. 01:40:33.200 --> 01:40:38.880 It's generally just a neutral factual accounting of the moving parts. 01:40:38.880 --> 01:40:43.280 Amillennialism gained ground after Christianity became a legal religion. 01:40:43.280 --> 01:40:47.120 It was systematized by Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century, and 01:40:47.120 --> 01:40:52.880 this systematization carried amillennialism over as the dominant eschatology of the medieval 01:40:52.880 --> 01:40:53.920 and reformation periods. 01:40:54.320 --> 01:40:58.720 Augustine was originally a premillennialist, but he retracted that view claiming the 01:40:58.720 --> 01:41:00.320 doctrine was carnal. 01:41:00.320 --> 01:41:05.520 Amillennialism was the dominant view of the Protestant reformers, the Lutheran Church 01:41:05.520 --> 01:41:10.880 formally rejected Killiasm in the Augsburg Confession and condemned the Anabaptists. 01:41:10.880 --> 01:41:14.480 Historically, most Anabaptist groups were amillennial. 01:41:14.480 --> 01:41:20.240 And others, quote, who now scattered Jewish opinions that before the resurrection 01:41:20.240 --> 01:41:24.000 of the dead the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, 01:41:24.000 --> 01:41:26.640 the wicked being everywhere suppressed. 01:41:26.640 --> 01:41:31.280 Likewise the Swiss reformer Heierich Bullinger Bullinger wrote up the second Helvetic 01:41:31.280 --> 01:41:35.920 Confession which asserts we also reject the Jewish dream of a millennium 01:41:36.080 --> 01:41:39.360 or golden age on earth before the last judgment. 01:41:39.360 --> 01:41:43.440 John Calvin wrote in the Institutes The Killiasm is a quote fiction 01:41:43.920 --> 01:41:48.080 that is quote too childish either to need or to be worth 01:41:48.080 --> 01:41:49.520 a refutation. 01:41:49.520 --> 01:41:54.240 He interpreted the thousand year period of Revelation twenty symbolically, applying it 01:41:54.240 --> 01:41:58.000 to the various disturbances that awaited the church while still toiling on 01:41:58.000 --> 01:42:03.360 earth. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches have long held amillennial positions, as 01:42:03.360 --> 01:42:05.440 well as the Roman Catholic Church. 01:42:05.440 --> 01:42:10.240 So going to Cory's point a minute ago, you won't find a 01:42:10.240 --> 01:42:17.360 lot in church history disputing these specific subjects because almost 01:42:17.360 --> 01:42:23.280 all of church history until the seventeenth century was a millennial. 01:42:23.280 --> 01:42:26.480 And And I want to bring this up here to to draw 01:42:26.480 --> 01:42:33.920 a distinction between when we go after dispensationalism and the pre-tribulation rapture 01:42:33.920 --> 01:42:37.520 stuff, I want to distinguish it from I know we have a 01:42:37.520 --> 01:42:42.560 lot of post-millennialist listeners. 01:42:42.560 --> 01:42:46.640 I don't have a problem with the approach that they generally take. 01:42:46.640 --> 01:42:51.920 I think that the postmill guys are not pursuing something that I 01:42:51.920 --> 01:42:52.960 have any problem with. 01:42:52.960 --> 01:42:55.360 You know, it's the same thing that we say on Stone Choir 01:42:55.360 --> 01:42:56.000 all the time. 01:42:56.000 --> 01:43:01.840 Hey, let's believe God, let's go to church, let's read our Bibles. 01:43:01.840 --> 01:43:05.600 It's basically the eternal gospel of Revelation fourteen. 01:43:05.600 --> 01:43:08.320 Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment 01:43:08.320 --> 01:43:11.120 has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea 01:43:11.200 --> 01:43:12.960 and the springs of water. 01:43:12.960 --> 01:43:18.000 So I think that the way the the guys who call themselves 01:43:18.000 --> 01:43:23.360 post-millennial today are pursuing things I don't have a problem with. 01:43:23.440 --> 01:43:26.160 When we say that we are a millennial and we believe that 01:43:26.160 --> 01:43:29.760 that's correct, and we say that dispensationalism is a haircut. 01:43:29.760 --> 01:43:34.720 I want to draw a very clear line between that heresy and 01:43:34.720 --> 01:43:38.960 what we think is an error on the part of the postmillennialists. 01:43:38.960 --> 01:43:41.280 And so I wanted to point to this, you know, quotation of 01:43:41.360 --> 01:43:46.240 just facts from Wikipedia to make clear to you guys your doctrine 01:43:46.240 --> 01:43:48.560 is less than four hundred years old. 01:43:48.560 --> 01:43:52.880 It wasn't until the seventeenth century that the beginnings of post millennialism 01:43:52.880 --> 01:43:54.320 began to emerge. 01:43:54.320 --> 01:43:59.280 And so you have like a 150-year head start on the dispensationalists, 01:43:59.280 --> 01:44:02.560 but it is still a novel eschatology in the history of the 01:44:02.560 --> 01:44:06.400 church. Again, even the reformers, like you know, Calvin and Luther agreed 01:44:06.400 --> 01:44:07.440 on something. 01:44:07.440 --> 01:44:10.880 That didn't happen a great deal, but it occurred here. 01:44:10.880 --> 01:44:16.240 There was really no one debating anything about eschatology. 01:44:16.240 --> 01:44:19.440 Now there were certainly discussions are these the end times? 01:44:19.440 --> 01:44:21.120 That's That's Christian. 01:44:21.120 --> 01:44:24.640 There's a theme throughout all of the New Testament that is pointing 01:44:24.640 --> 01:44:25.840 towards the end times. 01:44:25.840 --> 01:44:29.440 Yeah, much of Jesus preaching was talking about the end days. 01:44:29.440 --> 01:44:33.040 It's referred to in numerous epistles, obviously, the very last book in 01:44:33.040 --> 01:44:37.200 the Bible, as we order it today, is entirely, almost entirely about 01:44:37.200 --> 01:44:38.240 end times. 01:44:38.240 --> 01:44:43.600 So it's entirely Christian to talk about these things. 01:44:43.600 --> 01:44:49.920 I think I think that amillennialism is the only defensible scriptural position, 01:44:49.920 --> 01:44:53.600 but I don't think that most of the errors, at least on 01:44:53.600 --> 01:44:57.840 the post-millennial side, are significant, with one key exception. 01:44:57.840 --> 01:44:59.920 The reason I wanted to bring it up here, in addition to 01:44:59.920 --> 01:45:02.240 say we all think you're going to hell because you disagree with 01:45:02.240 --> 01:45:04.160 us on this. 01:45:04.160 --> 01:45:08.960 If you are post-millennial, if you believe that the thousand years is 01:45:08.960 --> 01:45:11.280 now, whether it's a literal thousand years or not, I know a 01:45:11.280 --> 01:45:12.800 lot of guys don't believe it's a literal. 01:45:12.800 --> 01:45:14.800 Thank you for that at least. 01:45:14.800 --> 01:45:19.840 If you believe that Christ's church is ascendant and that we are 01:45:19.840 --> 01:45:23.680 capturing the kingdom on earth for God today. 01:45:23.680 --> 01:45:26.480 And you believe that's the arc that we're on. 01:45:26.480 --> 01:45:30.000 If you turn out to be wrong and I turn out to 01:45:30.000 --> 01:45:32.480 be right, and the world is going to blow up in the 01:45:32.480 --> 01:45:36.000 next 10 years, not as a planet exploding in space, but like 01:45:36.080 --> 01:45:42.320 everything that we know going away, suffering, apostasy, churches being destroyed, Christians 01:45:42.320 --> 01:45:43.680 being persecuted. 01:45:43.680 --> 01:45:47.360 If these things, which have happened in many places historically, if they 01:45:47.360 --> 01:45:53.520 happen to us, and that blows up your postmillennial views, are you 01:45:53.520 --> 01:45:55.280 going to despair? 01:45:55.280 --> 01:45:58.640 Because as a millennialist, we're gonna be just fine with that. 01:45:58.640 --> 01:45:59.920 No, it's terrible. 01:45:59.920 --> 01:46:05.040 Like it's it's gonna be suffering and misery and chastisement, and a 01:46:05.040 --> 01:46:07.360 lot of people are gonna die if I'm right. 01:46:07.360 --> 01:46:10.720 I hope I'm wrong, but you know, we'll see. 01:46:10.720 --> 01:46:13.600 You know, as we've said in past episodes, the a lot of 01:46:13.600 --> 01:46:17.440 these debates around doctrine are not simply about winning the argument. 01:46:17.440 --> 01:46:19.760 I mean, that's that's the key thing here. 01:46:19.760 --> 01:46:22.080 I'm not trying to win an argument with you and say, don't 01:46:22.080 --> 01:46:24.640 be post-mill, be amil. 01:46:24.640 --> 01:46:28.480 I'm trying to warn you that by the way, the thing that 01:46:28.480 --> 01:46:34.080 both the Lutheran confessions and the other reformers called Jewish lies that 01:46:34.080 --> 01:46:39.040 you hold, the post millennialist view, the idea that the millennium is 01:46:39.040 --> 01:46:41.840 a period of prosperity, that was a Jewish myth. 01:46:42.000 --> 01:46:45.280 It was something that was being spread in the fifteenth and sixteenth 01:46:45.280 --> 01:46:49.440 century. That's important because there were a lot of Jews in parts 01:46:49.440 --> 01:46:52.400 of Europe then, ethnically. 01:46:52.400 --> 01:46:53.280 They were not 01:46:55.040 --> 01:46:59.920 people who held to the faith of the first century Jews. 01:46:59.920 --> 01:47:05.760 Talmudic Judaism completely, completely replaced whatever remnant 01:47:06.640 --> 01:47:12.000 of Judaism may have existed in Jesus' day, it's dead and gone 01:47:12.000 --> 01:47:14.240 for nearly 2,000 years. 01:47:14.240 --> 01:47:17.920 So the Jews of the days of the Reformers who were talking 01:47:17.920 --> 01:47:22.560 about what you call the millennium, what everyone calls the millennium, believing 01:47:22.560 --> 01:47:26.080 that it's a period of of prosperity. 01:47:26.080 --> 01:47:27.600 That was a Jewish lie. 01:47:27.600 --> 01:47:29.520 It was a Talmudic lie. 01:47:29.520 --> 01:47:32.400 And the reason that's crucial is if you remember in a couple 01:47:32.480 --> 01:47:35.200 episodes, we've talked about Tik and Olam. 01:47:35.200 --> 01:47:38.880 What is the the belief of Tikin Olam is the perfection of 01:47:38.880 --> 01:47:39.920 this world? 01:47:39.920 --> 01:47:43.840 The Jews believe today that it is their duty to be the 01:47:43.840 --> 01:47:47.360 agents of God on this earth perfecting things. 01:47:47.360 --> 01:47:51.760 That's why they're willing to do genetic engineering and organ harvesting and 01:47:51.760 --> 01:47:55.600 the most horrific abuses of man and creation. 01:47:55.600 --> 01:48:01.520 They will do it if they can rationalize as perfecting the world. 01:48:01.520 --> 01:48:05.680 That's kind of part of postmillennialism. 01:48:05.680 --> 01:48:08.160 Now to be explicit, I'm not accusing you guys of being secret 01:48:08.160 --> 01:48:09.840 TikTok Lom agents. 01:48:09.840 --> 01:48:11.920 I don't believe that, I'm not saying that. 01:48:11.920 --> 01:48:14.640 I am, however, saying that when you look at the genealogy of 01:48:14.640 --> 01:48:17.680 that specific idea, it came from the Talmud. 01:48:17.680 --> 01:48:19.920 It came from these people. 01:48:19.920 --> 01:48:21.760 Today you're not in serious error. 01:48:21.920 --> 01:48:23.600 it's a I think a small mistake. 01:48:23.600 --> 01:48:26.400 But frankly, like a lot of you agree with us about this 01:48:26.400 --> 01:48:27.280 stuff. That's fine. 01:48:27.280 --> 01:48:31.200 Like it's not it's not that it's an egregious doctrinal error. 01:48:31.200 --> 01:48:34.560 In the specific case, I I just want to warn you that 01:48:34.560 --> 01:48:38.080 if things get worse in such a fashion that, you know, many 01:48:38.480 --> 01:48:41.920 church denominations are in the process of collapsing today. 01:48:41.920 --> 01:48:44.480 The people at the top, the men at the top are by 01:48:44.480 --> 01:48:48.560 and large evil, and they're actively seeking evil ends against those in 01:48:48.560 --> 01:48:49.680 the pews. 01:48:49.680 --> 01:48:53.600 If that continues, you're gonna be run out of your churches and 01:48:53.600 --> 01:48:56.320 you can form more churches, that's gonna be happening, that as that's 01:48:56.320 --> 01:48:57.760 always happened. 01:48:57.760 --> 01:49:01.040 But if those bodies get smaller and smaller, as it seems like 01:49:01.040 --> 01:49:05.920 they probably will, if we're no longer ascendant as Christendom was for 01:49:05.920 --> 01:49:09.440 a thousand years, I don't want you to lose hope. 01:49:09.440 --> 01:49:11.920 I don't want you to think, well, yeah, I got that wrong, 01:49:11.920 --> 01:49:14.080 you know, maybe the Bible's not right. 01:49:14.080 --> 01:49:17.520 And so that's the specific reason I want to point to amillennialism 01:49:17.600 --> 01:49:20.400 being the historic view of the church is that we just like 01:49:20.480 --> 01:49:22.720 as Lutherans we didn't change anything. 01:49:22.720 --> 01:49:26.720 And so when there's the ebb and flow of these things, we're 01:49:26.720 --> 01:49:30.560 not worried about it because we don't see don't see the ebb 01:49:30.560 --> 01:49:33.520 and flow being a fulfillment of prophecy. 01:49:33.520 --> 01:49:37.360 Now, we've said in the past that you know Revelation and Daniel 01:49:37.360 --> 01:49:42.560 and some of the things that Jesus says, it's clearly it's prophecy 01:49:42.640 --> 01:49:43.840 about the future. 01:49:43.840 --> 01:49:47.440 As a matter of disclosure, I reject preterism. 01:49:47.440 --> 01:49:52.960 I I believe specifically that Revelation was written probably about in 96 01:49:52.960 --> 01:49:56.160 AD. I think it was written well after the fall of the 01:49:56.160 --> 01:50:00.080 temple. This has long been a matter of dispute within the church. 01:50:00.080 --> 01:50:02.640 I think that I have a defensible position. 01:50:02.640 --> 01:50:05.120 I also freely admit I could be wrong. 01:50:05.120 --> 01:50:09.120 I think it is possible that Revelation was written in 68 AD. 01:50:09.120 --> 01:50:15.360 I think it is possible that those prophecies were partially fulfilled. 01:50:15.360 --> 01:50:18.160 And we'll get into what that means because you know fulfillment. 01:50:18.160 --> 01:50:19.280 I don't think it could be partial. 01:50:19.280 --> 01:50:22.880 Being partially fulfilled is like being partially pregnant. 01:50:22.880 --> 01:50:24.960 Fulfillment means it's completed. 01:50:24.960 --> 01:50:27.200 So I was talking to Corey before we started recording. 01:50:27.200 --> 01:50:29.280 I don't know if there's another word for it. 01:50:29.280 --> 01:50:29.600 So 01:50:31.760 --> 01:50:35.600 if I'm wrong, and the revelation prophecies were exclusively 01:50:36.720 --> 01:50:41.600 about the future, then I don't think it really changes anything because 01:50:41.600 --> 01:50:43.760 the prophecies are still typological. 01:50:43.760 --> 01:50:45.920 And it's very clear that some of the prophecies, it certainly, you 01:50:45.920 --> 01:50:50.240 know, they're prophecies from Jesus, you know, either thirty or sixty years 01:50:50.240 --> 01:50:54.640 prior, that were at least partially fulfilled by the destruction of the 01:50:54.640 --> 01:50:58.720 temple. He was very clearly at that time warning the Jews of 01:50:58.720 --> 01:50:59.680 that day. 01:50:59.680 --> 01:51:05.440 And here's the trick with typology, including typology with prophecy. 01:51:05.440 --> 01:51:09.120 The fact that it occurred once does not preclude the possibility that 01:51:09.120 --> 01:51:10.960 it can never occur again. 01:51:10.960 --> 01:51:15.360 Because if the fulfillment of the prophecy is typological, then then the 01:51:15.360 --> 01:51:18.800 anti-type when it comes in the future, the full fillment of the 01:51:18.800 --> 01:51:22.400 thing will be greater than the smaller one that was pointing to 01:51:22.400 --> 01:51:26.800 it. I think that it's very, to me at least, it's a 01:51:26.800 --> 01:51:31.280 very plain reading of all the prophecies and all the history that 01:51:31.280 --> 01:51:35.040 line up with the destruction of the temple and the scattering of 01:51:35.040 --> 01:51:37.600 the Jews from Roman territory. 01:51:37.600 --> 01:51:39.040 I believe that that 01:51:40.720 --> 01:51:43.840 is completely typological of the end days. 01:51:43.840 --> 01:51:46.560 I think that when the world ends, it's going to be a 01:51:46.560 --> 01:51:48.240 much bigger version of that. 01:51:48.240 --> 01:51:51.440 And so the reason I mention this is I think it's important 01:51:51.440 --> 01:51:56.240 when we're looking at these prophecies, which if they're future looking exclusively, 01:51:56.240 --> 01:51:59.520 if if they have not yet been fulfilled, then we're not gonna 01:51:59.520 --> 01:52:01.840 know until either we see it with our own eyes or a 01:52:01.840 --> 01:52:04.400 prophet who is not yet born explains it to us. 01:52:04.400 --> 01:52:08.960 Absent a prophet explaining a future prophecy, we cannot fully understand it. 01:52:08.960 --> 01:52:11.440 It's only when we see it and we have faith that we 01:52:11.440 --> 01:52:13.680 can remember the prophecy and say, Yep, there it is. 01:52:13.680 --> 01:52:17.920 God promised it, now I see it. 01:52:17.920 --> 01:52:20.880 It's always good for Christians, as was done in the you know 01:52:20.960 --> 01:52:23.760 in the days of the Reformation and done even from the very 01:52:23.760 --> 01:52:25.360 first days of the church. 01:52:25.360 --> 01:52:28.240 They looked around and they said, Are these end times? 01:52:28.240 --> 01:52:31.360 That's something that God frankly wants from us. 01:52:31.360 --> 01:52:33.920 You know, one of the prophecies of Jesus event times would be 01:52:34.000 --> 01:52:36.400 there will be wars and rumors of war. 01:52:36.400 --> 01:52:39.600 Maybe some autist has already done it, but I would imagine that 01:52:39.600 --> 01:52:44.640 that has been true certainly every decade in the history of humanity, 01:52:44.880 --> 01:52:48.000 at least since Jesus days, that there were either wars or rumors 01:52:48.240 --> 01:52:50.240 rumors of wars going on. 01:52:50.240 --> 01:52:53.600 So does that mean that it's not a prophecy of end times 01:52:53.680 --> 01:52:54.640 because it's always true? 01:52:54.640 --> 01:52:57.760 No. That means we should always be looking around and taking these 01:52:57.760 --> 01:53:01.440 things seriously, not to the extent that as Corey was talking about 01:53:01.600 --> 01:53:05.680 the at the beginning about reading the newspaper and trying to, you 01:53:05.680 --> 01:53:12.800 know, correlate scorpions and flying at creatures in revelation to particular military 01:53:12.800 --> 01:53:15.600 programs. That's please don't do that. 01:53:15.600 --> 01:53:17.120 That's not the point. 01:53:17.120 --> 01:53:20.240 When it's clearly fulfilled, you're not gonna need to you're not gonna 01:53:20.240 --> 01:53:21.760 need to decoder ring. 01:53:21.760 --> 01:53:24.160 We may never see those things with our own eyes, but we 01:53:24.160 --> 01:53:28.720 should expect that we may, because that's why God gave it to 01:53:28.720 --> 01:53:33.120 us to warn us, to warn every Christian, and to warn unbelievers 01:53:33.200 --> 01:53:36.320 too. Prophecies can be delivered to unbelievers and sometimes they come to 01:53:36.320 --> 01:53:40.400 believe. You know, when Jonah went to Nineveh, if you read Jonah, 01:53:40.400 --> 01:53:42.240 it's a short book, just go read it. 01:53:42.240 --> 01:53:43.600 There's no gospel. 01:53:43.600 --> 01:53:47.120 God sends Jonah to Nineveh and he says God's gonna kill you 01:53:47.120 --> 01:53:48.640 all. And that was it. 01:53:48.640 --> 01:53:51.200 That he went around, he walked around the very large city and 01:53:51.200 --> 01:53:53.600 said, God's killing you all in forty days. 01:53:53.600 --> 01:53:57.280 And they all repented, and they prayed to God for mercy, and 01:53:57.280 --> 01:54:00.960 God heard their pleas and saw that they had relented and God 01:54:00.960 --> 01:54:05.760 relented. But those were unbelievers who were given a prophecy and it 01:54:05.760 --> 01:54:08.480 became the source of their repentance. 01:54:08.480 --> 01:54:09.680 And I think that 01:54:10.640 --> 01:54:14.000 as we talk about Jews in the world and and in the 01:54:14.000 --> 01:54:18.400 evils that come from them, if we actually hated those people, the 01:54:18.400 --> 01:54:20.480 very last thing that we would want would be for them to 01:54:20.480 --> 01:54:26.400 become Christian, or for them to hear God's word, or crucially, for 01:54:26.400 --> 01:54:29.280 them to be told that what they're doing is evil. 01:54:29.280 --> 01:54:32.720 Because just as when Jonah went to Nineveh and said, God's going 01:54:32.720 --> 01:54:36.560 to kill you all because you're wicked, they repented. 01:54:36.560 --> 01:54:41.200 They only were capable of repenting because God gave them the gift 01:54:41.200 --> 01:54:43.760 to be able to do that. 01:54:43.760 --> 01:54:48.240 For us today to say that anyone is doing something evil is 01:54:48.240 --> 01:54:50.320 not itself evil. 01:54:50.320 --> 01:54:52.960 To call evil evil is scriptural. 01:54:52.960 --> 01:54:54.640 It's obedience to God. 01:54:54.960 --> 01:54:58.480 There are good ways and bad ways to approach it, but fundamentally, 01:54:58.480 --> 01:55:02.320 to call out an evil man and say this is wickedness is 01:55:02.480 --> 01:55:04.880 the greatest act of love you can have for him. 01:55:04.880 --> 01:55:07.200 Because what's gonna happen if he repents? 01:55:07.200 --> 01:55:09.840 He's going to turn to God and he's going to be forgiven. 01:55:09.840 --> 01:55:11.440 His evil will cease. 01:55:11.440 --> 01:55:16.000 He will receive eternal life as a gift for God's sacrifice for 01:55:16.000 --> 01:55:18.400 the evil that he has relented from. 01:55:18.400 --> 01:55:21.360 When you do not call a man who is in fact evil 01:55:21.600 --> 01:55:24.960 evil, you're letting him continue in his wicked ways. 01:55:24.960 --> 01:55:25.440 And so 01:55:27.680 --> 01:55:30.400 when we see these things in the world, if we're not, if 01:55:30.400 --> 01:55:33.680 we're too afraid to speak to them, we're making things worse for 01:55:33.680 --> 01:55:36.800 our neighbor and for the very man who's acting evilly. 01:55:36.800 --> 01:55:38.800 So there are times where I don't I don't want to talk 01:55:38.800 --> 01:55:39.680 to some of these people. 01:55:39.680 --> 01:55:41.680 I don't want to talk about some of these things. 01:55:41.760 --> 01:55:44.640 I'm not like I'm not saying I always do a great job. 01:55:44.640 --> 01:55:48.320 I certainly fail many times, but there are times when I absolutely 01:55:48.320 --> 01:55:51.760 will speak against something, knowing it's going to be unpleasant for me 01:55:51.760 --> 01:55:54.480 to do it, because I feel as a matter of conscience I 01:55:54.480 --> 01:55:55.040 have to. 01:55:55.040 --> 01:55:58.640 I have to warn someone that they're on a precipice and that 01:55:58.640 --> 01:56:00.880 they are about to fall off. 01:56:01.600 --> 01:56:06.400 The end times prophecies help to reinforce the urgency of such things 01:56:06.480 --> 01:56:09.920 to remind us that we don't have forever to repent. 01:56:09.920 --> 01:56:13.520 We don't have forever to bring our families to God. 01:56:13.520 --> 01:56:15.280 It's part of the reason for the baptism episode. 01:56:15.280 --> 01:56:18.240 Don't wait till your kid is twelve to give them the gift 01:56:18.240 --> 01:56:19.600 of the Holy Spirit. 01:56:19.600 --> 01:56:20.560 That's God's gift. 01:56:20.560 --> 01:56:22.960 It's not yours to stand in their way. 01:56:22.960 --> 01:56:27.360 So all of these things, when we have a sense of urgency, 01:56:27.360 --> 01:56:30.560 it doesn't need to be in the in terms of I'm gonna 01:56:30.560 --> 01:56:31.840 go fix the world. 01:56:31.840 --> 01:56:35.040 It's simply in terms of let's obey God and do whatever he 01:56:35.040 --> 01:56:37.600 says, and then he'll take care of the rest. 01:56:37.600 --> 01:56:41.040 And if the world were to repent today, as it should, and 01:56:41.040 --> 01:56:44.880 I think certainly will not, I think that God would relent. 01:56:44.880 --> 01:56:48.960 I think that when we were blessed as as Christendom, they were 01:56:48.960 --> 01:56:52.000 the times when we were largely in obedience to God. 01:56:52.000 --> 01:56:56.400 We certainly confessed him collectively, even when though there were many unbelievers 01:56:56.400 --> 01:56:58.880 among us, you know, historically in Christendom. 01:56:58.880 --> 01:57:03.040 Today, Christians are the absolute minority, you know, single digits in most 01:57:03.600 --> 01:57:05.600 places, including in the West. 01:57:05.600 --> 01:57:10.160 When you look at actual Christian belief, it's easily single digits, and 01:57:10.160 --> 01:57:11.920 that's in free fall. 01:57:11.920 --> 01:57:12.240 So 01:57:14.160 --> 01:57:17.840 I don't think we can fix anything by being better. 01:57:17.840 --> 01:57:19.920 And I don't think that we should worry about it. 01:57:19.920 --> 01:57:22.960 I think one of the key distinctions as we talk about what 01:57:22.960 --> 01:57:25.280 do we do when we're living in the world and trying to 01:57:25.280 --> 01:57:27.600 obey God, they're two separate questions. 01:57:27.600 --> 01:57:28.880 What should I do? 01:57:28.880 --> 01:57:30.880 And what is the result going to be? 01:57:30.880 --> 01:57:33.440 We should always obey God simply because He's God. 01:57:33.440 --> 01:57:36.000 If you confess that God is God, you do whatever He says, 01:57:36.000 --> 01:57:37.280 and that's it. 01:57:37.280 --> 01:57:42.240 And so the permission slip that that gives us is that the 01:57:42.240 --> 01:57:44.560 outcome is not for us to achieve. 01:57:44.560 --> 01:57:47.680 If I do the right thing, knowing that if everyone were also 01:57:47.680 --> 01:57:50.880 doing the same right thing, there would be a good outcome, that 01:57:50.880 --> 01:57:52.000 God would bless it. 01:57:52.000 --> 01:57:54.640 I don't have to worry about success. 01:57:54.640 --> 01:57:58.400 If I do the right thing and it fails, that's not on 01:57:58.400 --> 01:58:02.240 me. And if it succeeds, if it succeeds, that's from God. 01:58:02.240 --> 01:58:06.240 So I think that's a that's one of the weaknesses of of 01:58:06.240 --> 01:58:11.600 post postmillennialism is that if all the impetus is on the tikanolam, 01:58:11.600 --> 01:58:16.720 let us make the world better now, to the exclusion of God's 01:58:16.720 --> 01:58:20.880 providence, you're setting yourself up for being put in a situation where 01:58:21.120 --> 01:58:24.720 if things don't pan out, you might be left worse off in 01:58:24.720 --> 01:58:27.760 your faith than if you had simply done the right thing and 01:58:27.760 --> 01:58:29.280 not worried about the outcome. 01:58:29.280 --> 01:58:30.160 It's very difficult. 01:58:30.160 --> 01:58:33.280 You know, we talked about in the the travails of young men 01:58:33.280 --> 01:58:36.320 episode. Outcome independence is really hard. 01:58:36.320 --> 01:58:38.880 To do the thing that you know that you should do, knowing 01:58:38.880 --> 01:58:42.240 that it may well fail, it takes some fortitude. 01:58:42.240 --> 01:58:45.200 And it's something that as men and as Christians we need to 01:58:45.200 --> 01:58:50.160 develop because it it's preciously short in the world, and its absence 01:58:50.160 --> 01:58:52.480 is a tremendous danger. 01:58:52.480 --> 01:58:56.160 So, yes, we should look to the end and we should look 01:58:56.160 --> 01:58:58.880 to God's promises and trust that He'll take care of us as 01:58:58.880 --> 01:58:59.600 He promised. 01:58:59.600 --> 01:59:02.720 And so whether things get better or they get worse, we at 01:59:02.720 --> 01:59:07.440 least know that God is going to continue to be God. 01:59:07.440 --> 01:59:11.920 And that's completely missing from what the dispensationalist view is. 01:59:11.920 --> 01:59:14.880 They basically push the whole church out of the way and say, 01:59:14.880 --> 01:59:16.080 you know, it's all about Israel. 01:59:16.080 --> 01:59:17.920 Let's do whatever they need, whatever they want. 01:59:17.920 --> 01:59:19.840 Well, they want to do evil. 01:59:19.840 --> 01:59:21.600 They're going to continue to do evil. 01:59:21.600 --> 01:59:23.840 That's making the world worse. 01:59:23.840 --> 01:59:25.840 As Christians, we must fight that. 01:59:25.840 --> 01:59:27.600 We must resist that. 01:59:27.600 --> 01:59:27.920 And 01:59:29.120 --> 01:59:31.280 we must know that we may fail. 01:59:31.280 --> 01:59:34.240 We may do everything right, and it may fail. 01:59:34.240 --> 01:59:37.600 All of all of our obedience may be brought to nothing. 01:59:37.600 --> 01:59:40.240 If it's God's will, then that's what's gonna happen. 01:59:40.240 --> 01:59:43.280 And we can't despair if and when that day comes. 01:59:43.600 --> 01:59:45.840 Frankly, that's one of my chief concerns. 01:59:45.840 --> 01:59:50.000 I don't want anyone to despair because whatever beliefs they have carrying 01:59:50.000 --> 01:59:54.000 them into the hardest times of their lives I don't want errors 01:59:54.000 --> 01:59:57.120 in their beliefs to make it easier for them to lose faith 01:59:57.360 --> 02:00:01.120 because God has given us these gifts for our comfort as well 02:00:01.120 --> 02:00:02.560 as for our salvation. 02:00:02.560 --> 02:00:05.760 And anything that gets in a way of comfort when it's true 02:00:05.760 --> 02:00:10.160 comfort according to God's will, is a sign that maybe there's something 02:00:10.160 --> 02:00:13.920 wrong. And sometimes comfort is is just you're gonna die. 02:00:13.920 --> 02:00:15.440 Pray that you'll die peacefully. 02:00:15.440 --> 02:00:17.280 That maybe that's the only comfort you can have. 02:00:17.520 --> 02:00:19.360 It's not prosperity gospel. 02:00:19.360 --> 02:00:24.000 It's just do what God says and trust the let rest in 02:00:24.000 --> 02:00:24.880 his hands. 02:00:24.880 --> 02:00:28.720 And if the world ends in in ten years, be ready for 02:00:28.720 --> 02:00:32.160 it. And if the world lasts another thousand years, be ready for 02:00:32.160 --> 02:00:32.880 that too. 02:00:32.880 --> 02:00:35.920 We should do the things that we're told by God to do 02:00:36.080 --> 02:00:37.600 regardless of the outcome. 02:00:37.600 --> 02:00:40.640 Not planning for the end or even necessarily hoping for the end, 02:00:40.640 --> 02:00:44.160 but in obedience to whatever God demands today, because we don't live 02:00:44.160 --> 02:00:45.360 in the future. 02:00:45.360 --> 02:00:46.800 We live in the now 02:00:47.760 --> 02:00:51.920 knowing that when we are faithful to God, He will deliver His 02:00:51.920 --> 02:00:56.560 promises in the future, whether it's the blessing of a peaceful life 02:00:56.560 --> 02:00:59.920 and a good church and a strong nation, or whether it's the 02:00:59.920 --> 02:01:04.560 blessing of kingdom come, he's gonna deliver. 02:01:04.640 --> 02:01:09.760 For my part, I've never really thought that worrying about how close 02:01:09.760 --> 02:01:14.400 the end times are is particularly worthwhile. 02:01:14.400 --> 02:01:18.800 And the reason for that is not because thinking about Scripture or 02:01:18.800 --> 02:01:24.400 attempting to understand Scripture is unimportant or irrelevant to one's life. 02:01:24.400 --> 02:01:25.920 Although spending 02:01:27.040 --> 02:01:31.040 an inordinate amount of your time in Scripture and Revelation is probably 02:01:31.040 --> 02:01:33.840 not a good sign, and will not be good for your faith, 02:01:33.840 --> 02:01:37.520 you should be spending your time elsewhere, in large part read more 02:01:37.520 --> 02:01:41.440 of Genesis and Romans and the Psalms and Proverbs. 02:01:41.440 --> 02:01:43.040 Read these things. 02:01:43.040 --> 02:01:46.080 I'm not saying avoid revelation. 02:01:46.080 --> 02:01:48.880 But if you're immature in the faith, yes, do avoid revelation. 02:01:48.880 --> 02:01:51.440 There are other things you need to read first. 02:01:51.440 --> 02:01:56.000 But the reason that I've never found it a particularly worthwhile or 02:01:56.000 --> 02:02:00.160 sensible thing to do to worry about the proximity of the end 02:02:00.720 --> 02:02:04.800 times to our current day, is that the end times are always 02:02:04.800 --> 02:02:09.920 right around the corner for any given man, because each and every 02:02:09.920 --> 02:02:14.720 one of us is a handful of missed heartbeats or a missed 02:02:14.880 --> 02:02:18.880 step as you're going down the stairs, or a car accident, whatever 02:02:18.880 --> 02:02:19.760 it happens to be. 02:02:19.760 --> 02:02:22.640 We are all seconds away from death. 02:02:22.640 --> 02:02:25.440 Basically at every moment of the day. 02:02:25.440 --> 02:02:27.520 Now we don't think about that as we go through our day, 02:02:27.520 --> 02:02:29.600 and I'm not saying to dwell on that, that will drive you 02:02:29.600 --> 02:02:32.000 insane. Don't do it. 02:02:32.000 --> 02:02:35.040 But a meteor could strike me right now as we're recording. 02:02:35.040 --> 02:02:37.680 Lightning could strike me, sideways lightning is a thing. 02:02:37.680 --> 02:02:38.800 There are all these problems. 02:02:38.800 --> 02:02:39.520 I don't worry about them. 02:02:39.520 --> 02:02:41.920 I'm not concerned about them. 02:02:41.920 --> 02:02:44.560 The hour of my death is known to God, and I don't 02:02:44.560 --> 02:02:46.240 concern myself with it. 02:02:46.240 --> 02:02:49.200 The same thing is true of the end times no man knows 02:02:49.200 --> 02:02:52.320 the hour, no man knows the day, save God alone. 02:02:53.280 --> 02:02:55.440 And so I don't have to worry about it. 02:02:55.440 --> 02:02:57.680 It will come when it comes. 02:02:57.680 --> 02:03:00.640 For me it could come tomorrow because I am mortal, I will 02:03:00.640 --> 02:03:01.760 one day die. 02:03:01.760 --> 02:03:03.920 God knows when that will happen. 02:03:03.920 --> 02:03:07.200 And so as a Christian, it is incumbent on me to live 02:03:07.200 --> 02:03:11.680 my life as if two things were true, because both are in 02:03:11.680 --> 02:03:13.280 fact true. 02:03:13.280 --> 02:03:16.800 First, as if I would die in the next moment or the 02:03:16.800 --> 02:03:20.720 next hour or to morrow And so I should live my life 02:03:20.960 --> 02:03:24.080 being prepared and in preparation for that. 02:03:24.080 --> 02:03:28.160 That doesn't mean becoming a monk or living in a cave or 02:03:28.160 --> 02:03:31.520 any of these silly things that people do, because you serve God 02:03:31.520 --> 02:03:35.200 in the vocation he has given you, in the life He has 02:03:35.200 --> 02:03:39.280 given you, by serving those around you whom He has put into 02:03:39.280 --> 02:03:43.200 your life, you serve God by serving others. 02:03:43.200 --> 02:03:47.520 Because as Luther said, God does not need our good works, but 02:03:47.520 --> 02:03:50.000 our neighbor does. 02:03:50.000 --> 02:03:55.360 And the second way, in addition to not worrying about these things 02:03:55.520 --> 02:04:00.720 and serving our neighbor, We have to recognize that we will live 02:04:00.720 --> 02:04:06.320 forever. Because human beings are not conditionally immortal. 02:04:06.320 --> 02:04:12.160 From the second God decided to make you, you were immortal. 02:04:12.560 --> 02:04:14.560 You were going to live forever. 02:04:14.560 --> 02:04:19.040 The only question is where you will spend that eternity. 02:04:19.040 --> 02:04:24.640 You will spend that eternity either in paradise or in hell. 02:04:24.640 --> 02:04:26.800 And so both are simultaneously true. 02:04:26.800 --> 02:04:29.440 You are mortal and you will die soon. 02:04:29.440 --> 02:04:32.720 It could be eighty years from now, could be ten years from 02:04:32.720 --> 02:04:34.320 now, could be ten minutes from now. 02:04:34.480 --> 02:04:35.600 Doesn't matter. 02:04:35.600 --> 02:04:38.480 But you are also immortal and you will live forever. 02:04:38.480 --> 02:04:42.240 And so bearing both of those in mind with that sort of 02:04:42.240 --> 02:04:46.960 tension is how Christians are supposed to live their lives. 02:04:46.960 --> 02:04:50.320 You don't live it with worry because God will provide. 02:04:50.320 --> 02:04:52.400 That is what he has said he will do, and all things 02:04:52.400 --> 02:04:55.840 work together for the good of those who are called according to 02:04:55.840 --> 02:04:56.960 his purposes. 02:04:56.960 --> 02:05:01.440 I'll slip in my confirmation verse whenever I can. 02:05:01.440 --> 02:05:05.600 But we live without that worry, but at the same time we 02:05:05.600 --> 02:05:10.400 prepare ourselves for the inevitable. 02:05:10.400 --> 02:05:14.880 And in the case of the Christian, the inevitable is good news. 02:05:14.880 --> 02:05:19.440 Because for the Christian, death is merely a doorway to the next 02:05:19.440 --> 02:05:23.760 life, to a perfect life, free of all of the cares and 02:05:23.760 --> 02:05:26.560 the sin and all the problems of this life. 02:05:26.560 --> 02:05:30.160 That doesn't mean that we want to go through that doorway immediately. 02:05:30.160 --> 02:05:32.960 Paul contemplates this in his writings. 02:05:32.960 --> 02:05:36.560 We have duties here, we have things we are called to do, 02:05:36.560 --> 02:05:40.480 we have work while it is day, and so we do those 02:05:40.480 --> 02:05:47.280 things. Of course I am awillennial so that's that does factor into 02:05:47.280 --> 02:05:51.280 this. And what Woe read, that quote, was essentially all of Article 02:05:51.280 --> 02:05:58.080 seventeen, insofar as it relates to eschatology from the Augsburg Confession. 02:05:58.080 --> 02:06:01.600 It was so little of an issue at the time, it was 02:06:01.600 --> 02:06:05.280 so not a live issue that it was addressed in a single 02:06:05.280 --> 02:06:07.440 paragraph, and not even a long one at that. 02:06:08.000 --> 02:06:10.720 And bear in mind that these things were written in German, some 02:06:10.720 --> 02:06:12.640 of the paragraphs are very long. 02:06:12.640 --> 02:06:17.120 This one very short. 02:06:17.120 --> 02:06:22.160 Because the historical position of the church is all millennialism. 02:06:22.160 --> 02:06:26.080 That's not to say that you aren't Christian if you interpret these 02:06:26.080 --> 02:06:26.960 things differently. 02:06:26.960 --> 02:06:31.040 It is simply to say that you are in fact standing outside 02:06:31.040 --> 02:06:35.520 the historical interpretation of the church, and as Will mentioned, there are 02:06:35.760 --> 02:06:39.520 some concerns that come along with that. 02:06:39.520 --> 02:06:42.560 That is in part between you and God and between you and 02:06:42.560 --> 02:06:44.480 your teachers. 02:06:44.480 --> 02:06:48.160 Read the scriptures, see what it is that God says about these 02:06:48.160 --> 02:06:54.000 things These things, come to a firm conclusion in your own conscience. 02:06:54.000 --> 02:06:57.520 That is the most vitally important matter. 02:06:57.520 --> 02:07:00.160 We would, of course hope that you come to the same conclusion 02:07:00.160 --> 02:07:03.920 that we have reached, but you may not. 02:07:03.920 --> 02:07:08.240 Now I said that there were two additional things that I wanted 02:07:08.240 --> 02:07:14.640 to mention about dispensationalist teaching, and really And really, there are three, 02:07:14.640 --> 02:07:16.960 but two that I will go into in a little bit of 02:07:16.960 --> 02:07:20.800 depth, just to leave you with something from this episode, so that 02:07:20.800 --> 02:07:21.440 you can 02:07:22.880 --> 02:07:26.240 try to refute at least, because quite frankly, many of these discussions 02:07:26.240 --> 02:07:28.000 will be unproductive. 02:07:28.000 --> 02:07:32.240 I don't want to bury the lead or hide that from you. 02:07:32.240 --> 02:07:35.280 If you try to discuss these issues with someone who has been 02:07:35.280 --> 02:07:41.120 steeped in dispensationalism, particularly particularly for decades, you will probably not get 02:07:41.120 --> 02:07:47.600 anywhere. You have to keep that in mind, because otherwise you are 02:07:47.600 --> 02:07:50.480 going to despair of dealing with these people. 02:07:50.480 --> 02:07:52.160 Do not despair of it. 02:07:52.160 --> 02:07:55.040 In some cases you will not be able to address the issue. 02:07:55.040 --> 02:07:59.360 If it happens to be your father, your mother, your parents, your 02:07:59.360 --> 02:08:04.960 grandparents. The best you can do honor them according to the fourth 02:08:04.960 --> 02:08:10.560 commandment, and probably try to avoid these issues to some degree. 02:08:10.560 --> 02:08:15.840 If they come up, then yes, you are arguably duty bound to 02:08:15.840 --> 02:08:18.320 speak the truth, because it is defending God and His Word. 02:08:19.280 --> 02:08:22.720 But you do that with wisdom, and with care, and with the 02:08:22.720 --> 02:08:24.880 fourth commandment in mind. 02:08:24.880 --> 02:08:28.720 But anyway, the the two main issues that I wanted to address 02:08:28.720 --> 02:08:30.800 were the so called Rapture 02:08:31.680 --> 02:08:35.760 The promises to Abraham, and then I mentioned a third thing, but 02:08:35.760 --> 02:08:39.280 this one I can mention very quickly, but it is a useful 02:08:39.280 --> 02:08:41.920 arrow to have in your quiver. 02:08:41.920 --> 02:08:49.200 Woe read Romans nine in Romans 9, there is a particularly 02:08:49.200 --> 02:08:53.440 important verse for those who are attempting to refute the heresy of 02:08:53.440 --> 02:08:57.840 dispensationalism. Some dispensationalists will try to use this as a proof of 02:08:57.840 --> 02:08:59.360 what they believe. 02:08:59.360 --> 02:09:02.160 They shouldn't because that's insane. 02:09:02.160 --> 02:09:06.080 But many times you'll meet a dispensationalist who will tempt to argue 02:09:06.080 --> 02:09:13.360 that Israel can mean only ethic Israel, descended from the man God 02:09:13.360 --> 02:09:18.000 renamed to Israel, Jacob. 02:09:18.000 --> 02:09:23.280 But we know that isn't the case, because in Romans 9, 6, 02:09:23.280 --> 02:09:27.920 and I'll read through verse 7 because 6 ends halfway through the 02:09:27.920 --> 02:09:29.360 verse, really. 02:09:29.360 --> 02:09:32.720 But it is not as though the word of God has failed, 02:09:32.720 --> 02:09:35.040 for not all who are descended from Israel 02:09:36.080 --> 02:09:41.360 belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because they 02:09:41.360 --> 02:09:47.200 are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named. 02:09:47.680 --> 02:09:50.000 Two points here. 02:09:50.000 --> 02:09:55.360 The second point is that Abraham's true offspring are named through Isaac. 02:09:55.360 --> 02:09:58.480 They are children of the promise, which is what the next verse 02:09:58.480 --> 02:10:00.880 says, of course. 02:10:00.880 --> 02:10:01.840 But the first point 02:10:02.800 --> 02:10:08.000 The word Israel is used twice in two distinct senses they cannot 02:10:08.000 --> 02:10:10.800 be equivalent or the verse is incoherent. 02:10:10.800 --> 02:10:16.560 For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. 02:10:16.560 --> 02:10:19.280 Well there you have both Israels. 02:10:19.280 --> 02:10:22.240 There are more, of course, there are about seven senses of Israel 02:10:22.240 --> 02:10:25.360 used in Scripture, but these are the two most salient. 02:10:25.360 --> 02:10:31.680 You have Ethnic Old Testament Israel that would be those descended from 02:10:31.680 --> 02:10:34.240 Israel, Israel here being Jacob. 02:10:34.240 --> 02:10:38.560 They are the lineal blood descendants of that man. 02:10:38.560 --> 02:10:42.000 And it says not all of them belong to Israel. 02:10:42.000 --> 02:10:43.920 That is the Israel of God. 02:10:43.920 --> 02:10:48.560 That is the Ecclesia, that is the Church, that is the elect. 02:10:48.560 --> 02:10:52.320 That is what is meant by the true Israel. 02:10:52.400 --> 02:10:56.480 And so here we have two senses of Israel in one verse. 02:10:56.480 --> 02:11:01.920 You cannot possibly claim that all mentions of Israel refer only to 02:11:01.920 --> 02:11:07.840 ethnic Israel, because right here we have an absolute categorical refutation of 02:11:07.840 --> 02:11:09.440 that contention. 02:11:09.440 --> 02:11:14.960 And then we'll close out with these two issues, the rapture and 02:11:14.960 --> 02:11:17.520 the promises to Abraham. 02:11:17.520 --> 02:11:21.520 We're already running a little long, so I may put the promises 02:11:21.600 --> 02:11:25.040 to Abraham as a separate audio file and link to that. 02:11:25.040 --> 02:11:27.840 We'll see how this goes. 02:11:27.840 --> 02:11:31.600 For the rapture there are a few verses, a few sections of 02:11:31.600 --> 02:11:35.360 scripture. It's never one verse really, it's usually multiple verses, and you 02:11:35.360 --> 02:11:37.920 don't want to cherry pick too much. 02:11:37.920 --> 02:11:40.640 You want the context along with the verse. 02:11:40.640 --> 02:11:45.520 But we'll start with first Thessalonians four, starting from verse thirteen. 02:11:46.240 --> 02:11:49.920 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those 02:11:49.920 --> 02:11:53.120 who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who 02:11:53.120 --> 02:11:54.320 have no hope. 02:11:54.640 --> 02:11:59.040 since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, Even so through 02:11:59.040 --> 02:12:03.040 Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 02:12:03.040 --> 02:12:06.320 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, 02:12:06.320 --> 02:12:09.600 that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of 02:12:09.600 --> 02:12:13.520 the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep, for the 02:12:13.520 --> 02:12:17.040 Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with 02:12:17.040 --> 02:12:20.240 the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet 02:12:20.240 --> 02:12:23.840 of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 02:12:23.840 --> 02:12:27.040 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up 02:12:27.040 --> 02:12:30.160 together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the 02:12:30.160 --> 02:12:33.840 air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 02:12:33.840 --> 02:12:38.720 Therefore encourage one another with these words. 02:12:38.720 --> 02:12:42.800 I mentioned this one first, because this is the verse where in 02:12:42.800 --> 02:12:47.520 the Latin of the Vulgate we get the term rapture, because the 02:12:47.520 --> 02:12:52.720 word therefore caught up in the Vulgate is raptus, which simply means 02:12:52.720 --> 02:12:55.600 caught up, that's why it's translated as caught up. 02:12:55.600 --> 02:12:58.400 It has a broader definition. 02:12:58.400 --> 02:12:59.920 It can mean a number of different things. 02:12:59.920 --> 02:13:03.840 It can even encompass kidnapping, for instance, but here it means caught 02:13:03.840 --> 02:13:06.240 up together. 02:13:06.240 --> 02:13:11.360 The focus here in this section, as should be obvious, when read 02:13:11.360 --> 02:13:14.480 in context, which is why I started at verse 13, instead of 02:13:14.480 --> 02:13:19.680 where dispensationalists will typically start, the focus is on addressing the ancient 02:13:19.760 --> 02:13:25.440 and quite frankly silly worry about those who died before Christ returned. 02:13:25.440 --> 02:13:28.320 There were some in the ancient church who were worried that Christ 02:13:28.640 --> 02:13:34.240 hadn't come back yet, and some of those who believed had died. 02:13:34.240 --> 02:13:39.600 It's a fairly ridiculous position for members of a religion where the 02:13:39.600 --> 02:13:40.960 core of the religion Religion 02:13:42.560 --> 02:13:46.640 is God incarnate dying and coming back to life. 02:13:46.640 --> 02:13:50.800 That some die before God returns does not mean they won't be 02:13:50.800 --> 02:13:54.880 resurrected or they won't be part of the new kingdom. 02:13:54.880 --> 02:13:57.040 That's the main thrust of this. 02:13:57.040 --> 02:14:00.720 This has nothing to do with a supposed rapture, or some being 02:14:00.720 --> 02:14:03.600 left behind during the tribulation. 02:14:03.600 --> 02:14:06.240 This is simply a teaching of Christian doctrine. 02:14:06.240 --> 02:14:09.760 This is what we see in the creeds the resurrection of the 02:14:09.760 --> 02:14:13.680 dead all will come to life in Christ. 02:14:13.680 --> 02:14:16.160 Some of us who are alive if we happen to be, I'm 02:14:16.080 --> 02:14:19.840 not saying that we speaking here will necessarily be so, but those 02:14:19.840 --> 02:14:23.440 who are alive will be changed in the blinking of an eye, 02:14:23.440 --> 02:14:25.680 and the dead will come to life. 02:14:25.680 --> 02:14:28.560 And the reason that it says first 02:14:29.680 --> 02:14:34.960 is that it is simply saying that this will happen before we 02:14:34.960 --> 02:14:37.280 are all caught up together. 02:14:37.280 --> 02:14:41.680 It's not saying the dead rise first or there's this group that 02:14:41.680 --> 02:14:44.480 first in time have something happen to them. 02:14:44.480 --> 02:14:48.400 This is a logical ordering that is one of the senses of 02:14:48.400 --> 02:14:51.600 the term first, or in the Greek protos. 02:14:51.600 --> 02:14:54.480 So neither of the teachings that are usually drawn out of this 02:14:54.480 --> 02:14:57.520 by dispensationalists is present here. 02:14:57.520 --> 02:15:00.800 You don't have a rapture, you don't have anyone left behind for 02:15:00.800 --> 02:15:02.560 the tribulation. 02:15:02.560 --> 02:15:07.200 This is just addressing an ancient worry that's not really a live 02:15:07.200 --> 02:15:08.560 issue in the church anymore. 02:15:08.560 --> 02:15:12.400 After two thousand years, we've kind of figured out that some Christians 02:15:12.400 --> 02:15:14.400 will die before Christ returns. 02:15:14.400 --> 02:15:19.120 This is just no longer a concern for us. 02:15:19.520 --> 02:15:23.360 Then there are three additional sections of scripture that I want to 02:15:23.360 --> 02:15:24.160 address on this point. 02:15:24.160 --> 02:15:28.720 Two of them essentially mirror each other, and the last is a 02:15:28.720 --> 02:15:32.480 section of Revelation because of course we have to address something from 02:15:32.480 --> 02:15:36.560 Revelation in an episode on dispensationalism. 02:15:36.560 --> 02:15:38.480 The first is Luke 17. 02:15:40.080 --> 02:15:43.280 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, 02:15:43.280 --> 02:15:46.640 he answered them: The kingdom of God is not coming in ways 02:15:46.640 --> 02:15:50.720 that can be observed, nor will they say, Look, here it is, 02:15:50.720 --> 02:15:54.640 or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst 02:15:54.640 --> 02:15:55.840 of you. 02:15:55.840 --> 02:16:00.560 I'll pause here for a second before reading the rest of this. 02:16:00.560 --> 02:16:06.080 If there is a literal millennium, it would most certainly be visible. 02:16:06.080 --> 02:16:08.640 It would be something that can be observed. 02:16:08.640 --> 02:16:12.000 Here Christ is saying, The kingdom of God is not coming in 02:16:12.000 --> 02:16:13.600 ways that can be observed. 02:16:13.600 --> 02:16:16.960 The second coming will be observed, and I will get to that. 02:16:16.960 --> 02:16:20.000 But the kingdom of God is the church. 02:16:20.000 --> 02:16:23.680 The kingdom of God comes as the church age, it comes as 02:16:23.680 --> 02:16:26.880 the gospel is spread to more and more people. 02:16:26.880 --> 02:16:31.600 It comes as God gathers in his saints from every nation and 02:16:31.600 --> 02:16:35.360 tongue. It is not a literal rule upon the earth. 02:16:35.360 --> 02:16:39.120 Now he will stand upon the earth, as we see in Job, 02:16:39.120 --> 02:16:41.760 and we have quoted that many times, but that But that is 02:16:41.760 --> 02:16:45.920 the second coming, and then also of course in paradise. 02:16:45.920 --> 02:16:48.160 But to continue the reading. 02:16:48.160 --> 02:16:51.920 And he said to the disciples, The days are coming when you 02:16:51.920 --> 02:16:54.320 will desire to see one of the days of the Son of 02:16:54.320 --> 02:16:57.280 Man, and you will not see it, and they will say to 02:16:57.280 --> 02:17:00.800 you, Look there, or look here. 02:17:00.800 --> 02:17:04.560 Do not go out or follow them, for as the lightning flashes 02:17:04.560 --> 02:17:07.840 and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so 02:17:07.840 --> 02:17:10.400 will the Son of Man be in his day. 02:17:10.400 --> 02:17:13.680 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this 02:17:13.680 --> 02:17:17.760 generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it 02:17:17.760 --> 02:17:19.920 will be in the days of the Son of Man. 02:17:19.920 --> 02:17:23.360 They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, 02:17:23.360 --> 02:17:26.720 until the day when Noah entered the Ark, and the flood came 02:17:26.800 --> 02:17:28.560 and destroyed them all. 02:17:28.560 --> 02:17:32.320 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were 02:17:32.320 --> 02:17:36.880 eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the 02:17:36.880 --> 02:17:40.560 day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from 02:17:40.560 --> 02:17:42.720 heaven and destroyed them all. 02:17:42.720 --> 02:17:44.960 So will it be on the day when the Son of Man 02:17:44.960 --> 02:17:46.000 is revealed. 02:17:46.000 --> 02:17:49.040 On that day let the one who is on the house top, 02:17:49.040 --> 02:17:51.760 with his goods in the house, not come down to take them 02:17:51.760 --> 02:17:55.360 away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not 02:17:55.360 --> 02:17:56.240 turn back. 02:17:56.240 --> 02:18:00.720 Remember Lot's wife whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, 02:18:00.720 --> 02:18:03.120 but whoever loses his life will keep it. 02:18:03.120 --> 02:18:06.560 I tell you, in that night there will be two in one 02:18:06.560 --> 02:18:09.760 bed, one will be taken, and the other left. 02:18:09.760 --> 02:18:13.440 There will be two women grinding together, one will be taken, and 02:18:13.440 --> 02:18:14.800 the other left. 02:18:14.800 --> 02:18:17.040 And they said to him, Where, Lord? 02:18:17.040 --> 02:18:20.880 He said to them, Where the corpse is, there the vultures will 02:18:20.880 --> 02:18:26.160 gather. As I've mentioned many times before, you have to take sections 02:18:26.160 --> 02:18:30.480 of scripture as a whole, not chop them up into little chunks. 02:18:30.480 --> 02:18:33.120 This all flows together. 02:18:33.120 --> 02:18:38.480 And perhaps that last bit is a little difficult to exegete for 02:18:38.480 --> 02:18:39.600 some, anyway. 02:18:39.600 --> 02:18:43.200 Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. 02:18:43.200 --> 02:18:47.520 This is a quip by Christ pointing out this is an obvious 02:18:47.520 --> 02:18:51.760 thing. If vultures are gathered, there's a corpse. 02:18:52.640 --> 02:18:53.280 This is 02:18:54.240 --> 02:18:58.560 used typologically as it were, of the coming of the Son of 02:18:58.560 --> 02:19:02.960 Man, of the return of Christ, the second coming, the return to 02:19:02.960 --> 02:19:08.080 judgment. It'll be obvious, like the fire from heaven that destroyed Sodom 02:19:08.080 --> 02:19:13.120 and Gomorrah, like the flood that wiped out the ancient world. 02:19:13.120 --> 02:19:17.760 These things were not secret, these things were not difficult to discern, 02:19:17.760 --> 02:19:21.600 they were not hidden from the world, they were open and obvious, 02:19:21.600 --> 02:19:24.000 notorious even. 02:19:24.000 --> 02:19:27.200 That is how the second coming will be. 02:19:27.200 --> 02:19:31.360 Everyone will see it, from the east to the west. 02:19:31.360 --> 02:19:34.800 And so there is no rapture. 02:19:34.800 --> 02:19:39.760 There's no secret coming where Christ secretly steals into the world and 02:19:39.760 --> 02:19:43.840 takes out his saints, and then comes again at some later point 02:19:43.920 --> 02:19:45.680 to judge the world. 02:19:45.680 --> 02:19:49.520 That is what he very clearly denies here, for as the lightning 02:19:49.520 --> 02:19:52.640 flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, 02:19:52.640 --> 02:19:55.760 so will the Son of Man be in his day. 02:19:55.760 --> 02:20:03.680 The rapture cannot be true, because Scripture says it is not. 02:20:03.680 --> 02:20:07.360 And so when you have those who teach that there will be 02:20:07.360 --> 02:20:13.440 a secret second coming, or a coming in between, the incarnation and 02:20:13.440 --> 02:20:16.800 the second coming, you know that's false. 02:20:16.800 --> 02:20:21.600 Scripture says it is false, right here, and so we must according 02:20:21.600 --> 02:20:27.200 to Scripture, reject the idea of a rapture. 02:20:27.200 --> 02:20:29.760 And notably, I would like to pull out one more thing before 02:20:29.760 --> 02:20:33.680 moving on to Matthew 24. 02:20:33.680 --> 02:20:39.360 Some will attempt to use this, broken up into little pieces to 02:20:39.360 --> 02:20:42.000 teach a rapture, because they will say, Well look right here it 02:20:42.000 --> 02:20:45.440 says, There will be two women grinding together one will be taken, 02:20:45.440 --> 02:20:48.560 and the other left. 02:20:48.560 --> 02:20:53.360 Does it say which one will be taken? 02:20:53.360 --> 02:20:55.040 The answer is no. 02:20:55.040 --> 02:20:57.440 It does not say if the believer will be taken or the 02:20:57.440 --> 02:21:02.240 unbeliever. So bear that in mind, as we go through two more 02:21:02.240 --> 02:21:03.840 sections here. 02:21:03.840 --> 02:21:06.800 Matthew twenty four. 02:21:06.800 --> 02:21:10.320 But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the 02:21:10.320 --> 02:21:14.320 angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only For as 02:21:14.320 --> 02:21:16.640 were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the 02:21:16.640 --> 02:21:17.920 Son of Man. 02:21:17.920 --> 02:21:20.720 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and 02:21:20.720 --> 02:21:24.720 drinking, burying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered 02:21:24.720 --> 02:21:27.760 the Ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept 02:21:27.760 --> 02:21:29.280 them all away. 02:21:29.280 --> 02:21:32.080 So will be the coming of the Son of Man. 02:21:32.080 --> 02:21:35.200 Then two men will be in the field, one will be taken, 02:21:35.200 --> 02:21:38.720 and one left, two women will be grinding at the mill, one 02:21:38.720 --> 02:21:40.880 will be taken, and one left. 02:21:40.880 --> 02:21:44.400 Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day your 02:21:44.400 --> 02:21:47.920 lord is coming, but you know this, that if the master of 02:21:47.920 --> 02:21:50.480 the house had known in what part of the night the thief 02:21:50.480 --> 02:21:53.040 was coming, he would have stayed awake, and would not have let 02:21:53.040 --> 02:21:55.280 his house be broken into. 02:21:55.280 --> 02:21:59.040 Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is 02:21:59.040 --> 02:22:02.880 coming at an hour you do not expect. 02:22:02.880 --> 02:22:06.720 Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has 02:22:06.720 --> 02:22:10.080 set over his household, to give them their food at the proper 02:22:10.080 --> 02:22:13.920 time. Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing 02:22:13.920 --> 02:22:15.120 when he comes. 02:22:15.120 --> 02:22:18.400 Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his 02:22:18.400 --> 02:22:22.720 possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, My master is 02:22:22.720 --> 02:22:26.480 delayed, and begins to beat his fellow servants and eat and drinks 02:22:26.480 --> 02:22:30.880 with drunkards, the master of that house, the master of that servant 02:22:31.120 --> 02:22:33.440 will come on a day when he does not expect him, and 02:22:33.440 --> 02:22:36.960 at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in 02:22:36.960 --> 02:22:39.360 pieces, and put him with the hypocrites. 02:22:39.360 --> 02:22:44.240 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 02:22:44.560 --> 02:22:50.000 You will notice that again, it is not mentioned which is taken 02:22:50.160 --> 02:22:51.600 and which is left. 02:22:51.600 --> 02:22:54.720 Scripture does not tell you if the believer is taken or if 02:22:54.720 --> 02:22:58.160 the believer is left, if the unbeliever is taken, or if the 02:22:58.160 --> 02:23:00.560 unbeliever is left. 02:23:00.560 --> 02:23:05.040 Those who attempt to use these verses to justify a supposed rapture 02:23:05.280 --> 02:23:10.320 assume, without scriptural warrant, that these verses teach that the believers will 02:23:10.320 --> 02:23:13.760 be caught up, that believers will be taken. 02:23:13.760 --> 02:23:14.400 Now 02:23:15.440 --> 02:23:20.560 believers are at some point in this caught up, because that's what 02:23:20.560 --> 02:23:25.440 we get from the earlier passage that I read. 02:23:25.440 --> 02:23:29.680 But that does not mean that here the believer is taken or 02:23:29.680 --> 02:23:34.160 the believer is left, and we know this from two of Christ's 02:23:34.160 --> 02:23:38.640 parables. I'll use these two parables before I read the final section 02:23:38.640 --> 02:23:40.480 from Revelation. 02:23:40.480 --> 02:23:45.040 The first parable is the parable of the net, from Matthew thirteen. 02:23:45.040 --> 02:23:48.080 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown 02:23:48.080 --> 02:23:50.800 into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. 02:23:50.800 --> 02:23:53.600 When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and 02:23:53.600 --> 02:23:57.200 sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad. 02:23:57.200 --> 02:23:59.440 So it will be at the end of the age. 02:23:59.680 --> 02:24:03.360 angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and 02:24:03.360 --> 02:24:06.640 throw them into the fiery furnace, in that place there will be 02:24:06.640 --> 02:24:10.320 weeping and gnashing of teeth. 02:24:10.320 --> 02:24:15.440 So which is gathered first here, the believer or the unbeliever? 02:24:15.440 --> 02:24:20.800 Similarly, the parable of the wheat and the tares, again Matthew thirteen. 02:24:20.800 --> 02:24:24.720 He put another parable before them saying, The kingdom of heaven may 02:24:24.720 --> 02:24:27.920 be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 02:24:27.920 --> 02:24:31.360 But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds 02:24:31.440 --> 02:24:33.200 among the wheat and went away. 02:24:33.200 --> 02:24:36.400 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds 02:24:36.480 --> 02:24:39.760 appeared also, and the servants of the master of the house came 02:24:39.760 --> 02:24:43.360 and said to him, Master, did you not sow good seed in 02:24:43.360 --> 02:24:44.080 your field? 02:24:44.080 --> 02:24:46.080 How then does it have weeds? 02:24:46.080 --> 02:24:49.040 He said to them, An enemy has done this. 02:24:49.040 --> 02:24:52.000 So the servants said to him, Then do you want us to 02:24:52.000 --> 02:24:53.280 go and gather them? 02:24:53.280 --> 02:24:57.280 But he said, No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up 02:24:57.280 --> 02:24:58.960 the wheat along with them. 02:24:58.960 --> 02:25:02.800 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I 02:25:02.800 --> 02:25:06.640 will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, and bind them in 02:25:06.640 --> 02:25:11.280 bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn. 02:25:11.280 --> 02:25:16.480 And so I ask again, which is gathered first, the believer or 02:25:16.480 --> 02:25:19.440 the unbeliever? 02:25:19.440 --> 02:25:25.120 The exegesis, the eisegesis, of the previous verses by those who believe 02:25:25.120 --> 02:25:29.680 in a rapture, is not consonant with what Christ teaches in his 02:25:29.840 --> 02:25:36.320 parables. In his parables, he uses the wicked being taken away as 02:25:36.320 --> 02:25:37.680 his example. 02:25:37.680 --> 02:25:40.720 The wicked are taken out of the world first, and thrown into 02:25:40.720 --> 02:25:41.840 the fire. 02:25:41.840 --> 02:25:45.440 Now I'm not saying that is necessarily how this will take place. 02:25:45.440 --> 02:25:51.200 Christ is using parables to explain Using these, what is going to 02:25:51.200 --> 02:25:53.680 happen in the end times. 02:25:53.680 --> 02:25:58.240 It is not necessarily an exact chronological statement of what will happen 02:25:58.240 --> 02:25:59.840 in the end times. 02:25:59.840 --> 02:26:05.680 However, it does tell us that we cannot interpret these other sections 02:26:05.840 --> 02:26:10.480 as those who believe in dispensationalism do, because they do not agree 02:26:10.480 --> 02:26:11.840 with Scripture. 02:26:11.840 --> 02:26:14.560 You cannot make Scripture contradict itself. 02:26:14.560 --> 02:26:19.040 If you make Scripture contradict itself, you have erred. 02:26:19.040 --> 02:26:22.160 It is not that Scripture is wrong, it is not that Scripture 02:26:22.160 --> 02:26:27.360 contradicts, it is that your interpretation of Scripture is necessarily wrong, and 02:26:27.360 --> 02:26:32.160 so in light of these parables, you cannot interpret the previous two 02:26:32.160 --> 02:26:36.240 passages from Luke and Matthew that are often used to attempt to 02:26:36.240 --> 02:26:42.560 justify a rapture Because they are not consonant if you use dispensationalist 02:26:42.800 --> 02:26:46.800 or rapture understanding. 02:26:46.800 --> 02:26:50.880 And so the final section here of scripture, I think I will 02:26:50.880 --> 02:26:54.640 do the promises to Abraham separately just to keep this episode from 02:26:54.640 --> 02:26:55.920 running too long. 02:26:55.920 --> 02:26:57.520 I will link to that in the show notes. 02:26:57.520 --> 02:27:00.400 It's from my notes on Genesis when I was teaching a class 02:27:00.400 --> 02:27:02.720 on that book. 02:27:02.720 --> 02:27:06.080 But the last section of scripture from Revelation three 02:27:07.440 --> 02:27:10.800 and to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, the words 02:27:10.800 --> 02:27:13.680 of the Holy One, the true one, who has the key of 02:27:13.680 --> 02:27:17.120 David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no 02:27:17.120 --> 02:27:19.200 one will opens. 02:27:19.200 --> 02:27:23.040 I know your works, behold, I have set before you an open 02:27:23.040 --> 02:27:25.440 door, which no one is able to shut. 02:27:25.440 --> 02:27:28.480 I know that you have but little power, and yet you have 02:27:28.480 --> 02:27:31.600 kept my word, and have not denied my name. 02:27:31.600 --> 02:27:35.040 Behold I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say 02:27:35.040 --> 02:27:38.400 that they are Jews and are not, but lie, behold I will 02:27:38.400 --> 02:27:41.440 make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will 02:27:41.440 --> 02:27:45.200 learn that I have loved you, because you have kept my word 02:27:45.200 --> 02:27:47.040 about patient endurance. 02:27:47.040 --> 02:27:49.600 I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming 02:27:49.600 --> 02:27:53.280 on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. 02:27:53.280 --> 02:27:57.200 I am coming soon, hold fast what you have, so that no 02:27:57.200 --> 02:27:58.960 one may seize your crown. 02:27:58.960 --> 02:28:02.080 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the 02:28:02.080 --> 02:28:03.600 temple of my God. 02:28:03.600 --> 02:28:06.480 Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on 02:28:06.480 --> 02:28:09.040 him the name of my God, and the name of the city 02:28:09.040 --> 02:28:13.120 of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God 02:28:13.120 --> 02:28:16.640 out of heaven, and my own new name, he who has an 02:28:16.640 --> 02:28:21.840 ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. 02:28:21.840 --> 02:28:24.960 Now this passage This passage does not precisely tell us what Christ 02:28:24.960 --> 02:28:27.440 means when he says that he will keep them from the hour 02:28:27.440 --> 02:28:28.880 of trial. 02:28:28.880 --> 02:28:34.160 Dispensationalists will attempt to interpret this as proving a rapture. 02:28:34.160 --> 02:28:38.560 This is again not permissible because this is importing one's priors into 02:28:38.560 --> 02:28:43.200 the text instead of taking the text as it appears. 02:28:43.200 --> 02:28:50.160 As stated earlier, the exegetical rule that Christians do, that Christians must 02:28:50.160 --> 02:28:54.960 follow, is that we use clear text to interpret difficult texts or 02:28:54.960 --> 02:28:58.480 ones that are, from a human perspective, less clear. 02:28:58.480 --> 02:29:00.400 We do not do this the other way around. 02:29:00.400 --> 02:29:05.360 We do not make clear text gray by attempting to use hard 02:29:05.360 --> 02:29:08.960 text to make them say what we would prefer they say instead 02:29:08.960 --> 02:29:10.800 of what they actually say. 02:29:11.600 --> 02:29:14.640 And so we know from the previous passages, from all that we've 02:29:14.640 --> 02:29:20.720 reviewed in this episode, dispensationalism cannot be true. 02:29:20.720 --> 02:29:23.040 And there is, of course, no rapture. 02:29:23.040 --> 02:29:28.720 I demonstrated that conclusively with the previous verses, showing that rapture theology 02:29:28.720 --> 02:29:35.120 necessarily makes of God a hypocrite, makes his word conflict and contradict. 02:29:35.120 --> 02:29:38.400 And so we cannot attribute error to God the error must lie 02:29:38.400 --> 02:29:38.960 with those who 02:29:39.920 --> 02:29:42.560 misinterpret his word. 02:29:42.560 --> 02:29:46.160 And so this section from Revelation, which is sometimes used in an 02:29:46.160 --> 02:29:50.000 attempt, often used, quite frankly, in an attempt to prove a supposed 02:29:50.160 --> 02:29:52.720 rapture, proves no such thing 02:29:53.840 --> 02:29:59.120 That God will save these referenced individuals, and do remember there are 02:29:59.120 --> 02:30:02.720 multiple letters to multiple churches, it's not just this one letter to 02:30:02.720 --> 02:30:04.400 the church. 02:30:04.400 --> 02:30:07.760 That God will save these individuals from this particular trial 02:30:08.720 --> 02:30:12.400 does not say there will be a pre-tribulation rapture. 02:30:12.400 --> 02:30:14.880 It is simply not what the text says. 02:30:14.880 --> 02:30:19.440 And as Christians, we are bound by what the text says, not 02:30:19.440 --> 02:30:23.280 what we would like to think the text says, not what we 02:30:23.280 --> 02:30:29.520 believe, as our own interpretation, arrived at outside of Scripture, and then 02:30:29.520 --> 02:30:32.960 brought to Scripture and imported into it. 02:30:32.960 --> 02:30:35.680 You take God at His Word. 02:30:35.680 --> 02:30:40.800 You don't take God at the Word of fallible men who say, 02:30:40.800 --> 02:30:43.680 Well no, this must be true because X, Y, and Z show 02:30:43.680 --> 02:30:46.160 me in God's word. 02:30:46.160 --> 02:30:48.800 No, you don't have to show me everything in God's word that 02:30:48.800 --> 02:30:50.960 it's true I know that water is wet. 02:30:50.960 --> 02:30:55.200 You don't have to prove that from Scripture. 02:30:55.200 --> 02:30:59.760 Because not all truth is contained in Scripture, but all things in 02:30:59.760 --> 02:31:02.240 Scripture are true. 02:31:02.240 --> 02:31:06.400 And so anything in Scripture, because all truth is one, must agree 02:31:06.400 --> 02:31:08.560 with everything else in Scripture. 02:31:08.560 --> 02:31:09.680 If you can show that 02:31:10.720 --> 02:31:15.680 a particular understanding, that a particular theology, that a particular doctrine or 02:31:15.680 --> 02:31:22.720 dogma, necessarily make scripture conflict with itself, you have conclusively proven that 02:31:23.520 --> 02:31:27.440 particular theology, or doctrine, dogma, whatever it happens to be, you have 02:31:27.440 --> 02:31:31.360 proven conclusively that it is wrong. 02:31:31.600 --> 02:31:36.480 You haven't necessarily proved that any other particular interpretation is correct, but 02:31:36.480 --> 02:31:40.000 you have proved that that one is wrong. 02:31:40.000 --> 02:31:43.760 And so I would contend and I firmly believe that in this 02:31:43.760 --> 02:31:50.560 episode we have shown, according to the history, according to in large 02:31:50.560 --> 02:31:54.640 part the scripture, because the scripture is obviously the most important thing 02:31:54.640 --> 02:31:59.280 here, but according to the history and the theology, and yes, the 02:31:59.280 --> 02:32:05.600 worldly consequences to some degree, we have shown that dispensationalism is necessarily 02:32:05.600 --> 02:32:08.480 false. It is a heresy. 02:32:08.480 --> 02:32:14.880 It is something that is impermissible for Christians to believe. 02:32:15.040 --> 02:32:17.840 And so the bottom line is very simple. 02:32:17.840 --> 02:32:22.080 Christians must reject dispensationalism. 02:32:22.080 --> 02:32:25.520 It is a modern innovation that does not have a basis in 02:32:25.520 --> 02:32:29.920 Scripture, that has a basis in the wicked secular world, and it 02:32:29.920 --> 02:32:34.080 has been used as a cudgel against Christians and against the Church, 02:32:34.080 --> 02:32:38.320 and, yes, also against the West. 02:32:38.320 --> 02:32:43.360 If we are to preserve the Church and yes, our own nations, 02:32:43.360 --> 02:32:48.480 our own peoples, the West, if we are to preserve Christendom, we 02:32:48.480 --> 02:32:54.080 must reject dispensationalism and those who teach it, because it is a 02:32:54.080 --> 02:33:00.400 wicked lie, and every wicked lie has an animating intelligence behind it. 02:33:00.400 --> 02:33:03.920 And so dispensationalism is not of God, it is not of scripture, 02:33:03.920 --> 02:33:05.280 it is not truth. 02:33:05.280 --> 02:33:09.760 It is of Satan, it is a lie, it is pernicious, it 02:33:09.760 --> 02:33:12.000 is a heresy.