Latest / The Week in Bible Prophecy / The Pre-Trib Rapture Debate
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers podcast.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Well, welcome to the podcast, everybody. I'm here in studio
- 0:11Speaker 2: with Lee Brainer. Welcome Lee Mando.
- 0:13Speaker 3: It's good to be here again. I always love being
- 0:15Speaker 3: with the Prophecy Watchers crew.
- 0:17Speaker 2: Yeah, we we have a lot to talk about today
- 0:19Speaker 2: because and I'll just want to say right up front
- 0:22Speaker 2: that the idea of the pre trib rapture, as you
- 0:26Speaker 2: know you've spoke a lot on it, is it can.
- 0:29Speaker 2: It brings out sometimes the best and the worst in people.
- 0:34Speaker 2: And there's a lot of people that in general that
- 0:38Speaker 2: speak very aggressively at times against the pre trib rapture.
- 0:42Speaker 2: I mean, it has not been your experience.
- 0:43Speaker 3: It has definitely been my experience. I've had a few
- 0:46Speaker 3: of the well known names in the pre rap rapture
- 0:48Speaker 3: camp and well known names in the post trib rapture
- 0:51Speaker 3: camp going after me in public forums like Twitter.
- 0:56Speaker 2: So, I mean, the So what I want to do
- 0:58Speaker 2: today is I want to talk about some of that.
- 1:00Speaker 2: I mean, my heart is to keep things positive. Uh.
- 1:03Speaker 2: Those that disagree with us, I mean, I've been on
- 1:04Speaker 2: record over and we love them. There are brothers in Christ.
- 1:08Speaker 2: I don't want to, Uh, I want to speak lovingly
- 1:11Speaker 2: of them and and and speak in a way that's civil.
- 1:14Speaker 2: But also what I would like to do is to
- 1:18Speaker 2: interact with some of the things that are some of
- 1:21Speaker 2: the criticisms that are happening against the preacher position. I
- 1:25Speaker 2: think all of us we never want to disengage in
- 1:30Speaker 2: in these my I give people to benefit that I
- 1:32Speaker 2: was a pastor a long time. I give people to
- 1:34Speaker 2: benefit the doubt. Uh. Just it's it's easier if I
- 1:38Speaker 2: just assume that their motives are pure. And that's that's
- 1:41Speaker 2: the way I like to live my life. It makes
- 1:42Speaker 2: me feel better. But nevertheless, as it relates to the
- 1:45Speaker 2: substance of the arguments, regardless of maybe how they're said,
- 1:50Speaker 2: I think it would be helpful to begin to address
- 1:53Speaker 2: some of those. But let's let's give a little bit
- 1:55Speaker 2: of background. So a couple of years ago you spoke
- 1:59Speaker 2: at the Preacher conference in Dallas, Tommy Ice, doctor Andy Woods, others,
- 2:04Speaker 2: and at the time you had sent us an article
- 2:08Speaker 2: on the ten sayings that were found you found an Ephraim.
- 2:11Speaker 2: Let's give a little bit of background of what that is,
- 2:13Speaker 2: of what that was, and how you came to speak
- 2:15Speaker 2: at the pre Trip conference.
- 2:16Speaker 3: Well, originally there had been one Efrium, the Syrian rapture
- 2:21Speaker 3: passage that had been known in times past, and it
- 2:27Speaker 3: was familiar to the pre Trip. It was in English,
- 2:29Speaker 3: that's important, yeah, and it had been translated out of
- 2:32Speaker 3: the out of the Latin into English and it was
- 2:36Speaker 3: well known to people. So when I discovered Afrium the
- 2:40Speaker 3: Syrian rapture passage, while I was doing research on the
- 2:43Speaker 3: Greek word Apastacia for my book on second Thessalonians two three,
- 2:48Speaker 3: I came across a rapture passage in Afrium the Syrian
- 2:52Speaker 3: that was unknown, at least I couldn't. I didn't recollect it.
- 2:55Speaker 2: I hadn't seen it any in your in the original
- 2:57Speaker 2: Greek here right.
- 2:59Speaker 3: Yeah, where it's un translated works in Danbreek. There's over
- 3:03Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty works in Ephriem that either don't
- 3:06Speaker 3: have a published English translation, or there's a translation that's
- 3:10Speaker 3: buried away that someone did for a dissertation, or something
- 3:13Speaker 3: that's hard to reach. There's maybe only a dozen of
- 3:16Speaker 3: his works that have English translations. Okay, yep, But at
- 3:19Speaker 3: any rate, I was going through this research doing looking
- 3:23Speaker 3: for aposta see and I found a rapture passage I
- 3:26Speaker 3: didn't recognize, so I pulled a few books off my shelf,
- 3:29Speaker 3: I did some research on published lists of known Patristian
- 3:32Speaker 3: rapture passages, and I didn't find it. So I spent
- 3:36Speaker 3: about two months going through his works finding rapture passages.
- 3:41Speaker 3: I found over thirty rapture passages that were clear rapture passages,
- 3:45Speaker 3: and ten of them in the context made it clear
- 3:47Speaker 3: it was a pre trip rapture passage. So I forwarded
- 3:50Speaker 3: that stuff to the to prophecy watchers, and it was
- 3:56Speaker 3: forwarded to you and we just took off from there.
- 3:58Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is important because let's set the stage
- 4:02Speaker 2: here a little bit. Is that oftentimes people who are
- 4:07Speaker 2: critical of the dispensational perspective or the preacher position will
- 4:10Speaker 2: make a claim or an assertion that the preacher position
- 4:14Speaker 2: originated with Jonathan Darby right as well as Margaret McDonald
- 4:21Speaker 2: eighteen thirties. So we recognize and we go, oh, okay, well,
- 4:26Speaker 2: that's fair. Right, that's a fair that's at first glance,
- 4:30Speaker 2: ye isn't that? That's a fair assertion? Hey, this was
- 4:33Speaker 2: started there. Well, okay, so that being the case because
- 4:37Speaker 2: of that assertion, what's our response.
- 4:42Speaker 3: Well we should we should let their response are their
- 4:46Speaker 3: claims stand, and say.
- 4:47Speaker 2: Well, let's challenge it, let's challenge it.
- 4:49Speaker 3: And so we would go to the For instance, there's
- 4:52Speaker 3: a whole string of people from the beginning of the
- 4:54Speaker 3: Protestant Reformation up till Jan Darby's time who didn't hold
- 4:58Speaker 3: modern dispensationalism person but they held to a pre tribulation
- 5:01Speaker 3: rapture in one form or another. It was. It's not unknown,
- 5:05Speaker 3: it's not unheard of.
- 5:05Speaker 2: So before you go on there, I mean William Watson's book,
- 5:08Speaker 2: Dispensationalism Before Darby. That's a great book. So he he
- 5:12Speaker 2: was a what was his he was? He was? I know,
- 5:15Speaker 2: he's a professor at Colorado Christian University. Do you remember
- 5:18Speaker 2: what his what his discipline was?
- 5:19Speaker 3: No, I sure don't. I thought it was in the
- 5:21Speaker 3: field of history.
- 5:22Speaker 2: But that's what I think too. He was he was
- 5:24Speaker 2: It wasn't theology, but he was history. And so he decided, hey,
- 5:27Speaker 2: I can I know a lot of these these Puritans
- 5:31Speaker 2: that were living in England and others, and so he
- 5:33Speaker 2: wrote this book, Dispensation Before Darby, uh, covering from the
- 5:37Speaker 2: time of the Reformation, primarily in England, where he addressed, Hey,
- 5:42Speaker 2: this idea that a dispensational framework began with Darby in
- 5:46Speaker 2: the eighteen thirties is completely false, and so he wrote
- 5:49Speaker 2: a whole book on it, which again it had helped
- 5:51Speaker 2: to challenge this idea, which for him, he's like, well,
- 5:54Speaker 2: let's let's put it to scrutiny. So we have that now. Really,
- 5:58Speaker 2: I would say post Reformation documented in the book, which
- 6:02Speaker 2: helped to challenge that assertion. So I think one of
- 6:07Speaker 2: the claims often that is made is that we, or
- 6:10Speaker 2: you or others the researchers, that because we have no
- 6:13Speaker 2: evidence for the preacher position at all in the Bible,
- 6:17Speaker 2: we're trying to go scour the church fathers to find
- 6:20Speaker 2: something and respond to that. Because that's really not true
- 6:25Speaker 2: to me.
- 6:25Speaker 3: I mean, it seems it's almost hysterical to me, really,
- 6:29Speaker 3: because I believe in the pre tribulation rapture, because the
- 6:33Speaker 3: clear teaching in the Bible, the interplay that we see
- 6:36Speaker 3: in Revelation chapter four through five, the promise in Revelation
- 6:39Speaker 3: three ten to be kept from the hour of trial,
- 6:41Speaker 3: the promise in John fourteen one through three that the
- 6:44Speaker 3: next time the Lord Jesus interacts physically with the Church.
- 6:47Speaker 3: They're going to glory, they're going to go to the
- 6:49Speaker 3: New Jerusalem, going to go to the Father's House. They're
- 6:51Speaker 3: not going to stay down here on earth. And we
- 6:53Speaker 3: could multiply these references. So my conviction is based on
- 6:57Speaker 3: the scriptures. And the only reason I go to the
- 6:59Speaker 3: Church isn't because I need ammunition to prove the pre
- 7:03Speaker 3: tribulation rapture. It's because I need ammunition to overthrow the
- 7:07Speaker 3: objection that the pre trip rapture is not seen in
- 7:10Speaker 3: the early Fathers, and that is the farthest from the
- 7:13Speaker 3: truth you could be.
- 7:14Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean because a lot of the work
- 7:16Speaker 2: I got to speak at the pre trib conference as
- 7:18Speaker 2: well on the ol of a discourse and Luke seventeen
- 7:21Speaker 2: and Matthew twenty four, well, all the elem at discourse
- 7:24Speaker 2: in the sense of looking at I rescue, yes, before
- 7:29Speaker 2: the Day of the Lord, and it was a rescue prior.
- 7:31Speaker 2: It was a pre Day of the Lord rescue. So
- 7:36Speaker 2: it's in the Bible. It's there. But again, let me
- 7:38Speaker 2: clarify for those listening that because this has come up recently,
- 7:42Speaker 2: Joel Richardson makes a comment, I actually saw the Twitter
- 7:45Speaker 2: thing myself and I commented there and again we love Joel,
- 7:48Speaker 2: he's a brother in Christ. But one of the things
- 7:50Speaker 2: that he mentioned on there was that phrase that, well,
- 7:53Speaker 2: the reason that people are trying to find the Church
- 7:56Speaker 2: fathers is because it's not in the Bible. And I'm like, well,
- 7:58Speaker 2: I said, that's not the whole story, man, And I
- 8:01Speaker 2: said very nicely, because we should be nice. But so
- 8:05Speaker 2: just so people understand is we're not looking at pre
- 8:08Speaker 2: Darby things to defend the view. But when people make
- 8:13Speaker 2: an accusation that it started with Darby, you and I
- 8:16Speaker 2: have talked abouts a lot that it's a myth. It's
- 8:19Speaker 2: a myth that kind of refuses to die. It continues
- 8:21Speaker 2: to continue to be shared on the Internet, social media.
- 8:25Speaker 2: So our goal is simply to go and say, just
- 8:28Speaker 2: like William Watson did, hey guys, that's fair. It's a
- 8:32Speaker 2: fair statement upfront, let's challenge it, and it's false. And
- 8:35Speaker 2: so here you are doing research. You found the ten
- 8:39Speaker 2: refferences in Greek Ephraim, which hasn't been out there, which
- 8:43Speaker 2: I think is valuable research. That's why Tommy Ice at
- 8:47Speaker 2: the time, Doctor Tommy Ice, when I remember to going
- 8:51Speaker 2: to dinner with him, and I said, did you read
- 8:54Speaker 2: Lee's paper? And he said, you know, Mondo, I get
- 8:58Speaker 2: a lot of these things. And at first glance I
- 9:00Speaker 2: was like, no, wait, I don't believe a second of it.
- 9:03Speaker 2: But he said that he's written. He wrote a scholarly
- 9:07Speaker 2: article where he had thirty five references to pre Darby
- 9:12Speaker 2: church Father, you know, kind of things outside of William
- 9:15Speaker 2: Watson's work. And he said, but once I got into
- 9:18Speaker 2: Lee's work, he said, it's ten more at least that
- 9:23Speaker 2: I can add to my thirty five. He goes, but
- 9:26Speaker 2: I realized that the work being done by Lee, in
- 9:29Speaker 2: these untranslated works, they're just there. I mean again, thousands
- 9:33Speaker 2: and thousands of pages. He said. I was so compelled
- 9:37Speaker 2: that I gave up my spot, Yeah, my own spot
- 9:39Speaker 2: speaking at the pre TRIB conference to fast track him in,
- 9:42Speaker 2: to let people know not only of the work that
- 9:45Speaker 2: you're doing, but also the magnitude of what you found there.
- 9:49Speaker 3: Yeah, And the work has continued. We've discovered another nine
- 9:53Speaker 3: pre trip passages and Eusebius. As far as I know,
- 9:57Speaker 3: no one knew that Eusebius was pre trip because is
- 10:00Speaker 3: few works translated into English don't make it clear.
- 10:03Speaker 2: So who do we have. Let's talk about this assertion
- 10:09Speaker 2: is that Nope, this was never in the Church Fathers.
- 10:12Speaker 2: So let's step back for a moment, because we believe
- 10:14Speaker 2: it's in the scripture. We believe again all the you know,
- 10:18Speaker 2: Luke seventeen, John fourteen, you referenced all of them. But
- 10:22Speaker 2: let's also let's also set the stage a little bit
- 10:26Speaker 2: for the history of the Church Fathers. We recognize that
- 10:29Speaker 2: we now we're walking on the shoulders of two thousand
- 10:33Speaker 2: years of church history and doctrine and formulation and other things,
- 10:36Speaker 2: and the analysis of scripture. I don't expect a first
- 10:41Speaker 2: or second century theologian to have full developed theologies like
- 10:48Speaker 2: we do systematic theologies like I mean, you get books,
- 10:51Speaker 2: they're volumes, right, volumes you can get of systematic theology.
- 10:54Speaker 2: They didn't have that. They were new, they didn't have
- 10:56Speaker 2: the other giants. They only had one hundred years of
- 10:59Speaker 2: maybe some people studying it.
- 11:01Speaker 3: Well, that's exactly right. For instance, we're looking at iron
- 11:04Speaker 3: As here today and we're working our way there. But
- 11:07Speaker 3: in iron Aus's day, which is in the second century
- 11:10Speaker 3: early they had not yet worked through the entire trinitarian controversy.
- 11:15Speaker 3: They hadn't worked through a lot of the controversies on
- 11:18Speaker 3: very fundamental doctrines of the faith, so they hadn't worked
- 11:22Speaker 3: through the whole eschatology dispute yet either.
- 11:26Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, that's I'm glad you bring up
- 11:28Speaker 2: the Trinity, because there's a lot of people that are
- 11:29Speaker 2: critical of that. But the fact of the matter, it
- 11:32Speaker 2: wasn't that the fourth century Church, you know, at the
- 11:35Speaker 2: Council and I see, I just decided to create the Trinity.
- 11:38Speaker 2: But what they're doing is they're looking at the Bible,
- 11:41Speaker 2: where you know, in the name of the Father Son
- 11:43Speaker 2: and the Holy Spirit, you're like, well, that's name is singular,
- 11:45Speaker 2: but the father Son is plural. And then in you
- 11:47Speaker 2: know John one one, you have all these passages at
- 11:50Speaker 2: the early Church is trying to come out of this
- 11:52Speaker 2: Jewish framework of monotheism, which is very strict, and all
- 11:57Speaker 2: of a sudden they're going back and going, oh, look
- 11:59Speaker 2: at that. There are there are hints of this of
- 12:02Speaker 2: this try you and God and the Old Testament. You
- 12:06Speaker 2: know Proverbs thirty about who's the Son? Do you know
- 12:09Speaker 2: his name? You know Isaiah nine to six, the Mighty God.
- 12:13Speaker 2: So you have all these passages John one one in
- 12:15Speaker 2: the beginning was the word, the word was with God,
- 12:17Speaker 2: the word was God. So you have all these things
- 12:19Speaker 2: that they're wrestling with, and I actually give them, I
- 12:23Speaker 2: give them credit because plus, apart from just simply trying
- 12:27Speaker 2: to live, you know, in a in a very I
- 12:30Speaker 2: would say primitive, but a much more difficult society, they're
- 12:33Speaker 2: wrestling with these theological challenges. How do we how do
- 12:37Speaker 2: we believe in one God? But yet we see this
- 12:39Speaker 2: text reveal the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
- 12:43Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. And when you come to the prophecy
- 12:45Speaker 3: issues here you run into the whole controversy. If you
- 12:48Speaker 3: don't have settled theological terminology, you don't have a settled
- 12:52Speaker 3: eschatological systematic theology. And then you come to the issue
- 12:56Speaker 3: of a distinction between Israel and the Church, and that
- 12:58Speaker 3: you're going to have the Church facing one set of
- 13:01Speaker 3: circumstances in the last days, and then God's going to
- 13:04Speaker 3: return to Israel and they're going to face another set
- 13:06Speaker 3: of circumstances. And how are you going to clarify that,
- 13:09Speaker 3: How are you going to qualify it, how are you
- 13:10Speaker 3: going to describe it?
- 13:12Speaker 2: Yep, So let's bring up another passage which I think
- 13:14Speaker 2: is fascinating is the seventy weeks of Daniel Daniel nine,
- 13:19Speaker 2: but he's giving them, he's given the angels explaining it
- 13:23Speaker 2: to Daniel. But then in Daniel twelve he says, this
- 13:26Speaker 2: is you know, six hundred BC sealed up Daniel, because
- 13:30Speaker 2: it's at the time of the end, it'll knowledge will
- 13:34Speaker 2: be increased. Ama. So we have this recognition that the
- 13:39Speaker 2: first century, second century, some of their eschatology was you know,
- 13:45Speaker 2: it was varied, and so we expect that as we
- 13:49Speaker 2: get closer to the end and Israel comes back as
- 13:51Speaker 2: a nation, which happened in forty eight, that now all
- 13:54Speaker 2: of a sudden we begin to understand more. But there
- 13:58Speaker 2: were those, There were those as I can re presentation
- 14:00Speaker 2: another place on just some of the commentaries before, like
- 14:04Speaker 2: a eighteen hundreds, they recognize Israel's coming back as a nation.
- 14:09Speaker 2: That's a straight value, that's a straightforward reading of scripture.
- 14:12Speaker 2: But what we do see now is in the last
- 14:15Speaker 2: couple hundred years, as we see Israel become a nation,
- 14:19Speaker 2: we go now we can see more how the framework
- 14:21Speaker 2: is works for this end of the age scenario.
- 14:24Speaker 3: That's exactly right, because you can't really have some of
- 14:30Speaker 3: the prophecies about Israel in the last days, there's really
- 14:33Speaker 3: nothing underneath. If Israel isn't there as a physical nation.
- 14:36Speaker 3: They start with the assumption that Israel is in the
- 14:39Speaker 3: land as a nation.
- 14:40Speaker 2: Yep. So let's go to you know, one hundred and
- 14:41Speaker 2: twenty eight or you know, one hundred and fifty eighty
- 14:44Speaker 2: iron ass or whatever. So to two hundred where he
- 14:47Speaker 2: was around two hundred. Is that he's about one fifty
- 14:49Speaker 2: to two.
- 14:50Speaker 3: Hundred the mid second century.
- 14:52Speaker 2: So the Barkok revolt has already been completed in one
- 14:54Speaker 2: thirty five.
- 14:55Speaker 3: Ye.
- 14:56Speaker 2: The israel Is now they're completely eliminated from the land
- 14:59Speaker 2: under threat of death. So for a theologian, they're looking
- 15:03Speaker 2: over at Israel and the man Israel's gone, gone dust,
- 15:06Speaker 2: been of history, exiled to all the nations, as Jesus
- 15:08Speaker 2: said in Luke twenty one. So for them, I can imagine,
- 15:12Speaker 2: and we see this with Augustin later in four hundred
- 15:14Speaker 2: and eighty. He's recognizing, oh, this is replacement theology. Israel
- 15:19Speaker 2: is now all the promises in the Old Testament that
- 15:21Speaker 2: were unfulfilled, which they recognized they were unfulfilled, all those
- 15:24Speaker 2: are going to be fulfilled somewhere sometime in the Church,
- 15:27Speaker 2: in this new work of God doing in the Church age.
- 15:31Speaker 2: So we can see why, in some ways, based on
- 15:34Speaker 2: their I would call it current event hermeneutics, that they recognize, Oh,
- 15:40Speaker 2: Israel's gone. So for God to be true and faithful,
- 15:43Speaker 2: those prophises must be fulfilled, and the only way they
- 15:46Speaker 2: can be fulfilled is in the Church versus them saying, hey,
- 15:50Speaker 2: in some future time, God's going to bring Israel back.
- 15:53Speaker 2: That was inconceivable to them.
- 15:55Speaker 3: And what's interesting is it wasn't inconceivable in iron Aus
- 16:01Speaker 3: this time, because he writes very clearly, for instance, in
- 16:06Speaker 3: Heresies chapter five thirty four to one, which is on
- 16:09Speaker 3: page three. Here he says, I make the observation here
- 16:15Speaker 3: the iron As regards God as having two redemption programs.
- 16:19Speaker 3: And he says, he who in the New Testament raises
- 16:22Speaker 3: up from the stones children under Abraham, is he who
- 16:26Speaker 3: will gather, according to the Old Testament, those that shall
- 16:29Speaker 3: be saved from all the nations. Jeremiah says, behold the
- 16:32Speaker 3: days come, saith the Lord that they shall no more
- 16:35Speaker 3: say the Lord lives, who led the children of Israel
- 16:37Speaker 3: from the north and from every region whither they had
- 16:40Speaker 3: been driven he will restore them to their own land,
- 16:43Speaker 3: which he gave to their fathers. So he makes a
- 16:45Speaker 3: clear distinction between the New Testament program and the Old
- 16:52Speaker 3: Testament saints being gathered again. And if you think about it,
- 16:57Speaker 3: the New Testament program is obviously dominated by the Gentiles,
- 17:01Speaker 3: but those Old Testament promises of gathering Israel, they're gathering
- 17:05Speaker 3: the physical seed of Jacob.
- 17:08Speaker 2: Yeah, what I see here, this is a great I'm
- 17:11Speaker 2: seeing some of this for the first time only because
- 17:14Speaker 2: here you have something being written again in the mid
- 17:17Speaker 2: second century. I'm going to include this in my presentation.
- 17:20Speaker 2: I didn't have this before because this idea of the
- 17:23Speaker 2: spiritual seed. We know that Galatians three the spiritual seed
- 17:25Speaker 2: of Abraham. We know that we're part of that. Ye
- 17:27Speaker 2: you know, he's the father of the faithful. But you
- 17:29Speaker 2: still have the physical seed or the ethnic seed of Abraham,
- 17:33Speaker 2: which is Israel specifically, as we know the rest of
- 17:36Speaker 2: the passages of scripture about them being restored. For him
- 17:39Speaker 2: to say he'll restore them to their own land, that's
- 17:41Speaker 2: absolutely incredible that he understood that distinction.
- 17:45Speaker 3: That's exactly right. And so this is really part of
- 17:47Speaker 3: the case that we can use to demonstrate that irene
- 17:51Speaker 3: Aus really did hold a pre tribulation rapture. He made
- 17:54Speaker 3: a distinction between the Church saints of this age and
- 17:58Speaker 3: the Israel that's after the Church is out of the picture,
- 18:01Speaker 3: as well as having some pre trip rapture picture passages
- 18:04Speaker 3: that we'll look at in a moment.
- 18:05Speaker 2: So let let look. Let me do another thing here
- 18:07Speaker 2: for the for the listeners, because when we think about dispensationalism,
- 18:11Speaker 2: it's a dirty word in many many camps. But I
- 18:16Speaker 2: want people to understand that dispensationalism, at least as it
- 18:19Speaker 2: relates to the key pillars. You have a literal hermoneutic yeap,
- 18:24Speaker 2: you take scripture straightforward. If the prophecies of Jesus' first
- 18:27Speaker 2: coming were literal, the prophecies of his second comer in literal,
- 18:30Speaker 2: I mean, that's to me, that's very expected. The second
- 18:34Speaker 2: distinction is or the second pillar is that the Church
- 18:38Speaker 2: and is role are distinct absolutely. And the third pillar
- 18:40Speaker 2: is that God does everything for his glory. So that's it.
- 18:43Speaker 2: There's three. So you can have dispensationalism is at the
- 18:46Speaker 2: core those three things. Now from there you can have
- 18:51Speaker 2: a calvinist dismissationalists. You can have Armenian dispensationalists. You can
- 18:54Speaker 2: have a charismatic dismissations. You can have somebody that is
- 18:58Speaker 2: baptizing babies as a dispensation. I mean, so we don't
- 19:02Speaker 2: want to look at those like a charismatic as an
- 19:04Speaker 2: example of a theology as defining dismensationals. It isn't, that's right,
- 19:09Speaker 2: But so oftentimes people will throw oh dismissations, they're all Calvinists, Well,
- 19:14Speaker 2: I don't want to be one of those, or they're
- 19:16Speaker 2: all Arminian, Well I don't want to be one of those.
- 19:17Speaker 2: That has nothing really to do with dismensational thinking. It
- 19:21Speaker 2: has to do with that literal hermonatic again, a distinction
- 19:24Speaker 2: between church and is well and he does all things
- 19:27Speaker 2: for the glory of God. So with that as a
- 19:29Speaker 2: as a backdrop, when you see what iron As is
- 19:32Speaker 2: saying here, this is very dismensational, absolutely in the sense
- 19:36Speaker 2: he's taken things literal that would be the only way
- 19:38Speaker 2: he would get there. And he's making a distinction between
- 19:41Speaker 2: the spiritual seed and the physical seed.
- 19:43Speaker 3: Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, we've got another passage here, let's see,
- 19:49Speaker 3: it's on the last page here, page four, and I
- 19:55Speaker 3: bring out well, actually it starts on the.
- 19:58Speaker 2: Page three, number four there on the bottom.
- 20:01Speaker 3: Yep. So we are going to be looking at where
- 20:06Speaker 3: Ironais sees Israel and the tribulation. And so he's up
- 20:10Speaker 3: the passages in Hereses five, section twenty five point four,
- 20:15Speaker 3: and we read here a king of a most fierce
- 20:17Speaker 3: countenance shall arise, one understanding dark questions and exceedingly powerful,
- 20:22Speaker 3: full of wonders, and he shall corrupt, direct and influence
- 20:26Speaker 3: and put strong men down. And then and I put
- 20:29Speaker 3: it in italics here the Holy people. Likewise, so he's
- 20:35Speaker 3: God of Vendetta here against the Holy People. But he's
- 20:38Speaker 3: going to qualify who he means by the Holy People.
- 20:41Speaker 3: And then he points out that the time that his
- 20:43Speaker 3: tyranny shall last, during which the saints shall be put
- 20:46Speaker 3: to flight, they who offer a pure sacrifice under God,
- 20:52Speaker 3: and then clarifies again in the midst of the week,
- 20:54Speaker 3: the sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away, and
- 20:57Speaker 3: the abomination of desolation shall be brought into the temple.
- 21:00Speaker 3: Even under the consummation of the time, shall the desolation
- 21:03Speaker 3: be complete. Now three years and six months constitute the
- 21:08Speaker 3: half week.
- 21:09Speaker 2: So this is Daniel nine. Yeah, I mean it's amazing.
- 21:12Speaker 3: So basically, what he's saying is he's taking the return
- 21:16Speaker 3: to the Temple and the return of the sacrifices literally,
- 21:19Speaker 3: and he qualifies what saints. He's talking about those that
- 21:22Speaker 3: are offering a pure sacrifice under God. This is talking
- 21:25Speaker 3: about the physical nation of Israel returned under God.
- 21:29Speaker 2: So let me ask, do you the word pure? There
- 21:35Speaker 2: is there any other nuance to that in the sense
- 21:37Speaker 2: of because I imagine iron As probably would have a
- 21:41Speaker 2: difficulty of thinking that the sacrifice from a new Covenant
- 21:47Speaker 2: perspective would be pure. Is there any other who offer
- 21:51Speaker 2: a pure sacrifice? And you know, you see where I'm
- 21:54Speaker 2: going in that.
- 21:54Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, what I would gather is he was so
- 21:57Speaker 3: close to the Apostolic age. I mean, Irene asked a
- 22:00Speaker 3: disciple of Polycarp, who had been a disciple of John himself.
- 22:05Speaker 3: So the very apostle who had written the Book of Revelation,
- 22:09Speaker 3: who put the capstone on the prophetic revelation for all
- 22:13Speaker 3: the scriptures, had personally communicated the core dispensational understanding to Polycarp.
- 22:19Speaker 3: Polycarp had delivered that to iron As. I suspect that
- 22:23Speaker 3: iron As really did understand maybe in a simpler form
- 22:26Speaker 3: than we do. But God was going to go back
- 22:29Speaker 3: to Israel that they have seven more years under the
- 22:33Speaker 3: law and that God is going to bring the new
- 22:36Speaker 3: Covenant salvation to them. And I think that's where he's going.
- 22:40Speaker 2: I mean, in him to say that the sacrifice and
- 22:42Speaker 2: libation shall be taken away. I mean, this is Daniel
- 22:44Speaker 2: nine twenty seven. I mean, this is this is clear
- 22:47Speaker 2: that he's referencing that passage and that he gets it
- 22:50Speaker 2: so right so early is very impressive. Well, let's do
- 22:55Speaker 2: a couple of things here, because I think this is helpful.
- 22:58Speaker 2: So you you we talked about your first presentation at
- 23:03Speaker 2: the pre trib and then you you gave another presentation
- 23:07Speaker 2: skeletal thing of iron Ais. But what's been happening recently again,
- 23:13Speaker 2: some some big time guys are coming in there and
- 23:15Speaker 2: they're being critical, which is again it's fine. I don't
- 23:17Speaker 2: mind criticism. Hopefully everybody's nice about it. But let's talk
- 23:20Speaker 2: about some of the the the the methodology of some
- 23:23Speaker 2: of these criticisms that you you have here. Let's talk
- 23:28Speaker 2: about number one down there or number two so on
- 23:32Speaker 2: the bottom page one, yep, let's talk about what let's
- 23:35Speaker 2: let's look you and I are going to do another uh
- 23:39Speaker 2: presentation on the alleged problems with the pre trib We
- 23:43Speaker 2: want to address those we like, we like ob objections,
- 23:46Speaker 2: but let's talk about some of the ways in which
- 23:48Speaker 2: people are criticizing here.
- 23:49Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, basically what I see is whenever error is
- 23:53Speaker 3: attacking truth, they use the unholy trinity, okay, and uh,
- 23:58Speaker 3: that involves there's always a mantra, there's always a selective
- 24:03Speaker 3: use of evidence or a proof text theology, and then
- 24:06Speaker 3: there's argument against the man at harmony. This is the
- 24:11Speaker 3: unholy trinity of false doctrine. And to me, like when
- 24:15Speaker 3: the Bible says you can know false teachers, we really
- 24:19Speaker 3: have two tests to understand false teachers. Not one because
- 24:23Speaker 3: we already know there's a test of okay, who's got
- 24:25Speaker 3: the best exegetical arguments from the scripture. But the second
- 24:28Speaker 3: test is those that learn their doctrine from the Father
- 24:33Speaker 3: of lies learn how to defend that doctrine from the
- 24:36Speaker 3: accuser of the brethren. And there's a little bit doesn't
- 24:40Speaker 3: mean they're not real believers, but there's an element of
- 24:42Speaker 3: harshness in their dealings and an element of unfairness, and
- 24:46Speaker 3: so they always fall back on a mantra that's defended
- 24:49Speaker 3: with proof texts, and then they argue against the person
- 24:53Speaker 3: rather than present Exejesus.
- 24:55Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean again, we don't. I'm glad you
- 24:57Speaker 2: mentioned that. With that, we're not saying to anybody this
- 25:00Speaker 2: agrees with us or unbelievers, but by any means. But
- 25:03Speaker 2: the fact of the matter is, and we we've said this,
- 25:06Speaker 2: you and I have talked about this where we all
- 25:08Speaker 2: believe Jesus Christ's Lord and savior absolutely and uh, and
- 25:12Speaker 2: some of these other issues, as important as they are. Uh,
- 25:16Speaker 2: you don't have to believe in the preacher rapture to
- 25:18Speaker 2: be saved, you absolutely not. Yeah. So we call these
- 25:21Speaker 2: nonsalvfic issues important issues. And so when when when we
- 25:26Speaker 2: come to these, we we go, hey, guys, make sure
- 25:30Speaker 2: that you're being fair, because I want to be that way.
- 25:34Speaker 2: I want to be I don't want to attack the person.
- 25:36Speaker 2: That's not a fair argument. I don't want to bring
- 25:38Speaker 2: his character into play. He could be the worst guy
- 25:42Speaker 2: in the world. Uh, maybe he's out sleeping around or
- 25:44Speaker 2: he's doing drugs, but he's got good theology. So the
- 25:47Speaker 2: fact of the matter is, I want to interact with
- 25:48Speaker 2: his argument and now his person that's between him and
- 25:51Speaker 2: the Lord. They're gonna work that out. But if if
- 25:54Speaker 2: he if he makes a theological comments, I'm gonna engage
- 25:58Speaker 2: the argument itself. That's exactly so, you know, so when
- 26:00Speaker 2: what what I do see oftentimes is those comments that
- 26:04Speaker 2: people make that they you know, they'll start attacking the person.
- 26:09Speaker 2: Oh you're a pre trip. We know how you are,
- 26:11Speaker 2: and you're like, really, come on, can she be nice?
- 26:15Speaker 2: I just had a guy recently. He was trying to
- 26:17Speaker 2: trying to engage me into some eschatology uh comments, and
- 26:23Speaker 2: I said, sure, I like talking theology. But about three
- 26:26Speaker 2: emails in, because I didn't agree, all, I'm going to hell.
- 26:32Speaker 2: It was just it was very I was like, wow,
- 26:34Speaker 2: just because I don't agree with exactly what you think
- 26:37Speaker 2: that the Great White Throne judgment's going to be, that
- 26:39Speaker 2: now I'm on my way to Hell. I said, I
- 26:41Speaker 2: thought my salvation was based on my faith in Jesus.
- 26:44Speaker 2: But so I was like, hey, man, you know what,
- 26:47Speaker 2: I'm I'm done. It's not that I don't like to
- 26:50Speaker 2: discuss these things, but if you're gonna get all angry
- 26:52Speaker 2: and start putting hell fire on everybody, I go I'm
- 26:56Speaker 2: not interested. I said, you know, the the goal is
- 26:59Speaker 2: this is one, tween is thirteen two. If I know
- 27:02Speaker 2: all mysteries, If I have perfect theology but I don't
- 27:06Speaker 2: have love, that's right, I'm nothing.
- 27:08Speaker 3: And when we come to the theological debate and you
- 27:11Speaker 3: really nailed it, we can leave the character out of
- 27:14Speaker 3: the question because only that matters is who's presented the
- 27:18Speaker 3: truth of the scriptures most accurately. And I've discovered that
- 27:23Speaker 3: when you're in a conversation, whether it's formal debate, whether
- 27:27Speaker 3: it's just a living room conversation over a cup of coffee,
- 27:30Speaker 3: if one party gets frustrated and they can't answer point
- 27:36Speaker 3: by point with what the Bible says, and they start
- 27:39Speaker 3: to lose their traction, they will jump into the argument
- 27:43Speaker 3: against a man, argument at hominem.
- 27:46Speaker 2: And these are you know, I studied logic, which is
- 27:51Speaker 2: good and bad because my poor daughter's growing up it
- 27:54Speaker 2: was always specificity was like the favorite word of the
- 27:57Speaker 2: family and specific city girls specificity. But they learned in
- 28:03Speaker 2: the sense of to think carefully and with precision. And
- 28:07Speaker 2: so you think about again the fallacy of the ad
- 28:10Speaker 2: homine market. Well, if I'm not getting this way I'm
- 28:12Speaker 2: just going to attack the person's character. Well, that's not
- 28:13Speaker 2: doing it. But also one of the other things that
- 28:15Speaker 2: you see is you have written here there are claims
- 28:19Speaker 2: that no scholar has ever believed that Ireneus was pre trip. Well,
- 28:22Speaker 2: that's the fallacy of rooting to authority. So what does
- 28:27Speaker 2: that have to do with things? Because no scholar agrees
- 28:30Speaker 2: with this. Now, there's a certain level of humility that Okay, well,
- 28:34Speaker 2: I don't want to be some loaner in my theology.
- 28:38Speaker 2: But we know that after the New Testament was written
- 28:42Speaker 2: and finished, theologians came up with new discoveries or new
- 28:46Speaker 2: ideas all the time. So somebody had to discover it
- 28:49Speaker 2: as being new. And so the real question is not
- 28:52Speaker 2: whether I can quote a scholar. Sometimes it's helpful because
- 28:54Speaker 2: maybe they've done additional work. The question is is it true?
- 28:59Speaker 2: Is it biblical? Does it match good exegetical methodology?
- 29:03Speaker 3: Yeah, I and I agree. For instance, when you bring
- 29:06Speaker 3: up this question and they'll say, okay, no scholar that
- 29:09Speaker 3: I'm aware of has ever held that iron As was
- 29:12Speaker 3: pre trip. Well, what's funny to me is okay, I
- 29:15Speaker 3: just do a little quick Google search on my front
- 29:17Speaker 3: page on the top ten results. I get several well
- 29:20Speaker 3: known names that were mentioned the iron as.
- 29:23Speaker 2: Is pre trib okay.
- 29:25Speaker 3: But what's also interesting is I would say, Okay, well,
- 29:27Speaker 3: it doesn't really.
- 29:28Speaker 2: Matter, becauesn't matter.
- 29:29Speaker 3: Well, I don't personally know a single theologian that's read
- 29:35Speaker 3: the entirety of iron Ass's heresies from the first chapter
- 29:39Speaker 3: to the beginning of the first chapter, all the way
- 29:41Speaker 3: to the first book, all the way to the end
- 29:43Speaker 3: of the fifth book, read it in English, and then
- 29:45Speaker 3: worked through the Latin and the Greek of the passages
- 29:48Speaker 3: that were difficult to understand to make sure that they
- 29:50Speaker 3: had the they were actually being faithful to what the
- 29:55Speaker 3: intent of the author was. And so so, if you
- 29:59Speaker 3: don't have people that have actually worked all the way
- 30:01Speaker 3: through iron Ass's ecclesiology and eschatology and work through the
- 30:07Speaker 3: whole work and came up with conclusions on the eschatology,
- 30:10Speaker 3: and came up with conclusions on the ecclesiology, and these
- 30:13Speaker 3: things harmonize and balance with each other. If you don't
- 30:16Speaker 3: have that, then really all you're talking about is you're
- 30:19Speaker 3: just throwing names out there. But they're they're scholars in
- 30:23Speaker 3: their own right, but they're not necessarily a scholar in
- 30:26Speaker 3: iron ass.
- 30:27Speaker 2: See and and well even let's let's put another angle
- 30:30Speaker 2: on it. You have people that maybe are a scholar
- 30:33Speaker 2: in iron ass but they're not a scholar and systematic
- 30:36Speaker 2: theology exactly. And so now it takes a very balanced
- 30:40Speaker 2: approach to come to the place of going, okay, that's
- 30:46Speaker 2: why you know, when I was in college and seminary,
- 30:47Speaker 2: I try to be very broad, right because and as
- 30:50Speaker 2: a pastor, you just you can't help a bit try
- 30:52Speaker 2: to be broad because you're pastoring, so there's all kinds
- 30:54Speaker 2: of breadth to what people ask you. So you kind
- 30:58Speaker 2: of have to be a general practitioner of things. But
- 31:00Speaker 2: in reality, I look, I think about the work that
- 31:02Speaker 2: you're doing. So let's say you take an irony as
- 31:05Speaker 2: scholar who's reading the Latin the Greek, but he doesn't
- 31:07Speaker 2: understand what we just mentioned earlier, the distinctions of dispensational thinking.
- 31:12Speaker 3: That's right.
- 31:13Speaker 2: He maybe comes from a covenantal perspective or whatever. So
- 31:15Speaker 2: as he's reading it, he's going to see something totally different.
- 31:19Speaker 2: By not he's not going to see that that distinction
- 31:22Speaker 2: that we saw earlier between the spiritual seed, which is
- 31:25Speaker 2: a new covenant idea and the physical seed, and that's
- 31:28Speaker 2: very dispensational. So if he doesn't have that, if he
- 31:31Speaker 2: lumps them all into one group, then he's not going
- 31:33Speaker 2: to see those things aren't going to jump out at him.
- 31:35Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and he's gonna miss him.
- 31:37Speaker 3: They're gonna have the same struggles reading Ironaus that they
- 31:40Speaker 3: have reading the Old Testament and the New Testament.
- 31:41Speaker 2: Yep, So let's let's let's talk about that for a minute. Because, uh,
- 31:46Speaker 2: one of the things that that I like, For example,
- 31:49Speaker 2: I have a I have a rough reform study Bible.
- 31:53Speaker 2: I got this big fat Bible. Some people see it
- 31:54Speaker 2: on television like what Bible is that. I go, well,
- 31:57Speaker 2: it's a reform study Bible edited Biras sproll And And
- 32:00Speaker 2: it's not that I agree with Arcie Sproul on his eschatology.
- 32:03Speaker 2: But the reason I got it is because I wanted
- 32:05Speaker 2: to make sure that I was reading him accurately. So
- 32:10Speaker 2: when I open up Matthew twenty four and I have
- 32:12Speaker 2: his book that he wrote the Last Days according to Jesus,
- 32:14Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, I don't want to misrepresent this guy.
- 32:16Speaker 2: He's my brother I love. I'm gonna see him heaven.
- 32:17Speaker 2: He's there now. But I don't want to be one
- 32:20Speaker 2: of those guys that misrepresents the other perspective and we
- 32:26Speaker 2: don't have all the answers. But on that note, you
- 32:28Speaker 2: have this confusion sometimes with the word church. That's right,
- 32:33Speaker 2: So talk about that and talk about maybe the history. Again.
- 32:38Speaker 2: We understand from dispensational perspective, church is very distinct. But
- 32:41Speaker 2: let's talk about how the word church sometimes is misconstrued
- 32:45Speaker 2: or confused.
- 32:45Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, for instance, in modern dispensationalism, when we use
- 32:50Speaker 3: the word church, we are referring not to all the
- 32:53Speaker 3: saints of all the ages. We are referring only to
- 32:57Speaker 3: the saints that basically from the time of Christ forwards
- 33:00Speaker 3: to the ton Pentecostal to the saints of this age.
- 33:05Speaker 3: And we think the Old Testament saints and the Tribulation saints,
- 33:09Speaker 3: we would put them in under the heading of Israel
- 33:12Speaker 3: and maybe Gentile proselyates to Israel. It's a very different idea. Now,
- 33:16Speaker 3: if you're in the reform camp, they use the word
- 33:19Speaker 3: church that collects everyone from Adam all the way to
- 33:21Speaker 3: the end of the age. It's a very it's like anybody.
- 33:24Speaker 2: It's ever been a believer. It's considered the church for them,
- 33:28Speaker 2: and and that that creates a lot of confusion, especially
- 33:31Speaker 2: when we're trying to have conversations. You said about the church,
- 33:34Speaker 2: We're like, no, no, no, we're talking for pentecost On
- 33:37Speaker 2: and not even So. This is the other thing too,
- 33:39Speaker 2: is the word the word saints, because you see that
- 33:42Speaker 2: in Daniel right, the Saints will be overcome by the Antichrist,
- 33:45Speaker 2: and they're like, oh see that's the church because we're saints.
- 33:47Speaker 2: Paul says, we're saints, right, Oliver to the saints at
- 33:50Speaker 2: Philip Philippi. You also see the word elect. That's right.
- 33:53Speaker 2: So people need to understand that the word elect, the
- 33:58Speaker 2: word believer, the word say. We would all agree from
- 34:02Speaker 2: a dismisational perspective.
- 34:04Speaker 3: That's exactly that.
- 34:04Speaker 2: Those are the broadest terms you can have, and they
- 34:08Speaker 2: mean believers of all time. But when we talk about church,
- 34:11Speaker 2: Jesus said Matthew sixteen, I will build my church. It's
- 34:14Speaker 2: a future thing that that began at Pentecost, and the saints,
- 34:19Speaker 2: the believers during the tribulation, they're not part of the church.
- 34:21Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
- 34:22Speaker 2: Yeah. See, so this is when you go to Matthew
- 34:25Speaker 2: twenty four, and Jesus sends the angels to go to
- 34:28Speaker 2: gather the elect They say, see Matthew twenty four to
- 34:31Speaker 2: twenty eight. After the tribulation, he sends his angels that's
- 34:33Speaker 2: the church, you go, no, no, no. The elect is a
- 34:36Speaker 2: broad word. It means believer of any age, so that
- 34:39Speaker 2: doesn't it's not a slam dunk against a pretri position exactly.
- 34:46Speaker 3: And one of the difficulties we face is Irenaeus in
- 34:50Speaker 3: book five and chapter twenty six, Section one has a
- 34:55Speaker 3: passage that's the well known post trip passage for I,
- 35:00Speaker 3: and it has the church is being put to flight.
- 35:03Speaker 3: So he has the church in the tribulation.
- 35:06Speaker 2: Let's let's read it, let's do it. Let's pull that out.
- 35:08Speaker 3: Well, I actually don't have that.
- 35:10Speaker 2: From our conversation. Okay, yeah, so the church is put
- 35:13Speaker 2: to flights. What does that mean? Then let's let's what's
- 35:15Speaker 2: going on there.
- 35:16Speaker 3: So what we have to understand is, and I'm going
- 35:20Speaker 3: to bring this out in an article I'm gonna put
- 35:21Speaker 3: up on my website, but Ireneus has several passages in
- 35:26Speaker 3: which he defines what he means by the church. So
- 35:29Speaker 3: we believe the church is just the saints of this age,
- 35:32Speaker 3: and the contrast from all the other ages, Irenaeus is
- 35:36Speaker 3: a little broader. He has the church is a technical
- 35:39Speaker 3: term for all the seed of Abraham, the spiritual seed
- 35:43Speaker 3: and the physical seed. And he makes a clear distinction
- 35:48Speaker 3: between God's working with the gentiles of this age and
- 35:53Speaker 3: gonna be returning to Israel. So as soon as you
- 35:58Speaker 3: go down that route, the fact that he has the
- 36:01Speaker 3: church and the tribulation, you have to decide, okay, is
- 36:04Speaker 3: he talking about the spiritual seed of Abraham or the
- 36:07Speaker 3: physical seat of Abraham. Now, if you're going to get
- 36:11Speaker 3: bent out of shape over the use of a particular
- 36:14Speaker 3: word over terminology, you're going to make a debate here.
- 36:17Speaker 3: He says church, he must mean what we mean by church.
- 36:21Speaker 3: But the fact of the matter is you have to
- 36:23Speaker 3: go to his context. You have to go to his
- 36:26Speaker 3: other writings, his other writings to qualify or clarify what
- 36:30Speaker 3: he means by the word church.
- 36:32Speaker 2: See, this is some of the other thing that we
- 36:33Speaker 2: were talking about. In the sense of approaches. All of
- 36:37Speaker 2: us can do this. I know I've been guilty of this,
- 36:40Speaker 2: guilty of proof texting. Yeah, I mean, which is natural?
- 36:43Speaker 2: You know, give me verse, that give me verse. That's
- 36:45Speaker 2: kind of the way that we should live. But we
- 36:48Speaker 2: also could say, give me verse, and then we selectively
- 36:51Speaker 2: present a verse, and that we minimize the other verses
- 36:55Speaker 2: that might shed increased light on how we're taking that wrong.
- 37:00Speaker 2: You see this a lot in the trinitarian debate. You
- 37:03Speaker 2: just pull a verse out There's one God, and then
- 37:04Speaker 2: you go, okay, well what do we do with that.
- 37:07Speaker 2: There's one God. That's it. That's it. There's no trinity,
- 37:09Speaker 2: and so or Jesus says my father is greater than I.
- 37:12Speaker 2: There it is proof text. Don Jeovah's witnesses will do this,
- 37:15Speaker 2: and you go, well, what's the context, how is that written?
- 37:19Speaker 2: And is there other passes? What does it mean? Over See,
- 37:21Speaker 2: if all we had was that verse my Father is
- 37:23Speaker 2: greater than I, we would miss that he's talking in
- 37:26Speaker 2: his servant role, in his humanity versus his dity, which
- 37:31Speaker 2: he didn't set aside. His d he set aside the
- 37:34Speaker 2: prerogatives of his deity and philographs too. So but here
- 37:37Speaker 2: we have a proof texting problem and we don't want
- 37:38Speaker 2: to be guilty of that. But in this instance, if
- 37:41Speaker 2: we take the one verse, the church is put to
- 37:44Speaker 2: flight without taking into consideration the other things that Irnas
- 37:48Speaker 2: wrote about the fullness of what he means, we would
- 37:51Speaker 2: miss that, and that would be honestly, that would be
- 37:53Speaker 2: a very powerful verse for a post trib or whatever.
- 37:59Speaker 2: But now we see the rest of the context, You're like, no,
- 38:01Speaker 2: it blunts it.
- 38:03Speaker 3: That's right. And so we already looked at passages where
- 38:05Speaker 3: we see that he has a clarification or a distinction
- 38:08Speaker 3: between Israel and the Church. But he's actually got three
- 38:11Speaker 3: pretty I think they're clear pre trip rapture passages, and
- 38:14Speaker 3: the first one is on page two here.
- 38:16Speaker 2: Yeah, let's jump into some of these because this is
- 38:18Speaker 2: this is great.
- 38:19Speaker 3: Here's the first one. It's in again. All this stuff
- 38:21Speaker 3: is from the Heresies, and this is Heresies Book five,
- 38:24Speaker 3: Chapter five, Section one.
- 38:25Speaker 2: So before you get in there for a second, if
- 38:29Speaker 2: people want to look at this, are these things that
- 38:31Speaker 2: you're looking at in English or in Greek?
- 38:33Speaker 3: This you can get the whole translation of all five
- 38:37Speaker 3: books in English easily. Just google Irons plus English and
- 38:41Speaker 3: you'll bring up several different websites that have the full
- 38:43Speaker 3: English translation.
- 38:44Speaker 2: Okay, so what you're doing here is simply in English.
- 38:47Speaker 2: So people wanted to go look this up. Yep, they
- 38:48Speaker 2: can for themselves. Okay, so five point against Sarres's five
- 38:52Speaker 2: point five point one.
- 38:53Speaker 3: Yep. For Enoch, when he pleased God was translated in
- 38:56Speaker 3: the same body in which he did please him, thus
- 39:00Speaker 3: pointing out by anticipation the translation of the just Elijah
- 39:06Speaker 3: too when he was caught up in the substance of
- 39:09Speaker 3: his natural form, thus exhibiting in prophecy the assumption of
- 39:14Speaker 3: those who are spiritual, and that nothing stood in their
- 39:17Speaker 3: way of their body being translated and caught up. And
- 39:20Speaker 3: then I put a little ellipses in there because I
- 39:23Speaker 3: skipped the section. And then we have wherefore also the
- 39:26Speaker 3: elders who were disciples of the apostles. So he's talking
- 39:30Speaker 3: about people like polycarpent Clement tell us that those who
- 39:34Speaker 3: were translated were translated to that place, for paradise had
- 39:40Speaker 3: been prepared for righteous men such as have the spirit,
- 39:43Speaker 3: in which Paul, also the Apostle, when he was caught up,
- 39:47Speaker 3: heard words that are unspeakable as regard us in our
- 39:51Speaker 3: present condition, and that they shall and that there shall
- 39:55Speaker 3: they who have been translated remain until the consummation all things.
- 40:01Speaker 3: So what he's talking about you have the initial anticipation
- 40:05Speaker 3: of a few individuals like Enoch that went to heaven,
- 40:08Speaker 3: and they're gonna wait there until the very end. But
- 40:11Speaker 3: the translation of the Just also is coming, and they're
- 40:14Speaker 3: gonna go to heaven. This is John fourteen one, two three.
- 40:17Speaker 3: They're gonna go to heaven and they're gonna wait there
- 40:21Speaker 3: with the Just until the end. He's making a distinction
- 40:24Speaker 3: between the rapture and the second coming. Another one, and
- 40:30Speaker 3: this is the common one that if people know about
- 40:33Speaker 3: any pretrip passages in iron Ais, this is the one
- 40:35Speaker 3: they know, which is five point twenty nine point one. Therefore,
- 40:40Speaker 3: when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught
- 40:44Speaker 3: up from this, it is said there shall be tribulations
- 40:48Speaker 3: such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be,
- 40:52Speaker 3: for this is the last contest of the righteous, in
- 40:55Speaker 3: which when they overcome, they are crowned with incorruption. And
- 41:00Speaker 3: so we see here there's a removal of the church suddenly,
- 41:03Speaker 3: and then once that removal has taken place, then there's
- 41:07Speaker 3: going to be a great tribulation, which is the last
- 41:12Speaker 3: contest of the righteous. Makes you if you start with
- 41:16Speaker 3: the assumption there's only one second coming. There's only one coming.
- 41:20Speaker 3: There's one gathering of the believers. You're going to see
- 41:23Speaker 3: here that you want the church to be in the tribulation.
- 41:25Speaker 3: You understand there's a distinction, and you understand that ironeis
- 41:29Speaker 3: makes a distinction. And now you're going to have the
- 41:31Speaker 3: church going up and then you're going to have more
- 41:34Speaker 3: saints in the tribulation.
- 41:35Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's that's the important thing is to see
- 41:37Speaker 2: here that there is a second group of saints, of
- 41:44Speaker 2: believers from every tribe, tongue, nation. Right Revelation seven, you
- 41:48Speaker 2: see you see people getting saved during the tribulation period,
- 41:51Speaker 2: post rapture lots.
- 41:52Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 41:53Speaker 2: And so one of the things that's interesting too is
- 41:58Speaker 2: when you compare Matthew sixteen at the Gates of Hell,
- 42:00Speaker 2: well shall not prevail or against the Church. But yet
- 42:03Speaker 2: in Revelation thirteen seven you have that the Antichrist has
- 42:06Speaker 2: given authority to prevail over the saints or over the
- 42:11Speaker 2: people at that time. And so that's one of the
- 42:14Speaker 2: big dispensations distinctives to say. And Daniel a Ight says
- 42:19Speaker 2: the same thing that you have that the believers being
- 42:24Speaker 2: annihilated during the tribulation period, which is so different than
- 42:29Speaker 2: what you have in the other passages of scripture about
- 42:32Speaker 2: us not being a destined to wrath, appointed to wrath,
- 42:34Speaker 2: we're delivered from the wrath to come, and that we're
- 42:38Speaker 2: going to go be with Jesus. You know, we're going
- 42:40Speaker 2: to skip the whole hour of trial Revelation three ten.
- 42:42Speaker 2: So that's very important to see that they're here. He's
- 42:46Speaker 2: clearly mentioning this second group of righteous, of elect believers
- 42:51Speaker 2: of saints, however you want to phrase it.
- 42:52Speaker 3: Yeah, we have the same kind of tension going on
- 42:55Speaker 3: here between the rapture and the Second Coming that the
- 42:59Speaker 3: the apause when they were first dealing with the Lord
- 43:02Speaker 3: Jesus at his first coming, and the Old Testament prophets
- 43:05Speaker 3: had the same thing. How do you reconcile the reigning
- 43:10Speaker 3: Messiah passages with the suffering Messiah passages and so all
- 43:15Speaker 3: the way up until the time of the cross Lord.
- 43:17Speaker 3: At this time, are you going to bring the kingdom?
- 43:18Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of confusion, and I
- 43:22Speaker 2: think God, God, in his brilliance, puts you know, jose
- 43:27Speaker 2: says that a little bit here, a little bit there,
- 43:29Speaker 2: precept upon precept, you know, in order to hide in
- 43:32Speaker 2: plain sight his plan. It's there. When we look at hindsight,
- 43:37Speaker 2: we go, oh, look at that, it was obvious yep,
- 43:40Speaker 2: And God say yeah. Now then hindsight when he brings
- 43:42Speaker 2: it together by historical reference. I think there's some of
- 43:45Speaker 2: that we'll see. Most people will see as we come
- 43:49Speaker 2: at the second coming, and we'll look back and go, yeah,
- 43:52Speaker 2: it was there the whole time. But we see through
- 43:55Speaker 2: glass darkly.
- 43:57Speaker 3: Well, we got one more rapture passage here. Perhaps we
- 43:59Speaker 3: should go through the.
- 44:00Speaker 2: Let's do it.
- 44:01Speaker 3: This is in Hereses five point thirty one to two.
- 44:04Speaker 3: For as the Lord went away in the midst of
- 44:07Speaker 3: the shadow of death, where the souls of the dead were,
- 44:10Speaker 3: yet afterwards arose in the body, and after the resurrection
- 44:14Speaker 3: was taken up, it is manifest that the souls of
- 44:17Speaker 3: the disciples, also upon whose account the Lord underwent, these things,
- 44:23Speaker 3: shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them
- 44:27Speaker 3: by God, and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event,
- 44:32Speaker 3: then receiving their bodies and rising in their entirety, that
- 44:36Speaker 3: is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come
- 44:40Speaker 3: thus into the presence of God. So here the pattern
- 44:44Speaker 3: with the resurrection of the Lord was to rise from
- 44:48Speaker 3: the dead and descend to glory. And we see the
- 44:52Speaker 3: same pattern that is going to happen in the resurrection
- 44:55Speaker 3: with the church. And if you compare this with the
- 44:58Speaker 3: other rapture passages, he's here talking, he's on the John
- 45:03Speaker 3: fourteen track. We're gonna we're gonna ascend, rise, ascend from
- 45:08Speaker 3: the grave in resurrection and then rise to heaven and
- 45:12Speaker 3: we're gonna await there.
- 45:13Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's keep let's keep rocking here.
- 45:16Speaker 3: All right. Well, so when we put this together, now
- 45:20Speaker 3: we've we touched on earlier. We touched on that iron
- 45:24Speaker 3: as saw two redemption programs, and we looked at here.
- 45:27Speaker 3: Now there's a pre tribulation rapture. So if you have
- 45:30Speaker 3: a rapture where people are delivered prior to a time
- 45:34Speaker 3: of tribulation, and you've got distinct programs. You've got the
- 45:38Speaker 3: spiritual seed, which is the gentile saints of this age,
- 45:42Speaker 3: and you have the physical seed, which is the Lord
- 45:46Speaker 3: returning to the nation of Israel and gathering them. Now
- 45:49Speaker 3: we're looking at something that's clearly dispensational. And then we have, uh,
- 45:55Speaker 3: there's passages which we looked at and we can take
- 45:58Speaker 3: another return back to them, but there are saints in
- 46:01Speaker 3: the tribulation that are Jewish saints. And that passage we
- 46:05Speaker 3: looked at earlier five twenty five four where the Holy
- 46:08Speaker 3: People who are the ones the saints that are put
- 46:12Speaker 3: to flight, who offer a pure sacrifice to God. And
- 46:16Speaker 3: then it goes on to mention that the contexts from
- 46:18Speaker 3: Daniel nine twenty four through twenty seven with the Temple.
- 46:21Speaker 3: So I think it's very interesting. You've got the distinction
- 46:24Speaker 3: between the two classes of redeemed saints, You've got a
- 46:28Speaker 3: rapture before the tribulation, You've got saints in the tribulation,
- 46:32Speaker 3: and you've got passages in iron As that qualify that
- 46:35Speaker 3: these are Jews in the tribulation. So I don't see
- 46:38Speaker 3: how you can escape the conclusion that iron Aus was
- 46:42Speaker 3: pre tribulation. The only way you can avoid that is
- 46:45Speaker 3: to ignore all the qualifying passages and just do a
- 46:49Speaker 3: proof text passage where you say, here we see the
- 46:52Speaker 3: Church in the tribulation.
- 46:53Speaker 2: And you know, again, I think that I don't want
- 46:56Speaker 2: to put on any of the Church father the Ma
- 47:00Speaker 2: earn the very specific modern nuanced label right of pre
- 47:05Speaker 2: trip Like I mean again, you could go go to Dallas.
- 47:07Speaker 2: You can get all the pre tribu want in the
- 47:09Speaker 2: sense you get a degree in historical theology, and you
- 47:13Speaker 2: could have this fine tuned, you know, all the modern
- 47:16Speaker 2: systemization of pretributational or dispensational doctrine. You're not saying that
- 47:23Speaker 2: he would pass the test, right, that iron As would pass,
- 47:27Speaker 2: But at the nugget level, at the seed level, at
- 47:30Speaker 2: the at the basics, or even at the foundational level,
- 47:33Speaker 2: clearly he is.
- 47:34Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Yep. Yeah, he has the core precepts
- 47:38Speaker 3: that make a person dispensational versus a replacement theology. Yeah,
- 47:43Speaker 3: but certainly his dispensationalism falls well, it's not modern development.
- 47:49Speaker 2: But again that's why I think at the beginning, I
- 47:50Speaker 2: really wanted to say, hey, at the core level, this
- 47:53Speaker 2: is what you have, this distinction between Israel the literal
- 47:56Speaker 2: Hermontic and everything's done for the glory of God, and
- 47:58Speaker 2: that that if you make the distinct between at least
- 48:02Speaker 2: the first two. For sure, if you take a little
- 48:03Speaker 2: hormonic and the distinction, you'll end up you have to
- 48:07Speaker 2: end up as a preacher person, because you'll recognize the
- 48:11Speaker 2: purpose of the seventieth Week of Daniel.
- 48:13Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean to deal with Israel and give the
- 48:16Speaker 3: people the physical seed of Jacob a second chance to
- 48:21Speaker 3: embrace the New Covenant in Christ's blood, because Israel cannot
- 48:24Speaker 3: receive her promises, her land or temple or throne promises,
- 48:28Speaker 3: kingdom promis, can't inherit any of them. Apart from the
- 48:31Speaker 3: New Covenant. The Old Covenant can only condemn, it cannot save.
- 48:35Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely, I mean Book of Hebrews. All right, let's
- 48:38Speaker 2: keep moving.
- 48:40Speaker 3: Well, I think with this we have actually gone through
- 48:44Speaker 3: all the material here as far as presenting the preacher
- 48:47Speaker 3: of passages, presenting the distinction between Israel and the Church,
- 48:51Speaker 3: and just demonstrating that there were actually Jewish believers are
- 48:54Speaker 3: the ones that are in the tribulation. So I think
- 48:57Speaker 3: here then when we step back, okay, step back from
- 49:00Speaker 3: ironeis and we say okay, here we've shown that the
- 49:04Speaker 3: earliest Father, whom we have really a full eschatology teachings from,
- 49:10Speaker 3: is pre trip. This is really important to me because
- 49:13Speaker 3: I mean, we know that we have the passages I
- 49:16Speaker 3: brought from and Grant Jeffries has also brought some afrim
- 49:19Speaker 3: Assyrian passages and we have Eusebius. So then we have
- 49:23Speaker 3: the standard rapture passages that appear in a lot of lists,
- 49:27Speaker 3: But when you come to Ireneus here this is really
- 49:29Speaker 3: in many ways ground zero. He's the earliest, big name,
- 49:33Speaker 3: the earliest one with extensive writing, that's well known, and
- 49:37Speaker 3: that actually has a developed eschatology. And so if we
- 49:41Speaker 3: can see that Ironeus is pre trip, I think it
- 49:44Speaker 3: greatly strengthens the position that there were was a pre
- 49:48Speaker 3: trib testimony in the early Church. But I think where
- 49:51Speaker 3: people get confused is they got this idea that either
- 49:55Speaker 3: all the early fathers were pre trib or they were
- 49:57Speaker 3: all post trip. We've only got a choice one of
- 50:00Speaker 3: the other. But this is simply not the case. I mean,
- 50:03Speaker 3: from the very beginning, there was debate in the Church
- 50:06Speaker 3: on different doctrines and different aspects of eschatology. And I
- 50:11Speaker 3: think it's very illuminating to be able to go through
- 50:14Speaker 3: the early Fathers and see people that were clearly non
- 50:17Speaker 3: dispensational and they were replacement, but to see earlier fathers
- 50:22Speaker 3: or concurrent fathers who were dispensational and made distinction between
- 50:27Speaker 3: Islam and Church.
- 50:28Speaker 2: So I think that if somebody has a church father's collection, yeah,
- 50:33Speaker 2: we can get it on you know, I was almost
- 50:36Speaker 2: going to say ce d Rahm, because that's how I
- 50:38Speaker 2: first got it. But if you get it digitally now
- 50:42Speaker 2: I mean thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of
- 50:46Speaker 2: at that time, I mean the first four centuries, it's
- 50:49Speaker 2: amazing how much we do know of the writings that
- 50:52Speaker 2: took place. Now, then you enter the dark ages, right,
- 50:54Speaker 2: there's there's writings certainly here and there, but not as
- 50:57Speaker 2: voluminously as you have in the first four centuries. But
- 51:01Speaker 2: let's fast forward to now, let's say the last hundred years,
- 51:05Speaker 2: so you look at the last hundred years of Christian
- 51:08Speaker 2: thought in all the different realms. Maybe, yeah, if you
- 51:12Speaker 2: want to use Catholic, that's fine, let's add them in
- 51:15Speaker 2: the mix. So now let's fast forward from this point too.
- 51:18Speaker 2: Let's if the Lord Terry's to twenty three hundred and eighty.
- 51:21Speaker 3: Okay, So they're gonna look.
- 51:23Speaker 2: Back and go, well, what do those Christians think? You know,
- 51:25Speaker 2: in the twentieth century, So you could go back and
- 51:28Speaker 2: you go, oh, well, clearly they didn't. You know, people
- 51:30Speaker 2: didn't believe this because when you look back at the church,
- 51:34Speaker 2: now all that's named the church, just the visible church,
- 51:38Speaker 2: you're gonna have every theological stripe under the sun, and
- 51:42Speaker 2: so you can't say, and this is what I want
- 51:45Speaker 2: to make sure people understand. We're not saying that the
- 51:48Speaker 2: pre trip idea was universal in the second century. That's right,
- 51:54Speaker 2: it wasn't, just like, we can't say that it's universal
- 51:57Speaker 2: in this present century. But the would be if someone's
- 52:01Speaker 2: looking back at the twentieth century, from twenty three hundred,
- 52:03Speaker 2: they go, well, it was definitely there. There were threads
- 52:06Speaker 2: of it going through historical maybe not certainly, not universally.
- 52:11Speaker 2: So what we're saying now is no one's claiming that
- 52:16Speaker 2: this idea of the pre trib was well known in
- 52:19Speaker 2: every theologian and in the East or down in Alexandria,
- 52:23Speaker 2: in the South, or in Rome. It's here. And that's
- 52:28Speaker 2: the whole point, is that, just like now, there's pockets.
- 52:31Speaker 2: Would that be a fair statement.
- 52:33Speaker 3: I would agree absolutely that in the early Church, I
- 52:38Speaker 3: think that a pre tribulational teaching was taught by the apostles.
- 52:42Speaker 2: I agree.
- 52:43Speaker 3: I do not think that everybody understood it. They didn't
- 52:46Speaker 3: have enough theological context and eschatology context to really grapple
- 52:51Speaker 3: with it, and it was quickly being lost and then
- 52:55Speaker 3: in the late second century, early third century, there was
- 52:59Speaker 3: an explosion of replacement theology. By the time we get
- 53:03Speaker 3: deep into the fourth century, and by the time we're
- 53:07Speaker 3: into the fifth century the four hundreds, the replacement theology
- 53:11Speaker 3: completely dominated.
- 53:12Speaker 2: So again let's let's talk about why that is. Because
- 53:14Speaker 2: you have origin. Yes, he was like the beginning of
- 53:20Speaker 2: the modern allegorical movement, and then of course Augustine took
- 53:24Speaker 2: that right up. So when you look at that, even Alexandria,
- 53:28Speaker 2: the Alexandria movement versus more of the Antiochian movement, the
- 53:34Speaker 2: antioch Group, which is, you know, basically in the in
- 53:37Speaker 2: the Middle East, they stuck to that literal hermeneutic. But
- 53:41Speaker 2: if you take the allegorical, you're gonna end up all
- 53:44Speaker 2: over the map. That's why you're gonna end up with
- 53:46Speaker 2: replacement theology. And of course Augustine's non literal millennial kind
- 53:52Speaker 2: of thinking, because you're gonna go, oh, we don't need
- 53:54Speaker 2: to take that. So let's remember that it comes back
- 53:57Speaker 2: to number one. The number one distinction or the everyone
- 54:00Speaker 2: distinctive of dispensational thought is taking the scriptural, literal, normal,
- 54:07Speaker 2: normal hermeneutics. I want to say little but normal hermeneutics,
- 54:10Speaker 2: recognizing that when it says Jesus is going to be
- 54:13Speaker 2: born in Bethlehem, it's a literal thing. Bethlehem means house
- 54:17Speaker 2: of bread. Oh well, really, what that means is not
- 54:19Speaker 2: that we don't need to worry about him actually being
- 54:21Speaker 2: born in Bethlehem. It's that Jesus said he's the bread
- 54:23Speaker 2: of life. See, and so you can take that and
- 54:26Speaker 2: you can make it allegorical and figurative and end up
- 54:28Speaker 2: anywhere you want, But we don't see that.
- 54:30Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. And another interesting point I find
- 54:34Speaker 3: fascinating is it in the early Church when this replacement
- 54:38Speaker 3: theology came through, Amillennialism rolled through like a steamroller, and
- 54:44Speaker 3: literal millennium went out the window. But yet hanging on
- 54:48Speaker 3: when we get in the fourth century, we late third
- 54:51Speaker 3: century have Eusebius. In the mid fourth century, we have
- 54:56Speaker 3: f Him the Syrian, and these guys, even though they
- 54:59Speaker 3: were millennial themselves and they had taken the Old Testament
- 55:04Speaker 3: promises to Israel and spiritualized them for the Church, they
- 55:09Speaker 3: still based on the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
- 55:14Speaker 3: the Gospels and Paul's epistles. They saw material on which
- 55:17Speaker 3: they taught a pre tribulation rapture.
- 55:20Speaker 2: Yeah, and if people can you know the whole idea
- 55:23Speaker 2: of killialism, right, I mean we call it, you know today,
- 55:27Speaker 2: millennial thinking, but back then they used a different word.
- 55:29Speaker 2: But it's it's this idea of a thousand years, a
- 55:31Speaker 2: literal thousand years they see in Revelation twenty. They believed it,
- 55:36Speaker 2: and then it became spiritualized.
- 55:39Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
- 55:40Speaker 2: I mean they had a physical they recognized, no, this
- 55:42Speaker 2: is going to be a physical kingdom, but then it
- 55:44Speaker 2: became spiritualized real like you said with I would say origin,
- 55:47Speaker 2: and then Augustine, and then on and then it spread
- 55:49Speaker 2: because again Augustine was extremely influential. And do I disagree
- 55:54Speaker 2: with everything Augusta said? No, by no means he had
- 55:56Speaker 2: a lot of great stuff in talking about the nature
- 55:59Speaker 2: of God and nature of salvation and other things. But
- 56:03Speaker 2: even going to the Reformers, we could fast forward there.
- 56:05Speaker 2: I mean, these guys were fighting for their lives, but
- 56:08Speaker 2: they did a great job of rescuing the straightforward understanding
- 56:14Speaker 2: of the Gospel of grace, the soulless right, that's right.
- 56:18Speaker 2: They did a great job of rescuing that back. And
- 56:20Speaker 2: I think many of them didn't have the time. For example,
- 56:24Speaker 2: if you look at John Calvin's works, just in as
- 56:27Speaker 2: an example, he didn't write on Revelation. He didn't write
- 56:29Speaker 2: a commentary, you know, he just he wrote on so
- 56:32Speaker 2: many other books, and even many of the things in Ezekiel,
- 56:35Speaker 2: the second half of Ezekiel, he didn't write a commentary
- 56:37Speaker 2: on that because whether he didn't know, or didn't have time,
- 56:41Speaker 2: or whether it was too confusing.
- 56:42Speaker 3: But well, it'd be difficult to try and bring out
- 56:47Speaker 3: the new Covenant, that material that's in the latter half
- 56:52Speaker 3: of Ezekiel, Yeah, for sure, as always as well as
- 56:57Speaker 3: the temple exactly.
- 56:58Speaker 2: I mean you think about what do they do with
- 57:01Speaker 2: Ezeco forty through forty eight. I mean even today some
- 57:04Speaker 2: of the covenants, well, if you look at some of
- 57:05Speaker 2: the covenant the loads es today, again, love God, they're
- 57:09Speaker 2: wonderful people, but when they come to Zekera forty have
- 57:12Speaker 2: no other choice but to allegorize it.
- 57:14Speaker 3: That's right. Well, one other thought I think we should
- 57:18Speaker 3: step back into and just reinforce it is the fact
- 57:22Speaker 3: that the lesson that we're learning here from Irnas applies
- 57:25Speaker 3: not only to when we're studying the early Fathers, or
- 57:28Speaker 3: when we're reading the theological writings of anyone past or present.
- 57:31Speaker 3: But it also applies to our study the scriptures. We
- 57:34Speaker 3: don't want to get our understanding of an author from
- 57:36Speaker 3: just one single passage, which can be misunderstood. The Bible
- 57:41Speaker 3: is its own best interpreter, and we want to be
- 57:44Speaker 3: getting our theology, not from theological theology, where you can
- 57:47Speaker 3: have you start with a little maxim or a little
- 57:52Speaker 3: mantra and then you run with that. We want to
- 57:56Speaker 3: get our understanding of theology from the Bible. We want
- 57:59Speaker 3: a biblical theology. We want clear statements of scripture, qualified
- 58:04Speaker 3: and defined by clear statements of scripture, and the same
- 58:08Speaker 3: when we come to iron Aus, was iron As post
- 58:10Speaker 3: trip or was he pre trip? Well, I can just
- 58:13Speaker 3: throw up one Passes says here this is a pre
- 58:15Speaker 3: trip passage. Someone else can throw up a past so
- 58:18Speaker 3: this one looks like a post trip passage. But if
- 58:20Speaker 3: you step back, you actually wrestle with his ecclesiology, you
- 58:25Speaker 3: wrestle with his eschatology. You see the fundamental tenets of
- 58:29Speaker 3: dispensationalism and pre tribulationism.
- 58:32Speaker 2: I think that's a very good point because I remember
- 58:34Speaker 2: in seminary I wrote a paper on the difference between
- 58:39Speaker 2: biblical theology and systematic theology and the relationship because I
- 58:45Speaker 2: think oftentimes the goal is to develop a systematic theology,
- 58:48Speaker 2: but systematic theology cannot happen unless you have a proper
- 58:52Speaker 2: biblical theology, because you know, like, for example, all of
- 58:55Speaker 2: the examples that is helpful is the word the refaem.
- 58:58Speaker 2: If you have a systematic theological approach to the refaem, well,
- 59:02Speaker 2: if you don't understand that Moses in the first five
- 59:07Speaker 2: books in the Pentitude uses refaeme different than how Isaiah
- 59:12Speaker 2: uses it or other passages, then it's it's if you
- 59:16Speaker 2: can't see in a in a biblical theological sense, like
- 59:18Speaker 2: let's look at how Isaiah in that book alone uses
- 59:20Speaker 2: the word refee versus Moses. When you're developing your systematic theology,
- 59:25Speaker 2: you're gonna you're not gonna take them into context. You're
- 59:27Speaker 2: going to mix them together and to say, well, this
- 59:29Speaker 2: is confusing. But if you have the proper biblical theology
- 59:33Speaker 2: and in the nature of the words and the linguistics,
- 59:36Speaker 2: then you come over and your systemic systematic theology is smooth.
- 59:39Speaker 2: You go oh, and you see it what they call
- 59:42Speaker 2: diachronically through time. You'll see how it developed from Moses
- 59:45Speaker 2: all the way to Isaiah. There's been you know, six
- 59:48Speaker 2: seven hundred years there between them, and how even the
- 59:50Speaker 2: language developed. So that's super important that as we look
- 59:53Speaker 2: at the scripture, we take John and we look at
- 59:57Speaker 2: John and John alone, and then we we you, we
- 1:00:00Speaker 2: can connect it with Paul, but we want John to
- 1:00:02Speaker 2: be able to stand on his own in John fourteen.
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: That's right, or Paul amen. And having this robust, full
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: orbed approach to understanding the scripture is really one of
- 1:00:15Speaker 3: the greatest tools that we need to have in our
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: toolbox when we study the scriptures. One of our greatest dangers,
- 1:00:21Speaker 3: I think is people just learning to run with their
- 1:00:24Speaker 3: favorite authorities, yep, their favorite teachers. Their teachers give them
- 1:00:28Speaker 3: a proof text and the official interpretation, and they say
- 1:00:31Speaker 3: this word has to mean this. Well, you go and
- 1:00:35Speaker 3: you study the scriptures. You realize, no, that word does
- 1:00:37Speaker 3: not have to mean that. In fact, that word can't
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: mean that. In fact, years ago, when I was a
- 1:00:42Speaker 3: babe in the Lord and I started studying Greek, my
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: primary motive for studying the Greek was actually to help
- 1:00:48Speaker 3: defend myself against people saying this is what the Greek means.
- 1:00:52Speaker 2: Uh, you know what. That's what's what I did too,
- 1:00:55Speaker 2: you know, because well I wasn't born Greek or Hebrew,
- 1:00:58Speaker 2: and so I like, I want to be I'd read something,
- 1:01:01Speaker 2: they'd have a Hebrew word, I'm like, well, I want
- 1:01:02Speaker 2: to be able to know what that says, because it's
- 1:01:06Speaker 2: way different. You know, a script and so the same thing,
- 1:01:09Speaker 2: because you know, you got to get into it, you
- 1:01:10Speaker 2: got to go deep. But Lee, hey, appreciate your time
- 1:01:13Speaker 2: today for the audience. Where can people find out more
- 1:01:15Speaker 2: about what you're doing.
- 1:01:16Speaker 3: Well, they can go to my website soothkeep dot info.
- 1:01:19Speaker 3: That's s O O T h K e e P
- 1:01:22Speaker 3: dot info if you don't know that, soothkeep is Old
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: English for truth Fortress. I have the same handle on
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: my YouTube channel. I've got a lot of videos and
- 1:01:31Speaker 3: material on my YouTube channel, soothkeep Awesome.
- 1:01:34Speaker 2: Well, for those listening, hopefully you made it this far
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- 1:01:39Speaker 2: check our stuff out at prophecywatchers dot com.
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- 1:02:03Speaker 1: world is spinning out of control, but we are not
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