Transcript: Episode 0079

“Making Peace”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:37 – 00:00:39:	Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.

00:00:39 – 00:00:40:	I am Corey J.

00:00:40 – 00:00:41:	Mahler.

00:00:41 – 00:00:43:	And I'm still, whoa.

00:00:45 – 00:00:49:	On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing End Times or Eschatology.

00:00:49 – 00:00:56:	Before we get into the meat of it, Corey has shipped the very last of all the pre-orders, all the pending orders.

00:00:56 – 00:01:04:	If for some reason your charge was rejected, it's because the machine is set up very strictly to help us from being exploited and banned.

00:01:05 – 00:01:09:	So please contact Corey if you have any problems with your orders.

00:01:09 – 00:01:14:	If you like to place an order at shop.stonechoir.com, we have plenty more.

00:01:14 – 00:01:16:	We'll have a couple of years supply.

00:01:16 – 00:01:22:	So anyone who's interested in supporting the show and getting a really cool challenge coin, they are all there.

00:01:22 – 00:01:22:	They're numbered.

00:01:22 – 00:01:26:	They're basically being issued sequentially, unless you make a particular request.

00:01:26 – 00:01:33:	You can guess which numbers are probably already gone with several hundred pre-orders out, but you might get lucky if you have a particular number in mind.

00:01:34 – 00:01:36:	And thank you to everyone who's supported us with that.

00:01:36 – 00:01:38:	It means a lot to us that you're excited about it.

00:01:38 – 00:01:39:	We're excited about it.

00:01:39 – 00:01:43:	I keep it in my left-hand pocket all the time now.

00:01:43 – 00:01:51:	Today as we're talking about The End Times, the reason that we're doing it is, it's kind of a continuation of the last couple of episodes.

00:01:51 – 00:01:56:	We were talking about the supernatural and about God's action in the world.

00:01:56 – 00:02:13:	And we wanted to specifically focus this week on the prophecies, the promises that God has made about The End Times, because they're in there, they're in the Bible, and they are something that has always fascinated men because they're unclear.

00:02:13 – 00:02:20:	I've talked many times in the past about the fact that for someone to be given a prophecy is a gift from God.

00:02:20 – 00:02:25:	To be able to interpret prophecy is a gift from God, a separate gift, incidentally.

00:02:25 – 00:02:27:	To be given a vision is a gift from God.

00:02:28 – 00:02:33:	To be given the gift of interpreting visions is a separate gift.

00:02:33 – 00:02:45:	And so, as we look today at a few of the visions in scripture that were in our prophecies of the end times, it's clear from the men who received them, in particular Daniel and John, they didn't understand them.

00:02:45 – 00:02:50:	When Daniel and John received their visions, they were terrified.

00:02:50 – 00:02:50:	They were confused.

00:02:50 – 00:02:51:	They were bothered.

00:02:51 – 00:02:53:	They were like, I don't know what it is.

00:02:53 – 00:03:03:	And so, God in both cases had to, or the angel had to lift them up, encourage them, give them heart, and tell them, look, just write this down.

00:03:03 – 00:03:04:	It's for later.

00:03:04 – 00:03:06:	You don't need to understand all of it.

00:03:06 – 00:03:12:	And in both cases, some portions of it were actually interpreted for them within their visions.

00:03:12 – 00:03:22:	And the reason I highlight that here is that we shouldn't be uncomfortable with the fact that reading this stuff is confusing and uncomfortable.

00:03:22 – 00:03:26:	If the very man who received the vision is like, I don't know what's going on, it's scary.

00:03:26 – 00:03:28:	It's okay for us to have the same reaction.

00:03:28 – 00:03:33:	That doesn't mean that we're bad Christians, that we're there faithless, or that we're ignorant.

00:03:33 – 00:03:37:	We're having the natural reaction to a supernatural revelation.

00:03:37 – 00:03:45:	And the reason those promises are given, that these visions of the future are given, is for ratification.

00:03:45 – 00:03:48:	They're in scripture for a reason.

00:03:48 – 00:03:55:	And one of the key points that we want to make here today is that Christ is coming twice.

00:03:55 – 00:04:02:	The Old Testament is filled with prophecies of Christ's first coming, all of which were fulfilled with His coming bodily.

00:04:02 – 00:04:17:	When Christ, the second person of the Trinity, was incarnate as a man, and He lived, He prophesied, He did miracles, He died, He was resurrected, and He ascended into heaven, that fulfilled all of the prophecies about His first coming.

00:04:17 – 00:04:26:	And so, what we have in the pages of the New Testament is a bunch of believers who were given prophecies that they couldn't understand.

00:04:26 – 00:04:38:	They were given things about being healed by stripes, and a virgin giving birth, and all this stuff that you could sort of speculate about what it might actually mean as an allegory.

00:04:38 – 00:04:42:	You know, does the thing about stripes mean any sort of equidistant pattern?

00:04:42 – 00:04:47:	And then when it's actually fulfilled, you're like, okay, no, that's, I can see very clearly what happened here.

00:04:47 – 00:04:54:	So the prophecy in the Old Testament was unclear until it was fulfilled, and that became very clear.

00:04:54 – 00:05:11:	And so by the time we get into the pages of the New Testament, after the Gospels, after the Ascension and Pentecost, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, they all understood clearly what those prophecies meant and how they were fulfilled because they had been fulfilled.

00:05:11 – 00:05:24:	And so much of the teaching of the apostles and Acts and beyond is saying, look, all these things in the Old Testament that were pointing to the Christ and the future, here is how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies in very particular ways.

00:05:24 – 00:05:37:	And much of the New Testament is about saying, look, that which was concealed in a prophetic vision, in a prophetic language that wasn't easily understood, now is made clear by the coming of Christ.

00:05:37 – 00:05:40:	There's also a second coming of the very same Christ.

00:05:40 – 00:05:46:	And the prophecies in the New Testament and then some in the Old Testament about the second coming of Christ are the same way.

00:05:46 – 00:05:56:	And the reason for doing this episode, and the reason for highlighting that there are two comings of Christ, is that the prophecies for the first coming were fulfilled and they were believed.

00:05:56 – 00:06:03:	And they had to be believed before they were understood, so that when they were fulfilled, those who witnessed them could say, yep, there was.

00:06:03 – 00:06:05:	I didn't understand before, but I believed it.

00:06:05 – 00:06:06:	Now I understand it.

00:06:06 – 00:06:09:	I see it and I believe it, and it all makes sense.

00:06:09 – 00:06:12:	I know that God has kept his promises.

00:06:12 – 00:06:14:	The same thing is true of us.

00:06:14 – 00:06:21:	There are prophecies in the future that have yet to be fulfilled that men will see with their own eyes.

00:06:21 – 00:06:34:	And things which are inescrutable today, as we're sitting here without a prophet to explain them, without someone to interpret those visions, absent some direct revelation, the best we can do is speculate.

00:06:34 – 00:06:40:	However, when those events occur, as they are promised by God to occur, that's important.

00:06:40 – 00:06:51:	The prophecy of the future is not just like we use prophecy, like it's a special term for a thing, but fundamentally it just means God has made a promise that has yet to be fulfilled.

00:06:51 – 00:07:00:	And a mark of a true prophet is that if someone says, I'm here and I'm a prophet from God, and I have new revelations for you, they can never be wrong or they're a false prophet.

00:07:00 – 00:07:08:	Can't get a single thing wrong, because to speak in God's voice is to say that you are giving something that is infallible.

00:07:08 – 00:07:14:	So every false prophet who's ever come along has spread lies because they're not infallible.

00:07:14 – 00:07:15:	They're evil.

00:07:15 – 00:07:18:	They're anti-Christ, in fact.

00:07:18 – 00:07:39:	When these things are actually fulfilled in time, whether it's in our lifetimes or in this century or this millennium or 10,000 years from now, on whatever days the final prophecies occur in real life as they're prophesied to, believers who remember the promises of God will be able to look at those things and say, yep, there it is.

00:07:39 – 00:07:42:	I didn't know what that meant before, but I can see it with my own eyes.

00:07:42 – 00:07:49:	And so, the reason for us talking about it today is that it's not that this sort of thing is the meat of the Christian faith.

00:07:49 – 00:07:55:	And unfortunately, people seem to fall off of one of two sides of this horse either.

00:07:55 – 00:08:05:	They go nuts by saying, okay, well, there's a bunch of prophecies, and it's really weird and really interesting, and I'm going to concoct this elaborate scheme so I'd say that I understand it clearly.

00:08:05 – 00:08:07:	We don't understand anything.

00:08:07 – 00:08:07:	It's a vision.

00:08:07 – 00:08:14:	It's no less confusing to us than it was to Daniel and to John and to the others who were given these visions.

00:08:15 – 00:08:21:	But at the same time, they're promises of God, which means that they're true even when they're inexplicable to us.

00:08:21 – 00:08:31:	Either most people today will look at these things and say, well, yeah, I'm going to narrow this down and say, it's Apache helicopters and on CNN that's the scorpions or whatever.

00:08:31 – 00:08:34:	I don't remember how they correlate those things.

00:08:34 – 00:08:37:	There's some wackos you can find that try to do that.

00:08:37 – 00:08:48:	And although I call them wackos and it's entirely apt to say that because they're making things up, the problem is that there's a part of the spirit of doing that that we shouldn't condemn.

00:08:48 – 00:08:59:	And that's the other side of the horse that most people fall off of, is that because there are some people who see these prophecies, they're inexplicable, and they say, OK, this is a promise from God.

00:08:59 – 00:09:01:	Let me try to find it in the newspaper.

00:09:01 – 00:09:06:	Let me try to find it in my life and make this thing in the Bible about me.

00:09:06 – 00:09:07:	It's not a great place to be.

00:09:07 – 00:09:13:	It's not completely wrong, because these are prophecies that are given to the church, that are given to mankind.

00:09:13 – 00:09:14:	They will be fulfilled someday.

00:09:14 – 00:09:18:	And we're always to look to see if they're being fulfilled in our day.

00:09:18 – 00:09:21:	That's one of the very clear admissions from God.

00:09:21 – 00:09:31:	The other side of the horse that most people fall off of is they will, I can't understand any of this, and a lot of people have made fools of themselves in the past, so I'm just going to not believe any of it.

00:09:31 – 00:09:37:	And one of the particular modern ways that that has occurred is that people become Judaizing heretics.

00:09:37 – 00:09:42:	And I say, well, actually, all those prophecies were already fulfilled in the Bible.

00:09:42 – 00:09:48:	Everything that we read about End Times in the New Testament, that was fulfilled by AD 70, which is false.

00:09:48 – 00:09:51:	And we'll demonstrate today that that is provably false from the pages of scripture.

00:09:52 – 00:09:56:	But just as important, that's Judaizing.

00:09:56 – 00:10:01:	It's taking the New Testament, it's taking our scripture and saying, well, actually, that's about the Jews.

00:10:01 – 00:10:03:	That's not about us at all.

00:10:03 – 00:10:04:	What are you left with?

00:10:04 – 00:10:11:	You're left with pages of scripture that have no promises for us beyond, I guess, the resurrection of the dead and forgiveness of sins.

00:10:11 – 00:10:16:	You know, like the metaphysical stuff, the conceptual feel good stuff, the important stuff.

00:10:16 – 00:10:20:	But you're not left with any concrete promises that God's going to do this, that and the other thing.

00:10:20 – 00:10:22:	That's false.

00:10:22 – 00:10:27:	Those promises were given for a purpose, and we are included in that purpose.

00:10:27 – 00:10:50:	And so, while we don't want Eschatology and looking at signs to be something that people spend all the time thinking about, as you're reading through scripture, and you stumble across these prophecies over and over again in numerous books, you can avoid revelation entirely, and you're still constantly going to be coming across End Times prophecies.

00:10:50 – 00:10:52:	That's because God thinks it's important.

00:10:52 – 00:10:54:	He's letting us know it's important.

00:10:54 – 00:10:58:	And so, when you come across those, don't skip past them.

00:10:58 – 00:11:00:	Don't say, well, this isn't about me.

00:11:00 – 00:11:03:	That was already taken care of, so I don't need to worry about any of it.

00:11:03 – 00:11:08:	We should believe, and we should ask God to help us understand.

00:11:08 – 00:11:09:	And it's going to be in that order.

00:11:10 – 00:11:16:	And this is one of the places where I think the Lutheran approach to a lot of these things works better than some of the others, because it's a mystery.

00:11:16 – 00:11:18:	We can't figure it out.

00:11:18 – 00:11:21:	There's no one to explain it to us, and that's okay.

00:11:21 – 00:11:26:	We're allowed to, and we're commanded to believe it, even without understanding it.

00:11:26 – 00:11:40:	And if belief means nothing more than, I'm going to remember that thing, and then later on, if I see something actually happen in the material world that very clearly correlates, I should say, yeah, I think this is that promise of God being fulfilled.

00:11:40 – 00:11:43:	So that's the fundamental point of this episode.

00:11:43 – 00:11:51:	Don't skip past and ignore the parts of the scripture that are confusing to us, because they were confusing in the Old Testament, the prophecies of the first coming.

00:11:51 – 00:11:53:	They didn't understand.

00:11:53 – 00:12:03:	As you look at how, particularly after Pentecost, the apostles pointed back to all the prophecies of the Old Testament and showed over and over, here's how Christ fulfilled them.

00:12:04 – 00:12:16:	The only way that that argument worked was because the believers remembered and respected that all of those promises, all those prophecies that didn't make sense before, now could make sense.

00:12:16 – 00:12:21:	If you don't believe that they matter, then you're not going to be able to receive Christ.

00:12:21 – 00:12:28:	They would have not received the first coming of Christ, and many of them didn't, and we would not be able to receive the second coming of Christ when He comes.

00:12:28 – 00:12:34:	Again, it doesn't matter if it's this decade, if it's in our lifetimes, if it's in the next thousand years.

00:12:34 – 00:12:36:	The point is not precisely when.

00:12:36 – 00:12:41:	The point is that every Christian has a duty to know these things and to just keep watch.

00:12:41 – 00:12:43:	That's all God says to do, just keep watch.

00:12:43 – 00:12:52:	And you can't do that if you don't believe that these promises are true, that they're from God, and that they're intended for us as well.

00:12:53 – 00:13:11:	A fundamentally important point when dealing with prophecy is that even though prophecy applies to creation generally, in most cases, not in all cases, but in most cases, prophecy is for the church, it is for believers.

00:13:11 – 00:13:21:	Of course, part of that is not quite tautological, but believers are those who believe in the prophecies and the prophecies are for those who believe.

00:13:21 – 00:13:23:	But Revelation is a good example of this.

00:13:23 – 00:13:25:	Revelation is written to and for the church.

00:13:26 – 00:13:31:	For those outside of the church, the book is going to have very little meaning.

00:13:31 – 00:13:36:	In fact, it's going to seem quite crazy in some places, some of the descriptions in that book.

00:13:36 – 00:13:42:	Of course, it's an apocalypse and it is apocalyptic, in both senses in this case.

00:13:43 – 00:13:46:	But the book is written fundamentally to Christians.

00:13:46 – 00:13:52:	The same thing is true of various prophecies throughout scripture, particularly with regard to the End Times.

00:13:52 – 00:14:04:	These things are written to make us aware of what is coming insofar as we can understand them, and also to provide comfort, because these are promises of God.

00:14:04 – 00:14:06:	And we have to take them with the other promises of God as well.

00:14:06 – 00:14:11:	He has promised to keep his church until the end, to preserve believers.

00:14:11 – 00:14:26:	That doesn't mean that the church will be preserved as big as it is today, or as big as it was at its height, for instance, because certainly we have seen a fall of the church from the height of Christendom to where we are today.

00:14:26 – 00:14:29:	But it does mean that God will preserve the church to the end.

00:14:29 – 00:14:35:	He in fact says that he will cut short the days of tribulation in order to preserve the elect.

00:14:35 – 00:14:38:	That's how bad things are going to get.

00:14:38 – 00:14:41:	Which raises another point.

00:14:41 – 00:14:56:	Those who would tell you that things are going to just keep getting better, that until the end, we will continue to see sort of an uphill, an upward trend, things will get better, and then Christ will return.

00:14:56 – 00:14:59:	Those men are liars.

00:14:59 – 00:15:00:	That should not be sugar-coated.

00:15:00 – 00:15:01:	It should not be put another way.

00:15:01 – 00:15:06:	They are liars because that is not what scripture says.

00:15:06 – 00:15:10:	Scripture very clearly says that things will continue to get worse.

00:15:10 – 00:15:14:	Now, that does not mean that things will only get worse.

00:15:14 – 00:15:17:	It means that things will get worse near the end.

00:15:17 – 00:15:20:	Things today are certainly getting worse.

00:15:20 – 00:15:24:	So, could this be the beginning of the end?

00:15:24 – 00:15:25:	Yes.

00:15:25 – 00:15:28:	Could it be not the beginning of the end?

00:15:28 – 00:15:29:	Also, yes.

00:15:29 – 00:15:38:	The reason for that is related to one of the ways in which prophecy is fulfilled, but in a specific way in this case.

00:15:40 – 00:15:43:	Things are going to get worse at the end.

00:15:43 – 00:15:55:	Just because things are getting worse today does not mean this is the end because of course things could get worse now and in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years get better and then get worse again at some future point.

00:15:56 – 00:16:00:	The point to take away is that things at the end will get worse.

00:16:00 – 00:16:04:	They are not going to get better and then Christ returns.

00:16:04 – 00:16:05:	They are going to get worse.

00:16:05 – 00:16:09:	There is a period of tribulation and then Christ returns.

00:16:10 – 00:16:20:	How that is related to the fulfillment of prophecy throughout scripture, or many prophecies, is that the fulfillment is often cyclical, in a sense.

00:16:20 – 00:16:29:	There will be a minor fulfillment, and then perhaps another minor fulfillment, and you will see a number of these throughout scripture, and then there is the ultimate fulfillment.

00:16:29 – 00:16:31:	This is related, of course, to typology.

00:16:31 – 00:16:45:	We could look at the various types of Christ in the Old Testament, and then, of course, Christ himself, the anti-type, the full fulfillment of all of the prophecies, because David was a type of Christ.

00:16:45 – 00:16:47:	He delivered his people.

00:16:47 – 00:16:51:	He fulfilled some of the requirements.

00:16:51 – 00:16:58:	He performed some of the duties of the ultimate Christ, of Jesus Christ, but not all of them.

00:16:58 – 00:17:07:	He was not so much an imperfect fulfillment, although, of course, he was an imperfect man, as he was a typological fulfillment.

00:17:07 – 00:17:11:	And we see that with many scriptures, and we see that with many prophecies, particularly.

00:17:12 – 00:17:33:	So, when someone points out that, well, this is the fulfillment of that prophecy, that's almost always incorrect, because if you are limiting it, if you mean to limit it by your words, to one fulfillment, that's probably not a correct interpretation of the prophecy, because there are probably multiple fulfillments.

00:17:33 – 00:17:34:	Yes, there's an ultimate one.

00:17:34 – 00:17:36:	There's one that is more meaningful.

00:17:36 – 00:17:41:	It stands above all the others, but it is not the sole fulfillment.

00:17:42 – 00:17:49:	We see this in particular with regard to the End Times, because there are those who will try to argue for full preterism.

00:17:49 – 00:17:55:	They'll try to argue that the prophecies have already been fulfilled in the past, and so they no longer apply to us.

00:17:55 – 00:17:56:	That's irrelevant.

00:17:56 – 00:17:57:	It's in Scripture.

00:17:57 – 00:17:59:	It's true, but it already happened.

00:17:59 – 00:18:04:	So they view it sort of as the historical books of the Pentateuch.

00:18:05 – 00:18:06:	Those are events that already happened.

00:18:07 – 00:18:07:	They're true.

00:18:07 – 00:18:09:	They're historical.

00:18:09 – 00:18:15:	We're not looking forward to them, except for, of course, some of the prophecies and promises contained in those books.

00:18:15 – 00:18:17:	But the events themselves already happened.

00:18:17 – 00:18:22:	Some will try to argue that with regard to the End Times prophecies in various books in Scripture.

00:18:22 – 00:18:24:	And that's simply not true.

00:18:24 – 00:18:44:	Just because there was some typological fulfillment, say under Nero, for instance, I don't think that either of us would argue that you didn't have some typological fulfillment of End Times prophecies under certain of the Roman emperors, it does not mean that those were the ultimate fulfillment of those prophecies.

00:18:44 – 00:18:50:	Many of the prophecies remain unfulfilled because we are not right now at the end of the End Times.

00:18:50 – 00:18:52:	We can say that for certain.

00:18:52 – 00:19:01:	We can't say for certain we aren't at the beginning of the End Times, but we can say that there are unfulfilled signs that we have not reached that final end stage.

00:19:01 – 00:19:07:	And so we can most certainly say that of historical fulfillments of some of those prophecies.

00:19:07 – 00:19:13:	They were partial, they were typological, but they were not the ultimate fulfillment.

00:19:13 – 00:19:18:	And so when you look at prophecies, it's important to recognize there may be multiple fulfillments.

00:19:18 – 00:19:24:	You're not necessarily looking for one single fulfillment, whether in history or in the future.

00:19:24 – 00:19:34:	And as Wo mentioned, many of these prophecies are going to be outside of the capacity of anyone listening to this to fully understand.

00:19:34 – 00:19:51:	Because it's very unlikely that God has given anyone listening right now a full enough, a strong enough, a deep enough gift of interpretation to interpret fully and completely, say, Revelation or Daniel or Ezekiel.

00:19:51 – 00:19:56:	There will be things that we can understand and things that will remain a mystery.

00:19:56 – 00:19:58:	And that's fine.

00:19:58 – 00:19:59:	God is infinite.

00:19:59 – 00:19:59:	We're finite.

00:19:59 – 00:20:03:	We should be comfortable with the idea that there is going to be mystery.

00:20:03 – 00:20:16:	There are going to be things we cannot fully understand that shouldn't worry us, that shouldn't concern us in a negative sense, because God promises that all things will work together for the good of the elect.

00:20:16 – 00:20:21:	Just because we do not understand does not mean that God does not understand.

00:20:21 – 00:20:23:	Obviously, God understands all things.

00:20:23 – 00:20:25:	He is the one who's in control.

00:20:25 – 00:20:27:	He is the one who has written these words to us.

00:20:28 – 00:20:36:	We read them, understand them as best we can, given the gifts that he has given us, and then the rest of it we just accept.

00:20:36 – 00:20:50:	I do not have to understand every single verse of scripture in order to believe in the promises of God, in order to believe that God will work all things for the good, in order to believe that scripture is true.

00:20:50 – 00:20:52:	I understand much of scripture.

00:20:52 – 00:20:53:	I don't understand all of it.

00:20:53 – 00:20:58:	There are verses that remain a mystery, but I read them.

00:20:58 – 00:21:04:	I understand them insofar as I can understand the words I am reading, and I accept them as true.

00:21:04 – 00:21:11:	At some point, God will explain them to me, or if God never explains them to me, then that doesn't matter.

00:21:11 – 00:21:13:	Then it's something reserved for him.

00:21:13 – 00:21:18:	In either case, as a Christian, I am comfortable with that outcome.

00:21:18 – 00:21:23:	Just because something is in scripture does not mean we have to obsess over understanding it.

00:21:24 – 00:21:30:	There are things that have been given us to understand and things that have not been given us to understand.

00:21:30 – 00:21:36:	So we may not understand every single verse in Revelation or every single verse in Daniel.

00:21:36 – 00:21:39:	Some of the prophecies are difficult to interpret.

00:21:39 – 00:21:43:	That's fine, and we have to be comfortable with that.

00:21:43 – 00:21:55:	Quite frankly, one of the dangers in dealing with Eschatology, in dealing with these books and prophecies of the End Times, is that some get obsessed with it.

00:21:55 – 00:21:58:	This is not the core of the Christian faith.

00:21:58 – 00:22:01:	This is not something over which to obsess.

00:22:01 – 00:22:04:	There are more important books in Scripture.

00:22:04 – 00:22:09:	If you are reading only Revelation, you are making a grave mistake.

00:22:09 – 00:22:17:	You should be reading other parts of Scripture more and more often than you are reading, say, Daniel or Revelation.

00:22:17 – 00:22:22:	That's not to say the books are unimportant, because, of course, they flow from the mouth of God.

00:22:22 – 00:22:24:	They flow from the mind of God.

00:22:24 – 00:22:26:	All of it is true.

00:22:26 – 00:22:27:	All of it is important.

00:22:27 – 00:22:32:	But even Scripture speaks of certain parts of Scripture being more important than others.

00:22:32 – 00:22:34:	And obviously, that's the case.

00:22:34 – 00:22:42:	The parts that clearly teach us about Christ and the Gospel are more important than mere recounting of history.

00:22:42 – 00:22:44:	One is a matter of your eternal soul.

00:22:45 – 00:22:46:	The other is true.

00:22:46 – 00:22:49:	And God has included it for edification.

00:22:49 – 00:22:52:	But it is not as important as the Gospel.

00:22:52 – 00:22:57:	The same sort of thing is true with regard to End Times prophecies and related matters.

00:22:57 – 00:23:00:	There are more important things in Scripture.

00:23:00 – 00:23:18:	We are doing the episode because it's important to understand how these play into the Christian life, the place these things have in the Christian life, and also to refute some of the heresies that have arisen in the Church with regard to abusing these parts of Scripture.

00:23:18 – 00:23:23:	We are not minimizing their importance, but we are also not going to overstate them.

00:23:23 – 00:23:30:	Because becoming obsessed with them is a problem historically in the Church, and even much more so today.

00:23:30 – 00:23:41:	Because as we already said, you see plenty of Judaizing and other problems in the Church that rely on eisegesis of these passages, of these parts of Scripture.

00:23:41 – 00:24:04:	And just as a general rule, if someone is building his theology, is building his argument out of parts of Scripture that are very difficult to exegete, out of parts of Scripture that are mysterious, that are perhaps even impossible to fully understand, that man is at least doing something that is unwise, and in many cases, he is deliberately attempting to mislead you.

00:24:04 – 00:24:09:	And so as a Christian, you must be on your guard with regard to these matters.

00:24:10 – 00:24:14:	So just a couple last framing verses before we get into the meat of these things.

00:24:14 – 00:24:23:	The reason that we're spending so much time on framing is that it's really important not to run off the rails with this stuff, but it's also really important not to reject it.

00:24:23 – 00:24:33:	We know that we are all treading a fine line here by delving into things that, as Corey said, have historically been the subject of tremendous heresies, of nonsense, of cults.

00:24:34 – 00:24:40:	It's very common for cults to arise around false interpretations driven by antichrists of End Times things.

00:24:40 – 00:24:45:	So to begin one specific passage, this is from Acts 1.

00:24:45 – 00:24:50:	This is basically Luke's continuation of the end of the Gospel of Luke.

00:24:50 – 00:24:57:	It is written, So when they had come together, they asked him, Jesus, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?

00:24:57 – 00:25:02:	He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.

00:25:04 – 00:25:13:	But you will receive power when the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

00:25:15 – 00:25:20:	And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

00:25:20 – 00:25:29:	And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood with them in white robes and said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

00:25:29 – 00:25:36:	Thus Jesus, who has taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.

00:25:36 – 00:25:45:	So, I want you to keep in mind the words of those two angels that appeared to the disciples as they were looking up at Jesus ascending into heaven.

00:25:45 – 00:25:47:	They just asked him, Lord, are you here to complete your kingdom?

00:25:47 – 00:25:52:	Which is, you know, part of the millenarian parasy that we'll get into here in a minute.

00:25:52 – 00:25:55:	And he says, go preach the gospel.

00:25:55 – 00:26:03:	And then he vanishes before their eyes, and the angels come and say, why are you guys standing around, gawking up in the sky?

00:26:03 – 00:26:04:	Go do what he said to do.

00:26:04 – 00:26:07:	And so this is our message to everyone listening today.

00:26:07 – 00:26:10:	This is not about gawking out of the sky.

00:26:10 – 00:26:15:	This is not about staying glued to TikTok or wherever you're getting your news.

00:26:15 – 00:26:24:	Wherever you're finding out what the latest breaking international, global, whatever is, you should not be looking at that and saying, okay, I got to find that in the Bible.

00:26:24 – 00:26:25:	We're not encouraging that.

00:26:25 – 00:26:26:	We don't do that.

00:26:26 – 00:26:28:	It's not good for anyone.

00:26:30 – 00:26:43:	The focus that Jesus gives the apostles in particular is they were being sent out for the Great Commission and something that the Church has since fulfilled and some would argue completed, I think probably truly.

00:26:44 – 00:26:51:	The command to take the Gospel to the end of the earth is, it's in fact an eschatological command.

00:26:51 – 00:26:55:	End of the earth there, the actual Greek word is eschatos.

00:26:55 – 00:27:01:	It means the last, furthest, uttermost, extreme, or most remote, and either space, time or degree.

00:27:01 – 00:27:07:	So it is truly the end of all things in terms of space, time, whatever.

00:27:07 – 00:27:19:	And so when we're talking about eschatology, there's a connection between the spread of the Gospel everywhere and the fulfillment of all of God's promises in the world.

00:27:23 – 00:27:37:	Two passages that I want to emphasize, something that Corey was saying a minute ago about the Gospel and contrasting this sort of somewhat peripheral theology in contrast to the beating heart of the Christian faith.

00:27:37 – 00:27:41:	I want to make a key point that we've made before, but it's a crucial one.

00:27:41 – 00:27:45:	There are two different definitions of Gospel, and both are true.

00:27:45 – 00:27:55:	There is the narrower Protestant definition of Gospel in contrast to law, where Gospel is how we are saved, how God saves us.

00:27:55 – 00:27:58:	John 3.16 is the heart of the Gospel.

00:27:58 – 00:28:00:	That's absolutely true.

00:28:00 – 00:28:03:	Not one man can save himself.

00:28:03 – 00:28:07:	We can't do anything to make God look at us and say, wow, that guy's really great.

00:28:07 – 00:28:09:	I'm going to elevate him.

00:28:09 – 00:28:14:	The only thing that God sees when he looks at us are filthy rags from our wickedness.

00:28:14 – 00:28:23:	While we were enemies of God, he loved us so much in spite of that disgusting state that he sent his only son to die for us on the cross.

00:28:23 – 00:28:30:	And by adoption as sons of God, we become coheirs of eternal life and of forgiveness with Christ.

00:28:30 – 00:28:34:	And so our robes are washed white in the blood of the lamb.

00:28:34 – 00:28:36:	All those are things that God promises us.

00:28:36 – 00:28:38:	And that is the gospel.

00:28:38 – 00:28:42:	While we were enemies, we were made sons of God through his grace.

00:28:42 – 00:28:44:	And that is the gospel promise.

00:28:44 – 00:28:55:	And that is the essential overarching theme of Christianity, that we didn't deserve it, God did it anyway, and he gave it to us freely.

00:28:55 – 00:28:59:	And the joy of the Christian life is to share that free gift with others.

00:28:59 – 00:29:02:	So in one sense, that is the gospel, and it's absolutely true.

00:29:02 – 00:29:07:	There is, however, also another sense of the gospel that's used in scripture.

00:29:07 – 00:29:09:	Gospel means good news.

00:29:09 – 00:29:13:	And the good news is every word from the mouth of God.

00:29:14 – 00:29:26:	2 Timothy 3 says, All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

00:29:27 – 00:29:34:	So when God describes scripture, he says that it's useful for all sorts of things, specifically to equip men to do good works.

00:29:34 – 00:29:37:	Now, that's post-soteriological.

00:29:37 – 00:29:37:	I use that term a lot.

00:29:37 – 00:29:44:	It means after salvation, after we have been saved, then the Christian life begins.

00:29:44 – 00:29:51:	And so, in that sense of all scripture being breathed out by God, definitionally, it must be good, right?

00:29:51 – 00:29:58:	If the gospel is the good news and every word of scripture is breathed out by God, then every word of scripture must be good.

00:29:58 – 00:30:00:	And therefore, it's good news to hear it.

00:30:00 – 00:30:06:	Even the parts that are bad to hear, even the parts about the end of the world are in a very true sense the gospel.

00:30:07 – 00:30:11:	And so, here's two verses to hammer the point home that I'm making here.

00:30:11 – 00:30:20:	Again, not opposing what Corey said or what any one of the churches taught, but just to say there are two distinct ways that gospel is used, and they're both scriptural.

00:30:22 – 00:30:25:	Here's what 1 Thessalonians chapter one says.

00:30:25 – 00:30:43:	This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us.

00:30:43 – 00:31:03:	When the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

00:31:03 – 00:31:13:	When he comes on that day to be glorified with his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you is believed.

00:31:13 – 00:31:22:	So your God is very clearly saying, obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, and anyone who doesn't is going to be afflicted by God and by his angels with flaming swords.

00:31:22 – 00:31:24:	That's a whole lot of law.

00:31:24 – 00:31:32:	And God calls it the gospel and he says, those who do not obey the gospel, which is a law statement, is going to be damned.

00:31:32 – 00:31:39:	Now, Lutherans will be programmed and primed to scream that this is confusing law and gospel.

00:31:39 – 00:31:42:	It's not, because we're talking about the whole council of God.

00:31:42 – 00:31:48:	And the reason for highlighting this is that the whole council of God includes these prophecies about End Times.

00:31:48 – 00:31:59:	And although these prophecies, although these promises of the future, are less important than the promise of salvation, because they are from God, they're no less important for us to believe.

00:31:59 – 00:32:03:	And as Corey said, you can get some stuff wrong and not be damned.

00:32:03 – 00:32:07:	You can get this stuff wrong and not be damned.

00:32:07 – 00:32:13:	However, when you read scripture and say, this is a bunch of crap, I don't believe it, then you are risking damnation.

00:32:13 – 00:32:15:	And so that's the distinction.

00:32:15 – 00:32:17:	It's not getting a fact wrong.

00:32:17 – 00:32:19:	It's not about having a wrong opinion.

00:32:19 – 00:32:23:	It's about, do you believe the promises of God, or do you disbelieve them?

00:32:23 – 00:32:36:	And the approach that we encourage everyone, we exhort you to take to all of scripture, is to believe it, to receive it faithfully, and to the best of your ability, to try to understand it, and to try to find teachers who will teach it to you faithfully.

00:32:36 – 00:32:40:	Because the gospel is also to be obeyed.

00:32:40 – 00:32:54:	As is repeated in Revelation chapter 14, John records, then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.

00:32:54 – 00:32:59:	And he said with a loud voice, Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come.

00:32:59 – 00:33:04:	And worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea, and the springs of water.

00:33:04 – 00:33:13:	So again, in heaven, God is calling an eternal gospel, Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come.

00:33:13 – 00:33:16:	That's not how Protestants typically talk about the gospel.

00:33:16 – 00:33:18:	And yet God says that's the gospel.

00:33:18 – 00:33:21:	And so I'm making the specific point here.

00:33:21 – 00:33:23:	It's good news because it's from the mouth of God.

00:33:23 – 00:33:33:	Even though I was talking about judgment, even though I was talking about flaming angels and annihilation and wrath from God, it's good news because it's from our Lord.

00:33:33 – 00:33:37:	And if you hate that God, you're in trouble.

00:33:37 – 00:33:40:	And that's when it becomes a matter of salvation.

00:33:40 – 00:33:48:	So as we tackle these subjects, it's out of respect for what God has said, and it's not to try to elevate one thing over another.

00:33:48 – 00:33:51:	It's just to make sure that we're not leaving anything out.

00:33:51 – 00:33:57:	In some ways, this is kind of a continuation of one of the earliest episodes we did on neglected doctrines.

00:33:57 – 00:34:00:	Except in this case, Eschatology is not neglected, frankly.

00:34:00 – 00:34:04:	It's probably over-emphasized, but improperly.

00:34:04 – 00:34:13:	You have some church bodies that make their entire gimmick about End Times and weird stuff that doesn't actually stick with scripture.

00:34:13 – 00:34:16:	And then you have the others mostly who are just poo-pooing it.

00:34:16 – 00:34:17:	Like, I don't believe any of that.

00:34:17 – 00:34:20:	I don't think that doesn't apply to us.

00:34:20 – 00:34:25:	And so as we get into the meat of the prophecies, just remember that it's there for a purpose.

00:34:25 – 00:34:27:	It's part of the gospel.

00:34:27 – 00:34:29:	It's part of the good news because God has given it to us.

00:34:29 – 00:34:33:	And so just receiving it that way makes a whole lot easier.

00:34:33 – 00:34:36:	When you respond as Daniel and as John, like, I'm afraid and I'm confused.

00:34:36 – 00:34:37:	Okay.

00:34:37 – 00:34:39:	That means you're actually paying attention.

00:34:39 – 00:34:47:	But, you know, when we did the Fear of the Lord episode, part of the emphasis there is that to fear God is obedience to God.

00:34:47 – 00:34:51:	In fact, that's literally what the eternal gospel is called in Revelation 14.

00:34:52 – 00:34:54:	Fear God and give Him glory.

00:34:54 – 00:34:55:	And the fear comes first.

00:34:55 – 00:34:58:	Obey God, fear God, give Him glory.

00:34:58 – 00:35:01:	This is how God tells us to respond to Him.

00:35:01 – 00:35:04:	And that response can only come in faith.

00:35:04 – 00:35:06:	Back to what Corey was saying.

00:35:06 – 00:35:09:	Only in faith is any of this possible.

00:35:09 – 00:35:11:	So, there's no, I'm going to save myself by doing this really good.

00:35:11 – 00:35:13:	No.

00:35:13 – 00:35:16:	If you believe a word of scripture, you can't believe that.

00:35:16 – 00:35:18:	We are face down trembling.

00:35:18 – 00:35:19:	We are nothing before God.

00:35:20 – 00:35:25:	And He elevates us by giving us the good news and by making us coheirs with Christ.

00:35:25 – 00:35:27:	And then it's okay.

00:35:27 – 00:35:30:	But by ourselves, we are worse than nothing.

00:35:30 – 00:35:39:	So, never let anyone confuse you and never let anyone say that we're ever saying anything different because that's the essence of the Christian faith.

00:35:39 – 00:35:42:	Continuing in 1 Thessalonians 5.

00:35:42 – 00:35:51:	Now, concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

00:35:51 – 00:36:00:	While people are saying, there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon the pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

00:36:00 – 00:36:05:	But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.

00:36:05 – 00:36:08:	For you are all children of light, children of the day.

00:36:08 – 00:36:10:	We are not of the night or of darkness.

00:36:10 – 00:36:15:	So then, let us not sleep as others do, but let us be awake and sober.

00:36:16 – 00:36:27:	And this is the clarion call of all of the prophecy of the End Times, the things that we can't understand, to keep watch, to be sober, to take it seriously, not to dwell on it.

00:36:27 – 00:36:33:	And so, we are sequestering this in an episode, because we have talked about Eschatology a couple times.

00:36:33 – 00:36:36:	We did an episode specifically on the dispensational heresy.

00:36:36 – 00:36:41:	But it's not most of the Christian life, and it shouldn't be for you either.

00:36:41 – 00:36:45:	But when you do come across it in scripture, take it seriously.

00:36:47 – 00:37:03:	One of the hallmarks of those who hold to heretical, or at least extremely unorthodox, views of The End Times and of Eschatology in general would be very complicated graphs and charts.

00:37:03 – 00:37:06:	We've all seen memes to that effect.

00:37:07 – 00:37:33:	You have those who start drawing on a whiteboard with lots of arrows, lots of divisions, all sorts of markers, and quite frankly, that's a dead giveaway that the person has no idea what scripture actually teaches about the timeline of history, because scripture teaches the fullness of time, including eternity past and eternity future in this case, if you want to include those in time.

00:37:33 – 00:37:43:	And so it helps to have a general rough outline of how this works just in your mind, as you're going through these prophecies, as you're reading scripture.

00:37:43 – 00:37:50:	And you can actually hold the entire thing in your mind because the true timeline is very simple.

00:37:50 – 00:37:52:	This is not complicated.

00:37:52 – 00:37:58:	We don't need a whiteboard, which is good, because this podcast is audio only.

00:37:58 – 00:38:04:	We don't need any sort of graph or chart, because I can run through it in just a minute here.

00:38:05 – 00:38:12:	The full timeline, and this is of all things, is as follows.

00:38:12 – 00:38:23:	You have eternity past, which is God dwelling, not so much alone, because God is Trinity, but God dwelling in the absence of anything that is not God.

00:38:23 – 00:38:24:	Then you have creation.

00:38:24 – 00:38:26:	Then there is the fall.

00:38:26 – 00:38:31:	Then there is the Old Testament era, which of course includes worsening sin.

00:38:31 – 00:38:34:	Then you have Christ as the dividing point in history.

00:38:35 – 00:38:44:	After that, you have the Church Age, which again includes worsening sin, despite what some would claim as earlier discussed.

00:38:44 – 00:38:48:	Near the end of the Church Age, there is a period of tribulation.

00:38:48 – 00:38:52:	Then there is the Second Coming, which is the end of all things.

00:38:52 – 00:38:56:	There is re-creation, and then there is eternity future.

00:38:56 – 00:38:57:	That's it.

00:38:57 – 00:38:59:	That is the full timeline.

00:38:59 – 00:39:03:	No need for any other divisions or arrows, flags, any of that.

00:39:04 – 00:39:12:	That is the full teaching of scripture with regard to history, including again, eternity past and eternity future.

00:39:13 – 00:39:26:	And so, when you see those who try to divide up scripture, divide up history into, say, dispensations, which we covered in our episode on dispensationalism, you know that's a false teaching.

00:39:26 – 00:39:40:	Another one that is often seen in, not just historically in some cases, but in modern times, it is a particularly pernicious version of this, various forms of millenarianism.

00:39:40 – 00:39:49:	Many of these are based on the false belief that the number 1000, that the millennium in Revelation is literal.

00:39:49 – 00:39:51:	It is not.

00:39:51 – 00:40:00:	It is important to understand the meaning assigned to numbers in scripture, to understand why you see that number 1000.

00:40:00 – 00:40:01:	There are other numbers as well.

00:40:01 – 00:40:11:	There is, of course, the number 144,000 in Revelation, and you have the number 7 and the number 40, and these numbers appear in prophecies.

00:40:11 – 00:40:20:	They are not going to mean anything to you unless you understand how numbers are used in scripture, because they are used not just as numbers, but also as symbols.

00:40:20 – 00:40:22:	Sometimes the numbers are literal.

00:40:22 – 00:40:24:	Sometimes the numbers are symbolic.

00:40:24 – 00:40:27:	Sometimes they are both.

00:40:27 – 00:40:39:	One good example of a number being used in both a literal and a symbolic way is the division of Moses' life into three periods of 40 years.

00:40:39 – 00:40:40:	Those periods are literal.

00:40:40 – 00:40:47:	He literally lived 120 years in divisions of 40 years.

00:40:47 – 00:40:51:	Egypt, exile, and then leading the people in the Exodus.

00:40:51 – 00:41:00:	However, the number 40 is also a symbolic number, and I will get to that, but I'll start with the number 1, because that seems like the logical place to start.

00:41:01 – 00:41:07:	The number 1 in scripture is used to represent uniqueness, unity, or primacy.

00:41:07 – 00:41:11:	And so, of course, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

00:41:11 – 00:41:20:	The number 2 is not, in fact, plural, as we would think in English, because Greek has a dual grammatical number.

00:41:20 – 00:41:29:	This has fallen away in modern usage in Greek, but it was very much a thing in the Old Testament, and even up into the Koinotimes of the New Testament.

00:41:30 – 00:41:33:	It describes something that is naturally dual.

00:41:33 – 00:41:38:	So, for instance, your hands, or it can be used for division or contrast.

00:41:38 – 00:41:46:	Three is actually the first true plural, and it can represent a short but complete cycle of action.

00:41:46 – 00:41:50:	It also is obviously one of the numbers of God, being the number of the Trinity.

00:41:51 – 00:42:09:	Now, four is an important number with regard to some of these prophecies, because four often represents God's work in creation, usually in a multiple, but it is a number that relates to God working out something in time, in creation.

00:42:09 – 00:42:13:	Six is, of course, the number of mankind we were made on the sixth day.

00:42:13 – 00:42:17:	666, of course, is a different number, but we'll leave that aside for now.

00:42:18 – 00:42:21:	Seven is another number of God.

00:42:21 – 00:42:23:	God likes the number seven.

00:42:23 – 00:42:25:	Scripture doesn't necessarily tell us why.

00:42:25 – 00:42:27:	We don't need to understand why.

00:42:27 – 00:42:28:	He likes the number.

00:42:28 – 00:42:33:	It is one of the numbers that represents perfection, or God's ordering of things.

00:42:33 – 00:42:36:	And so, for instance, creation took seven days.

00:42:36 – 00:42:38:	There are seven days of the week.

00:42:38 – 00:42:43:	The cycle of the moon is broken into sections of seven days.

00:42:43 – 00:42:48:	This number relates to God's plan and ordering of things in creation.

00:42:48 – 00:42:54:	Ten is a number of fullness or constancy, or a number of perfection.

00:42:54 – 00:42:56:	It's one of the numbers dealing with perfection.

00:42:56 – 00:42:59:	There are a few of those in scripture.

00:42:59 – 00:43:02:	So, for instance, you can see this in tithing.

00:43:02 – 00:43:07:	We give 10% representative as thanks for the whole.

00:43:07 – 00:43:10:	The number 12 represents God's people.

00:43:10 – 00:43:13:	In the Old Testament, this is seen as the 12 tribes.

00:43:13 – 00:43:15:	In the New Testament, you see this with the 12 apostles.

00:43:16 – 00:43:19:	The number 24, of course, then, is 12 repeated.

00:43:19 – 00:43:25:	That would be the fullness of God's both Old Testament and New Testament people.

00:43:25 – 00:43:32:	Notably, those in the Old Testament are not just the Hebrews, of course, because there were other believers in the Old Testament.

00:43:32 – 00:43:43:	The number 40, which I mentioned earlier with regard to Moses, this is often a critical period in God's organization of things in time.

00:43:44 – 00:43:46:	So, part of his plan.

00:43:46 – 00:43:50:	A good example of this would be Christ's Temptation in the Desert.

00:43:50 – 00:44:01:	Of course, we see this prefigured typologically represented in the 40 years of wandering in the desert that the Hebrews did.

00:44:01 – 00:44:06:	Of course, there's a difference here because Christ was the obedient son, Israel was the disobedient son.

00:44:06 – 00:44:09:	That's why they were wandering in the desert for 40 years.

00:44:09 – 00:44:18:	The number 70, of course, is just a multiple of 7 and 10, and so you have those two numbers representing God's work and completeness.

00:44:18 – 00:44:23:	And then you have various other numbers that are multiples of the numbers already mentioned.

00:44:23 – 00:44:26:	But the number 1000 is an important number.

00:44:26 – 00:44:29:	What is the number 1000?

00:44:29 – 00:44:34:	It has two main uses in scripture.

00:44:34 – 00:44:38:	The first is that it represents military action of some kind.

00:44:38 – 00:44:50:	And so many times in the Old Testament, there will be a division in two thousands, or there will be a thousand taken from each tribe for the number 12,000, which incidentally represents the church militant.

00:44:50 – 00:44:55:	But it is a military sense for the first use of this number in scripture.

00:44:55 – 00:45:01:	The second use is to represent God's perfection, because of course, what is a thousand?

00:45:01 – 00:45:03:	It's ten cubed.

00:45:03 – 00:45:08:	So ten being the number of fullness or perfection, and three being the number of the trinity.

00:45:09 – 00:45:14:	Now we can speak of this thousand years mentioned in Revelation.

00:45:14 – 00:45:16:	What is the thousand years?

00:45:16 – 00:45:19:	The thousand years is the church age.

00:45:19 – 00:45:28:	It is the period of time between Christ's ascension, or Pentecost depending where you want to start the clock, as it were, and the second coming.

00:45:29 – 00:45:36:	It is representing God's perfect span of time for the work of the church on earth.

00:45:36 – 00:45:38:	That's all it is.

00:45:38 – 00:45:41:	It does not represent a literal one thousand years.

00:45:41 – 00:45:47:	It is not Christ coming down and reigning in Jerusalem as a king for a thousand years.

00:45:47 – 00:45:50:	It is the church age.

00:45:50 – 00:45:57:	And we know that because we can see very clearly from Scripture how these numbers are used symbolically.

00:45:59 – 00:46:10:	There is an important caveat here historically with regard to some of those in the history of the church who thought that this number may have been a literal number.

00:46:10 – 00:46:16:	Because there is a distinction between those who thought that historically and those who believe it today.

00:46:16 – 00:46:29:	So around the year 1000, if you believed that perhaps Christ is going to come back right now and rain on the earth or whatever it happened to be specifically that you believed, perhaps there was some warrant to that.

00:46:29 – 00:46:41:	Because you see the number 1000, it's been literally 1000 years since Christ ascended, if you're in the year 1033 anyway, give or take a little bit.

00:46:41 – 00:46:51:	But after that period, because obviously Christ did not come back, the second coming did not occur in 1033 or we would not be having this discussion right now.

00:46:51 – 00:46:57:	After that period, there is no longer any warrant to hold that sort of belief.

00:46:57 – 00:47:10:	Even if just held as sort of an innocent, well, maybe it'll happen because we are now more than 2000 years after Christ's earthly ministry, not after the conclusion of it, of course, because we have a few more years to go for that.

00:47:10 – 00:47:19:	But given the amount of time that has passed, we can see and very safely conclude the number is not both symbolic and literal.

00:47:19 – 00:47:26:	It is only symbolic in this case, which of course fits perfectly with prophecy.

00:47:26 – 00:47:29:	You must remember that the Bible is a collection of books.

00:47:29 – 00:47:30:	It is not one book.

00:47:30 – 00:47:34:	It is a collection of books, which is an important point for a number of reasons.

00:47:34 – 00:47:48:	One, because all of the interrelationships and references help to prove the authorship of scripture by God, but also because you must recognize different books are different genres.

00:47:48 – 00:47:52:	And we all know this from our English classes or just from reading.

00:47:52 – 00:47:59:	You do not read a book of poetry the same way as you would read a history book.

00:47:59 – 00:48:00:	They're not the same.

00:48:00 – 00:48:04:	And so, for instance, the first five books of scripture are history.

00:48:04 – 00:48:10:	You read them as being almost exclusively literal, because that's what they are.

00:48:10 – 00:48:11:	They are history.

00:48:12 – 00:48:24:	When you get to the Psalms or you get to some of the other wisdom literature, you read that differently from how you would read the historical books, because you are going to have more figurative use of language.

00:48:24 – 00:48:27:	You're going to have figurative use of numbers.

00:48:27 – 00:48:37:	And with regard to the Psalms, there's an important point here for those who want, I guess, a talking point or at least a point of argument with regard to the number 1000.

00:48:38 – 00:48:47:	There are those who will argue that, well, it says 1000, and so it must be literal because it's what God said, and I'm going to believe the literal sense of it.

00:48:47 – 00:48:52:	Well, you can't do that with Revelation, because then Christ is a sheep with seven horns.

00:48:52 – 00:49:00:	But setting that aside, in Psalm 50, God speaks of owning the cattle on a thousand hills.

00:49:00 – 00:49:03:	Does God own the cattle on a thousand hills?

00:49:03 – 00:49:05:	Of course.

00:49:05 – 00:49:06:	Is it only a thousand hills?

00:49:06 – 00:49:09:	Of course not, because he owns all things.

00:49:09 – 00:49:14:	The number there is used as representative of the totality.

00:49:14 – 00:49:15:	It is representing creation.

00:49:15 – 00:49:18:	It's saying God owns all things.

00:49:18 – 00:49:20:	And so he won't ask us for something.

00:49:20 – 00:49:24:	He doesn't need something from us, because he owns all things.

00:49:24 – 00:49:29:	He owns everything, because the universe and the fullness of it is his.

00:49:29 – 00:49:32:	That's why the number one thousand is used there.

00:49:32 – 00:49:34:	And the Psalms are more literal than Revelation.

00:49:35 – 00:49:39:	So the genre determines how you exegete the book.

00:49:39 – 00:49:45:	Yes, you take the words of scripture literally, but you do not take them literalistically.

00:49:45 – 00:49:49:	When you go overboard, you're just falling off the other side of the horse.

00:49:49 – 00:49:55:	If you allegorize everything and just erase any literal meaning, you fall off one side of the horse.

00:49:55 – 00:50:05:	But if you take things so literally that you actually miss what God is saying, that you miss what he is trying to tell you, you are just falling off the other side of the horse.

00:50:05 – 00:50:12:	And as we continue to say in episode after episode, you do not want to fall off either side of the horse.

00:50:12 – 00:50:16:	Just because one may be worse does not mean the other is good.

00:50:16 – 00:50:19:	You want to stay on the horse.

00:50:19 – 00:50:28:	And so the number 1000, generally speaking in scripture, particularly when dealing with prophecy, is a symbolic number.

00:50:28 – 00:50:32:	In the Old Testament with military muster, it is often also a literal number.

00:50:32 – 00:50:34:	But those are historical books.

00:50:34 – 00:50:38:	Revelation is a prophetic book.

00:50:38 – 00:50:42:	You have to pay attention to the genre when you are dealing with scripture.

00:50:42 – 00:50:46:	God has written to us in different ways, in different books.

00:50:47 – 00:50:54:	We would never treat even a human author the way that some try to treat God.

00:50:54 – 00:51:03:	There are authors, just normal human authors, who have written poetry and history books, or have written fiction and nonfiction.

00:51:03 – 00:51:09:	We do not read the different genres the same way, even from just a human author.

00:51:09 – 00:51:11:	So why would we do it to God?

00:51:11 – 00:51:18:	God certainly has a reason that he has written to us in these different ways, and we should take notice of that.

00:51:18 – 00:51:27:	That is part of what it means to actually read scripture and attempt to understand it, attempt to actually take in what God is saying to us.

00:51:27 – 00:51:35:	And so these numbers and their symbolic usage is important to keep in mind when reading through particularly prophetic passages.

00:51:35 – 00:51:38:	The same thing, of course, is true of the number 144,000.

00:51:40 – 00:51:44:	I won't go in depth on that number right now because it's not the point of the episode.

00:51:44 – 00:51:47:	Perhaps in the future we may do one on Revelation.

00:51:47 – 00:51:53:	But the number 144,000 is representative of the fullness of the church.

00:51:53 – 00:51:57:	You can say it's the church militant or the church triumphant.

00:51:58 – 00:52:03:	It sort of depends on your perspective where you're looking at it in time, as it were.

00:52:03 – 00:52:05:	But it is the fullness of all believers.

00:52:05 – 00:52:07:	Because, of course, what is it?

00:52:07 – 00:52:15:	12 times 12 times 1,000, which is the Old Testament believers, the New Testament believers, and the perfection thereof.

00:52:15 – 00:52:17:	That's why it's 144,000.

00:52:17 – 00:52:25:	And one of the ways that we can tell it is not a literal listing of the tribes of Israel is that it is in fact not a literal listing of the tribes of Israel.

00:52:26 – 00:52:29:	You can compare the Old Testament lists to this list.

00:52:29 – 00:52:31:	It's not the same list.

00:52:31 – 00:52:33:	You have different names included.

00:52:33 – 00:52:35:	And so it is not a literal list of the tribes.

00:52:35 – 00:52:38:	It is representative of the church.

00:52:38 – 00:52:40:	It is representative of believers.

00:52:40 – 00:52:49:	And you can see that in the part of the passage that immediately follows with the grand crowd that cannot be numbered.

00:52:49 – 00:52:54:	These are both views of the church, views of all believers throughout all time.

00:52:55 – 00:52:57:	It is not a literal 144,000.

00:52:57 – 00:53:01:	You don't have to be good enough that you're included in this tiny number of the saved.

00:53:01 – 00:53:06:	It is representative of the fullness of those who are elect in Christ.

00:53:08 – 00:53:14:	And as Corey was going through all that numerology, I just want to emphasize, God did that.

00:53:14 – 00:53:16:	That's not manmade.

00:53:16 – 00:53:25:	That's not man inserting our fascination with the relationships of numbers into something in order to make it our own.

00:53:25 – 00:53:26:	These are God's patterns.

00:53:26 – 00:53:28:	This is how God does stuff.

00:53:28 – 00:53:32:	So that's how we approach it.

00:53:32 – 00:53:50:	And on the point of the specific millennium, I think it's important when we're looking back over church history to recognize that, as we'll get into in a minute, as we're looking at what was said by Daniel and by John, as they received their revelations, they were confused.

00:53:51 – 00:53:57:	They saw a vision, they didn't understand it, and they were left with their head scratching.

00:53:57 – 00:54:00:	And that is how God left us.

00:54:00 – 00:54:06:	That is how God left the church in somewhat of a state of confusion about these things.

00:54:06 – 00:54:07:	It was very deliberate.

00:54:07 – 00:54:14:	He knew exactly what he was doing when he sort of rolled this hand grenade into the church and said, there you go.

00:54:16 – 00:54:21:	When I describe it that way, I don't mean to make it sound malicious, but obviously, this is fraud.

00:54:21 – 00:54:23:	This is stuff that is their sharp edges here.

00:54:23 – 00:54:25:	It's very easy to invent heresies.

00:54:25 – 00:54:29:	But at the same time, that's pretty much true of all of scripture.

00:54:29 – 00:54:32:	You can look at any corner of Christian theology.

00:54:32 – 00:54:39:	People have come along and invented false, wicked ways of misinterpreting it.

00:54:39 – 00:54:50:	The reason the thousand years, I think, is particularly interesting as we look at church history is that the view of various church fathers before and after that time did evolve.

00:54:50 – 00:54:56:	And I think that's a good illustration that tradition is no indication of theology.

00:54:56 – 00:55:05:	One of the early church fathers who began to reject the millenarian view that the thousand years was literal was Origen.

00:55:05 – 00:55:13:	He began more of a movement towards a view of these things as being allegorical, or in the case of this, as numerological.

00:55:13 – 00:55:22:	And Augustine pretty much formalized the all-millennial view, the allegorical view of those things that Corey just mentioned.

00:55:22 – 00:55:25:	There was church theology for well over a thousand years.

00:55:25 – 00:55:33:	There was virtually no descent from the all-millennial view once Augustine sort of formalized it and laid it out well.

00:55:34 – 00:55:48:	I think it's important to look at what those men believed before the thousand years, you know, AD 1000, the literal thousand year period ended, because, for example, I was born in 1977.

00:55:48 – 00:55:52:	Corey was born sometime after that, but all the Zoomers were listening.

00:55:52 – 00:55:56:	Almost all of you were born in a different millennium than either of us were.

00:55:56 – 00:55:58:	That's a real generational gap.

00:55:58 – 00:56:01:	That's a leap to be born in two different millennias.

00:56:01 – 00:56:02:	It's kind of wild to think about.

00:56:03 – 00:56:06:	It certainly makes me an old man today.

00:56:06 – 00:56:20:	And yet, what made this come to mind was I realized that had I been born 1,000 years earlier, had I been born in 977, I would have been 23 years old at the time the millennium turned over.

00:56:20 – 00:56:30:	I would have certainly, I think, believed what Augustine had established as a good termeneutic, that this is allegorical, this is not a literal thousand year.

00:56:31 – 00:56:39:	And yet, although the allegory, the symbology predominates, that doesn't mean that the actual thousand years wouldn't also be true.

00:56:39 – 00:56:45:	As Corey mentioned, Moses lived three literal 40 year periods.

00:56:45 – 00:56:49:	Each of them was a different sort of period of trial in a different way.

00:56:49 – 00:56:49:	It was literal.

00:56:49 – 00:56:51:	40, 40, 40.

00:56:51 – 00:56:52:	That was Moses' life.

00:56:53 – 00:57:01:	So, the fact that the symbology, the symbolism, and the literal could potentially be the same, shouldn't surprise anyone.

00:57:01 – 00:57:08:	So, if I had been 23 years old at the turn of the millennium, the first millennium, I would have been watching.

00:57:08 – 00:57:11:	I would have been watching to see like is anything going to happen?

00:57:12 – 00:57:13:	Is Jesus going to come back?

00:57:13 – 00:57:31:	And then as Corey said, I think probably a more natural way of viewing the end of the millennium would be to bookend it with Jesus' ascension and Pentecost, wherever you want to mark the beginning of the church age, within like that 50-day period around, you know, AD 1033.

00:57:31 – 00:57:35:	I definitely would have taken seriously the possibility that Jesus might be coming back.

00:57:35 – 00:57:55:	And yet, at the same time, as we're going to get into in a minute, when you actually look at all the specific prophecies around the end times, I would have had to admit them, as men have had to admit at every period of time, that although the speculation is pious, well, maybe it's coming up.

00:57:55 – 00:57:57:	That's an entirely pious thing to wonder.

00:57:57 – 00:57:59:	God wants us to wonder that.

00:57:59 – 00:58:01:	That's why He didn't nail it down.

00:58:01 – 00:58:04:	He wants us to keep watching, to pay attention.

00:58:04 – 00:58:22:	And yet, just as in AD 1033, and just as I can today in current year, I can state with absolute certainty, without committing any doctrinal error, Jesus is not going to come back on this specific day.

00:58:22 – 00:58:22:	Why?

00:58:22 – 00:58:27:	Because the fulfillment of the prophecies of the End Times has not yet come.

00:58:27 – 00:58:31:	There are signs which we don't understand yet, but we'll know it when we see it.

00:58:31 – 00:58:37:	There are certain things that God promised will happen that very clearly have not yet happened.

00:58:37 – 00:58:45:	And so that's an essential part of treating the eschatological promises of God seriously, is that they actually mean something.

00:58:45 – 00:58:49:	And so if they haven't happened yet, then the things that come after the promises cannot happen.

00:58:50 – 00:59:02:	And so it does not violate the promise that no one knows the day or the hour to say it's not going to be this particular day, because there's a set of stuff that God promised would happen that hasn't happened yet.

00:59:02 – 00:59:05:	That has nothing to do with having any prophetic vision or anything.

00:59:05 – 00:59:09:	It's literally just believing what God says and saying, yeah, that hasn't happened.

00:59:09 – 00:59:15:	So while a thousand years ago I would have had my eyes opened, I would have also known that, yeah, it can't be now.

00:59:15 – 00:59:18:	Like I would have wondered, but when I looked at the signs, I wouldn't see it.

00:59:19 – 00:59:23:	And that's not interpreting signs as some sort of profit or anything weird.

00:59:23 – 00:59:30:	It's just saying, I'm not sure exactly what these prophecies mean, but I know that nothing remotely like this stuff has happened.

00:59:32 – 00:59:47:	Before we get into the meat of some of those specific promises, I want to point to one of the sections in the Old Testament that is very clearly future looking, both within the Old Testament period and then also within the New Testament period.

00:59:47 – 00:59:50:	And we know this because Jesus said so.

00:59:50 – 00:59:55:	Daniel 7, Chapter 7 through 12, are all his visions.

00:59:55 – 00:59:57:	There are a number of visions that he's given.

00:59:57 – 00:59:58:	We're not going to read the visions.

00:59:58 – 01:00:05:	We'll put a bunch of different portions of prophecy in the show notes just for you to look at over time.

01:00:05 – 01:00:11:	It's going to be too much to read all in one sitting, but it'll be nice to have one place where you can just go and find them.

01:00:13 – 01:00:23:	I'm going to read a bit from Daniel 7 and a bit from Daniel 8, just to illustrate how he received the visions that he received as he received them.

01:00:23 – 01:00:26:	So he's getting this from God.

01:00:26 – 01:00:27:	How does he respond?

01:00:27 – 01:00:30:	And then what is given to him in the process?

01:00:30 – 01:00:37:	So in Daniel 7, As for me, Daniel, my spirit and my body trembled, and the visions of my head troubled me.

01:00:37 – 01:00:43:	And I drew near to one of them that stood by, and I sought to learn of him the truth of all these things.

01:00:43 – 01:00:47:	And he told me the truth, and made known to me the interpretation of these things.

01:00:47 – 01:00:56:	And later on at the end of the chapter, As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly troubled me, and my countenance was changed, but I kept the matter in my heart.

01:00:56 – 01:01:00:	So here's the prophet Daniel, receiving visions directly from God.

01:01:00 – 01:01:01:	He's standing right next to an angel.

01:01:01 – 01:01:06:	He asked to explain some of it to him, and he does, and he's still troubled.

01:01:06 – 01:01:08:	So I'm skipping what's actually said in Daniel 15.

01:01:09 – 01:01:12:	I would suggest you go read it at some point.

01:01:12 – 01:01:13:	The important part is that he was troubled.

01:01:13 – 01:01:14:	He was confused.

01:01:14 – 01:01:16:	He didn't know what was going on.

01:01:16 – 01:01:20:	So that is the Christian response.

01:01:20 – 01:01:22:	It's okay not to understand.

01:01:22 – 01:01:23:	That doesn't mean you've done something wrong.

01:01:23 – 01:01:25:	It doesn't mean you haven't been faithful.

01:01:25 – 01:01:28:	Doesn't mean you haven't been, you don't have the Holy Spirit.

01:01:28 – 01:01:32:	God has not revealed how to interpret these things.

01:01:32 – 01:01:39:	And in the next chapter in Daniel 8, there's a specific portion of the prophecy that is interpreted for him.

01:01:39 – 01:01:42:	I want to highlight a couple of details here, because I think it's interesting.

01:01:43 – 01:01:50:	And I heard the voice of a man between the ubel, and he called and said, Gabriel, cause that man to understand the vision.

01:01:50 – 01:01:52:	And he came and stood near where I stood.

01:01:52 – 01:01:56:	And when he came, I was struck with awe and fell upon my face.

01:01:56 – 01:02:01:	But he said to me, understand, son of man, for yet the vision is for an appointed time.

01:02:01 – 01:02:04:	And while he spoke with me, I fell upon my face to the earth.

01:02:04 – 01:02:06:	And he touched me and set me on my feet.

01:02:07 – 01:02:15:	And he said, behold, I make you know all things that shall come to pass in the end of the wrath, for the vision yet for an appointed time.

01:02:15 – 01:02:17:	And I, Daniel, fell asleep and was sick.

01:02:17 – 01:02:20:	Then I arose and did the king's business.

01:02:20 – 01:02:23:	And I wondered at the vision that there was none that understood.

01:02:23 – 01:02:25:	So again, the same kind of response.

01:02:25 – 01:02:28:	These things were given to him and he fell on his face and felt sick.

01:02:28 – 01:02:32:	And the angel Gabriel had to stand him up and give him courage.

01:02:32 – 01:02:37:	And what God says to him in those visions is just write this stuff down.

01:02:37 – 01:02:38:	Don't worry about it.

01:02:38 – 01:02:39:	Take courage, son of man.

01:02:39 – 01:02:42:	Write it down and it's for later.

01:02:42 – 01:03:00:	And what was given to him then, and this was during the Babylonian captivity, this was at the beginning of it, was a prophecy of there were four beasts and they symbolize, and this is revealed in the prophecy itself, it is interpreted within the prophecy, what it means.

01:03:01 – 01:03:08:	Specifically, that they would be the success of empires, of Babylon, of Medo-Persia, of Greece and then of Rome.

01:03:08 – 01:03:09:	And the first three are named.

01:03:09 – 01:03:13:	Rome is not named because it doesn't exist yet.

01:03:13 – 01:03:29:	But the correlation between the specific beasts that are represented in Daniel, are correlated to the success of kingdoms, these four world-spanning, incredibly powerful kingdoms that came in quick succession between Daniel's day and Jesus' day.

01:03:30 – 01:03:36:	So, one of the interesting things about the prophecies given to Daniel is that they span many centuries.

01:03:36 – 01:03:43:	There's a certain portion of the prophecy that Jesus points to in his own preaching that has yet to be fulfilled.

01:03:43 – 01:03:50:	And so, it's important, as Corey was saying earlier, to remember God created time, he is not bound by it.

01:03:50 – 01:03:58:	And so, a lot of times when we are looking at these sort of prophecies, as God reveals them, he's not bound by time.

01:03:58 – 01:04:00:	Particularly, when he's giving a vision.

01:04:00 – 01:04:04:	You know, we all have dreams and we remember some of them sometimes.

01:04:04 – 01:04:06:	Dreams are inherently kind of weird.

01:04:06 – 01:04:24:	They may jump around spatially, they may jump around temporally, you may remember a completely different time in your life, you may see a vision of some place you've never been, maybe you're talking to people you've never met, maybe you're talking to someone who died a long ago, and you're not having any sort of, you know, occult experience, it's just, it's a dream.

01:04:24 – 01:04:27:	It's outside of the bounds of space and time.

01:04:27 – 01:04:30:	That's how dreams work.

01:04:30 – 01:04:36:	When God gives these visions of prophecies, of promises of the end time, He's not bound.

01:04:36 – 01:04:47:	And so the prophecy given to Daniel, portions of it he saw because he was in Babylon, but much of it occurred over subsequent centuries, going into the next millennium.

01:04:47 – 01:04:48:	That's the way it works.

01:04:48 – 01:04:56:	And there are other prophecies that are given elsewhere, particularly in Revelation, some of which are very clearly in the first century AD.

01:04:56 – 01:05:06:	It's very clear that there are certain things that were revealed to John in his apocalypse are typologically of things that happened up to the destruction of the temple.

01:05:06 – 01:05:11:	And we're going to go through Matthew 24 and 25 here in a minute.

01:05:11 – 01:05:24:	The important thing is that when Jesus is describing those things, and then as John is describing them in his vision, God is not bound by tying them to specific places on the timeline, which isn't to say that they aren't fulfilled.

01:05:24 – 01:05:37:	It's just that when Jesus gives a prophecy in Matthew 24 and 25, as you read it, it's very clear that some portions were typologically fulfilled after his death and resurrection through the destruction of the temple.

01:05:37 – 01:05:43:	And it is equally clear that there are things in Matthew 24 that absolutely have not yet occurred.

01:05:43 – 01:05:45:	They could not possibly have occurred.

01:05:45 – 01:05:51:	And in fact, this is one of the heresies that's refuted in, I believe, 2 Thessalonians.

01:05:51 – 01:06:04:	And right around AD 50, there was a heresy that was going around where people were claiming that Jesus had come back and that they had missed it and that those who had died were not saved because they weren't resurrected.

01:06:04 – 01:06:11:	They misunderstood the visions and the prophecies, and they were worried that they had been left out of the resurrection of the dead.

01:06:11 – 01:06:16:	And so part of 2 Thessalonians is specifically refuting that that's nonsense.

01:06:16 – 01:06:18:	These things are not yet fulfilled.

01:06:18 – 01:06:21:	There are things that were prophesied that haven't happened yet.

01:06:21 – 01:06:32:	Now in the case of some of the prophecies that Jesus gave before His death and resurrection, and 2 Thessalonians, that was before the destruction of the temple.

01:06:32 – 01:06:37:	But yet there are still things that are clearly in Matthew that have yet to be fulfilled.

01:06:37 – 01:06:39:	They cannot possibly have been fulfilled.

01:06:39 – 01:06:49:	And so one of the parts of this that's a very short, simple part, that Christians must reject, is the idea of preterism, which basically means after.

01:06:49 – 01:06:50:	That's already over.

01:06:51 – 01:07:08:	The only way to believe that Matthew's prophecies, the prophecies of Jesus in Matthew 24 and 25, have been fulfilled, is to claim that the second coming has already occurred, that the trumpet has blown, the resurrection of the dead has occurred, in which case we're all liars.

01:07:08 – 01:07:09:	The creeds are lies.

01:07:09 – 01:07:11:	Everything we say about the Christian faith is a lie.

01:07:12 – 01:07:16:	What is true is what Corey was saying earlier, and what we've said in many episodes.

01:07:16 – 01:07:21:	The fulfillment of prophecy is frequently typological.

01:07:21 – 01:07:32:	You know, there are a couple small examples correlated from the Old Testament to the New Testament that I think illustrate the critical hermeneutic that we should have when we're looking at any prophecy.

01:07:32 – 01:07:38:	In the Old Testament, you have Moses raising the bronze serpent up on a pole.

01:07:39 – 01:07:45:	And every Israelite who looked upon that bronze serpent was saved from the poison of the adders.

01:07:45 – 01:07:53:	And the New Testament directly correlates that symbol of the raised up serpent on the pole to Christ being raised on the cross.

01:07:53 – 01:07:58:	Similarly, Jonah spent three days in the belly of a fish.

01:07:58 – 01:08:03:	The New Testament directly correlates that to Jesus spending three days in the tomb.

01:08:03 – 01:08:19:	Now, the interpretive lens that would say, well, that already happened, so it can't happen again, would necessarily cause you to say, well, Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, therefore, I can't believe that Jesus was in the tomb for three days.

01:08:19 – 01:08:21:	That can't happen because it already happened.

01:08:21 – 01:08:27:	I don't believe that Jesus was raised on the cross because the bronze serpent was raised on a pole.

01:08:27 – 01:08:29:	That already happened, it can't happen again.

01:08:29 – 01:08:31:	Obviously, that's insane.

01:08:31 – 01:08:32:	Obviously, that's blasphemous.

01:08:32 – 01:08:39:	But that's the kind of argument that's being made when you say, well, that happened at the destruction of the temple, therefore, it can't happen again.

01:08:39 – 01:08:42:	That's not how typology works.

01:08:42 – 01:08:46:	Sometimes God repeats things very clearly.

01:08:46 – 01:08:50:	One of the major premises of this episode is that there's a first coming and a second coming.

01:08:50 – 01:08:53:	The second coming is a repetition of the first.

01:08:53 – 01:08:54:	It's typological.

01:08:54 – 01:08:57:	It's made very explicit in numerous places.

01:08:57 – 01:09:00:	Jesus is going to come back the same way He went up.

01:09:00 – 01:09:01:	That's what the angels said to the apostles.

01:09:02 – 01:09:05:	It's what is said in other places in Scripture.

01:09:05 – 01:09:08:	Jesus has come back the same way He left.

01:09:08 – 01:09:09:	That's a repetition.

01:09:09 – 01:09:10:	It's not an inversion.

01:09:10 – 01:09:12:	It's there was this and there's that.

01:09:12 – 01:09:13:	It's going to happen the same way.

01:09:13 – 01:09:19:	The second coming is going to be like the first departure, but it's tied to the first arrival.

01:09:19 – 01:09:21:	Jesus will come again.

01:09:21 – 01:09:22:	It's repetition.

01:09:22 – 01:09:24:	To say it already happened is functionally.

01:09:24 – 01:09:28:	Say, well, I can't believe that Jesus will come back because He already did that once.

01:09:28 – 01:09:29:	Like, that's just, it's ludicrous.

01:09:30 – 01:09:32:	That's not how Christianity works.

01:09:32 – 01:09:34:	God likes to repeat Himself.

01:09:34 – 01:09:37:	And so we have to be comfortable with some things being repeated.

01:09:37 – 01:09:40:	And in prophecy, that's very explicitly what happens.

01:09:40 – 01:09:55:	As we get into Matthew 24 and 25 here in a minute, you'll see that there are certain things that clearly happened, and yet there are also things that it makes perfect sense that they would also happen in the End Times, the actual final end of all days.

01:09:55 – 01:10:05:	And when we look in the early church history and see what happened in the destruction of the temple, it's okay to say, yeah, look, that destruction, that wrath was poured out.

01:10:05 – 01:10:08:	The wrath is coming again in the last days.

01:10:08 – 01:10:16:	As Corey said earlier, it's very clear that the last days are going to be an outpouring of wrath as has never been seen before in history.

01:10:16 – 01:10:18:	God makes that explicitly.

01:10:18 – 01:10:23:	So for us to believe that is believing the gospel.

01:10:23 – 01:10:31:	And I think that part of the reason for us doing this episode and emphasizing this explicitly is that it's not bad news for God to come back.

01:10:31 – 01:10:32:	Not if you're Christian.

01:10:32 – 01:10:34:	It can be scary.

01:10:34 – 01:10:39:	I mean, John was having a vision in heaven and he fell on his face as though dead.

01:10:39 – 01:10:41:	He was so terrified of what he saw.

01:10:41 – 01:10:44:	Interacting with God's stuff can be scary.

01:10:44 – 01:10:45:	We are to fear the Lord.

01:10:45 – 01:10:46:	He's frightful.

01:10:46 – 01:10:48:	That doesn't mean he's bad.

01:10:48 – 01:10:53:	It just means when we actually recognize what kind of creatures we are, it's overwhelming.

01:10:54 – 01:10:59:	But the overwhelming part is oriented towards the majesty, the glory, the power of God.

01:10:59 – 01:11:09:	And the fact that that God who is that powerful, that glorious and that majestic, loves us so much that he did all this, and he promises all this, is our comfort.

01:11:09 – 01:11:17:	And so ultimately, all this is rooted in comfort because he's given us these things so that when the bad things happen, we don't lose faith.

01:11:17 – 01:11:26:	If we don't believe that these things apply to us, if we don't believe them when we see them, when bad times come, we will lose heart.

01:11:26 – 01:11:30:	The only thing that will get us through is keeping God's promises in our heart.

01:11:30 – 01:11:45:	And whether it happens in our lifetimes or a thousand years or ten thousand years, the point is that every generation of Christians needs to pass on to the next the recognition that when past generations thought that maybe that was the end of times, they weren't being foolish.

01:11:45 – 01:11:50:	They were being pious and faithful Christians who believed God's promises.

01:11:50 – 01:11:54:	And when they saw things bad and things getting worse, they said maybe this is it.

01:11:54 – 01:11:57:	If this is it, thy kingdom come.

01:11:57 – 01:11:59:	That is the ultimate Christian prayer.

01:11:59 – 01:12:01:	And we should never reject that.

01:12:01 – 01:12:14:	And believing these prophecies is a vital part of ensuring that should those days come in our lifetime or our children's lifetime, we believe it and we can receive it with what God has given us.

01:12:14 – 01:12:15:	It's going to be frightful.

01:12:15 – 01:12:23:	It's going to be terrible in the proper sense, but it's also what is necessary for us to have eternal life.

01:12:23 – 01:12:28:	All things coming to an end are how ultimate salvation is delivered.

01:12:28 – 01:12:31:	We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

01:12:31 – 01:12:34:	That's the promise of the Christian life.

01:12:34 – 01:12:39:	As Will mentioned, we will put many of these passages in the show notes.

01:12:39 – 01:12:56:	But when it comes to reading passages about the End Times, if you read through them and you find that they are simply incomprehensible to you, that all of this is confusing, you can't place it, take away two things.

01:12:56 – 01:13:04:	There are two ultimate things that every Christian can and should take away from all of the passages in scripture dealing with the End Times.

01:13:04 – 01:13:07:	The first is that God has a plan.

01:13:07 – 01:13:17:	That should basically go without saying, but God has a plan and he has revealed some of it to us, even if in a way that is somewhat mysterious and difficult to understand.

01:13:18 – 01:13:23:	And the second is that God has a plan for you, because God has a plan for the elect.

01:13:23 – 01:13:34:	And so, for those who have the gift of faith, the free gift of faith, those who are numbered among the elect, regardless of how bad things get, all of this is good news.

01:13:35 – 01:13:46:	No, it's not good news that our lives are going to get worse here in time, if we live through the End Times, but it is good news that God will use that to preserve us safe to eternal life.

01:13:47 – 01:13:55:	Those are the two points that Christians should take away, regardless of what else you're able to take away from reading those passages of scripture.

01:13:55 – 01:14:00:	At the absolute least, you can take away those two things and find comfort in them.

01:14:02 – 01:14:09:	And so again, don't necessarily dwell on those passages of scripture too much, because there are other things that are more important.

01:14:09 – 01:14:15:	That's not to say the episode is not important, or that we are dwelling on it against our own advice.

01:14:15 – 01:14:20:	We are addressing these issues, because they are important, and they can be used to mislead.

01:14:20 – 01:14:34:	And our goal is to refute some of those false teachings that have crept into the church, and to provide both a correct explanation of these things, and the comfort that is there in these passages.

01:14:34 – 01:14:38:	Because there is comfort in the prophecies of the End Times.

01:14:38 – 01:14:57:	Again, even if things will continue to get worse, it is comforting to know that God is still in control, God has a plan, and it's not just an overall plan for creation, but it is a plan that accounts for each and every one of the elect, for each and every Christian.

01:14:58 – 01:15:15:	And so, just because the times may be terrifying, which they certainly were to the men who saw these visions, it does not mean that we lose hope or that we despair, because as Christians, there is always hope, because God is in control, and everything is going according to his plan.

01:15:16 – 01:15:23:	And so, as Woe mentioned, we will now turn to Matthew 24 and 25, starting with, of course, Matthew 24.

01:15:25 – 01:15:30:	Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.

01:15:30 – 01:15:34:	But he answered them, You see all these, do you not?

01:15:34 – 01:15:40:	Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

01:15:41 – 01:15:51:	As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?

01:15:51 – 01:16:03:	And Jesus answered them, See that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray, and you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.

01:16:03 – 01:16:08:	See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.

01:16:10 – 01:16:17:	For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

01:16:17 – 01:16:20:	All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

01:16:22 – 01:16:36:	We have mentioned it before, when dealing with this particular section of scripture, but it is worth repeating here, because it is worth repeating until everyone, who claims to be Christian, recognizes this fact.

01:16:37 – 01:16:47:	Christ says here, very clearly, not one stone will be left upon another, that will not be thrown down, when speaking of the destruction of the temple.

01:16:47 – 01:16:52:	And this is the literal destruction of the temple, at the hands of the Romans.

01:16:52 – 01:17:02:	And so when you see supposed Christians going and praying at the so-called wailing wall, they are worshiping a false god, and they are calling Christ a liar.

01:17:02 – 01:17:07:	Because Christ says, not one stone will be left upon another.

01:17:07 – 01:17:10:	That does not leave any room for a wall.

01:17:11 – 01:17:22:	So anytime you see someone say the wailing wall, so called, is part of the temple, you can refute that with this passage from scripture, with these words of Christ.

01:17:22 – 01:17:27:	Because Christ said, not one stone will be left upon another.

01:17:27 – 01:17:34:	And the Romans fulfilled that as part of God's plan, as part of God's judgment on the wicked apostate Jews.

01:17:34 – 01:17:39:	The destruction of the temple was part of his judgment on that wicked nation.

01:17:39 – 01:17:49:	And it was fulfilled according to his word, which again, not one stone on another, no wall, no retaining wall, nothing.

01:17:49 – 01:17:51:	Everything was destroyed.

01:17:52 – 01:18:09:	One thing I found interesting when reading about the destruction of the temple was that when Vespasian sent Titus to go destroy, to conquer Judea, to subjugate those people, what I read was that the intention was not actually to destroy the temple.

01:18:09 – 01:18:11:	They wanted to preserve it.

01:18:11 – 01:18:17:	And the temple somehow caught on fire and was consumed by conflagration.

01:18:17 – 01:18:22:	I found that interesting because the account didn't say, well, it was supernatural or not.

01:18:22 – 01:18:33:	But if you're familiar with, subsequent to the destruction of the temple, later on, there was actually an effort to rebuild it, not that much later.

01:18:33 – 01:18:41:	And when workmen were trying to reassemble the temple, fire actually came from the ground and consumed them.

01:18:41 – 01:18:47:	There are eyewitness reports of men who were working on constructing the temple being consumed by fire.

01:18:47 – 01:18:56:	And so I think that in light of those accounts, the burning and the destruction of the temple, seemingly out of nowhere, it was God keeping that promise.

01:18:56 – 01:18:59:	Jesus promised the temple would be destroyed.

01:18:59 – 01:19:08:	And whether or not Titus or anybody else wanted to keep it intact, when the time that was appointed for its destruction came, it was leveled.

01:19:08 – 01:19:20:	Now, what's interesting is that for a period of time after Pentecost, through destruction of the temple, there were still some Christians who went to the temple.

01:19:20 – 01:19:30:	It's not clear to what extent they participated in the sacrificial system anymore, but they took offerings and they prayed, and they certainly gathered there to learn and to study.

01:19:30 – 01:19:57:	Whatever was going on in the church age, between about AD 30 or 33 and AD 70, with the complete destruction of the temple, God ensured that the prophecies that had been fulfilled in Christ, that the entire sacrificial system was fulfilled by His birth, death and resurrection, His perfect sacrifice on the cross, was the antitype to every sacrifice that had ever been given.

01:19:57 – 01:20:05:	With the destruction of the temple, anything that could possibly have represented the former faith was erased.

01:20:05 – 01:20:17:	And the only thing that was possible from that point on was an explicitly and overtly Christian faith with none of the trappings of what at that point was really becoming Judaizing.

01:20:17 – 01:20:26:	And we did the series at the beginning of this year, where we talked at length about the state of the church, about the various heresies, including the Judaizing heresy.

01:20:26 – 01:20:35:	And we talked about the fact that it was the very first emergent heresy, Judaizing and Gnosticism were attempting to devour the church in her infancy.

01:20:35 – 01:20:53:	And so the fact that God destroyed the temple, as Christ had prophesied here, this is very clearly a direct prophecy of God that was fulfilled within 40 years, was the end of anything except for the Christian faith.

01:20:53 – 01:21:00:	Any pretense that someone who would call himself a Jew could be a Christian was put to death with the destruction of the temple.

01:21:03 – 01:21:11:	By foreclosing on that period in history, the promise that God made from the cross, that it is finished, was completed.

01:21:11 – 01:21:18:	It is finished, the temple curtain was torn in two, there was an earthquake, there were signs there in that moment.

01:21:18 – 01:21:25:	But when Titus came and the temple was leveled, that left no doubt whatsoever.

01:21:25 – 01:21:28:	As Corey said, there's no such thing as a temple wall.

01:21:28 – 01:21:35:	Anyone who has gone to that wall and prayed there is apostatized by doing that as an absolutely apostate wicked act.

01:21:35 – 01:21:38:	You are denying Christ by calling him a liar.

01:21:38 – 01:21:40:	That's how serious that is.

01:21:40 – 01:21:45:	And yet, we see every single politician, all sorts of so-called church groups go over there.

01:21:45 – 01:21:48:	Probably some of you listening have done it.

01:21:48 – 01:21:49:	I'm not saying you're going to hell.

01:21:49 – 01:21:53:	I'm saying that that was an act of apostasy for which you need to repent.

01:21:53 – 01:21:56:	Everyone who's done that needs to repent for it because it was wicked.

01:21:56 – 01:21:58:	It was calling Jesus Christ a liar.

01:21:58 – 01:22:00:	And that's why these prophecies matter.

01:22:00 – 01:22:08:	It's not that misinterpreting the prophecy this way or that way is more important than the gospel.

01:22:08 – 01:22:15:	But when, as Corey said, as Jesus said, not one stone will be left upon another, you say, oh, look, I find five, six, ten, twelve stones.

01:22:15 – 01:22:17:	Look at this, I'm going to go pray.

01:22:17 – 01:22:19:	That's way more than a pinch of incense.

01:22:19 – 01:22:24:	That's calling God a liar and saying, look, the Judeo faith has been preserved.

01:22:24 – 01:22:27:	Well, that was not done until recently.

01:22:27 – 01:22:28:	That's subject for another day.

01:22:28 – 01:22:30:	We talked about it many places.

01:22:32 – 01:22:41:	The other important part of this first passage in Matthew 24 is that there are a number of things that Jesus describes here that are colloquial at this point.

01:22:41 – 01:22:43:	They're part of, I think, just the English language.

01:22:43 – 01:22:49:	Even people who don't know anything about Christianity have heard the phrase, wars and rumors of wars.

01:22:49 – 01:22:50:	And it goes on.

01:22:50 – 01:22:54:	It says, you'll hear of wars and rumors of wars, so you're not yet alarmed.

01:22:54 – 01:22:57:	For this must take place, but the end is not yet.

01:22:57 – 01:23:03:	For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

01:23:03 – 01:23:06:	All of these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

01:23:06 – 01:23:10:	When has that not been true in human history?

01:23:10 – 01:23:15:	That's probably been true continuously, virtually every year since Jesus said it.

01:23:15 – 01:23:16:	Does that mean it's not a prophecy?

01:23:16 – 01:23:17:	No.

01:23:17 – 01:23:30:	That means it's a prophecy for all of us, that whenever you hear these things, to remember Jesus prophetic words, to remember that these are the beginnings of the birth pains of the end of time, of the end of all things.

01:23:30 – 01:23:38:	And so, these bad things, this news of terrible things like earthquakes and famines and wars, it's a call to repentance.

01:23:38 – 01:23:41:	That's fundamentally what it is, and that's the purpose of the prophecy being given.

01:23:41 – 01:23:48:	When we hear the bad news, don't scoff and don't laugh and say, well, people have been saying that for 2000 years, that will never be true.

01:23:48 – 01:23:58:	Well, at that point, now you have a very serious spiritual problem because the reminder is put there so that we're just reminded to reorient towards God for a little while.

01:23:58 – 01:24:01:	Oh, I was worrying about other stuff.

01:24:01 – 01:24:04:	I'm hearing about famines and wars and rumors of wars.

01:24:04 – 01:24:06:	I need to remember that God is coming soon.

01:24:06 – 01:24:08:	I need to take that seriously.

01:24:08 – 01:24:09:	That's why it's there.

01:24:09 – 01:24:15:	The fact that you can't pinpoint it to a particular date on the map is because God operates outside of history.

01:24:15 – 01:24:17:	And so we knew that it would always be true.

01:24:17 – 01:24:22:	He permitted it to be true, probably and virtually every year.

01:24:22 – 01:24:23:	That means it's working.

01:24:23 – 01:24:25:	That doesn't mean it's not working.

01:24:26 – 01:24:29:	Continuing in Matthew 24.

01:24:29 – 01:24:35:	Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

01:24:35 – 01:24:39:	And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.

01:24:39 – 01:24:43:	And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

01:24:43 – 01:24:47:	And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

01:24:47 – 01:24:49:	But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

01:24:50 – 01:24:56:	And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

01:24:56 – 01:24:58:	And then the end will come.

01:24:59 – 01:25:17:	Similar to what Woe said about wars and rumors of wars and having always been a part of human life on this fallen earth, because of course we can see that in the first interaction with Cain and Abel, war has always been a part of human existence, unfortunately.

01:25:18 – 01:25:25:	These things also, in this paragraph here, have been part of the history of the church from the very beginning.

01:25:25 – 01:25:34:	We have seen betrayals and hatred from the world, hatred from those who are supposedly inside the church, and the love of many growing cold.

01:25:34 – 01:25:37:	We see that particularly happening today.

01:25:37 – 01:25:40:	Is that an indicator of the end times today?

01:25:40 – 01:25:42:	It could be.

01:25:42 – 01:25:49:	Or it could just be part of that continuing cycle that we see throughout history.

01:25:49 – 01:25:53:	And again, this is a reason to always be prepared.

01:25:53 – 01:26:01:	Scripture speaks frequently that those who are awake, those who are watchful, are blessed, because they are the faithful servants.

01:26:02 – 01:26:29:	Another important point in all of this, and I've said this before, but it bears repeating, whether or not the actual end times will come in three years or five years or fifty or five hundred or five thousand, however long it takes, ultimately for each one of us, that doesn't matter that much because we are all finite.

01:26:29 – 01:26:31:	We are all mortal.

01:26:31 – 01:26:40:	Each one of us is never more than some unknown period, possibly very short, away from death.

01:26:40 – 01:26:41:	My heart could stop while I'm recording.

01:26:43 – 01:26:47:	I could get into an accident later when I'm running errands after we're done recording.

01:26:47 – 01:26:56:	Any number of things could happen to me, and I could stand before the judgment seat of God, long before I thought that was going to happen.

01:26:57 – 01:27:09:	Because, most likely, given my family history, I'll probably make it into my 80s, but that's only if something does not happen to me in the intervening time, and that's in God's hands.

01:27:09 – 01:27:11:	And so we should always be prepared.

01:27:12 – 01:27:18:	You should never think, Oh, well, I'll repent of that and amend my ways and change in ten years.

01:27:18 – 01:27:21:	You know, God give me chastity, but not yet.

01:27:21 – 01:27:23:	That's a terrible prayer.

01:27:24 – 01:27:26:	You could die tomorrow.

01:27:26 – 01:27:28:	You could die in your sleep tonight.

01:27:28 – 01:27:30:	Christians must recognize that.

01:27:30 – 01:27:32:	We should always be prepared.

01:27:32 – 01:27:36:	And that's part of the point of what Christ is saying here.

01:27:36 – 01:27:38:	These are things that have always existed.

01:27:39 – 01:27:41:	And so you should always be ready.

01:27:41 – 01:27:43:	Will they intensify at the end?

01:27:43 – 01:27:44:	Yes, they will.

01:27:44 – 01:27:46:	That's part of the prophecy.

01:27:46 – 01:27:51:	But it is also a constant reminder that as a Christian, you should be watchful.

01:27:51 – 01:27:53:	You should be wakeful.

01:27:53 – 01:27:56:	You should be looking for the coming of Christ.

01:27:56 – 01:28:12:	Not in the sense of scouring scripture and news headlines, but in the sense of living as a Christian, in the sense of deepening that walk with Christ, continuing to read the scriptures, continuing to amend your life as the Spirit enables you to do so.

01:28:12 – 01:28:14:	That is the Christian life.

01:28:14 – 01:28:21:	It's not waiting until the last moment and then hoping that on your deathbed you can repent right before you flatline.

01:28:21 – 01:28:22:	That's not Christian.

01:28:22 – 01:28:27:	And odds are, if you try to play that gamble, you'll lose.

01:28:27 – 01:28:28:	Do not do that.

01:28:28 – 01:28:29:	That is not the Christian life.

01:28:29 – 01:28:34:	The Christian life is being awake and waiting for the master to return.

01:28:36 – 01:28:45:	And it's notable that here in verse 14, God puts a condition on the end of the world.

01:28:45 – 01:28:54:	He says, the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, that is, all races, and then the end will come.

01:28:54 – 01:28:57:	So that is a condition upon his own return.

01:28:57 – 01:29:03:	He will not return, as said elsewhere in Scripture, until the gospel has been taken to all races.

01:29:04 – 01:29:10:	And to what extent that has been completed, it has been a topic of discussion in the church for many centuries.

01:29:10 – 01:29:14:	Many have argued, and I agree, that this work is now complete.

01:29:14 – 01:29:20:	I think it's entirely fair to say that all nations have been reached with the gospel.

01:29:20 – 01:29:21:	That doesn't mean we stop evangelizing.

01:29:21 – 01:29:24:	That's got nothing to do with throwing up our hands.

01:29:24 – 01:29:29:	But the question of the precondition is certainly a valid one, whether or not it's been complete.

01:29:29 – 01:29:31:	You can agree, disagree.

01:29:31 – 01:29:31:	It doesn't even matter.

01:29:32 – 01:29:37:	The point is that there is something that must happen before Christ's return.

01:29:37 – 01:29:43:	So again, this goes back to what I said earlier, to say Jesus can't possibly come today because of X.

01:29:43 – 01:29:45:	Well, God himself has put conditions on that.

01:29:45 – 01:29:54:	And so if this condition has been fulfilled, then that is one stop that is no longer preventing today being the end of days.

01:29:55 – 01:30:16:	This is, incidentally, another point in the nail in the coffin of preterism because to say that the temple's destruction in AD 70 completed all of this prophecy is to say the whole world had received the gospel before that happened and then the end will come and the end, for some reason, had everything to do with the Jews.

01:30:16 – 01:30:17:	It's not even about us.

01:30:17 – 01:30:18:	It's just all about the Jews.

01:30:18 – 01:30:22:	It turns out that all the New Testament prophecy was about them too.

01:30:23 – 01:30:30:	It's a Judaizing heresy to try to rip us out of the pages of a book that God has given to us and say actually that's about the Christ killers.

01:30:30 – 01:30:33:	No, that's, it's simply not.

01:30:33 – 01:30:39:	The destruction of the temple was God's wrath being poured out upon a people who rejected him and brought a curse upon themself.

01:30:39 – 01:30:43:	And that curse has been poured out and delivered to this day.

01:30:43 – 01:30:44:	Continuing in Matthew.

01:30:46 – 01:30:53:	So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.

01:30:53 – 01:30:56:	Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

01:30:56 – 01:31:00:	Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house.

01:31:00 – 01:31:04:	And let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.

01:31:04 – 01:31:11:	And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath.

01:31:12 – 01:31:18:	For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now.

01:31:18 – 01:31:20:	No one never will be.

01:31:20 – 01:31:24:	And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.

01:31:24 – 01:31:28:	But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.

01:31:28 – 01:31:34:	Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it.

01:31:34 – 01:31:42:	For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

01:31:42 – 01:31:45:	See, I have told you beforehand.

01:31:45 – 01:31:49:	So if they say to you, Look, he is in the wilderness, do not go out.

01:31:49 – 01:31:53:	If they say, Look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it.

01:31:53 – 01:31:59:	For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

01:31:59 – 01:32:03:	Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

01:32:04 – 01:32:25:	We of course see a typological fulfillment of this, with the destruction of the temple, because those to whom Christ is here speaking, at least the bulk of the crowd at the time, some of them would have seen the destruction of the temple, perhaps, some of the very young members of the crowd, but certainly the children of some of the members of the crowd.

01:32:25 – 01:32:32:	But the ultimate fulfillment of this is of course the end days, and that is why they are cut short for the sake of the elect.

01:32:32 – 01:32:44:	The destruction of the temple and the destruction of basically the entire region by the Romans was not of such an intensity and degree that it would cause the elect to fall away.

01:32:44 – 01:32:51:	The end times will be of such an intensity, and so God will cut them short for the sake of the elect.

01:32:51 – 01:32:55:	That is a promise from God with regard to how bad things will get.

01:32:55 – 01:33:06:	That is an undeniable sign, just as undeniable as the Second Coming itself will be, because the Second Coming will not be something where you can say, well, maybe that was Christ.

01:33:06 – 01:33:11:	There will be no confusion when Christ returns.

01:33:11 – 01:33:18:	The entire world will see him come, and it will be undeniable that Christ has returned.

01:33:18 – 01:33:19:	There will be no debate about it.

01:33:19 – 01:33:22:	It will not be someone trying to convince you of it.

01:33:22 – 01:33:25:	Everyone will know when he returns.

01:33:25 – 01:33:31:	And that is why we can very easily dismiss those who say, look, here is the Christ.

01:33:31 – 01:33:34:	No, because we will all know when he returns.

01:33:34 – 01:33:43:	So if someone is trying to convince you that Christ has returned, or this person is the Christ returned, hopefully no one listening to this show would fall for that.

01:33:43 – 01:33:48:	But certainly, you know from the words of Christ here that you can simply dismiss that.

01:33:48 – 01:33:52:	It is not going to be something that is subtle or hidden.

01:33:52 – 01:33:53:	It's not a rapture.

01:33:53 – 01:33:58:	It's not a secret taking away of people from the earth.

01:33:58 – 01:34:02:	It is going to be as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west.

01:34:03 – 01:34:07:	It is going to be obvious to all of mankind simultaneously.

01:34:09 – 01:34:45:	And on a tangential note, if you want to think, hopefully productively, about typology and how it relates to God's relationship to time, think about the temple and Christ, because Christ is the true temple, of course, but Christ comes between the destruction of one temple that was rebuilt at the time, largely by Herod, and then the other destruction that came after him by the Romans.

01:34:45 – 01:34:52:	So you can see typologically, there's a link there, but which direction does that flow with regard to time?

01:34:52 – 01:35:03:	So you can think about that, meditate on that to some degree, and perhaps productively realize how God works in time with regard to prophecy.

01:35:03 – 01:35:09:	It's not always the way that we view it as human beings, because we, of course, are stuck in time, as it were.

01:35:09 – 01:35:12:	We move through time because we have physical bodies.

01:35:12 – 01:35:14:	We are part of the created universe.

01:35:15 – 01:35:20:	One of the attributes or aspects of which is time.

01:35:20 – 01:35:24:	And so, there's a distinction there with how God relates to these things.

01:35:26 – 01:35:39:	And this is one of the passages that I referred to earlier, where Daniel was in part prophesying things that would not yet be fulfilled until well after the return of Christ.

01:35:39 – 01:35:41:	And Jesus himself points back to Daniel.

01:35:42 – 01:35:48:	And what's funny, if you go towards the end of Daniel 12, he says, I heard, but I did not understand.

01:35:48 – 01:35:52:	Then I said, Oh my Lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?

01:35:52 – 01:35:58:	He said, go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.

01:35:58 – 01:36:01:	So once again, the prophet of God was confused.

01:36:01 – 01:36:03:	He didn't know what he'd written down.

01:36:03 – 01:36:06:	And God said, this is sealed away until it's proper time.

01:36:06 – 01:36:09:	And that is frequently the case when God talks about his things.

01:36:10 – 01:36:13:	Things are sealed away until their time has come.

01:36:13 – 01:36:15:	This was the case with Jesus' whole ministry.

01:36:15 – 01:36:25:	At the beginning, when people were beginning to say, you are the Christ, he strictly admonished them not to tell anyone because his time had not yet come.

01:36:25 – 01:36:31:	Because when that was publicly proclaimed, it immediately precipitated his murder on the cross by the Jews.

01:36:31 – 01:36:46:	And so that couldn't happen yet until he'd fulfilled all the prophecies, which is why despite not being ashamed of being God, he necessarily had to keep it a secret for as many people as possible until all of the other things were fulfilled.

01:36:46 – 01:36:49:	And then when the time came, he said, it is so.

01:36:51 – 01:36:58:	This passage from, you know, verse 15 through 28 is another great example, as Corey was saying, and I'll reiterate.

01:36:58 – 01:37:02:	When God speaks of these things, it's across time.

01:37:02 – 01:37:06:	You can slot part of this maybe into being about the destruction of the temple.

01:37:06 – 01:37:08:	I don't think that's any stretch.

01:37:08 – 01:37:15:	But it can't possibly all be about having been fulfilled by AD 70, because has the son of man returned?

01:37:15 – 01:37:16:	No.

01:37:16 – 01:37:17:	That's blasphemy.

01:37:17 – 01:37:21:	It's blasphemy that's dismissed elsewhere in scripture.

01:37:21 – 01:37:23:	You cannot say that Jesus has already come back.

01:37:23 – 01:37:25:	That has yet to happen.

01:37:25 – 01:37:30:	And again, it hasn't happened because all the nations certainly at this point hadn't been reached.

01:37:30 – 01:37:39:	If they've been reached now, that's one thing checked off, but there are other stops that are in the way of being able to say, well, Jesus could come at any time.

01:37:39 – 01:37:42:	And many of those prophecies are yet to be fulfilled.

01:37:43 – 01:37:49:	Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.

01:37:49 – 01:37:54:	And the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

01:37:54 – 01:37:57:	Then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of man.

01:37:57 – 01:38:04:	And then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

01:38:04 – 01:38:12:	And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

01:38:13 – 01:38:22:	Again, we can very obviously see this is not going to be something that is subtle, or something that anyone on the earth will miss.

01:38:22 – 01:38:26:	The second coming is going to be the most obvious thing in all of history.

01:38:27 – 01:38:32:	Everyone will know when it happens, there will be zero doubt.

01:38:32 – 01:38:34:	From the fig tree learn its lesson.

01:38:34 – 01:38:39:	As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.

01:38:39 – 01:38:45:	So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates.

01:38:45 – 01:38:50:	Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

01:38:50 – 01:38:54:	Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

01:38:56 – 01:39:05:	So I think the crucial part here is where Jesus says, truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

01:39:05 – 01:39:10:	Now, there's been debate for 2,000 years over what this generation means.

01:39:10 – 01:39:22:	One possible interpretation would be that it means those who were living, and therefore that would support the premise that all this had to be fulfilled by the destruction of the temple.

01:39:22 – 01:39:27:	And that would be a possible reading, if not for the fact that he's describing the end of days.

01:39:27 – 01:39:32:	The trumpet blast, the gathering of the elect, that's all revelation stuff.

01:39:32 – 01:39:33:	That is the end of all things.

01:39:33 – 01:39:34:	That's judgment day.

01:39:34 – 01:39:36:	It is the second coming.

01:39:36 – 01:39:42:	So the only way that this generation would must admit is ambiguous.

01:39:42 – 01:39:45:	It could potentially refer to a number of different things.

01:39:45 – 01:39:59:	When we have the concrete examples of all the things that must take place before the generation will pass away, you cannot possibly conclude that it is speaking of those who are living in the first century.

01:39:59 – 01:40:06:	It's an absolute impossibility to believe the text and to believe that that is what's going on.

01:40:06 – 01:40:12:	And so again, this is one of the most basic places where the clear interprets the unclear.

01:40:12 – 01:40:20:	If you have an ambiguous statement of this generation, the most natural, obvious and in isolation explanation would be those who are living.

01:40:20 – 01:40:21:	Absolutely agree with that.

01:40:21 – 01:40:23:	That's the most simple reading of it.

01:40:23 – 01:40:27:	But then when you look at all the tests, have all the nations heard the gospel?

01:40:27 – 01:40:28:	Has the son of man come back?

01:40:28 – 01:40:30:	Have the trumpets blown?

01:40:30 – 01:40:34:	Has the lightning been seen from the east to the west by every living man?

01:40:34 – 01:40:35:	No.

01:40:35 – 01:40:37:	None of those things have happened.

01:40:37 – 01:40:42:	And therefore, this generation absolutely cannot refer to those who are living.

01:40:42 – 01:40:43:	So it's a very simple thing.

01:40:43 – 01:40:45:	You don't have to speculate.

01:40:45 – 01:40:46:	And this is not a matter of opinion.

01:40:47 – 01:40:56:	The things which are absolutely impossible disqualify a possible hypothetical interpretation of an ambiguous verse.

01:40:56 – 01:40:58:	So Jesus wasn't screwing around.

01:40:58 – 01:41:00:	He didn't say anything wrong.

01:41:00 – 01:41:09:	But when he said this generation, I think that the interpretation that many of the church fathers have held, that I think is consistent, is that this is talking about the church age.

01:41:09 – 01:41:24:	Because again, when you look at this stretch of things, some of them, you know, from the moment the Olivet Discourse began here, at the beginning of Chapter 24, when they were asking him, you know, about his kingdom, he said, here's the stuff that's going to happen first.

01:41:24 – 01:41:26:	The temple is going to be destroyed.

01:41:26 – 01:41:28:	People are going to flee Judea.

01:41:28 – 01:41:29:	It's going to be really bad.

01:41:29 – 01:41:31:	The days will be cut short.

01:41:31 – 01:41:32:	Everyone is going to see.

01:41:32 – 01:41:34:	Everyone's going to hear the trumpet blast.

01:41:34 – 01:41:36:	And it's going to be the end of all things.

01:41:36 – 01:41:43:	That's an all-encompassing church age prophecy from the day that it was given until today.

01:41:43 – 01:41:44:	And it has yet to be fulfilled.

01:41:45 – 01:41:47:	Because we haven't heard the trumpet blast either.

01:41:47 – 01:41:50:	So, portions of this have yet to happen.

01:41:50 – 01:41:53:	Therefore, this generation shall not pass away.

01:41:53 – 01:41:57:	I think the only reasonable reading that's left for us is that it's referring to the church age.

01:41:57 – 01:41:59:	It's referring to us.

01:41:59 – 01:42:03:	Not as a living generation, but as part of the church more broadly.

01:42:03 – 01:42:07:	The bride of Christ has yet to be reunited with the bridegroom.

01:42:07 – 01:42:10:	When the trumpet blast, that will happen.

01:42:10 – 01:42:12:	And until then, these things are not completely fulfilled.

01:42:14 – 01:42:16:	But concerning that day and hour, no one knows.

01:42:16 – 01:42:20:	Not even the angels of heaven nor the son, but the father only.

01:42:20 – 01:42:24:	For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the son of man.

01:42:24 – 01:42:32:	For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.

01:42:32 – 01:42:36:	And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.

01:42:36 – 01:42:38:	So will be the coming of the son of man.

01:42:38 – 01:42:40:	Then two men will be in the field.

01:42:41 – 01:42:43:	One will be taken, and one left.

01:42:43 – 01:42:45:	Two women will be grinding at the mill.

01:42:45 – 01:42:47:	One will be taken, and one left.

01:42:47 – 01:42:52:	Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

01:42:52 – 01:43:02:	But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake, and would not have let his house be broken into.

01:43:02 – 01:43:07:	Therefore you also must be ready, for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

01:43:08 – 01:43:16:	Who, then, is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?

01:43:16 – 01:43:20:	Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.

01:43:20 – 01:43:24:	Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.

01:43:24 – 01:43:42:	But if that wicked servant says to himself, My master is delayed, and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and in an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and put him with the hypocrites.

01:43:42 – 01:43:46:	In that place, they will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

01:43:49 – 01:43:57:	Here we see very clearly from scripture what Christians are to do and what Christians are not to do.

01:43:57 – 01:44:01:	It's the same thing that we already said earlier in the episode.

01:44:01 – 01:44:10:	As Christians, we are to stay awake, we are to be watchful, we are to wait for the return of the master of the house, which of course is Christ.

01:44:10 – 01:44:14:	We are to wait for his second coming.

01:44:14 – 01:44:22:	That doesn't mean again that we are to scour the news headlines and try to correlate everything with a verse of scripture.

01:44:22 – 01:44:38:	Rather, it means that we live the Christian life in anticipation and expectation of Christ's return, whether it happens in our lifetime or we die and see him at the judgment, which the judgment is not bad news for Christians.

01:44:38 – 01:44:40:	Do bear that in mind.

01:44:40 – 01:44:43:	The judgment is terrible news if you are not a Christian, of course.

01:44:43 – 01:44:49:	That's where we see the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, which is, of course, a description of hell.

01:44:49 – 01:45:02:	But we are to stay awake and wait for Christ by living a Christian life, not by growing derelict in our duties and thinking, well, Christ hasn't come back yet, so it must be a long time in the future.

01:45:02 – 01:45:06:	Or I'll just do whatever I want for a couple of decades, and then I'll repent.

01:45:06 – 01:45:07:	That's not the Christian life.

01:45:07 – 01:45:09:	That's apostasy.

01:45:09 – 01:45:15:	And you have no guarantee that at the end of that period of apostasy, you'll come back to the faith.

01:45:15 – 01:45:18:	You have no guarantee you'll live through that period.

01:45:18 – 01:45:25:	Again, you have no guarantee of tomorrow, let alone 10, 20, 30 years in the future.

01:45:25 – 01:45:29:	Everything is according to God's will and God's good grace.

01:45:30 – 01:45:33:	Whatever God gives you, He gives you as a gift.

01:45:33 – 01:45:38:	And you are to use it in a Christian fashion while living a Christian life.

01:45:38 – 01:45:47:	Not to live a dissolute life and wait until the very end and hope that you can repent on your deathbed, because again, that is not a Christian life.

01:45:47 – 01:45:49:	That is a wicked thing.

01:45:49 – 01:45:53:	And do remember, there are rewards for living as a Christian.

01:45:53 – 01:45:56:	There are rewards for your works in this life.

01:45:56 – 01:45:57:	They do not save you.

01:45:57 – 01:45:58:	They do not justify.

01:45:59 – 01:46:02:	But God promises rewards in the next life.

01:46:02 – 01:46:11:	So if you live a dissolute life for 30, 40, 50 years, maybe you manage to do that for 80 years and repent on your deathbed.

01:46:11 – 01:46:15:	If you actually repent, you will indeed be saved.

01:46:15 – 01:46:24:	However, those 80 years that you could have been living as a Christian and doing good works and accruing treasure in heaven, you wasted them.

01:46:24 – 01:46:25:	You wasted your life.

01:46:27 – 01:46:34:	It is better to live as a Christian than to live as a wicked member of this generation.

01:46:34 – 01:46:43:	It may look like they're living it up, like they're having a grand time, but ultimately everything that they have done is dust and ash.

01:46:43 – 01:46:45:	All of it will be burned away.

01:46:45 – 01:46:50:	And if they do not repent by the end, they will burn with it.

01:46:50 – 01:46:58:	Whereas if you live the Christian life, you will be accruing rewards in heaven and also have eternity to enjoy them.

01:46:58 – 01:47:10:	For the sake of time, we're not going to read through all of chapter 25, but just to give you an overview, and I want to assign this as reading homework for you, go read Matthew chapter 25.

01:47:10 – 01:47:18:	What you'll find is just as there was one parable talking about being awake and being prepared, there are two more parables.

01:47:18 – 01:47:22:	There's a parable of the 10 virgins, and then there's the parable of the talents.

01:47:22 – 01:47:30:	And both of them are about vigilance, watchfulness, and obedience in this life, in anticipation of the master's return.

01:47:30 – 01:47:34:	And the message of both of them is the message of this episode.

01:47:34 – 01:47:38:	God says, believe this stuff and keep watch.

01:47:38 – 01:47:39:	And that's it.

01:47:39 – 01:47:40:	And so that's all we're saying.

01:47:40 – 01:47:47:	Our exhortation is nothing more or less than Christ's own words to believe this promise and to keep watch.

01:47:47 – 01:48:04:	And then the last two paragraphs of Matthew 25 are Christ describing in eschatological terms him sitting on the judgment throne, separating the sheep from the goats, entering us into paradise, and entering the damned into eternal torment physically.

01:48:04 – 01:48:08:	That's the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

01:48:08 – 01:48:28:	And then, just to give you an idea where this was positioned in Christ's ministry, the very next thing, the very beginning of chapter 26, he says, when Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, you know that after two days, the Passover is coming and the son of man will be delivered up to be crucified.

01:48:28 – 01:48:32:	So this is the very last thing that he said in his earthly ministry effectively.

01:48:32 – 01:48:34:	And he didn't give it to a huge crowd of people.

01:48:34 – 01:48:37:	This was to the disciples that he gave this teaching.

01:48:37 – 01:48:41:	It was passed on to us because it applies to us.

01:48:41 – 01:48:48:	It wasn't just about them going out and warning the Jews of the next 40 years, watch out, because the temple is going to be destroyed.

01:48:48 – 01:49:05:	It was for all believers in all times and all places since then to keep watch, believe God's promises, treat His prophecies with respect, even understanding them as Daniel understood them, which wasn't to say not at all, as I've heard, but I do not understand.

01:49:05 – 01:49:09:	And then Daniel said, Oh my Lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?

01:49:09 – 01:49:13:	And God said, go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.

01:49:14 – 01:49:22:	So, we can't go beyond that, because there's nothing revealed beyond what scripture has left, in some cases ambiguous.

01:49:22 – 01:49:25:	But when these things are fulfilled, we will know.

01:49:25 – 01:49:30:	And that's the tenor of all three of the parables in Matthew 24 and 25.

01:49:30 – 01:49:35:	When you keep watch, when you see the bridegroom coming, when you see the master returning, you're going to know it.

01:49:35 – 01:49:41:	You're going to see the signs and you're going to believe it, because you have treasured these promises in your heart.

01:49:41 – 01:49:53:	Just as Mary treasured the promises that God had given in scripture before the angel came to her, when the angel came and said, you are going to bear the Christ, she didn't say, I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

01:49:53 – 01:49:55:	She knew exactly what the prophecies were.

01:49:55 – 01:50:03:	The only thing that Mary was confused about is how could she fulfill the prophecy of bearing the son of God when she was a virgin?

01:50:03 – 01:50:05:	She understood that that didn't add up.

01:50:05 – 01:50:08:	She didn't know what she had to do to obey God.

01:50:08 – 01:50:09:	And so the angel told her, I'm going to take care of that.

01:50:09 – 01:50:10:	God's going to take care of that.

01:50:11 – 01:50:24:	So, for us to receive God's prophecy in a review mirror, as is presented in scripture, doesn't mean we're going to understand it any better than Daniel did, or any better than John did in his Apocalypse.

01:50:24 – 01:50:26:	But it means that it's just sitting there for us.

01:50:26 – 01:50:27:	These are real things.

01:50:27 – 01:50:34:	Even if we don't understand them, when they're manifest, when they are fulfilled, we will know it when we see it.

01:50:34 – 01:50:39:	And the only way to know it when we see it is to believe it and to keep watch.

01:50:41 – 01:50:50:	So, obviously, in Scripture, the most relevant book discussing future prophecies is Revelation, the Apocalypse of John.

01:50:50 – 01:50:54:	And we're not even going to get into any of those details because it's a vision.

01:50:54 – 01:50:57:	It's a terrifying, inscrutable vision.

01:50:57 – 01:50:59:	There are things, some of which seem to be repeated.

01:50:59 – 01:51:02:	It's obviously very symbolic language.

01:51:02 – 01:51:11:	There are things that are presented visually that would have had to make sense to people in all times and in all places.

01:51:11 – 01:51:37:	You know, one of the examples that we gave last year when we did the episode on 6,000 years and counting, I mentioned that the description of God hovering over the face of the waters was descriptive, but when scientists recently have simulated what the pre-Big Bang state of the universe would have looked like, they expected to find a gas or something.

01:51:37 – 01:51:49:	And when they plugged all of their best knowledge, their best hypotheses into a simulation, what they actually simulated was something that was a perfect liquid called quark-gluon plasma.

01:51:49 – 01:51:51:	Now, I even know what a gluon is.

01:51:51 – 01:51:58:	And so, if God had talked about quark-gluon plasma in Genesis, it would have done no one any good whatsoever.

01:51:58 – 01:52:00:	So, what he said, he said, over the face of the waters.

01:52:02 – 01:52:09:	The visions that are given in Daniel and that are given in Revelation are in terms that anyone can understand at any time.

01:52:09 – 01:52:13:	Because if you start using weird words, it's not going to mean anything to anyone.

01:52:13 – 01:52:21:	For example, as I mentioned earlier, there were the four beasts in Daniel, and three of them were named, and Rome was not named because it didn't exist yet.

01:52:21 – 01:52:23:	And so, God didn't give a name to a thing.

01:52:23 – 01:52:29:	He just said, this is going to come, and it's going to be the last and greatest of these beasts that's going to conquer everything.

01:52:29 – 01:52:30:	That was Rome.

01:52:30 – 01:52:33:	It was very clearly fulfilled by Jesus' day.

01:52:34 – 01:52:42:	So, we're not going to get into any of the details of Revelation itself, but it is crucial to put it in its proper historical context.

01:52:42 – 01:52:50:	So, I'm just going to give a few facts here to establish the credentials of the apocalypse of John.

01:52:50 – 01:52:52:	Two things, two points that are crucial.

01:52:52 – 01:52:56:	One, this was written by John the Apostle.

01:52:56 – 01:52:59:	Two, this was written in about AD 95 or AD 96.

01:53:00 – 01:53:04:	It was written decades after the destruction of the temple.

01:53:04 – 01:53:06:	This is important for two reasons.

01:53:06 – 01:53:10:	One, John wrote it, it is a prophetic book.

01:53:10 – 01:53:12:	It is actual inspired scripture.

01:53:12 – 01:53:16:	It's at the end in part because nobody understands it.

01:53:16 – 01:53:18:	So, it's long been the view of the church.

01:53:18 – 01:53:21:	It's a view that is, I think, an absolutely necessary one.

01:53:21 – 01:53:27:	We can't go around deriving theology from Revelation in isolation.

01:53:27 – 01:53:37:	You can't make a conclusion from Revelation that isn't supported elsewhere simply because it's too weird to be making any conclusive statements.

01:53:37 – 01:53:39:	And yet, at the same time, it is scripture.

01:53:39 – 01:53:41:	It is inspired by God.

01:53:41 – 01:53:57:	I've seen in other times some analyses of the various intermingling of different parts of scripture represented in Revelation, and it is astonishing how much scripture is pulled in by allusion, by quotation.

01:53:57 – 01:54:07:	So many different parts of the entire corpus of the Bible are incorporated into Revelation, that it can only possibly have a supernatural origin.

01:54:07 – 01:54:13:	No man could possibly know scripture well enough to have made up Revelation.

01:54:13 – 01:54:16:	So, if it's supernatural, it's one of two things.

01:54:16 – 01:54:21:	Either God wrote it and it's inspired, or the devil wrote it to deceive us.

01:54:21 – 01:54:22:	No man could have done this.

01:54:23 – 01:54:29:	And when we look at it, there's nothing in it that's inconsistent with anything else we know about Christian doctrine or anything.

01:54:29 – 01:54:33:	Parts of it are confusing, just as Daniel is confused.

01:54:33 – 01:54:37:	And he says so in his own epistle, in the book of Daniel.

01:54:37 – 01:54:38:	He's like, I don't know what's going on.

01:54:38 – 01:54:40:	He falls on his face in terror.

01:54:40 – 01:54:45:	Okay, that's a natural place for a man reading this to be.

01:54:45 – 01:54:49:	A few facts for you just to establish the claims I made about the authorship and the timing.

01:54:51 – 01:55:00:	The most well-known and historically significant student of the Apostle John was Polycarp of Smyrna, who was born in about AD 69 and lived to about 155.

01:55:00 – 01:55:03:	He was the bishop of Smyrna, which is a modern-day Turkey.

01:55:03 – 01:55:07:	He was considered one of the most important apostolic fathers.

01:55:07 – 01:55:13:	According to early church tradition, particularly the writings of Irenaeus, he was a direct disciple of the Apostle John.

01:55:13 – 01:55:20:	And Irenaeus, who was himself a student of Polycarp, emphasizes this connection in his writings against the heresies.

01:55:20 – 01:55:36:	Also, Justin Martyr, who was born about 100 and lived to about 165 in his Dialogue with Trifo, which was written at the end of his life, mentions, quote, A certain man with us whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him.

01:55:36 – 01:55:41:	So this is directly connecting the Apostle John to the apocalypse of John.

01:55:43 – 01:55:47:	Irenaeus of Lyon, he was born 130 and lived to 202.

01:55:48 – 01:55:57:	And his work against heresies, written at about 180 AD, Irenaeus quotes extensively from Revelation, attributes it to John the Apostle.

01:55:57 – 01:56:18:	He writes, we will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist, for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in this present time, it would have been announced by him who beheld the apocalyptic vision, for that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day towards the end of Domitian's reign.

01:56:18 – 01:56:31:	Now, Emperor Domitian reigned from AD 81 through 96, which means that there's absolutely no possibility that John's revelation could have been written prior to 81.

01:56:31 – 01:56:40:	And because it was written when he was on the Isle of Patmos, it had to be near the end of his ministry, it had to be roughly AD 95 or 96.

01:56:41 – 01:56:48:	So, we're establishing John wrote it, the Apostle John, and it was done in a certain period of time.

01:56:48 – 01:56:59:	Now, when you're quoting men who were not inspired, this is where Protestants in particular get into all sorts of trouble, because like, oh, well, that's tradition.

01:56:59 – 01:57:00:	That could mean anything.

01:57:00 – 01:57:15:	Well, it is tradition in the sense that it's history, in the sense that the earliest witness, which is not some metaphorical, it's not some literary term, it's literally dudes who were there, who saw, who talked to guys who saw.

01:57:15 – 01:57:17:	My grandpa was born in 1897 or 98.

01:57:17 – 01:57:20:	He sat on Geronimo's lap when he was a little kid.

01:57:20 – 01:57:22:	He was a witness to Geronimo.

01:57:22 – 01:57:25:	So I am one step removed from Geronimo.

01:57:25 – 01:57:30:	That's a living link to something in history that to me is ancient history.

01:57:30 – 01:57:40:	So it's possible for really wild leaps of generation seemingly to occur just by connection of one man to another man over the span of time.

01:57:40 – 01:57:42:	A couple more facts that are important.

01:57:42 – 01:57:45:	Melito of Sardis, who died about AD 180.

01:57:45 – 01:57:52:	According to Eusebius, Melito wrote a work on the Apocalypse of John, though that work is now lost.

01:57:52 – 01:57:57:	And this indicates to us that Revelation was known and studied in Asia Minor by the mid-second century.

01:57:57 – 01:58:07:	So it wasn't simply that John wrote it, but it was also something that was under significant examination in circulation by other early church fathers.

01:58:07 – 01:58:16:	Regardless we think of their theology, the simple fact is that this was not some weird Gnostic thing that was just kind of in the periphery.

01:58:16 – 01:58:22:	This was central to the early development of the Christian faith, which we hold to this day.

01:58:22 – 01:58:29:	Clement of Alexandria, who died in 215 AD, refers to Revelation in his writings and accept them as scripture.

01:58:29 – 01:58:39:	And while not directly dating Revelation, he mentions John's return from exile in Patmos after the death of quote, the tyrant, which is generally understood to refer to demission.

01:58:39 – 01:58:47:	And Tertullian, who died in 240 AD, in his works in the early third century, frequently quotes from Revelation, he treats it as scripture.

01:58:47 – 01:58:55:	And then Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived until 340 AD, which incidentally is after the first council in Nicaea.

01:58:55 – 01:59:04:	In his book on church history, he reiterates Irenaeus' account placing John's exile and the writings of Revelation during Domitian's reign.

01:59:04 – 01:59:12:	So there is almost universal consensus from those earliest in church history that these facts are true.

01:59:12 – 01:59:18:	That John the Apostle wrote it, that he wrote it decades after the destruction of the temple.

01:59:18 – 01:59:27:	And that's important again, because when we look at the Judaizing heresies of today, they want to say, no, Revelation can only possibly have been written about AD 68.

01:59:28 – 01:59:43:	And that somehow this epistle, I guess, was in circulation for, you know, a dozen or so months before the destruction of the temple, as somehow a warning to the Jews specifically, and not to believers, but to the Jews, hey, your temple is going to be destroyed by God.

01:59:43 – 01:59:46:	Well, history doesn't back that up.

01:59:46 – 01:59:49:	The earliest witnesses don't back that up.

01:59:49 – 01:59:53:	And it's also theologically, not only unnecessary, but bankrupt.

01:59:53 – 02:00:07:	What is important is that when you look at the descriptions of the prophecies in Revelation, and it's worth reading, it's worth reading through the whole thing, even just in wonder and confusion, like wow, this is wild stuff.

02:00:07 – 02:00:13:	There are very clearly parts of it that would seem to refer to the destruction of the temple.

02:00:13 – 02:00:35:	And while the Judaizers use that as evidence, so called, that somehow Revelation had to come before the destruction of the temple, I think that when you look at how we've described Daniel's Revelation, Daniel's vision, and the prophecies that Jesus gave in Matthew 24, they span vast time periods.

02:00:35 – 02:00:40:	They go beyond what we would normally consider a boundary.

02:00:40 – 02:00:48:	And so, for Revelation, written in 80, 95 or 96, to refer back to the destruction of the temple, makes perfect sense.

02:00:48 – 02:00:51:	In the sense that it was a vision of all these things happening.

02:00:51 – 02:00:55:	And those were happenings, they were profound happenings.

02:00:55 – 02:01:16:	And so, for the vision that God gave to His prophet and His Apostle John to include one of the most important moments and markers in the passage of time in church history, the destruction of the temple, the absolute closure on the Jewish period, of course, that would be in there.

02:01:16 – 02:01:17:	That makes perfect sense.

02:01:17 – 02:01:20:	That doesn't do anything to time when it was written.

02:01:20 – 02:01:29:	And frankly, as soon as you start saying, well, I think this had to occur before the temple, otherwise, you know, maybe it was inspired by those events, well, then you're denying the inspiration of scripture.

02:01:30 – 02:01:33:	You're saying that a man wrote this, God didn't write it.

02:01:33 – 02:01:42:	That somehow, you know, John just incorporated things that he remembered from decades prior, and he, what, he made up his visions.

02:01:42 – 02:01:44:	Then we have a much bigger problem.

02:01:44 – 02:01:48:	Because I said, like, if you seriously delve into it, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

02:01:48 – 02:01:56:	But if you want to look into some of the in-depth analyses of how much of Revelation is tied to all of scripture, it's bonkers.

02:01:56 – 02:02:01:	It's insane how much of it incorporates the entire text of scripture.

02:02:01 – 02:02:04:	I do not believe that a man could have written that.

02:02:04 – 02:02:14:	No, that's, maybe you can imagine some man who just knew scripture so well, he knew it, you know, as well as God, and incidentally, as well as Satan, to do something like that.

02:02:14 – 02:02:17:	To me, it's more believable that only a supernatural source could have written it.

02:02:17 – 02:02:28:	And so it doesn't concern me in the slightest that the destruction of the temple is represented certainly, in part, in the visions, because the visions span thousands of years.

02:02:28 – 02:02:34:	Getting back to the millennium thing earlier, that's where the millennium specifically comes up repeatedly.

02:02:34 – 02:02:35:	It's a symbolic period.

02:02:35 – 02:02:46:	It's obviously a very long period of time, because the things that Jesus mentions in Matthew 24, the things, some of which John reiterates, clearly some happened, clearly some haven't happened yet.

02:02:47 – 02:02:51:	We're now well past 2,000 years since Jesus' birth.

02:02:51 – 02:02:58:	And so the fact that some of those things would have happened and some haven't happened yet, doesn't mean it's not prophecy.

02:02:58 – 02:03:01:	It means that God's time scales are not our own.

02:03:01 – 02:03:05:	A day is like a thousand years to Him, and a thousand years are like a day.

02:03:05 – 02:03:08:	When God told us that, He was saying, you know, don't worry about it.

02:03:08 – 02:03:13:	You're not necessarily going to make sense of it any more than Daniel could or John could.

02:03:13 – 02:03:15:	When they saw these things, they were confused.

02:03:15 – 02:03:17:	We're going to have the same response.

02:03:17 – 02:03:19:	The important thing is not to dismiss them.

02:03:19 – 02:03:25:	And so it's worth reading through Revelation, as Corey said, not to make it your whole personality.

02:03:25 – 02:03:30:	It's not where you should spend most of your time, but it's worth reading through once or twice.

02:03:30 – 02:03:41:	And if you want to delve into some of the other ties, that's certainly useful because it's going to make other parts of scripture richer, but it's a vision without a prophet to interpret it for us.

02:03:41 – 02:03:43:	John had no one to interpret it for him.

02:03:43 – 02:03:44:	He didn't know what was going on.

02:03:44 – 02:03:48:	He was as confused as we are, and he was God's apostle.

02:03:48 – 02:04:03:	So we don't need to feel bad about not understanding it, but we are commanded by God to keep watch, to take these promises seriously, and to be prepared so that if in our days these things happen, we'll know it when we see it.

02:04:03 – 02:04:19:	When it comes to the book of Revelation, if you are so inclined and you really want to read these materials, hopefully you've read other parts of scripture first, because that is the best and strongest recommendation any true teacher is going to give you.

02:04:19 – 02:04:24:	Before you read Revelation or some of the other prophecies, read the other parts of scripture.

02:04:24 – 02:04:27:	You need that foundation as a Christian.

02:04:27 – 02:04:37:	You need the background to help place some of these things into their proper points in what it means to be a Christian in Christian theology.

02:04:37 – 02:04:42:	However, you can certainly profitably read chapters 2 and 3.

02:04:43 – 02:04:49:	You can read chapter 1, of course, as well, which is basically the introduction to the Book of Revelation.

02:04:49 – 02:04:53:	But chapters 2 and 3 are the letters to the churches.

02:04:54 – 02:05:13:	These are actually a good example of the typological or cyclical fulfillment, as it were, because, yes, these are written to actual historical churches, because the Church of Ephesus in Smyrna and Pergamum, and Thyatira and Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, these churches existed.

02:05:13 – 02:05:20:	However, the past tense there matters, because these are now places that are located in Turkey.

02:05:20 – 02:05:22:	This is no longer Anatolia.

02:05:22 – 02:05:24:	Of course, just Greek, Anatolii the East.

02:05:24 – 02:05:31:	This was the eastern region of what was, at various times, parts of different empires.

02:05:31 – 02:05:37:	But from the point of view of the Greeks, it was the east, and that's why it was called Anatolia.

02:05:37 – 02:05:38:	That's where these churches were.

02:05:38 – 02:05:42:	These were Greek churches at the time.

02:05:42 – 02:05:47:	Some Celtic populations in the area as well, but that's a discussion for another day.

02:05:47 – 02:05:50:	These letters are written not just to these churches.

02:05:50 – 02:05:53:	They are written to every Christian.

02:05:53 – 02:06:10:	They are written to every church today, because the things that are addressed in these letters, whether it is praise or condemnation, are things that we see in modern churches, things that we see in historical churches, things we will see in every single church until the end of time, until Christ returns.

02:06:10 – 02:06:22:	It doesn't mean that every church has every good thing mentioned in the letters or every bad thing mentioned in the letters, because in some way these are, again, typological.

02:06:22 – 02:06:27:	You may have one church that's like the church in Ephesus or another that's like the church in Thyatira.

02:06:29 – 02:06:41:	These can be read profitably because they are still as applicable to us today as they were to the churches to which they were originally written in 8095, say.

02:06:41 – 02:06:46:	That happens to be the year that the Lutheran Study Bible gives for the composition of Revelation.

02:06:46 – 02:06:48:	I see no reason to disagree with it.

02:06:48 – 02:06:51:	It is one thing that I like about the Lutheran Study Bible.

02:06:51 – 02:06:58:	It just bluntly states the historical belief concerning the author and the date, and that's it, which is what Christians should do.

02:06:58 – 02:07:03:	We don't need to engage in the higher criticism of trying to find some way to squabble over dates and authorship.

02:07:04 – 02:07:07:	That's not a Christian way to approach these matters, really.

02:07:07 – 02:07:10:	That's needless academic squabbling.

02:07:10 – 02:07:24:	But to return to the letters in Revelation, these are good for Christians to read, because they tell us the things for which Christ praises churches and the things for which he condemns them.

02:07:24 – 02:07:30:	And it is also vitally important to recognize the threat that is present in these letters to the churches.

02:07:31 – 02:07:34:	The threat is the removal of the lamp stand.

02:07:34 – 02:07:42:	The threat is to take away the position, the place of that church within the larger church, Upper KC.

02:07:42 – 02:07:47:	It is possible for a church body to apostatize.

02:07:47 – 02:07:50:	That is certainly a relevant warning for us today.

02:07:50 – 02:07:57:	And so chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation can be read very profitably by any Christian.

02:07:57 – 02:08:06:	The rest of the book, of course, gets into visions and things that are more difficult to interpret, but just reading those letters to the churches.

02:08:06 – 02:08:07:	It is straightforward.

02:08:07 – 02:08:09:	We see the things that Christ praises.

02:08:09 – 02:08:11:	We see the things that he condemns.

02:08:11 – 02:08:15:	And that is profitable for any Christian to read.

02:08:16 – 02:08:24:	And so we will close out this episode with a reading from scripture, this one from 2 Peter, chapter 3.

02:08:26 – 02:08:29:	This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved.

02:08:29 – 02:08:41:	In both of them, I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

02:08:41 – 02:08:50:	Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires, they will say, Where is the promise of his coming?

02:08:51 – 02:08:58:	For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.

02:08:58 – 02:09:12:	For they deliberately overlooked this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

02:09:12 – 02:09:22:	But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

02:09:22 – 02:09:30:	But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

02:09:30 – 02:09:42:	The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

02:09:42 – 02:09:54:	But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

02:09:54 – 02:10:10:	Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.

02:10:10 – 02:10:16:	But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

02:10:17 – 02:10:37:	Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace, and count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.

02:10:37 – 02:10:45:	There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

02:10:46 – 02:10:55:	You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.

02:10:55 – 02:10:59:	But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

02:10:59 – 02:11:03:	To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity.

02:11:03 – 02:11:04:	Amen.