It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies.

And biases in another religion.

I think that what's fascinating, you're raised.

You'Re razor sharp on your criticism of Islam here.

Yeah, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own.

Because I.

That may be the case.

And there's that confirmation bias coming up again.

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Yeah, we know, we know you're scared, but tonight we're going to be talking.

We've been going through each of the weeks this month, and there, there was five.

So we had to double up on one of the.

One of the end time views.

But each week we've been looking at a different end time position and a study known as eschatology, the study of end times.

What we have been doing, we started with a more optimistic type of amillennialism.

That was with Keith Foskey.

We then looked into a more depressing one with Matt Slick.

And so what you really saw was, well, optimistic millennialism wasn't much different than post millennialism in some people's eyes.

And so we looked at post millennialism.

Last week we talked about historic pre millennial, pre millennialism.

And this week, well, you know, I'm just going to Say for the record, my guest will be able to verify this, that he gave me two dates and only two dates that would work with him.

And the person who could do the other date that he gave, well, he could only do that date, which meant that we're ending on the truth, which is dispensational premillennialism.

I did not force that.

I just.

It God's providence, it worked out that way.

And if you disagree that that's the truth, well, you only disagree for about 70, 80 years.

Just saying.

So let me bring our very short, tiny little apologist on with us.

Dan.

Dan Kraft.

You know, people are really going to wonder if you're really as tall as we say, you know, because you don't look that tall in, in camera.

Well, you know, if I stand up, all you'll see is my.

So, yeah, so, you know, you haven't been out in, for, for a couple times that you got scared of all the eschatology talk, but you came in for the, the right one, so that's good.

I've just been busy, bro.

I've been.

Let's see, last week I was in Moscow, Idaho, teaching.

So yeah, at your son's school or.

I did an hour on Christian denominations and then did two hours on Roman Catholicism.

And then we took all the interns over to the University of Idaho to the Catholic center there, and we got to listen to two Catholic deacons give their presentation on why they think Catholicism is totally legit.

So that was interesting.

So where were you teaching at?

Was that school your son went to?

No, that was, it was a, an internship for Tiny Heartbeat Ministries.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah, that's My, my son is on staff with Tiny Heartbeat Ministries.

So.

Yeah.

All right, so let us bring in Peter Gaiman.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

And, and Kathy, Kathy is saying finally, dispensationalism.

Some, some folks have been waiting, having to hear all these other things.

So, Peter, if you could introduce yourself, I, and you know, so folks would, would know who you are, where you teach, and, and your podcast, which is, you know, one of the other podcasts like this one of the Christian podcast community.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, thanks for having me on.

And like you mentioned, I am a host of a podcast, the Bible Sojourner, and it's good to be a part of the Christian podcast community.

For my job, I have the privilege of teaching at Shepherd's Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina.

So there I focus mainly on Old Testament classes, some Hebrew.

I teach, I have taught some Greek, some Septuagint stuff.

And so it's just a privilege I help lead the Israel trips when we get a chance to go.

We haven't had a chance to go for about two years now because of all the conflicts and things.

And so it's a privilege to be involved in those areas.

And then at church, my wife and I have helped up lead up the young adult group at our church and that's a huge privilege to be involved with that as well.

And so just a privilege to serve our Lord and Savior.

Yeah.

And I'm excited to have you on.

Not just because we finally get to talk about the true end times view, but no, I, and, and throughout folks who've been seeing the whole series, you realize I, I joke around about it, but I've been fair with each of this, the guests to let them share their view.

Asking some questions, not critiquing, not attacking this.

This would be a different one because, you know, Peter and I are going to agree, I should say that for folks who may remember, Peter is at the seminary where many years ago we talked about just war theory with someone who is, was my favorite professor in seminary, Dr. David Berggraf.

And so he's someone who was on this show many years ago and he is the dean of the seminary where Peter is at.

So that means you get to listen to him a lot, which is really cool.

Yeah, no, I, I feel privileged every day I walk in the door.

Yeah.

Well, just so you know, Kathy says here, Peter Bible Sojourner, I follow your YouTube channel.

I appreciate your teaching and content.

See, there you go.

You got a fan here.

Oh, super thankful for that.

Thanks, Kathy.

She's one of our regulars.

So let's talk about dispensational premillennialism and the fact that we talked historic premillennial last time.

There's going to be some differences.

So what I'm going to ask is could you give us an overview of what, what dispensational premillennialism is?

And because we had the historic, how would you see the difference between what would be and when we say historic for folks who watched last week and this is, you're kind of seeing this in, in the cases, no matter which one you hold to, they have differences.

You, there's not like, hey, everyone holds to every piece of this but it broad, broad brushing it.

But so what would be the differences between those two?

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

And I didn't listen to the previous episode, so shame on me for.

No, no, no.

I Don't want to step on anyone's toes.

But the way I would perceive it would be that dispensational premillennialism is essentially a system of theology that's built upon a, what I would call an originalist hermeneutic, meaning that the driving force, in contrast to all other systems of a dispensational viewpoint is that the determiner of meaning for a biblical text relates to what the original author and the original audience would have understood it to mean.

So that's where you're going to derive your theology from.

You're not going to in many other systems.

In fact, all other systems would allow this potentially is that you could have more of a canonical reading of the New Testament, reinterpreting or reimagining the Old Testament.

But the number one rule of the dispensational system is that the passage that you are studying has to speak for itself within the context of what has been revealed up to that time.

So for example, if you're reading Genesis, it's kind of unfair for you to skip over to Luke or Acts and say we can finally understand Genesis because we have Luke or Acts, because of what the original audience in 1400 BC would have had.

So just to kind of summarize that dispensationalism then is looking primarily at a passage within its own context.

And that doesn't mean that we can't go through a biblical theology.

That's a process that we are very keen to do.

But the primary aspect is that each passage must be interpreted within its own context primarily.

And so throughout the conversation, I'll probably make allusion to that, because a lot of these other systems are going to say, we know that this passage has to mean this because of what we read over here.

And I will say that's the incorrect methodology for how you interpret Scripture.

So that is the primary rule.

And what that is going to lead to ultimately is the dispensational distinctives, which would be primarily seeing a distinction, distinction between Israel and the church.

If you're reading passages according to the original authorial intent, you're going to see that when Paul is discussing the Church, he'll in many places make a distinction between the church and a future for ethnic, geographical, national Israel.

And so when we see those things happen, we can say, okay, how would the original audience have understood this?

You go to the Old Testament prophets, same questions are asked.

And so if you just read them in a straightforward way, a lot of times the old fashioned word that often gets thrown out.

I don't like to use it because it's been dragged through the garbage heap a lot.

But the term literal, a literal hermeneutic, I think it's fine.

But people just misunderstand it.

It doesn't mean that there's no such thing as metaphor or there's no such thing as figures of speech or symbols or anything like that, that.

But what it means is that it's used in its literary context in accordance with how the author determined that it should be used.

And if, and of course when we do that, when we interpret each passage within that context, we're going to come up with some certain essentials.

We're going to be premillennialist.

You can't have a authorial, original, intent hermeneutic and wind up as amillennial or post millennial.

You just can't.

You, you have to wind up as pre millennial.

And if you keep that consistently, you would also recognize that there's a distinction between Israel and the church then, and that the nation of Israel is going to have a distinct future in the land of Israel, and they are also going to return and repent and have a new heart.

So that's how I would define it, broadly speaking.

Yeah.

And I think that something you said I want to highlight.

And you and I were on Keith Foskey's bow tie dialogues when he talks with people that have differing views than he does.

And we were talking dispensationalism.

And one of the things I said there, I'll.

And I'll say it here, I usually do when it comes to dispensational premillennialism is that premillennialism is a byproduct of dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism is not premillennialism.

Okay.

It's the byproduct.

It is what, what you just heard Peter say, consistently taking the, the Scriptures so we don't have a different interpretation for future prophecy than we did for already fulfilled prophecy.

We read the Bible the same way.

And when you do that consistently, you come to a premillennial view.

Now, I don't know that I've ever said this before, but it's something I've been thinking about recently.

I'll see if Peter agrees with me or he's going to tell me I'm a heretic.

But I think that what I see is when you're, when you're consistent with the Scripture, when you practice the rules of interpretation consistently, not spiritualizing It.

And seeing that, oh, well, this is the Bible, it needs to have a spiritual interpretation.

But using the rules of language, we come to one view, a premillennial view.

But when you allow for the spiritualization, everyone comes up with different views because kind of they're making it up as they go along.

I don't know.

But I think what you have is because this.

Your.

The rules are not the same when you start allowing for spiritualization.

I think you're right.

And I think the key word I like to focus in on would be consistency, is that if you have a certain kind of hermeneutic when you're defending the Trinity, you have a specific hermeneutic when you're talking about soteriology, but then you decide for eschatological matters that you're going to adopt kind of a spiritualization of things or say that what a text says is different than what it means, then you start getting into all kinds of trouble.

And like you said, if you.

If you just start saying the rules don't matter in those contexts, then you're definitely in trouble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And.

And I think that, you know, a lot of people.

Look, you've probably had this a bunch of times, Peter.

How many times you said someone, well, my dispensationalist, they go, well, I don't.

I don't believe in pre.

Mill.

Countless times.

Yeah.

To which my.

They'll even say the Rapture.

They'll say, I don't believe in the rapture.

Yeah.

To which my response is always, oh, so you don't understand dispensationalism.

And they're always like, no, I grew up dispensational.

Yeah, exactly.

Like everyone that, like, you know, Leighton Flowers, who says, I grew up Calvinist.

And every Calvinist goes, you don't understand Calvinism?

And he goes, no, no, I understand it better than you.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

I do think there's probably.

I think a lot of people, especially now, in.

In our current culture, dispensationalism is, you know, thrown underfoot.

And everyone loves to, you know, whip and beat dispensationalism right now.

But it.

So it's kind of like a badge of honor saying like, yeah, I rejected that.

I grew up, understood it.

And it becomes very, very obvious that they don't really understand what's going on, unfortunately.

Yeah.

And.

And one way.

One good thing to do is I usually ask people, so what.

What is dispensationalism?

Yeah.

And.

And they don't know other than, oh, pre millennialism.

Or, or like you said, rapture, but they usually don't.

So.

So if you were to look at all millennial, post millennial historical premill.

How.

Would you see dispensational premill differing from each of these?

What would be core tenants of them?

Core core passages.

I, I'm, I'm sure we're going to get to the passage we've dealt with every single week this month is Revelation 20.

So maybe we could just start there.

Right.

How, how would we interpret Revelation 20 different than these differing views?

Well, if I can, if I can say it this way, one of the.

Let me answer the question this way.

And it might be something that's kind of unexpected, but I think it's, it's really important to point this out is that I am a pre millennialist before I even get to the New Testament.

And that may surprise people, but I often.

And people would call me a heretic.

And this goes back to presuppositions.

Right.

But my presupposition is that my theology, if I only have the Old Testament, should be consistent with what I end up getting when I have the New Testament added to it.

And it's interesting because a lot of people do start at Revelation 20, which is actually one of the most.

I will try to soften this.

I wanted to say it's something of the loony bin to start there because if you think of the.

Now, obviously I'm not.

You know, a lot of the listeners here have been taught and they understand things, but if you were to take a brand new believer, for example, and throw them into Revelation 20 and say figure it out, they'd probably be in trouble because they would just read it and say, okay, well based on this, I think that the Lord's going to come and this is what's going to happen.

They might get it right.

But the reality is that people who are reading Revelation 20 for the first time, to whom John is writing, by the way, to stick it to our preterists a little bit after 95, 80, you know, if he's writing to this original audience, they understand already the Old Testament.

In fact, even though I don't agree with many of his conclusions, G.K. beale, probably one of the most brilliant amillennialist scholars out there, has done significant work showing that Revelation just is citing and eluding the Old Testament all over the place place.

And Daniel is one of those books where if you don't understand Daniel, revelation doesn't make a lot of sense.

And so unfortunately a lot of people will jump to Revelation without understanding Daniel.

And of course I argue that because Daniel is so late, meaning that it's written around 5.

Well, it finishes around 536 BC somewhere around there.

But there are a lot of prophets that come before that and believe it or not, Daniel was actually reading them when he was giving his prophecies, Jeremiah, for example.

And so the links are there.

People just need to understand you have to start earlier.

And so one of the things I point out to people, and I'll just summarize it this way so we don't take forever because you ask a good question about Revelation 20.

But one of the things that I think people have to understand is that the Old Testament is hyper clear.

Like no, no confusion whatsoever that Israel will go into exile because of their sin.

God will give Israel a new heart and will return and restore them to the land where they will, the kingdom will be restored and their, their livelihood and their existence will surpass that of what they experienced under salt Solomon.

So we have never seen that.

And the Old Testament promises that.

And so you are forced with one of two options by the time you're leaving the Old Testament that that's what you should be looking forward to, or you just have to allegorize it or spiritualize it.

And unfortunately for a lot of people, that's what they default to saying.

Well, let's just say that these specifics, let's ignore them and let's just say that God said he's going to bless us with eternal life.

That's what it means.

Or something like that.

And obviously I think that's unacceptable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I, you asked about Revelation, Revelation 20 because.

Yeah, no, no, it's, it's good and it's important.

And I do want to say, you know, it's, this is the thing that I like people just have to understand is that it is a different way.

Way when you're, when you're going to see Israel and the church separately as at more discontinuity for people that don't come from that background.

They can't fathom that.

Right.

Because they're so used to seeing.

Oh well, they're this.

They're the same body and two different administrations.

They.

It's hard for some to think other.

And so I wanted to emphasize the fact that you're, you're saying it's from the, you're.

It's coming from the Old Testament because what I don't, what we don't want to do.

Okay.

As a dispensationalist, what we don't want to do is read the New Testament into the Old.

Right?

It's, it's not like, oh well, Song of Solomon had no meaning until Christ because they didn't know this was about Christ in the church.

No, a godly marriage is something that is always, for since Adam and Eve, a valuable thing.

And, you know, it's a wedding, you know, so, yeah, so Revelation 20.

Yeah.

And so I think by the time you get to Revelation 20, you already have this big backdrop of Old Testament which is going to predispose you a certain way.

In fact, I didn't even mention this, but Zechariah 14, which is kind of the revelation of the Old Testament, has so many parallels to Revelation 19 and 20 that, you know, I think if you tried to interpret this in a vacuum without Old Testament, you know, you might be predisposed to make some of the errors that of course, I call them errors that all millennials or post millennials would make in interpreting it because they try to either isolate the text or they try to rely on some other things which we can get into.

So in essence, I think one of the greatest strengths of just a premillennial interpretation of Revelation 19 and 20.

And by the way, there would be.

I'm assuming you talked about this last time with the historic premillennialists, because there's a lot of overlap between how 19 and 20 would be interpreted from whether it be a dispensational or historic premillennial perspective, usually.

And the greatest strength of the pre millennial viewpoint is that you just take 19 and 20 as a consecutive, essentially as a consecutive narrative sequence.

It's a prophetic sequence, but it's a consecutive narrative prophetic sequence.

And that fits exactly with what Revelation claims to be.

Revelation claims to be prophetic literature.

Now, a lot of people say, no, you have to have special rules because it's apocalyptic.

Well, that's a debate.

Because Revelation claims to be prophecy.

It doesn't claim to have a special rule genre that is different from other prophecy.

I mean, you read Ezekiel, you read Zechariah, which are clearly prophecies.

I think Revelation should be treated very similarly, if not the exact same, to how Ezekiel and Zechariah end up being interpreted.

That's not to say there aren't symbols, but in reality those symbols always mean something.

So when we read through 19 and 20, I think that the sequence is, is very profound and fits with the Old Testament pattern of the fact that there's going to be judgment that is brought at the coming of the Messiah.

And you can think Isaiah's little apocalypse has this.

So if we're talking like Isaiah 24, you see this idea that there's going to come judgment and imprisonment for those who are opposing God.

That's.

I think it's Isaiah 24, 19, 21 or something like that.

And what you also have is Zechariah, who gives this same pattern where the Messiah comes.

He annihilates the enemies and then establishes his kingdom.

Well, so Too then you have 19, Revelation 19, the Messiah coming, annihilating his enemies, and then in 20, he secures the kingdom.

I mean, it's just the pattern that this isn't.

See, people always say you're just building your, your viewpoint on a literal reading of Revelation 20.

No, I mean, that's, that's insane.

That's not what's happening.

This is the sequence we see throughout Scripture where the Lord comes, annihilates his enemies, and then establishes his kingdom.

And so even.

And I should say too, that I don't know who.

I think it was Josh Howard, that represented post millennialism for, for your discussion, right?

No, actually.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

For post millennium.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so he kind of represents more of a new neo post millennialism.

But some of the old post millennialists would actually agree with that interpretation of Revelation 19 being the second coming of Christ and then the annihilation of the enemies at the end and then the initiation of a golden age of 1000 years.

So a lot of the older post millennialists did actually take it to be a literal 1000 year reign of Christ, although they saw the sequence different than us.

Obviously they tried to put dates on that and whatever.

But the point being that even older post millennialists recognize that Revelation 19 most likely has to refer to the second coming of Christ.

That just fits all the, all the paradigm there.

And then the sequence of Revelation 20 then is that the Lord institutes his kingdom by securing Satan binding him forever, or not forever, but binding him so that he has no power to deceive the nations.

But a lot of people key in on that idea of the purpose clause so that he doesn't deceive the nations and say that's the only way he's bound.

But the reality is that he's bound and chained in a pit.

That's the, that's the full identity.

So it's not, I mean, just to put it in, I guess, in a, just a silly illustration, that would be like me saying, I'm going to lock you in jail.

So that you don't draw graffiti on the wall or whatever.

It's like, what?

Like, that's not.

I mean, there's a lot of different ways that you can prohibit drawing of graffiti on the wall.

You don't have to lock someone away in a cellar, in a dungeon to keep that from happening.

But the point is that it's a very absolute language here where Satan is bound, incarcerated.

And one of the purposes, this isn't the exclusive purpose, but one of the purposes, as mentioned by the text, because of what is going to happen later on, is that he doesn't deceive the nations then.

And so at the end, he's released to deceive them again.

And then he allies and organizes a rebellion after that fact.

And it makes sense that that's.

That's what would be allowed for.

For him.

In fact, people often say that that is like the death knell to the premillennial viewpoint, is that it makes no sense that Satan would be released again at the end.

Well, everybody has to do something with the fact that the text literally says he's released.

So everybody has to deal with that somehow.

And I think from a premillennial viewpoint, it makes a lot of sense that Satan would be released to show that ultimately, no matter what, you know, what sequence you find yourself in, what age of history you find yourself in, Satan has no ultimate power.

So.

So nobody who is going to have any question who the real authority is, like, you know, there's going to be nobody thinking in the eternal state or anything.

That, boy, I don't know if Satan would have been around, you know, right before the end, like, maybe things would have been different, that nobody's going to have that option because there's going to be no question whatsoever where the ultimate authority and power resides.

It's with the Messiah, it's with the Lord.

He has absolute power.

And so that's one thing that is just, I think, insurmountable.

I think I did a couple podcasts with a good buddy of mine, Matt Waymire, on the binding of Satan, and he wrote a journal article on that, wrote a book on millennialism in the age to come, which I always encourage people to pick up because he wrote a lot on that issue and the other issue in Revelation 20, just to be brief, why I think it's just so important to take it just in a straightforward, literal way are the sequence of resurrections that are given there is that it just seems like.

It seems like the pinnacle of irresponsibility to take one resurrection now Obviously I'm speaking, I'm here presenting my view.

Right.

And so I love my brothers and sisters from all male postmill camps and they're going to disagree with me on this.

And I welcome the disagreement.

We can have conversations on that.

But it, from my perspective, it is quite irresponsible to say that the resurrection, you know, in verse five and the Resurrection in verse five, four.

Or is it the, let me see here, five and six.

So five and six, the resurrection is mentioned there, the first resurrection, the second resurrection, which comes later, after the thousand year, the thousand year reign of Christ, that those are qualitatively different resurrections.

Now they're going to, they're going to turn around and say, no, it makes perfect sense given what we know about theology.

But I'm going to say if you just start dealing with this text, if you are just dealing with this text, the original audience, original author, reading through this, there is nothing within the text itself that would indicate that we should make a switch in understanding one resurrection to be spiritual and one resurrection to be physical.

That's really an imported theology into the text.

So I've talked a long time.

That's some of the ways that I would see Revelation 20 from a premale perspective.

Yeah, and one of the arguments that we hear from folks, and I think I addressed this when Matt Slick was on because he, he makes this argument a lot, but he, he used to make the argument everywhere.

You see the word thousand in the Bible, it's figurative.

And I corrected him on that and he said so he changed it to thousand year.

And, and I still disagree with him.

And, and we, we addressed, addressed it because.

Okay, so the thousand years appears ten times in the scriptures, six of it in Revelation 20.

Okay, so the other four, one is Psalm 90, verse four, that says for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passed by, or as a watch by night.

Now I'm going to hold off on that one because I'm going to come back to it.

When we look at second Peter, Ecclesiastes says Ecclesiastes 6, 6.

Even if the other man lives 1000 years twice and does not see a good thing, do not all go to the same place.

Now what people will say is that those two are figurative.

Second Peter 3, 8 uses thousand years twice.

But do not let let this one fact escape your notice.

Behold that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.

Now in that last one, is that an illustration?

Yes.

With the first one for a Thousand years in your sight.

It sounds very similar to what we have in Second Peter, right?

Comparing a thousand years to a day, it's illustrative.

You can even say the same in Ecclesiastes 6, 6, because he's saying if a man lives a thousand years twice, in other words, 2000 years, but doesn't see any good things, though those are, we're seeing them in the case where they are used in illustrations.

The fact is it is comparing a thousand years, a literal thing, thousand years to a day.

Otherwise, if that thousand years is, is spiritual, it's just figurative, then, and the day is figurative, then it has no meaning at all.

Right.

The whole purpose of it, the only way to make sense of what it's saying is to compare a literal thousand years to a literal day.

So I will argue that all of the thousand years in the Bible are literal because it's the only way to make sense of them in their context, the way they're being used as an illustration.

Right.

Can I add one thing to that too?

And this is like just to play, you know, the rhetorical argument game is the one thing that I, the one thing that I don't mind telling people is that, and, and I, I really think there's probably a lot of people that have thought this way.

But one of the people I credit for this is Michael Spiegel from Dallas, is one of the things that he pointed out is that there were actual premillennialists throughout history that didn't take the thousand years literally, but they were still pre.

Millennial in their, in their eschatology.

And one of the things that I would point out is a lot of times people are assuming that if we can somehow make people think that the 1000 doesn't have to be 1000 exactly, that somehow makes us win the argument.

And my pushback is, listen, even if 1000 means 1111, let's just say that's what it means.

That doesn't fix anything.

It's the exact same theology.

Now instead of a thousand year reign of Christ, it's just 11, 11 year reign of Christ, but the sequence is the exact same.

So I don't know why that becomes a huge arguing point other than maybe people think that if they can just show that the word thousand doesn't mean 1000 here, then we can all sudden jettison all word meanings in the passage.

That's just irresponsible hermeneutics because you can't function in meaning that way.

So I always tell, even hypothetically and rhetorically, even if 1000 could mean slightly more, slightly less, it doesn't matter.

The passage still means the exact same sequence.

And so maybe I'm a 999 year millennialist, I don't know.

But well, and you know, Dr. Chung, last week on Historic Premillennialism, for folks who, you know, were watching or listening, that's his view, right?

He is a pre millennialist, but when it came to the Revelation 20, he used, well, as I argued, the figurative amillennial type of view, right.

He suddenly goes, oh well, it's just spiritual time.

And so is kind of bridging the gap with, you know, like look, trying to kind of hold both.

And so, but the issue is that Revelation 20 is giving a time sequence.

It's, it's chronological.

So, so just within that context, if he's giving chronological events and giving a time period, why would we say, well that time period is not chronological when the context of the thinking of the argument that John's making is chronological, I may be making it too simplistic.

Well, I also just to add fuel to your fire, because I think you're right, think about, I think what needs to be done is we need to go back and look at all of the Old Testament paradigms that, where the prophecies have prophesied time periods and just, and I have not done this exhaustively, but just from the ones I can call to mind just out of hand, prophecies that are talking about what is going to occur are by nature specific.

And so you have Daniel's prophecies very specific.

You have Ezekiel's prophecies very specific.

You have Jeremiah's prophecies very specific.

Specific.

And so this would be, to use that argument, then this would be the only prophecy where the prophetic timeline of what is going to happen in years is not specific.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and you mentioned Daniel, the passage I always go to, because I, I do think this is an important one is, is Daniel chapter nine, the, the 70 weeks, because I find that so many.

And so I'm going to ask you to help us walk us through Daniel 9, 24, 27, because to me this is the hardest one for others to hold to unless they're going to say the whole thing is spiritual or figurative.

And I've only had one person ever argue that because everybody I've, I've had this discussion with always takes the first 69, seven year periods as literal and then the last one is suddenly figurative.

We had, we had, you know, a preterist on here, not during this discussion.

And I didn't want to include them in this discussion because I just don't think it's even in the same category of end times views.

I think it, okay, I'm not going to get into that.

So.

But you know, that was the thing that we saw with him was.

It was just, hey, this is.

Yeah, it could be literal.

Literal, literal.

Now it's just figurative.

Like, like, well, how does it get to 70?

How, how do you get from 33 AD to 70 in seven years?

Just help me understand that.

And, and if you remember, he, folks who had watched, he was like, well, it's three and a half years.

I said, that doesn't help your problem.

That makes it worse.

You just cut your time in half, you know, and so walk us through Daniel 20, Daniel 9, because you've, you mentioned this one.

This is pretty specific.

It gives an exact time frame for things.

Yeah, no, this is great.

So Daniel 9, basically, when I teach this in Old Testament studies class, we end up taking hours on this just alone because it's, there are a lot of complications here, but they're, they're, they're beautiful complications.

You know, it's kind of like when you go to a museum.

You don't want to just rush through.

You want to take your time, observe things.

You want to appreciate the beauty.

And so, you know, alas, we don't have unlimited time.

But I'll just try to highlight a couple things.

Things.

So in Daniel 9, the context is, and I think this is, you know, this is funny because I'm probably going to make some dispensationalists upset.

Okay, so you asked for it though.

So you, you wanted to get my opinion.

You asked to have me.

And I should, I should mention, I. Folks, I do encourage you to listen to the Bible, Sojourner, because Peter does go through a lot of these things.

A lot of the arguments, arguments that people make, he's answered already on there.

And so I do know his view.

I do know how he's walked through this.

And then some other passages were, I will admit it's caused me to go back and go, I got to rethink that.

Well, and the reality is, the reason, the reason I preface that.

I appreciate you saying that too, Andrew, because the reality is that there are even within dispensationalism.

You alluded this to, to this earlier.

But even within dispensationalism, there is a, there is, there are different views that are acceptable.

So on this passage, the heavy hitter that every dispensationalist is aware of is Harold Hohner.

And Harold Hohner taught at Dallas for years and he took a viewpoint that was popularized by Sir Anderson.

And this was the viewpoint that if you, if you start the 70 week decree.

So a couple background things here.

When, when The Bible says 70 weeks are decreed, the, the Hebrew word there is just shavua, which is a group of seven.

Now in English we just have a word for dozen.

We don't have a word for a group of seven.

We have a dozen, which is a group of 12.

But some languages have words for groups of other things, like a trinity maybe, I guess would be another example of a group of three or something.

So in Hebrew it's a group of seven.

Now weeks for us is kind of like that because it's a group of seven days, but it's not in Hebrew it could be a group of seven days, it could be a group of seven years.

And here it's.

Almost everyone agrees that it's not a group of seven days, but it's a group of seven years.

So sometimes when I teach this, I just say 77s are decreed and those sevens are years.

So sometimes people are confused by that.

But I just wanted to be exhaustive to mention that.

And so when it talks about these 70 groups of seven years, most dispensationalists will go back with the work of Harold Hohner and they'll say, you know what?

I think Harold Hohner was right and that this should date to around 445 B.C.

and date to Nehemiah 2.

So that's how it would correlate there.

And so most people would, would say, okay, that's when the starting point is.

And you run some very complex calculations which we go through.

But I don't want to belabor the point.

And if you run these very complex calculations which involve using prophetic years of 360 days a year and then calculating it into Gregorian calendar days, which, you know, again is super complicated, 365.24, etc.

And you run that out, what you get is that the 69th year of this prophecy that ends on the day of Jesus's triumphal entry.

Now that has tremendous, you know, wow factor built into it.

And I just have to say that it would be really cool if it was that specific.

But I'm not personally convinced that that is, that, that the prophecy is down to the day of Jesus triumphal entry.

I actually, and this surprises people, but I actually think that some.

Well, I'll just say it this way, an all millennialist by the name of Peter Gentry from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He actually was the one to convince me that there's a better way to interpret these 70 weeks.

And that's if you go and count sabbatical cycles, which was a common form of telling time in the Old Testament and in the Jewish world.

So if you count these separate sabbatical cycles from the time of Ezra 6 and 7, if you count it from that time period and you just take it as normal years, you wind up right at 2627 A.D. which would mark essentially either the very beginning of Jesus's ministry according to the traditional 30 AD crucifixion date, or.

Or just a couple of years right before, if you take a 33 AD crucifixion date, which I think most people are leaning towards now.

So all that to say is that it's it.

It fails to have the wow factor with regard to when the end of that 69 weeks is.

But I think it's probably a little more accurate given a couple details that are found in chronicles.

And the whole reason for Israel's exile seems to be because they did not observe the Sabbath cycles and things like that.

So I know that's super complex and I just blew by that.

But I want to get to the.

Where the real disagreements are because technically a lot of amillennialists and post millennials would agree with me on how I take that passage then up to that point, up through the first 69 weeks, then if they're going to take it literally.

But then in that 70th week, that's where all viewpoints just have this big free for all mma, you know, street style.

You know, this is just nasty stuff.

And it's one of those things where, you know, it's funny because we're getting along so well for the first 69 weeks that also it's like, well, what happened?

And so some people do take it just figuratively.

But I think what is coming into, into play now is a lot of all millennialists and post millennialists are interpreting the 70th week as no prophecy concerning the end times, but only concerning a prophecy of Jesus's death.

And so what they'll do if.

And I'll just read it in verse 27.

Well, going back in, in 26 and 27, I'll start in 26 of Daniel 9 says after the 62 weeks.

So that would be after the.

So there's an.

There's an initial time period of seven weeks and then 62 weeks.

So after that final 62, that brings us to a total of 69.

So after the 69 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing.

Now, every viewpoint, at least to my knowledge, views that as the crucifixion of the Messiah, which is a great evangelist, evangelistic verse for Jewish people, you know, just saying, like, hey, the anointed one, the Messiah is cut off, shall have nothing.

But then you have this, this other phrase here that says, the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.

And that's very difficult to fit into because that happens in 70 AD so that can't really fit into the 70th week.

Something, something's going on there, which, which means that we're probably looking for a gap here already because we know after the fact that now granted, when, when biblical prophecy comes, it has.

The illustration that people give is that it's, you see the mountain peaks, but sometimes you don't see the details.

So, you know, I, I get that if somebody's just reading this, maybe they wouldn't know that there would be a gap here originally.

That's, that's fine.

That's kind of par for the course because there's lots of biblical prophecies that they didn't know that there would have been a gap there initially.

So that's fine.

And so here you have 70 AD being referenced immediately.

The people of the prince to his come shall destroy the city in the sanctuary.

And it talks about the desolations that are decreed.

And then verse 27, this is where people just really diverge.

It says, he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.

Now, who is the he there?

It's the people of the prince who is to come.

Now this is where people just go crazy because the amillennialists and the post millennials will say, ah, that's Jesus, the prince who is to come.

But Daniel has been talking about this ruler, this anointed ruler, this specialized ruler throughout the book.

Especially if you look at Daniel 7, he is a huge character there, this little horn.

Daniel 8, probably, if not explicitly prophesying him, is prophesying him in character there.

And so you have this, this leader who we refer to as the Antichrist, being mentioned.

And so it's no surprise that he's brought in here, especially because the time period when it says for half a week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering.

Well, that same phrase is actually used previously in Daniel this is where I just don't understand why all millennials and post millennials don't read that.

Because Daniel has already said time, times and half a time, which is three and a half.

So that's what the little horn does.

And the little horn is not the Messiah.

The little horn is the one who opposes the people of God.

And so, you know, let's just use logic here.

Earlier.

Daniel says that the little horn opposes God's people specifically for three and a half time periods.

And then here you say that you're going to have half of half of a week.

So half of a seven, three and a half.

I mean, is that just coincidence?

I mean, I don't think so.

I don't believe in coincidences.

So that's one of those things where, I mean, I think if you're reading the Book of Daniel, it's just obvious who's being talked about here.

But, but I digress.

The amillennialists and post millennialists, they're going to say that this is Jesus in verse 27.

Even though I'd say, you know, it's very clear who Daniel's been talking about.

He's talking about the one who's opposing the people of God, the Antichrist, not the, that's what we end up calling him, the Antichrist.

But in, in this case, they would say that this is Jesus being put to death at half of the week.

But the problem is that if, and this is where if you took the traditional, I say traditional, this is what scholars used to hold to almost universally is a 30 A.D. crucifixion date.

Well, if the end of the 69th week comes at, you know, 27 A.D. 30.

30 A.D. would fit somewhere around there.

But almost all New Testament, not almost all, but the majority of New Testament scholars now are leaning toward the 33 AD crucifixion date.

And so now that's a huge problem, I think, for somebody who's trying to make Jesus be crucified at the middle of the week, because that's not the middle of the week anymore.

If the end of the sabbatical cycles are running out 26, 27 A.D. and Jesus is being crucified 33 A.D. that's no longer three and a half.

And so now you just are losing this literalism.

Now it's not a problem for me because I don't think this is talking about Jesus.

I think this is talking about a future week, future time period, which, by the way, by the way, Revelation would confirm that because it uses that time period of 12, 60 days, which in Revelation 11, which is three and a half years.

So a lot of things go together.

From a premillennial viewpoint it works very nicely.

But for some reason post millennialists and amillennialists often will take these as just either coincidences or unrelated texts.

But that's where I would say these are connected.

And if you take just a straightforward reading, keeping the context of Daniel in mind, you're going to come away with a consistent approach where Jesus is prophesied as being crucified after the 69th week.

But there's a built in prophecy here where there's going to be a future week where the Antichrist as we come to know him is going to bring about some significant destruction and then revelation ends up picking up the trail and talking about that.

Yeah.

And the thing here for folks to see, I'm going to keep, I guess focusing on it because it is the importance is the consistency.

Right.

The question, you know, the question I'm gonna, I have for you is gonna be, you know, what do you see as the strengths and then also the weaknesses of the view you hold to because said this each week, if you think your position has only strengths and no weaknesses.

Right.

Then you haven't really studied your view and you definitely haven't studied any of the other views.

Okay.

So every one of these views have their strengths and their weaknesses.

I personally think that the strength for dispensational premillennialism is the consistency.

Now if you remember some time ago I did a debate on this channel with a Covenant theologian.

And yes, the topic was that he believed that Covenant theology is more, more literal than dispensationalism.

Yeah.

Well the issue that I raised in that was the consistency issue.

And he would say, well, he's being consistent.

He's consistently using a spiritual interpretation.

Right.

So his way of defining literal was to say, well, it means whatever the Lord literally meant it to mean, which is a spiritual interpretation.

But, but how do you know that's what it means?

What your theology tells you?

So.

Right.

It's finding everything to fit together.

And I just want to warn folks to say Jehovah Witnesses have a system that works.

Mormons have a system that works.

The rabbis have a system that works.

It may be convoluted to you and I, but it works for them because they're going to find a way to answer the problems.

Okay.

It may seem strange, but Democrats actually have answers to things and it seems to work for them.

I mean, aoc, AOC thinks she's brilliant.

She may be, you know, comparing herself to, you know, Jasmine Crocker, but, you know, that's not saying much.

But the thing is, I think the consistency of what dispensationalism does is it uses the rules of interpretation for certain genres and it uses it consistently throughout.

So it doesn't say, okay, this, the Old Testament has a different way of interpreting it once we come to the new.

So you don't say, oh, well, prophecy is interpreted this way in the old and this way in the New, because a historical narrative is interpreted one way in the old and one way in the New.

No, it's the rules for historical narrative, the rules for instructional, the rules for prophecy or Hebrew poetry, and they stay consistent throughout.

And I think that's, I'm just giving, I haven't given what I thought is the strengths of any others, but I'm going to give it this one.

I think the strength is, it's the consistency of having the same rules of interpretation.

But now I'll let Peter expound on that.

I give the simple answers and he.

Expounds, why should you just say I agree with you both?

Just to capitalize on that?

I would say the reason that's a strength is because that's how we all communicate.

So the strength of the dispensational hermeneutic is that we don't change communications.

For example, when you and I were communicating about when to come on the show, you know, I gave you specific dates and I said, sorry, these are the only ones that can work for me.

And you didn't look at those dates and say, okay, what you actually mean is that any time would work for you because these numbers are meaningless or whatever.

You know, it's just like when we talk together, we have specific meaning behind how we communicate.

That's, that's what I mean by authorial intent is that we rely God designed communication and God designed communication to take place that way.

And so it's kind of ridiculous to assume.

And again, I, I speak harshly, but I want to tread gently upon my, the, the, the hands and feet of my brothers in amillennialism and post millennialism.

But I would say that it's kind of silly to develop a way of reading the Bible that is different from normal communication because that would be accusing God of designing a system of communication where the clarity with which we communicate is better outside of Scripture, but his own communication is inferior to that.

Which is really kind of ridiculous, I think.

But of course, that's my opinion.

And the Lord will be the ultimate judge as to who is correct on that.

So if that's the strength, and I think, you know, just the clarity of reading scripture and not having a system, we don't have to have a creed or anything like that.

We just say, let the text say what the original author intended it to say.

Let's.

Let's work hard at that.

And if that's the strength, there are.

Can I give two weaknesses?

I guess.

I don't know.

You didn't say.

I can only give as many strengths and as many weaknesses as you want.

And you can also give as many passages that you can think are the strong or weak if you want to.

Oh, yeah, okay.

That's a good idea too.

Well, let me just talk generally about weakness first.

So one weakness goes alongside with.

With the idea of the not having.

Okay, let's put it this way.

The.

One of the strengths of dispensationalism that coincides with what I just talked about is that you don't need to go to school to be a dispensationalist.

In other words, I always tease, and again, sorry to my covenantal brothers and sisters, but I always tease them that you have to be taught to be a covenantalist.

You have to taught because you can't learn these covenants of grace, the covenant of works, covenant of redemption.

You can't learn those from Scripture.

They're not there.

So sorry, I'm going to be stowed here.

But they're not mentioned in Scripture.

Okay?

So you have to learn those to be able to read them into Scripture.

Then if you just use what's in the Bible, then you're going to wind up a dispensationalist if you just use the Bible to interpret the Bible.

Okay, so I've said my piece with that.

Which means that the shepherd boy can have the same insights and biblical literacy as the scholar.

And that's dangerous to people.

And what that means then is that sometimes you can have people.

The shepherd boy can come up with a conclusion and he's being biased and he can come up with a deviation of doctrine because he doesn't have this creed or confession, which he is bound to if he's just thinking from the biblical text.

And so that scares people sometimes because sometimes we get a passage wrong.

But that's not because the passage is wrong.

Or maybe the passage isn't even difficult.

That might be because we have a bias.

It might be because of our cultural context, which we're not appropriately putting to the side, you know, so we do need to understand that that is a potential problem.

At least I think it's okay to say that, is that we need to get rid of our biases.

Because sometimes I've seen all sorts of things.

Like I've seen people argue that only you, if you go to a regular church, you're in sin.

Because the Bible only teaches house churches should be a thing, you know, And I'm not against house churches, but I'm just saying you can't argue from the Bible that if somebody goes to First Baptist on the corner, that they're deeply in sin or something like that.

But they arrived at that from just looking at all the house churches in the New Testament, and they said, hey, well, that's what I believe is mandated.

So there is a problem potentially with that.

And so we need to acknowledge that as being a possibility.

And the other thing about the potential problem is that if you're trying to take each detail of scripture seriously, it's difficult because you actually have to fit things together.

For somebody who's okay with spiritualizing a text, if there's something that kind of maybe doesn't contradict, but maybe there's a tension there, they're okay to resolve the tension, saying, well, that's not really what it means anyway.

It just is speaking broadly or just speaking in, you know, broad brush strokes.

And it doesn't want us to take it seriously with.

Or seriously would be too far.

It doesn't want us to take it literally, or it doesn't want us to take us specifically.

It just wants us to take it generally.

And so it's easy to get around those tensions that way.

But for.

For us who would want to take the.

The scriptures very specifically now, we have some tensions.

For example, to just show you what I mean by that, in Daniel, since we're there In Daniel, chapter 12, you have this interesting part, how the book ends.

In verse 11 and 12 of Daniel 12, it says from that time, from that time, that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up.

There shall be 1290 days.

Now, the immediately following verse, in verse 12, it says, Blessed is he who waits and arrives at 1335 days.

Now, you have two very specific timelines given there.

1290 and then 1335 days.

Now, what is it that happens at 1335 days?

We are not told.

But how many times I've been asked, saying, well, what happens after 1335 days?

Now, there's some good theories, I think, but the reality is that we're Just the ones who have the obligation to try to figure out what that is or to try to synthesize these time markers together.

And a different viewpoint might be able to say, ah, it's just saying they'll be blessing for a long time and that's good, or whatever you, how you want to do that.

But that's the challenge.

And the difficulty is that some of these things are difficult to work together.

Or another example would be working together the second coming passages and trying to figure out which, which passages deal with like rapture versus which passages deal with second coming.

I don't think that that's just a cakewalk.

I think that that is hard.

And the reason, the reason premillennialists argue about the timing of the rapture is because it's not a cakewalk.

People are arguing, no, these details should take priority and so it's a mid Trib rapture.

No, these details should take priority, which means that it's a post trib rapture.

No, these details should take a priority which means it's a pre trib rapture.

And those are healthy debates and good.

But that's part of the issue is that with some of these details we're trying to, to make sense of them.

That's why there are those debates and that's why we treat scripture seriously.

But for somebody who does not treat the details as seriously, they're willing to just broad brush them.

That's not going to be an issue.

And so that ends up being pretty difficult.

So that's just general comments, I suppose.

But if you're, if you're talking, can I talk about some specific passages that I think are strengths for that?

I think that would be, that'd be good.

So as far as like strengths, I think the Bible's storyline in general really supports the dispensational viewpoint.

Everybody's going to say that, but if you think about why, why Jesus has to reign from Jerusalem on earth, I think a dispensational viewpoint makes sense because it connects Jesus to Adam.

And Adam was given a mandate to rule the earth and he failed that mandate.

So Jesus actually has to rule on earth to fulfill what Adam was supposed to do.

And so as part of the kingdom, he's given that mandate to do that.

And so all the promises that were given to Israel are going to be fulfilled.

In actuality, I think that the Old Testament is heavily, heavily premillennial.

In fact, I think it was one of the stalwart post millennialists.

Lorraine Boettner, in his three Views Book, it was a three views book.

He was defending the post millennial viewpoint.

He and his quote gets shared all the time because it's just such a great example of somebody who's honestly approaching this.

He says if we take the Old Testament prophecies literally, then we have to take a premillennial viewpoint.

It's going to wind up in a kingdom for Israel.

That's just the natural consequence.

So you basically have to give the whole Old Testament to the premillennialist.

Because if you take an originalist hermeneutic, that's just what you wind up with.

And then I would say strengths for the premillennialist would be Acts 1 where the disciples say that at this time that you're going to restore the kingdom of Israel.

In Acts 3, Peter refers back to that, addressing Israel, saying, repent so that the times of refreshment might come and so that the Messiah might return from heaven who's appointed for you, and that the times of restoration might come.

So really clear premillennial passages in Acts 1, Acts 3, like very, very much highlighting that you have Matthew 19 where Jesus says, in the future, you who have followed me will reign on 12 tribes, talking to his disciples will reign on tribe 12 tribes when I sit on my glorious throne.

And then you couple that with Matthew 25, Jesus says, I will sit on my glorious throne in the future when I come with my holy angels.

So talking about the future.

And so again that just fits very well with a pre millennial viewpoint.

And then Romans 11, obviously nine through 11 in total.

But Romans 11 is just fits really clearly with the Old Testament picture of a restored Israel.

And then Revelation 20, 19, 20 as we talked about, fits really nicely with that so very, very obvious connection from Old to New Testament of a restoration of Israel, a kingdom that is connected to the return of the Messiah.

All of that is tied together very nicely.

And I'm going to also try to be fair and try to throw out some difficult passages here for a premillennial viewpoint.

Now I don't.

Obviously every viewpoint has the difficult passages and I think it's fine to acknowledge that.

But at the same time, I think every theological viewpoint comes up with ways to interpret those passages in light of not just the system, but in light of hopefully this would be my presupposition, hopefully in light of a originalist hermeneutic.

So there would be passages like Colossians where it says you've been transformed, formed from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

And that that's a present existence.

And so to believe in a future kingdom, you have to do something with that.

Now I think it's fine to just interpret that the way Paul talks about in Philippians, for example, about how we are citizens of heaven currently, even though we don't live in heaven, we belong to that kingdom, we belong to the citizenry in heaven.

And so I just, I, I don't think it's talking about a spiritual kingdom or anything like that.

I just think we are legitimately kingdom citizens now.

I just, I personally again, there could be debates about this.

Some dispensationalists are okay saying that the kingdom is here in spiritual sense now, but then there's going to be, you know, a physical kingdom coming later.

I actually just say I don't think the kingdom's here at all right now.

I look for a completely future kingdom.

But I'm okay talking about being a kingdom citizen right now because we are kingdom citizens and that is what we long for.

Our, our home is not bound up here in this world system.

It's bound up with our king who is currently in heaven.

And so we look for him to come back.

So I think a passage like Colossians would be a possible one where you're just, you're saying, okay, that might be kind of difficult.

Similar would be when John or when John relates Jesus conversation to Pontius, Paul, Pilate, and Jesus says my kingdom is not of this world.

So a lot of amillennialists will look at that.

Interestingly enough, post millennialists would probably side with the pre millennialist on this.

But a lot of amillennialists will argue and say, ha, See it's.

We're not looking for any physical manifestation of the kingdom.

But again, I think what he's talking about there is not so much that his, his kingdom is not going to come in physical form as much as it's the kingdom is not.

You know, he talks about my servants would fight like my kingdom doesn't come with the might of this world.

My kingdom comes with the might of the Father in the way that the Father designed the kingdom to come and that is the Son coming to conquer.

And so I think that that would be another passage, I guess the other ones that are thrown out there.

I think there are legitimate ways to interpret this from a premillennial viewpoint.

But these are the ones where in Acts 2 and Acts 15, you have, you have the apostles referring to respectively in Acts 2, you, they're referring to Joel 2, 28, 32.

And then in Acts 15 referring to Amos 9 and a few other passages actually.

And so some people would say, look, these are completely fulfilled now, which are prophecies concerning the kingdom and the, the revival of Israel.

So we know that because these are completely fulfilled, we know that there is no future fulfillment for these texts.

And I don't think that's a necessary conclusion from those, from those texts.

But I can acknowledge that if somebody did take that view, saying these passages mean that these, these prophecies are completely done away with now, that that would lead them predispose them to rejecting a premillennialism.

I just think that's not the wise approach to interpreting those passages, especially given the surrounding context of Acts 1 and 3.

So.

But those are, those are more difficult passages to work through.

I think that they have been worked through satisfactorily, but I think those would be the ones that people should be aware of.

Yeah.

And let me just say for any of the post mills on Mills, you know, if Peter is, well, if he's, you know, pouring some cold water on your theology.

Well, let me, let me help you with that.

You could just go full, full on to get yourself a nice cold plunge and you can do that from the Plunge company and get yourself a cold plunge because obviously if you're still stuck in that, you need to just get a dose of reality.

Cold plunging will do that.

Folks that are regulars here, you know that I do my cold plunge every morning.

Yes, 43 degrees every morning, even when it's 9 degrees outside five minutes wakes you up far more than coffee.

It is great for the health.

And they also have saunas.

So if you want the heat, they have those too.

Now we, a lot of people have said, hey, great products for at plunge.

They love them.

If you want to get one of their cold plunges or their saunas, just go to striving for eternity.org plunge but they are expensive and they have good quality stuff.

But some people have said, hey Andrew, is there something that you could do that's maybe a little bit better on the budget because you still want those health benefits of heat therapy and cold therapy?

Well, we did work with another company as well if you want to go on the cheaper side.

It's called the POD company.

They also have cold plunges.

They also have the saunas I'm actually trying out, just got it today day they have a portable sauna that has red light therapy and claims I'm going to test this but they claim that they can get up to 184 degrees in 10 to 15 minutes.

It is not infrared.

So I'm very curious to see the technology they're going to have for that.

So I'll probably report back in a future episode about that if it works well.

But there they are less expensive than the plunge company.

So you can go to strivingforaternity.org pod if you want to check that out.

So two, two different companies, same great health benefits.

But one thing that you are seeing is we're talking a lot about scripture and therefore let me recommend you to get Lagos Bible software.

You can get it if you go to lagos.com SFE SFE stands for Striving for Eternity.

And then you have a lot of tools at your fingertips.

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So it's now getting to be affordable.

You do the subscriptions.

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But you can get a lot of great books.

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So go to logos.comsf to get those discounts.

And so poor Peter hasn't listened enough that he was like wow, we just went into a camaraderie.

I didn't see that one coming.

That that's the fun of it.

Let's, let's get to a couple, couple of, of questions that did come up and then I want to get to.

There's some terminology we've been using that for some that a lot of people have lots of discussion.

What is rapture?

What is tribulation?

You know, what is, what are all those things?

So but some of the questions that, that I did put that I brought up here.

There is.

So there is a question about Daniel, since we're talking to Daniel, Hannah says if not brought up, what about the Image In Daniel 2?

All the kingdoms are literal physical kingdoms until the stone hits the hit the feet and grows into a non literal spiritual kingdom.

So I mean would that would be the obviously addressing the view that others would have where they're taking the image saying all those, you know, just, just like in the, in the 70 weeks.

It's literal, it's literal, literal.

And then that future one is not literal.

Right.

I think that's perceptive because I think there's a disconnect there if we take that view.

So I would argue that that is that we are supposed to take that literally.

And if you look at the history of interpretation for the stone in Daniel 2 and how it's interpreted, Christians are kind of mixed on how they interpret it, but a lot of people interpret it as the first coming of Christ.

And now we are living in that kingdom, but it's probably better to look for that stone to come as linked with his second coming.

And so that's what I would interpret that as, is when Christ comes and establishes his kingdom, there's going to be no mistaking it.

It's going to be very, very visible.

All right, and this we've talked about a bit, but John, who goes by Atomic Apologetics, says thoughts on Christians who say the church is now Israel.

All right, well, I did see that.

That same commenter said that I talk too much.

So he mentioned that I give way too long of answers.

No, that's fine.

I'll give way shorter.

No, no, no.

So.

So just so you realize, you know, we call him chicken man because he used to come in and he would be backstage and he'd just have his chickens all running around.

You could go as long as you want.

We like busting on John.

No, but I probably do talk too much.

So I appreciate if he, if he was mentioning that.

Yeah.

So it's very, it's very common to equate Israel with the church.

And, you know, we could go into some very specific reasons why that is not the case.

But I'll just give a really simple one, and that's in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel is given very specific covenantal curses for disobedience, and that happens to them.

And the prophets talk about a very specific future for the nation of Israel, and we should expect that to happen to them.

And there are plenty of passages where in both Old and New Testament, you have Gentiles and Israel talking or mentioned specifically.

I'll just mention one here.

And this is a really fun verse to throw out there that for people who say that the church and Israel are the same.

So in First Corinthians 10:32, Paul writes and tells the Corinthians give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.

So he differentiates three groups, the Jews, the Greeks, and the church.

So I don't want to argue with Paul.

I think that we have some different groups here.

Well, you're not arguing with Paul.

You're arguing with the Holy Spirit when you're arguing Israel.

That's true, you know, and I, I, that's not a position I want to hold, you know, be arguing against Holy Spirit.

So Wesley Dickens says this pre mill leads more people to pursue, pursue Judaism than the Ten Plagues.

How, how would you answer that?

Well, that's not true.

Well, although it's, Wait, I'm kind of confused, I guess, to pursue Judaism than the Ten Plagues.

Yeah, I don't know how the Ten Plagues people, I don't know how that fit in.

But yeah, but I think that was, I think it was supposed to be, that goes back to what we said at the beginning, like, you know, dispensationalism, the whipping boy of, of Reformed.

Right.

But I, I, I think it was just that maybe, maybe Wesley could correct us if I'm wrong.

Maybe it was meant as a, like a kind of an insult.

But, but there are people that claim that premillennialism or really dispensationalism leads people to, to Judaism.

I see.

Yeah.

Well, historically that's, that's just a historical.

Well, yeah, there's no, there's no evidence of that.

In fact, I don't know, maybe, maybe you know somebody, I don't know anybody who's gone from Christianity to Judaism from, from dispensationalism.

I'm sure there are people, I just don't know them.

But actually I was reading up on some of the history of dispensationalism just because it does get dragged under the bus.

And dispensationalists were on the front lines, both financially and manpower in running Jewish evangelism and pretty successfully, I might add, in the early 1900s.

And so there was, and in fact some of the, I mean people were just very, very, you know, all about like getting, getting the Jews saved and sometimes obnoxiously so, you know, I think we should be very careful in how we do that.

We don't want to offend needlessly our unbelieving neighbors.

But, but I just think that, yeah, it's kind of weird.

I, I suppose there are people that go from dispensationalism to Judaism, but that's not a necessary logical jump.

Usually people are just really passionate about seeing their, their Jewish neighbors become, become, put their faith in, in the Messiah and become Christians, you know.

Yeah.

And so he says to add on to it, he was saying, you, you cause folks to think it's better to be a Jew now than a Christian Christian.

He also said plenty of evidence of folks trying to adopt Judaism.

And I think what, I think I'm reading into it, obviously if he joined that, we could know for sure.

But I think what he's referring to is the Hebrew roots movement.

And when you look at the Hebrew roots, yet, you're going to see more of the Hebrew roots coming out of the people that would hold to a separation of the church in Israel and a dispensational view.

But one of the things that you have to do is it's, I think that as Wesley, you mentioned, you know, category error.

I think you, you're the one with the category error.

What is causing people to go into, whether it be Judaism or Hebrew roots?

Is it the dispensational theology or is it their spiritual pride of desiring to claim that they, as every, we see this throughout history, every group that tries to say they're, they're Israel, they're the priesthood, they're the lost tribes of Israel, there is a sense where people think that the Jewish people have some more spirituality.

I have this, I have this within a family, okay?

People who practice the Jewish laws, they feel that it helps them to be more spiritual.

Now, they're not going to the point where they're actually going to Judaism and Hebrew roots, but there are people that feel, it makes them feel more spiritual.

And there's others who, they go into that and they start going.

I mean, I remember a woman that was a security guard at a place where I worked, and she was telling me about a, a holiday that she was celebrating at her synagogue, which was, it's supposed Christian synagogue.

And she's telling me about all the, all the, the symbolism of Christ in this holiday.

And I'm like, I don't know any Jewish person that celebrates that.

And she's like, you're just jealous because I'm more Jewish than you.

And I think that's what Wesley may be referring to someone like that.

I'm like, I was actually born, raised Jewish bar mitzvah at Hebrew school for 10 years.

And you think you're more Jewish than me because you're celebrating something that Jewish people don't celebrate.

Okay, right.

Yeah.

You know, I think, you know, I think as, as you were talking there, I, I totally see, I totally could see that being an appeal to human pride.

In fact, I was reminded of Revelation 3 where, where you had a group that was identified as those who said that they were Jews, but they weren't.

They were lying.

And so from early on, you apparently had people who adopted Judaism but weren't Jews.

And so it, you know, I think that that, that definitely could be the case.

And I actually just got a question on my podcast not too long ago about a movement in the Midwest about where there were certain people who were trying to adopt Jewish laws and customs.

So that I, I didn't get too much into the question.

I. I didn't have time.

But that would have been interesting to look more into that because that might be similar to what you're saying.

So I like you're saying, though, I don't think that that's related to dispensationalism at all.

It's just related to sin and human pride and desire to be something you're not.

Yeah.

And so if you do tackle that on your episode.

Rob Solberg, R.L.

sarlberg.

He's got a book, Torahism.

And that is, that's the only book I know that deals with Hebrew roots.

And he calls it Torahism because it's, he's.

He's trying to grab all of these people that want to put themselves back under the Torah, under the law.

And so it does sort of include black Hebrew Israelites as well, because they kind of do that too.

And what do they are doing?

Argue.

They argue they're the Israelites.

Right.

I actually think that ever since Christ, you see groups that are trying to claim an authority and a spirituality that they are Israel, the Catholic Church, where I would argue that once Christ came, we no longer needed a priesthood because that's what the Old Testament looked forward to in the New Covenant is a, we wouldn't need a priesthood.

And so you end up saying, oh no, we have priests and we.

And, and they're trying to recreate the, the offerings, but in a different way.

And, and you have the, the Mormons that say they're the lost tribes.

You have the black Hebrew Israelites that want to go put themselves under law and create their own Hebrew language that you know, by the way, started in the fit in the the 60s in Harlem.

So just saying if, if the language started in Harlem, it's probably not from Israel.

Maybe, I'm guessing.

Right.

So, yeah.

And, and it is fine.

So one, one of the comments I see here from John, he says since we're talking about black Hebrew Israelites, he says, I remember when Andrew had a debate with the black Hebrew is right.

It was the e. It was an easy victory for Andrew.

And for folks who don't know the context of that one for years, it was actually Peter, like a year and a half that I had been challenging Any black Hebrew Israelite to debate me, to have a formal debate, and they never would do it.

And so we had three guys.

It was going to be three against one, because one of the things with black beard lights, they never go one on one one.

They need to work in a.

In a pack.

And so it was going to be three against one.

And I said, fine.

You know, and we had.

Moderator was all set up, and these three guys blocked both me and the moderator the, like, two days before the.

The debate was.

Which meant we couldn't give them the link to join the debate.

And they, of course, went off and said that we were so scared of them that we wouldn't give them the link to the debate.

Well, there was no way to give it to you.

You blocked us.

And the only way we had was.

Was Facebook.

Right.

And so what ended up happening was is I told the moderator, hey, let's have the debate.

And you guys could go back on this channel and.

And see this debate.

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna spill the beans on it.

But I told the moderator, let's do the debate.

I said, just in.

I'll, you know, I'll introduce myself.

I'll give my opening, and just let the black Israelites introduce themselves and give their opening.

And.

And, you know, John is saying, lol.

It was epic.

And.

And so what I did was the.

The moderator was like, what are you going to do?

I said, don't worry about it.

We.

We'll do it.

And so I gave my opening.

He said, okay, well, we're going to allow the black Hebrew Israelites to introduce themselves and give their opening.

And all of a sudden, I just popped up an empty chair, and I just said, here's all the black Hebrew Israelites willing to debate me.

That actually worked because the next week, we actually got someone that was willing to come on and do the debate.

And so we did do that debate the following week.

And, you know, Peter, a good way to know that somebody lost the debate, it's when everybody from their side tells you that he didn't do a good, good job.

You should be debating them or debating someone else.

Yeah.

And yet I kept saying, okay, you can come on.

Like, this is a.

This is a show.

Anyone can come in.

You go to apologetics live.com.

anyone can come in, ask any question you want to do a debate.

I mean, look, there's people that come in here and they are prepped for a debate.

We had the Jewish rabbi who came in ready to.

To debate me.

I didn't Know, I was debate that night.

It's okay, right?

I think he came in twice.

We had the, the guy from the Church of Christ who wanted to debate that baptism is necessary for salvation.

I didn't know we're doing a debate.

Okay, let's do it.

So that's.

This show you.

I'm not afraid of a debate.

So.

Yeah, but let me see.

So Wes, Wesley says this now.

He says, what did John the Baptist under inspirational Holy Spirit, when was the benefit of genetically connected to Abraham?

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question.

I think what he's referring to is it the baptism of.

Well, in Matthew 3 and there are other places as well.

But in Matthew 3, you know, he talks about how don't boast saying we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able to from these stones to raise up children of Abraham.

So in other words, the implication there is there's no benefit to being a son of Abraham there.

But that's, that's not the necessary logical connection.

In other words, it was the way I would say it is.

This way, it's the exact same as in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament Testament, being an Israelite was not enough to save you.

Being the Old Testament, being an Israelite was a great benefit in many ways, but it didn't save you and it didn't guarantee you righteousness or anything.

You still had to obey.

You still had to.

You still had to listen to what God had revealed.

And that's the same thing that John's saying.

It's nothing.

In other words, John isn't saying anything that the Old Testament prophets themselves hadn't said.

Where, you know, for example, in the Old Testament, the Israelites would say, we have the temple, we have the temple.

God would never hurt us.

And the prophets said, oh yeah, well, look what God did to Shiloh when they had the tabernacle.

And so this is a common theme.

And John being the premier prophet himself, he picks up on this, you know, just really challenging the people saying, listen, you can't trust in your identity.

That doesn't give you anything before Christ.

And sometimes this is something that gets thrown in for a confusion of dispensationalism, is that dispensationalists don't believe that Jewish people are saved differently than Christians.

Everyone is only saved by faith in repentance from your sins and putting your trust in the Messiah in Christ.

And so these people that John's talking to, same thing.

They don't get a free pass because they're Jews.

In fact, I always tell people, you can disagree with me if you want on this, Andrew, but I always tell people that when the Jews rebel against God in the Old Testament, New Testament or even today, they are twice guilty because they have so much light, so much revelation that God has given to them.

And so it's really sad they don't get a free pass saying, oh, they can do whatever they want and God still pleased with them.

It's just epically sad that they've actually rebelled against the full revelation that he's given to them in, in the Scriptures.

And so, yeah, I think what John says is completely accurate, is that you can't put, you can't trust in your Jewish identity to save you.

That's not going to do anything.

You're a sinner, you're going to be judged and condemned unless you repent.

And that's something that we would tell any Jewish individual.

There's no one Jewish way and one Gentile way to be saved.

It's the same way.

And there will come a future, Zechariah says, when the nation of Israel will look on the one whom they have pierced, and they will mourn, mourn as one mourns for an only child, and they will repent and turn from their sins.

And we look forward to that.

Yeah, I would say, I think a lot of people think because so few Jewish people seem to get saved, it's, it is a small remnant, as scripture says.

And so I think that people are more.

When they ask the question of, they ask it to me often is how did you get saved like it was?

And my answer is always the same way everyone else did.

Yeah, right.

I didn't get saved any different.

But what I think they're, what.

The reason they're asking is because it's like, wow, you know, so few people.

A lot of people come out of Catholicism or something like that, but not Judaism.

But I, I would agree with you.

The benefit I've, I've said this often is I think the benefit of being raised Jewish is the fact that I, I identify and understand Jewish idioms.

Hebrew poetry, you're growing up with that.

So some things come easy to me in interpreting scripture because I'm familiar with it.

I use this example all the time.

But I remember the first time my pastor was preaching through the passage where Jesus says, no man knows the day or the hour, Only the father knows, knows.

And I think I messed up the, the, I didn't do it exactly.

But, but you understand the passage and, and so, so many people.

You know, my pastor was spending all this time saying how Jesus could know something in his humanity that he doesn't know his deity and.

Or vice versa.

And, you know, in explaining this, how.

How could it be Jesus have the two natures but know something and not know something?

And I just, I was really pumped and I said, why.

Why didn't you just explain that it's a wedding feast?

He's like, what?

Yeah, that's a, That's a.

An idiom that we use to refer to a wedding feast.

The idea of it is that you should be living, like, any moment something can happen.

And he's like, I didn't know it was.

And it's like a common thing.

Like, to me, it was just like, duh, you spent 20 minutes explaining something.

But why do you.

You know, there are things that are idioms that I, I found I would pick up on that.

It's like, oh, yeah, I see.

I see that.

And others don't pick up on it.

It's like if.

Just like when we had a Japanese student living in our house and there's.

I use a lot of idioms, and she would just be like, or better yet, my poor wife.

My poor wife was.

She's.

My wife is from Hong Kong.

And so we.

We do marriage counseling.

And my pastor is.

Goes, he's like, trying to explain to my wife that, like, you know, you're not going to be able to change Andrew.

He's just.

He's going to be just nuts all the time.

And he goes, you.

You could be trying to, you know, work on him till the cows come home.

And she's like, she has this puzzled look on his face, on her face.

And he's like, what's wrong?

And she goes, what do cows have to do with this?

Right?

Because she didn't get the idiom right.

And so I, I do think that's the.

But.

But I agree with you.

That's the extent of it.

There's no extra benefit.

Like, we don't get saved different.

We're not.

I mean, I, I will say that I was raised believing that just being.

Being Jewish, I was automatically going to heaven.

But it's not true.

Right, Right.

So, all right, let me see if we can get to some of these others.

And, and this is an encouraging comment that John had Apollo Atomic Apologetics says this.

I gotta admit, I gave up eschatology years ago because it got too confusing and just stirred up a lot of division.

Okay, what advice could you give someone like me?

Yeah, so the fact that he's in here wanting to discuss and the fact that he wants to get some advice, I think is, is helpful because I think it is encouraging.

Yeah, no, that's a great question.

It's so practical too.

A lot of times people just ask, well, like, so what?

Like why, why should I care about these things?

And I guess there's, there's, there's probably multiple reasons, but I'll give just a couple that I find particularly helpful on this.

So the one thing is that it really does boil down to the glory of God.

And what I mean by that is so it's hard for us naturally to not be so egotistical and self centered.

But we really need to understand life is not about us, it's ultimately about God's glory.

And one of the reasons God tells us what's going to happen is so that when it does happen, we can say he was faithful to what he did.

Now if you just ignore what God says about the future and it happens just the way that he said it did, you don't have the privilege of seeing that you don't have the privilege of being able to give God glory that way.

It's kind of like if you, God's going to do some amazing things.

And it's so encouraging when you pray and ask God to do that and he does it.

But might God have done that anyway if you didn't pray?

Maybe.

I mean, he could have blessed you anyway.

He could have given you something.

But would you have known that it was from him in the same way?

No, there's something different when you ask God and God says, yes, I will give it to you, here it is.

And in a similar sense, when we study what God's going to do.

And by the way, you're saying, well, where are you getting this?

I'm drawing this directly from Ezekiel, because throughout Ezekiel's prophecies about what is going to happen in the future, he specifically says, it's for the sake of my holy name that I'm to going, going to do this.

It's not.

In fact, he literally says it's not for your sake.

And I think that's so funny.

He's talking to Israel, he's like, it's not for your sake.

Don't get these pigheaded, you know, arrogant ideas.

It's not because of you, it's because of me.

And so he said, so I just think that's so important is that studying eschatology is primarily about glorifying God, being able to Say God has promised to do this now watch him be faithful.

And that's why I think it's just such a great opportunity to give God glory and to be standing there and say, listen, God has said this and God is one who keeps his words and his promises, and that's why we can have confidence in the promises God made us, etc.

And so that's one thing, and that's a very real thing.

But secondarily, there is actually very real personal impact to us in the sense that on the one hand, the way John says it, I think it's in First John 3, he says, everyone that has this hope, talking about Christ's return purifies himself.

And I remember reading that for the first time, or at least realizing it, maybe I'd read it before and just realizing it as I was meditating on that, that what he's talking about is understanding and looking for the return of Christ, knowing what that's going to look like, knowing that that's imminent, knowing that it could come anytime, that has a purifying effect in our lives.

So there is, there is a very real thing.

I mean, actually, I don't know how some post millennialists deal with this.

This would be interesting, but, but I suppose this wouldn't be a motivating factor for them at all, which is really a shame.

And this is why I would be pretty passionate about getting your eschatology right, is that unless you know, Christ could return imminently, like he, like he could be here tomorrow.

What's the motivation to living a holy life now?

People say, oh, there's lots of motivation.

Yes, I agree, I do agree.

But there is something special about knowing that you're, knowing that you could come face to face with your master in the morning.

I mean, that's powerful.

I mean, there's something real about, I've talked about with some older saints about something special that happens when you get older.

Just knowing my time is short.

Well, if you actually could have that view, even when you're younger, think about the kind of life that you would live.

Having this, this hope is a purifying hope.

And I think that's a very real tangible effect.

So it's not just about studying Israel for the sake of Israel or anything like that, but it's the deeper consideration of what's going on in looking ahead to Christ's return.

So those would be two things that I think would be very important.

There could be other ones, I'm sure as well, if you wanted to add some, Andrew, but I Think those two things I often think about.

Well, one of the questions I was trying to end each of these shows with, and so now would be a good time, is just to open up and say, so how does pre.

You know, in this case, the dispensational premillennialism, how does that affect your life?

How do you.

How does it affect your walk with Christ?

Because each of the ways, you know, I mean, look, Revelation is the only book that promises a blessing to the readers, right?

And I've always been like, huh, okay.

Because it's one of the more confusing ones, right?

So how does this.

I mean, how do you live it out?

How does it affect your daily walk?

Yeah, no, that's a great question.

Well, I think on just a very practical level, I kind of hinted at this in the last answer, but I just think it really does motivate me to live a whole holy life and to be found pleasing to the Lord.

You know, it's interesting.

The pejorative a lot of people claim about dispensationalists is they'll equate it with the pre Trib rapture, and they'll say pre Trib rapture basically just teaches you to be an escapist.

Dispensationalists are escapists.

They just are trying to check out of here as fast as possible.

They're not looking ahead to anything.

They're trying to just get out of here because the world is going downhill, and they just.

They don't want to be involved with this, so they're not going to work for cultural betterment, etc.

Well, that may be true to a certain degree, but I think that's sinful.

If somebody had that attitude, what I.

What the way it affects me.

And there was a famous supreme millennials, DL Moody, who you people recognize because of his evangelism crusades and things like that.

He was often on record saying that his eschatology caused him to work three times as hard.

And I think that that's true.

Like, if you have a true understanding of the fact that the king could return and what's he going to find you doing?

That just really motivates you.

It motivates you in evangelism.

It motivates you to.

To be faithful to the commands God has given you.

That is praying, reading your.

Reading the word, modeling Christ likeness for your family, keeping short accounts of your sin, reconciling when necessary.

Just knowing that, hey, I don't want any sin to be here.

I want to.

I want to be pursuing holiness so just very practically, that does affect me in looking forward to Christ's return and I hope it affects all of us.

But then also I know that this is, this is where everyone would say the same thing.

But I'll say it just because I think it's true for the dispensational prevolidal is that I do think it gives me a confidence in knowing Scripture is trying to read it consistently.

And what I mean consistently is you gave the example of your friend who was spiritualizing consistently.

Now I think that we have to jettison that as a possibility because that's not how communication takes place in normal human communication, but it gives me confidence in God's word.

If I'm trying to consistently use the same original as hermeneutic in one text, another text, and another text, it helps me understand that God's not just flipping a switch, changing the way he's communicating.

And that encourages me saying, let's just say worst case scenario, this is kind of weird thing to think, but if I get to heaven and I find out I was wrong, God says, sorry, you were wrong on this and I'm sure I'm wrong on something.

And somewhere, of course we all are.

But if God says, yeah, you really blew it on this, the amillennialists were right or whatever, I mean the fail safe to me is that okay, praise the Lord, thanks, I guess I blew it and that's fine.

But I was trying to be consistent with what I'd seen you yourself do in the Incarnation with Christ, how he communicated and how he explained things.

And so that's what I was just trying to follow that pattern.

I was trying to follow the prophets, the apostles and Christ himself.

And so if I end up getting it wrong, that's a better philosophy, I think, than to get to heaven and have God say, why didn't you just read it like normal communication, like I designed the world to function?

I don't want to get there and say, yeah, I really should have taken that common sense approach.

That's kind of just.

Well, I think it's a safer, I mean I think that I, I believe dispensationalism is not going to say thus says Lord something he didn't say.

It's, it's going to be a safer he.

Maybe God meant more than what we sure think, but at least I, I would argue it's a safer position because I'm not saying the Lord said something he didn't.

I'm, I might not be saying everything he says, but I'd rather be.

I'd rather not say everything he said said than say he said something he didn't say.

Just saying.

But you know, I, I think that that's a key element though with dispensationalism is the fact when we look at Covenant theology versus dispensationalism, Covenant theology would see the purpose of scriptures as being Christocentric.

It's all about Christ.

We would look at it as the all for God's glory.

Okay?

It's doxological.

It's about God's glory.

And therefore we're looking through the whole Bible to see God being glorified in it.

And so what I end up seeing is, I think that a lot of it is, it's to what you had said.

A lot of it is if you knew this was your last 24 hours on the earth, would you live differently?

Right?

People that get, go to a doctor, find out that they have a cancer, they're going to be dead in six months, what do they do?

They start calling people that they need to reconcile with because they know life is short.

Well, the dispensational premillennial view says we should live every moment as if now could be that moment.

And that causes us to, it should at least cause us to live like, okay, we gotta, we, we got to get right with people.

We got to, you know, share the gospel with people.

We got to do.

We gotta live every moment as if it's our last.

Now that doesn't say others can't do that.

But.

So let's let me get to a couple others while we have a few minutes that I wanted to get to.

Well, one actually is, is, is son that was brought up in there, some decision discussion.

I think not all Israel is Israel.

So let's, let's discuss this because this is a big one that we have come up.

How would you respond to that?

I mean, I agree not all Israel is Israel in the sense that, I mean, if, if you look at the context there, I think what Paul's talking about there is not everyone who identifies as Israel, who identifies as Jewish stands for what God wants Israel to be.

So in other words, you have a large circle of who Israel is or who the Jews are.

But the people who are obedient and not rebellious or who are obedient and not rebellious is a very small subset of that.

So it would be kind of like the way.

And I've actually used this before and I've heard lots of people use it before, is we've talked about fellow Americans who stand up against American ideals and say they're not real Americans.

I mean, yes, they may have a passport that says they are American, but they're not American.

I mean, they are communist socialists, like they're not American.

Okay, Are you referring to aoc?

No comment.

Yeah.

So I think, I think that's what Paul's talking about there.

The problem is, of course, a lot of people try to go beyond what Paul says and says that what he's saying is that the reverse is also true, that gentiles are also Israel.

But that's not what he says.

He just says not all who are Israel or not all Israel is Israel in the sense that there is a, there is a circle within a circle.

You don't add something else into the circle, if that makes sense.

That's how I take it, at least.

Yeah, and you might have heard me say this on Keith's program, but I don't know what, whether you agree or disagree with it.

You know, I know the other gentleman that we had on there didn't like this, this illustration, but the, the, for me, the way I see it, I, I, I go back to the way, you know, in, in church history, right, during the Middle Ages, there was the discussion of what is the church.

And we got into delineating the, the visible local church versus the invisible universal church.

And so the, the local visible churches, that gathering on Sunday, that's made up of, of believers and unbelievers, where the invisible universal church is only believers everywhere in the world.

And we understand that distinction with the church.

I see the same distinction with Israel.

You have national Israel.

You want to call that the local visible Israel versus spiritual Israel.

You want to call that the universal, you know, invisible Israel.

But it's the same, same kind of idea.

You have a nation of people that are made up of believers and unbelievers.

Just because they're Jewish doesn't make them saved.

So there's believers and unbelievers in the nation that gather, but there's those that are only the Israel that's spiritual.

Now, I don't know.

What would you think about that, Peter?

Peter?

It's something that, for me to make sense of things, I like to compare to something that we agree on to, you know, to, to make sense of things.

I don't know if you, you have thoughts on that, maybe you'll correct me and I'll have to throw that out altogether.

You know, it's funny, I, I remember you giving that illustration, but then I'd forgotten So it's like I heard it again for the first time.

So yeah, I honestly haven't thought about it too much.

It doesn't seem problematic to me.

I mean it does seem analogous in many ways.

So I think, I think all illustrations could probably fall apart somewhere, but it seems like it works well to me.

Yeah.

All right, so another, another thought that I had, someone made a comment about early on.

Hannah mentioned something that I wanted to bring up.

May take it not the way she was doing it, but she said Gabriel said to Jesus, Mary's child would rule on David's throne and that would be on earth.

You know, folks who, who, you know, if you think back when you, if you watch, if you're a regular viewer of this show, you remember that one of the co hosts, Drew, who was at that time post Millennial, I had done an episode because a friend of mine, Jim Osman from Kootenay Community Church, Resurrection Sunday, made an off handed comment.

This was not even in his notes, but it struck me so much that I called him up and was like, let's discuss this, unpack this more.

But he made the argument that when you look at the promises of the Davidic kingdom being a literal throne, it is only premillennialism that could fulfill the Davidic covenant.

None others can fulfill that in what David was promised.

And it was just like this offhanded comment.

And if and Drew wanted to not really debate, they had a discussion and Drew ended up on that show.

He didn't just unfortunately didn't go pre Millennial, but he did agree that Jim had a really good point with it and it was really hard to argue against it.

And I think that that has been a key element that, that I've argued for is like, okay, so you're Amil, your post mill.

What do you do with the Davidic covenant?

Now, by the way, it might sound weird because dispensationalists get accused of not believing in covenants.

No, we hold to all the covenants, not just three that aren't actually in the Bible.

We hold to the, the, the seven that are.

You know, I always say that better name for disbelief dispensationalists, because at least I'm sure there's some dispensationalists that hold to a mandatory seven dispensations or something like that.

But I think a better name for a dispensationalist would be Biblical Covenantalist.

But that probably won't fly just because people will think that we're making fun of covenant theologians.

If we do that.

But a dispensationalist really does pay very close attention to covenants.

It's just the biblical ones.

Yeah, and, and the argument, I mean, I made this argument covenantal soul all the time is the fact that I think a dispensationalist holds to the covenants more so because what defines each of the dispensations, a covenant.

That's what gives the new instruction.

That's what gives the, That's.

So we hold to those.

And so Wesley, and Wesley, I, I'll just give this out there is.

You are more than welcome to come on in here any, any week that you want, if you want to.

I mean, it seems like you got some really strong views against dispensationalism.

I kind of like discussions with people that have a strong view.

If you want to come in one week, if you want, if you want more than just a few minutes, you, you know, you can give you an hour, two hours.

But yeah, let, let, you know, let's talk.

But he asked, do, do, do you agree with Andy Wood's statement the Abrahamic covenant granted to Israel, unconstitutional, sorry.

Unconditional and perpetual ownership of the blessing of land, seed and blessing, which is a blessing of blessing.

He said, he paraphrased.

Now, first off, I don't know where Andy said that, so I, I'm not going to respond to what Andy may or may not have said.

I, I don't know that I agree with everything there, because if you say perpetual.

Well, we know that part of God's judgment on Israel is that they were not in the land.

I mean, there was always some Jewish people in the land.

Okay, Any, anyone that wants to argue, well, the, the Palestinians were there, you know, before 1948.

Just remember that every Jewish person in that land before 19, 1948 was called Palestinian.

Okay?

There was no Palestinian state ever.

There's no Palestinian language, there's no Palestinian money, and there's no Palestinian culture.

Okay, there's different cultures in that land.

But, so I don't know that I would agree that it's a perpetual.

And I don't know what the blessing of the blessing would be.

So I, I, it's hard to answer because I, I don't know the context of the statement, but I would say that when it comes to the fact that there is a promise to Israel, that promise is one that is still future because it's something that was promised, literally.

And that promise has not been fulfilled yet.

So therefore the only way that that promise could be fulfilled in A literal sense would be that God is going to do something with Israel.

I do not believe in the God of the Quran.

I don't.

Do not believe in a God that deceives.

So I don't believe that God would in the Old Testament say I want you to, I want you to.

I'm going to convince you that everything is literal and then in the New Testament say gotcha.

It was all really just spiritual.

I just don't believe in a God that does that.

But your thoughts, Peter, if you have any.

No, I think I would agree.

It's hard to make an assessment on someone's statement out of a, out of a context.

But I'm sure like I had some similar questions about I don't know what he meant by perpetual.

And I also don't know what he meant by unconditional because even though there are parts that are unconditional in some sense, there's still conditions that are attached to the Abrahamic covenant.

Like it's not.

So I guess I just have to see what he meant by that.

But yeah, I think just on its face there were some, some questions on how I would probably phrase some things.

Yeah, I would need to.

Okay, so he's, he's saying here he's saying Andy woods chapter from his book what should we think about Israel?

So I guess he wrote a chapter in there.

So I, I haven't read it.

So I, I don't know the context of it.

But yeah, so sorry about that.

Just a couple last things that we have here.

Hannah says this kind of bringing us back to the beginning, Peter.

Dispensationalism has been getting a lot of flack from everyone lately.

So I don't, so I don't think we should worry about making fun of others belief systems.

But yeah, I mean this has been a thing is that dispensationalism does get a lot of.

Well, like I said, it's the whipping boy from.

For many reformed folks.

Yeah, it's so true.

I'd say.

Well, I'd say it this way, it's true.

Dispensationalism has been kind of viewed as the genesis or the source of all evil right now, which is just irresponsible and not correct.

But at the same time I don't think we should be motivated to do unto others as they have done unto us.

I think.

You know, I just appreciate how even in the, in the comments I, I've loved just seeing, you know, I, I saw at least one post mill mention that they were postmill and, and you know, there were a variety of eschatological views represented and I hope, you know, it's.

Sometimes I don't want to come across as, as the fact that I hate these other systems or I have you know, very, very much genuine love for brothers and sisters who hold these viewpoints.

And I don't think we're gonna, I don't think when we get to heaven for example that Jesus will be upset with us if we show some kindness and gentleness to those who disagree with us.

I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say that now I think we can be passionate.

In fact, I really respect Andrew how you have even invited those who disagree with you to just like be passionate and talk about those things.

And I can tell that you're very difficult to offend and that's, that's just really cool.

So that's, that's awesome.

I just wish we disagreed more on more things apparently so that we could talk about those things.

But it's, I think that Christian character ought to be marked by a gentleness toward those who oppose with you now on certain things maybe you have to be harsh because it's, it's a gospel first tier issue or something.

But listen, like we can really get along well with each other on some of these issues but unfortunately I do think it is a problem on both sides.

But I do think that the majority of the problem is coming from non dispensationalists right now trying to blame dispensationalists for so many problems that are not dispensationalists fault.

But that doesn't mean we need to respond in kind.

I would definitely say let's just do what Jesus taught us to do and be kind to one another.

Yeah, I mean I love the fact that week after week we have such variety within the comments because it shows that we, we have, I mean I really try to get away from tribalism and things like that and, and be respectful to one another.

And I, I think that shows by the number of people who, who tune in and comment, who tune in live I should say and comment because we get to see the discussion and, and, and, and sometimes it gets heated I will admit in this, in the chats but I'm glad that it, that we, people keep coming back anyway and, and continue discussing things and we, we should be doing that I think.

But you know, I, I, yeah, I.

Should add too that there was a follow up comment that apparently that was said in humor which.

Yeah, makes sense.

So Kathy says thank you for a good show, Andrew and Dr. Gaiman, very helpful and good dispensational answers.

She also says, I appreciate Dr. Damon's attitude and his slow, very gracious, very gentle.

Thank you.

So some things for you there that people are appreciate, appreciative of you in the way that you're presenting.

And I think that I, I.

Look, we're all going to be wrong in some areas.

Theologically, we don't know where, because if we did, we would change if we're going to be honest.

And so we need to realize that Christ is going to correct all of us.

Okay.

I hope that, I really hope that these, these five weeks we've been doing, it's been helpful for, for you folks.

I mean, granted, this is probably the only week where I've been a little bit more, more defensive in the view because it's the one that I hold where the others I really haven't, I haven't really, you know, really agreed, disagreed too much with, with the different guests that we had on because I want you guys to hear them in their own words.

My, my goal is that you would actually dig into the scriptures.

That's really the goal.

That you hear the strengths and the weaknesses of each and they would cause you to get into the word of God and research that.

Peter can give all the words, I could give all the words.

And that doesn't mean anything.

It's the word of God that matters.

And so don't take it because someone makes really persuasive arguments.

The question is, what does God say?

It's not how persuasive an argument someone makes.

I mean, I can tell you there's rabbis who make, make really, really persuasive arguments and do all kinds of gymnastics to make things sound good.

And you sit there and go, wow, that seems amazing.

And yeah, but it's just not biblical, right?

So we just got to be careful that.

Now let me, let me just throw this up there so folks, can, can be praying.

John did ask.

He said, andrew, please pray for my wife and I.

We were both homesick with COVID So if you guys would pray for John and his wife, that would be appreciated by.

Well, he and his wife especially, but all of us here as well.

So Peter, let me give you the, the last words, anything that, any last comments you want to make, any, any things you want to promote, anything that you're, you're doing.

I think there's, I think there may be some conference coming up in October even pretty soon.

Ah, yes.

Yeah, we have our Shepherd's 360 conference in October, October 12th to the 14th.

Thanks for mentioning that.

The yeah, that's in Cary, North Carolina.

If anyone's around or wants to make the trip over, it's going to be on Perseverance in the Christian life this year.

So excited for that.

I have some, some people like Joel Bey, Alex Montoya, couple other people.

It's yeah, just really looking forward to that and being a part of that.

So yeah, other than that, I just.

Thanks for the.

Thanks for the good time.

Thanks for those who have tuned in to kind of share their questions.

And you know, I just want to echo what you said and just encourage people to get into the Word and, and just really examine those presuppositions on hermeneutics and and how God communicates.

Does he communicate the same way we do or is there a difference?

And that's going to largely direct.

I would say if you're really, really wanting to dive into like examining the presuppositions and want kind of like college level treatment of this issue.

My favorite book on hermeneutics is the Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers by Abner Chow.

So Abner Chow chou he he goes through kind of a biblical theological look of Old and New Testament saying the prophets interpreted the Bible this way, the apostles interpreted the Bible this way, Jesus interpreted the Bible this way, so should we.

And so I think it's very, very good.

And you don't have to be a dispensationalist to appreciate it, but he just makes a very compelling case for how we ought to interpret scripture.

So I always tell people if you want to so you want some steak to chew on, get that book and give it a read.

Excellent book.

And I also want to recommend the Bible Sojourner to you guys.

Check that out.

You can find it@christianpodcastcommunity.org if you can't find it on your apps, you could follow it there.

I do encourage you even if you may not be a dispensationalist.

Peter goes through just detailed explanations of things with be there passages of scripture or topics.

At least if nothing else it will get you thinking.

So check out the Bible Sojourner with that.

Let me give some things where I will be out speaking and I do have I will give a I'm going to say this now before I get into speaking events.

I'm going to give a correction on a speaking event and just say someone thought they were going to fool me and I'm not Easily fooled.

Yes.

I have to make a correction on a speaking event, but I will be out in Washington, Indiana, September 5th to 7th.

Powerhouse Ministries is having a conference out there.

And I will be.

That will be a.

Excuse me, that.

That's going to be covering.

My topic is going to be dealing with.

I'm trying to look up my topic now because I forgot which, which all of them are.

My topic is focused on Christ's sovereign.

Christ is sovereign over man, mankind for all of life.

And so that, that will be what I will be covering there.

The following weekend, September 11th to the 15th or 14th, I will be at the roadmap for revival.

That's Jeffrey Rice's conference.

Myself, James White, Keith Foskey, several others will be there.

And that will be on revival.

My topic there will be on the revival of faithful men, of faithful preachers.

So in, in the slew of men that we have seen fall in the last few years, that is a need for faithfulness, especially at a pulpit that same weekend.

So that's going to be in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

But if you're not, if you're on the east coast and can't make it to Tullahoma, Tennessee, at my home church, Oxford Valley Chapel, Aaron Brewster, who's one of our speakers, will be at my church.

And we're north of Philadelphia that same weekend, September 12th to 14th.

Just go search for Oxford Valley Chapel and you could get the details of that.

He's going to be speaking.

He's going to be doing a whole weekend seminar.

So he's going to be talking about really our responsibility to God, our responsibility to, to the unbelievers, to the church, to our family.

So it's going to reach every area of life for whether new believers or people who've been walking with Lord for a long time now.

I said that I have to make a correction and that someone tried to fool me.

I mentioned on a previous episode I think that I was invited to go to the uk.

I was excited to thought of returning to the UK to speak again.

I haven't been there since before COVID and got an invitation, did what we usually do, that we sent the thing saying here's the speaker form.

They filled out the speaker form and something just wasn't right.

And what wasn't right was that I always want to talk to the pastor or the host to work through topics.

It's not enough for me that they just say, hey, talk on this.

The, the, the thing came in saying, hey, you know, we'll pay for your flight and your hotel and all that, you know, here's the conference.

Look up the website.

And sure enough, the website has a conference.

Because I have been invited to two churches to speak overseas where there wasn't a conference on their website.

This one had one had the mention of the conference, but you know what?

It was lacking a church that's 350 years old, supposedly.

And there weren't any sermons on the website.

Yeah, so I, my background is cyber security.

So, yeah, I know my way around the Internet.

I literally track bad guys for a living for many years.

Okay.

And so the reality is, is that this website that was sent had been created the first day it had its first day on the Internet was June 5th of this year for a church that claims 350 years of history.

And so.

And the first thing that they put on it was this conference.

So, yeah, unfortunately I was hoping I would be able to, to return to England and maybe see some folks that I haven't seen for well over probably about like seven years or so.

But I will not be going if there's.

Unless someone else has a church in England wants to have me come.

But that event is, well, as far as I could tell, bogus.

And because I kept asking to meet with the pastor and yet has not heard from them since, so.

But hey, who, whoever it is, if you're, if you're watching this, just know that, yes, you did try to be smart.

And there's a way to register a domain and keep it private so that people, people can't see who owns it.

So kudos for you for doing that.

But did you know that with that always comes an abuse line?

Yes.

So yes, Namecheap.

Legal.

Legal did get an email from me.

They do know that you're trying to con people into buying flights to go to the UK and buy hotels and then find out that there's nothing there.

I wasn't fooled.

Too bad on you.

But I do want to prevent you from doing it from others.

So, yes, we did get legal involved.

Hopefully they'll take you down and they'll know.

They will know who you are.

Just so saying we might not, but namecheap does so just the way bad guys do do things.

Right?

I still don't know.

Is it an atheist?

That's where I'm curious.

Is it an atheist that's doing their games or is this just a professing Christian that doesn't like me very much?

It could be anyone.

But so with that, Peter, thanks for coming in.

I think you did a masterful job as you do on the Bible, Sojourner.

A masterful job every, every time you do an episode.

So thank you very much for coming in and explaining the, the biblical.

I mean the dispensational premillennial view.

Well, it's, it's a, it's a privilege, Andrew.

Thanks for having me on.

So.

Oh, okay.

This would be a great comment to end on.

I just, I saw the beginning of it.

We'll see.

I didn't read the whole thing, but Wesley, Wesley says my pastor is unashamedly pre mill dispensational and it appears to be a prerequisite for membership and teaching.

I have, I have the benefit of being challenged to think through what the scriptures say.

That is a good thing.

So I, I appreciate that you're, that you're dis, you're not in agreement with them, but you're still there studying.

That's great.

That's a good thing.

So next week I don't have a guest or a topic as of yet, but there will be, I will just say there was going to be some interruption possibly in August just because of the fact that I am moving somewhere mid August and there's going to be some disruptions, I'm sure in September because I'm traveling, I think like every week in September.

But we will have some topic.

If not, we'll just continue in our study as we've been doing, of taking tackling different apologetic issues that are often come up and we'll, we'll tackle that.

So we'll, we'll see what we have for next week.

But until then, remember to make today.

Sorry I messed it up.

Say it every week and I messed it up this week.

Strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye now.