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Did the Early Church Believe in the Rapture? | Lee Brainard | The Week in Bible Prophecy
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A
The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers Podcast.
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B
Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the podcast today. Mondo Gonzalez, here in studio with Lee Brainer. Welcome, Lee, Mondo.
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A
It's good to be with you guys again and what a topic to talk about.
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B
Yeah, this is a great topic because we see the confusion out there as it relates to dispensationalism, kind of a big word. People wonder, well, what the heck does that mean? And there's, there seems to be a lot of, of hat whether you use a word like dispensationalism or even Zionism, as we not only do we see it in the Christian church, but we see it through the political. We see it a little bit with certainly with Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens, some of the others that are become very anti Israel. Is that what you're seeing?
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A
I see the same thing. And I think we're going to see this anti Israel, anti Zionist, anti Jewish spirit continue to increase in America as we get towards the end of the age. Because as we know, one of the very signs that you've come right up to the end of the edge of the world is that the whole world is going to hate Israel for Christ's sake.
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B
And so, you know, on that note, I heard one person say, give me any evidence at all of that claim. What biblical evidence would you have? I got my own views. But what biblical evidence would you have that there's hatred at the end of the age of the Jews? Specifically, what scripture comes to mind?
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Well, in the Gospels we read in several passages that you shall be hated of all nations or all men for my name's sake.
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Was he speaking only plain devil's advocate?
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Yeah.
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Was he speaking only to the Jews standing in front of him, or was he speaking to the church or believers in general?
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Well, I think he was definitely addressing the people and nation of Israel, the Jews. It was in a context talking about the coming tribulation. But it's also, I think, perfectly legitimate to take and lift that principle up and apply it to Christians because we bear the same testimony.
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B
Yeah. And I look and see when you come to like Zechariah 12, right at the end you have, I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone and all nations will come against it. You're like, well, that sounds pretty clear. Right. As it relates to that. I also see too, Even in Zechariah 14, there's a great war where Jesus is appearing and there all the nations are gathered together. Even when we talk about Armageddon, where are they gathered? Well, they're Gathered in Israel. Right. And whether you're at Megiddo or whether you're down south in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, lots of argument on where Armageddon is, but nevertheless, they're there. And then we see in Zechariah or in Revelation 12, what is the devil doing? Right. He's going after the Jews. That's right. So, I mean, there is definite evidence.
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A
Oh, absolutely. You can't miss the anti Semitism, anti Zionism in the Bible unless you intentionally miss it.
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B
Yeah. Or if you try to say that's been fulfilled. Well, the other thing too, that comes up and what we want to discuss today is help to define some terms, because I love friendly discussion or debate even. I have a lot of friends. We interview people who are covenant theologians. Maybe they're amillennial. They don't believe in a physical millennium. I want to make sure I represent them right, because amillennial means non millennium. Like an atheist, an A in the front is a denier of the word. But amillennialists, they believe in a millennium. Okay. But it's not a physical one.
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That's right.
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It's a spiritual one. And it's not necessarily even a millennium, because millennium is thousand years. But these are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Right. We love them and we're going to spend the millennium with them and I think a physical one. But they will often position themselves. And we're going to unpack this as being anti dispensationalism. Well, first of all, what in the world talk about just the word itself and dispensationalism as a system. You hear that phraseology, too. What does it mean? What does dispensationalism mean? And let's unpack that.
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Well, first of all, I want to make sure that people understand that dispensationalism is not a synthetic system that you take and you place on the Bible and you force the Bible to fit the system. Dispensationalism is simply a hermeneutical concept, a hermeneutical approach to the Scriptures. You start with the literal hermeneutic, the historical, grammatical hermeneutic, where you consistently, yeah, you're going to be consistent about it. You're going to let Israel be Israel, you're going to let the church be the church. You're going to trust the plain statements about the tribulation, about the Antichrist, about a millennium, about the thousand years, about the arrival of the kingdom at the second Coming. You take all this at face value, that's the foundation of the whole thing. It's really how you approach the Bible. And then we build on top of that with the outcome of that hermeneutic. And so we'll say, okay, if we follow this hermeneutic, we're going to have a clear distinction between Israel and the church. God has one new covenant program that he's working through Israel and there's an aspect of that new covenant program that applies to to the Gentiles. There's one new covenant, but it's going to have one blessing for Israel and one blessing for the Gentile dominated church. But also on top of that foundation, that hermeneutical foundation, we're going to bring up a couple other things. We're going to say, okay, we believe in a literal seven year tribulation at the end of the age because we take Daniel 9, 24, 27 literally. We're expecting somewhere off in the unknown future the final seven years. And those seven years are declared upon Israel. The first 69 weeks were upon Israel. The last week will be upon Israel too. But we also a third one that we could put up on top of there, that comes straight from the hermeneutic. The Bible talks about a future kingdom. A literal thousand year kingdom is a physical kingdom. Yep. And it mentions the kingdom in the Old Testament with only a couple hints of its length, no clear statement of its length. We come to the book of revelation in chapter 20. We find its length mentioned six times in one short stretch of scripture at 1000 years. So we have these things here that are clear results of the hermeneutic. And so we don't force the Bible into this literal kingdom. We don't force the Bible into a literal tribulation. We don't force the Bible into this whole hard distinction between Israel and the church. We actually got that simply from our hermeneutic.
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Yeah. And that really is the key. When I look at. There's a variety of aspects of what we understand is the formalized system of dispensationalism. But the core nugget. I mean if you wanted to. And this has come straight out of Charles Ryrie's 199596 book. So you know, I'm not quoting somebody else or I'm not quoting even somebody that's a detractor. Quote the original guy. Right. But he brings it down. He says if you strip away everything else, the pre trib strip away everything else. And you were to summarize this into three things, it would be the core foundation of the System of dispensationalism is, number one, taking the Bible in a very literal, hermeneutical way. What you just said, consistently literal, normal. We understand when Jesus said in John 10, I am the door. He's not talking about cedar or redwood or mahogany. It's a metaphor. Okay? So even a literal hermeneutic taking the Bible in a plain way, the typical thing is if the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense. Right?
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So that's.
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We hear that phrase. And that's the thing is, if the text is going to be spiritualized or, you know, made figurative or metaphorical, there should be something there that would warrant that. But normally take everything in a normal, plain way. That's the first cardinal point. The second cardinal point is based on the first one. We see Israel and the Church being distinct.
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That's right.
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It's just. It plays itself out. The church is not the new Israel and the Israel was not the pre Church. So. And there's a lot of ways to unpack that. And the third one is just everything God does is for his glory. You're like, that's dispensationalism at its core. Really? That's it. And so what I want to say is, yes, that's it. But I would also say that every Christian, every single Christian today holds to some form of dispensationalism. And they're going to go, no, no, no. And you go, no, no, hold on a minute. Because do you eat pork? Exactly. Dispensation is a Greek word, Oikonomia. Right. It means oikos means house. Right. And nomia means law. So you have like a ruler of a house, a household ruler, and it's the word is in the Bible. So this, like you say, well, I'm not a dispensationalist. So you don't believe the Bible? Because I'll read it here in Ephesians 1:10. I'll start in verse 9. It says, Having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and are on earth. I'm reading. This is the new King James, I believe. Yep. So there's the word dispensation, Ephesians 1:10. And if we go to Ephesians 3:2, Paul says, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the Dispensation of the grace of God, which was given to me for you. So it's this idea of an economy or a management. But I'll just say this, that the reason why I say every Christian is a dispensationalist is because none of us are going out and offering a sacrifice.
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That's right.
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And so if you talk to anybody that even a covenant theologian, you'd say, hey, did you offer your sacrifice? They go, oh, no, we don't do that. And you go, why not? Because. And they go, well, what do you mean? And she go, well, you don't offer a sacrifice because that was part of the previous. Come on, man, say it. Dispensation. It was part of the previous dispensation. And all we're saying is that when we look at the Bible, we recognize that God works with humanity in different ways. I'll give you one example and get your thoughts on this because you mentioned pork. Well, in dispensationalism has seven different. They recognize seven different dispensations in the Bible. Again, everybody believes in at least two Old Testament sacrifices and New Testament. So there's at least two. But we also, even some of the early church fathers, they had several, at least four or five, even Augustine had several. And we recognize, well, in the garden they were innocent. And they ate vegetables, right? Genesis one, they ate vegetables. There was no meat. Sorry, man, vegetarians. Well then even after they fell, let's just continue that up until the time of the flood. Genesis 9, after the flood, God says, you can now eat meat. Just don't drink the blood. You're like, oh, well, we recognize, well, something changed. See, God interacted with man differently. And then when we come to Leviticus 11 with Moses, God says, okay, I said before for all of humanity, you can eat meat nor blood. But now I'm going to be even more restrictions on you. No pork, et cetera, shrimp. And then we come to the New Testament and then all the sacrifice and we come to the New Testament, people can argue whether those are lifted up. At least we know we're not doing sacrifices anymore. So right there you have several dispensations. So we're all dispensationalists. And at the end of the day, what I tell people is you have to admit that we're not forcing that, that frame framework on the Bible. It's there, isn't it?
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A
That's right. And another thing that people need to understand, dispensationalists didn't invent in the, in the mid-1800s, the concepts of dispensations, they inherited them from their Puritan forefathers. They were part of the Reformation testimony. And the Reformation testimony got it because dispensations had come all the way through church history from the early Father. Now at the time of the Reformation and then up into the time of the Puritans up to John Darby. People varied whether they saw three, four or five dispensations prior to the time of the church. But they treated dispensations exactly the way dispensationalists do. Didn't matter if they were amillennial, they treated the dispensations exactly the same. They had the same explanations for them, the same descriptions of them, the same content in those dispensations. So what it comes down to is really when we're talking about non dispensationalism versus dispensationalism, we're talking about whether we have completed dispensationalism or incompleted dispensationalism. The only issue is is there one more dispensation coming before the eternal state?
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B
Right. And that is the kingdom, that is the thousand year kingdom. And so let's go back for another because there's no doubt if you. Certainly there's other major components, as you mentioned, in the full understanding of what dispensationalism taught. But you talked about the kingdom. So let's bring that up because one of the elements, one of the. Again we can limit to three, but let's say what are the ten core elements? As an example of dispensationalism is these other things. You mentioned the preacher rapture, seven of the week of Daniel being future. And you mentioned the physical literal kingdom. Okay? So it's really, most people aren't dispensational and let's say amillennial, that's kind of contradictory, right? Because to be dispensational you really have to believe in a physical literal kingdom. Now let's focus on that for a moment because if someone wants to say, well I'm amillennial and I'm not, and I'm not dispensational as this, okay, Somebody you'd say, well dispensationalism, Lee started with Darby in 1830, right? And you go, well okay, which part of that are you saying started with Darby? Okay, obviously we just said that the idea of dispensations did not start with Darby. That started within the church fathers. I just read it out of the Bible, right? Paul's talking about this Dispensation, and he calls it of the grace of God, post Jesus. So let's take another element, thousand year reign. Okay, millennialism. Did that start with Darby?
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A
No, it absolutely did not. We go back, we see many people from the Reformation forwards who taught a literal thousand year kingdom. We go back through church history, go back to the early Fathers. We see a number of the early fathers taught a literal thousand year long kingdom. It was more prevalent in the first few centuries of the Church than later on. But it had a remnant testimony that went relatively deep called chilism.
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Right?
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Yes, chiliasm.
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Chiliasm. So you know how you pronounce it? So chiliasm here. So chiliasm. Why is it called chiliasm?
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Because that is the Greek word for a thousand, Chilia, where millennia is a Latin word for a thousand.
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Okay, so now, so here again, people say dispensationalism began with Darby. And we've already established that the idea of dispensations didn't begin with Darby. It started in the Bible.
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That's right.
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And everybody's a dispensationalist in that framework under that definition. We also recognize that now this thousand year reign physically did not start with Darby either. A major component of modern dispensation did not start there. It started in the Church Fathers, right?
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Yeah, that's right. In fact, it goes deeper than the Church Fathers. Some of the early rabbis prior to the time of Christ, and their tradition passed through to the rabbis after the time of Christ. These rabbis taught that there was going to be a glorious reign of Christ, the Messiah. They didn't know who he was going to be, but they're Christ or the Messiah for a thousand years. They saw it coming.
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Did they use the term a thousand?
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Some of them did. They did have a thousand years.
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That's. That's pretty important.
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Yes. And they, what they saw is based on things like Hosea, not Hosea, but.
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Yeah, Hosea 6.
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Yeah, yeah, Hosea 5 and 6. That was, that was the fact that there was Israel was going to be set aside. They had a time of the Gentiles followed by a return to Israel.
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Well, they had the two days, you know. Right, two days. And then in the third day he'll revive us, which would give at least a conceptual idea of more. I would think that a covenant theologian would love that because it's a little bit of a spiritualization of Hosea 6, 1, 2.
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Yeah, that's right.
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That, you know, two days again he will hurt us and then. And the third day he will Revive us and we will live in his sight after two days. So you have this idea of that being a thousand years per day, 2,000 years. And then in the third day would be a thousand year, you know, whatever the third day or the third set, the Sabbath, basically they understood this. And that's kind of what I see too is that many of them, especially the early church, had this idea of that there would be 6,000 years of history followed by a thousand years of Sabbath kingdom.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Based on the typology of the creation week. So no doubt the Jews went on that as well. So let's go to another character, another characteristic, again full blown dispensationalism. And that is what about a tribulation period? Okay, so people say, well, the whole idea of a tribulation period, also 70th week of Daniel started with Darby. But this idea of a tribulation period for a specific segment of time, people say that that's started in 1830. Okay, talk about that.
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A
Well, I would say let's just go back to Daniel, chapter 9, verses 24 through 27. Read the passage slowly. Clearly working through that passage with sixth grade level grammar, we're going to see very clearly that the Messiah was crucified after the 69th week. Yep, the 69th week ended and he's crucified not for himself. And then off in the distant future, we have the 70th week starting. But in between the close of the 69th week and the start of the 70th week, you have the crucifixion of the Messiah and the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans and the coming of, of the prince who is to come from the Roman people. So you've got these three things that are in between the close of the 69th week and the start of the 70th week. So these weeks do not touch together. It's a future 70th week. And it doesn't, the passage doesn't tell us how much time is going to evolve in that window or that parenthesis, but it does demand a window or
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parenthesis at least of 40 years. Yeah, at least a minimum. This is what's. To me, it's really, it's mind boggling that many people try to in the covenant camp or even the Jews, if you see them today, because you can tell that they were arguing against the Christian interpretation of that. They try to make either the 70th week already all the 70 weeks fulfilled. But from a covenant perspective, is this idea that, well, of that 70th week, that final 70th week, the 69 weeks ended. So now you have another seven years. And they want to see them contiguous. There's no gap there. So then they say, well, okay, Jesus started it. So the first three and a half years were his, were part of that 70th week, and then the second three and a half years, obviously was something else. And you go, well, wait a minute. How does that even possible? How is that possible? Because the 70th week didn't begin sequentially until the temple's destroyed.
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That's right.
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It's impossible.
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That's right. And if. If you were going to stick with a literal seven years, and you measure that from AD 70, you are not going to go. The kingdom should have come at AD 77. Or whatever's going to happen. Should have happened.
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B
Whatever should have happened, yeah. So this is where. So you. So here again, let's go back a little bit to what we understand as a. You have. Obviously, there is. There is. I can read it. Let me read this. In Daniel 9, a lot of people will argue that. Well, there's. Why are you guys assuming that the 70th week mentioned here is identical to the Tribulation? Okay. Or using Daniel 12's language, a time of great trial, a great wrath. We see Jesus using similar language, something that's never happened in the history of the world up until then and never will be again. He's quoting Daniel, chapter 12, but in Daniel 9, it talks about. It says this, then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. But in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering, and on the wing of abominations, and shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate or the desolator. Here we have this idea of desolations.
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Yes.
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That doesn't seem like a positive thing. Right?
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No. I mean, once you take up the subject of the abomination of desolation, you're taking up the subject of the Antichrist. You're now in the ground or on the ground of a literal tribulation at the end of the age.
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Yeah. So it's not like even in the language itself, it's associating this time with a time of trouble.
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That's right.
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And here's a guy called the Desolator. So he's coming and he's desolating things. Right. And what is desolation? Well, it means to bring something to ruin. Right. So you have that imagery. But also talk about, because I don't think anybody, there's very few, I'll say it that way, that has done as much as you have done in the early church fathers, especially in the non English church fathers which most people don't have access to. And you've been researching them, looking for language that would speak about all of these things that we understand. You know, an Antichrist, a tribulation period, even a rapture, which we'll get to the rapture in a second. Talk about even what you have found, especially Irenaeus, who has discussed the idea of a tribulation. Physical, literal. A physical literal Antichrist. I mean, people say, oh, what's wrong with you people? You know this, that all started with Darby. That's dispensationalism on steroids. Again, a distinction of modern dispensationalism is the idea that there's going to be a literal Antichrist and there's going to be this period of tribulation which we describe as the 70th week of Daniel. There's going to be a literal guy and a literal temple, etc. And they'll say that started with Darby. So once again, is that true?
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Absolutely not true. I mean, because when you take up Irenaeus, you're taking up a man who lived about 1700 years prior to where Darby's pre tribulational ministry started. And so when you look at Irenaeus, we discover something very interesting. Not only did he teach a pre trib rapture, he taught the foundation stones of dispensationalism, a distinction between Israel and the church. Now we say Israel in the church. His common terminology is the Old Testament church and the New Testament church.
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B
Now let's. Before I don't want to move too fast, the word church comes from ekklesia in the Greek. That's right. So he's writing in Greek. Ekklesia just means what the assembly or
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the synagogue or the gathering.
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The gathering. So we oftentimes today we will use the word church. And certainly dispensationalists do. They will use it as a technical term.
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That's right.
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But that isn't that. We have to be careful with that. Right. Because that could work against the idea where you say, oh well, he's using the word church there and he's talking about the Old Testament ecclesia. But that's. It's just a general Greek word.
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Right, right. Well. And where it comes from is Irenaeus was using the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which uses the word ecclesiastical dozens and dozens of times as a representation of Israel, particularly Israel in the wilderness.
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B
And you have the word adat Hebrew, which is the word congregation.
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Yeah.
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And so even today you have, like, if there's several Messianic churches, Messianic congregations, say I'll use that word. They're called adat shalom or, you know, adat Yeshua. They are the congregation of the Messiah or Mashiach. And so the Hebrew word adot is translated in the Old Testament Septuagint as ekklesia. So it's not a technical term only for the New Testament, ekklesia, the church made up of Jews and Gentiles. And so this. So when. So talk about that, because many of the covenant theologians will say, see, there's Irenaeus not making a distinction between the two groups, but they're forcing. It's interesting how they're forcing a New Testament dispensational distinction. I don't know why they embrace that on the passage, but that's not what the passage is saying.
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A
That's exactly right. So what Irenaeus does is he talks about the Old Testament church. God's going to finish his program with the Old Testament church, goes into the New Testament church. The New Testament era, where we're at, he's got a few things left to finish with the Old Testament church, but he goes to the New Testament church, he's going to finish the New Testament church program, and then he's going to go back and pick up with the Old Testament church where we left off. And in the tribulation, a literal tribulation, the Old Testament church is going to be persecuted by the Antichrist. In the tribulation, the Old Testament church is going to offer sacrifices in the temple that are acceptable to God. So he's got the Old Testament program, which is Israel, and in the tribulation, offering sacrifices and persecuted. Now people say, well, see, the church is being persecuted by the Antichrist. He's talking about the Old Testament church, not the New Testament church, talking about Jews.
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B
Right.
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And he makes it very clear, and this is a classic example that if you don't understand a person's ecclesiology, you probably are not going to understand their eschatology either.
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B
Yeah, that's super powerful. Because again, when you. I look at one of the best examples is First Corinthians 10:32, where Paul says, give no offense to the Jew or the Gentile or the church.
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A
That's right.
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B
And you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, where is he getting these three groups. He basically separates out the church as being a distinct group from the Jews and Gentiles. Now we know that this new body of believers, Ephesians chapter 2, is made up of Jews and Gentiles, but it's a one new body.
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A
That's right.
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B
That's what I find. It's separated from the idea of Old Testament national Israel, corporate Israel. And so here again, let's summarize a couple things. Many of the distinctions of what we understand as dispensationalism clearly did not start with Darby. Right?
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A
That's absolutely right. They're based in the Bible. They were understood, many of them, by the Old Testament Jews. They were understood by the early church. They were lost in the church, are largely buried when replacement theology took over starting in the second century and coming full hilt, full tilt by the third century.
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B
So let's bring up another point here, is that when you're having a discussion about these theological points, maybe somebody's watching somebody who's dispensational have a debate with somebody who's amillennial or covenant theologian or, you know, comes from a Reformed perspective as an example, many times both of them will appeal to the early church.
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Yeah.
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Now to me, the early church. Is the early church monolithic.
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Absolutely not. It's no different than today.
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It's no different than today. So I can appeal to my early church father. That guy's going to appeal to his early church father, and then what do we do? Right. So this is where the limits of appealing to the early church is. By definition, it's limited. But many people will say, well, I hold onto the view that has been around for 1800 years.
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Yep.
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And you go, says who? Which. Who are you appealing to? Because if you're appealing to. Because what they'll say often is the view that I hold is a. Is a view that was pre Darby.
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Yeah.
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And you go, well, are you talking about Irenaeus, Are you talking about Origen or you know. Right. I mean, are you talking about Augustine?
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That's right.
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So even there they were on polar opposites. Right. Yeah.
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A
So the real value of the early church fathers is not to determine who's. Right. The real value of the early church fathers for the dispensationalists is to have plenty of ammo to prove that it's simply not true that pre tribulationism, a literal tribulation, a literal millennium, a dispensationalism didn't exist until Darby. So because one of the main arguments thrown against Dispensationalism is. We don't have to weigh your arguments. We know that you're using the Bible deceptively because nobody in church history, no early father ever taught it until Darby. So this is an invented fiction in the 1830s it belongs in the same category as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses.
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Yep.
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But we are able to show from Protestants from the beginning of the Reformation forwards to Darby and we're able to show in the early church and there's a few hints of it in the medieval ages too.
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B
Sure.
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That there were pre tribulationists dispensationalists in prior to Darby. So we completely throw out that argument that dispensationalism didn't exist simply by referring to church history. Once we've thrown that bogus position out, now we have to have a man to man eyeball to eyeball debate simply on what saith the Scriptures.
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B
Yeah, exactly. Because let me bring up another one because I'm saving the pre Trib rapture which is clearly distinctively dispensational.
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A
Right.
- [31:36]
B
I'm saving that distinctive for last. The other one that comes up often, that which I see which of course I've written about in my book the Red Heifer, the mystery of the Red Heifer is this idea that there's going to be coming a future tribulation period which is going to have a temple in it, a physical, literal, rebuilt temple which is going to include sacrifices that that are happening and not that I'm embracing and that are endorsing that simply just it's a matter of fact that that's gonna happen. Well as we see many people have said that's again that comes from dispensational heresy. Dispensationalism heresy. And I go wait a minute. And if you go onto our website and I've put this there prophecywatchers.com temple I made it really easy. I discuss are we crazy? Are we crazy to believe in a third physical temple being rebuilt according to prophetic scriptures? And so I go through and I answer the different things but it comes back to a literal hermeneutic. But secondly, it said for all of those people that say this idea only began with Darby, I went through and gave. I mean it's probably longer than my article is scripture or not scripture, but historical data after data, boom, boom, boom. Talking about all, not all certainly, but so many places in the church fathers that describe the Antichrist, a real literal guy sitting in a very real literal temple that has been rebuilt at the end of the age. This is post 70ad. These are church fathers that are saying this. So once again, what we want to say is if you say. If somebody says that believing in a physical temple being rebuilt at the end of the age is distinctively dispensational heresy and only began with Darby is 100%
- [33:31]
A
false, that's exactly right. If people are going to go down that path, there's really only two explanations. Either they don't know enough about church history that they should stop talking about the subject until they actually learn some church history, or they are willing to twist the facts of history, ignore the facts of history, sweep them under the rug to win the debate. That's not a good look. You know, if we're going to actually embrace the historical grammatical hermeneutic, which everybody professes to believe, if they're a conservative evangelical and that to what they profess, yep. We've got to stick with the facts of history and the facts of grammar and the plain statements of Scripture. And if you go back and you study history, it's very clear there will be a literal tribulation with a literal temple and a literal Antichrist. This is very common in the early fathers. What's interesting about this, some of these early fathers, like Eusebius and Ephraim the Syrian that taught this point, they were actually amillennial, which is very fascinating because throwing away a literal millennium happened earlier than actually throwing away a literal tribulation.
- [34:48]
B
Right. Which is interesting because recently I was having a conversation with a friend, a brother in Christ, and he's amillennial. And I had asked him, do you believe in a tribulation? And he goes, yeah. He goes, I have no problem with an Antichrist coming, you know, and ending the age. So for them, and even like somebody like R.C. sproul, at least originally, some people claim he became post millennial, but in his book Last Days according to Jesus. But many of the amillennials still believe that there is a final tribulation. You can't really be post millennial and believe that, because post millennial means you're going to. And on a good note, right? And then you've brought the millennium, and then Jesus returns. But for those that are amillennial, they often can embrace a tribulation period, an antichrist, and then Jesus comes back and boom, it's over. Then we're into the eternal age. So that's. But like you said, historically speaking, they got rid of the millennium first before they got rid of the tribulation. And many of today, just of course some of the real strong preterists or others, they've gotten rid of all of it altogether. Now in the last few minutes here, the key distinction, I would say that really makes you a dispensationalist. Again, not the other things because those were all prior to Darby the big dog. I mean here we are, Lee, the big one that people will make the claim is that this idea of a pre trib rapture, a rapture prior to the 70th week of Daniel or the day of the Lord or a seven year period, is only found in modern day Darbyite dispensationalism that no one else had this view prior. Now again I'm sitting here speaking to the guy who's written more on this. Is that true?
- [36:42]
A
Absolutely not. If you go with an open heart, willing to let the plain statements of the early church fathers be taken at face value and you actually investigate, look at things in context, you're going to see that the Didache, which was probably written either in the end of the first century or the very beginning of the second, was pre Trib. And the Didache was in the era of when either very at the tail end of John the Apostle John's life or very short shortly after his death. It was pre trib. You come to Irenaeus who claims that
- [37:24]
B
he was 200 A.D. just so people, he's around 200 A.D. 185. Right?
- [37:27]
A
Yeah. Well, and Irenaeus says that he got his teaching on eschatology from aged men who had sat at the feet of the apostles themselves. This is one step removed from the apostles.
- [37:43]
B
Basically Papias and Polycarp, that's who he learned it from.
- [37:49]
A
And Papias and Polycarp learned it from John and Clement or Clement was in there and they learned it from John and Peter and James. So we have a very close proximity here to the early apostles themselves. And so this early church Father Irenaeus very clearly taught in four different passages and a pre tribulation rapture.
- [38:15]
B
See, so this is important too because the. Let's just give the title of your book because again for people that say, well I've never heard that before, all this is 100% Darby. And you're going to go, no. And so talk about your book.
- [38:30]
A
Okay, so the book is called Recent pre Trib Findings in the Early Church Fathers. It's available on Amazon and at Prophecy Watchers. Yeah, and Prophecy Watchers in a few other places. And what the book does is it brings out the Pre trib argument from the Didache, from Irenaeus, from Ephraim the Syrian and from Eusebius. Now there were already, most dispensationalists were already aware that there was a pre trib argument in the Didache and in Irenaeus. But what I did is I clarified and expanded on the argument for a pre trib rapture and gave people some information that they were not aware of,
- [39:12]
B
especially the use of the language, like you said with Iron eras, using Ecclesia and others contextually.
- [39:18]
A
And then when it comes to Eusebius, I brought out nine pre tribulation rapture passages that nobody was aware of existed. As far as I know, nobody even knew or guessed that Eusebius was pre trib until I brought this information out. It's not found in his works that are translated, but he's got some strong evidence for a pre trib rapture in the works that have not been translated into English. And then when it comes to Ephraim the Syrian who's in the 4th century, I bring out 10 crystal clear pre Trib rapture passages that plainly state that the church is going to be kept from the Great Tribulation. The language is so, so clear that you basically have to poke your eyes out to deny it.
- [40:05]
B
So in addition, let's just say that some people, again playing Devil's Attica, they say, well that's a reference not to all seven years, it's only a reference to the Great Tribulation the last three and a half years. Would that really even matter too much? Because it still shows it annihilates a post tribal rapture.
- [40:29]
A
Yeah, and it does it basically. It would essentially. Because if you're going to go down that road, a lot of some of the early fathers didn't hold a seven year tribulation at the end of the age. They held a three and a half year tribulation at the end of the age. So it's still a literal pre trib rapture.
- [40:47]
B
Yeah, so that's, that's the important thing here is that when you look at the hatred going out there, what we see often, sadly is that most people that argue against dispensationalism don't fully understand it. They don't understand the distinctions, they don't understand the limits. And we've just spent the last 40 minutes looking at almost all, almost all of the major distinctions individually isolating them out, showing that they existed prior to Darby.
- [41:21]
A
I would like to add one closing thought here and that's that people get frustrated. Why Is God going to go back to the Jews? They rejected the Lord and he's moved on. This is exactly the point. God is the God of second chances. He set Israel aside temporarily, not permanently. He's the God of second chances. He's going to give Israel a second chance to receive their Messiah, to receive the new covenant nationally.
- [41:47]
B
Nationally. Yes, yes.
- [41:49]
A
And so this is a tremendous blessing. If God can give recalcitrant, impenitent, backsliding, apostate Israel a second chance, then we can rest assured he's going to give any human being on planet earth a second chance.
- [42:07]
B
I mean, this is where you go to Romans 11. And no doubt Paul talks about the doctrine of election. Okay, he's talking a variety of things, but specifically he says, well, that the doctrine of election would stand. And he said, but you know what? Hey, the elect received it. So in this sense, Paul was part of the elect.
- [42:25]
A
That's right.
- [42:25]
B
He received it and he said, and the rest were blinded. Okay. But Paul goes on to say, I think there's something to say that God is not going to allow the Jews to the national Jews to end on such a sour note. That's right, because it's kind of an affront against them, even though they're a fault. He's not a fault, but he's like, no, I'm going to succeed and I'm going to win. I'm going to vindicate my name. And this is why in Romans 11, Paul makes the comment, as we know, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. And he says, all Israel will be saved. And he'll remove ungodliness from Jacob. Right. Romans 11:26. But in addition, he says, hey, have they stumbled so much that they have fallen out? And he says, no. He goes, look, if through their falling, their stumble, all this amazing glory has come to the Gentiles, how much more their restoration? And he says, that's going to be what we've seen in the gospel, going to the whole world. And we're being recipients of it based on their failure. The Jews tripping, they didn't fall completely out of the off the stage, they tripped. And of course, some Jews got saved. Paul says they're in restoration, which could only be national.
- [43:38]
A
That's right.
- [43:38]
B
Because if there wasn't a future restoration nationally, you'd say, well, Jew, Paul got saved, big deal. Yep, it's a national restoration. And if that happens, he says, what are. That's going to be riches to the world?
- [43:50]
A
That's right.
- [43:50]
B
This just comes back to riches. When? During the millennial period?
- [43:53]
A
That's right.
- [43:54]
B
Final thought.
- [43:54]
A
I like to say if you thought Pentecost 1.0 was amazing, wait till you see Pentecost 2.0.
- [44:00]
B
Amen, bro. Well, I couldn't have been a better person to talk with about this topic than you, Lee. And so thanks everybody for listening today. We gotta run. But this. I hope you come back to this, because you're gonna. This is not going away. There are going to be those that will attack what we just say is a straightforward, plain reading of scripture which leads to these topics. They did not start in 1830 with Darby. No matter how many times we have to say it. It's mainly just straw man attacks, which we know is fallacious reasoning. So thanks for listening and we will catch you next time.