Eschatalks 01: And I'm back...

It's been quite a while, over a year, since Theologic ended. There have been some unfinished thoughts that have been going on in my head over the past year that I have wanted to tell folks. This upload is the beginning of a lengthy expression of my heart and mind that I've wanted to tell our listeners for over a year on the topic of how to interpret prophecy. Yet it's become more than that to me. The following upload not only begins to address interpreting prophecy but is the first of four recordings culminating in why a future understanding of Revelation is essential to understand AND apply its truths. Contrary to popular opinion, Revelation and future prophecy matters even to our practice. May the Lord take what has been on my heart and mind and bless you with it.

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Welcome back to another installment of Theologic. After over a year, we finally have another episode being recorded and released on the Theologic podcast. And some of you are shocked. Some of you are maybe, I hope, excited. Maybe some of you really don't care. That's fine. I'm just really glad to be back with you over the course of this time. It is just me. Sean and Zach are not a part of this. And the one of me is sitting before you today with uh some things on my heart that I've been wanting to talk about. And um, I'm recording this as the first recording since July of 2025. I'm recording it in August of 2026. Uh, so it's been over a year. And if you remember that last episode, Sean and Zach and I had that conversation about what do we do in the future? What am I going to do in the future? Um, before we left, I had had some plans and desires and thoughts about uh maybe doing something that would be a YouTube channel and examining good and bad and Times views. I was going to call it Esquatox. Um, and I uh I'm I don't have that. I don't have the equipment to be able to do that. So I decided I would not do it Esquitox itself. Uh but I thought what I would do today, and recording just four recordings is what my plan is. Um what I thought I would do today is just uh bring those kinds of ideas, those kinds of thoughts um into this podcast, into the theologic podcast. For any listeners who might still be there and subscribed, for any listeners who might find it interesting, uh maybe to hear what I have to say on this topic, I want to address bad understanding of the end times as well as a good understanding of the end times, what makes it bad, what makes it good, so that we can understand that the end times in scripture, as is recorded, is clear. It is understandable, we can know it, and we don't need to be afraid, perhaps, that God perhaps was unclear, or that uh that we're free to take prophecy in whatever direction we want to take. And I'm gonna address that today uh in our recording uh today. So, what I want to do is what I should do, because you deserve to hear this, is uh why has it been so long? Uh why has it been so long? And and I'll just be frank and open and say I really have felt personally that to make a podcast to be something meaningful, um, it should be something uh that is unique. I mean, there is an endless number of podcasts out in the podcast sphere. To have one guy talking about theology is nothing unique as a uh as a format of a podcast. What made theologic as we had it unique was that we had people of different theological perspectives on on different views within biblical orthodoxy, and that we could talk, we could agree upon what we agreed upon and debate on the things that we did not agree upon. And so uh we we had that, I think, going for us in terms of its uniqueness. You don't find that, I didn't find at the time when we started in 2022. You don't find that around in a lot of places. So I thought this is unique. One guy like me is not unique, and so um what I decided to do was uh I'm not going to uh do a podcast on my own unless I can have something that uh that would make this something unique. And so uh that's changed, as you can tell. There has been ever since then, I guess a growing desire in my own heart. I say this because we had plans before the end of the podcast to do a debate on how to interpret prophecy. And I was I was really excited. I wanted to do that debate because that really is ultimately the foundation behind why Sean and I disagree on our end times views, because it's all about what we call hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, how we interpret the scripture. How do you interpret the Bible? That's the big question. Is there a place for seeing the Bible through your own ideas, through your own theology, letting your predetermined beliefs do the work of interpreting the passages of scripture in front of you? Or is there no place for that? And it is your role to figure out what the passage means by what it says. That's really the ultimate bottom line, and of course I'm sure both sides would accuse each other of uh of doing just that. But that was something I'd prepared for. I put together uh a lot of content in terms of the study of Zechariah 14, and uh we were going to do a debate on that, and then we had decided to end the podcast at that point. Added to that, I had already begun preaching through the book of Revelation. Those are two end times passages, Zechariah 14, and basically the entire book of Revelation from chapter 4 on to the end. That's why I was uh eager to do the work of um preaching that. And now I've become much more seasoned in understanding that book. And so what resulted was I I've got to do something. Over the course of this year, for myself personally, it has been, I think, I would argue, a fire in my bones, right? I've been wanting to speak along these lines because I see them as so very important. And let me admit and say, I really don't think that this should be or is about being right as much as it is about these truths being important. That we we we don't have leeway to just take scripture and make it what we want it to be. We don't have leeway to um to say whether one passage is um useful or beneficial or not, especially until we understand it. And so it was my interest over the course of this year. It was I've needed to say something, I've wanted to say something. And what's been happening over the course of time is that uh I think our culture, the Christian culture itself, with things like Christian nationalism and so on, has been really moving in that sort of direction. And we see things with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens concerning the nature of Israel, and I felt like, well, our Israel debate I think was very helpful. I hope people found that helpful. Um, regardless, obviously Sean and I are agreement in some ways when it comes to Israel, but the culture's changed. And it has been my interest now. How do I speak to the issues of culture? I really think that so many of these things within culture are because are contributed to, not entirely, but are because of a faulty view of scripture and even very specifically a faulty view of eschatology, a faulty view of the end times. I just saw a really great video a couple weeks ago with Todd Friel and um uh Al Moller from Southern Seminary. Excellent video. I'd encourage you to find that one on the wretched YouTube YouTube channel. How one could have a high view of Israel and be biblical about it. The proper view or a biblically formed view about Israel, current Israel itself as a political entity. And I really think that a lot of that, though not entirely, a lot of that does tie in with the end times, even though Al Moulder is not millennial himself, he can still say Israel has a right to the land. A lot of this ties into hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, a lot of this ties into eschatology, and somebody has to get out and say something. And I have not wanted to. I'm gonna be honest, I have not wanted to say anything about this. I don't really feel like I have that much to say that's of value. I I would hope it could be, but something has to be done, something has to be said. And if I can say what I can say on the avenues that I can say it, not only my local local church, but also online, I'm gonna try to use those avenues uh to talk about that. The issues, like I mentioned, of Christian nationalism, so much of that within uh, and I'm not talking about the political entity of Christian nationalism, that is, you know, the whole Trump thing. I'm talking about more along the lines of Christian uh Bible-focused, Bible-centered, reformed, mostly post-millennial, but also other end times views, uh, that form of Christian nationalism founded upon the view that Matthew 28, where Jesus says, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, go make disciples of all nations, that that is in some senses a call to political takeover, in a sense. Not entirely, but it's it's it's like that. And and I've even heard guys that believe that sort of thing, downplaying missionaries who have given their lives over for the purpose of the gospel, to reach people with the gospel and say that's not the Great Commission. And that's something that needs to be addressed. Now, I don't I don't think that what I'm going to be talking about is directly is going to directly address that, but I do want to hit something that's downstream from that, and that is hermeneutics, the interpretation of prophecy and understanding the end times and understanding how we should view Israel, how we should view people, that is tied into understanding prophetic texts of Scripture. Along with that comes a sort of ambiguity about the book of Revelation, the book I'm preaching through. It's like, oh, what does this mean? Is it this? Is it that? Um, there's all sorts of, I would argue, a commitment or a lack of commitment to its meaning, but I think a lot of it has to do with accepting what it says. Now, obviously, our culture looks at the book of Revelation, sees the wrath of God, which is everywhere in that book, and they say, I want nothing to do with that. I don't want the wrath of God. It scares me, and churches don't want to preach that. They want people in seats, they don't want truth as much to be proclaimed because it's going to make people afraid. Somebody needs to talk about that. Somebody needs to because it's true. I don't get up and preach because I want to say something out of my own heart necessarily, coming from my own mind. I want to say something because it's true and people need to know it, which is why I've preached through the book of Revelation thus far. It's God's word, it's true, and we need to understand and know it so that it can inform us and prevent us from misunderstanding the truth. I want to say, very importantly, that there are not just false teachings that come along the category of the doctrine of salvation, right? They say that you can be saved by your works, right? Things like that. That's a false teaching, right? False teaching has a way of affecting any area of what I would argue within systematic theology. There's false teaching that that plays along the lines of the understanding of the Bible, right? The Bible is uh maybe not inspired, the Bible's not inerrant. That's a bibliological false teaching. There's false teaching concerning the character and person of God the Father. Uh maybe open theism would be an example of that. That's a theological false teaching. Christology, you can say that about the virgin birth, to deny that. You can say that uh that there's false teaching related to the nature of who Christ is. Is he God? Is he man? Is he both? Is he what is he? Those kinds of things would be examples of ways that uh false teaching can affect the nature of Christ. It goes all the way down the line. Holy Spirit. Go all the way to eschatology too. In fact, Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 2, he actually speaks about a false teaching that is an end times false teaching. Two false teachers are getting up and preaching, and what are they saying? That the resurrection has already happened. 2 Timothy 2. That's an end times false teaching. And what does he say? That it has shipwrecked the faith of some. Think about that for a moment. It is important for us to understand the timing of the events of the end. To say that it's already happened can be destructive to people's faith. And as much as saying that it would never happen would be destructive to people's faith, and as much as saying wrongly that certain prophecies are being fulfilled today, or certain prophecies will aren't really what they mean. So the the end times itself is important. It's important for us to get the chronology right, and that text evidences that. So that we make sure that we're on the right pathway. I'm convinced that ambiguity on the book of Revelation and other prophetic books of the Bible is the reason behind why there's so much apathy when it comes to prophetic books of the Bible. I've heard uh really intelligent theologians saying that prophetic books of Scripture, I don't have the mind for that. What if I could tell you that it's not about having uh like a brilliant mind to be able to understand this? It's about being willing to take what it says and believe it. That's all that it is. It's as simple as most things are in the Christian life. It's about understanding and taking what it says at face value and believing it really. Not obviously understanding that sometimes there's interpretation involved, there challenged text, but there's challenged text when it comes to the to other areas of theology too. There's there's challenged text in 1 Corinthians 15. But it's not that the entire doctrine or that the entire book itself is unintelligible because it's a tough text. It doesn't mean you cannot come to reckon with what Paul is saying in any way because there's a difficult passage in the middle of it. And so we have to get this right, we have to be faithful, we have to be careful, and uh we have to exercise basic, faithful, interpretive methods, and that's what I'm gonna cover over the course of the next four recordings. And so what I'm about to say matters to interpreting the book, um, it matters to understanding the book, and what I'm excited about is the final episode is going to be about applying the book. The final episode out of the four, it may be one that you're most interested in, um, is going to be about how we understanding future prophecy and what it does for our practice. Because that's the big complaint people have, right? They say, why would the book of Revelation be speaking about these future realities as if they are, you know, predicting real-world events in the way that they're described? It doesn't have any bearing on my practice. And my point is to say that, in all honesty, whether it is future, whether it is past is irrelevant to the practice part. If I said the book of Matthew was because it's in the past, therefore it's not relevant. Well, that's not true either. That has nothing to do with my application of the passage. It has something to do with the interpretation of the passage, because it's in the past. Why would we say that revelation, because it's future, has no bearing on my application and how I live? When the Apostle Paul can tell uniquely, maybe not uniquely, actually, when he can tell the people of Thessalonica that while I was with you, baby Christians, by the way, that I told you about these end times things. He didn't reserve it for last. He told them throughout the short period of time he was with them. When I was with you, I told you these things. Paul saw teaching the end times as something that was not only valuable but also understandable. He can ask them, Didn't you know this? I told you this. Why can't we do that? Why do we have to think otherwise? So please believe me when I say that the truths in Revelation are indeed practical, and the fact that the events described in chapter four to the end are future does nothing to remove its practicality. Paul could give practical principles for the people not to be worried, not to be concerned, not to be upset, look forward to the hope. And set your affections on things above. By the way, that's exactly what the end time should do for the Christian. Is to move us to set our affections on the things above, and the specificity of these things should do nothing to remove that, but to do everything to add to that. Specificity is only a boon, only a benefit. Not a detractor. What I think is a valid warning, a valid um interpretive principle. If you have your Bible, you can turn to 2 Peter 1. Um, and I'm going to be talking a lot about the book of 2 Peter toward the end until we get to the end of this episode. But uh the 2 Peter chapter 1 is such an important passage when it comes to the nature of understanding the role, the origin, and uh the function of prophecy. And in addition to that, what you get is um you also get some important hermeneutical principles, in other words, principles to help you understand and interpret prophecy rightly and properly. So I want to just set the scene here and give us a brief overview of 2 Peter before you get into it. 2 Peter is a book that is about false teachers and false teaching. The heart of the book is chapter 2. And in that passage, he speaks about who false teachers are, what their character will be, what they will do, how they will act, what is in the inside of their heart, and he says on multiple occasions some frightening words. He says the blackness of darkness is reserved for them forever. It is as if Peter is saying, There is no question these guys are bound for eternal darkness and judgment. Frightening words. But before he gets into that in chapter two, and after he gets into that in chapter three, he gives two important, what you might say, hermeneutical markers. In chapter three, one of the things he says that false teachers are going to do, particularly those who would deny the second coming altogether, what they're going to do is twist the scripture like they do with Paul's writings. They're going to do it with his writings, they're going to do it with other passages of Scripture, to twist it according to their own desires. And then we get into 2 Peter chapter 1, what I think is very, very helpful and useful in our understanding. This is verses 20 through 21. Very helpful. No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Now he reveals that false prophets and teachers are coming in chapter two, which is why he has to segue into here's how we should understand the origin or nature of prophecy first, so that when these people come in chapter two, false prophets arose in the past, false teachers are going to arise in the future. You know what they are going to be doing, and you'll be set up to understand something that would prevent you from being taken in by their lies. Prophecy doesn't come from some dude making up what he wants to make up. Prophecy does not originate from one's own mind. It originates by men of God who were moved by the Holy Spirit. Before later warning about those who will twist in chapter three, the Scriptures. And it's interesting that the genre of prophecy is singled out. Now I would argue that the Holy Spirit singles this out because it's an important genre for us to reckon with and understand its value. But it almost seems like a valuable application to recognize that this is speaking to the very genre of scripture that a lot of people seem to think is not relevant or helpful or understandable today. But right here we're giving some important hermeneutical principles. He points out that it's by the Lord's will that men spoke as they were born along by the Holy Spirit. Here's the point. Because God chose to reveal his word through human authors, those authors are not incidental to interpretation, but they are essential to it. The men of God moved by the Holy Spirit are essential to our understanding. Now I believe it is talking about origin, but there's also a view that when he says private interpretation, it's a historical view. Luther taught it, for example, that he's actually talking about how one interprets prophetic texts of Scripture. So there's debate whether that word interpretation speaks about how you actually interpret the Bible or whether it's talking about the origin of the Bible itself that came by the Holy Spirit. But regardless, we have to reckon with the idea that there's something important. When it comes to the nature of the human authors that's being mentioned here, prophecy does not originate in the prophet's imagination, but in the Holy Spirit. And that should have profound implications for how we interpret biblical prophecy. If interpretation of biblical pot prophecy can only be traced back to my own mind, my own beliefs, rather than the intended meaning of the spirit-moved author, then I do not ultimately have God speaking through his word. I have only myself presuming to speak through his word. When you read Isaiah, you're reading the mind of a man moved by the Holy Spirit to write what he wrote. You get into his mind, and you'll get into his message. The way to do that can be as simple as understanding our daily speech with those around us. It is not as entirely complicated as people seem to think. And so what does it actually mean to seek the author's intended meaning? I have five different questions that I think will help us along those lines before we get into what it is to misinterpret the scripture along these lines. Number one, we ask this question What do his words ordinarily communicate? Ordinarily communicate. Usually, when it comes to interpreting the Bible, the simplest answer is the right answer. Because God, who has superintended and made the tongue, he made language. Most often it is the most simple of language. What does the immediate context indicate? You can't just take a passage of scripture or a verse, take it out of context, as these people do in 2 Peter 3, and then you make it what you want it to be. That is that's how false teachers work, and we all we must not be like them. The immediate context is how you understand meaning. And I I would like to illustrate it this way. There are various words in English that if I just said the word out of context, then it would be very difficult for people to really say what you they think I mean until I put in the context. How about this word post? What could the word post mean? Well, uh it could be a serial company out of Battle Creek, Michigan. Um if you've had post serial. It could be a part of a fence. It could be a place where an army man is stationed. It could mean like a prefix to a word that means after. There's there it could be a lot of different things. If I said the army man stood at his post, you get exactly what I mean by that if you're familiar with the way that word post is used. Context is what drives the meaning. And when we take words out of context and we don't consider that context, that causes the text to mean what we want it to mean rather than what the author intended it to mean. How do we figure those things out? Very simply, look at the context. I'm going to be talking about when we get into how we can tell when somebody is uh providing an inadequate explanation of uh passages of prophecy. And one of those ways is that the explanation is uh the context of that the passage does not fit it. We'll be looking at that as we look through. What does the immediate context indicate? Number two. Number three, how does he use the language? That's very helpful too, right? When you listen to me talk, I sound very different from other people in your lives, not only from my voice, but if I if I wrote you a text message or or if uh somebody else you knew wrote you a text message, there's going to be different words that we use. I try as best as I can uh to not use too big of words, but it's very hard for me because these bigger words are much more precise than a lot of the smaller words. Like hermeneutics is much more precise than saying the very wordy uh doctrine of interpretation or study of interpretation, right? It gets to be a little much. Um, you start just adding more words. When you just have one word, it makes it simpler if you know what it means. How does the author use language? John's use of language is going to be different than the way Peter speaks. John has a very obvious and notable, particularly in the Gospel of John and in his epistles, you can see his style of writing is uh is very, very unique. He's uh the way he talks, he talks about love and truth, and it's very simple language, communicating very complex truths. Well, when you get to the book of Revelation, it's going to be very different because he's recording a different genre. It's very all he his job is to simply record what he sees. The book of Revelation is a unique in that sense when it comes to John's writings, because he is not looking at an earthly circumstance that's requiring to write a letter like most of the letters of the New Testament would be. He has, by supernatural decision of God himself, been entered into a prophetic vision. And God is the one revealing the pictures, and John is the one there just writing it down. And so the language he uses is going to be unique from his other writings. That's just an example. That's that's any writer of the Bible or the New Testament, Old Testament. They have a unique style. Follow that style, understand that style, and it'll help you. Number four, what has he already told us? Sometimes what you'll find is in order to understand a passage of scripture, you just need to jump back into what has already been talked about. One example of that is John chapter 3, when Jesus says you must be born again. And that could be you could stop and look at all sorts of things that people might consider being born again. I was listening to a John Denver song that uh talks about somebody who went to Colorado. If you grew up in the 70s, maybe you know that song where he he says that uh you could say he was born again by this basically nature-y experience. If we could take that out of context, we could make it mean what we want it to mean. But the key is to actually look back at chapter one, because chapter one tells us what it is to be born again. He says to be born not of the flesh, nor of the will of man, nor by blood, but to be born of God. Well, at least we get some qualifications to know exactly what it is not. To be born again is not to be born into a family. That's not what it is to be born again. It wasn't a decision of your mom and dad to make that happen, and that, by the way, fits with your baptism as much as it fits within your personal lives. The decision for you to be born or the decision for you to be baptized is not what it means to be born again. To be born of water and of the Spirit is not to be baptized, to be born of water is to be cleansed from within of your sins. Washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Look back at the previous part and you'll get much more clarity on what is being talked about in the passage at hand. five. What background from prior scripture is he assuming? That's really key. That's really, really, really, really key. Um when you study Paul's writings in 1 Thessalonians and in 2 Thessalonians, it is obvious that Paul gets his eschatology, the doctrine of the end times, he gets that from the Old Testament. That's what we did in our debate on the Antichrist. He gets it from the Old Testament. So if you know the Old Testament, if you know what background he's looking at, you'll be better informed on what he's talking about in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He's going back to the book of Daniel, uh, he's going back to the Old Testament to inform his theology. So should we. The man of lawlessness, the son of perdition, is one example of the is the one you find in Daniel 7, Daniel 10, and 11, and beyond. What background from prior scripture is he assuming? When you go into the book of Revelation, you're going to find a lot of Old Testament imagery. And so it's good for us to know the whole Bible so that we can understand what is being communicated in the last book of the Bible. Those are the five questions. What do his words ordinarily communicate? What does the immediate context indicate? How does he use the language? And what has he already told us? And finally, what background from prior scripture is he assuming? Now the question comes how do you tell when you're hearing the mind of the interpreter instead of the mind of the biblical author? In our next episode, we're going to explore how to identify when scripture is misunderstood. We'll look at how it can happen. We're going to look at what the earmarks are when they happen. And this is important stuff because how we view scripture has an important bearing on our eternities, our expectations, our joy, our hope, and our practice, how we live. So I trust you'll join me on this topic in the next episode.