Gary DeMar critiques dispensationalism's "parenthesis" theory and privatized Sermon on the Mount, arguing instead for postmillennialism where Christ's church gradually transforms culture from the bottom up. He rejects literal thousand-year reigns, citing 2 Peter 3 as the burning of old covenant orders rather than total destruction. DeMar emphasizes applying biblical principles to politics and education, warning against discouragement when facing slow progress or secular dominance. Ultimately, the discussion urges Christians to build moral foundations incrementally through families and institutions, rejecting superficial cultural capitulation in favor of comprehensive worldview engagement. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Dispensationalism and the Rapture00:14:53
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show, would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five star review?
This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible.
Thanks.
Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest Gary DeMar.
He is the president of American Vision, and the topic for our discussion was all things post millennial.
We were kind of scattered in our discussion, so we really covered the bases.
But we talked about the danger of two kingdom theology.
We talked about the danger of dispensationalism.
We talked about the danger of premillennialism.
And a lot of the post millennial conversation was where to root it in biblical text, but then also how to be a post millennial Christian in practice, how to practically apply that eschatology today.
How do we win?
And how did we get here as a nation?
And the world at large.
And what's the solution?
How do we get out of the hole?
So, if that's what you're looking for, you're going to love this episode.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right.
So, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
As I've already mentioned, my guest is Gary.
We have Uncle Gary, is what you typically go by, but Gary DeMar with American Vision.
Are you the founder of that, Gary?
No, American Vision was founded by a fellow named Steve Schiffman back in the late 1970s.
I came on in 1980 as a researcher.
And just through a number of different things, the board decided to let Steve go.
And I became the president probably mid 1980s.
Okay, cool.
Could you tell us a little bit about American Vision?
What is the mission or the purpose of this ministry?
Is it fair to call it a ministry?
American Vision, if you're familiar with wall builders, David Barton, it's a kind of restoring, learning more about America's Christian heritage and making people aware of that.
That's how American Vision got started.
And the founder, when I came on, I said, look, this isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life, just talk about America's Christian history.
What we as Christians need to do.
It is to talk about a comprehensive biblical worldview and the application of that.
And he agreed with that.
He didn't know much, really.
He kind of glommed onto that topic.
He partnered with Marshall Foster.
I don't know if you know who Marshall Foster is.
See, that's the thing.
A lot of you young guys, really, the history of all this stuff.
One of these days, I'm just going to have to sit down and go through all of it.
So Marshall Foster is still in the realm of America's Christian heritage.
He's good friends with Kirk Cameron.
It was Marshall Foster who introduced Kirk Cameron to the Preterist perspective.
Kirk watched a video series that I did.
Then they did a documentary called Unstoppable.
I think it was Unstoppable.
Was that the one?
I can't.
That's the one.
I don't know if that was the one.
But it was on America's Christian history.
So American Vision moved into the biblical worldview realm.
I wrote the first book I wrote was the first volume of God and Government.
And it was just, and then remember, this is the Reagan, this is the Reagan decade.
Ronald Reagan was elected as president, beat Jimmy Carter by a landslide in 1980.
Ronald Reagan became president, and it was really the first time that Christians had, that Christians became a voting bloc.
It was the born again voting bloc.
And this is when Jerry Falwell, who was a Baptist dispensationalist, got involved in politics and started an organization called the Moral Majority.
And he got Christians involved.
And there was a national affairs briefing in 1980 that Ronald Reagan showed up for, but Jimmy Carter and John Anderson, who was a third party candidate, did not.
And it was at that particular meeting where Ronald Reagan kind of endeared himself to.
To Christians, and this became then a Christian voting block.
And what I knew needed to be done was that Christians need to understand that, in terms of the Bible, government isn't synonymous with politics, that there's God as a governor of all things, there's self government under God, which is kind of self control, governing your own lives according to God's standards for the individual.
And there's family government, church government, and civil government.
And so it ended up being a three volume set, God and Government, which is now in a Hardback one volume set.
And that kind of became foundational for American Vision.
But as I went out and started teaching on this particular topic, inevitably someone would say, well, you know, why?
Remember, this is early 1980.
My first volume came out in 82.
The second volume came out in 84.
The third volume came out in 1986.
And what was popular in the 1970s was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, which was published in 1970.
And Hal Lindsey kind of made this prediction.
That Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was prophetically significant.
Generation was 40 years.
You add 40 to 1948, you get 1988.
So there was a lot of buzz in the 1980s about the rapture was right around the corner.
And inevitably, people would say, Why are we bothering with this?
Jesus is coming soon, and all the signs are pointing to that.
And so that's when I added kind of the eschatological side of all of this.
And then we expanded into economics, education.
Creation, evolution, and the apologetic side because I studied under Dr. Greg Bonson at Reformed Theological Seminary.
So, this was essentially a package deal that the founder of American Vision knew nothing about.
And so, in essence, he needed me to kind of keep this ball rolling.
So, I've been with American Vision for, I guess, 41 years.
Wow.
Wow.
That's really cool.
Yeah, these days, man, if I had a dollar every time I hear a Christian say that, you know, that Christianity is not supposed to be political or Christians shouldn't be involved in government or this or that, it sounds like the work that you're doing is what I wish a lot of Christians would read and study and understand.
Why do you think it is that?
When do you think that really became a significant dominant position with American Christians that Christianity and politics have nothing to do with one another?
I don't know if there's an exact point in time where you could say, this is it.
I think there was kind of a convergence of ideas where I think eschatology had a lot to do with it.
I mean, you Schofield Reference Bible came out in the early 1900s.
And it kind of put the kibosh on we're living in this parenthesis.
You know, the kingdom of God is yet future.
We're living, we really don't have anything to say about the things of this world.
I mean, even the Sermon on the Mount isn't applicable today.
Explain that real quick.
The Sermon on the Mount isn't applicable today.
They would say it's applicable, but they would just say it's private, a privatized application.
Well, remember, the dispensationalist says we're living in a Explain the parentheses.
Well, the parentheses, this might take a little time.
That's okay.
I'll be as quick as possible with this.
Dispensationalism teaches that there is a salvific distinction between Israel and the church.
The dispensationalists claim that the church arose because Israel rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah, and that stopped the prophecy clock.
Of Daniel's 70th week, which was supposedly a seven year period, that the prophecy clock stopped.
And so God quit dealing with Israel and he started dealing with this new entity called the church.
And according to dispensationalism, at Pentecost or sometime after that, the church age began.
So, and right now, according to dispensationalism, we're living within the church age.
And so the Sermon on the Mount was supposed to be for kingdom living.
Well, according to the dispensationalists, the kingdom doesn't come until after.
This parenthesis is over, and that's the rapture where God takes the church off the earth.
And then there's a seven year period.
There's the rise of Antichrist.
The Antichrist makes a covenant with Israel.
The Antichrist breaks the covenant, rebuilt temple, animal sacrifices, Armageddon, all hell breaks loose, on and on and on.
And then there's a bloodbath.
Two thirds of the Jews living in Israel are going to be slaughtered.
Billions of people around the world will be killed.
That's the dispensational system in a nutshell.
Right.
Real quick, do most dispensations, so that's super helpful.
Thank you.
Do most dispensational, uh, Individuals, would they hold that the earth, like a literal interpretation of, you know, Peter, when he said the earth will dissolve like snow, when they say new heavens, new earth, do they think God is restoring this earth or God's just going to completely wipe it out and replace it?
Like Jesus is going to rapture his own, take us to heaven, which is some separate place from earth, and then we're going to eventually return back to a whole separate planet that he's going to create to replace this earth.
Is that right?
Well, the dispensationalists teach that, you know, this rapture of the church takes place, and then there's a seven year period where Antichrist kind of reigns.
Jesus returns.
So there's this rapture is secret.
You don't see Jesus.
Just all the Christians are taken off the earth.
Right.
Then, after that seven year period, when Jesus returns, he then returns and sets up his kingdom on earth.
And that's Revelation chapter 20.
Although Revelation chapter 20 doesn't say any of that.
And there's nothing in Revelation 20 that says Jesus is going to reign on the earth and rule from Jerusalem.
And they have to have a rebuilt temple and all that.
Now, at the end of that thousand years, That's when the new heavens and the new earth start.
So, 2 Peter 3, according to the dispensationalists, does not happen until after the thousand years.
Gotcha.
Now, most all mills, post mills, who don't have that thousand year literal Jesus reigning on the earth, they believe 2 Peter chapter 3 is a literal fire breathing catastrophe on the earth and a renovated earth.
I don't personally, I don't hold that position.
John Owen didn't hold that position.
John Brown didn't hold that position.
John Lightfoot didn't hold that position.
Others didn't either.
The second Peter three is really talking about the elements of the old covenants are tested by fire and burned up.
Not that the earth itself is burned up, but that old covenant order is burned up.
Right.
So it Different views based upon your eschatological position.
That's helpful because I was telling you before we started recording, I was in San Diego.
I didn't tell you San Diego, but I was in San Diego, California.
I told you California.
And San Diego is close proximity to Westminster Escondido.
And Westminster Escondido, you know, even John Frame, you know, wrote kind of his critique of the Escondido theology.
He named the book The Escondido Theology and primarily critiquing their two kingdom theology.
I think I even wrote a.
I think I wrote a foreword or an introduction.
Oh, did you?
Okay.
And so, anyway, Van Druden would be, for a lot of guys, the gold standard there.
But Horton, you know, Michael Horton and multiple other guys would adhere to that strict two kingdom theology, where basically Druden, from what I've understood.
And so, anyways, I had interaction with, you know, a lot of my pastor friends were Presbyterian, but a lot of them came out of Escondido, Westminster Escondido.
And so they, you know, were pretty staunchly two kingdom.
And from what I heard from them, Basically, what was taught at the school is that the only thing that is going to enter into the new heavens and new earth is, you know, the only physical thing is our physical resurrected bodies, because you have to hold to that without being just a full blown heretic.
So you've got to say that, you know, you've got to believe in the resurrection and a literal bodily resurrection, but everything else, they really believed everything would be burnt up, would be complete.
It wasn't going to be restored.
So, like texts where it says, you know, that even creation itself is groaning with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
Uh, Druden and those guys would say that you know that the creation is groaning with eager expectations to give way to the sons of God to basically like a mercy killing, it wants to die so that this new thing can happen.
That's a pretty look, that's a pretty popular position among a lot of even some post mill guys.
Okay, I personally believe we need a almost complete reassessment of eschatology because if you look at the creeds, you look at The Nicene Creed, and you look at the Apostles' Creed, one of them says the resurrection of the body, the other one says the resurrection of the dead, one says he descended into hell.
The Pope as Antichrist Debate00:05:23
The Nicene Creed says baptism for the remission of sins.
And so there are a number of things, even in those confessional statements, and we don't even know those creedal statements, we don't even know who wrote the Apostles' Creed.
Confessional statements, Baptist confessions, Westminster confession, whatever the case might be, there's very little on eschatology.
Everything, most of the stuff on eschatology, the Westminster Confession of Faith, of course, made a direct statement in its original version that the Pope was Antichrist.
That was a popular view among the Reformers.
Yeah, the 1689 says that too, which I'm just happy to read that is the Pope is an Antichrist, to which I would say yes and amen.
That to me is in biblical terms, that doesn't fit.
So, you would say that there's a singular Antichrist?
Is that what you're hinting at?
I was raised Roman Catholic and I memorized, we had to memorize the Apostles' Creed.
So, if you look at the Apostles' Creed, a Protestant who believes in the Apostles' Creed, Roman Catholics believe in the Apostles' Creed.
Yes.
Jesus is the Son of God, God is triune.
All of that was within the Roman Catholic Church.
The difference is that in biblical terms, an antichrist is someone who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
That is, an antichrist is someone who denies the Father and the Son.
Well, Roman Catholics don't deny the Father and the Son.
So the biblical definition of an antichrist, I'm talking about the biblical definition, 1 John, yes.
Most likely, and again, 1 John 2, verse 18, John says, Look, there's not just one antichrist, there's many antichrists.
We're living in the last hour, and this is evidence.
The evidence for that is there are many antichrists.
So, who are these antichrists who denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh and denied the Father and the Son?
So, that would be apostate Judaism.
It's not Roman Catholicism.
Here, I think the reformers got this wrong.
That's why I think there are a lot of guys who are historicists.
They believe the Roman Catholic Church is the end time antichrist.
Not in terms of what the Bible has to say and define it.
I've seen guys write books on the Antichrist and just skip over 1 John 2, verse 18, 1 John 2, 22, 1 John 4, 1 and 2, 2 John 7.
They never actually defined Antichrist.
And that there were many of them.
I appreciate that.
That's a really fair assessment.
And I've never thought that the Roman Catholic Church or the Pope is the Antichrist or the final Antichrist, but I have categorized the Pope as.
And Antichrist, which is what Reformed Baptist guys did, what a lot of Presbyterian guys did.
But the point you're making in saying that, you know, if we want to have a biblical definition of the Antichrist, the Antichrist is, because you're right, John absolutely, he explicitly says that in chapter two.
The one who is the Antichrist, but the one who denies that Jesus has come in the flesh, which is, and, you know, I even wrote a book on 1 John, and I remember when I was dealing with that text saying that, you know, because saying that Jesus came in the flesh includes a lot.
If we flesh out that statement, it says that.
For one, it says that Christ is eternal.
He came in the flesh.
He came from somewhere, right?
He was somewhere else.
And so he, you know, it says that he, you know, he didn't always have flesh.
So what did he have before that?
He was a most pure spirit with God the Father, eternal, eternally begotten, not made.
And he comes in the flesh.
And so you're right.
By that standard, and that is what John clearly says, by that standard, Catholics would not fall into the category of.
So now, this does not absolve the Roman Catholic Church of all of its many, many.
Right, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They may be anti Christ, but in terms of the Bible, you can't really make that statement.
But the papacy, the idea of speaking ex cathedra, Virgin Mary, and perpetual virginity, the assumption of Mary, praying to Mary, all that kind of stuff.
I mean, the Roman Catholic Church has enough doctrinal problems.
We don't have to create extra ones.
Yeah.
No, that's fair.
Thanks.
I appreciate that.
So, okay.
So, all that means by the way, it's not that Kirk Cameron, the movie isn't unstoppable.
He did another one.
It's called Monumental.
Okay.
That's the one that he did on America's.
Christian heritage based upon this monument that is up in Massachusetts, which overlooks the harbor.
A gigantic, if you haven't seen it, it's really worth watching.
It's called Monumental.
Kirk Cameron and Marshall Foster are involved in that.
And Darren Doan actually was the one who kind of fixed that particular film.
He's not giving any credit for it in the film itself, but Darren Doan was the one that actually put that all together and really made it viewable.
That's a little sidetrack.
That's great.
All right.
Well, so let's.
Postmillennial Views on Revelation00:14:39
I know that a lot of our listeners are very interested in eschatology, and a lot of them are very interested in post millennial eschatology, which is where I'm at.
But this is a recent, a lot of our listeners know this because I've shared it in prior episodes.
But this is a recent development for me just in the last couple of years, really coming into post millennialism.
And I think what I hear from a lot of our audience is well, I like it.
I don't know anybody who doesn't like it.
Everyone's like, I like it.
I want it to be true.
But wanting to be true.
Wanting sufficient biblical evidence.
We've done some stuff on our show with like Matthew 24 and the Olivet discourse, which that for me seems to be one of, as I've learned and listened to guys like you and guys like Doug Wilson, I feel like Matthew 24 seems to be one of the easiest ones now to explain.
In fact, now it's like one of those things like once you see it, you know, you can't unsee it.
And so now it's hard for me to look at Matthew 24 and explain it in the framework of any other eschatology but a post mill preterist, you know, theology.
But what are some other maybe Key biblical texts that really convinced you of the post millennial persuasion?
Well, typically, when someone becomes a post millennialist, they're stuck in the definitions, the tensional definitions among amillennialism, premillennialism, and then post millennialism.
And they're battling a paradigm that isn't in and of itself.
Clear of how you get there.
Premillennialists have it very easy.
Jesus is going to reign on the earth for a thousand years.
Simple.
Go to Revelation 20.
You reign with Christ for a thousand years, although it doesn't say on the earth, and the ones who do reign with him are dead.
So that's another issue.
But theirs is real simple.
Hey, interpret the Bible literally.
Although it seems like it's the only place in the book of Revelation that they interpret literally is that 1,000 years.
You're right.
And they don't talk about all the other things in there that you cannot interpret literally.
So they got the easiest job.
To do the amillennialist has the second easiest job based on Revelation chapter 20, and that's simply because if you read Revelation chapter 20, it does not describe a millennium as we know it.
We say it's a thousand years.
Well, a thousand years is a millennium, uh, true in the sense that that's the definition of a thousand years, but a millennium has a broader definition to it in the sense it's typically a time of.
Of peace, prosperity, goodwill towards men, all that sort of thing.
But you don't find that in Revelation chapter 20 either.
None of it is in there.
So, I'm of the opinion that you cannot build a millennial perspective based upon Revelation 20.
The premium can't do it because it doesn't say Jesus is going to reign in the earth for a thousand years.
It says nothing about rebuilding a temple, it says nothing about animal sacrifices, it says none of those types of things.
The amillennialist has a better case in the sense hey, Revelation 20 doesn't describe what we would think of a millennium.
In fact, if you go to the early church fathers, And you read their discussions of the millennium, and premillennialists like to say, oh, all the early church fathers, almost all the early church fathers were premillennial.
Well, dispensationalists wrote his master's thesis on that, and he said, nah, that's not the case.
What you really find is the beginnings of all millennialism.
And if you look back and you study the early church and those who described a millennium, they didn't quote Revelation chapter 20, they quoted Jewish sources.
Which is kind of interesting, which have nothing to do with Revelation chapter 20.
So, how does the postmillennialist make his case?
I always tell people you can't go to Revelation 20 to do that.
I don't think it has anything to do with what we think of as a millennium.
So, that's my first breakaway point.
The second thing is what you brought up, and that is things like the Olivet discourse, 2 Thessalonians 2, the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist issue.
The book of Revelation, the dating of the book of Revelation, what are all those symbols all about?
But mostly it's the sign indicators that stop people from becoming postmillennial, plus experiential exegesis.
That is, look at the world around us today.
I hear that.
So the first thing you have to do is get out of Revelation chapter 20 to build your case.
Number two, you've got to clear the deck.
By going looking at these passages like the Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and say, Hey, this deals with these events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
So that takes some of the criticism away from those who oppose post millennialism because, say, we have wars and rumors of wars, you got famines in various places, you got false Christ and so forth.
You say, Well, wait a minute.
Yeah, we do have those things.
They were in the first century too.
And Jesus was talking about that particular generation.
And so, one of the places that I, and there are a number of ways to do this, one of the places that I go to, this would be my third attempt, you know, after you say, get out of Revelation 20, that's number one, clear the deck with eschatological passages.
And that is the consistent application of an unbelieving worldview.
Where does unbelieving thought go?
Where does it lead to?
When it is consistent with itself, because it's always pitting one worldview over against another worldview.
And I think what we've got going on right now, and we've had for a very long time, Christians are inconsistent.
We mentioned very early on, Christians don't want to get involved in the things of this world.
And the other side takes advantage of that because we've left a cultural and moral vacuum.
And so one of the reasons we see the ascendancy of so much evil in the world is because Christians sat back and did nothing.
They did nothing.
Go through history.
Who were the educators?
Who developed science?
Hospitals.
All these cases, for the majority of cases, they were Christians who did this.
The great cathedrals, I mean, those cathedrals were built to last millennia.
I mean, they're still standing today.
I mean, you couldn't even burn down the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
They had a very futuristic perspective.
But we gave all that up eschatologically and I think culturally.
We took kind of a pietistic approach to life, which seemed to be more spiritual.
So we want to be spiritual.
Let's, you know, Jesus didn't get mixed up in politics.
Politics is dirty.
There's a separation between church and state.
Satan is the God of this world.
You just go down the list with these things is that you can't impose your morality on other people.
We're just supposed to preach the gospel.
So you've got all this stuff, this kind of mix of witches' brew of a worldview that essentially says to the Christian, we're on a holding pattern until some eschatological event takes place.
So I go to 2 Timothy 3.
I think 2 Timothy 3 in the New Testament is the place to begin.
And most people say, Well, how can you say that?
Because 2 Timothy 3 is truly significant in the way the Apostle Paul outlines the implications of an unbelieving worldview, where it goes.
And then the other part is what we as Christians should be doing when we see.
The faltering implications of the consistency of an unbelieving worldview.
And once you go there, you begin to understand.
And this, remember now, this is written, 2 Timothy chapter 3, this is written to a young pastor, guy like you, living at the time where you had apostate Judaism, you had the advance of the Roman Empire, and you had a prediction that the temple and everything associated with it was going to be destroyed.
Real quick.
So, where would you date?
The writing of 2 Timothy.
Because right there, you just said.
Yeah, on the dates of these books, it's probably, I'm going to guess, maybe in the 50s, may have been in the early 60s.
I'm not sure.
Because that's another thing.
I think for a lot of people, I remember, you know, with Jeff Durbin, you know, like dating the authorship, the writing of Revelation at, I think he said like AD 67, like just a few years ago.
Probably earlier.
I would say about AD 64, maybe 65.
Right.
Because a lot of people, I think that's part of it also, is the dating of certain New Testament books, because people, You know, would say, well, this was 8090.
They do the late date thing.
James Jordan has 204 lectures on the book of Revelation.
And one of the things he, I was listening to one of them yesterday.
One of the points he makes is he says, you can go through the internal evidence that, you know, the time texts, the fact that the temple is still standing in Revelation chapter 11.
Right.
The sixth king is mentioned, which was probably Nero.
The number 666 is referring to Nero Caesar.
You would say that the 66, because I know that's what Sproul said, and that's to me, that seems to make sense that that was a reference to Nero.
Is that what you're saying?
Jim Jordan has a more interesting perspective.
Jim's perspective, and I'm trying to get people to understand this.
When Jim teaches through the book of Revelation, and you don't have to agree with everything he says, I mean, he'll tell you, look, I'm speculating here, speculating there.
And I'm working on a series in the book of Revelation.
It's not going to be an in depth thing, but it's going to begin with this premise.
How would the first hearers and readers of the book of Revelation have understood it?
And what tools would they have had at their disposal to understand it?
They wouldn't have any commentaries.
They would have no helps at all.
All they would have is, for the most part, the Old Testament and some parts of the New Testament.
That's all they would have to do this.
And so, and yet they're to understand it.
And if they're to understand it, and that's all the tools they have, then we need to pay attention to that.
And Jim makes this fascinating statement.
He said that the book of Revelation is mediated through angels and those symbols, animals, and so forth and so on.
Babylon mentions Babylon, mentions the city where Jesus was crucified, is called Egypt and Sodom.
You have the candles, the candlesticks, all these Old Testament allusions.
Some people say like 200 to 400 different allusions to the Old Testament.
And he said the book of Revelation, because it was mediated through angels, this is Old Testament language.
This is the, it's kind of like Zechariah, Joseph, in dreams, they were angels.
Old Testament angels, all the way through.
Angels brought this, angels brought this, and so forth.
But when you read the Gospels and you read the letters, you don't see any of that type of language because that language is New Covenant stuff.
You do see it early in the Gospels because that's still part kind of the old covenant.
And so Jim is saying here look, this is a, you got to understand the Old Testament if you're going to understand the book of Revelation.
And it makes no sense to have the book of Revelation.
Done in the 90s.
It doesn't fit the new covenant scenario.
It's a completely different approach to the way it's done.
So let's go back real quick.
That's helpful.
I appreciate it.
But 2 Timothy chapter 3, I've got it here.
Do you remember what verses you're referencing?
It's the whole chapter.
The whole chapter?
Not to go through, and it's real quick.
2 Timothy chapter 3, Timothy is a young pastor.
And Paul's giving him advice.
Just basically saying, in the last days, because that's what people are going to reference.
So starting in verse 1, but understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.
Avoid such people, for among Them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning.
Stop right there, yeah.
Okay, this is where people go.
They they stay, and I've seen it quoted so many times that this is where they stop in order to try to make the case that this is describing our time.
So, what you first thing you have to do is study the last days and go through the New Testament, find out what last days are all about.
We won't do all that, but I guarantee you.
The last days refers to the last days of the old covenant.
Studying Biblical Last Days00:08:31
Right, the acts being at the root, right?
Like John the Baptist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who warns you to flee from the wrath to come?
He's not talking about something in the distant future.
But okay, so you get to the end of verse six, and people say, see, this is talking about our day.
But now look at verse seven.
And this is what I say about the people who express and live out these characteristics in verses one through six.
What will happen to them as they become more and more consistent with them over time?
And then the next question is, what should we as Christians be doing while their collapsing worldview takes place?
So, verse seven, they're always learning, but they're never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Wow, wait a minute.
Why are we putting so much stock in the power of these people when they're always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth?
Now, look at verse eight.
And just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men of depraved mind.
Rejected as regards the faith.
Now, who were Janice and Jambres?
Janice and Jambres were the two sorcerer high priests who stood behind the throne of Pharaoh when Moses and Aaron came in.
Now, you've got to picture this Moses and Aaron come in from the desert, and all they have, besides God's word and God's command, is a dead tree branch.
That's it.
And so, you know, they throw down the rod, it becomes a serpent.
Pharaoh's Janus and Jambres throw down theirs.
And what ends up happening there is, of course, Aaron's rod consumes those of the Janus and Jambres.
Then what happens next?
10 plagues are issued against Egypt.
Israel escapes and goes into the land of Canaan and goes into a new garden, so to speak.
Now, It's a land flowing with milk and honey.
In Numbers 13 and 14, 12 spies are sent out.
Everything God said about this land is absolutely true.
They brought back some of the fruit from the land.
They say, oh, they're giants in the land.
So here we see what happens when God's people are confronted with these types of people in verses 1 through 6.
They took a vote.
10 of them says, you can't go into the land because they're giants.
Joshua and Caleb said, God gave us the promise in Numbers 13, 1 that we're going to take the land.
They wasted 40 years in the wilderness because they didn't believe.
So that's what you got to picture all this.
Then look what comes up next.
Verse 9.
But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those who came to be.
So, briefly, what are we finding today?
Unbelievers are becoming more and more consistent with themselves.
With their worldview.
They're killing their future through abortion.
They're mutilating their future with transgenderism.
They're bankrupting all of us.
And unfortunately, a lot of Christians are kind of going along with this.
And it happened in the wilderness as well.
But it says here, but they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two who came to be.
Now, then the next line, verse 10, but.
But you, Timothy, you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance.
And you balance that or contrast that with everything up in verse one through six.
And he gives on here that you even followed my persecutions, my sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra.
What persecutions I endured, and out of them all, the Lord delivered me.
And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
The other side is weak.
The only reason the other side exists.
In any time frame, is number one, they're inconsistent with their worldview.
And number two, they borrow moral capital from our worldview.
But over time, they abandon that borrowed capital and become more consistent with themselves.
They destroy themselves.
Then it goes on you, however, you, Timothy, continue the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that bleeds to salvation.
Through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
All scriptures God breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for adequate, equipped for every good work.
That is postmillennialism in a nutshell.
It deals with the real world, it deals with real sin in the world, but it also deals with the implications of sin as people become more and more consistent with it.
The second phase of that is, or the parallel phase of that is, what should Christians be doing in the interim?
And Paul gives the instructions.
You follow my teachings.
Now do them.
Go out there and do them and replace what is disintegrating around you.
Now we're seeing a little bit of this, not necessarily by Christians, but here we have this cancel culture going on.
A cancel culture with Twitter and all the other social media platforms, as they become more and more consistent with themselves, they're losing their grip.
They got rid of Trump.
Well, Trump was the big, big deal on Twitter.
He's gone.
You got CNN right now that they're down to like 645,000 people watching them daily.
You got all these alternatives out there that are coming out, and people are abandoning these sites.
And that's what happens to unbelieving thought as it becomes consistent with itself.
Christians need to develop a Christian worldview and get back to basics.
And notice the basic here is you learned this stuff from your grandmother and your mother.
You need these basic, these fundamental principles you need to learn and you need to apply.
So you build from the bottom up.
And that was why my God and Government books begin with God is a governor of all things, self government, family government, church government, and then finally civil government.
And now you go back.
So you got this is 2 Timothy chapter 3.
So now you go back to 1 Timothy chapter 3, and it talks about leadership.
And that is the person who can't govern his own household shouldn't be governing the church.
Right.
That's how you defend post millennialism.
You can bring there a whole bunch of other verses you can bring in about the word of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
All of those verses.
But this is a practical application, not of post millennialism, because to me, post millennialism is built on Revelation chapter 20 and post the year 1000.
I mean, it doesn't fit.
So that's where I've become convinced of post millennialism.
It hasn't been on a bunch of these kind of proof texts for it.
Now, you can make a case for that, that mustard seed and the trees, all those types of things.
But this is a practical application of post millennialism.
The book of Acts is a practical application of post millennialism because even with all the persecution from the Jews and eventually from the Romans, they're gone.
The temple is gone.
The Roman Empire is gone.
Christians transformed the world from this.
They didn't do it perfectly, but we should be getting better at it with practice.
Major universities in the United States were started by Christians Harvard and Yale.
You can go down on the list with this, Dartmouth, Columbia.
And we give them up because we compromise.
And that we just got to quit, we have to quit compromising.
Matthew 16 and Church Growth00:04:33
This is one of the nice things about what's going on in Moscow.
And the reason someone like Doug Wilson gets slammed so much is because he has drawn a line in the sand and he says, we're on this side of this and we're going ahead and we're not just criticizing culture, we're transforming it.
You know, from the bottom up here, and we're trying to create a model.
I know a lot of people are moving to Moscow, but that's not going to work long term.
Right.
We should be taking that and going other places and doing, you know, go thou and do likewise.
Right.
No, I completely agree.
No, that was really helpful.
I mean, that's part of what appeals to me is that, you know, the name of our podcast is Theology Applied.
And I think that's one of the big problems is you have Christians saluting the inerrancy of Scripture, but not actually believing in the sufficiency of Scripture, not actually willing to take the sword off of the mantle.
And, you know, if somebody's trying to Bust down the door and come into your house.
The enemy's at the gate, like grab the sword, use the sword, apply your theology and theology, applying our theology beyond just our private lives and our homes, our marriages.
You know, I mean, Christians have never been shy to do conferences on marriage and family and conferences on the church.
And we, so it's like we think that the scripture applies in these two realms of the home and the church, but that somehow, you know, I was preaching just the other day in my church and saying, you know, Like the Simba, you know, Mufasa illustration of, you know, Pride Rock and Mufasa the king is showing Simba all of his kingdom that will one day be his.
And, you know, Simba said, What's that dark, shadowy place over there?
And you could almost hear like the evangelicals saying, That's the realm of politics.
You must never go there.
We don't have any authority there, you know.
But Christ is king of all.
And so for me, to me, for my listeners, I don't know if I've ever shared this, but the starting place for me, so that was super helpful.
Second Timothy 3.
For me, it was very similar.
It was a practical starting place.
So the text for me was just, The Great Commission that we're called to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the triune God, and then teaching them to obey all of Christ's commands.
And for me, this is what I took that and then I cross-referenced with what Jesus says, you know, in Matthew 16: that the gates of hell, he's going to build his church, the increase of his government, like it's not just going to sustain, but it's going to grow.
He's going to build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
Um, you know, and the church is on the offense, it's being built, it's expanding and increasing, and hell is actually on the defense, and hell won't be able to hold back the growth of Christ's church.
So, Matthew 16 made me think, All right, the church is going to win because Christ is going to ensure that that is so.
And then, you take that with Matthew 28 and the Great Commission, which includes not just making converts but teaching them to obey all of Christ's commands.
And then you ask the question, Well, what are all of Christ's commands?
and you start thinking, Well, Every command in scripture ultimately can be tracked back to Christ.
And, you know, but even with the greatest commandment and the second greatest to love the Lord and love our neighbor, and that being two tables of law of the Old Testament, the Old Testament and the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments being, you know, the moral law being the bedrock for where we got all these civil laws in the Old Testament.
And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my goodness.
So fulfilling the Great Commission is talking about how to start a school and how to have a God fearing government and how to do this and how to do that.
And so then the only question left is, and I think a lot of my pre mill friends would be here, they would, I could convince them of theology needing to be applied to all of life.
I can convince them of that sooner.
But the reason they're able to still hold onto their pre male theology is because I can't convince them that we'll ever be successful.
Right?
So they're like, theology applies to everything.
So that's why I think you need Matthew 28 and Matthew 16.
You need both of them.
Matthew 28 says, this is the job.
Matthew 16 says, and it's going to work.
And once I had those two pieces, it was like, well, then of course we should have Christian nations and Christian governments.
I always tell people is that.
If you make post millennialism so grandiose, and then people look as to where they are right now, they'll say, There's no way we can get from here to there.
Balancing Grand Vision with Reality00:02:34
And I sit back and I think the number of multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar companies that got started in garages.
Right.
Jeff Bezos, Apple, Walt Disney, the guy who started eBay, they think how small they started.
And people will criticize Bezos and he built this, all this, he did all this and all this and all this.
He said, look, you could have done that.
He did it.
You could do something like that.
But if you make the task so grandiose at the beginning, people say, there's no way we can get from here to there.
And I've told this story.
I started lifting weights when I was probably, I don't know, 11 or 12 years old.
And when you buy a weight set, if you buy an Olympic weight set, you get, they're in kilos, but basically, you go to the American weights and measures.
You get 45 pound plates, 35, 25s, 10s, two and a halves, and one and a quarters.
And you buy a set, 315 pounds.
Very, very few.
I don't know any 11 year old, 12 year old is going to be able to lift three, you know, do a bench press with 315 pounds, do a clean and press with 315 pounds.
That's not going to happen.
Those weights, those smaller weights are on there.
You start at a lower weight.
And you incrementally, to get stronger, you add the one and a quarters or two and a halves.
And after a while, you look after four years or so and say, look what I had a big chart that I had.
I filled it all out and all my workouts and the records that I did and so forth.
And I say, you go back and you look at what I was doing when I was 14 years old and what I ended up doing when I was 18 years old.
And if someone had said, This is what you're going to have to do in order to do what you want to do, I probably would have said, There's no way I can do that.
I can only lift 110 pound barbell over my head.
So, what we have got to do is be careful of how we present the case for post millennialism.
You can make it so grandiose, it gets people so excited about it that when they go out there and start working on it, They get discouraged because it isn't moving as quickly as they want.
Losing Moral Centers in Society00:15:44
But remember what Paul writes in 2 Timothy chapter 3 you followed my persecutions.
And all who follow Jesus Christ are going to be persecuted.
And so there is this here's what the unbelievers believe.
This is what's going to happen.
They're consistent.
That doesn't mean that things are going to be a bed of roses.
They get there.
Here's what you're supposed to do while this is taking place, et cetera.
The case.
And because we're far, we're very, very far behind.
I mean, Princeton started in what was called the log college.
And it started in a log, basically a log cabin.
Well, you go up and look at Princeton today, it's no longer a log cabin.
And we as Christians have to start thinking of the possibilities out there, but not be discouraged if we don't reach those things immediately and give up.
That's good.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
So, what do you think in terms of this?
This was one of my questions.
It seems like, you know, so unbelievers, at first, they're borrowing capital, moral capital from Christians in the Christian worldview.
And they're also borrowing, and we're being charitable there because the actual word would be stealing, right?
Stealing.
They're stealing from Christ.
But they're stealing from Christ's moral capital, but they're stealing from Christ's principles, right?
They want the principles of Christ without the person.
Of Christ, but they're using these principles because they work.
We live in God's world, God has rules for his world, and God will not be mocked.
A man reaps what he sows, and so non Christians do that.
But then eventually, you said you know that they become more and more consistent with their actual worldview.
Which, of course, when you become consistent with a worldview that is antithetical to Christ, then the result is chaos.
My question is within the post mill framework, things you know, yes, I understand your point, it's going to be slow, right?
It could be a few thousand years, it could be 20, 30, 40,000 years, who knows?
Um, but it seems like On one hand, I feel like, you know, Christ is defeating his enemies one by one.
That's another thing that was convincing for me because pre male, it seems like the first enemy for Christ to defeat is death.
Whereas the Bible says that, you know, the last enemy is death.
And so I see Christ defeating his enemies now.
But then there's certain enemies where I'm like, I felt like that one was defeated.
Like, how many times do we have to try socialism until that enemy is defeated?
You know what I mean?
Like, so my question is throughout the last 2,000 years, since the.
Life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and the fall of the ending of the old covenant, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Would you say that there are some big worldviews, just demonic, horrible worldviews, that really have been laid to rest that aren't going to resurrect and come back, and we have to learn that lesson again?
Are we progressing?
Well, again, I think when you think about the majority of Christians send their children to government schools.
Right.
What do you expect?
I mean, be like, oh, let's send our children to the Roman schools, or let's send our children to, you know, Daniel and his three friends, they were captives.
They had to be there as an example.
And I know there are some schools that are better than others and so forth and so on, but there is no school out there, there's no public school out there that's teaching biblical world and life view Christianity.
And there are lots of Christian schools that aren't teaching biblical world and life view Christianity.
So there just needs to be a, and I don't know, I don't know if it's going to be come by way.
We finally get kicked in the head.
And Gary North has this analogy that Ray Sutton said that there are all these medicines in the medicine cabinet.
And for every time there's an illness, they go and they pick one of these remedies and it doesn't work.
And the next time they get ill, they pick another and it doesn't work.
And they pick another and it doesn't work.
And finally, the last one in there is a Christian worldview because they've exhausted all the other ones.
Now, I don't.
I don't want that to be, it doesn't have to be that way.
I'm beginning to see a lot of change out there.
There are lots of Christians out there who are catching on to this.
I mean, when I was a Christian, no one was talking, I mean, Francis Schaefer was talking Christian worldview, but his was more of a kind of a philosophical, historical dynamic of that worldview.
But you know, you've got to talk to a lot of Christians today.
They don't have any idea who Francis Schaefer is.
They just don't.
Because I think one of the reasons is that Francis Schaefer didn't offer an alternative.
He didn't offer specifics about here's what we need to do.
He was premillennial, so his eschatology held him back.
He was somewhat Vantillian in his view.
That's why he mentions presuppositions and so forth.
But he just couldn't, and his son apostatized.
His son's a I mean, he's just going way, way off the deep end, Frank Schaefer, Frankie Schaefer.
So, but things we didn't have, we didn't have, we have very few Christian defense foundations out there.
You got Liberty Council, you have Alliance Defending Freedom, and there are about six of them out there that are defending Christians in court, winning lots of cases.
Christian school movement is growing.
It's been, and it's been because of COVID, it's growing even more.
COVID helped, yeah.
There's a lot of good curriculum out there on this.
Podcasts like yours, podcasts like mine, what Jeff Durbin and those guys are doing, cross-politic guys and what they're doing.
There's good discussion on Facebook on all of these different topics.
I mean, somebody posts something and I'll see these comments and I think, wow, I have no idea who this guy is, but this guy's right on the money.
And my wife and I went to a, it's called the Pregnancy Center.
It's north of here in Jasper, Georgia, and a good friend of ours runs it.
Not only does it talk about abortion, but it's not just a negative approach, like don't get an abortion.
It's we will help you with your child.
You decide to keep your child, we will help you.
They have a place for them to come in with clothes.
They can take courses, they work with them, and so forth and so on.
And it was their last banquet, my wife and I were sitting down, and there was this young couple, and I forgot what they asked me what I did, and I told them what I did.
And they said, Oh, we really like.
We like George Grant and Greg Bonson.
Now, they didn't know who I was, and I didn't know who they were, but they knew George Grant and Greg Bonson.
I'm thinking, where did they find out about this?
So there's a lot, it's going to take time.
There's a new day.
Eschatology is big right now.
Amillennialists, historicists, amillennialists, and premillennialists don't have any real answers.
They're still debating their position.
Against preterists who essentially wiped the floor with their exegesis.
I mean, somebody sent a video of a guy who used to be a Christian.
One of the reasons he left Christianity was to be said, Oh, Jesus predicted that the world was going to end.
This generation will not pass away.
And I'm thinking, this is a seemingly intelligent guy.
He doesn't have a clue.
When Doug Wilson debated Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens brought up Matthew 24.
And in, I don't know, 90 seconds, Doug Wilson shut him down.
And so, when I started in this, when I used to do radio shows, oh, the attacks I got, which didn't bother me.
Now, if I do a radio show, 80% of the people say, Yeah, Gary, I believe the way you do.
I did this study on my own, or I read your book, and so forth.
There's been a whole, there's been a sea change of this.
The guy on Gab, I don't know if you, If you're on Gab at all, no.
But this guy, which is kind of an alternative to YouTube or Twitter, I think it's.
Yeah, I'm very familiar with Gab.
I'm not on it, but yeah.
Yeah, he loves David Chilton.
Huh, really?
He pushed my book, Wars and Rumors of Wars, gave us a $500 credit to advertise on Gab.
Wow.
So there's a lot going on out there that we just don't, a lot of us don't know about.
The internet's made it possible to, I can, you know, send PDFs all around the world.
I don't have to, you know, a lot of people can't buy books because it's.
It's too expensive.
People are translating stuff all the time.
So we are just at the beginning, I think, of a paradigm shift.
And Christians who don't get on the train are going to be, their view is going to be left behind, which is okay by me.
Left behind.
But umps.
Yeah.
Their view will truly be left behind.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I've, you know, just in the last 10 years, Or so it does seem like there's just a major shift that people are thinking differently.
People want to apply their theology.
People want to see Christian schools, Christian government, Christian this, Christian that.
And people want to fight.
And I think, I don't know, in God's providence, I think that's sometimes what it takes.
I think we just, we had just a bunch of spoiled children.
It seems like we just had like the, some generation, I don't know what generation, but some generation, the sin of Eli, we just had these spoiled sons that just were lethargic because they had all these provisions that America.
Gave to us, you know, and now all of a sudden, like, COVID made a bunch of people think, right?
We, you know, Doug Wilson said it like this we all had to learn in, you know, 15 minutes what we should have been studying over the past 15 years, you know, about God and government and all this, you know, and, but it made a lot of guys, myself included, like, oh my goodness, I don't have, I don't have a Christian worldview that encompasses these kinds of situations.
And it was all ethereal and all theoretical and not a big deal until the last couple years, especially now everyone was like, yeah, I want to think about, Um, what vaccine I get, I want to think about who I vote for, I want to think about this, think about that, and you know.
And so now everybody is like, the Bible actually does have an answer to these things.
And the guys who still want to insist, because some guys they are going to get left behind because they refuse to budge, but the guys who still want to insist that this, you know, pietism, this you know, privatized lordship of Christ, he's not lord of all, he's just lord of your sweet little heart, and it's you know, and it's private, and you know, he's going to return soon, and he doesn't really, Christ doesn't really have any desire to get involved in worldly affairs.
I really do think that that brand of Christianity is quickly becoming obsolete.
People just aren't interested.
There have always been gatekeepers.
Seminaries are gatekeepers.
You can't minister unless you've gone to seminary.
And there really aren't that many gatekeepers anymore.
If you want to know something today, you can go online and find an answer to it or find a group that years ago you couldn't do.
Look, when I was in high school, I graduated from high school in 1968.
I never, never heard the gospel.
No one ever talked about any of that.
When Jimmy Carter ran for president and he used the phrase born again, the media didn't have any idea what that meant.
Billy Graham had to write a book called How to Be Born Again in order to try to explain all this stuff.
So we are so far behind and we capitulated.
Look, public schools, when I was growing up, they were okay at prayer and they had.
You know, a Bible verse, you know, here and there, but nothing was taught from a biblical worldview.
But a lot of I remember sitting down with a high school friend I hadn't seen in, I don't know, 40 years back, went back to Pittsburgh and, and I told him, gave him my testimony.
So, well, Gary, we were all Christians back then.
We were all Christians.
That's because you went to church.
Although, two doors down, there was a Jewish fellow who, you know, we forgot about him.
But his worldview was our worldview, had the same moral, you know, everybody in the neighborhood pretty much believed.
In the same way, and for the most part, raised their kids in the same way because there was a spillover effect.
There was kind of a Christian civil religion that still existed.
But that changed rapidly.
World War II changed the moral center of the United States, it changed everything.
We didn't see it right away, but it did.
Can you explain that a little bit?
Yeah.
Flesh that out.
World War II.
Well, here we fight World War I.
It didn't last long before we're fighting World War II again.
And what people saw over there, these soldiers came back.
My father was in World War II, he was in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed.
He was in the Pacific in World War II.
He was in the Korean War, his right leg was blown off in the Korean War.
And these men came back.
And they saw horror.
And the question was, where was God in all this?
Same thing happened in Europe, where the Jews, you know, six million Jews killed.
Where was God in all this?
People began to question the very core of their existence by what they had seen and what they had experienced.
And it was slow.
There was still the Christian remnant there a bit, but people began to, I think, move on with their lives because they had lost the moral center of things.
And the Christian churches were weak.
They didn't talk about these things.
I mean, Billy Graham, you know, Billy Graham comes out in the 1950s, and there was Fulton J. Sheen, who was Roman Catholic, who was on TV, but they weren't really dealing with the issues of the day in a transformational way.
We were sending all of our kids to public schools.
We just thought they were great.
You know, we were growing up, you know, we paid football, cheerleading, da da da da, all that kind of thing.
And secularism creeped up on us.
To the point where it grabbed a hold of us.
And then, of course, pastors weren't preaching the whole counsel of God.
And so, politically, what happened was that there wasn't that much of a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Secularism Creeping into Schools00:03:25
A Kennedy Democrat would be considered a fairly conservative Republican today.
The Republicans today are almost worthless.
And Christians give up, or they, when 1980, we won the election in 1984, Christians just thought, boy, we just changed the world.
Well, we didn't.
We just, Won a couple of wars.
And then it was like it's, they gave up.
They just went right back to where they were before.
It's like 9 11.
All that happened.
And, you know, it's amazing how we've forgotten, you know, we didn't see that as maybe a warning from God that we better get our act together with all of this.
So God has given us enough warnings here.
I hope more and more Christians take heed.
Maybe they are.
Maybe they're getting a little more fed up.
Maybe they need to understand that government, we just don't switch sides and we take the same money that they're taking and spend it for our pet projects.
So a lot of teaching has to take place.
And unfortunately, a lot of pastors aren't prepared for it.
Yeah, I completely agree.
It seems like each generation always has to learn why.
You know, you can pass down the what, this is what we do, you know, but they need to learn the why.
They need to have the worldview.
They can't just hang certain virtues in midair.
They have to, there has to be a foundation for that understanding the underpinnings.
And it seems like.
I don't know.
It just, you know, one generation, I forget who said this.
It might have been D.A. Carson back in the day, but one generation believes the gospel, the next generation assumes the gospel, the next generation neglects the gospel, and the next generation rejects the gospel.
And, you know, and I think that illustration can apply beyond just the gospel.
But for me, you know, I can't look back at Reagan and I can't, you know, that's, I'm just not, I wasn't providentially born at that time.
But what I can see, you know, I was a part of Acts 29 network for a while and then left and wanted to be confessionally reformed.
I kind of got sick of Acts 29 for a number of reasons, but the biggest one was Acts 29, in my assessment, just always wanted to be cool.
They wanted to be cool in one way with Driscoll, and then they said, hey, we repent of wanting to be cool and we don't want to be cool anymore.
But really, they just tried to start that thing wasn't cool in the culture's eyes anymore.
So it's not that they actually repented of the approval of man and the desire to be cool.
They just recognized that society was condemning Driscoll.
Driscoll was cool for a while.
He was cool in Seattle, but then when that started being condemned, As chauvinistic and all those kind of things, then all of a sudden, you know, with greater and greater emphasis on feminism and all these, then it was like, oh, yeah, holiness and gentleness and, you know, these kinds of things.
And, you know, but then quickly out of that came racial reconciliation.
Racial, and I remember like six years in a row, every conference that, you know, racial reconciliation, racial, and they'd have a panel, you know, and everybody get up there and it was all anecdotal, you know, and just stories of being pulled over by a police officer and mistreated, these kinds of things.
And so eventually, you know, I was like, I didn't even have the language for it at the time.
I didn't know about critical race theory.
I didn't know any of these things.
But I was like, I'm just, I'm tired of, like, how many times do I have to repent of a sin that I'm not even aware that I'm committing?
You know, the sin of corporate racism.
That's your problem.
See, you're not aware of it.
So it makes you.
Gospel-Centered Racial Reconciliation00:07:06
Exactly.
Right.
Racist by definition.
See, it's all mixed up in this.
But see, what ends up happening is what Christians don't, a lot of these guys who have these ministries and so forth, they.
They don't like the particulars.
They don't want to have to make the hard choices.
They don't want to have to tell people, you know, you don't, why are you sending your children to government schools?
Why are you doing that?
Well, we, you know, our school's different.
And I remember talking to some Christian leader, this was a number of years ago, and he said, well, our school's different.
And I said, Tim, do you know that the other people are saying that about their schools?
Their schools are different, but you're saying their schools are terrible, and they're saying your schools are terrible.
He eventually changed.
He said, I don't know because of what I said.
But look what's happened to government schools.
Right.
I mean, they think we took prayer and Bible reading out of the schools in the 1960s, 1962 and 63.
We took that out and that's what changed.
No, it changed a long time before that.
If you're just sprinkling a little bit of pixie dust Bible stuff in a school and you're not teaching everything from a Christian perspective, you're not teaching a Christian worldview and you're turning your children over to the people who are trying to destroy you.
Right.
No, you're absolutely right.
We have a lot of Christians who don't have a Christian worldview.
And then all of a sudden, as secularism took over, then the world just started calling it, started calling a spade a spade.
So it's like, you know, they had already, secularism had already gotten its fangs in.
And the actual meat of Christianity and a Christian worldview was moved out.
And then, but then there's still the remnants of, you know, the Christian pixie dots, like you're saying, to allow, to sedate.
The Christians to let the actual meat of it, the actual worldview get taken, the teeth of Christianity get taken.
But here's some pixie dust.
So we're not actually really taking this thing and say, oh, okay, well, yeah, they prayed before the football game.
You know, okay, it's not that.
That's a victory.
Right, exactly.
And then.
We have a moment of silence.
And then.
It's a moment of silence.
Right, exactly.
A moment of victory.
But then once it's all gone, then eventually, you know, you don't do the pixie dust anymore because you don't have to.
You can just call it what it is.
Yeah, this is a public school.
What makes you think it's Christian?
Whoever would have thought that Eastern Europe.
Is more Christian than the United States.
The fact that Eastern Europe would come out of communism.
I mean, Hungary, the president of, I don't know if he's prime minister or president of Hungary, is a staunch reformed Christian.
And you're beginning to see the Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, they've learned about the past and they don't want to go back there.
You've got Sub Saharan Africa where the gospel is spreading.
And we think America is kind of the The breadbasket of evangelicalism.
But no, I'm Central South America.
Now, the types of Christianity that are going on down there are pretty weak.
But there are people down there trying to transform it.
I have a good friend in Guatemala that's trying to transform it.
I got someone in Chile that's trying to transform it as well.
All over the world, these types of little things are being raised up.
And you've got Eastern Europe countries resisting.
The flow of Muslims into their country.
Right.
The European Union is trying to punish them for that.
But this, you know, they're not giving up.
So, anyway, hey, I've got to.
Yeah, no, that's fine.
Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up.
Okay.
The last thing I was going to say just with the Axe 29 thing is, you know, it was cool here and then it was cool here.
But my point is, you know, going into the woke thing, my point is just whether it be Timothy Keller or whether it be Axe 29 or a lot of guys, it just became.
Gospel, gospel, gospel centrality, right?
That's what I always, you know, you got to be gospel centered, gospel centered.
Anything outside of that is peripheral.
You're wasting your time.
But then what I noticed is, you know, you anytime I talk about something that's conservative, you say, no, no, no, just focus on the gospel.
But then anything left, left leaning, right?
Engaging the like you are engaging the culture and pushing for things in the culture to happen.
They're just all leftist ideas.
So you're allowed to do that while being gospel centered.
But if you do anything conservative, then you're not being gospel centered.
So I think that was a big thing too.
But any last words or if nothing else, just let our listeners know how they can follow you.
Well, they can go to Americanvision.org and the podcasts are there.
They're Articles, books.
We have a good, good selection of books on apologetics, America's Christian history, eschatology, and a whole bunch of other projects as well that we're working on.
Of course, I'm on Facebook.
So, and, you know, look, people shouldn't be discouraged.
People shouldn't be overwhelmed with what's to do.
You know, I talk about circles of responsibility.
You are responsible for yourself first.
And you're married, you know, children, their families, you know, second.
You have friendships next.
You have your job after that.
You've got, you know, the circles just keep going out.
And so these are, you have priorities within those circles.
You keep, you know, do what is called responsibility within those.
Don't bite off more than you can chew.
You know, take on something.
Don't feel guilty if you're not changing the world within a week.
Right.
It just takes, you know, it takes time.
You know, fix your own.
Judgment begins with the house of God.
Judgment begins with us first, but we should be doing transformative in the way that we can.
Support ministries that are doing some of this work and maybe encourage your pastor to address some of these topics.
You might have to do some research for him on that.
You've got to remember a lot of pastors have a mortgage on the church.
They start preaching on some controversial topics.
They may lose a third of their congregation.
They don't want to do that.
Lots of reasons why they won't preach on these topics.
So there's an elder whose daughter got an abortion.
So there's just, you know, there are people on maybe some form of welfare.
You can't talk about economics that much.
Right.
A lot going on that has to, you know, that has to change.
Yep.
You're right.
You're right.
Well, thanks for coming on the show, Gary.
We really appreciate it.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
This is undoubtedly.
The best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.