00:01:36.780No, American Vision was founded by a fellow named Steve Schiffman back in the late 1970s.
00:01:43.640I 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.
00:02:10.420American 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.
00:02:25.180That'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 is just talk about America's Christian history.
00:02:37.520what we as Christians need to do is to talk about a comprehensive biblical worldview and the
00:02:44.480application of that and he he agreed with that he didn't know much really he he kind of glommed
00:02:50.380onto onto that topic he was uh he partnered with Marshall Foster I don't know if you know who
00:02:56.100Marshall Foster is they see that's the thing a lot of you young guys really the history of all
00:03:01.620this stuff um one of these days I'm just going to have to sit down and go through go through all of
00:03:07.240So Marshall Foster is still in the realm of America's Christian heritage.
00:04:22.380And this is when Jerry Falwell, who was a Baptist, dispensationalist, got involved in politics and started an organization called the Moral Majority.
00:04:34.320And 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.
00:04:48.060And it was at that particular meeting where Ronald Reagan kind of endeared himself to Christians.
00:04:56.700And this became then a Christian voting bloc.
00:05:00.840And 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.
00:05:11.780That there's God is a governor of all things.
00:05:14.120There's self-government under God, which is kind of self-control, governing your own lives according to God's standards for the individual.
00:05:22.560And there's family government, church government, and civil government.
00:05:26.700And so it ended up being a three-volume set, God and Government, which is now in a hardback, one-volume set.
00:05:33.740And that kind of became foundational for American Vision.
00:05:38.000But as I went out and started teaching on this particular topic, inevitably someone would say, well, you know, why?
00:07:10.260Yeah, 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.0.62
00:07:17.800or Christians shouldn't be involved in government or this or that.
00:07:21.440It sounds like the work that you're doing is what I wish a lot of Christians would read and study and understand.
00:07:28.200Why do you think it is that when do you think that really became a significant dominant position with American Christians,
00:07:36.640that Christianity and politics have nothing to do with one another?
00:07:39.340um I don't know if there's a I don't know if there's a an exact point in time where that
00:07:48.440where you could say this is this is it I just I think there was kind of a convergence of of of
00:07:56.040ideas um where I think eschatology had a lot a lot to do with it I mean you Schofield reference
00:08:02.960Bible, you know, came out in the early, you know, early 1900s. And it kind of put the kibosh on,
00:08:12.620we're living in this parenthesis. You know, the kingdom of God is yet future. We're living,
00:08:19.580we really don't have anything to say about the things of this world. I mean, even the
00:08:24.240Sermon on the Mount isn't applicable, you know, today.
00:08:28.120um explain that real quick the sermon on the mount isn't applicable today they would say
00:08:34.020it's applicable but they would just say it's private the privatized application well remember
00:08:39.020the dispensationalist says we're living in a a parenthesis explain the parentheses well the
00:08:45.240parenthesis well that's this might take a little little time i'm trying to be as quick as possible
00:08:49.200with this. Dispensationalism teaches that there is a salvific distinction between Israel and
00:09:00.460the church. The dispensationalists claim that the church arose because Israel rejected Jesus as the
00:09:08.440promised Messiah, and that stopped the prophecy clock of Daniel's 70th week, which was supposedly
00:09:15.580a seven-year period, that prophecy clock stopped. And so God quit dealing with Israel, and he started0.61
00:09:23.520dealing with this new entity called the church. And according to dispensationalism, at Pentecost0.54
00:09:29.020or sometime after that, the church age began. So right now, according to dispensationalism,
00:09:35.300we're living within the church age. And so the Sermon on the Mount was supposed to be for kingdom
00:09:41.380living. Well, according to the dispensationalists, the kingdom doesn't come until after this
00:09:47.600parenthesis is over, and that's the rapture where God takes the church off the earth.
00:09:52.040And then there's a seven-year period. There's the rise of Antichrist. Antichrist makes a covenant
00:14:02.340So like text where it says, you know, that even creation itself is groaning with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
00:14:09.060Druden 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.
00:14:18.080It wants to die so that this new thing can happen.
00:14:21.800And that's a pretty, look, that's a pretty popular position among a lot of, even some post-mill guys.
00:14:29.460I personally believe we need a almost a complete reassessment of eschatology, because if you look at the, you look at the creeds, you look at, you know, 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.
00:14:53.520Nicene Creed says baptism for the remission of sins.
00:14:57.960And so there are a number of things even in those confessional statements.
00:15:01.420And we don't even know those creedal statements.
00:15:04.620We don't even know who wrote the Apostles' Creed.
00:15:07.160But throughout all these creedal statements and even confessional statements, Baptist confessions, Westminster confession, whatever the case might be,
00:15:16.200there's very little on eschatology uh everything most of the stuff on eschatology the westminster
00:15:23.320confession of faith of course made a direct statement in its original version that um
00:15:29.600the pope was the antichrist that was that was a popular view in the you know among the reformers
00:15:36.720and yeah the 1689 says that too which i'm just happy to read that is the pope is an antichrist
00:16:09.840You know, 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.0.85
00:16:29.060that is an antichrist is someone who denies the father and the son well roman catholics don't
00:16:35.200deny the father and the son right they don't they so the biblical definition of an antichrist i'm
00:16:41.980talking about biblical definition first john yes most likely and again first john chapter 2 verse
00:16:50.22018 john says look there there's not just one in it there's many antichrist we're living in the
00:16:57.060last hour, and this is evidence, the evidence for that is there are many antichrists. So who are
00:17:01.640these antichrists who denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh and denied the Father and the
00:17:07.040Son? So that would be apostate Judaism. It's not Roman Catholicism. Here I think the reformers0.84
00:17:14.780got this wrong. That's why I think there are a lot of guys who are historicists, you know, they
00:17:19.880believe the Roman Catholic Church is the end-time antichrist, not in terms of what the Bible has
00:17:27.020to say and define it i've seen guys write books on the antichrist and just skip over first john
00:17:34.820chapter 2 verse 18 first john 2 22 first john 4 1 and 2 second john 7 and that they never actually
00:17:42.260define the antichrist right and that there were many there were many of them so that's that's a
00:17:47.160fair i appreciate that that's a that's a really fair assessment and i've never thought that you
00:17:51.480know the roman catholic church or the pope is the antichrist or the final antichrist but i have
00:17:56.500categorize the pope as an antichrist which is what reformed baptist guys did what a lot of
00:18:01.920presbyterian guys did but the point you're making in saying that you know if we want to have a
00:18:07.020biblical definition of the antichrist the antichrist is because you're right john absolutely
00:18:12.220he explicitly says that in chapter two the one who is the antichrist but the one who denies that
00:18:17.420jesus has come in the flesh which is and you know i even wrote a book on first john and i remember
00:18:22.200when I was dealing with that text saying that, you know, because saying that Jesus came in the
00:18:26.200flesh includes a lot. If we flesh out that statement, it says that for one, it says that
00:18:30.240Christ is eternal. He came in the flesh. He came from somewhere, right? That he was somewhere else.
00:18:35.440And so he, you know, it says that he, you know, he didn't always have flesh. So what did he have
00:18:40.080before that? He was a most pure spirit with God, the father, eternal, eternally begotten, not made.
00:18:46.480And he comes in the flesh. And so you're right by that standard. And that is what, uh, John
00:18:52.080clearly says by that standard catholics would not fall into the category so now this does not
00:18:57.700i appreciate that solve the roman catholic church of all of its many many of course yeah yeah yeah
00:19:02.720they may be anti-christ in but in terms of the bible they you can't really make that statement
00:19:10.140but yeah papacy the idea of speaking excedra virgin mary and perpetual virginity the assumption
00:19:19.680of mary praying to mary all that kind of stuff i mean roman catholic church has enough doctrinal
00:19:26.280problems we don't have to make we don't have to create extra ones yeah no that's fair thanks i
00:19:31.040appreciate that so okay so all that means it's not kirk cameron the movie isn't unstoppable he did
00:19:38.140another one it's called monumental okay that's the one that he did on america's christian heritage
00:19:43.320based upon this monument that is up in Massachusetts which overlooks the harbor a gigantic if you
00:19:50.520haven't if you haven't seen it it's really worth watching it's called monumental Kirk Cameron and
00:19:54.360Marshall Foster are involved in that and Darren Doan Darren Doan actually was the one who kind
00:20:00.640of fixed that particular that particular film he's not giving any credit for it in in the film
00:20:07.680itself but Darren Doan was the one that actually put that all together really make it made it
00:20:11.640viewable but anyway that's a little side a little sidetrack that's great all right well so let's i
00:20:17.480know that a lot of our listeners are very interested in eschatology and a lot of them
00:20:20.980very interested in post-millennial eschatology which is where i'm at but this is a recent a lot
00:20:27.180of our listeners know this because i've shared it in prior episodes but this is a recent development
00:20:31.620for me just in the last couple of years really coming into post-millennialism and i think what
00:20:38.460I hear from a lot of our audience is, well, I like it. I don't know anybody who doesn't like it.
00:20:43.760Everyone's like, I like it. I want it to be true. But wanting sufficient biblical evidence. We've
00:20:49.840done some stuff on our show with Matthew 24 and the Olivet Discourse, which that for me seems to
00:20:55.680be one of, as I've learned and listened to guys like you and guys like Doug Wilson, I feel like
00:21:01.420Matthew 24 seems to be one of the easiest ones now to explain. In fact, it's one of those things
00:21:06.680It's like once you see it, you know, you can't unsee it.
00:21:08.700And 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.
00:21:17.520But what are some other maybe key biblical texts that really convinced you of the post-millennial persuasion?
00:21:25.500Well, typically when someone becomes a post-millennialist, they're stuck in the definitions, the tensional definitions among amillennialism, premillennialism, and then post-millennialism.
00:21:42.880And they're battling a paradigm that isn't in and of itself clear of how you get there.
00:22:07.660Hey, interpret the Bible literally, although it seems like it's the only place in the in the book of Revelation that they interpret literally is that one thousand years.
00:22:24.520The 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.0.82
00:22:39.900We say it's 1,000 years. Well, 1,000 years is a millennium. True in the sense that that's the definition of 1,000 years, but a millennium has a broader definition to it in the sense it's typically a time of peace, prosperity, goodwill towards men, all that sort of thing.
00:23:01.700But 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 pre-mill can't do it because it doesn't say Jesus is going to reign on the earth for a thousand years.
00:23:20.620It 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.
00:23:36.360In 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.
00:23:51.140Well, a dispensationalist wrote his master's thesis on that, and he said, nah, that's not the case.
00:23:56.780What you really find is, is the beginnings of all millennialism.
00:24:00.060And if you look back and you study, if you study the early church and those who described the millennium, they didn't quote Revelation chapter 20.
00:24:10.140They quoted Jewish sources, which is kind of interesting and which has nothing to do with Revelation chapter 20.
00:24:18.480So how does the post-millennialist make his case?
00:24:23.660I always tell people you can't go to Revelation 20 to do that.
00:24:27.400I don't think it has anything to do with what we think of as a millennium.
00:24:36.280The second thing is what you brought up, and that is things like the Olivet Discourse,
00:24:42.7002 Thessalonians 2, the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist issue, the Book of Revelation,
00:24:49.540the dating of the Book of Revelation, what are all those symbols all about?
00:24:52.760But mostly it's the it's the sign indicators that stop people from becoming postmillennial plus experiential experiential exegesis.
00:25:06.160That is, look at the world around us today. I hear that.
00:25:09.300So the first the first thing you have to do is get out of Revelation chapter 20 to build your case.
00:25:14.760Number two, you've got to clear the deck by going looking at these passages like the Olivet Discourse and Matthew, Mark and Luke.
00:25:22.760And say, hey, this deals with these, the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
00:25:29.580So that takes some of the criticism away from those who oppose postmillennialism because, say, you know, we have wars and rumors of wars.
00:25:39.720You've got famines in various places. You've got a false Christ and so forth.
00:25:42.760You say, well, wait a minute. Yeah, we do have those things.
00:25:45.760They were in the first century, too. And Jesus was talking about that particular generation.0.80
00:25:52.780And so one of the places that I, and there are a number of ways to do this.
00:25:56.400One 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.
00:26:07.860And that is the consistent application of an unbelieving worldview.
00:27:01.100In all these cases, for the majority of cases, they were Christians who did this. The great1.00
00:27:07.360cathedrals. I mean, they, those cathedrals were built to last millennia. I mean, they're still
00:27:12.820standing today. I mean, you couldn't even burn down the Cathedral of Notre Dame. They had a very,
00:27:17.160they had a very futuristic perspective. So we gave all that up eschatologically, and I think
00:27:24.620culturally. We took kind of a pietistic approach to life, which seemed to be more spiritual. So
00:27:32.060we want to be we want to be spiritual let's you know jesus didn't get mixed up in politics
00:27:37.640politics is dirty um there's a separation between you know church and state uh satan is the god of
00:27:45.440this world you just go down the list with these things is that you can't impose your morality on
00:27:50.860other people we're just supposed to preach the gospel so you've got all this stuff this kind of
00:27:56.200mix, a witch's brew of a worldview that essentially says to the Christian, we're on a holding pattern
00:28:05.300until some eschatological event takes place. So I go to 2 Timothy chapter 3. I think 2 Timothy
00:28:13.520chapter 3 in the New Testament is the place to begin. And most people say, well, how can you,
00:28:20.880Why do you say that? Because 2 Timothy chapter 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.
00:28:48.440And once you go there, you begin to understand, and remember now, this is written, 2 Timothy chapter 3, this is written to a young pastor, a 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.
00:29:14.980real quick so what where where would you date the writing of second timothy because right there you
00:29:20.340just said you know on the dates of these books it's probably i'm going to guess maybe in the 50s
00:29:25.340may have been in the early 60s i'm not sure because that's another thing i think for a lot
00:29:29.760of people i remember you know with jeff durbin um you know like dating the the authorship the
00:29:37.500writing of of revelation um at i think i think he said like 80 67 like just just a few earlier i
00:29:44.600would say about 80 60 64 maybe 65 right because a lot of people i think that's part of it also is
00:29:50.360the dating of certain new testament books because people you know would say well this was 80 90
00:29:54.540they do the late yeah they do the late date thing james jordan has a he has 204 lectures
00:30:01.720on the book of revelation and one of the things he i was listening to one of them yesterday
00:30:07.840one of the points he makes is he says you can go you can go through the in the internal
00:30:13.180um evidence that you know the time texts uh the fact that the temple is still standing in
00:30:19.040revelation chapter 11 right the sixth king is mentioned which was probably nero the number
00:30:24.480666 is referring to uh the nero caesar you you would say that the the six six because i know
00:30:31.500that's what sprawl said and that's to me that seems to make sense that that was a reference to
00:30:35.360nero is that jim jordan has a more interesting jim's perspective and i'm trying to get people
00:30:43.020to understand this uh when when jim teaches through the book of revelation and you don't
00:30:50.480have to agree with everything he says i mean he he'll tell you look i'm speculating here speculating
00:30:54.860there and i'm working on a series in the book of revelation it's not going to be an in-depth thing
00:31:00.200but it's going to begin with this premise. How would the first hearers and readers
00:31:08.040of the book of Revelation understood it, and what tools would they have had at their disposal
00:31:15.320to understand it? They wouldn't have any commentaries. They would have never, no helps at
00:31:22.100all. All they would have is, for the most part, the Old Testament and some parts of the New
00:31:29.180testament that's all they would have to do this um and so and yet they're to understand it and if
00:31:36.940they're to understand it and that's all the tools they had then we need to pay attention to that
00:31:42.080and jim makes this this is a fascinating statement he said that the book of revelation
00:31:47.300is mediated through angels and those symbols animals and so forth and so on babylon mentions
00:31:57.680Babylon that mentions the city where Jesus was crucified is called Egypt and Sodom. You have
00:32:05.960the candles, you know, this is candlesticks. You got all these Old Testament allusions. Some people
00:32:11.440say like 200 to 400 different allusions to the Old Testament. And he said the book of Revelation,
00:32:19.660because it was mediated through angels this is old testament language this is this is the uh
00:32:29.760it's kind of like you know zachariah joseph in dreams they were angels uh old testament
00:32:35.740angels all the way through angels brought this angels brought this and so forth but when you
00:32:41.020read the when you read the gospels and you read the letters you don't see any of that type of
00:32:47.680language because that language is new covenant stuff you do see it early in the in the gospels
00:32:54.520because that's still part kind of the old old covenant and so you know jim is saying here look
00:33:00.320this is a you got to understand the old testament if you're going to understand the book of
00:33:06.440revelation and it makes no sense to have the book of revelation done in the in the 90s it it doesn't
00:33:14.340fit the new covenant scenario it's it's completely different approach to to the way it's you know to
00:33:22.180the way it's done um so uh so let's go back real quick that that's helpful i appreciate it but uh
00:33:28.860second timothy chapter three what i've got it here do you remember what verses you're referencing
00:33:33.120you got it's the whole chapter the whole chapter not to go and it's just it's real quick okay
00:33:39.600In 2 Timothy 3, Timothy is a young pastor, and Paul's giving him advice.
00:33:46.540Just basically saying, in the last days, because that's what people are going to reference.
00:33:50.060So starting in verse 1, but understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
00:33:54.560People 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.
00:34:07.780lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of god having the appearance of godliness but denying
00:34:12.760its power avoid such people for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak
00:34:18.780women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions always learning stop stop right there
00:34:25.580okay this is this is this is where people go they they stay and i've seen it quoted so many times
00:35:46.980Why 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?
00:35:53.140Now look at verse 8. And just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men of depraved mind rejected as regards to faith. Now who were Janus and Jambres? Janus and Jambres were the two sorcerer high priests who stood behind the throne of Pharaoh when Moses and Aaron came in.
00:36:17.860Now, 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.0.68
00:36:33.460and that and so you know they throw down the the the rod it becomes a serpent uh pharaoh's
00:36:42.520janice and jambres throw down theirs and what ends up happening there is of course
00:36:47.080aaron's rod consumes those of the janice and jambres and what happens next 10 plagues
00:36:53.800are are are issued against egypt israel escapes it goes into the land of canaan and goes into a
00:37:02.060a new garden, so to speak. Now, it's a land flowing with milk and honey. In Numbers 13 and 14,
00:37:11.100you know, 12 spies are sent out. Everything God said about this land is absolutely true. They1.00
00:37:17.040brought back some of the fruit from the land. They say, oh, they're giants in the land. So here
00:37:20.900we see what happens when God's people are confronted with these types of people in verses
00:37:28.160one through six. They took a vote. Ten of them says you can't go into the land because they're
00:37:33.640giants. Joshua and Caleb said, God gave us the promise in Numbers 13, one, that we're going to
00:37:41.180take the land. They wasted 40 years in the wilderness because they didn't believe. So
00:37:46.640that's what you, they got to picture all this. Then look what comes up next. Verse nine, but they
00:37:52.840will not make further progress for their folly will be obvious to all as also that of those1.00
00:37:59.840two came to be so briefly what are we finding today unbelievers are becoming more and more0.95
00:38:07.160consistent with themselves with their worldview they're killing their future through abortion0.98
00:38:11.540they're mutilating their their their their future with transgenderism uh they're they're0.98
00:38:19.260bankrupting all of us, and unfortunately, a lot of Christians are kind of going along with0.99
00:38:24.460this, and it happened in the wilderness as well, but it says here, but they will not make further0.96
00:38:30.620progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two came to be. Now,
00:38:35.500then the next line, verse 10, but, but you, Timothy, you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith,
00:38:43.780patience, love, perseverance, and you balance that or contrast that with everything up in verse
00:38:50.500one through six, and he gives on here, that you even followed my persecutions, my suffering,
00:38:56.400such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured,
00:39:01.500and out of them all the Lord delivered me, and indeed all who desire to live godly in Christ
00:39:06.600jesus will be persecuted but evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse deceiving and being
00:39:14.380deceived the other side is weak the only reason the other side exists in any time frame is number
00:39:25.060one they're inconsistent with their worldview and number two they borrow moral capital from
00:39:30.580our worldview but over time they abandon that borrowed capital and has become more consistent
00:39:36.360with themselves, they destroy themselves. Then it goes on, you, however, you, Timothy, continue the
00:39:42.080things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that
00:39:46.560from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that bleeds
00:39:51.920to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable
00:39:57.640for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God
00:40:02.040may be equipped for adequate, equipped for every good work. That is post-millennialism in a
00:40:08.060nutshell. It deals with the real world. It deals with real sin in the world, but it also deals
00:40:14.440with the implications of sin as people become more and more consistent with it. The second phase of
00:40:19.400that is, or the parallel phase of that is, what should Christians be doing in the interim? And
00:40:24.720Paul gives the instructions. You followed my teachings. Now do them. Go out there and do them
00:40:29.720and replace what is disintegrating around you now we're seeing a little bit of this
00:40:35.120not necessarily by by christians but here we have this cancel culture going on right a cancel
00:40:41.660culture with with you know twitter and all the other social media platforms as they become more
00:40:47.280and more consistent with themselves they're losing their they're losing their their grip
00:40:54.140they got rid of trump well trump was a big big deal on twitter right he's gone you got cnn right
00:40:59.480now that they're down to like 645,000 people watching them uh you know daily you got all
00:41:06.320these alternatives out there that are coming that are coming up and people are abandoning
00:41:10.000these these sites they've all that's what happens to unbelieving thought has become
00:41:15.920as it becomes consistent with itself christians need to develop a christian worldview and get
00:41:22.060back to basics and notice the basic here is you learn this stuff from your grandmother and your
00:41:28.420mother. You need these basic, these fundamental principles you need to learn, and you need to
00:41:34.560apply, so you build from the bottom up, and that was why that my God in Government books begin with
00:41:40.520God is a governor of all things, self-government, family government, church government, and then
00:41:44.780finally civil government, and now you go back to God. This is 2 Timothy chapter 3, so now you go
00:41:50.180back to 1 Timothy chapter 3, and it talks about leadership, and that is the person who can't
00:41:54.800govern his own household shouldn't be governing the church right so to me that's how you defend
00:42:01.320post-millennialism you can bring there are a whole bunch of other verses you can bring in about
00:42:04.860the word of the lord will cover the earth as the as the waters cover the sea there are all of those
00:42:11.060verses but this is a practical application not of post-millennialism because to me post-millennialism
00:42:18.660was built on uh revelation chapter 20 uh and the post what post the the year 1000 i mean just it
00:42:27.320doesn't fit uh so that that's where i've become convinced on a post-millennialism it hasn't been
00:42:34.780on a bunch of these kind of proof texts for it and you can make a case for that um that you know
00:42:40.320mustard seed and the and the 11th tree in the trees i mean all all those types of things but
00:42:45.900this is a practical application of post-millennialism. The book of Acts is a practical
00:42:52.460application of post-millennialism because even with all the persecution from the Jews and0.87
00:42:58.080eventually from the Romans, they're gone. The temple is gone. Roman empire is gone. Christians0.86
00:43:05.260transformed the world from this. They didn't do it perfectly, but we should be getting better at1.00
00:43:09.880it with practice. Major universities in the United States were started by Christians, Harvard and
00:43:14.700Yeah, you've gone down on the list with this, you know, Dartmouth, Columbia, and we give them up because we compromise and that we just got to quit.0.99
00:43:26.040We have to quit compromising. This is one of the nice things about what's going on in Moscow.0.69
00:43:31.660and the reason someone like Doug Wilson gets slammed so much
00:43:37.060is because he has drawn a line in the sand
00:43:41.300and he says we're on this side of this
00:47:31.740Matthew 16 says, and it's going to work.
00:47:34.400And once I had those two pieces, it was like,
00:47:37.540well, then of course we should have Christian nations and Christian governments.
00:47:40.380I always tell tell people is that if you if you make postmillennialism 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.
00:47:59.160And I sit back and I think the number of multi, multi, multi, multi billion dollar companies that got started in garages.
00:48:14.560Right. Jeff Bezos, you know, Apple, Walt Disney, the the the guy who started eBay.
00:48:24.920They they start they think how small they started. Right. And then people and people will criticize Bezos.
00:48:32.840He built this all this. He did all this and all this and all this. I said, look, you could have done that.
00:48:38.700He did it. You could do something like that. It's so.
00:48:42.660But if you make that if you make the task so grandiose at the beginning, people say there is no way we can get from here to there.
00:48:49.540right and i i've i've told this this story is i i started i started lifting weights when i was
00:48:56.280probably i don't know 11 or 12 years old and when you buy a weight set if you buy an olympic weight
00:49:03.240set you get they're in kilos but basically they're basically the you go the american
00:49:08.700what weights and measures you get 45 pound plates 35 25s 10s two and a halves and one and a quarters
00:49:16.460and you know you buy a set you know 300 315 pounds very very few i don't know any 11 year
00:49:26.900old 12 year old is going to be able to lift three you know do a bench press with 315 pounds do a
00:49:30.900cleanup press with 315 pounds that's not going to happen those weights those smaller weights are on
00:49:36.680there you start at a lower weight you and you incrementally to get stronger you add the one
00:49:44.260and a quarters or two and a halves and after a while you look after four years or so he said look
00:49:49.300what I I had a big chart big chart that I had I filled it all out all my workouts and my record
00:49:55.400the records that I did and so forth and I said you go back and you look what I was doing when I
00:50:00.560was 14 years old and what I ended up doing when I was 18 years old and if someone had said this is
00:50:06.020what you're going to have to do in order to do what you want to do I probably would have said
00:50:10.660there's no way I can do that I can only lift 110 pound barbell over my head so what we have got to
00:50:16.800do is be careful of how we present our the case for post-millennialism you can make it so grandiose
00:50:26.480it gets people so excited about it that when they go out there and start working on it they get
00:50:32.480discouraged because it isn't moving as quickly as they want but remember what Paul writes in
00:50:37.340in second timothy chapter three you followed my persecutions right and all who follow0.77
00:50:45.180jesus christ are are going to be persecuted and so there is this here's what the unbelievers
00:50:52.880believe this is the how what's going to happen they're consistent it doesn't mean that things
00:50:56.740are going to be a bed of roses they get there here's what you're supposed to do while this is
00:50:59.980taking place etc so you have to be careful on how you present the case uh and because we're far we're
00:51:09.820very very you know far behind i mean the princeton princeton started in what was called the log
00:51:16.240college and it started in a log basically a log cabin well you go up and look at princeton today
00:51:22.940it's no longer a log cabin and you know we as christians have to start thinking of the
00:51:29.980possibilities out there but not not be discouraged if we don't reach those things immediately and
00:51:37.340give up that's good yeah i appreciate that um so what do you think in terms of this was one of my0.88
00:51:45.880questions it seems like you know so unbelievers at first they're borrowing capital moral capital
00:51:51.900from Christians and the Christian worldview.
00:51:54.800And they're also borrowing, and we're being charitable there
00:51:57.700because the actual word would be stealing, right?
00:52:18.020And so non-Christians do that, but then eventually you said,0.99
00:52:20.540you know, they become more and more consistent with their actual worldview, which, of course,0.61
00:52:25.760when you become consistent with a worldview that is antithetical to Christ, then the result is
00:52:31.340chaos. My question is, within the post-mill framework, things, you know, yes, I understand
00:52:37.200your point. It's going to be slow, right? It could be a few thousand years. It could be 20,
00:52:41.22030, 40,000 years. Who knows? But it seems like, on one hand, I feel like, you know, Christ is
00:52:47.100defeating his enemies one by one that that's another thing that was convincing for me because
00:52:50.680premill it seems like um the first enemy for christ to defeat his death whereas the bible
00:52:55.700says that you know the last enemy is death um and so so i i i see christ defeating his enemies
00:53:02.240now um but then there's certain enemies where i'm like i felt like i felt like that one was defeated
00:53:09.020like how many times do we have to try socialism until that enemy is defeated you know what i mean
00:53:14.780So 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?
00:53:40.560well uh you know again i think when you think about you got the majority of christians send
00:53:50.320their children to government schools right what what do you what do you expect i mean be like oh
00:53:55.900let's let's send our children to the roman schools or let's send our children to you know you know
00:54:01.560daniel and his three friends they were captives they they had to be there and adults as an example
00:54:08.800And 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.
00:54:24.240so 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
00:54:30.540got we finally get we kicked get kicked in the head and we gary north has this this uh analogy
00:54:37.520that ray sutton said that there are there are all these medicines in the medicine cabinet and for
00:54:43.360every every time there's an illness they go and they pick one of these remedies and it doesn't
00:54:49.120work and the next time they get ill they pick another it doesn't work they pick another and
00:54:53.940it doesn't work. And finally, the last one in there is a Christian worldview, because they've
00:55:02.060exhausted all the other ones. Now, I don't, you know, I don't want that, you know, to be,0.99
00:55:09.180it doesn't have to be that way. I'm beginning to see a lot of change out there. There are lots of
00:55:14.900Christians out there who are catching on to this. I mean, when I was in, you know, I was a Christian,
00:55:19.940No one was talking, I mean, Francis Schaeffer was talking Christian worldview, but his was more of a kind of a philosophical, historical dynamic of that worldview.
00:55:37.800But, you know, you could have talked to a lot of Christians today, they have no idea who Francis Schaeffer is.
00:55:44.020They just don't, because I think one of the reasons is that Francis Schaeffer didn't offer an alternative.
00:55:52.220He didn't offer specifics about here's what we need to do.
00:55:55.560He was premillennial, so his eschatology held him back.
00:56:00.520He was somewhat Vantilian in his view.0.79
00:56:03.360That's why he mentions presuppositions and so forth.
00:56:09.740his sons. I mean, he's just going way, way off at the deep end, Frank Schaefer, Frankie Schaefer.
00:56:15.480So, but things we didn't have, we didn't have, we have very few Christian defense foundations out
00:56:22.260there. You got Liberty Council, you have Alliance Defending Freedom, there are about six of them
00:56:26.520out there that are defending Christians in court, winning lots of cases. Christian school movement
00:56:33.180is growing, it's been, and it's been because of COVID, it's growing even more. COVID helped, yeah.
00:56:37.620There'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.
00:56:49.580There's good discussion on Facebook on all of these different topics.
00:56:55.040I 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.
00:57:03.800and my wife and I went to a it's called a pregnancy center it's north north of here in
00:57:10.700Jasper Georgia and a good friend of ours runs it and not only does it talk about abortion but
00:57:15.840it's it's just not it's not a it's not just a negative approach like don't get an abortion
00:57:20.980it's we will help you with your child you decide to keep your child we will help you they have
00:57:27.840a place for them to come in with clothes they can take take courses they work with them and
00:57:33.560so forth and so on and it was their last banquet my wife and I were sitting down and there was this
00:57:39.720young couple and I forgot what they asked me what I did and I told them what I did and they said oh
00:57:44.600I we we really like uh we like George Grant and Greg Bonson now they didn't know who I was
00:57:51.600and I didn't know who they were but they knew George Grant and and and Greg Bonson uh I'm
00:57:59.260thinking, where did they find out about this? So it's going to take time. There's a new day.
00:58:08.740Eschatology is big right now. Amillennialists, historicists, amillennialists, and premillennialists
00:58:15.480don't have any real answers. They're still debating their position against preterists
00:58:22.100who essentially wiped the floor with their exegesis.0.62
00:58:28.220I mean, somebody sent a video of a guy who used to be a Christian,
00:58:33.060and one of the reasons he left Christianity was he said,
00:58:36.520oh, Jesus predicted that the end, that the world was going to end.
00:58:40.600This generation will not pass like that.
00:58:42.140And I'm thinking, this is a seemingly intelligent guy.
00:58:48.140When, 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 there, when, when I started in this, in this, when I used to do radio shows, oh, the attacks I got, which didn't, didn't bother me.
00:59:08.980now if i do a radio show you know 80 of the people say yeah gary i believe the way you do i did this
00:59:14.980study on my own or i read your book and so forth there's been a whole there's been a sea change of
00:59:19.580this the guy on gab i don't know if you if you're on gab at all no uh but this guy which is kind of
00:59:26.640an alternative to youtube or twitter i think it's yeah i'm very familiar with gab i'm not on it but
00:59:32.260Yeah. Yeah. He loves David Chilton. He pushed my book, Wars and Rumors of Wars, gave us a $500 credit to advertise on Gab.
00:59:43.100Wow. So there's a lot going on out there that we just don't, a lot of us don't know about.
00:59:48.960The 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 too expensive.
00:59:58.240of tramp people are translating stuff all the time uh so we are just at the we're just at the0.88
01:00:05.580beginning i think of a of a paradigm shift and christians who don't get on the train are going
01:00:13.540to be their their view is going to be left behind which is okay by me left behind but um yeah their
01:00:20.740view will truly be left behind um yeah no i i agree i've you know it just in the last 10 years
01:00:26.880or so I it does seem like there's just a major shift that people are thinking differently people
01:00:31.720want to apply their theology people want to see Christian schools Christian government Christian
01:00:38.180this Christian that and people want to fight and I think I don't know in God's providence I think0.90
01:00:43.400that's sometimes what it takes I think we just we had just a I don't know a bunch of spoiled0.99
01:00:47.700children it seems like we just had like like the some generation I don't know what generation but
01:00:52.620some generation the sin of eli we just had these these spoiled sons that just were lethargic because
01:00:58.700they had all these provisions that america oh yeah gave to us you know and now all of a sudden
01:01:04.700like coven made a bunch of people think right we you know doug wilson said like this we all had to
01:01:08.960learn in you know 15 minutes what we should have been studying over the past 15 years you know
01:01:12.640about god and government and all this you know and but it made a lot of guys myself included like oh
01:01:17.540my goodness i don't have i don't have a a christian worldview that encompasses these kinds of
01:01:23.880situations and it was all ethereal and all theoretical you know and not a big deal until
01:01:28.240the last couple years especially now everyone's like yeah i want to think about um what vaccine
01:01:34.520i get i want to think about who i vote for i want to think about this think about that and you know
01:01:39.000and so now everybody is like the bible actually does have an answer to these things and the guys
01:01:44.640who still want to insist because some guys they are going to get left behind because they refuse
01:01:48.780to budge but the guys who still want to insist that this you know pietism this you know privatized
01:01:54.380lordship of christ he's not lord of all he's just lord of your your sweet little heart and it's you
01:01:59.300know and it's private and you know he's going to return soon and he doesn't really christ doesn't
01:02:03.640really have any desire to get involved in worldly affairs um i really do think like that that brand
01:02:09.420of Christianity is is quickly becoming obsolete people just not interested there are there have
01:02:15.420always been gatekeepers these uh you know seminaries are gatekeepers uh you can't you
01:02:21.780can't minister unless you've uh you've gone to you know you've gone you've gone to seminary and
01:02:27.040uh and there there really aren't that many gatekeepers anymore right if you want to know
01:02:33.140something today, you can go online and find an answer to it or find a group that years ago you
01:02:44.180couldn't do. Look, when I was in high school, I graduated from high school in 1968. I never,
01:02:51.040never heard the gospel. No one ever talked about any of that. When Jimmy Carter ran for president
01:02:59.380and he used the phrase born again, the media didn't have any idea what the word, what that
01:03:04.740meant. Billy Graham had to write a book called How to Be Born Again, in order to try to explain
01:03:11.980all this stuff. So we are so far behind, and we capitulated, look, public schools when I was
01:03:21.140growing up, they were okay at prayer, and they had, you know, a Bible verse, you know, here and there,
01:03:26.300but nothing was taught from a biblical worldview but a lot of i remember sitting down with a high
01:03:30.780school friend i hadn't seen in i don't know 40 years back went back to pittsburgh and and uh i
01:03:37.040told him we gave him my testimony said okay we were all christians back then we were all we were
01:03:41.420all christians that's because you went to church although two doors down there was a jewish fellow
01:03:46.680who you know we forgot about him but his his worldview was our worldview had the same moral
01:03:53.600you know everybody in the neighborhood pretty much believed in the same way and for the most
01:03:59.800part raised their kids in the same way because there was a spillover effect there was kind of a
01:04:05.580christian civil religion that still existed but that that changed that changed rapidly
01:04:13.360changed rapidly world war ii changed the moral center uh of of the united states it changed
01:04:23.760everything we didn't see it right away but it it did um can you explain that a little bit
01:04:30.660yeah flesh that out world war ii well here you know here we fight fight world war one it didn't
01:04:37.940last time before we're fighting World War II again, and what people saw, what people saw over
01:04:43.280there, these soldiers came back. My father was in the, he was in World War II, he was at
01:04:47.640Pearl Harbor when it was, it was bombed. He was in the, in the Pacific in World War II. He was in
01:04:54.460the Korean War, his right leg blown off in the Korean War, and these men came back, and they saw
01:05:01.880horror, and the question was, where was God in all this? Same thing happened in Europe, where the
01:05:07.560Jews, you know, six million Jews killed. Where was God in all this? People began to question the very
01:05:13.320core of their existence by what they had seen and what they had experienced, and it was slow.0.61
01:05:19.640There was still the Christian remnant there a bit, but people began to, I think, move on with
01:05:25.380their lives because they had lost the moral center of things, and the Christian churches were weak.
01:05:32.400they didn't talk about these things i mean billy graham you know billy graham because out in the
01:05:36.9201950s and uh and there was fulton fulton j sheen it was roman catholic who was who was on tv but
01:05:45.020they weren't really dealing with the you know with the issues of the day in a transformational
01:05:52.320way we were sending all our kids to public schools we just thought they were great you
01:05:56.360know we were growing up you know we played football cheerleading da da da da all that kind
01:06:00.800of thing. And secularism creeped up on us to the point where it grabbed a hold of us. And then,
01:06:08.660of course, pastors weren't preaching the whole counsel of God. And so politically, what happened
01:06:14.320was that, you know, there wasn't that much of a difference between the Democrats and the
01:06:17.320Republicans. A Democrat, a Kennedy Democrat would be considered a fairly conservative Republican
01:06:25.600today the republicans today are are almost worthless uh in the in you know christian
01:06:33.860christians give up you know or they not when 1980 we won the election in 1984 christians just thought
01:06:40.380boy we just changed the world well we didn't we just won a couple of wars and then it was like
01:06:45.400it's they they gave up they just went right back to where they were before it's like 9-11
01:06:49.860all that happened and you know it's it's amazing how we've we've forgotten you know we didn't see
01:06:59.200that as as maybe a warning from god that we better get our better get our act together with all of
01:07:05.300this so god has given us enough warnings here uh i hope it's i hope more and more christians take
01:07:11.620heed maybe they are maybe they're getting a little more fed up uh maybe they need to understand
01:07:17.040And 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.
01:07:25.660So a lot of teaching has to take place.
01:07:27.680And unfortunately, a lot of pastors aren't prepared for it.
01:07:40.840They can't just hang certain virtues in midair.
01:07:43.260There has to be a foundation for that, understanding the underpinnings.
01:07:47.660And it seems like, I don't know, one generation, I forget who said this,
01:07:52.920it might have been D.A. Carson back in the day,
01:07:54.560but one generation believes the gospel and the next generation assumes the gospel.
01:07:58.800The next generation neglects the gospel and the next generation rejects the gospel.
01:08:04.600And I think that illustration can apply beyond just the gospel.
01:08:09.320But 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 wasn't born at that time.
01:08:16.120But 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.
01:08:22.460I kind of got, you know, I got sick of Acts 29 for a number of reasons.
01:08:25.240But the biggest one was Acts 29, in my assessment, just always wanted to be cool.
01:08:29.460They wanted to be cool in one way with Driscoll.
01:08:31.500And then they said, hey, you know, we repent of wanting to be cool and we don't want to be cool anymore.
01:08:35.460but really they just tried to start that that just driscoll that thing wasn't cool in the
01:08:41.080culture's eyes anymore so it's not that they they actually repented of the approval of man and the
01:08:45.700desire to be cool they just they recognized that society was condemning driscoll driscoll was cool
01:08:51.360for a while he was cool in seattle and but then when that started being condemned as chauvinistic
01:08:55.980and all those kind of things uh then all of a sudden you know with greater and greater emphasis
01:09:00.840on uh feminism and all these then it was like oh yeah holiness and gentleness and you know these
01:09:07.040kind and you know but then quickly out of that came racial reconciliation racial and i remember
01:09:12.180like six years in a row every conference that you know racial reconciliation racial and they'd have
01:09:15.860a panel you know and everybody get up there and and it was all anecdotal uh anecdotal you know
01:09:20.600and just stories of being pulled over by a police officer and mistreated these kinds of things and
01:09:25.820so eventually you know i i was like you know i didn't even have the language for it at the time
01:09:29.380I didn't know about critical race theory.
01:09:30.840I didn't know, you know, any of these things.
01:09:32.140But I was like, I'm just, I'm tired of, like, how many times do I have to repent of a sin
01:09:36.420that I'm not even aware that I'm committing, you know, the sin of corporate racism.
01:10:43.740I mean, they think we took prayer and Bible reading out of the schools in the 1960s, 1962 and 63.
01:10:51.820We took that out, and that's what changed.
01:10:53.520Now, it changed a long time before that.
01:10:56.500If you're just sprinkling a little bit of pixie dust Bible stuff in the school, and you're not teaching everything from a Christian perspective, you're not teaching a Christian worldview.0.92
01:11:08.340And you're turning your children over to the people who are trying to destroy you.0.91
01:12:13.280Whoever 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.
01:12:33.180and you're beginning to see the eastern europe eastern europe who you know they've learned
01:12:40.620they've learned about the past and they don't want to go back there right you've got sub-saharan
01:12:46.240africa where the gospel is spreading and we think america is kind of the the bread basket of
01:12:52.000evangelicalism but no in central south america now it's the types of the types of christianity
01:12:59.040that are going on down there are pretty weak.
01:13:01.600But there are people down there trying to transform it.
01:13:03.640I have a good friend in Guatemala that's trying to transform it.
01:13:06.420I've got someone in Chile that's trying to transform it as well.
01:13:11.520All over the world, these types of little things are being raised up.1.00
01:13:18.600And you've got Eastern Europe countries resisting the flow of Muslims1.00