The Church, No. 3

Colossians 1:15-20

COL-126

Our subject is "Hymn in Honor of Christ," number 16 in Colossians 1:15-20.

The Church

God, for the last 2,000 years, has been gathering together from Jews and Gentiles, a special body of saints called "the church." Jesus Christ is the Head of this church body as the head is to the human body. We have read about this in the beginning of Colossians 1:18: "He (referring to Christ) is also the Head of the body, the church." This is a very important and significant point being brought in here at this point in the apostle's letter, who had just presented Jesus Christ as the Creator of the universe; and, secondly, as the Preeminent Person of the universe. Colossians 1:18a: "Christ, the head of the body." The word "church," we have indicated, means "a called out assembly of people from all the mass of mankind." The church had its beginning on the day of Pentecost with the arrival on earth of God the Holy Spirit, Who baptized believers into one unit called the body of Christ. The church has a distinct role in the program of God for mankind, and a unique relationship to God in contrast to believers of other dispensations. As we will go along, you'll see that there's just nothing to compare to what a Christian is in his relationship to God: his privileges; his status of authority; and, the honors that are heaped upon him in comparison to what other believers (especially the Jews) have enjoyed.

The Jews

So, this is why you want to remember that when we are told that Israel is no longer in the plan of God because it rejected His Messiah, and didn't keep its part of the bargain – there was no bargain. There is no bargain. God's going to do it all for Israel. So, the Jew has a very big future in the plan of God. Israel has not been rejected by God and replaced by the church. These two systems, Judaism and Christianity, are mutually exclusive because they're totally different.

Historic Premillennialism

Now, I've pointed out to you the views of the place of the church in God's plan for human history. This will help you, I think, to understand the difference between Israel and the church. The first view we presented this morning was what we called historic premillennialism. The word "pre" means "come before." The word "millennial" refers to the 1,000-year kingdom of Christ on this earth. The "pre" means that He comes before that. From the time of the apostles, as the Scriptures were written, and as the early church fathers and theologians analyzed what the Bible was saying, and trying to put together the prophetic picture for the future, they came up, for the first 300 years, with historic pre-millennialism.

If you get the tapes that we have up in the tape room on the dispensations (the dispensations series), you will come to the section on the church. And there we have listed for you, by centuries, the writers that we have records of: the theologians; and, the Bible teachers – first century; second century; and, third century. Now we come up to the fourth century. And up to that time, uniformly, without exception, they were all premillennialists, because some of them, like Papias, for example, was a personal disciple of John the apostle. He was a personal student of John. He was taught by John. And Papias is very clearly a premillennialist.

Now, you cannot treat these men as fools. You cannot blow them off, as the covenant theologians like to do – that they were just men who were not in the know; they did not understand; they were ignorant; and, it took later wiser people to come up with the true millennial picture. In the New Testament, these men had the teachings of the apostles, and most of all, the teachings of the apostle Paul.

So, historic pre-millennialism, . . ., was the church age, which is an indefinite period of time. They did understand that something different had happened from the day of Pentecost. They were no longer under the Jewish system. They were under the church system, and that began on the day of Pentecost. This will end, they understood, at the rapture of the church, where Christ is to meet the church in the air.

Now, unfortunately they got that part wrong. They concluded from the Scripture that the rapture was going to take place after the tribulation, which meant that the church would then go through this period of God's final great wrath against all mankind. But they knew that Jesus Christ, from 1 Thessalonians 4, was going to come down, and they concede that they would meet Him in the air after the tribulation, and turn right around and come back down to the earth, and then proceed to enter the Millennial Kingdom, at the end of which would be the new earth.

Now, this 1,000 year kingdom, of course, was repeatedly referred to in the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, what did the angel Gabriel say to Mary when he told her she was going to have this special son which was going to be the Messiah Savior? He told her that He would be great for what reason? Because He was going to sit as King upon His father David's throne. He descended from the line of David. He would be the greater son of David, and He would rule over all nations, and he would rule over the house of Jacob. Now you can't make that mean the church. Come on. "The house of Jacob" – Jews. How long? Forever. It was very clear what this Son was going to do.

Now, there was a problem. They rejected Him. They should have obeyed Him, but they did not. And the result was that the Jewish program of the kingdom was postponed. So, here in historic premillennialism, this is the way it all began. It was the church age. Then they thought that the tribulation period came next. They should have put the rapture before it. They put it at the end of the tribulation, and then they had to bring Christ right back down again. And then they entered the Millennial Kingdom. They understood that the church was going to rule with Christ. Then, at the end of that, there was to come a new earth as well as a new heaven, free of the contamination and the effects of sin.

Origen

Now, there's only one contrary voice in these first three centuries, and that was a theologian named Origen. Origen, in the third century, rejected the principle of literal interpretation of Scripture. And that's the key. If you don't interpret the Bible for what the words mean, they mean anything you want them to mean. The result was that he got far afield, looking for spiritual meanings behind the words.

Amillennialism (Augustine)

Well, things rocked along. He rejected this literal picture which had evolved from the instructions of the apostles and the records of the New Testament Scriptures, and as they were compared to Old Testament Scriptures. But he didn't come up with any other system. That was left to the fourth century to one of the great church fathers named Augustine. Augustine formulated the view which today we know of as amillennialism. The letter "a" in Greek means a negative – no millennium whatsoever.

Now, Augustine, unfortunately, was influenced before he became a Christian. He was a greatly educated man, and he was deeply into Greek philosophy – platonic Greek philosophy particularly. And he himself lived an enormously sinful life. He lived a debauched life in every direction that you could think of. So, for Augustine, it was very easy to accept the Greek philosophical point of view that anything material is inherently evil. And for him, it was inconceivable that on a material earth, the Holy Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the absolute Holy One, would reign over a kingdom on this earth. That was inconceivable. Now, he himself has had such a terrible memory of sin in his unsaved days that whatever was material, he thought the Greek philosophers had it exactly right, and Plato had it right on target as far as he was concerned, that anything material was going to be evil.

Therefore, he went back to Origen, and he picked up his spiritual, non-literal idea of dealing with prophecy. And he therefore said, "None of this is to be taken literally. Yes, it does talk about 1,000 years, but it doesn't mean a literal 1,000 years that Christ is going to rule over a kingdom on earth, because he simply could not do such a thing. The earth, because it's material, is evil. Christ would not rule over this earth." So, he spiritualized all the Bible teachings on the tribulation; the millennium; and, the new Earth. He gave it all a non-literal interpretation. The tribulation became an era, not specifically seven years as per Daniel's timetable, but just an era of a perfect time number. Yes, the number seven in the Bible is a perfect number. Seven is completion. And he said, "Well, the tribulation is going to be a period of completion."

So, he spiritualized that away from an actual seven years, and therefore, that made Daniel's 490-year prediction of God's dealing with the history of Israel (before it would be through) meaningless. That meant the 483 years that had been completed up to Palm Sunday were meaningless, because suddenly it became spiritualized. There was no actual seven years.

The millennium – he did treat that at first as a literal 1,000 years. These people (and the covenant theologians do this to this very day) – they bounce back and forth between literal interpretation and spiritualizing, and they decide which way it should be. For some reason, here Augustine said, "Yes, it will be 1,000 years, which means that in the year 1,000, Jesus Christ is going to return to this earth. But when He didn't (of course, he was dead by then), his followers said, "Well, he should have interpreted that spiritually too. He made the mistake of trying to be literal. He should have spiritualized the 1,000 years to mean a long period of time.

So, the millennium became something that was just a long period of time, and it was the same time as the church. The church age became the millennium. Where is the kingdom of Christ then? Where is Christ's ruling? That was transferred to heaven – not on David's throne, as was told to Mary, but his Father's throne in heaven became David's throne. So, the kingdom was suddenly in heaven, and Christ's ruling not from the earth, but from the holy place of heaven itself. The new earth had to be changed from an actual planet, and it became heaven also. Where people end up in eternity is not the new earth, in terms of a planet, but, for him, it was going to be in heaven itself, from whence Christ reigned. There was no connection then with the throne of David and the prediction very specifically made to Mary.

That had to be very significant – that the Father said, "I want you to make this clear. My Son is going to come down. He's going to be incarnated, starting off as a natural human being, as a baby, and He is going to be incarnated (become a human being) to fulfill My promises to Israel." What promises? Well notice Luke 1:30-33: "And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall name Him Jesus ('Yeshua' – which is 'Joshua,' meaning 'salvation'). He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And His kingdom will have no end."

Now, here's what the amillennialist, following Augustine's principle of non-literal interpretation, does. He reads Luke 1:31: "Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a Son, and you shall name Him Jesus." He treats that with literal interpretation. He says, "Yes, there was a woman called Mary. Yes, she was favored of God. Yes, she did conceive a child Who had no sin nature because He was specially conceived – humanly, by the act of the Holy Spirit. And she did bear this Son, and she did call Him Jesus. And He was great, and He was called the Son of the Most High." And then they draw a line at that point in Luke 1:32. They just draw a line across, in order to signal that, at the end of the word "high," they shift from literal interpretation to spiritual interpretation: "And the Lord will give Him the throne of His father David" – not the literal throne of David, but the throne in heaven: "And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever" – not the Jewish people, but the church. He will reign over the church forever. Not forever over the Jewish people: "And His kingdom will have no end." There is no kingdom on earth to end. It's all in heaven.

Now, you ask: how do you decide where to stop literal interpretation and begin spiritualized, symbolic interpretation. You don't, you just invent it. This is a prime example of forcing the Bible to fit the amillennial viewpoint of Augustine who missed the boat on this issue. He didn't get prophecy straight. And all those who have descended through him to the reformation, and from them to this day, are as botched up as he was, because you can see that there is no basis for switching gears.

Now the liberals love this idea. They listen to the amillennialist, who says, "It's not going to be really a real kingdom. It's not going to be the throne of David literally. It's not going to be reigning in a Millennial Kingdom over the house of Jacob forever. That's symbolic." The liberal theologians says, "That is absolutely true." But the liberal says, "However, you have made the mistake of drawing the line in the middle of Luke 1:32, because verse 31 is also symbolic: 'You will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you should call His name Jesus.' You're not really going to, as a virgin, have a child. Mary never really had a child."

Well, when you're reared in church, and you're taught these things, I remember one time, as a teenager, on a Sunday afternoon, with our church, going out, knocking on doors and giving out tracks about the Bible. And I remember to this day. It was one of those moments frozen in time in my mind. This man said to me, "Well, I tell you. Whatever Christianity may have to say, young man, I cannot accept the idea of the virgin-birth of Christ. I cannot accept the idea that He could have been conceived without a human father." And in my innocence, I was blown out of the water. I was dumbfounded that anybody should question that. But what was he questioning? He was saying what the liberal says: "It's a symbol. It's a spiritual message. It's not true:" "And He will be great and called the Son of the Most High God." No, He's not going to be. The liberal says, "He's not really God. He is a great man, but He is not deity.

Now, do you see where this leads, when you throw out literal interpretation? And do you see how inconsistent the amillennialists are to say, "We'll take half of this message to Mary, and say that it's literally true. The other half is symbolic. It is not really literally true.

So, don't be intimidated by the amillennialists. I mean, they're smug little sneering smiles should not be interpreted as wisdom. You should pity them for their smug, sneering, little smiles, because that's there are so many of them that they are confidently right, and they cannot be wrong. But they are.

Well, this was a real can of worms that Augustine opened, and set into motion in as the fifth century began (the years of the 400s). And for the other problems that arose – for example, a first and second resurrection. Where does that happen? "Well," Augustine said, "the first resurrection was the point of your regeneration when you're saved." But the word "resurrection" does not talk about spiritual coming to life. It's physical coming to life. The Bible doesn't use the word "resurrection" in terms of a spiritual coming to life, which indeed you do at the point of your salvation. Resurrection is applied to the physical body.

Now, you can see how far an absolute brilliant theologian who understands the original languages will go to make the Scriptures fit a preconceived plan. And they do it to this very day. The amillennialists are still trying to squeeze everything into this diagram and this picture. And it doesn't matter the absolute contradiction to Scripture that this creates. He proceeded to do it anyhow, and applied the word "resurrection" to spiritual regeneration. The second resurrection is the literal rising of a person (a believer) from the grave. But there's supposed to be 1,000 years between the first and second resurrections. Well that just means a long period of time. Again, this is spiritualized – a long period of time.

So, suddenly, again, "1,000" doesn't mean a thing. Yet, when you put it all together, as we have done for you previously, you know that the first resurrection includes three stages: Christ; the church; and, then the Old Testament believers and those who believe at the end of the tribulation. All those form three stages of the first resurrection. Then comes the millennium. At the end of the millennium, we're told that the second resurrection takes place. And that's the bringing to life of all unsaved dead from all ages, so that they can stand before the great white throne judgment, and have the final condemnation pronounced against them. That's a very significant doctrine. Augustine botched it all up. He completely lost the important meaning between the first resurrection and the second resurrection.

That's why the Bible says: "Be careful. Don't be in the second resurrection. Don't fail to be part of the first resurrection." What does that mean, if the first resurrection is nothing but your spiritual coming to life, and the second resurrection is coming alive from the dead? The whole point of that division between the first and second resurrections is meaningless.

Furthermore, he had a problem with Satan being bound for 1,000 years. And he said, "Well, Satan is bound because he's restrained, because Christ defeated him on the cross." But when the Bible speaks in Revelation about Satan being bound, it means he cannot do what? "No longer deceive the nations." Is Satan deceiving the nations today? You betcha he is. And it's nonsense to suggest that he's not. The amillennialists – it's hard for them I would think, to look in the mirror as they shave, because they're looking in the eyes of such stupidity. You have big arrogance – lots of arrogance if you have lots of numbers. As long as you have enough people who are as stupid as you are, you're very confident, and very arrogant about it. And yet, it is destroying the riches of what it means to be part of the body of Christ. And he just changed the 1,000-year millennium into a long period of time.

Furthermore, he said that the church is through. It rejected the Savior. The Messiah has now turned away from the people of Israel, and they will never again be the people of God. And they have been replaced in God's plan of the ages by the church. There's no future for Israel. Now, the Roman Catholic Church loved this doctrine when they heard it. It gave them what they were looking for to take over as God's kingdom and God's kingdom authorities, and for the hierarchy of the church to take over as the rulers of the world. This began with the Pope so that he had a threefold crown: he was ruler over heaven; over hell; and, over the earth. That's what they wanted. Here was a doctrine that enabled them to do that.

So, they call a church council, and met in the city of Ephesus in 431 A.D., and they made a change from the doctrine that was held as the official doctrine of the church from the apostles during the first three centuries. The Roman Catholic Church likes to say that it never changes anything that it teaches, and that it never changes anything that it believes. But that's among its other lies. It does. It certainly did here. And it changed from this to this view of the relationship of the church and the millennial Revelations – where the Millennial Kingdom concepts fit in. And the concept was that Israel was gone; and, the church has replaced it. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church now became God's authoritative kingdom upon the face of this earth.

Most protestant denominations believe the same thing today because their founders, the reformers, never did get this straight either. They just picked up Catholic doctrine and went with it.

So, amillennialism today says that the church begins, and it goes through the whole church age. This is the millennium. There's also the tribulation, because Christians suffered during this time. And it's not exactly seven years – just a perfect period of expansive time. When Augustine was asked about that, he said, "That's the Christian suffering." But that, of course, does not fit. And we can't get into all the Scriptures in Matthew that show that that would not fit that.

Then comes 1 Thessalonians 4 – Christ catching up the believers into the air, and they go into heaven. And here on earth the unbelievers are sent into hell. That's it. And this is called the great judgment day. And you're separating the sheep and the goat separation. It's not to go into the millennium, in Augustine's view, but it is the great separation of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

Post-Millennialism

Then the next thing that happens is that you have a problem. People still are saying: "You can't say they're not Christians. They do wrong." So, people who hold to the idea of Lordship salvation say, "Well, it's not because you have a sin nature. It's because you have a residual memory of how to do wrong, and you still do that." Dr. Charles Stanley says, "I no longer believe in a sin nature in man and a saved nature in man – that there are two natures, and that they are fighting against one another. Man is saved, and it says, 'Our old man was crucified with Christ on the cross.'" What is the word that they're ignoring? "Positional truth." Yes, we have been crucified positionally. But until we are resurrected with a body that's free of the sin nature, we are potentially sinners as much as we were before we were saved. The difference is: now, with the power of God, we can say "No." I can tell the devil: "No, I will not break the laws of God. No, I will not break the moral code." And you have the ability to do that. Or you can choose to go ahead and do what is evil. But this nonsense: "I don't have a sin nature. And what I'm doing is remembering how I used to do these bad things, and that's still in me, and I'm still doing them" is this horrendous? Where does it come from? Right from here, because at the heart of this concept is that man can become perfectible; man can become improved. And the charismatics who follow this point of view carry it to the fact that perfection is that man becomes a God.

Well, post-millennialism – the word "post" means "after." It means "after the millennium." So, what this envisions is a return of Jesus Christ to the earth after 1,000-year period after Christianity has taken over the whole world. This is a golden age of mankind for 1,000 years, because the whole world is Christianized, and the world has become better and better.

Now, behind this idea, which arose in the 17th century, was the beginning developing of the enlightenment – the idea that finally eventuated in the French revolution of the superiority and the ability of man to create a utopia on this earth through man's rational processes, and through the developments of science. And the idea is that in every way, every day, we are getting better and better. This was a very euphoric view of mankind, and of the future. And they envisioned that after the Christians finally conquer the world, for 1,000 years, there will be this period of prosperity, and peace, and a reign of the influences of Christianity everywhere. And men will be getting better and better. Then Christ will return.

So, here's the church age. It's expanding. Finally, it conquers all the nations of the world. Then the golden age comes with the church reigning over all the earth. And at that point, Jesus will return. There's the rapture. And now they become like amillennialism. They kick into heaven. Heaven begins. And the unsaved go into the lake of fire. The world would have a period of improvement. The church would rise to world domination, because the societies all over the world would get better and better through two things: through humanism; and, through science.

Now, you don't have to read the book of the Revelation very far to know that the Bible says that the world is going to get worse and worse. You don't have to read your way through the epistles of the New Testament before very soon you find that, in the end times, man will become this and this and this. They will all start with self-love. That's the big thing now: "I have to have a good self-image – self-love, etc. etc. And then it lists all those terrible things that man will become. Everywhere the Bible says the world's going to become worse and worse.

Well, this idea (this interpretation) of the Millennial Kingdom and the relationship to the church really took fire. It was begun by a Unitarian minister named Daniel Whitby. He redesigned the concept of amillennialism to a millennium here on this earth again instead of in heaven – a millennium that's here on this earth, where man is moving forward and creating great prosperity by reason; that is, by his humanism, and by the progress of science. This interpretation spread quickly among Protestants, because it gave them a chance to have a different view of the relationship of the church to the Millennial Kingdom from that of the Roman Catholics. Up to that point, the Protestants had accepted the amillennial misconception. Furthermore, it was fitting with the rationalistic attitudes that were developing at the time of what man on his own is able to do.

So, this became very, very popular. Post-millennialism (it is true) did one good thing. It spurred a lot of missionary activity, because they said, "Let's get Christ back. Let's get the world Christianized. Let's get the golden age of mankind going." So, it did kick into high gear a lot of missionary activity. But it had a fatal flaw, and that was the inevitability of human progress toward peace, prosperity, and perfectibility in righteousness.

When World War II broke out, this view of the church and of the Millennial Kingdom took a body blow. It reverberated throughout the Protestant denominations, because of the brutality that was taking place on those battlefields. Up to then, we had a lot of chivalry – courtesy on the battlefield. People were lining up, and they'd parade. They'd say, "OK, y'all shoot at us one time. No it's our turn to shoot at you." And they're very courteous to one another, and very chivalrous, and very stupid. These open formations, going across a field like at Gettysburg, facing one another to see how many could survive to get a mile distance before the grape shot had brought them down. And then when they did make the parapets, they were so weakened they couldn't hold the position anyhow. I mean it was very kind of courteous to one another.

Now, all of a sudden they're putting out poison gas. They'd never seen what this does to human beings. One day the Allied troops are there, and they're saying, "What's that cloud coming over there?" The wind hits it, and puts it right over them. And they breathe it, and they go into screaming agonies. And they discovered what mustard gas; chlorine gas; and, the various gases would do to a human being: the blinding; the death; and, the incapacitating. It was so horrible that nobody used it in World War II. They didn't use it in World War II because everybody now was prepared. They trained us how to use gas masks. And right from the first they prepared. And both sides knew that if either side used this terrible weapon again, the other side was going to do it right back. That's the only reason the Germans didn't use it. That's the only reason the Japanese didn't use it. Do you know what's going on in our government now? The international treaty on outlawing chemical weapons. Is Iran agreeing? No. They said, "Hang it on your nose." Is North Korea agreeing? No. They said, "Hang it on your nose." Is Iraq doing it? Saddam Hussein said, "Are you crazy?" He found how easily he could take care of the Kurds that were giving him trouble. He just sent over the artillery with bursting of the chemical weapons, and he wiped out whole villages. He said, "Okay. Go in there. Clean up the bodies. That takes care of them." And yet the United States, even under a conservative Congress, is going hellbent to sign this treaty that the United States will destroy its chemical weapons facilities.

Well, the whole point was that World War I became a trench warfare. They began hiding in these trenches, which would go sometimes for miles. And periodically the distance between them was "no man's land." They would say, "Let's go. We're going to go over there and take the German trenches." And they'd go shooting out there. And the Germans invented a new weapon. Dog-gone-it. Wouldn't you know it? It was a thing called the machine gun that would rapidly fire bullets. And then they discovered that if you made fields of fire that would cross one another, it was impossible to walk across there. Sooner or later, you'd walk into a field of fire that was crossing, and you'd be killed. Did they stop? No. They just poured thousands of human beings from both sides into the most intense kind of slaughter. And the flower of a nation's manhood was rapidly destroyed on both sides.

Well, post-millennialism said, "This cannot be true. The world is not getting better. It's getting worse." And so they went back. You would think, at this point, they'd say, "Let's go to premillennialism. That's the way the church started. Let's rethink this." By this time, premillennialism now had come as the prominent concept, and I'll show you in a moment why. And the result was that post-millennialism took a terrible blow. And then what do you know? 25 years later comes World War II. And you talk about atrocities! You talk about brutality! I mean, nobody on the face of the earth ever dreamed of the brutality, and the atrocities, and the horror that was brought down on something like the 25 million or more people that eventually were killed in that war. And of course it ended with a big finish – a horrible atrocious weapon in the nuclear bomb that brought agony beyond anything that the human mind could ever conceive.

Well, when that finished, post-millennialism was dead. Nobody taught it. And something like (I don't know) 30 years went by, and nobody even wrote a book about it. Nobody would take it seriously. They'd be laughed at that they should even suggest this. Well, in the last 10 or 15 years, books started being written. Rushdoony became kind of the grandfather of it. He began reviving the concept of post-millennialism – that the world can improve itself and get better by Christianizing itself. His son-in-law, Gary North, a financial advisor, is also now promoting it. I listened to a debate with Gary North and Dave Hunt and Tom Ice. And they finally asked Gary North, "How long will it take until the world is Christianized?" North said, "It'll take 2000 years more." Where did he get that? Out of the thin air. Out of the fact that he has now committed himself that the world is going to get better – I don't care what the Bible says.

Dominion Theology

So, here we've got this whole nonsense charging in. The books are being written, left and right. This concept now is teaching the improvement of mankind under two viewpoints. One is called Dominion Theology. And that one says that it's going to come as the world is Christianized by missionary efforts, and so on. And the other is "Kingdom Now," which is the expression that the charismatics have gone for. In this system, of course, once more, the church has replaced Israel. There's no future for that nation. Therefore, that's why, out of post-millennialism, there is a strong anti-Semitism. Why not? The Jew has no future. He's never going to be God's people. And when he's a troublemaker, sock it to him. And there's a strange anti-Semitism that runs through Dominion Theology, and Kingdom Now.

The Charismatics look at it this way, under their Kingdom Now post-millennial dominion – that they can bring about this great Christianization of society because they are in Christ. And because they are in Christ, they're all little gods. Hello Eve. What did the devil say to you? "You can be a goddess." So, these little gods have authority to do what? To confess something, whatever they wish, because their words are the words of a God. And what happens when a god speaks? When a god speaks, things come into being and things happen. So, they actually, under Kingdom Now, say, "We will speak." They use the word "confess:" "We will confess that something is so, and it will happen because we're little gods." I notice that they don't confess about getting to be better-looking. Some of those women are terrible looking. They should confess that they should get better looking if they have that God-like ability. But they don't do that. But they think they're going to take over the world. And if you understand this, you'll understand what charismatics say, and what they do a lot better. It won't be quite so crazy. They actually think they're gods. And all they have to do is speak these words.

Well, some of these TV evangelists, like Benny Hinn – he has pulled his horns back a little. But he just told people, "You are a god. Don't let anybody tell you you're not a god. And we are going to bring in the Kingdom Now. Believe it. Speak it. Declare it."

Reform theology has gone in the direction of dominion now where they are going to take the world over more on a biblical teaching basis, and Christianize the world through missionary work and political activity. Remember that the dominion theology is big, and Gary North is very big. He has a difference with his father-in-law, Rushdoony. The father-in-law doesn't believe in political activism, but Gary North said, "This is how we're going to take over the world."

They claim that all these prophecies that we have in the book of the Revelation (the tribulation and the judgments of God) – that those are not future; those are all past. They all happened in 70 A.D. So, the whole book of the Revelation is now fulfilled. It's not future, as premillennialists say. It is passed. It is up and done with. There's nothing more to be fulfilled in this book. Revelation was written to describe what had happened, and it is all through.

However, it would be very strange that the book of the Revelation is fulfilled because it wasn't written until 95 A.D. And the conquest of Israel by the Roman Legion of Titus took place in 70 A.D. So, you have the book of the Revelation telling us (and Jesus says explicitly), "I'm going to tell you what's happening in the future: what has happened; what is now; and, what will be. He divides that up in those three directions (those three categories) – in the timetable of those three classifications, immediately at the start of the book of the Revelation. So, you can see how absolutely nonsensical all this can be.

Modern Post-Millennialism

Post-millennialism is charging back to life. It shows you how blinded men will be if they do not take the Bible literally. Now, we don't have time this evening to pursue modern pre-millennialism. I'm just going to give you a quick overview so we can tie this together. And next time, we'll walk you through the dramatic confirmation that this is indeed what the Bible teaches. If you don't want to believe it, please understand: don't come and debate with me. I'm perfectly happy for you to believe any nonsense you want to believe. All you have to do is know that you're going to answer to God for what you believe, and for what you teach people. I guarantee you, if the Bible is true, and if it is to be literally interpreted on both accounts (and that is the case), Augustine has a lot of regrets. He wishes that he had been more careful.

You have to remember that it wasn't until the beginning of the 19th century that historic pre-millennialism, with its mistaken concept of the church going through tribulation, was corrected. And I'll give you a little preview here. What corrected it? A group of people in England. They met in the city of Plymouth. And what did they do? They started studying the Bible – men like John Darby, and others associated with him. They became super students of the Bible. They were dealing with the original languages. They were studying the Scriptures. And they said, "Wait a minute. Post-millennialism is not true. Wait a minute. Amillennialism is completely out of sync with Scripture." Furthermore, they realized from the records that the original doctrine of the church for 300 years was premillennialism. But they said, "There's something wrong here. Something doesn't fit," because they started really laying out Scriptures. We refer to them today as the Plymouth Brethren.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

Back to the Colossians index