Steadfastegars.com. Use promo code Covenant 10 for 10% off your order. Welcome to the based Boomer podcast on Eschatology Matters, part of the Fight, Laugh, Feast, Network. What distinguishes off-millennialism from post-millennialism? While I very much appreciate my off-millennialist brethren, or what I call practical post-millennialists, it's important to understand that being optimistic or not is not what separates these two Eschatological perspectives. It's more than merely seeing the glass half full. On a surface level, that is non-theological or biblical, it can appear the two have much in common. But our Eschatological optimism is the result of something much deeper than a desire to see things turn out the way we want. Having an optimistic perspective with a fundamentally pessimistic theology is like running up hill. When you believe things are going to the proverbial hell in a hand basket, one way ticket. It's tough to maintain a positive outlook. As those of you who are familiar with my work will know, I was born again into the late Great Planet Earth late 1970s, which meant I accepted the dispensational pre-millennialist outlook on eschatology and the world. Things were getting increasingly worse quickly, and the rapture was happening any day. So, be ready to go. Such newspaper eschatology got weirysome after a while, and even after my stint seminary, I wasn't really keen on eschatology. That led me to adopt a kind of eschatological agnosticism, what I later termed pan-millennialism, or it will all pan out in the end. As indeed it will, but that's a cop out, because I was a recovering dispensationalist. I was convinced God didn't see fit to reveal much that wasn't confusing about eschatology, so I bother. But would God really want to confuse us and leave us in the dark about a topic as important as how it all ends, where everything is headed and how we get there? Sure, every orthodox Christian agrees that as the creed says, Jesus will come from the right hand of God to judge, believe, and the dead. We know God will usher in a new heavens and earth, where sin and suffering and sorrow will be no more, and he will wipe every tear from our eyes. The question is whether it is true that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and Jesus comes back like Batman to save the day. That's what I used to believe, and what most Christians believe, or alternatively, did God begin establishing his kingdom at Christ's first coming, and like a mustard seed in 11, it is slowly and inevitably growing throughout the entire earth to eventually usher in the final sin-free and reconciled kingdom on a new heavens and new earth when Christ returns. These are the questions which most Christians would never ask, and if you ask it, they think you've been drinking too much of the funny juice. My journey through all millennialism to post-millennialism. For whatever reason, God created me as something of an idealist with a kind of ambition where I believed if I work hard enough, I could accomplish anything. Of course, that's not true, but when I was young, I believed it completely. My dad used to make fun of me. My first obsession being a so-cow boy was surfing, and I just had to have that David Nueve surfboard, and went to the beach to work on my surfing as much as I could. Then I moved on to Qatar, and without doubt, I would be one of the greats. Eddie Van Halen had nothing on me, and being from so-cow himself, I saw him as a rival, which is kind of funny. I practiced for hours every day and got pretty good, but not close to Eddie Van Halen Good. One thing my dad would never let me forget was herring him to get me a wawa pedal. For the rest of his life, he would say to me, you just had to have the wawa pedal. Yeah, dad, then I could play Robin Trower and Hendrix. Then I got diverted into golf, and not only did I want to be great, but in fact, the greatest in the world. Sadly, I only had the talent to be the greatest in my family. Yes, delusions of grandeur came easily to me. Then I went away to college and got born again, and the idealism didn't stop there. I was going to become a missionary and change the world like William Carey, but realized I'm addicted to the comforts of American life. Then after college, it was politics. I'd learned what it means to have a Christian worldview from Francis Schaeffer and determined to apply it to all of life. I dove into political activism. It didn't take long to get disillusioned with that. I'd embraced reform theology and went to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, and academia was my next route to change the world. God would rescue me from that life because I met my wife at Westminster, and we were married and started life together. We got involved in an Amway business, which my older readers will be familiar with for the decade of the 90s, and that was the next vehicle to change the world and get rich. That didn't happen. Then in the late 2010s, after I'd gotten disillusioned with politics again, I decided to start a non-profit called the Culture Project because I realized that's the way we have to change America. That didn't go anywhere either. Through all these permutations of my delusions, I still maintained my idealism. Then in 2014, I embraced homilinialism. I didn't intend to become a pessimist, but in hindsight, I see that's what it did to me. When I embraced it through the teaching of scholar, theologian, and pastor, Kim Riddlebarker, I was so excited to learn that God actually did have something to say about, quote, end times. That's pathology wasn't just a means of too confusion and bickering after all. It was only after my embrace of post-millennialism in August of 2022 that I could look back and see what all millennialism did to my idealism that being dispensational and Pam Mill could not. Anyone who is familiar with my story knows it was Steve Bannon and his War Room podcast after the debacle of the 2020 election who slowly turned me into an optimist. I then started to look for a theological, biblical justification for my growing optimism and founded in the eschatological position I'd rejected all my life as a joke. I did not see that coming. It was one of the many ongoing effects of the red pill I unknowingly took when Donald J. Trump came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to run for president. It's kind of amazing to me that at almost the age of 55, I would begin to rethink so many of the things in my life and change my mind more often than not. I'm an object lesson to not allow our beliefs to become so ossified that when presented with different ideas and facts and perspectives, we won't change our minds. Prior to Bannon and still embracing our millennialism, I even got to the point where I would mock my younger self for being an idealist. I'm not changing the world because the world can't change. I came to believe the world isn't changing fundamentally until Jesus returns. Sin was too powerful a force in a fallen world filled with fallen people to change and things would get worse until Jesus returned to clean up the mess. After my, quote, conversion, I tried to figure out why I'd come to believe this so strongly. Mind you, prior to that, I still believed in the things getting worse in Jesus coming back to save the day paradigm, but it personally didn't turn me into a pessimist. All millennialism did. Why most all millennialists are pessimists? This is a bit of a sensitive topic because our all millennialists, brethren, don't really like to be considered pessimists. I certainly would never have considered myself one of them, especially given my history, but that's what I became. It goes with the territory. An interesting aside, as we discussed this topic, is that I've found that even pre-millennial dispensationalists, according to their theology, should be even more pessimistic than omelinialists, they often become the most robust culture warriors while the omils generally don't. You would think it might be the other way around. I'm all for theological inconsistency when it comes to this. One thing you'll find widespread among omils is Christian worldview thinking, but as I argue and have written about on my blog, while it is a requirement for all Christians, a Christian worldview is not enough, and we'll put a link to that in the notes. The reason is that it is primarily an intellectual exercise rather than an theological imperative rooted in the authority of the ascended Christ at the right hand of the power of God. Things will get better and the influence of Christianity will spread like leaven and bread, Matthew 13, not because people are thinking in a Christian way about things, but because God in his power through Christ is advancing his kingdom, extending Christ's reign and building his church. It's not our work that makes the difference, but God working in through and for us. What post-millennialism is not is positive thinking. It's realistic biblical thinking. The omils don't see it this way. I'll give you a couple quotes from a piece written by the man who persuaded me to become omil. Referring to the Olivet discourse, a piece in Modern Reformation magazine, he says, Jesus himself speaks of world conditions at the time of his return as being similar to the way things were in the days of Noah. Partly, a period in world history characterized by the Christianizing of the nations and the near universal acceptance of the gospel associated with so-called optimistic forms of eschatology. This assumes a futuristic perspective on Jesus' words. That what he's talking about is his second coming at the end of time, not what a preterist like me believes that Jesus was speaking to the generation who was listening to his words. As Jesus says, just a few verses before his reference to Noah. Truly, I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. So just three verses before the passage Kim uses to refer to a generation thousands of years into the future, Jesus says it's his generation. People try to make his words into something they are not, but in Greek or English or any other language you choose, this means this generation, not some other one far off into the future. In another passage from the same piece, he says, aside from the fact that many contemporary notions of optimism have stronger ties to the Enlightenment than to the New Testament, the New Testament's teaching regarding human depravity should give us pause not to be too optimistic about what simple men and women can accomplish in terms of turning the city of man into the temple of God. This of course assumes post-colonialism's case for optimism comes more from human than biblical teaching, but it doesn't. That's one of the reasons I embraced it, realizing I'd gotten this wrong and the case for eschatological optimism was thoroughly biblical and exegetical. Kim is not a fan of the optimistic, pessimistic paradigm, to say the least, and I would respond more and I responded more in depth to Kim and the piece I did previously, which will link to as well. Why post-millennialists are optimistic? The Ascension and Christ's kingship. It wasn't, but a few weeks after I embraced post-millennialism, that I heard Doug Wilson on a video say, quote, now you have the theological justification for your optimism. Bingo. That's what I was looking for and God provided it. Amazing. And this optimism had nothing to do with secularism and science and human knowledge that distorted post-millennialism in the 19th century, but with God's clear declarations in scripture of victory in Christ. We see this through all the covenant promises and prophetic declarations in the Old Testament, pointing forward to Christ. It's easy enough to pick out the declarations of judgment, but to me they are overwhelmed by the power in contrast to the declarations of victory of God's kingdom rule to come. Again, it is the scriptural proclamation of victory of the plans of God that compelled me to embrace post-millennialism once my mind was opened to it, which previously was shut like a trapped door I was convinced was unable to be opened. Since that is the basis of our eschatological hope, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come Ephesians 121, I will end with one passage and how I see it now and others like it as applying to Christ's first coming and not his second as I used to. Reading through Micah recently, I came to these stirring words in chapter 4. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains. It will be exalted above the hills and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion. The word of the Lord from Jerusalem, he will judge between many peoples, he will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. For the Lord Almighty has spoken. All the nations may walk in the name of their gods, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. With my futureous assumptions, I automatically saw this and many other passages like it. There's of course applying to Jesus' second coming, swords, into plowshares, not in this fallen world. Now I realize that's exactly why Jesus came to bring as the shepherds proclaimed, peace on earth, goodwill, poor men. If you compare the ancient world into which Jesus was born to the modern world as brutal as it still can be, it is peaceful in comparison, all because of the prince of peace. Just because the peace hasn't yet seeped into every nook and cranny of existence, doesn't mean the peace hasn't come, been coming slowly, all over the world since the resurrection, ascension, and pentecost. No Christian would deny that peace has come to personal relationships and families, but it isn't limited to that. The modern world shaped by the life death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ is utterly different than the ancient world into which Jesus was born. It is also clear, as it is in many other such passages, that they are speaking of life in a fallen world, not a perfected, sinless and restored world. References to disputes among nations imply sin still exists. So does the possibility of being made afraid, or nations walking in the name of some other God. The kingdom's coming is a painfully slow, mostly imperceptible process until you look in the rearview mirror. It nonetheless transforms wherever it goes, maybe in a decade or even a century, it doesn't look much like much transformation is happening, but look back 2000 years, and the transformation is as obvious as a volcano in full bloom. Reading scripture, especially the Old Testament, with transformation expectations, can bring a new appreciation for what Christ is doing in our own day. We find ourselves in a pivotal era filled with defining moments and global shits. What's the significance of it all? While many perceive doom and gloom, going back to find the way forward argues that these times are not only clarifying, but also immensely hopeful, there's a silver lining waiting to be seized. The metaphorical, red pill has awakened millions to truths previously obscured. Enter Donald Trump, the relentless dispenser of this awakening. As truth comes to light, the enemies of honesty are unmasked, marking the onset of another great awakening. Our contemporary awakening fuels a renewed confidence at the possibility of a refounded nation, true human flourishing and liberty and justice for all, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible and iTunes. The steadfast legacy Sumatra is a bold cigar with a nice balance of spice, leather and dried fruit. You can find these in all our other premium cigars at steadfastsigars.com. Use promo code Eschatology10 for 10% off your order. Permain steadfast and hold the line.