Well, good morning to everyone. Good to see you all here this morning. 

We're going to talk about prophecy this morning as we're coming into the book of Daniel. And prophecy should give us hope. I was thinking last night, aren't you glad that your hope is not in the Packers? Our hope, Peter said, rests your hope fully on the grace that's to be revealed at Christ's coming. Our hope is for the future and God's promise, and that's what prophecy is really all about. 

So we're going to broach this subject. I got to chapter two last week and came to the mountain, the rock cut out with hands, the mountain that fills the whole earth, and I thought, well, we should really probably just do some foundational stuff here, an explanation for a couple of messages, just so everyone understands why we believe what we believe and where we're going with this and how we understand the book of Daniel. 

I'm confident that there will be a lot of questions after our message this morning and discussion, so we'll have that time at the end again. Write down questions you have or scriptures you want to look at or anything you don't understand. This is a massive subject, and I'm not pretending to cover everything or explore every detail, but just to try to give a basic understanding. 

I wanted to start with Daniel 2 verse 31. It says, "You, O king, were watching and behold a great image, this great image whose splendor was excellent stood before you and its form was awesome. This image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found, and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth."

Well, last week we observed that in the dream given to Nebuchadnezzar, we see a prophecy, and there's broad agreement with the various schools of thought concerning the statue representing the kingdoms of Babylon: the head of gold, the coming kingdoms of Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. However, when we get to verse 35, we find a sharp division among interpreters of this passage. The stone that is cut out without hands and becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth brings us to the discussion of the kingdom of Christ. 

So what is the nature of this kingdom? What do the scriptures say about this kingdom? Our understanding of these things will drive much of our understanding of eschatology and therefore our interpretation of much of the book of Daniel. So we're going to consider what the Bible says about the kingdom this morning. We're going to also consider the two broad ways of understanding the whole of God's word and the unfolding of his salvation plan—these being covenant and dispensational theology. With this, we will see what the scriptures say about Israel and the church; we'll seek to point our eschatological understanding of the word of God in the right direction. 

I want to clarify as we begin this morning that we do not hold to or seek to promote any system of men concerning these things. I've not studied these systems in their fullness, nor do I seek to necessarily guide my understanding of the scriptures and the things yet to come by any system of man, but rather we seek to adjust our understanding as we grow and learn from the word of God. And I think we do that; we see that as we study and we grow. 

I also understand that there are wide variations among individuals in understanding these issues. It's often like a witness to a Roman Catholic person; they'll say, "Well, my uncle, he's Catholic, but he doesn't believe in transubstantiation." Well then he's not Catholic, you see. Or maybe he's an à la carte Catholic, taking what you want. So we can really only understand Catholicism by understanding its official doctrines. 

So I seek to try to sort of go to the official doctrines or mainline views of these things as taken from their sources. My intent in this message is just to expose you to the main ideas and explain from the scriptures why it is that we believe what we believe, so that we might more fully understand the book of Daniel as we study it together over the coming months. 

The study of prophecy, as we talked about, should be an encouraging endeavor. The truth that God is sovereign, that he knows the end from the beginning, that he's working out his will and accomplishing his salvation plan should give us great assurance and encouragement as we face the trials and tribulations of this life and see the wickedness of men and the system of Satan in our present world. 

We should take great encouragement that Jesus is coming again, that God will keep his promises, and that our full and final salvation and eternity is secure in Jesus Christ. 

So I've given you five points on an outline to just kind of guide us. We're going to look at the first three this morning and the last two next week. 

First: killing the straw man. Second: covenant versus dispensational theology. Third: key distinctions between Israel and the church. Fourth: God's covenant with Israel. And fifth: the day of the Lord. 

In Zechariah 12:2 it says, "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the surrounding peoples when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem, and it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all the peoples. All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it." 

One of the things that amazes me most, just on its face historically, contextually in our world, is that we see in a more prevalent way, perhaps more now than ever, the impact, the effect, and influence that the nation of Israel has in the world. This little sliver of land, this small group of people, and yet Israel's the topic of discussion everywhere on social media, in the governments of the world, in the military and economic spheres. 

When I preached through Daniel 11 years ago, it was a much different world, just because of our phones and social media. And we are constantly getting opinions of people, in short snippets mostly, hearing a lot of things about the world and politics and religion and theology and so forth. Israel's influence on the world is grand compared to its size and population, and it's universally hated. The people are universally hated; the religion, the ethnicity, by the vast majority of people in the world. Why is that? 

Even in the church, Israel, in our understanding of this nation, is a great dividing line. It's a point of contention. And I believe a straw man has been established in the church, and at the heart of this is the nation of Israel. 

I'm confident that you have heard it said in sermons, on podcasts and reels, that those who hold to the teachings that God will keep His covenant with Israel, that Jesus will establish the kingdom on earth for Israel, and that the church and Israel are distinct, are deceived by a very new idea called dispensationalism. That there was a man in the 19th century named Darby who came up with this whole idea of dispensational thought, that it was C.I. Schofield with his study Bible in 1909 that drew myriads of Christians into this deception. I've heard this again and again, and this is what many Christians have come to believe. 

Now again, I want to be clear, I've not studied Darby, nor his ideas, nor have I ever owned a Schofield Bible. I do not claim this system as my own because I'm not even sure what all it teaches. I want to just focus on two major distinctions between covenant theology and dispensational thought this morning because I think these two issues are the key to understanding prophecy and interpreting the book of Daniel and eschatology in general in the Word of God. 

One is that the church and Israel are distinct, and two, God has a future plan for the nation of Israel. I believe these two things are the key dividing points between the schools of thought concerning covenant and dispensational theology, and that our understanding of these theologies will largely guide our interpretation. The key is to understand these things rightly from the Word of God, and that's the challenge. 

But first, I'd like to kill this straw man. The idea that dispensational thought began with Darby in the 1800s is just factually not so. One of my greatest frustrations with the church today is that when we discuss church history, we always begin with Augustine, as if no church existed from Christ until the 5th century. Nearly every course I've ever seen or book I've read or teaching I've heard on church history begins with Augustine and then conveniently jumps 1,100 or so years to the Reformation. But the church began on Pentecost, and we have the book of Acts and all the letters that followed to teach us. We do have some writings from the early church fathers as well, and I don't generally put any stock in that. I'm not one to put a lot of stock in the writings of men. I don't believe we really know anything apart from the Scriptures, but my point here is to show that concerning the issues of the kingdom and the church and Israel, dispensational thought did not start in the 1800s. 

As we think about Daniel 2 and that stone cut out without hands that became a mountain that filled the whole earth, I want to just stop and talk about the various views of the kingdom that are held in the church. And for that we need to go to Revelation 20 verses 1 to 6. Revelation chapter 20 verse 1: "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. 

And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years." 

Well, the thousand years here is what is often called the millennium. And when we discuss the kingdom of Christ, when we discuss the millennial reign or the mountain that fills the whole earth in Daniel 2, we talk about it in relation to Jesus' second coming. So I'm sure you've heard the terms premillennial, postmillennial, amillennial. What these terms describe is the time of Jesus' second coming in relation to this 1,000-year kingdom described in Revelation 20. You guys have a handout on that that describes the various views—amillennial, postmillennial, premillennial—that you can kind of follow along there or take notes on or have for your reference. 

The premillennial view of Christ's second coming would say that Jesus comes again before the 1,000 years. The postmillennial view says that Jesus comes after the 1,000 years. And the amillennial view says that there is no literal kingdom, but spiritualizes the text that mentions Jesus' kingdom on earth, including the one in Daniel 2. 

So for example, the postmillennial view, I think this is very interesting. I don't know if you find this interesting, but I think it's very interesting to kind of explore these thoughts and where they come from and why men believe them. The postmillennial view would see the stone and mountain of Daniel 2 as the church, okay? They believe that the church will continually, over time, through the preaching of the gospel, through civil government and political means, Christianize the world. And there will come a point when nearly the entire world will become born again, and at this point, Jesus will come back to judge. 

So the kingdom is the church, and it's growing and growing until it fills the whole earth. Some of you may be familiar with Doug Wilson out in Moscow, Idaho, who has had some influence on the church. He's a postmillennial person. Just a note, in Daniel 2, the stone that strikes the statue of the kingdoms of men and fills the whole earth describes a cataclysmic event. The type of verb translated filled here speaks of a sudden, one-time event, i.e., Christ's coming, His second coming, judgment, and then the setting up of the kingdom. 

So in my opinion, this is one of the many problems with the postmillennial view. Just an interesting trivia bit; you'll remember when Pat Robertson ran for president of the United States. Some of you are old enough to remember that. Pat Robertson is postmillennial. So what he said when he was running for president is, "If you elect me president of the United States, we will hand the kingdom to Christ." That's a postmillennial view. 

So you can see how the various understandings of the kingdom and the church can affect your understanding of eschatology and how you interpret scripture. Now a note on the amillennial view before we leave this discussion. The amillennial view teaches that there is no literal kingdom on the earth, but rather that the 1,000 years represent the church age, and that Jesus is reigning in heaven with the saints who have died and are in the intermediate state. 

The key problems I have with this view are that the scriptures repeatedly teach that this kingdom will be on the earth, and also that Revelation passage in chapter 20 says—if you look at verse 4 again, he says, "I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years." 

But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. The language seems to point directly to the saints beheaded who did not worship the beast. Now, it takes a lot of spiritualizing texts in order to make this about the entire church age, which they believe began with Adam, the church began with Adam. And that this includes all the saints of all time who have died and are in heaven with Jesus. 

And also this word translated "resurrection" in verse five is anastasis. And this word anastasis in the Bible in all secular—not sexual—secular uses means a literal physical resurrection. So if you're following, what we see is a physical resurrection of these saints mentioned in verse four, followed by the 1,000 years. If we interpret these verses naturally, then the 1,000 years follows the physical resurrection of these beheaded saints who did not worship the beast in the context of the 42 months or the 1,260 days that John writes about in the book of the Revelation and is also mentioned in the book of Daniel. 

So these are the three main schools of thought concerning the kingdom of Christ introduced to us in Daniel two by the stone cut out without hands that crushes the kingdoms of the earth and then fills the whole earth. 

So let's go back to our straw man. The accusation we often hear is that the premillennial view and the belief that the church and the nation of Israel are distinct and God has a future plan for Israel only came about in the 1800s. And I just want to give you a few quotes from the early church fathers before 400 AD, some dating back to the first century. 

Again, I'm not trying to prove my system or anything by quoting these men, I'm just trying to give evidence that the idea of dispensational thought has been around since the beginning. Eusebius, you might know his name, wrote of Papias that Papias strongly held this view all the way back in the first century. Papias was contemporary and associated with John the Apostle and his disciple Polycarp. 

Listen to what Eusebius wrote about Papias. He said, "In Papias' accounts, there would be a certain millennium after the resurrection and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very earth." It's interesting because Eusebius was not in agreement; he was writing critically of what Papias taught, but he quotes him giving us that viewpoint from the first century. 

The Epistle of Barnabas, written in 117, also promotes the idea of a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on the earth. Justin Martyr, who spent time in Ephesus in 135 AD where John had been only 40 years earlier, near Patmos where John received the revelation, taught a premillennial view. Justin, in his dialogue with Trifo written in 155, describes the belief in a literal millennium as the orthodox doctrine. He sees the millennium centered in Jerusalem and predicted by Old Testament prophets. He wrote, “But I and others— I like the way he said, this is my new motto now. Here's what Justin Martyr wrote in 155. He said, ‘But I and others who are right-minded Christians on all points are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead and 1,000 years in Jerusalem which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others describe.’" 

Irenaeus also taught a premill view, much the same as we believe today. He said the period of millennium bliss corresponds to the seventh day of rest following the six days of creation. This apparently was a popular view in the early church. During this time, the earth is marvelously fruitful. Jerusalem is magnificently rebuilt. The righteous joyfully become accustomed to the new life of incorruption. After this preliminary regime of bliss has passed, a final judgment of all the world is instituted, and the new heaven and new earth are revealed. 

Now remember this was written in 155, and this is the exact view that dispensationalists hold today. Irenaeus also emphasized the land promise in his writing, saying that Israel would possess her land during the millennial reign. Tertullian wrote a little while after Irenaeus, but we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon this earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection and for 1,000 years. 

We could go on and on from the second and third century, but what this research shows is that up until the time of Origin in the late third century, the church seems to have universally believed a premillennial view. The spiritualizing of this kingdom time seems to have begun with Origin and then, of course, was developed by Augustine who influenced so much of the Western church. Again, I tell you these things and take the time not to offer men as any proof, but merely to show you that this idea that John Nelson Darby pulled these ideas out of thin air in the 1800s is totally false. 

In fact, the early church fathers appeared to have almost universally held the premillennial view until the great and very doctrinal divergence of the late fourth and early fifth centuries that brought us the Roman Catholic Church and the Dark Ages. We also find that Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Ephraim the Syrian, among others, taught the pre-tribulational rapture of the church long before Augustine. I have those quotes as well with references if anyone would like them. Many in the early church believed in the premillennial second coming of Christ in a literal 1,000-year reign on the earth. 

But what did the church teach about a future plan for the nation of Israel and Israel's distinction from the church? And this I find really interesting. Justin Martyr held that the tribes of Israel would be gathered and restored in accordance with the prophet Zechariah, that he would gather them with the winds and so forth, and he quotes from that. He says, "Tribe by tribe, they shall mourn and then they shall look on him whom they have pierced and they shall say, ‘Why, O Lord, has thou made us to err from thy way? The glory which our fathers blessed has for us been turned into shame.’" 

Tertullian discussed the future blessing and salvation of Israel when he said, "God will favor with his acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge him." He also urged Christians to anticipate eagerly and rejoice over the coming restoration of Israel, for it will be fitting for the Christians to rejoice and not to grieve at the restoration of Israel, if it be true as it is that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel. 

Interestingly, Origin—who we quoted before—diverged from the premillennial view, the literal reign of Christ on earth, still held that God would save national Israel at his second coming. He affirms and quotes from Romans 11:25 and 26. He also quotes from the Song of Songs, which is interesting, quoting the two callings of Israel, and he says this: "But after the call of the church, Israel will experience salvation, for the church was called between the two callings of Israel, that is to say, first Israel was called, and afterward, when Israel had stumbled and fallen, the church of the Gentiles was called. But when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then all Israel, having been called again, will be saved." 

Again, this is written in the late 200s, and it's an almost identical view to how dispensationalists understand the unfolding of God's salvation plan through time. Origin also wrote, "Now indeed, until all the Gentiles come to salvation, the riches of God are concentrated in the multitude of believers, but as long as Israel remains in unbelief, it will not be possible to say that the fullness of the Lord's portion has been attained." 

The people of Israel are still missing from the complete picture, but when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and Israel comes to salvation at the end of time, then it will be the people which, although it existed long ago, will come at the last and complete the fullness of the Lord's portion and inheritance. 

John Chrysostom also believed in the final salvation of the Jews, as did many church fathers, and this was the most interesting thing that I found—Augustine believed that Israel would be saved. He predicted this quite clearly, took a literal view of Zechariah 12:10 and Hosea 3:5. 

He said, "Afterward, shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall be amazed at the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." Nothing is clearer than this in this prophecy. And this he wrote concerning Romans 11, "That for as much as in that humble coming, the first advent of Christ, blindness hath happened in part unto Israel, that the fullness of the Gentiles might enter in, and that others should happen what follows, and so all Israel should be saved." 

He argued that the church has not permanently supplanted the Jews. He says, "What, have we supplanted the Jews? No, but we are said to be their supplanters, for that for our sakes they were supplanted. For if they had not been blinded, Christ would not have been crucified. His precious blood would not be shed. If that blood had not been shed, the world would not have been redeemed. Because then their blindness hath profited us, therefore hath the elder brother supplanted the younger, and the younger is called the supplanter. But how long shall this be? The time will come, the end of the world will come, and all Israel shall believe, not they who now are, but their children who shall then be." 

This is quite a quote, as Augustine deals honestly with these prophecies. Again, our desire is to search the word of God, to know and believe what he says, and form our understanding of all doctrine and truth from his word. But it's clear, pertaining to the distinctives of dispensational premillennial thought and covenant theology, that the early church held thoughts and doctrine much more akin to the dispensational view, including a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth, a distinction between the nation of Israel and the church, and a future salvation plan and land promise for Israel. 

Even Augustine held this view, that national Israel would be saved at the second coming of Christ, because of the clarity of Zechariah 12, Hosea 3, and Romans 11. The real question is always for us: what does the word of God say about these things? And that we're going to pursue next week. 

But I think it's important to demonstrate that it is a disingenuous attack to say that John Nelson Darby came up with these ideas constituting dispensationalism in the 1800s, and that they never existed before in the church. It does appear on the covenant side of things that Augustine conceived most of the seeds of theological thought, primarily in the realm of soteriology. And this was a divergence from the early church. 

So just briefly for our understanding, I want to highlight the key distinctions between dispensational and covenant theology. And again, this isn't comprehensive. You have a copy there, again, of what I'm going to highlight in your handout, if you want to follow along. For our purposes concerning prophecy and eschatology, we want to draw a couple of clear distinctions between dispensational and covenant theology. And I understand there's much more to each system, but I'm not really interested in the systems. 

What I find is that the scriptures lead us to a clear division around the two points we've already mentioned: Israel and the church and a future plan for the nation. So we see the primary distinctives of premillennial dispensationalism are these. 

First: an historical grammatical literal hermeneutic, meaning basically that we take the scripture naturally as it is written. If there's a reason to symbolize it or spiritualize it in the text or in the grammar, in the context, then that's fine. But when it says that Jesus will come out of heaven and judge the nations with a sword out of his mouth, perhaps the sword represents the word as we see throughout the scriptures, but it does mean that Jesus will come and judge the nations. 

Second: we see a future plan of God to keep his unconditional promises to the nation of Israel. Third: dispensationalists see the unfolding of God's salvation plan through the nation of Israel and a setting aside of national Israel because of their rejection of the Messiah. However, God's turning to the Gentiles in the church age and hardening of Israel is partial and temporal, and God will turn back to Israel and fulfill his unconditional promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as we see in Romans 11, as well as many of the Old Testament prophets in the book of the Revelation. 

Covenant theology has these distinctives. The covenant of works was made with Adam. This is a really foundational point to this whole theology. It teaches that God made a covenant with Adam that if he kept God's command, he would gain life. Likewise, they teach that the second Adam, Jesus, kept the law of Moses perfectly in order to attain righteousness to then impute to us. 

Just a quick note here: I believe the very foundation of covenant theology in Genesis is highly flawed. It never says that God made a covenant with Adam. It does say that in all the other covenants made, nor does it ever promise him life through obeying the law. Rather, Adam had life, and he brought death into the world through sin. 

Second: the covenant of grace begins after Adam's sin and extends to the eternal state. Third: the church includes all of God's people of all time and began with Adam. Fourth: there's no distinction between Israel and the church. The church is the fulfillment of the true Israel, and God has no future plans for national Israel. Covenant theology sees no specific eschatological events before the coming of Christ, nor any kingdom after, but only the eternal state. 

And covenant theology spiritualizes most prophetic texts rather than holding a literal or natural hermeneutic, and we saw this in the example of Revelation 20 before. So these are some important and clear distinctions between the two systems of thought, and it's important to understand that these broad framework understandings of the whole of God's revelation to us in His Word—and this is the point, this is why this matters—impact greatly how we understand most doctrines, but particularly prophecy and eschatology. 

Now, with the time we have left, I just want to more fully cover our third point, and then we'll pick up the last two points next week. One of the primary concerns that I have from studying the whole of the Scriptures is the distinction between Israel and the Church. In the covenant viewpoint, there's a great continuity between the Old and the New Covenants. 

Because they believe that God made a covenant of works with Adam, and then when he broke that covenant, the covenant of grace began immediately and extends to eternity, everything falls under the covenant of grace. The Mosaic law falls under the covenant of grace. So everything is continuing to the end. 

Therefore, they see the Church in the Old Testament—we hear a lot about people talking about replacement theology, and the Church has replaced Israel, but that's not technically the viewpoint of covenant theologians. They see Israel as being the Church all the way back to the beginning, and they see the Church as being Israel now, okay? So the Church began with Adam, Israel's the Church, the Church is Israel, the Church is all believers of all time. 

So with this continuity, there's a very little distinction between the Church and Israel. The dispensational viewpoint sees a great break in continuity, a clear distinction between the Old Covenant and the New. We believe that Israel as a nation of the Old Testament was very different from the Church in the New, and that God was doing something very different under the Old Covenant than under the Law than he's doing in the New Covenant. Many similarities exist—obviously, it’s the same God, it's justification, redemption, all those things are going on, the working out of his salvation plan, there's a shadow and fulfillment aspect for sure, but there's a clear distinction as well. 

So Israel was a nation chosen by God for the purpose of being a witness to the Gentiles. God made a covenant with Israel, and one entered that covenant—how? Circumcision, right? By ritual. So God made a covenant with Israel and you entered the covenant through this ritual of circumcision. The nation was just that—a nation of people. It was made up of unbelievers and believers. A personal justification was not the issue with the choosing of the nation for God's purposes. Some were justified by faith, just as men are today, and many, perhaps most, were lost and died and went to hell. 

The church is very different. It is not a nation, nor does it have a civil government or ceremonial system. It is not entered through a ritual such as circumcision or baptism but is entered only by faith and being placed into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. The church is made up entirely of believers and only believers. All of the church is saved forever. The church is not a city on a hill, as Israel was, meant to be a light to the nations to draw them to God, but rather we are in the church living in and among the pagans, living and working beside lost men as a witness by word and by deed to lead them individually to faith in Christ for salvation. 

The church is a body—the body of Christ. This was not true of Israel, and the church is, in a unique way, the bride of Christ. Israel is sometimes called a bride, but the church is uniquely the bride of Christ. So sometimes when these distinctions are confused, churches and denominations have doctrines that are not biblical. 

For instance, some believe that all children of the elect are elect, so they are born into the covenant with God, and this is why Presbyterians, for example, baptize their babies. They see this as coming into the covenant people of God, even though they have not or may never believe Jesus. They may never be saved. They are still part of the covenant. By the way, an important biblical note: God never made a covenant with Gentiles, only with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 

Covenant theologians see the church as made up of believers and unbelievers in covenant with God, and they see the church under the law as well. The law of Moses came under the covenant of grace. The moral law of God is a rule of life and has not been abrogated at the cross. We still live by the law as well as by the Spirit. These doctrines have a profound effect on eschatology as well. If Israel is the church and the church is Israel, then there's no plan of God for national Israel in the end times because there's only the people of God. 

And yet we have a multitude of scriptures that make unconditional promises to the nation of Israel for the end times, particularly the second coming and the kingdom. We see these truths over and over in Genesis and the prophets—major and minor—in the New Testament as well. And some of these are very clear and undeniable, as we saw with Augustine's comments on God's clear plan for national Israel at the second coming of Christ, found in Zechariah 12, Hosea 3, Romans 11. This is true in Joel and Daniel and all over. 

Zechariah 12:8 says, "In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the one who is feeble among them, and that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all nations that come against Jerusalem, and I will pour on the inhabitants of David, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they have pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn." 

Hosea 3:5 says, "Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." 

In Romans 11:25, "I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins." 

"Concerning the gospel, they—who are they? If they are the church, then who are the we?" 

"Concerning the gospel, they, Israel, are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." 

These are the scriptures that convinced Augustine that God will save national Israel—not those who are alive now or have lived, he said—but those who are alive at that time when Jesus comes. The ones who survived to the second coming, they will look on the one whom they pierced and believe Jesus, and God will keep his unconditional promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for one reason and one reason only—for his great namesake, for his reputation, for his character and nature, because he made the promises, and it's dependent on him, and we can go into that in detail, but even with Abraham, where he ratified the covenant, what did he do? He put Abraham over here, put him to sleep. He cut the animals into fiery furnace, and God walked. 

Well, that was a tradition that people did in that time to ratify a covenant, and the two men would walk together. And if I break my covenant, may this happen to me, but Abraham didn't walk through. God walked through. He said, "I will, I will, I will," for his great namesake. That's what's at issue here. It's not about Israel. Israel's a mess. They've been a mess forever. They're apostate. We're not talking about sending military aid or supporting everything a Jew does. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about God keeping his covenant for his great namesake, and we're just trying to deal honestly with a multitude of scriptures. 

So we'll look more into the scriptures next week, and God's covenant with Israel, the Day of the Lord, but I hope I've given you some things to consider this morning when you hear all the voices concerning the things that are yet to come. I don't know; maybe I hear more voices than you guys do because I look at those things when they come across my Facebook, but I hear this from a lot of Christians, and there's a lot more concern about what's going on with Israel, it seems to me, in this time. 

Okay, let's close in prayer. 

Father, we thank you. We thank you for all of your Word. We thank you that you tell us the end, that we can hope in your coming, that we have confident assurance that you will do what you say. If it were not so, you would have told us. Thank you that you tell the truth, and that we can depend on you and trust what you say, and that we can stake our eternity on your Word. Help us, Father, to be humble. So much room for humility in all these things. Help us to love one another. Help us to search together to find the truth. And Lord, help us to have a desire to know, to know you through all these wonderful things that we see in history of how you fulfilled your prophecies, and in the cross, in the time of the church, in Acts, and all these things we see you doing, and also what you've yet promised to do. Help us to understand these things rightly. Help us to see things for how they are, according to your Word, in Jesus' name. Amen. 

Okay.
tand these things rightly; help us to see things for how they are, according to your Word, in Jesus' name, amen. 

Okay, let's have some discussion and questions if you would like. It's a lot of information. 

Mr. Maltz, I appreciated your kind description of the churches and how eschatology is a view of certain churches. When we look back, we see that where people were in their culture and society affected their thoughts of eschatology, of the future. And I think anybody who suggests that Darwin came up with dispensationalism is extremely disingenuous, right? 

I think the reason it became popular in the hundreds, or I heard the original thought, was where the culture was, right? Coming out of the Civil War, and then going into World War I, and World War II. The thought of a post-millennial view of society, it just evaporated. Things were not getting better, right? Puritans came up; things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. 

So we see this move from pre-millennialism to post-millennialism because of where people are in their culture. 

Well, I think that definitely has an influence. Mitch is saying a lot of how people view eschatology has to do with the culture and times in which they live. And I think there is that, for sure. For instance, the post-millennial view didn't come about until the late 1600s. At least, I can't find anything earlier than that. 

And that really came out of the Roman Catholic view, but also the Reformation view, the Reformers' view, Lutheran Calvin of a state church. So they saw the government being one hand of, and you've seen that, the two arms of the king or whatever, that the government should be the enforcement arm of the church. 

So they believed in compelling people into the church. They also saw the church in what we talk about in the covenant way of believers and unbelievers. So they saw it more as geographic. So if you controlled this area, and say the Catholic church controlled Wisconsin and the Lutheran church controlled Michigan, then everybody in Michigan is a Lutheran. 

So that really gave rise to the post-millennial view in the 1600s. But I think that we have to understand that there are pertinent scriptures that should guide us. For instance, when you think of what Paul said in Timothy in the latter, you know, perilous times are going to come, and he gives that long list of things are going to get worse. It promises that things are going to get better and better in the world, right? It promises suffering and persecution and so forth. 

So some of these things on their face, but I understand your point. If you were looking at Hitler in World War II, and you were a Christian, and he was trying to take over the world, and he was killing all the Jews, and yeah, you might be like, wow, there's the Antichrist, right? And this is what's going on. And so that can definitely affect our thinking. 

But the discipline is to try and form it from the Word. Right, and that was your point. Yeah. 

I mean, look at eschatology. You see all these different areas of thought, and are these people trying to, have they got a handle? Sure, right. Or what is the truth? Right. I appreciate looking at God's Word. 

Thank you. I just found it really interesting to go back and look at some of that early church stuff because you can see so clearly where things were going, like you were saying, in the culture context and so forth. But you get to Augustine, and you start to see an origin just before him, these kind of amillennial kind of covenant thoughts, which I think were completely foreign to the early church. 

And of course, you also have the factor that Corinth was a pretty early church, right? So it's not that the earliest of the early church couldn't be wrong on things or corrupted or whatever as well. So that's why we go to the Word of God. But I did find it interesting. I see that all the time, this idea that dispensationalism came about in the 1800s and it's stupid and how would Daniel have known about Henry Kissinger, I saw a guy say the other day. I mean, there's all kinds of things. 

So I just wanted to bring that for encouragement. Other questions? You guys got that all down? Okay. 

Well, we will go through one of the greatest evidence that I've seen in my studies that come to as a pattern that we see concerning the day of the Lord in the Old Testament. So I want to talk a little bit about that and a little bit about the covenant with Israel next week and kind of get that laid down. We'll go back to Daniel 2 and work our way through. 

Looking forward to the last Sunday of the month, I've got some really interesting study in Romans 5, and we're doing this doctrinal discussions of the last Sunday of the month for the foreseeable future. We're going to talk about sin, the doctrine of sin, last Sunday this month, and particularly part of that is we're going to look at original sin and sin versus sins. 

We see in the scripture, particularly in Romans 5 to 8, the use of the singular sin with the definite article and whenever we see the atonement and the rest of the scripture, we see the plural sins. So the idea being Christ died for our sins and try to understand what's going on in Romans 5 to 8. So that's a pretty interesting study; plan on that. We'll have a little, I'm not sure we're doing coffee cups and cake pieces, I think, and then have a discussion. 

So, all right, anything else anybody wants to comment on or share? 

I'd hate to comment on it. I would imagine they're pre-millennial dispensational view, but I'm not super familiar with it. I remember hearing it years ago. Who's the name associated with that? 

Dave Hunt did that, didn't he? 

Jimmy D. Young, that's right. Yeah, so he would definitely be a pre-millennial dispensational viewpoint. 

Okay, all right, well I'm glad you guys have a clear understanding of all these things. All right, have a good week, and we'll see you next week.