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Tony and Jesse kick off the summer of Eschatology with a discussion about Historic Premillennialism and Dispensationalism.
Jesse Schwamb 0:10
Welcome to Episode 144, of the reformed brotherhood, Jesse.
Tony Arsenal 0:16
And I'm Tony and we are proud members of the Society of reformed podcasters.
Hey, brother.
Jesse Schwamb 0:31
Hey Brother.
Tony Arsenal 0:32
How you doing, man?
Jesse Schwamb 0:33
I'm doing alright, how are you what's going on in your world? Tony, tell me what is going on with you.
Tony Arsenal 0:38
You know, I'm getting ready for the beach. It's just I'm in like, I can feel like the weight of my my day to day life like starting to ease up a little bit. I've wrapped up a couple big projects at work that I need to finish up before I went on vacation. So I'm kind of get ready to coast right into the beach in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
Jesse Schwamb 0:58
You are far more prepared for that experienced than I am.
Tony Arsenal 1:01
Yeah, I would ask our listeners to pray for our vacation. But by the time they hear this will already be done with our vacation. But I'm pretty stoked.
Jesse Schwamb 1:08
Yeah, it's gonna be good times.
Tony Arsenal 1:09
Yeah. What about you? How you doing?
Jesse Schwamb 1:12
That's what I'm doing. All right. I'm just looking forward to a great conversation with you. This is one of the highlights of my week
Tony Arsenal 1:19
I thought that you're gonna say more, so I took a drink of my beer. And then you like stopped and it was this weird pause. It was this wierd awkwardness. Thanks, Jesse.
Jesse Schwamb 1:26
You're, you're very, very, very welcome. So hopefully this is like, dare we say maybe this is the highlight of other people's weeks to is like hearing us just talking each other?
Tony Arsenal 1:37
I hope so. I mean, I'm sure there are some people that really enjoy it. But I wouldn't. I don't know if anybody says it's like the highlight of their week.
Jesse Schwamb 1:44
Well, we gotta step up our game then. So let's like get it on with some affirmations. And this week, we decided like in our pre production meeting, which consists of about 10 seconds, of you and I chatting before we hit record button that we decided we're going to switch it up for your recommendation and just affirmation affirmation style this week.
Tony Arsenal 2:02
Yeah. So we're gonna have some affirmations and affirmations.
Jesse Schwamb 2:05
Double the affirmations?
Tony Arsenal 2:06
Yes. All affirmations all the time.
Jesse Schwamb 2:09
Hashtag all day
Tony Arsenal 2:11
All day.
Jesse Schwamb 2:11
So you start us off.
Tony Arsenal 2:13
I'll start off I've got I've got two. And they're both kind of similar, but they're both pretty sweet. So I literally stumbled, not like actually stumbled. But I like wandered onto this website the other day that I discovered called windy.com. Have you ever heard of this website?
Jesse Schwamb 2:30
No.
Tony Arsenal 2:30
Oh, my gosh, it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. So it's a weather website. But it's like real time scientific weather maps. So like, you can filter on different views. So this is going to be really helpful for us at the beach. Because you can do one map that's like a sea temperature map, or a waves map, and it'll show you like the waves as they come in. There's one that's really cool. That's a real time lightning filter. And you can actually see, and we had a thunderstorm yesterday. So I was actually testing this, you can see where the lightning registers and then they have like an expanding radius that represents the sound wave of the thunder. And it was actually super accurate. So I could see where the thunder would register. And then I could watch the wave approaching my location, and then the thunder would hit at the same time. As it was on the screen, it was really sweet. So you have to check it out. Like I easily last like an hour and a half, just checking all of the different filters and watching all the cool stuff. It's kind of hard to even really, like explain how awesome this is. So you just have to check it out. It's windy.com. It may replace your whether your weather website or application, it's pretty awesome. You can set up like alerts for different kinds of weather triggers. One of the things that I've always thought was hard to find the information on, but I always wanted to know was like how much snow do we actually have accumulated at any given point during the winter. And they have an accurate snow depth filter. So you can see how much snowpack there is at any given point on the globe. So it's really cool, you have to check it out.
Jesse Schwamb 4:05
I actually totally didn't even hear most what you said, because I've checked out the website. And I got totally distracted
Tony Arsenal 4:12
I know it's gonna shut it off while recording Otherwise, it'll totally take you away. It's, it's really cool.
Jesse Schwamb 4:19
You're right, it's a little bit it kind of defies verbal explanation, because there's so much information we're looking at right now. But the fact that you can, man, I'm looking at like actual wind patterns I know or my location.
Tony Arsenal 4:30
I know. It's cool. And you they have like different. It's hard. They're like charts, but they're they're different kinds of gram charts. So there's one called the meteogram, which is, I would assume I haven't looked it up yet. But I would assume it's like a standard format, almost like an infographic that meteorologists use to sort of get a snapshot of the whole, like comprehensive weather outlook for a given area for a given amount of time. It's really sweet. It really is hard to describe what you're looking at with this, but like, there's color bands, and then there's particles that move across the screen that represent different things. It's pretty sweet.
Jesse Schwamb 5:09
Well, I can say for certain is that one it is unlike anything I've ever seen. I feel like that's saying something for weather apps, because now they just seems so commodities.
Tony Arsenal 5:17
I know
Jesse Schwamb 5:17
You know a whether app is a weather app as weather app, but this is actually really super unique. And this is a great affirmation because I would say about 5% of the time this is a podcast about the weather situation or a lot so this is perfect.
Tony Arsenal 5:31
Yeah, we should get a sponsorship from them because then it could be like the reformed when the windy.com Reformed Brotherhood whether cast
or such, whether nerds but I love it.
It's so sweet. You gotta check it out. I love it. What about you reaffirmation? What's your first affirmation of the day.
Jesse Schwamb 5:48
So you and I fall into this group where we are among the visually impaired and that we need corrective lenses. And so I realized the other day that I love my glasses, and I have several pairs of glasses from the same place. And that is Warby Parker. So what I love about Warby Parker, and they're entirely online retailer actually think that has some physical locations across the US and major metropolitan areas is that one, it's very affordable glasses, and to the very high quality glasses. So I've ordered online glasses before from other places. And they either do a couple of things like they fade or they just fall apart or their job of particular high quality material. And so like a beat the heck out of my glasses, but like I get business done with my glasses on. So they need to they need to stand up to some kind of wear and tear. So Warby Parker calm is a great place for glasses. And there's two things in particular that I love about them. One is that you can try on pairs of their glasses five at a time for free by just going to the website ordering up a pair. So sometimes like I'm just boring, I just order up, I'll be honest with you, I just want to have a pair of boxing gloves and get them to try them out. Because here's the thing to like, if you order glass online, you can do everything you're supposed to get a sense for like, whatever online method they have for measuring like you can import a photo all that stuff is good to a certain point, but there's nothing like trying on a pair and making sure you do not complete fool. And that often happens to me for whatever reason. But the second thing I like is why I'm bringing this up right now is they just added that as part of like their standard, or their standard eyeglasses come with like, you know, scratch resistant UV protection, all that jazz, like all that good stuff, glare resistant everything. But they've just added blue light filter, which I love. So that is worth it. It costs i think i 50 bucks extra but to get a pair of really high quality lenses with the blue light filter. That's on point. So yeah, I'm totally down with it. really affordable. So check it out Warby Parker, W, ei, r b y parker.com. Really, really great glasses.
Tony Arsenal 7:51
Did you know I just discovered this the other day. They now make transition contact lenses.
Crazy, right?
Yeah. So like they transition. They're not like full on site like sunglass transitions. But they do transition to filter out UV light a little bit when you're outside. So it doesn't replace your sunglasses, but it helps protect your eyes a little bit. And then they also transition for blue light as well. The one downside is that when they transition to either of those, they turn your your eyes purple and you look a little bit like a demon. Or as how I would imagine a demon lots I've never seen a demon. But
Jesse Schwamb 8:29
yeah, that'd be great. Can you imagine sitting in a meeting and those things transition as you walk in or whatever? Yeah, that would be really freaky. Yeah, I love this thing. I was thinking about glasses recently. I'm so I have contact lenses. But I'm like a proud glasses where I kind of like, Listen, this is the way I am. This is the way God and His providence has ordained my eyes to function. So I just own it. And the nice thing about Warby Parker is they've got lots of different styles. And you get something that really suits your personality. I was also thinking recently, just how much I appreciate the age in which we live once again, because in many former ages, in fact, for most of history, when you when your eyes degenerate to any kind of small degree, imagine how debilitating that was. I mean that that basically is Yeah, not just life altering, but in some cases like life ending for careers for everything else. Like just think about how horrible that is. Yeah, you're cited in almost any other time in history.
Tony Arsenal 9:20
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, although it's amazing how long ago, the development of glasses actually was. I mean, true. People have been making spectacles to fix like, I glasses, I like I site for like, 700 years. It's been a really long time, lot longer than I would have thought.
Jesse Schwamb 9:39
Also, I don't know if you still can, but at one point in time, you could order from Warby Parker, a monocle.
Tony Arsenal 9:45
Really? prescription monocle. That's pretty awesome. Yeah,
Jesse Schwamb 9:49
it's killer man. So they have sunglasses, regular glasses. And at one point, the Monica which I was really tempted to do, but my wife was like, stop it.
Tony Arsenal 9:57
I feel like a monocle is probably something that you'll see offered on like mission aware.com soon, where it'll be like a style like one of those like, really young, restless or firm style things that people do. I could see the way they're like, you know, I was just reading bobbing the other day with my monocle. I can see that happening.
That actually gets a little bit too close to home,
it does get a little close to home. Because if I'm being honest, I would buy one.
Jesse Schwamb 10:30
I gotta go find it. So what's your second affirmation?
Tony Arsenal 10:33
So my second affirmation is another website. And so this one is a little bit of inside baseball for podcasters, probably not just podcasters, but especially podcasters. So we joke about how I always say something along the lines of like, yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. And then I never do. So like 99% of our episodes don't even have like a description, because writing show notes is like the worst part of being a podcast. What I found I again, another thing that I just kind of tripped upon on the internet, I don't even know how I stumbled on it. It's a website called otter.ai. And what it is, is it's an artificial intelligence transcription service. But this is what's a little different is most transcription services, you have to pay, like you pay per minute for transcriptions. So unless you're like a professional podcaster, and have all this income, which we have some really faithful listeners who have donated and help us to cover our costs, but we don't have a lot of extra cash flow running around. We can't afford like a tent like a 10 cent or a $10 a minute transcription fee. But this website, otter.ai gives you up to 600 minutes per month free of charge. And then the the monthly, like the first level premium subscription is only like $5 if you're a student, or $10, if you're not, and that's 6000 minutes. So that's either 10 or 100 droid hours of transcription for a really affordable price. And here's what's the coolest thing about it is I've been playing around with a little bit first, you can upload a file that you've already recorded, which is huge. Most of them you have to like read into the into the software in order for it to transcribe. So if you're doing it with a podcast, you have to set up this complex thing where you like feed the podcast back into the into the microphone of the computer, which it can be mess. This you can upload a file. But what's cool is when you upload a file, it automatically attempts to distinguish between speakers. And it's not just doing that based on like big picture of things, it's actually analyzing the voiceprint of the speaker. So then you label a speaker. And once you label a speaker, it goes through all of the other recordings that you have stored and attempts to find that same speaker. So the more you identify speakers, this is where the artificial intelligence that use the machine learning, the more you identify a speaker in different files, the more accurate it gets. And then it starts to learn the unique vocabulary of that speaker. So I tested this with a couple of our episodes, our voices have a similar kind of timber, it had a really tough time, but I uploaded three or four episodes. And then I went through and like painstakingly taught it the first the first episode, and then I asked it to reassess all the other ones I put in. And it like a charm, it got all of it with like very few mistakes. And it's it's really accurate. You can add custom vocabulary words, it automatically pulls out keywords from the conversation makes it all searchable. It's really sweet for for podcasters especially, because one of the things that they tell you if you listen to like the podcasting podcasts, or if you pay for like a book that teaches you how to podcast, this one's free here, folks, is you, you should take a transcription of your podcast and then include the entire transcription somewhere on your website. Because then your audio becomes searchable tax, which is difficult to do. And then that increases your ranking in the search engine. So you can literally take this and you can search it but then you can toss it all on your website in the show notes of an episode. It becomes searchable index and Tegel tax. So it's really slick. I'm super impressed. I've tried a lot of transcription services. And this is easily the most accurate and the most user friendly one that I've seen.
Jesse Schwamb 14:21
Wow, that's crazy. That's actually pretty good. And I for one, welcome our robot overlords. So yes, it's great.
Tony Arsenal 14:27
Well, yeah, and you can do it for like a meeting, like you have an app on your phone, you toss the phone down in the middle of your meeting, you hit record, it'll record all the speakers, and it'll pull apart who the speakers are, and make that text searchable. So like you could do it for class, it might be a little hard for class, because you're probably not close enough to the professor. But you could record the class on like a regular handheld recorder and then feed that audio via a file into it, it's really versatile, it's super useful. And they have a they have a discounted price of $5 a month for students, specifically because they want them to use it for lectures and stuff. I'm sure they're like, parsing out and using this, I'm sure there's some big data component behind it, where they're, they're parsing out the voiceprints and doing something with it in the background. But I don't care about that. I mean, we already live in a surveillance state. So everybody knows everything they want to know, and they can find it out. It's not, there's nothing I can really do to change it. So I'm not super worried about that. But if you are probably be aware that they're probably parsing your voiceprint and selling that data somehow,
Jesse Schwamb 15:27
let me make a confession about that type of thing. So this particular year for that holiday, during the winter months, where we often exchange gifts. My, my wife got me a gift, which you know about and it was an Amazon Echo. Oh man. And you know how we talked about this before, like, everybody's listening to everything, and you just got to be totally down with that. Yeah, just pretend like it doesn't actually happen to so that you can feel safe. But regardless of how you approach that situation, there's been a lot in the news recently about how, you know, often if you say something to your Amazon enabled device and doesn't recognize exactly where you're going to say that gets reviewed, of course, by somebody trying to break down to enable machine learning to understand what you're saying. So no joke, like a lot of time again, if I just come back into the room where the device is, I'll just say something really, really random. I'll say Alexa, and then I'll just she's gonna freak out in a second. I'll just say something really random about the gospel in hopes that it gets in front of somebody. I do this all the time. That's sorry. Yeah.
Tony Arsenal 16:26
You know, it's funny, I was in a, I was in a meeting with the section chief in our department, and we were having a discussion. And the topic of the conversation was like a process that had sort of developed. So when you're doing management of any kind of like, staff, there's processes that you build. And then there's processes that kind of develop on their own. And usually the processes they develop on their own or not, they're not very good, they just kind of happen. So we were talking about this process that we weren't sure where it came from. And it was like one of those things where you're like putting your hand like your head in your hands trying to figure out how how did this happen? And out of nowhere, his phone must have heard some keyword that thought it sounded like hey, Siri, and it just goes, I'm sorry, I don't understand. And we all lost it. Because we're like, we don't understand either, Siri.
Jesse Schwamb 17:17
That is hilarious, though. Because that's actually not necessarily happened to me. But I've been in a similar situation where it's like, just amazing, like Star quiet and somebody whose phone is just like, I do not understand what you're asking.
Tony Arsenal 17:28
Yeah. So Jesse, what's your second affirmation for the night?
Jesse Schwamb 17:32
Here's the lesson for me. It's, it's really quick, but in line of just embracing the way that God has made us, there are certain people in this world for which there is no greater representation than the fallen world in sin, then gluten, so and I have to avoid gluten. And that makes me really, really sad in many ways, especially when it comes to delicious beer since beer is mainly like, gluten and water, and yeast and alcohol. Yeah. And so I've been on this quest to really find beer that doesn't taste like straight rump, but that is gluten free. And that's that's kind of difficult. And a lot of times what happens is the beer is made in such a way where it's it's not really gluten free, but they make it with gluten and they process it out but then you know, that gets funky. So anyway, what I want to recommend is a beer that sounds super cool is super close to I think some kind of reformed terminology anyway, and it's super delicious. And that is a beer called gluten Berg night and it's actually made by Canadian company but they have a blonde ale they have American Pale Ale they've read it go say they've IPA, a stout and a white. These are all gluten free. But here's what's great about them. They're made with alternative grains like keen one ancient grains. I know this sounds crazy. Like this sounds like the kind of thing that would really like tastes like ground up pulverize shoe leather, but it's really good. Especially the whites and the IPA. I haven't used tried some of these right?
Tony Arsenal 19:01
Yeah, you brought some during midwinter. No reason for getting together season.
Jesse Schwamb 19:06
Season.
Tony Arsenal 19:07
I won't say that it tastes exactly like what you would expect from a normal gluten beer. But they weren't bad. They definitely were you could definitely taste that they were different in some sense. But I feel like if you if you if it was a blind taste test, and you put like a regular IPA made with wheat, and hops, and then a regular or gluten Berg beer made with some alternative grain and hops. I don't feel like I would have been able to say, Oh, yeah, this was made with something other than wheat, I would have been able to tell like something's a little different here. But I probably wouldn't middle I'll tell what it was. So for those who are, for whatever reason, wanting to avoid gluten. It's definitely a good alternative.
Jesse Schwamb 19:45
It's a great alternative. It's the best that I found. I know some people are going to like throw the flag and say like omission is awesome. Action is a pretty good beer. But again, that's one that's made with like, it has a restriction on the parts per million. This is totally gluten free. Right? And it's kind of hidden like, you want to be that dude that shows up and be like I brought beer made from King wha like a hipster. Yeah, so I recommend it.
Tony Arsenal 20:09
I think that if there's any adjective to properly describe you. It's probably super hipster.
Is that really
I feel like it might be. Sometimes I look at I'm like Jesse's really kind of a hipster. But the fact that you for fun sometimes order some Warby Parker trial glasses. That's a pretty hipster thing to do.
Jesse Schwamb 20:32
Fair enough. You're like, I need
Tony Arsenal 20:34
to make sure that I have the newest hipster trends, so that I can be just like all the rest of the hipsters.
Jesse Schwamb 20:39
Fair enough. I just like their glass. I just like glasses like you wear glasses. Do you like glasses?
Tony Arsenal 20:44
I do. But I'm switching the contacts. Mostly because I want to go to the beach. I want to be able to wear sunglasses.
Jesse Schwamb 20:49
That's, that's fair. I get that that's a real struggle for us glasses.
Tony Arsenal 20:53
Yeah, I'm actually thinking about LASIK surgery. And I was like really scared until I was like, man, if they screw it up, I'm going to go blind. And I found out that actually, in the history of LASIK surgery, there's never been a single instance of anyone ever having any serious I impairment as a result of LASIK surgery,
man.
So like the incident rate is zero, like there's been complications, but there's never been anybody who's had a negative impact to their site as a result of laser laser surgery.
Jesse Schwamb 21:22
I had a good friend who just had the LASIK done, and he loved it. And one things I found like just blew me away was that he must have granted permission for this. And I do understand all the details because like I said, I'm a Luddite when it comes to social media. But somehow they like I think they did it on Facebook Live with His permission, or they at least sent him the video somehow. See it being done if you wanted to. I was like, Man, that's that's just too much for me.
Tony Arsenal 21:47
Yeah, I'd be like, Don't Don't show me.
Jesse Schwamb 21:49
I don't want to see that.
Tony Arsenal 21:50
I don't need to see my eye open and laser the inside of it. Like re sculpt this the shape of my eye with a laser.
Jesse Schwamb 21:57
Yeah, but you know what that reminds me speaking of re sculpting and shaping vision, especially vision about the future.
Tony Arsenal 22:06
Wow, you get seven bonus points. 70. You get 3.5 bonus points. Yes. For that transition.
So good.
I'll give you the other 3.5 bonus points at the end of our episode.
Jesse Schwamb 22:21
That's fair. It's that's only fair to do it halfway. So we are starting this brand new series on eschatology, which I think we've kind of toyed around with this idea of like this summer of the eschatology the summer times and going through. Yeah, it's like the summer of George. But yeah, this summer of everything ending. And this is a kind of the first of an extended conversation about eschatology and things about the end times the ESCA time trying to really get to the heart of kind of different theories, different understandings, worldviews, perspectives paradigms, of how to understand what the Bible says about how things will end. And so we've decided, or I think you decided in your infinite wisdom, because I want to follow your lead on this, that today want to talk about historic pre millennial ism, and dispensation ism all together all at once. And so before people start, like gnashing their teeth and throwing their listening devices, from their cars in their homes, let's talk about first, like real quick why we lumped those two together,
Tony Arsenal 23:20
because they're the exact same thing. That's, that's why isn't it? No, they're not the exact same thing, if anything historic pre millennial ism was corrupted into dispensation ism in the 1800s. So we'll get into the details of what the view is, and kind of the features of it and how they're different. But more or less historic pre millennial ism, was a view that was prominent in the early church, it might actually even be the most prominent view in the early church, right? It's kind of hard to talk about what's prominent, and what's the most prominent view in the early church, because we actually don't have a lot of documentation from the first like, two centuries, really, until you get to like 180, or, or 200. We don't have a wide proliferation of documents. So that of the documents that we have historic pre millennial ism, or I suppose just pre millennial ism, was a very common view among the early church fathers. As we get into sort of the era of the Constantine, Ian church, or the the post, and I see in church where the church and the state are no longer at odds, we start to see other views emerge, which I'm sure some people will point out and say, see, once they got in bed with Rome, they were able, but whatever. Really, what it was, is they had more time to think about these sort of other doctrines that don't have a lot of on the ground application. So they were able to like reason through a lot of other things that they hadn't gotten to yet. But so historic pre millennial ism emerges as called historic because it has such a historic lineage emerges very early on. And then in the 1800s, there was a group of people who held to a historic pre millennial view. But they began to sort of distort that based on this weird vision that some little girl had about everyone disappearing from their beds. So this is this is what becomes dispensation realism later on in the 19th century.
Jesse Schwamb 25:13
Yeah, so the risk of making this really, really basic, we're talking about premium, pre millennial ism writ large, we're talking about a system that's primarily based on a literal method of biblical interpretation and the main premise of premium. And it's hard to say, it is hard to say when you're getting after it.
Tony Arsenal 25:31
Just to say, Kyle ism, it's easier. We'll talk about Kyle ism,
Jesse Schwamb 25:36
that's they just keep coming. So that the main thrust is that Jesus will literally turn to the earth before, which is where the pre comes from, before the millennium, that thousand year reign begins, and that he himself was inaugurated and roll over. So when I look at pre millennial lists, I'm seeing them divided into two groups with respect to their central approach to the prophetic scriptures. So you have the historic Polonius and then this dispensation prima Lingus right? And the principal difference, at least as I read them, between the two is the emphasis that each GIFs the nation of Israel during the millennium, which is that period of 1000 years, during which Christ will reign on Earth. So really, I think it's very fair to group them together in the sense that they're both referring to Christ returning before this Millennium ranks. That's the easy way to remember why these different than the other ones.
Tony Arsenal 26:22
Yeah, and just like we when we talked about our atonement series, we kind of had as a sort of a centralizing verse or architectonic verse was the verse in Romans that says that God is both the just and the justified in in discussions up the eschatology. And in this series, we're really focusing primarily on the different views in relation to the events in Revelation. And so particularly in view with pre millennial ism and then when we get to our and post millennial ism is Revelation chapter 20. So just before we kick off the series here, I want to read that. So starting with verse one, it says, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand, the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain, and he sees the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for 1000 years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him. So he might not deceive the nation's any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also, I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God, and those who had not worship the beast or its image, and had not received the mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for 1000 years. That's where the Millennium comes in. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection, bless it and holy as the one who shares in the first resurrection oversights, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God Christ, and they will reign with Him for 1000 years. And with 1000 years or ended, Satan will be released from his prison. And it will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, God and Magog to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad planes of the earth and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But the fire came down from heaven and consume them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophets were. And they will be tormented day and night forever. So this, this chapter, or this portion of this chapter, sets up what is called pretty much across the board is called the millennial reign of Christ. And so what's different is different. Different views of the millennium, either identify the the bodily return of Christ that's happening prior to the millennium, which is the view we're talking about tonight, pre millennial ism, or after the millennial millennia millennium, which is post millennial ism. Or then there's our millennial ism, which more or less views the Millennium not to be a concrete period of time, but to be sort of a symbolic or a representative figure of time in the Scripture. There are some views that hold some other weird things. We're going to talk about predator ism next week. So that's going to be a little bit different to our next time. But this week, we're looking at the view, both of the views we're going to look at tonight, identify the period of Christ's return is happening prior to this thousand year reign. And then the the, the battle or the Armageddon battle happens after this thousand years. So Christ returns, there's 1000 years of basically peace, as Christ kind of reestablished his his kingdom on earth. And then there's sort of this final battle that happens when the devil is released for some reason. And then then comes this throne judgment that we see in Revelation 20, verse 11.
Jesse Schwamb 29:56
Right on so let's break a little bit into each of those and kind of talk about about some of their distinguishing pieces as we at least we understand them. So let's start with like historic pre mail. Since that one's sounds historic, and we should go there first. So the way I understand this is really most historic pre millennial is believe that scriptural prophecy kind of like what you were saying, especially passages in Daniel and the one you just read, read from Revelation, give the entire history of the church in a more symbolic form. So they're looking into the churches past and present, to find the prophetic fulfillment and to see where we are in God's prophetic timetable. And I'd say most historic pre Mills hold that the nation of Israel is going to undergo actually some kind of National Salvation immediately before that Millennium is established. But there will be no national restoration of Israel. So the nation of Israel will have will not have like a special role or function as distinct from the church, the church is Israel in the in the largest sense.
Tony Arsenal 30:53
Yeah, exactly. And so we have to understand that, even though there are views that have similar features, there are a lot of us that believe that Christ comes back before the millennium. There are a lot of us that have that. But historic pre millennial ism is only one of those views. So you've heard me joke a little bit about this view called Kyle ism, which was actually declared to be a heresy in the early church. And this view basically, is associated with a static Christology, or sorry, with an overly humanistic Christology, where Christ returns and he reigns for 1000 years, but then his reign ends and then it becomes the reign of the Father. And so the clause in the nicea and creed that says his kingdom will have no end with specifically rejecting this idea of Kyle ism, where Christ reign was over this thousand year period. But then Christ no longer reigns as a king. So although we're joking, I'm joking, a little bit about calling this Kyle ism. Really, it's not the same as Kyle ism, because the historic pre millennial view would generally say, yes, there's this earthly reign of Christ for 1000 years, and then that reign changes. But Christ still reigns after that, where the Kyle his view would say, Christ no longer reigns after the thousand years.
Jesse Schwamb 32:14
Right? Yeah, this is a hopeful distinction. Because there are this is one of those things where especially we start talking about we throw around words like the rapture, there's, there's kind of this weird confluence of lots of different worldviews that join at that particular points, right, or at least that is in common culture, the thing that a lot of Christians are familiar with, either by way of just storytelling or just kind of coming from a cultural like influences. And there is something to be said that, you know, when Jesus began his public ministry, the kingdom of God was certainly manifest through that ministry. And so you have this kind of basis, at least in the historic Primo view that upon His ascension into heaven, in the gift of the Spirit of Pentecost, the kingdom is still present through the Spirit until the end of the age, which is Martha, by the return of Christ, to the earth in judgment. And then during the period immediately preceding the return of Christ, there's this great apostasy and tribulation. And so then you have after the return of Christ, there will be this period of 1000 years, that's the Millennium and that's separating the first resurrection from the second resurrection. So Satan will be bound. And just like you read, the kingdom will be consummated in the sense that it's going to be made visible during that period, it will be manifest in a physical state. And then at the end of that period, that 1000 years, Satan will be loosed, and there's going to be this massive rebellion immediately preceding the second resurrection or the final judgment. Right. And after this, that's when they'll be the creation of the new heaven and the new earth.
Tony Arsenal 33:42
Right. And so just just to kind of close out any real discussion of Kyle ism, and at least until we get back to the dispensation of you, because I, I think it'll come back around. It says, Here, I'm reading out of bobbing volume four, and it's on page 655. It says that kind of ism, in its attempt, quote, its attempts to do justice to Old Testament prophecy, in the sense that accepts the earthly messianic kingdom, predicted by it, but claims that this kingdom will be replaced after a time by the kingdom of God. So So Bobby is making the point that Kyle ism affirms that Christ will reign the Messianic kingdom will exist for 1000 years, but the Messianic Kingdom is distinct from the king the quote, Kingdom of God, and that the kingdom of God will replace the Messianic Kingdom. So that's where Kyle ism differs from historic pre millennial ism is that historic pre millennial ism does view the the kingdom of God as a comprehensive rule of Christ and the Father and the Spirit, but it would say that the millennial kingdom is kind of a distinct phase of that kingdom of God, that consummate Kingdom of God, it's kind of the initiation or the the coronation of the commencement of the kingdom of God, which is then sort of transmuted into this permanent rule of Christ so that's where it differs so I think we can put Kyle ism to rest for a little while, but I do think we'll come back to when we get to dispensation ism and in a few minutes here,
Jesse Schwamb 35:16
it's kind of like the moose boosh of the kingdom. Yeah, it's like the appetizer. It's like a taste. Yeah.
Tony Arsenal 35:27
Sorry.
Jesse Schwamb 35:28
I'm all distracted. I've got bobbing in my hand. So I got just like you got distracted with windy, calm. I'm all distracted by bobbing here. So then let's trance transition a little bit to dispensation ism, right, an overview of that. And I find for just for the record, dispensation ism is fascinating. In a sense, it's a really interesting, and dare I say, often complicated
Tony Arsenal 35:49
understanding. They have the best charts.
Jesse Schwamb 35:52
Yeah, they do have the best charts. That's a good way of saying it. Like if you want to see some amazing charts, just look up dispensations. And like just google images that
Tony Arsenal 36:00
millennial charts are really boring.
Jesse Schwamb 36:02
Yeah,
Tony Arsenal 36:03
it's like, it's just like Jesus is king. That's the whole chart. Just like a phrase on the board, that's all it is. Yeah. So let me let me give you my Gordon's definition of dispensation realism. And he's, he's exceedingly charitable and that he calls a dispensation of pre millennial ism. I actually think that's probably a little more generous than most propre millennials would appreciate because dispensation ism, although it shares again, there are lots of us that share certain features. Although it shares the feature that Christ returns at the beginning of the millennium, or inaugurate the Millennium by his return there, that's really the end of the major similarities. So here's how he defines it. He says, that is the quote, expectation of a literal thousand year Kingdom in the future that will also culminate in human failure. Israel in the church represents two distinct peoples with different programs in salvation history. And that's on page 435, of pilgrim theology. So he's, he's calling out a couple features, where he's talking about, it's a literal thousand years. So that's important, although there are lots of progressive dispensation lyst or you might call them like modern, this dispensation, lyst sensationalist, who would say that who would sort of let that become a more figurative number that it really just represents, like a long time. But the key is that there's this real concrete, defined period of time on earth, where Christ is bodily reigning, usually from Jerusalem, usually sitting on a real physical throne in Jerusalem, the temples been rebuilt. And that this this dispensation, and this is key to the dispensation system. We did an episode on dispensation realism A while back. So go look that up, because we went into a lot of detail there. But the key with this sensationalism is that every dispensation has a particular set of rules and a test that that, generally speaking, the test is always failed. So in the the dispensation of view, this millennial dispensation, the hallmark of it is that humans fail to pass the probation of the dispense the millennial dispensation. And then it retains this distinction between Israel and the church, that it's two distinct persons are two distinct people groups, with two distinct programs and salvation history. Now, that doesn't mean that all dispensations would say, Israel gets gets to heaven by means of work some of them do, most would still say, Israel gets to heaven, by God's grace through faith in the Messiah. But it's still not the same exact thing as what we talked about when Christians get to heaven. When with through faith in the Messiah, it's still a different kind of a situation.
Jesse Schwamb 38:49
Yeah, there's two things I want to draw, I think, from Horton's definition, that are pertinent or germane to this particular conversation. The first is what we've kind of mentioned, but I think bears repeating that the dispensation lyst is going to impact system or how many dispensations they speak of, and there are varieties of that, that God has those two redemption plans. And it's one is for the National Israel, and the one is for Gentiles during the quote unquote, church age. The second key piece, I think, is that there is a rapture of believers, when Jesus Christ secretly returns to Earth before the seven year tribulation period begins. And that's referencing that 70th week from Daniel nine. Right, so believers are not going to experience the persecution of the Antichrist who's going to rise to prominence during that tribulation period. And they would say that all of this biblical data dealing with the time of tribulation is referring to unbelieving Israel, not the church, as you and I right at the church. So this church age or this Age of Grace, is really to be seen as that period of time in which God is dealing with the Gentiles like people like you and I, prior to the coming of the kingdom of God during that millennium. So there's going to be this visible and physical Second Coming of Christ. And that's going to occur after this tribulation, and those who are converted to Christ during the tribulation, which includes like the hundred and 44,000 Jews, or at least their interpretation of it, who turned to Christ go on into the Millennium to repopulate the earth. So glorified believers rule with Christ during his future reign. And what I think is really super interesting about their understanding of how that really takes place is, you know, Jesus came to earth, bringing with him and offer of the kingdom to the Jews who rejected him. That was that particular epoch, that particular dispensation. So then God turned to dealing with the Gentiles. And that's, that's what brings the church age, but the church is just like this. I often see it references like this parentheses right now, like the real, obviously, the real that there is a parallel track for Israel. It's kind of just being put on hold, until Christ comes again before the millennium, and then kicks off this whole process really fascinating.
Tony Arsenal 40:52
Yeah, and, you know, we've talked a lot about classical theism and divine simplicity and divine foreign knowledge on this show. particularly pertinent to this is the episode I did with Trevor Marcella, who is one of the pub admins about the differences between Armenian ism and Reformed theology in reference to God's for knowledge, and whether he sees the future or whether the future happens because of God's decree. And what one of the main critiques I have of dispensation ism is, they have this picture of God, and I don't I don't know, any dispensation lyst that would consciously say this. So I want to be clear about that. But this is, I think, an entitlement of their view, is that God's original plan, right, if you will, God's plan A was for Israel to receive and accept the Messiah. Right? When Christ came in the first century, and then for the Gentiles, to be grafted into Israel, through that new nation. So in essence, what we see in Revelation, you know, we see this sort of strange picture towards the end of Revelation, I don't have the chapter in front of me. But there's, there's the New Jersey Islam and all the believers live in New Jersey, the New Jerusalem, but then there are still these other nations outside of the New Jerusalem. And so I've always struggled to be honest, a little bit what to do with that, like, what is that talking about? And the dispensation of you would say that there's this body of believers that live in the New Jerusalem, and then there's still this evangelistic effort for those who are outside of the city, who still need to be brought into the New Jerusalem. And so the dispensation of his view, basically says that's how the way that Israel was supposed to function. Right? They were supposed to accept the Messiah. And then the Messiah would establish this, this sort of reign on earth is divided kingdom on earth. And then the Gentiles would be brought into that, and they look at Solomon is kind of a foreshadowing that there are Gentiles that come and they're jealous of Israel. And so they want us they want what Israel has. But then Israel rejects the Messiah. So God kind of skips over that and go straight to the Gentiles. And the Gentiles sort of now are used in the sort of reverse way, Israel is now made jealous of the Gentiles and what they have. And through that jealousy, Israel is brought back into the fold, so that in the in the end times, the church is removed from the equation in the Rapture. And now Israel, because of their jealousy of the Gentiles is ready to receive the Messiah, in the millennial rule. So there's this seven year period of tribulation. And there's all sorts of Jewish people who come to faith in Jesus. And this represents more of a progressive view of the dispensation lyst than the classical view, but they come to faith in Messiah, and then through that faith of Messiah, that's where the thousand year reign comes in. So believers are brought back the thousand year reign initiate. And then there's some strange stuff that happens after the Millennium that I don't know that we need to get in right now. But I've always thought this was interesting, because it really does seem like it relies on God having to not just sort of hypothetically change his plan, which is kind of the where we land in Reformed theology. Right, we talked about God's initial plan with the the, the covenant of works that Adam failed. And so then he initiates the covenant of grace. That's all something that we we believe God decreed before all time, but dispensation ism really does treat it like God set the Messiah and expected the Messiah to be successful. And then all of a sudden, he's not a God has to have this parents medical period with the Gentiles. So I'm not I've never been quite sure how that lines up with God's for knowledge in the sense that God genuinely knows the future. But also God genuinely decrees the future. I don't know how people like MacArthur who would affirm in a robust sense, the decrees of God could still hold this view yet he does.
Jesse Schwamb 44:41
But at least it doesn't line up easily. Right? Right. You have to do a little bit of gymnastics, both linguistically and theological, I think to arrive at that. But you're right, also that if you have a believing brother or sister who holds this view, they're never going to come out and say, Well, this is God's plan B be right, certainly would not subscribe to that kind of language. And that's what makes us really interesting, because the other piece in terms of like the outworking, like you just said, of how we understand that the Millennium and What's strange about this is, if you subscribe to dispensation, let's see what then you're going to have to say that the Millennium period of history is a time which God is reverting back to fulfilling his Old Testament promises may ethnic Israel right after the modern church age, everything you just said, right, we that we live today after that has concluded. And so that means that as such, the Millennium will be a state of Jewish Dominion all over the world, along with a newly restored Jewish temple and priesthood, which rank could go on, we could talk just about that
Tony Arsenal 45:38
and sacrificial system that's really important.
Jesse Schwamb 45:40
The whole thing like the whole mammy Jama system has to be redone, stored in place. So what's strange about this, to me is one of the outer workings of that whole understanding that is that Christians who reign with Christ because we're understanding that's what the Scriptures tell us Christians will reign with Christ. So those that remember Christ are going to have are being given eternal glorified bodies, but they're going to rain, spiritually, race during that period of time, while the Jews will basically own the world physically and will like live, they'll marry, they'll die. And just as people have throughout all of history during that time, that's really strange to me. Yeah, I don't know that that comports well with like what the scripture saying that per se, but that this view leads toward that natural outworking. So it's only after that thousand year period in which God fulfills his promises to ethnic Israel, that Christ is going to get put down that final rebellion, and ushering in eternal state with its new heaven and new earth. But during that time, again, we're there. They're like parallel tracks, but in a really strange way, in a way that I think you kind of I don't want to say you're not twisting the Scripture, we're really trying to import this into the Scripture, rather than kind of execute out, at least in my opinion,
Tony Arsenal 46:49
right? So why don't we do this just to sort of lay the foundation for the rest of the series, we're going to I'm going to go through and as best as I can, right I'm, I'm an all millennial lyst, when I'm having a bad day, and maybe a post millennials when I'm having a good day. So those us are closely related. So I guess you might call me an optimistic millennial lyst. I don't think that the world is culminating as some golden age. But I also don't think that the world is in this sort of like, like steep dive decline, I think that probably it's as bad as it's ever been, anyway, talk more about that in a couple weeks when we get to my view. But I'm going to try to go through revelation 20, and try to give you as best I can, the way they understand this from each of the views. So we have these common features, right? That at the beginning of the thousand years, Satan is bound, he's cast into this pit, and he shut up for the duration of this thousand years. And then there's this period on Earth where there's, there's the reign of Christ on earth for this thousand year period. And then Satan is released. And there's this final constant battle. So as best as I understand it, the historic pre millennial lyst would argue that Christ returns at the beginning of this thousand year period, he sets up this reign on earth, and that his reign continues in maybe a new or transmuted fashion after the after this final battle. So there's, there's this period where Satan is bound Christ returns, he reigns on earth, and then his reign continues after the thousand years. That's pretty straightforward. I don't have any major objections to that other than, than the standard objections. But the dispensation list view, basically what they say here, and this is where I think dispensation ism really goes off the rails is they say that, right? There's this seven year period, prior to the prior to the millennial reign, were at at the seven years beforehand, all of the Christians in the world are brought up into heaven. But there's still people after the after this rapture, who expressed faith in Jesus Christ. So that's the people they would say, are the people who come come to life and reign with Christ for 1000 years. So it's not necessarily that there's this actual resurrection that happens, but that there's this, there's this coming to spiritual life. And these people who were alive during the rapture, but not yet Christians, whether they're Jews or Gentiles, they, they come to spiritual life. And that's kind of the first the first the first resurrection, then they reign with Christ. And then there's this thousand year period, where there are still people living life there, they're getting married, they're giving birth, they're raising children, right? People
come to faith in Christ, more or less than the same way. And then after the thousand years, there's another general resurrection. And I've never been clear about who the subject of that resurrection is who it is, from the dead. But there's this second resurrection. And I would actually say some dispensation is probably say that there's actually a resurrection of the unjust at this moment, because then there's this army that Satan has comes against the forces of Christ, and is destroyed. And then we go on, and those forces of evil are cast into the sea of fire. So the unjust must be raised as well, in the second resurrection at the end of the thousand years, and then they're cast into the lake of fire. So I can see where this comes from the text, right? It's not entirely irrational. This is where I think dispensation ism really falls apart is that rather than interpreting the Bible, literally, as they claim, they interpret the Bible literally mystically. And they do that selectively. Right. So it's literal, until you want to say that the locusts are actually helicopters, right? So so the locusts can be representative of helicopters, they can be the locusts could be Apache helicopters, if you want them to be in that somehow still literal. But if the New Jerusalem floating down from heaven isn't actually a city coming out of the sky, that's built like a cube, then somehow your allegories in the text. So I would actually say at least in terms of, I don't want to call it polemics because generally polemics happen outside of the church. But in terms of inner Christian debate and dialogue, I actually think that those of us who don't hold the the, the dispensation of you should stop using the word literal, when we're talking about dispensation lyst interpret the text. They don't interpret it literally, because literally means according to the literal conventions, or the literary conventions of the text. So interpreting a poem literally means that you interpret it according to the conventions, of poetry of that kind of poetry, where were they, the dispensation is sort of ignore the fact that this tax is not a strict historical prophecy, and that is prophesied a little realistic vision of the future. But instead, it's prophesied a highly symbolic statement about the future of all things, or maybe about the past of most things if you're if you're a predator, or partial predators, but he's the way they interpret this little realistically, and they do so selectively.
Jesse Schwamb 52:04
Right? And so much of contemporary evangelicalism is drawing from that particular fountain, whether or not in this just general dispensation or eschatology, and so kind of as we wind down this conversation, one of the things I want to recommend is, it's self serving, when the episodes we did where we spoke with Rob McKenzie, who authored a fantastic book press one of the best books, honestly, I've ever read on dispensation ism called identifying the seed.
Tony Arsenal 52:32
And maybe when he does the good ones, what's up, I said, it might be one of the only really good ones because what his actual program his actual project there was pretty unique and that he wanted to be exceedingly fair and charitable, not that other authors haven't been fair. But his his. His onus for writing the book was really to be winsome to people who are still in his family who are sensationalist.
Jesse Schwamb 52:58
Yeah, no, I said this before with Richard respect to that work. It's really good, because Rob grew up in that particular tradition, tradition, and then grew into Reformed theology. And so he is the unique type of person that actually knows the language on both sides and translate really, really well. Yeah. So if you know people, and actually just leave it that way, if you know, people, probably some of them are just analysts, even if they don't realize it, this is a great book. So look up identifying the seed, if this is going to spark some interest, this conversation we've been having about dispositions, because there's so much more than we can even say, and the algae simply profound that podcast did a whole amazing series on it. Yeah, I did, I don't know, like a dozen episodes. And that was probably even in many ways, just scratching the surface of many of these ideas that we've talked about. So go check out identifying the seed by Rob McKenzie. Yeah, he's a dear brother. And it's a really fantastic work.
Tony Arsenal 53:48
Yeah, and another couple good resources. Because, you know, we went a lot deeper in the atonement series, and I think we're going to be able to in this eschatology series, but there are a lot of great resources that go a lot deeper than we're going to be able to. So two thieves podcast, which is a currently dormant member of the Society of reformed podcasters. Although I've heard rumors that they may be waking up soon.
Jesse Schwamb 54:11
We don't call it a comeback.
Tony Arsenal 54:12
They did a series on eschatology that actually is very unique in the podcasting world. It was like a fully produced documentary podcast on the different views of eschatology. So go check that out, it was super good. I know that it took them a ton of time, otherwise, they probably would have done more of that kind of thing. But it's so time consuming. But there's also a really good book by Sam storms. I wouldn't recommend Sam storms on everything. But on this subject, he's excellent, and it's called kingdom come. And he is a dispensation of former dispensation lyst, who graduated with his MD PhD from Dallas Theological Seminary, which is kind of the hotbed or the seedbed of dispensation of theology in America. And he graduated from there with his MD, and then he came into an understanding of our millennial ism. So the book is a positive argument for millennial ism, but it has a really good section, which gives a good description of dispensation ism, and then dismantles it. So I wanted I wanted to just jump back real quick, because we kept on talking about Kyle ism. And the other element that I think is really dangerous about dispensation realism is and is, it actually goes back to this idea of Kyle ism. Right. So in the dispensation of schema, there is a, a permanent distinction between the kingdom on earth, which is the Messianic kingdom, in which Christ rules for that literal, thousand years on Earth. There's a distinction between that and then the spiritual kingdom of Christ throughout all eternity. So even though the saints, the Gentile saints come back to Earth, in some schemas, the emphasis for the Gentiles is still in the spiritual reign with Christ in heaven. So the Gentile stay in heaven, rainy bodily, somehow, with Christ, and the Jews reign on earth during this millennial kingdom, and then continue to reign on earth in this eternal physical Kingdom. But there's still this bifurcation of the kingdom of God, where Christ reigns in heaven, and the Jews reign on earth in some sense. And so there still is that really distinct element of a distinction between the Messianic kingdom and the Kingdom of God that isn't properly speaking, isn't Kyle ism, right? Anyone who tells you that dispensation ism is equal, a dispensation ism equals Kyle ism, is either ignorant, or is not being very careful with their terms. But there are some dangerous affinities that I think, because I think that in in terms of academic dispensation realism, they maintain that distinction, but in terms of popular dispensation has, how it actually makes its way into the average dispensation lyst. piety and in their understanding of the future of the earth and the future of God, people, it does retain this sort of strictly distinctive stylistic feature that I think can really be dangerous in terms of how we understand the future of, of all things.
Jesse Schwamb 57:10
Right on that's well said. I mean, that's as good as any place I think, to wrap this up. And I appreciate what you said before, because I think part of what we're trying to bring in this conversation is to bring an introduction to some of this stuff. And hopefully, if just people who are listening will feel a little bit more confident and comfortable with the terms that are being used. Yeah, and how to parse them out in their minds that when they're talking to people, and they're hearing how they express their understanding of this Cortana that they might be able to catalog that say the person, but least some of the ideas and allow for a little bit more fruitful intellectual, and theological conversation. Yeah. So to that end, let's do something we haven't done in a little while, which is, let's wrap up really quick, with a little spiritual conferencing, y'all for some of that,
Tony Arsenal 57:46
let's do it. Why don't you go first?
Jesse Schwamb 57:48
Alright, so in this time, we always like to kind of just share a little bit about as we've been reading the scriptures, what God has been bringing to our hearts into our minds. And so for me, I've been spending a little bit of time this week in Proverbs three, and four. And this is becomes strangely apropos for me, because I'm reading about all this wonderful, all this wonderful. I said, it's like wisdom about how we use our time, or at least what I'm understanding about Solomon saying about this. And it just reminded me that, especially in Proverbs five here that so much of sin has this practical effect on our bodies, and in our minds and our hearts. And one of those effects is that it's always kills your strength, it always destroys your literal ability to do things, to process things, to be before God and to be productive always, every time it always leads to exhaustion. And oftentimes, at least to somebody being able to basically take or SAP your own strength and use it for their advantage that never goes to every sin. But what became apropos for me was this idea that if wisdom is what is productive, what is godly, what is rewarding? What is spiritually satisfying, that in the opposite sense, then every time we pursue fall, it's exactly the opposite. One is life giving other one is life destroying. Yeah. And so where I started to really think about that, and maybe this is going too far, was just saying you and I have process before together. And that's this idea that I think part of folly is when we approach things and the use of time foolishly. So obviously, it's good to relax and is good to pursue things that allow you to decompress. When that decompression, though comes without boundaries. I think it spills over into folly. And then ironically, when you're trying to use that for rest, because it becomes folly because it's, it's unmitigated. It's unmanaged, it actually ends up sapping your strength, and for where this is coming to play is for things as ridiculous as sounds like Twitter, if I go into Twitter, without any good boundaries, even in relaxation, actually find that when I removed myself from it when I jumped in, and I've watched 1000 YouTube videos, just because I've just clicked through. Yeah, actually, I'm not rested at the end of that. I actually feel like all my strength is gone, that I feel less Natalie less productive, but less useful, yeah, less rewarded. And it leaves me feeling more empty rather than more reinvigorated. So I think that embedded it in Proverbs five is all this wonderful stuff about being faithful that I think the best thing I've done practically is, I know I want to do those things to relax, I say, Here's 10 minutes, it's 10 minutes to relax. I'm going to do this and I'm going to move on to something else. Like that's enough time to decompress and move on. So I just love and continually impressed with how God through His Holy Spirit made the scriptures and eternal contemporary no matter where we are, yeah, the world no matter what age in which we live, here, we find the good news. And part of that good news is not just the gospel, which is just radical in its own right. But the sense that we have this wonderful wisdom literature, which is this is like truth for living. This is true for like Monday and Tuesday mornings. This is like how to actually go forward and navigate your life in a way that in which you are filled with the Spirit. And part of that is like, Hey, get off for me again, YouTube and Twitter, use it to relax, set a boundary on the time. Move on.
Tony Arsenal 1:01:05
Yeah, yeah, my, my take on this week is actually providential related. I suppose we should stop being surprised when those things happen. Where are our spiritual conference, things line up so much. I have found that in the same way, I find a lot of ways to waste time, and then really frustrated with myself that I haven't accomplished all the things I want to. And so for me, it took the form of a video game, right. So I don't play a lot of video games, or at least Historically, the last couple years I haven't, I was a huge gamer in college. I was a pretty big gamer before I got married. And then just for a number of reasons, I just wasn't motivated enough time to do it anymore. But I had recently purchased a game. And you know, there's nothing wrong with purchasing a video game. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a video game and spending some time playing it. But I often found was when I was faced with the choice to either do something that I knew needed to get done. And I'm specifically talking about, like my schoolwork, or editing that podcast or studying the scriptures, things that are other than editing the Scripture, like things that are equally optional, right? It's not like I'm talking about like, I'm staying home from work to play this video game. I found that the things that I was foregoing, doing in favor of playing this game, were the kinds of things that not only were restful, but also edified me spiritually. And then this game that I was playing, maybe in a certain sense, it was restful, but I found that it was kind of consuming me and that I would I was thinking about, I would find myself at work thinking about the next time I could get home to play this game, or the next kind of move I was going to make or the next quest I was going to pursue in this game. And you know what, like I said, there's nothing wrong with playing video games. I'm not one of those people that's like, grow up and get out of your mom's basement. I'm not one of those people, like video games are no different than sitting and watching a TV show. It's a form of entertainment. Just like any other form of entertainment, we have the liberty to engage in that in appropriate ways. But I found that, you know, when I did an interview with Todd Pruitt, the other day, and part of my interview is I had to figure out how to record the audio coming through the computer. And I was having problems with that. So in order to try to fix that I restored my computer to a sort of factory state. And I hadn't reinstalled that game yet. And what I found was that I didn't have the drive to play that game enough to take the time to reinstall it. And so after that happened, I found myself I'm more productive. I feel less stressed out about the things I have to get done. And I don't really miss playing that game all that much. Like, yeah, it's a fun game. It's entertaining, but like, it was fun for a while now there's something else I'm gonna move on to, but it's not like I'm sitting there going, Oh, man, I really wish that I had reinstall that game because I really want to play that game right now. Like, yeah, someday I'll probably reinstall and play it again. But right now, I just don't care. So I think what the Lord is teaching me through that is that there are times where we just have to make a decision, to take a step to eliminate something that isn't necessarily a sin or isn't necessarily drawing us away from God. But just maybe isn't the right thing at the right time. Like I probably should have uninstalled that game a long time ago. Because I felt like man, this is really getting to be a bit of a productivity sink for me, I probably should have uninstalled that the minute I had that thought, and I just resisted it. So I think the Lord has just been really teaching me through this. Like, I should probably listen to my instincts a little bit more with some of these things. The Holy Spirit lives in me he's he's sanctified me, and he's transforming me more and more into the image of the sun. And so I should trust my instincts when it comes to things like that a little bit. Because contrary to most reformed people's thoughts, I don't think that total depravity is a reality for Christians anymore. Like there's a there's a corruption that persists even after a generation. But that that corruption is not throughout the whole man. It's not comprehensive, like it was prior to regeneration. It's still persist in all the parts I get like, there's conventional language to that, but, but there's also a part of me that is regenerated, and that is sanctified that's already been renewed after the image of Christ after the image in the whole man. So all of my faculties, in part have been restored to what they should be. So I should learn to listen to my instincts a little bit more.
Jesse Schwamb 1:05:29
Yeah, amen. Well, let's talk about that sometime. Right. Yeah, basically kicked off what I would consider a whole nother podcast, we should talk about degeneration. And what Paul says about is no longer is sin, but sin that lives in me, right? I'm totally down with you in that. And I think that that's really the point here, at least as I'm trying to express it is, these things can be restful, they are in fact restful. There is something liberating, though, from the Christian mindset, when we can say, I'm just going to spend X amount of minutes doing this, because I think everybody knows deep down when they've exceeded that line when there is no boundary and starts to become either harmful or hurtful or just unwise. And so you should just be honest, I think that is a mature Christian perspective, that can look at the good things that God has given us, like smartphones, or video games, or movies or Netflix, and know when to say, Enough is enough, like I've done this have gotten at the most, I feel like this has one of those curves, like marginal, decreasing or diminishing returns, like you get to the point where it's the most restful, but few of us able to stop at that point and say, all right, that's enough. I looked at this for 10 minutes, or I played for half an hour. And I have other things to do. And I know that this is enough refreshments that I can go be empowered to go do those things. And it's getting to that point, and just being honest with ourselves, which the scripture pulls us into that place anyway, by saying like, these things will actually take your strength over time, they will leave you feeling beaten down. Yeah, broken, even though you keep running to them. They say, Well, I need more of this because I feel like I need more rest, when they're actually doing the opposite for you. Yeah.
Tony Arsenal 1:06:55
Yeah, that's as good of a way to end the show is any so Jesse, Tony, I'm excited to do this eschatology episode series with you, because I think it's good. I'm really stoked
Jesse Schwamb 1:07:05
about this. This is gonna be great.
Tony Arsenal 1:07:08
As guitar is one of those areas that sometimes there's more heat than there is light. And I'm hopeful that our series can be kind of a source of light, to shorter sort of show people the different views without necessarily being overly polemical.
as am I, the summer of eschatology?
We should do like a legit movie trailer for this.
Yeah, we did. That was my really lame, like narration with the voice of the summer, the summer of eschatology is commands.
It was the summer of 2019. And there were two brothers, who decided to engage in a discussion about eschatology.
Jesse Schwamb 1:07:45
Is it fair to say, and this is my perspective, this is total recency bias, because adyen as you know, my wife is a recommendation, like, diligently going through every Marvel movie, so they're just constantly playing now in my home. Yeah, I feel like the trailer would be in that kind of style. Is that Yeah,
Tony Arsenal 1:08:02
maybe I mean, the Marvel trailers are kind of revolutionary in terms of movie trailers. So but probably not, there's not a lot of voiceovers in Marvel comic trailers. Well, this is got really tactical and weird and it did it did. We could start a whole new show on this, but that's really more like nerd gospel podcast category, even though they're another dormant group. But you know, there's, you know, she has about a week and by my calculation, she could make it to where she needs to be for us to watch Infinity War at the beach.
Man,
so champ, I'm gonna need her to take the rest of the week off work to do that.
Jesse Schwamb 1:08:38
I don't know. Everybody's just getting like a really personal view into our lives and yeah, habits right now.
Tony Arsenal 1:08:44
Yeah, well, I mean, we always have like one. We always have like one group of movies that we watch ad infinitum. During a like a break, like last Christmas or last midwinter. Whatever holiday. It was a Harry Potter movies. couple summers ago. It was like, like Jason Bourne movies. So this is the summer of Marvel.
All right. I mean, let's do it.
There we go. All right, Jesse. Well, until next time, honor everyone.
Love the Brotherhood.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai