Bible study: Premillennialism

My son has a fishing trip planned for tomorrow, and I don't... with the storm coming, it could mean there's pushing fish in front of it, and we could have a wonderful day. Or it could mean that there's going to be just eight seasick people on that boat. I'm not sure which is going to be.

So we'll see. I want you to imagine something for a minute, if you can, if we try to put ourselves back into the lives of somebody else. It is 410 AD, and you live in Rome. Rome is the greatest city known... it may be the greatest city in the world at the time. We're not even sure. Historians aren't even sure if there was a city that big in China at the time. But in the known world, as far as the Western world, in North Africa, in the Middle East, there's nothing like it.

It's got architecture that goes back to 400 BC, the 800 years. Huge buildings, aqueducts. It has spread a culture throughout the known world and unified the known world like no other time. And you live there, and you're a middle-class person. As a middle-class person living there, you have a nice house, and you have a nice living, and you have maybe six, eight slaves to help you run everything.

Now, slavery in Rome wasn't based on race, like in this country. Slavery in Rome was based on they conquered you, so anybody they conquered, they took part of the population and made them slaves. And because you're middle-class, you actually are wealthy enough that you have... one of your slaves is a Greek. And the reason why is Greeks are the greatest scholars in the world, and that Greek is a slave to do nothing but teach your children. So your children are going to be successful, and your children are going to be important in Roman society.

And you're a little worried, because a couple years earlier, the Rhine River froze, and the barbarians, these people, all you knew was that they were terrible. You called them barbarians because their language was just so nonsensical, it sounded like, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. They were vicious warriors, not disciplined like Roman soldiers, but they were so much bigger than them.

And they were furs, and they were illiterate. They had runes, but they really could not do writing. And they were a mixture of tribes, and these tribes fought each other all the time, but every once in a while they'd sort of get together and maybe fight the Romans for a while.

And you were afraid of them. Of anything in the world, the one thing you were afraid of were the barbarians, the Germanic peoples. And once again, they were the whole mixture of tribes there. And they were called Germanic as far as history is concerned, as far as the Romans were concerned, because they knew they were different peoples. They were this tribe and this tribe, and they were different, but the thing that made them Germanic was they had a similar language, and a similar culture, and a similar religion. And so these similarities, okay, this group of people, they just called them the Germans.

And the Rhine River froze. And you had been keeping these people across the Rhine and across the Danube in the south. And you let some come across every once in a while to settle. Mainly you used them as mercenaries. Oh man, these guys could fight. So you would brought them in, and you hired them. And they would fight for you. Mainly to fight other Germans. That's how they kept the Germans at bay. They kept them fighting each other. You'd hire one side, and then you'd hire the other side, and they kept them fighting each other.

Well, the Ostrogoths show up for the first time in 800 years. Well, I can't say that, because Hannibal actually showed up in Rome, but he never took Rome. But you have an Ostrogoth army show up. And their purpose, by the way, isn't to sack Rome. It's you owe us money. We've been fighting for you against other Germanic tribes, and you owe us money. And you're in Rome, and you don't like seeing all those barbarians out there, but hey, you have the greatest army in the world. You controlled world trade. You controlled everything with this army. And you talk about a society with free enterprise.

In Rome, there were no regulations on anything. Just pay your taxes. They didn't care how dirty business got. Just pay your taxes. There was even freedom of religion earlier in Rome, as long as you were willing to sacrifice to the emperor.

And of course, Christians weren't willing to do that, and that's why they were persecuted. We don't care who your God is. We're worshiping, too. Just sacrifice to the emperor. So it's 410, and the Ostrogoths are out there. Basically, what they didn't realize is that the Roman government wasn't in Rome anymore. They'd moved to Ravena, which was a fortress off the coast. And so they kept trying to negotiate with people who couldn't give them anything.

And so finally the Ostrogoths defeat the home guard, tear down the gates, and they're running rampant through Rome. Now, as far as destruction of ancient cities go, the Ostrogoth, the destruction of Rome, was rather minor. I mean, they killed thousands of people, and they raped people, and they burned a lot of buildings. Basically, they stole everything they could pick up and run off with.

I mean, they were getting their pay as mercenaries. And then they ran off to find another city, because they'd eaten everything in town, and it was like, okay, we've got to move on. And so they left, and the majority of Roman citizens are together saying, what happened to us? Because we are God's people. You see, for almost a hundred years, Rome had become a Christian nation, a Christian empire. I say Christian, they were Catholic.

It was the only church that was allowed. They were Christian. Every emperor from Constantine until 410 was a Christian, except one. And he only lasted three years. He tried to return to paganism, and the empire wouldn't go. Now, that doesn't mean there weren't lots of pagans around. It just meant that to be anybody in Rome, you had to be a Christian. So why had God done this? Why would God allow this?

Now, the pagans that were still throughout the empire gave them a really good answer. From their viewpoint. It's because of your idea that there's only one God. All the other gods are mad at you. And that's why your God couldn't defeat all the other gods, and all the other gods got together and said, we're going to show them that there's more than one God.

And of course, the other gods, they just move on to loot someplace else. Now, the great irony in all this is the Ostiger gods had actually converted, as had some of the Germanic tribes at this point, they'd actually converted to Christianity.

They were Sunday keepers. In many ways, they were Catholics, except they didn't believe in the Trinity. They believed that Jesus was a created being. That he was created, he was just a man. Sort of like a superman. In fact, to them, like most of the Germanic tribes, he was the greatest warrior that ever lived. I won't get into that, but it's fascinating, the Germanic tales of Jesus, okay? The greatest warrior that ever lived in a warrior society. So, they were Christian by those standards of the day, but they weren't Catholic.

There was a bishop in Hippo in North Africa, named Augustine. Now, anybody here speak Latin? Good.

It's Augustine in Latin. I told my wife, I have one pun. I don't know Latin, but I know one pun. I don't speak Latin, per se. Ah, some of you got it! She says, nobody's going to get that!

So, Augustine is the most prolific writer of the day. If you get all of Augustine's writings that are translated in English, they make up eight volumes as big as an encyclopedia. I have six in home, and no, I haven't read all of them.

And I don't suggest you do either. But we have to understand Augustine, and we're going to understand what happened in the concepts, because of the fall of Rome, and the explanation of how God could allow this to happen. And this would affect the idea of the kingdom of God, and would affect the idea of the millennium.

Because Augustine is struggling with this, it took him ten years to write a book called The City of God. And in the City of God, he explains why God allowed Rome to fall. And it's because there are two cities in the universe. The City of God and the City of Man. And because human beings are inherently evil, eventually, every city of man is destroyed by another city of man. But the City of God lasts forever. By the Middle Ages, they would call this Christendom, the Kingdom of Christ. The Kingdom of Christ reigns forever. So let's go to Revelation 20.

I only have three or four hours with material, so...

I do want to let...we actually have a set up where we can ask questions. We'll take a break here at some point, just to make sure you're all still with me here.

I've taken two college classes. Have you ever seen the great courses, college classes you can get? I've taken two classes on Augustine. Augustine, I can call him now, because I took the classes. But anyways, one I think was from Notre Dame. I mean, these are top schools, and of course they're given by top professors. And my wife, she said, what are you talking about? I said, Augustine. And she almost cried.

Revelation 20, verse 1. We know what this means. It's already been referenced a couple of times in sermons. But understand that even this day, the majority of Christians in the world do not believe what we believe this means. And throughout history, most Christians do believe what we believe this means. In fact, if you go back to, say, the early 1800s, it'd be hard to find any Christian in the world that defined this the way we do.

It's because of Augustine that it got changed. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain was in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the servant of old, who was 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 until the thousand years were finished. But after these things, he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones and those who sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded, for their witness to Jesus, and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast, or his image, or not received his mark, and their foreheads were 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 is finished. This is the first resurrection. Now, if I asked any of you what that means, you would have a quick, easy answer.

Augustine looked at that and said, Christians misunderstand this, because at his time, it appears that a large number, if not a majority, of an essay Christian's, it's the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church isn't unified in any way like it is now. Under the Roman emperors, it was run by the emperor. The papacy had to submit to the emperor. Eventually, the entire eastern half of the empire, which survived the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until the 1400s, the eastern half of the Roman Empire lasted until the 1400s, they took a different view. They kept the emperor in charge. But since there was no emperor in the west, the pope became the leader of the kingdom of God on earth, Christendom.

What is...where is God reigning right now? He's reigning in Christendom. What is that? That's the kingdom of God on earth. So what you must do is get as many nations as you can to become Christian, even if you have to kill them to do it. And believe me, in the Middle Ages, you will find war after war after war, long before the Crusades, where people were killed in order to make them Christians.

Eventually, you'll give up and become Christians.

So Augustine looked at this and said, you know what? This can't mean that...it can't mean a thousand years of Christ on earth. And part of it was because people were describing at the time...and he actually deals with their writings. We don't have their writings, but he deals with them. They were describing what the millennium will be like. We've heard about the beasts playing together. You think about all these sermons, what sermons, things we've heard about what the physical millennium is going to be like. He said, that can't be true. God's going to turn us into spirit beings. And we're not going to be eating good food. So therefore, he said, there has to be a different explanation to this. And he said, ah, only the spiritual will understand. By the way, Augustine was a very, very smart man. He was also a very troubled man. And it comes out in his writings. Because he was searching for truth and he couldn't find it. So what he concluded was, the abyss, Satan has been thrown into the world. The abyss is the world, the people, the city of man. The city of God, though, is where the saints are. Where are the saints? They're in the Catholic Church.

So, Christ is ruling on earth now through the Church. And that's why kings have to pay homage to the Pope. This was the...it would move towards that. He didn't say that there, but this developed of the Middle Ages. Why? And why were all the kings then of Europe crowned by the Pope for this very reason? They created Christendom, the rule of Christ on earth for a thousand years.

And Augustine said, I don't know whether it's a literal thousand years or whether it's an allegory. Well, you know, one of the reasons for the launching of the First Crusade around 1100? Wow! The thousand years are up! It's time to go take Jerusalem for Jesus to come back. So they slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims and other Christians and Jews so they could take it so Jesus could come back and he never came back. Because Christendom was already here, you understand? The kingdom of God was already here in Christendom. Now that seems strange to us. And to tell you the truth, if you ask the average Catholic today, they'd probably say, well, that's weird. No, this is what they believed and it started in 400 and went clear up into the 1700s.

So in order to understand the world you live in, you have to understand how it got there, right? So Augustine comes along. He says it's an allegory and we have to create Christendom now. Because Christ is now reigning. And it's where we get the concept of what is called amillennialism and post-millennialism. Post-millennialism is Christ comes back after a thousand years. I hear people say they're post-millennialist or I read their writings. They can't be post-millennialist because it's been a long time since Christ died. So basically what you really have now is amillennialism. Amillennialism is that Christ is now reigning through His Church. It's interesting, in the last few years in the Protestant world, this has caught fire. And that's why you will find in the Protestant Church movements in the United States that get certain people in power. They vote to get people in power because we must establish dominion over the country as Christians. And so they're very vehement about that because Christendom, this is a Christian nation and Christ rules in this nation. And we have to put the right people in power. But of course that's a new idea because from Augustine up into the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, there was only one Christianity in the minds of most people.

And that was Christendom, the Kingdom of Christ on earth. So you have amillennialism and then premillennialism. Premillennialism is what we believe. And that is, Christ comes before the Millennium. And literally sets up a thousand year reign. Now there's another doctrine that we have to understand here that's actually going to... How you understand this doctrine could lead you to premillennialism or amillennialism depending on how you understand this. And it's not going to be something you think really is important.

When Augustine came along for 200 years, the Catholic Church, and I say the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church really didn't form until the time of Constantine. And it really didn't form until Augustine came along. It was fragmented. In fact, it fought for a long, long time. They fought each other. It wasn't the papacy as we know it today. I mean, sometimes there could be as many as three popes, all fighting each other, all declared to be pope, and fractionalizing the church in the three parts. With riots in the street. Literally, riots in the street. People killing each other over who they wanted to be pope. So it's not near what it is today. But if you go back to the second century, you have a church forming that is totally Gentile. They have driven out Jews. And they see Israel and Judah as the exact same thing. And Jews are the killers of Jesus. So they literally want to remove anything from the worship of God and Jesus Christ that is considered Jewish. The first three things they go after is Sabbath, circumcision, and cleanly unclean meats. They must be removed because they are the marks of these evil people.

So when they talk about Israel, they're always talking about the Jews. So these evil people must be removed. You know, when Martin Luther came along, he believed it was his job to convert the Jews of Germany, because there were a lot of Jews in Germany to leave the Catholic Church, leave Judaism and come into this new protestant group. And when they didn't, he became furious. And he wrote a book against the Jews, which was used by the Nazis to set up the concentration camps. Now, he didn't support concentration camps, but his hatred was so great that 400 years of German Lutheranism had set up what the Nazis could do. That and Catholicism. Catholicism taught until 1962. It was finally changed in 1962 that every Jew by act of birth was a murderer of Jesus Christ. So if they remained Jewish, they could be killed because they were personally responsible for the murder of Jesus Christ. I mean, many of us were alive in 1962. That's how long that one lasted. Now, that wasn't the time of Augustine yet. So I'm not trying to make Augustine the one who originated all this stuff, but you have to understand the power of this. So in the second and third centuries, by the time of Augustine, this is becoming known and generally believed. The Jews have been rejected by God. So what do you do with all the prophecies in the Old Testament? Well, you go to two places in the New Testament. One, where Paul calls the church the Israel of God. And there's one other place where he compares it to a spiritual Israel. But there's this Israel that is the church. And they say, ah, the Israel has been totally replaced. Totally replaced by the church. And that's where they would use the term spiritual Israel. Spiritual Israel is the church, but what that means is everything God promised to the Jews has been... They don't get any of it. They only get the curses. All the blessings come to the church. So when Augustine comes along and says, there can't be a thousand-year raid on the earth. It's because they've already done away with a physical millennium. You understand? Any questions about that? You understand where I've come from? They've already done away with a physical... You can't have a physical millennium because that was given to the Jews. You can only have a spiritual millennium, and that's given to the church. And Christendom is on the earth right now, so the millennium has already started.

And so that's what was taught. That became a fundamental belief of Catholicism. And so he just played off of that. The foundation was already there. Now, let's look at a couple things here. Let's go to Genesis 12. Because is that true? We know that there are certain promises made to the church that are not made to Israel. But can we come to the conclusion that all the promises made to Israel have shifted to the church? Which would mean that, by the way, there is no need for a thousand-year physical millennium. By the way, you say, what did he say was the first resurrection? The first resurrection is when you die, because your soul goes to heaven.

So the first resurrection is simply when you die, and your soul goes to heaven. And remember, the saints reign? Why do you think worship of saints becomes central? You can't have a Catholic church without the worship of saints. It's the central core of everything they do. It's the worship of saints and Mary. Why? Because they rule in heaven. That's what Revelation says. They're ruling during this allegorical thousand years, this period of time in which Christendom is on the earth. We pray to the saints because they're ruling over us. And that's why you cannot... Once you do away with the immortality of the soul, there is no Catholicism. It doesn't exist. Because at its core is the belief. I must worship the saints because they are reigning in heaven because it is now the millennium.

I don't know where that... Any questions? My wife always says, that's crazy. No, no, no, no. I understand it. I read a little bit of Augustine. Very troubled man. Okay, we all get this. Good. Are you ready for the test? Okay, Revelation... or Genesis 12.

Because this is the world we live in. This is why most people that are Christians, like the Orthodox churches in Poland and Greece and Russia, they don't believe in pre-millennialism, at least the majority don't. Why? It all goes back to this. In Genesis... Let me get to Genesis here, 12.

And let's look at this very important prophecy. Okay, here's this great promise that he's going to give him a land, and through him all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. All the peoples of the earth are going to be blessed. Now let's go to chapter 13, verse 14. I'm just looking at a couple prophecies here because these are important to understand.

Chapter 13, verse 14.

He says, So he tells him that he's going to give him this land forever. Okay, this is a promise for land. Now Augustine would say this is a promise for the city of God. See how he would explain that? But that's not what it says. He says, Now would you look at this land, and this land is yours. We actually have two promises here. Two promises. And if we miss it, we miss something that Paul says. And this is where Augustine got it wrong. Let's go to Genesis 22. Genesis 22, verse 15. It says, This is when he offered to sacrifice Isaac. So here's a promise, this land, this blessing from God, this physical pouring out of a blessing. And then he says, So here's this promise to his descendants. We know then that we have the whole history of Israel and Judah up until the time, of course, Israel went into captivity with Assyria and lost their identity. And Judah went into captivity and then came back out of the Babylonian captivity. That's all in the Bible. But Paul says something remarkable, and this is where, by the way, the people who were forming the Catholic Church in the second and third centuries, this is where they went. And they took this to mean something that what God, well, let's go there. We'll see what they got out of it. Galatians 3. Galatians 3. Of course, Paul is very emphatic here. What he says is very, I mean, it's not something that needs a lot of interpretation. Galatians 3 and verse 16. Now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made. He does not say, and to seeds as of many, but as to one, and to your seed, who is Christ. Now, Paul takes that one passage and says, the promise to all nations is through one seed. Now there's a promise to all these descendants, and Paul, we would never know this if it wasn't for this, says, oh, wait, wait. No, there's one specific seed in here in which there's one specific promise. There is a national promise, if you will. There is a people promise to the descendants, physical descendants of Abraham. But there is an international global humanity promise made through one of his seed, which is Jesus Christ.

That's remarkable. This is the launch pad of Christianity. Now we can go through, we can spend two hours going through all the prophecies of the Old Testament that are quoted in the New Testament to prove that Jesus Christ is that seed. It's all through there.

Now let's go to verse 26. For you are all, now he's writing here to a church in Galatia that is predominantly, or at least that's a large number of Gentiles, non-Jews. For you are all the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized in the Christ that put on Christ, remember he just said, the one seed to Abraham, this is one specific promise and it's global. And there is neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham, seed and heirs according to the promise. Now which promise? The early founders of the Catholic Church said, all the promises. No. There's two promises. One, all humanity will be blessed in this seed of Abraham. And two, in the physical descends of Abraham, there's going to be a physical people God works with. The second promise is much greater. I mean, Jesus Christ is the much greater promise. This is why we're here in the church. This is why in the church there's neither Jew nor Gentile or Israel, or Gentile. We're all one. That doesn't mean... I mean, it says neither male nor female. Well, we're still male or female, but we understand what that means. We're all equal before God. Why? Because we've all become part of that promise made to Abraham, which is through the seed of Jesus Christ. What Paul says there...like I said, it launches the idea of Christianity. That all peoples come to God. The Gospel goes to everybody. This is the Gospel. But what about the other? And that's where the early Catholics got it wrong. All the promises went to the church. All the promises went to the church. One of the most important things in doing biblical study is to ask yourself any time you read something, what did it mean to the original audience? What we tend to do sometimes is say, oh, this means this to me, or this to us, as if they're writing specifically to 2020 United States of America. And you know, there are prophecies that might apply to 2020. But when the Bible was written to the people, it meant something to those original people. What did it mean to them first? What does Isaiah 11 mean to the people who received it? Isaiah 11. What does this mean to them?

Or what did it mean to them? What did it mean to the prophet? Isaiah believed what he was saying. So Isaiah was giving a false prophecy if this was going to be applicable to the church and that all of Israel, this promise was going to be taken away from them. Okay, this promise doesn't mean anything to them.

There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Catholics, Protestants, everybody. Ah! This is the Messiah. Everybody agrees this is Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of God. His delight is in the fear of the Lord. And how he's going to go on, he says he's going to judge everybody.

But with righteousness he'll judge the poor. He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod in his mouth, with the breath of his lips. He shall slay the wicked. Now Augustine liked that. Just killing everybody that wasn't Christian. Righteous shall be the belt of his loins, and faithful is the belt of his waist.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. No! Only stupid people, and this is one reason, by the way, they thought Jews were stupid. Or any Christians who took this literal were stupid. Only stupid people would understand this is an allegory. It's not to be taken literal, because there is no literal physical kingdom on earth. At that time, the thousand years is now. It's an allegory. This millennium may last actually for many millenniums, in which the church rules on earth. And God rules through the church. Eventually it was decided he ruled through the papacy.

The papacy became... first they were the vicar of Peter. They spoke for Peter, because Peter was one of the saints in heaven, and since the saints were reigning on earth, he spoke for Peter. After a while, nah, we just sidestepped Peter. The papacy speaks directly for Jesus Christ. And that was the belief in the Middle Ages. There are still Catholics who believe that today.

They would not take this literal. You can't take it literal. Isaiah thought it was literal. The people he wrote it to thought it was literal. And Jeremiah 31, verse 31, in the following verses, when it says that he's going to gather them together in the future, Israel together in the future, and give them a new covenant and pour out his Spirit upon them, Jeremiah thought it was to the people he was talking to, and the people he was talking to thought it was to them.

Augustine said, no, he's talking to me. The great danger sometimes when you personalize the Scripture beyond what is supposed to be personalized. No, he's talking to me. I'm a Christian. He's not talking to them. They're dirty Jews. And so you take all the Ezekiel, I just think of Micah, Zechariah, you go through all these prophets, and none of them are talking to Israel or Jews. None of them. Oh, they were at the time, and God turned his back, and he has this new Israel, and all those promises are made to them. But the promises were about a land and about a gathering.

All those promises are about land where the Messiah will come and gather the physical descendants of Abraham together into that land. That's the promise. And you go through the... I'm going through the series of minor prophets and Bible studies. Practically, not every one of them, but practically every minor prophet ends with, and you will be scattered, and he will gather you together at the time of the Messiah, and he will give you that land. The tribes will be so decimated. A little remnant will come back, and a remnant of those 12 tribes will come together and live in that land around Jerusalem.

That's the promise. Now, if that's true, the thousand years has a different meaning. Because there has to be a physical rulership of Jesus Christ on earth, and the physical descendants of Abraham have to be brought to that place. See, there's two parts to this, and we're part of the greater promise, but there's another promise.

And this goes clear back... it goes clear back to Moses. Go to Deuteronomy 30. I mean, this wasn't something just the prophets talked about. This goes clear back to the time of Moses. What's amazing about this prophecy here given by Moses is Israel is on the edge of the Promised Land. They haven't even gone into the Promised Land yet. They haven't even gone into the Promised Land yet. They've been wandering for 40 years. Here we are, right here. And they're told all the blessings and cursings chapters. You do this? Mr. Beams said, if is the big word. You do this? If you do this, this happens. If you do this, this happens.

But in chapter 30, verse 1... Now think about this. I don't think they could have even begun to understand what he was saying to them. Here's what God tells them as they are about... They're not even in the Promised Land yet. Now it shall come to pass when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you.

And you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you. Wait a minute! We're not even there yet. And he's already telling them, oh, you won't stay there. You will obey me, and I will scatter you among the nations. And you return to the Lord your God, and obey His voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you.

And if any of you are driven to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. And the Lord your God will do what? Bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. And He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. These are physical blessings given to the land. The only way Israel can actually exist in the way that God intends them to exist, is they have to be in the land of Abraham, and they have to have a temple and the Messiah, and God has to be there.

Once God was there anymore, what happened to Him? They got destroyed. The Messiah has to be there. This is the promise. If you believe in Amillennialism, you believe that promise from God, given to those people by Moses, was changed by God, and I can do that to them, I'm going to give it to the church. Well, I'm sorry, He doesn't promise us land. He promises us the universe. He doesn't promise the people in the church that we're going to come together and live as twelve tribes. He promised them that. He promised us to be resurrected and be Jesus Christ in the air.

That's what He promised us. We have a totally different promise. Through His seed, all humanity comes to God. But that doesn't mean He's thrown away the physical descendants of Abraham. They never did their job. And they're going to do their job. They were supposed to be the physical representatives of God on the earth to bring everybody to God. They wanted God exclusively for them. No, no, no, no. You bring everybody to God.

It's interesting, Solomon's temple, you read the dedication, he said that all peoples from all nations will come here to worship you. That's what Solomon said. At the time of Jesus, if you were a Gentile, you could even go close to the temple. They had a wall, and if you went over the wall, they killed you. If you weren't a Jew. That's a huge difference, isn't it? But what Solomon declares, what's happening at the time of Jesus? Well, now through Jesus Christ, that promise made to Abraham.

We are Abraham's seed in the church, spiritually Abraham's seed. But there's also those physical people who failed over and over and over and over again and continue to fail today. And guess what? God says, now you will do your jobs. Because I'm bringing you back to that land. And you will live in that land, and you will represent me. Because the Messiah will be there.

The Messiah will be there. So we have two promises. That's what Paul's trying to explain in Romans 9, 10, and 11. He says Israel has been blinded so that the Gentiles can come into the church, but there will come a time.

And he actually quotes a prophecy about the Messiah in there. We have a question, we don't have time to go through that. When the Messiah will reign, and Israel is brought back together. You see, there's two gatherings. There's two gatherings when Christ comes. And this is where Amillennialism has its own mess stuff.

There's the gathering of the saints to meet Christ and be changed into spirit beings. To do what? To serve Him. We've heard this all through the feast. To serve Him in converting the world. And then there's going to be all these physical descendants of Abraham. Most of them don't even know they're physical descendants. They're all scattered all over the place. And they're all going to be brought in together, especially by that time, by the end of the Tribulation. They're going to be just all over the place.

They're going to be brought in together, and he's going to say, Guess what? You've never done your jobs. You're going to do it now. You're going to help bring all people to the Messiah, who will help take them to God. There's two gatherings. There's two promises made to Abraham. They seem like one, but they're not. And if you don't have Paul, you don't realize, whoa! So we say, well, wait a minute. How can everybody be the seed of Abraham? And yet there's other prophecies to talk about the physical seed of Abraham. Because in Romans 9, 10, 11, Paul is very specific. He's talking about the physical seed of Abraham. How can he do that?

Well, it's very simple to Paul. There's two gatherings. There's two things going on. Right now, the most important one by far is the Church. That's what God's doing. Preparing the family to be resurrected. But those physical descendants of Abraham, they get gathered then. You think about where it says they see the Messiah and they weep. Because they realize, we're the ones... He's the one we purest, specifically when you talk about Jews. We killed him and he's coming back. He's actually the Messiah.

There's all these prophecies that talk about Israel being gathered all over. And then there's these prophecies, yeah, the saints are gathered from the four corners of the earth, too.

There's two gatherings. This is really... God's plan is really detailed. He's got this all worked out for that whole millennial period. So when we go back to Revelation 20, it's simple. We literally believe what it says. Revelation 19 says Jesus Christ returns, defeats the armies there, the Valley of Mageto, and he stands on the Mount of Olives, which we get from both Zechariah and from other prophecies in the New Testament.

Jesus said he's returning to there. And he comes and he establishes God's Kingdom on the earth, and who's with him? The saints. The church. All the saints. Clear back Sarah, Abraham, everyone, all through history that has been prepared as there. But then he says, okay, he gathers all these physical people from all over the world, and he brings them in and says, by the way, you're all physical descendants of Abraham, and we've got a job.

You know, someone said God's interested in every person. Every person has value. Every person has value. That's why God has this set up in every human being. There's a spiritual group to help convert them. There's a physical group that's going to have to be converted, and they're going to have to help them, because he wants a structure that brings to everybody. This is Christendom, not Christendom as it's defined today, which is the mystical rule of Jesus Christ in the church throughout Christian nations.

That's not what it is. Christendom is when the literal kingdom of God is set up on earth by Jesus Christ.

Now that's a simple thing. That's a simple thing. And yet it's so profound, and the majority of Christians don't get it.

And neither did Augustine.

If you ever read of anything of Augustine, which I don't suggest you do, but if you decide to, the one book you should read is his autobiography. He wrote the first great autobiography of Antigone.

It's called Confessions. And basically he writes a book saying, I'm really a sinner. And he came to the conclusion that people are conceived, wicked, and condemned to hell. Every human being is so evil, we're condemned to hell at conception.

So as soon as you're conceived, and that's why sex is so dirty, it's a necessary evil, and every person is conceived in sin. And God, through predestination, saves a few. He started what he set up there, created what today we call once saved, always saved. Once again, he wouldn't have thought of it that way, but it's where it goes to.

The Protestant Reformation Calvin brought that in, that's a whole other story. Okay, good. I said I wouldn't leave time, and I did skip a few things. But you understand, it just took two things. Revelation and the promises made to Abraham have two parts. They take two different fulfillments at the same time. Spiritual, physical. And it can't be the church, because the church doesn't get the area of Dan.

It means nothing to the church. And that's where Augustine couldn't figure it out. Well, it's all just allegory. It doesn't really mean that. It can't mean that. Because the Jews aren't worthy of anything. They're only worthy of death. They're the murderers of Jesus. They were worse than pagans. They were worse than pagans. They didn't like pagans either. I mean, pure pagans. They didn't realize how paganized they were. But if you worship Zeus, Catholics didn't like it.

So any questions about this? It's a simple issue. I'm not giving you anything really new, except maybe a little history about Augustine. You have to either go to the microphone or yell at one of the... Is it better than hearing? Maybe you better go to the microphone so we can record it. Yeah. Because if you have a question, probably somebody else connected has it. And by the way, if I don't have an answer, you know what you're going to get? I don't know. I have no problem with that answer at all.

Oh yeah, it's way up here. I forgot where it was. It's not by itself. You'll be winded by the time you get up here. Alright. So, if Christ rules through the Church and the saints, now, what's the explanation for why it's so bad? Why it's such an evil world? Why is nothing working? And, I know this is probably a second question, do they foresee an end point to that?

Yes. Did you hear his question? Why is it that this is actually part of what Augustine struggled with? This is why he came up with the idea of the City of God and the City of Man. The City of God, New Jerusalem, is perfect. But the City of God on earth, because it's in the City of Man, which is humankind, is messed up. King killed Abel. So, the City of... At the very beginning, the City of God on earth was... Violence was committed against it.

Enoch built the first city. So, he built this whole argument. I mean, the whole Old Testament. He goes through the entire Old Testament and builds this argument. He tells the Romans, of course, God would allow Rome to be destroyed. Even though the City of God is here in the Church, Romulus and Remus built this city. And Romulus... Remember, the brother killed... I mean, this was all legend, but Romulus killed Remus, and that's why it was called Rome.

The two brothers started the city, and they had... See, even Romulus and Remus. Rome itself was founded in this conflict. So, this conflict between the Christendom, the Kingdom of Christ on earth, is always going to be there, and it's always going to be imperfect, because we are depraved. Human beings are depraved. So, we're always going to be messing this up, but God, through His grace, works it out. And the end game is, at the end of the millennium, Christ does come. But the millennium is allegorical. Yes. They don't know.

They don't know what is going to happen. Well, we don't know either, I guess. No, but there's no way of even gauging when it will happen, except they do have some special Catholic prophecies. Yes, they do. They do have some special Catholic prophecies, which they think is going to be soon. So, you know... But yeah, with their idea of progressive revelation, they keep getting new stuff all the time.

So yeah, there is an end game here. Christ comes back. The great white throne judgment is that Satan goes out and deceives more people, and there are nations that have him become Christianized, and there are also Christians who think they're Christians or not. See, in their idea, there's a lot of people that have him being predestined. No, not there. The Catholic Church actually rejected this idea.

Augustine said there's a lot of Christians that aren't Christians. They just don't know it because they haven't been predestined, so God don't have to kill them. Okay. So the great white throne judgment just comes... That's just Christ comes back and kills everybody who's not a Christian. But don't they see... Do they see any purpose in the battle between the cities, the good and the evil? Yes. The purpose in the end is that the saints are somehow perfected in this battle. Okay. This is where Protestantism had a real problem with Catholicism, because you get your merits by fighting this battle.

So the Protestants said, well, you earned salvation then. Well, yeah, you sort of do because you have to fight the battle, but you're already predestined. Yeah, there's a logical problem. But see, Augustine didn't work all that out because he didn't intend to work all that out. He was just presenting these ideas, these grandiose ideas, and it took, you know, a thousand years later, they're still fighting over them.

Today, they're still fighting over them. The Seventh-day Adventist has been going through a bit of a controversy because some of them are starting to accept Augustine's concept of predestination, and some of them aren't. So they're starting to have a battle over that.

Well, that was inevitable. Oh, that was... He said, that was inevitable. A fight over predestination is inevitable. That's almost... That's a good pun. I like that one. Any other questions? See, that's exactly the questions that he asks. The questions he just asked are what Augustine asks. I can't forget the sound. I can't forget the sound. He's struggling. He's struggling.

And so he comes up with these things. I can't answer your questions. I don't know. Anything you ask me, I'm not going to know. So what did Augustine do or say or think or feel about Ezekiel 37? So if that's when, you know, they say our bones are cut off or dried, and that's when they go back to those physical promises, as we know and understand, are going to be fulfilled, how did he understand?

How did he treat that? I don't know. I never studied his... He has... You know, he gives time to that. I have never studied it. He asked about Ezekiel, you know, the bones coming together. He would just have an allegorical explanation of it that fit his construct. So I... But I don't know personally, because I have not read all eight encyclopedic volumes of Augustine, and I will never do it. So my question is, do you think that part of the reason that the amillennialism concept came up was because they were trying to figure out...

You know, Christ said he was coming soon. He was coming quickly, and he hadn't come in a couple hundred years. So they tried to figure out how do we understand that? So maybe it's more spiritual, not physical, because he hasn't shown up yet. Was that part of his logic?

It was exactly part of it, because they were wrestling with that. Augustine just comes along in the middle of a lot of arguments. And that's one of the arguments. One of the things that Augustine dealt with that was very interesting is for 200 years, Catholics, all Christians, it didn't matter who you were, were persecuted and killed. Those martyrs became worshiped.

And they thought Christ was coming back at any moment, so they kept... People actually pursued being killed. Origen, who was a Catholic writer, literally would go out as a teenager and try to get martyred. He would pick a fight with Roman soldiers.

He would run up to Christians that they were taking to kill them and hug them and kiss them. And they would just beat him up. He would just... He got so frustrated because God would let him get killed. So what he did was they became aesthetics. They found a new way to die. The new way to die is you never wash and take a bath, you never wash your clothes, you sleep on a hard bed, you eat really bad food, you don't drink wine, you're celibate and you live in a convent.

A monastery. You live in a monastery. That's where Augustine eventually ended up, too. You have to die for Christ. And the only way they could do it, and some of them literally starved themselves to death, what they did was horrendous. But they were waiting, waiting. Augustine comes up and says, wait a minute, wait a minute. We've got this all wrong. We've been keep waiting every second for him to come back. No! It's after this millennial, allegorical, one thousand year reign, and the church is now reigning, so sometime in maybe a thousand years. And he said it may be more because it may be just an allegory.

But he extended this out and broke this thing that everybody was just almost seeking martyrdom or seeking these aesthetic ways because Christ would come back in the moment. Can I ask one more question? Yeah, oh yeah. So, other than the Galatians where the Israel of God, the church of Israel of God, was there any other scripture that he could point to to say that God had rejected the physical descendants of Abraham? Or was that it? That's about it.

Thank you. Yeah, but you have to understand how much they hated Judaism. And there were a couple reasons why. One was in 130 AD, the Jews all over the empire ruled. Remember, the Jews revolted in 70 AD in Judah. All over the empire, the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire. There was somewhere between 60 and 80 million people living in...

Roman Empire... The populations of the day were so much smaller than we think now. I mean, all of Europe, all of Turkey, the Middle East, and Egypt were 60 to 80 million people because that was the Roman Empire. Now there's, what? I don't know, 700, 800 million, maybe a billion. So, in this, what was considered a huge empire, anywhere from 6 to 10% of the population was Jewish. And they rose up and tried to overthrow the empire. It seemed to be spontaneous. I don't think they did it all. And so the Romans went in and they wiped out all Jews out of the Middle East, basically.

And so what happened was, you didn't want to be Jewish. They hunted them down. And in 130, just about the exact time of this revolt, you find the Epistle of Barnabas, in which is a new understanding of Christianity, in which you must reject the stupid religion of the Jews. They are evil people.

And that includes Sabbath, Holy Days, clean and unclean meats. And the Epistle of Barnabas became so popular, they found it with copies of the Bible. People thought it was written by the Barnabas that had lived 100 years before, and they thought it was part of the Bible. And it's this new commentary on the Bible, in which he just attacks Judaism. That book had a huge impact on the development of this non-Jewish, totally Gentile Christianity. And they saw themselves with the Gentile Christians, who have rejected the evilness of the Jews.

And there are people still believe that today.

Yes, these are good questions. I teach some of this at ABC, and they are fascinated with it, because it's like we get into the Theodosius and Constantine. Yeah? I have a question. It's for now. It's time to... Can you hear me? Yes. You know, if you don't mind coming up so the people that are listening can hear it. What? Could you come up here? Because I forgot about the people on the wrong line. They'll need to hear your question. No, just up to the microphone.

I can speak. That's okay. You can speak right now. Can you come up here? Yes, if you would. Well, I've never been in front of a microphone. You're a natural. You're a natural. Okay. You know, in Ezekiel 5, 6, and 7, and it's a question for now, in our time. We know that America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand are more than Israel. Right. Right? What happens to more than Israel before... Does America don't exist anymore in times of great tribulation and several last plagues?

I know a one-third will remain, but America would not be on the scene in the final end times, would it? That's beyond what we'll talk here. I'll just give you a short synopsis that you could go talk to Mr. Preston, and he'll answer for you. It is obvious that the physical descendants of Abraham are just decimated during the tribulation.

They're just decimated. So the United States will either be destroyed or taken over, but it won't be what it is. It can't be what it is now. There's going to be massive death, massive destruction, Jacob's trouble. How exactly that's going to happen, I don't know. It's interesting, throughout the course of being in the church for years, there's all kinds of ideas of how that's going to happen. Nuclear bombs hitting the ice. There's all these different ideas we've had over the years.

But you're right. The physical descendants of Abraham are going to go through the tribulation in a terrible way. Of course, the whole world will, too, but there's going to be specific things happen to them. So we would not be as strong as they are a great nation again? No. If we are, it's only because somebody else has taken this over and grabbed our resources. If you know what I mean, somebody else has conquered it. The United States would be conquered by somebody else. So it would not be the United States, it would be something else.

Now, the beast power may just conquer this country. Does the church realize that, though? I think so. I don't think we're going to... This country is not going to be saved by God because it's not following God. It's not... This country is doomed. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but as you know, it's doomed. It cannot survive because the tribulation is coming and it's not going to turn to God. Individuals will, but this country will not turn to God. And then you have the church that is divided and scattered.

They have to have a climax with... If they're going to move in a place of safety or other groups, what's going to happen? The boss is going to have to figure that out. Crisis. Could you hear what happens to the... He asked him... So the physical descends of Abraham are just going to be decimated during the tribulation. What happens to the church when it's so fragmented and it's so dysfunctional? I mean, it very is dysfunctional. What happens to it? The more we try to fix this, the worse we make it. Only the boss, only Christ can fix it.

And we're going to have to all submit and let... Get out of the way so the Father can say... Because he's the head of the church, right? Father says, you fix this. But we're all in the way. Somehow we have to submit so he... And it'll happen. But, you know, as part of the church goes... The church is a mess at the end time. It predicts that. We know that. It's not all. Thank you. Okay, so... Now you could go get the details from Mr. Preston.

Okay. I knew we would start off in a different direction. I don't want to get too much in a different direction. I want to... Any questions about Augustine? I can tell you all kinds of things. No, yes.

Is amylin... millennialism the same as replacement theology? Replacement theology can be pre-millennial. But it's the same... it can be pre-millennial or amillennial. But replacement theology is that the church has received all the blessings of... Of Israel, right? Yeah. So, replacement theology could be either, depending on their view of the millennial. Millennium, you see? Yeah, but you're right. Replacement theology is the issue we're dealing with.

Okay. Well, we're five minutes over, but we'll take one more if somebody has a question. Okay, if you'll hand out the test and we'll...

Thank you for coming out tonight. I enjoyed it. And... Oh, Mr. Preston has something he needs to say here.

Oh, yes! I wanted everybody to stay, so I didn't announce this earlier. There's snacks outside. So we have snacks out there with cookies, all kinds of things. So be sure and go out and fellowship and get some snacks.