Eschatology Matters
Martin Selbrede: Eschatological Universalism - A Deep Dive Into Postmillennialism and BB Warfield
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It's a VGW group. We're operated by law, 18 plus terms and conditions apply. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to Eschatology Matters. I am your host, Josh Howard. Eschatology Matters is now on the fight-left feast network. So you can find us through all of the normal resources. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us through our website at eschatologymatters.org. But you can also now check out our content on the Pub TV app. So please check us out on FLF. If you're going to be around the conference this year, we'd love to connect with you down there as well. I believe it's in Texas. I cannot remember. Yeah, it is in Texas this year. So yeah, if you're at the FLF conference, we'd love to connect with you. But first, before we get going today, are you a Christian struggling to find the companies that align with your values and beliefs? Well, Squirly Joe's has you covered for all of your coffee needs. 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So please head over there and support that good business that has been such a faithful contributor here at Eschatology Matters. Today, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time, and I really hope that this one connects with those of you who are tuned into our channel. I'm talking today with Mr. Martin Selbretti, and I'm hoping I got the name right. Martin Selbretti with Calcedon, or excuse me, Calcedon. So Mr. Martin, before I butcher any more words, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me, sir. - Thank you for the invite, appreciate it. - And yeah, I'm thankful that I really nailed Selbretti and Calcedon without a, see, I'm tripping all over my words today. We're talking about BB Warfield today. So one of our listeners keyed us into some of your work. You've written on some of BB Warfield. If anybody is listening to this and thinking to themself, why don't know much about BB Warfield? Maybe they haven't read him, they're familiar with who he is, or they've seen his name floating around, but they're not very familiar with him. One of our joys today is gonna be to bring a little bit of BB Warfield to light, and to show what a joy and a depth of riches that he has for this conversation that we're having in eschatology. But before we jump into some of the BB specifics, if you would, Mr. Martin, just give a little introduction where you're from, where you're coming from, and maybe even how you've kind of come about this BB Warfield conversation and gotten into that sort of study. - Right, certainly as I moved into the Reformed faith as a young Christian in my early 20s, I was directed toward resources, and once you get into the past, say, Dr. Bettner, who was a popularizer of Warfield's position, you get into Warfield himself. And I think that had a huge impact on my views on eschatology, among other matters. In fact, I'm always reminded of one biographer said that Warfield was such a so strong a protagonist that the only way to deal with him is to ignore him. In other words, to engage him was to lose the battle. So he's dismissed or ignored, but he's rarely engaged, and I think that might be one reason why we don't hear too much from him today. And that's that he lost to the church militant certainly, because we need to know what ground, exegetical ground was already tread decisively by one of the top scholars of Christendom. He was one of a few people who could be said of him that he could share any department at a seminary and competently so, and that's the rarity, 'cause he knew all the languages. When he learned about the writings of Abraham Kuiper, he learned the Dutch language just so he could read Kuiper in that language. - Wow. - So he was a super scholar, also defended the faith against all the liberal trends and progressive trends of the time. So he was a staunch defender of conservative Christendom and the authority of scripture. In an era where that was all being sold out and thrown away on rationalistic grounds and where Phil was always a adamant, super naturalist and holding to the scripture was the sole guide on everything for matters of faith and practice. - Yeah, so I've been fascinated with Warfield for quite some time. One of the things that I've noticed with him is he's fascinating, he's rich, but he's also nuanced, right? So sometimes you run across, especially within eschatology, right? This is not, I think maybe you could say that he wasn't just like that. This wasn't his heartbeat to write in eschatology. Obviously, you know, systematic thinker, he's got a lot that he's cooking, a lot of kettles on the stove, so to speak. But at the same time when you read his eschatology, it's a little bit nuanced. And I think that's been one thing that's been interesting to walk through the BB Warfield conversations has been lots of people like to claim him. I've seen him claim by post-millennials, by our millennials. But you get the certainly the hopeful aspect to it. But first of all, if someone is unfamiliar with BB Warfield, why is one of the reasons that you would kind of frame that he is important to this conversation about eschatology? Why does BB Warfield matter? As we're thinking through eschatology, why is he a prominent figure that we should grapple with? - Primarily, 'cause he's the high watermark of post-millennial eschatology. No one took the promise this is scripture more seriously than he did. And no one did more agithetical groundwork to establish that there was no reason to backpedal on a total victory of the gospel in time and history prior to the second coming. Everyone else has some concession to evil having progress at the very end. Usually through a reading, I would call it a misreading, as would Warfield of Revelation 27, 8, and 9. Those verses are usually used to justify that the world ends in a bad way with fire from heaven, consuming a rebellion against Christians and Christ and whatever form the kingdom of heaven has, where they're inaugurated or what have you depending on the eschatology. Warfield cleaned house on all of that and showed that this was a gross misreading of Revelation 20 and such. So what happens then is that the modern and Christian will say, well, what we believe Satan is bound, but we still won't succeed with the great commission completely. And in Warfield, Satan is loose and Satan still loses completely to the last man. He and all the souls finally that are alive and the world are gathered into the Garner as a wheat. The chaff is all blown away way before that, generations before that point. So you have a very, very different notion of what victory is between these two systems. Warfield will take seriously that there'll be no more war ever more. As I thought, Isaiah 2, 4. Everyone else has to say, well, he has gonna be a big fight of some kind, some big conflagration at the end. And in Warfield, we find that that's a misreading of Revelation primarily because he took seriously the cross references as some earlier scholars did. Often he's not necessarily original, but he puts the pieces together in a compelling way. And he sees the exegetical thread that ties all those pieces together. And that's why people ignore him. They want to just continue to reiterate their own view and say, well, this must be this way 'cause we've always taught it this way and all back it was Guston. Well, Warfield's aware of all that. And he's aware that he's on the minority position. And he says, nonetheless, I'm gonna stand where the scripture stands. And that makes him unpopular because he's going to actually argue exegetically, not just traditionally or in a sense of just raw hope that things will go well for the great commission, but rather the certainty that the scripture requires and teaches exactly that. So every time you go to a passage of scripture that's alleged not to be a contrite country to victory the gospel, he shows that that's how that's been misconstrued. Unfortunately, in Warfield's case, he never wrote a system of theology. He was an occasional theologian, which meant that he wrote to the occasion, to the battle. He was always at the point where the battle was taking place. And that's what motivated his choice of topics. And no one has yet assembled all his eschatology writings in one place. They're distributed throughout his writings like diamonds in a coal mine. So it takes some, I've done some effort to put them together in an article that was published in the 1998 journal of Christian Reconstruction. I call it reconstructing post-millennialism to show that even the post-millennial position has what Rush Dune called, for example, an amolennial hangover. We grab some details from amolennialism and assume that they still would fit in post-millennialism, but they're kind of odd man out. So Warfield, like I said, cleans house on all this remaining pestimal millennial stuff that still adheres to many post-millennial positions. What we try to do is minimize the still-leged rebellion, whereas Warfield shows you got the time frame wrong. You're living in the little season of Satan. This is the period of time during which the fire is falling from heaven and destroying the wicked. And nothing will be left but the silver, and the dross will be driven away. So the thousand years in the little season are actually concurrent realities. And he proves this from what? Revelation itself, from Revelation 611, Revelation 1212. And even the passage in the 17th chapter showed that this little space, this little time, this little season, the micro-chronon, this concept appears throughout the book of Revelation repeatedly. And so when it appears the last time, we should take it seriously that he hasn't shifted gears. John has told us the same story from different aspects. And we can take that seriously. And otherwise we have conflicts with other passages in the scripture. This harmonizes both with Revelation itself internally and with all the other scriptures that point to what Christ came to do. Yeah, no, that's helpful. So one of the things I've noticed with Warfield, and maybe this will help if somebody's listening to this and they're trying to kind of like fit him into things. One of the things our channel has tried to work through is omonial and post-millennial. Not divides, but nuances, differences on various passages, differences in approach, as well as the similarities there, right? So with Warfield, I see some structural similarities with some who would come after him, who would claim the label of omonial, right? Like you can think to kind of some of that second generation of like your hardest boss and some of those guys that will come after him. And you say, okay, I see some of the structure there. I see some of the caution with Warfield that I don't necessarily see with some of the other theologians of his time. I'm thinking toward the Hodges that came before him, that sort of kind of Princeton trio, right? The old Princeton crowd, Charles Hodge and A.A. Hodge and then Warfield. I see a kind of, not maybe hesitancy, but a gentle handling of prophetic passages from Warfield. Not that he's cautious to wade into those waters, but he's very careful with how he applies them then. But one of the things that I find fascinating about where he sits, because you just kind of set him up as, you know, this is one of the like pinnacle markers of post-millennial thought. He's coming right at that time where post-millennialism, broadly speaking, right, begins to be referred to as post-millennial and a millennial. And again, we've talked about this on the channel, right? But this is like an early 1900s thing where, yes, you can trace back, you know, different patterns of thought, but really those two camps aren't considered separate until somewhere between 1900s, 1930s, early 20th century, in any case. This is a pretty recent development that those were seen as separate. And he's smack dab in the middle of it. What do you encounter in his writings that can help us kind of think of him at that kind of like watershed moment within eschatology? Right. Well, a lot of it depends on a technical term, right? Technically, amillennialism is a form of post-millennialism insofar as Christ returns after whatever the millennium is construed to be occurs. And that's true for amillennial and post-millennial. So if you use post-millennial in the sense, the more contemporary sense that it talks about the victorious gospel, that tends to mean post-post-millennial, even if you don't hold to the millennium occurring on Earth. So that's why John Valver, the famous dispensational scholar, he ranks Warfield as amillennial because Warfield places the millennium squarely in heaven and only in heaven. It's a symbol of the intermediate state because only souls, disembodied souls, occupy the millennium. And living people occupy the little season because we live for a short period of time. There's a contrast between the current troubles and the exceeding way of glory to come, the little season and the thousand years. If you're breathing air like we are, we're living in the little season. Once you die in Christ, you enter into the millennium and Satan has no more access to you, which is the whole premise that Warfield lays out. So if you're taking the technical sense, is a millennium an earthly period of time? Warfield is not a post-millennial, it's because he said it's not earthly. It's a heavenly thing. It's where the saints go when they pass from this mortal coil and join the church triumphant up there waiting, if you will, for the church bulletin to run its race or its course. But if you hold that the millennium is an earthly thing, then you technically would be either premill or post-mill because you'd say that's the time when Satan is bound and these things happen. Whereas in Warfield, Satan is quite unbound at this point and his defeat going to be totally completely defeated. In the other models, Satan is bound, but he can make a lot of progress. He gets unbound and messes things up again, you know, bull in a China shop and destroys all the progress that has been made. So we have to then discern, we're going to talk about the millennium as an earthly statement and Warfield is a millennial, but he gets his victory in the victory from 1 Corinthians 15, from Romans 11, a host of other passages, and that's why when he wrote on the article, a little short article called "The Gospel in the Second Coming," he says, these ideas, the words post-millennial, pre-millennial are unfortunate because they embody a misconception of what the millennium is. He says it's not an earthly state. It's a heavenly state and our marching orders come from other places in Scripture. Our duty is to be determined by commands, God's orders to us, not by our sense of what's going to happen. Predicted prophecy shouldn't determine duty, commands determine duty. And like your podcast here says, eschatology matters, it matters in this respect, that if it derails you from duty, then we become irresponsible and we're sitting on our hands when Christ expects us to do great things for him in the battle for the ages. Okay, so you said a couple things there that I hope you can clarify for me because, again, one of the challenges of Warfield is you're scrounging around, you know, different, just like you described, right? He's addressing topics, so you're trying to piece these things together, which for the layperson, that can be really challenging, or for me, it can be really challenging to work through. So with Warfield... It is Ryan here, and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like are you a fist-pumper? A woohoo! A hand clap or a high-fiver? If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. Choose from hundreds of social casino-style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait. Start having the most fun ever at Chumba Casino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group, void where prohibited by law, 18-plus terms and conditions apply. At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub bully? Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language. Luckily, you've got a team ready to help. Granger's technical product specialists are fluent in maintenance, repair, and operations, so whenever you want to talk shop, just reach out. Call clickgranger.com or just stop buying. Granger for the ones who get it done. Speaking of the ongoing pervasive influence of Satan. So I've got two things and I want you to tell me if I'm tracking with Warfield correctly on this. The first one is ongoing pervasive influence of Satan. He's recognizing there's a binding of the strongman, which is one of the kind of themes we've focused on this channel. He's reading Revelation a little bit differently than I might. And yet at the same time, he's saying there's a restraint of Satan and yet he's still making a mess in this world that separated him a bit from like, for example, Charles Hodge, who would have looked to the kind of golden utopian age as a true utopia here on earth. So Warfield seems to, and again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but seems to be pushing back against that a little bit and so far as the persistent ongoing fight against evil that's ongoing in this world, even here in the church age. So that's the first thing. The second thing would be when he's when he's looking to the heavenly rain, that's usually been one of the huge things that divides like omonials and post-millennials, right, is that broad brush strokes, there's a lot of nuance here. But in general, most omonial theologians will speak of a heavenly rain, right? And then most post-millennials will look to a heavenly and earthly rain with all the details we can work out there, but in general, right? Warfield, for example, spoke of, and this is one of the things I found fascinating about him is a eschatological universalism, where he's speaking of salvation of souls, and yet he's talking about it working out in this world. So I hear the heavenly focus with him, but not to the neglect of it. Can we say spilling forth into this world or whatever? Help me walk through this. Yeah, let me correct. The only reason he's quite a heavenly focus is only on several verses in Revelation 20. The rest of Revelation is very much fixed on the interaction between good and evil in the world, and the conquest of that evil, the totality of that victory. You see it most clearly in Revelation 11, 15. Now, or become the kingdoms of this world, the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he should reign forever and ever. Each of these six or seven visions in Revelation, in with the total victory of Christ ruling over all the hearts of men who are alive. So we have to understand that. So it's not that he's saying it's more merely a heavenly victory. That's actually no longer even in the fight in heaven. The point there is what happens to the Christian when he passes away, and when he sits with Christ in his throne. And the answer, and do we still have to deal with Satan? For example, that's a very legitimate question. In Job 1, guess who's there in heaven? There's Satan vilifying Job's character. And Zechariah 3, the same thing. Joshua, the high priest, and there's Satan in his right hand with standing him and accusing him. So we see Satan present in heaven, accusing the saints right there to God's face. And pointing them out specifically. It's something that we're going to have to deal with continually, because Satan's also in heaven until the last day. The answer is no. He was thrown out of heaven in Revelation 12, 12. The document is exactly that. He says it's very angry because he's limited to the earth. He's limited to the little season, to the little small space of time. He's got a short time. It says that means he's only allowed to deal with people who are alive, not with those who have gone into their reward. They have a Satanless environment up there. And that's all that's telling us is that there's a promise of a peaceful place for those who die in Christ. And Satan is not going to continue to accuse them as Zechariah. The high priest dealt with in Zechariah 3. Or Job had to deal with that greater cost to his family in Job 1. He is no longer present in heaven. He comes to earth and he knows he only has a short time to deal with it. And that's what we've been living in is that last hour, that short time between the admins, is a picture of how we see it from our individual lives. So I don't want to say that Warfield isn't saying, well, there is no earthly victory. He's all about the earthly victory. But it's not because Satan is making things easy for us, because he's tied up in a corner in a closet. It's rather that we are confronting him and we're crushing Satan under our feet shortly to use Paul's language. There you go. So that's where we are. So just because he sounds amylinial on this one point, does not mean he's throwing out the triumph of the gospel over all mankind. That's where eschatological universal comes in. He's saying not that all souls that ever lived would become saved, but that the great commission will be so successful in this world that those who are still alive, which are in this world, not out of the world, but in the world, they will be completely converted by the last day. And then the last enemy to be destroyed is death. So before death can be destroyed, all of other Christ's enemies have to be dealt with. And his enemies are always spiritual enemies. Those who oppose his rule and say we will not have him to rule over us. Even if he's on the right hand of the all power and authority, they're those who resist Christ to this day, as we can see with opening our eyes. But the time will come as Psalm 37 says where David says, that digital, digital is at least sought to look for the wicked man. Couldn't find him anymore. Well, why is that? Because the meek have inherited the earth. And this is a process that's driven by God's election, as Horfield points out. God, every generation that is born in the world is more and more of them are elect as a percentage. And that increases without limitation until everyone who is born is elect and comes to faith in Christ. And then all the wonderful promises of the Old Testament come to the front and center. And that's what Horfield is talking about. He said, we have essentially have such a pessimistic outlook about the promises of God that we always backpedal on them, and Horfield will not. He'll take them at face value raw, full intensity, promises of God, and not try to evade them in any way, shape, or form. So in the Horfield, there is no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts, as the book of Zagariah ends. There are no more wicked people living at the time that Christ is ready to come back and destroy death. And death is destroyed when it loosens its hold on Christ's children, and the men then living cannot die. That's exactly the way Horfield puts it. And that's what's depicted in the great pageant of the conquest of death in 1 Corinthians 15. So he must reign until he's made all his enemies his footstool. That means that before death is destroyed, all his enemies are gone. In other words, the chaff has been driven away and no place has been found for them as a consequence of the rock, made storm cut without hands, falling from heaven, hitting the statue, destroying all of it. And eventually it fills the entire earth. And that way the New Covenant is fulfilled. No man need teaches neighbors saying no to Lord, for they shall all know the Lord from the least of the greatest. And so that's the promise that Horfield is banking on. So he doesn't find his victory in Revelation 20. He finds it in every other section of Scripture except that place in Revelation 20. But it does see in Revelation 20 is he holds that we live in the little season, where fire is falling from heaven. And he sees that as basically a symbolic picture of Romans 118. For the wrath of God is, present tense, is being revealed from heaven, falling from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. So here we see that what's said diatically by Paul is pictured completely in vision by John. And so we're living in during the period of time when the fire is being poured on on the earth to purge it, to get rid of the draws over time, century to century. And we're part of that process. That's why Horfield was very, you probably can't kind of this phrase as your studies in Horfield concluded that he says we're not living in the last day's church, we're living in the primitive church still. It is the sands of time have not yet run out. And the promises of God are much bigger than what we've anticipated in regard to his victories as how they will be chalked up here in the world of the living. Absolutely. Yeah. So you said, I mean, you said a couple of things that I find encouraging, but like one of the things that I think is so encouraging to me to read from Horfield is his conviction. Like you said, not that Revelation is unimportant, but the fact that by the time he got to Revelation, he's already pulling a lot of freight from the rest of the New Testament and the Old Testament as well. But there's already a conviction of what that looks like. And that was something I remember first reading Voss back in seminary really started to connect things. But there was two things you pointed out that I think are worth making sure we emphasize. And the first is you helpfully kind of differentiated there between pointing to heavenly realities and trying to like bifurcate those from, from earthly realities or this worldly consequences. I think, I think one of the things that we have, we have seen is that among, let's just say among mainstream post-millennial theologians and let's just say optimistic on-millennial theologians, sort of that common ground that a lot of, a lot in the post-millanomal camp share. The broad brushstroke of on-millennials is often that it is a only heavenly reality that does not touch down on this earth. And I find that usually not to be accurate with the way they're painting the picture, that if you have a heavenly reality, it's going to actually have this worldly consequences. By the same token, when you have post-millennial theologians, frequently it's that, well, this is just a, this worldly, you know, we're trying to accomplish something in this world and hope that heaven reflects it. As opposed to saying, as you just did, no, no, Warfield's actually pointing to heaven. He's saying, where do the saints reign? And then this has influence here in this world. There is a kingdom that's being established this worldly that leads into this sort of eschatological universalism, which just that phrase, I feel like we need to just kind of emphasize, that probably sounds very odd to a lot of ears. Universalism in general, I think for a lot of us is sort of a discomforting term. But what he's aiming toward is what you just walked through is that when Christ said, and again, he's grappling with these passages in Scripture, that when Christ said that he has come to save the world, when he said he has come to redeem the world, that what he actually meant was the world, not that every single individual that's ever lived will be saved and numbered among the elect, but that when Christ says the world is actually in a real sense talking about the world, such that at a point in time, the world will be a redeemed world that he will then be claiming. Can you, can you walk us into that a little bit? Because I feel like that's a key encouragement from, from Warfield that might be missed, especially if people see that term universalism and chuck that up to some sort of, you know, some sort of hopeful, hopeful thinking that's not grounded in Scripture. Right. Well, of course, universalism without any adjective in front of it is heretical. I mean, there's no question that the idea that Hitler and Genghis Kong and Judas Iscariot are going to to be redeemed is not there's a massive book by my combs, I think his name is two volume, I have it called the devil's redemption, who talks about this doctrine of God, supposedly, we're deeming everybody who ever lived, regardless of how evil and when they were. So there's no justice ultimately. But the truth of the matter is justice is part of God's throne and it cannot be thwarted. And so Warfield's view is not that universalism is correct, but rather that in the world of the living, there is progress to the point of the great commission that you cannot evangelize anymore because there's no one left to be evangelized. But that's the people then living you see like a tree that falls once it falls, it stays in the position of sense. So once you die, your destiny is fixed, whether regenerate or unregener, it's fixed forever. So we don't hold to the heretical form of universalism. But we point out with Warfield that the idea that universalism is so repugnant that we must always keep, reprobate people in the world or else our sense of justice is incensed and repelled by it. That's nonsense. That's putting restriction on God. We don't limit the holy one of Israel in. His arm is not waxed short to save. In fact, what the point of the salvation is, is one that's intended to take a condemned world because he didn't come to condemn it. It was already condemned because it was already a bit of condemnation. So to save the world. So it's a transforming process over time. The transformation is the same one depicted in the parable at 11. We have three whole measures of meal. And then we have, as Warfield says, a little bit of 11 apparently lost in it, such a teeny part of the percentage of the whole, and yet by the power of it is all 11. Well, we're seeing this process of the leavening of the three whole measures of meal. One might argue that might be that maybe the three lines of Noah, I think that's speculative. But it's an interesting notion that there's not going to be anything exempt from the power of God to transform it from a unregenerate to bring forth a regenerate offspring. You know, Tyra was the father of Abraham, and as we can tell he was a pagan and not saved. But out of him came Abraham. Out of Abraham's loins came Levi. So we have this whole doctrine of the fact that people who are unregenerate either will have elect offspring, or like Psalm 109 says, their posterity will be cut off in the name, and the generation to come, their posterity will be gone, disappear. So there's two destinies, I believe, for the unregenerate. They have regenerate offspring, elect offspring, or be a dead end genealogically. And that's the way scripture depicts it. And there is no other third option there, really. Ultimately, the way of the transgressors is hard, and God sees to it, and God covenantally, because the whole world is in covenant with God, whether it knows it or not. And he will see to its terms. And I think that's where Warfield becomes very, very important to us, because he lifts the scales of our eyes to see because we usually tend to be optimistic. We picked this up because up until Warfield's time, very few people would even consider the notion of a completely saved world. You see inklings of it in John Owen. See, with the more the puritan started to penetrate this thing, the more they start to say, "Oh, this is interesting." Looks like we're talking or headed toward a completely saved world at the end of time. And Warfield wasn't afraid to back that horse in the race. And why? Because it had heterogeneous legs to run on. Yeah, it was uniformly attacked. But on faulty grounds, because when you're going to go after Warfield, you have to come up with, you can't just reiterate your own position, say, that's it. You have to actually deal with this heterogeneous arguments. And also, the cross-connections was he's systematic, just like he said at the outset. He was a great systematic theologian, and held the pseudo-systematic in polemical theology at Princeton. And held the ground there. And when he died, that was pretty much the end of Princeton. And Machin felt that that's it. Can't split Rotten Wood and better form a new church, ultimately, as a result. And new seminaries, too, because of the way, but you look at some of the influence of Warfield. John Murray, also post-millial coming out of that. His position on Romans ended up transforming along the lines of Warfield. And Warfield is not a starting point. He's kind of like the locus, the center. He's absorbing exegetical history and technical understandings from the past, and from the best scholarship before him. And he synthesizes them, and then perhaps passes them on to the future. There was a time when virtually nobody paid attention to him. Two world wars tended to kill out. Anyone who erected their hope on anything other than the raw scripture. If you're going by events, then walking by sight, post-millism is easily to kill. But if you want to buy faith in scripture, post-millum can survive. So people like Otialis and Kickbettner, they were able to and Rushtony were able to slide through World War II, two world wars, and still adopt a very positive outlook for the gospel, because the power of the gospel is what? The power of God unto salvation. So it's the power of God is much more powerful than men, and their attempt to resist him. So yeah, sure, the probability of all men. Most people who are post-mill are Calvinists, and Warfield was probably the preeminent Calvinist of this generation, certainly in America. And yet, despite the fact that he was 100% believed in the depravity of men and how evil man is, he even talks about this, how the sin of man, the evil of man, the wickedness of man, goes up to reaching before God to heaven, as he says. But a greater fact than that is that God has redeemed the world. So he always puts God bigger than man. And I think that's the secret. If you put your faith in man to yield victory, then you're going to fail, and you're going to say, "It's Warfield failed me." No, you failed to understand Warfield because Warfield put all the burden on God, and therefore, we are to obey God and be faithful in that which he's called us to. But God will determine the results, because after all, you don't control election. God does. But if God has already called, like Babe Ruth pointing into the outfield with his bat and sings going over there, God does the same thing. He says, "Yeah, we're going to end up with all the nations saved, and then Israel saved after that," or it says Romans 11's teaching. But most people don't realize that Romans 11 is riffing on Isaiah 19, verses 18 to 25, talks about the two mortal enemies of Israel, the people of God, Egypt, which tried to murder all their kids in Assyria, but not much better than Egypt. And it's predicted that he would be saved, that he would speak Hebrew. In fact, the Egyptians would speak Hebrew, the tongue would lip of Canaan, and that they would swear to God, and they would worship together, they'd put an altar together at the border between Assyria and Egypt, and then it says, "Israel shall be the third part." You see, the Gentiles come in first, and then Israel is added as the cabusa history. So Paul is not stinging anything new in Romans 11, 25, 26, he's reiterating what are, he's been laid out by the prophet Isaiah. So all these connections are very obvious once you take a look at them. You see the same notion of eschatology, little universalism in Psalm 87. The translation gets faulty, because there's a phrase there, each and every man is the correct rendering of that idiom, but people say this man and that man, that's the way literal, but the idiom is each and every man, and it's translated that way in Ezra, but it's not, I'm sorry, Esther, but it's not translated this way in Psalm 87, but it really says that each and every man shall be born in Zion. There's a prediction at the time of becoming where every human being born in the world is born in the redeemed kingdom of God, of Zion. That's why your name's Rahab, which is Egypt, Philistia, Babylon, Tyre as born in her. And what a glorious thing Zion is when all these nations that were God's enemies are born in Zion. And then finally, the concluding thing is, and each and every man shall be born in her. And what a promise that is, and where Phil doesn't back away from the promise. He doesn't soft pedal it. He doesn't try to evade it and say, well, I think the prophet got a little excited there. No, he actually takes it at face value that we have a total victory of the gospel. And therefore, we have a part to play in that victory. We're not just having a holding pattern. Rather, we should realize that we aren't had the right to a sort of a spiritual aggression in the sense of taking down every thought and stronghold again that's directed against the knowledge of Christ, as Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians 10 3, 4, 5. So that's really the mission for us is to take every thought captive because their Christ's declaim is his own and for our calling to take them captive is legitimate. And it's also healing, by the way, you take all the thought captive beings of Christ, you take them out from under Satan's foot and put them in Christ's bosom, if you will, to be safely held. So we want to transfer people out of the darkness into the light. And that's why Warfield finds a prophecy in 1 John 2, 8. The King James is faulty because there's a Greek word there, paragatai, which is a technical term is a middle voice passive and perfect means in actual process of passing away. The darkness is passing away, actual process of passing away, and the true light is shining already. And he says this tells us that prophecy teachers who say the darkness is increasing, the darkness is getting worse. Things are going to hell in the handbasket. Well, you have a choice between listening to that prophecy teacher or St. John who says the darkness is an actual process of passing away. And don't think he had it easy to say because he's looking at it on the vistas of heathen darkness, is there in Asia Minor when he says it, but he still says it. That darkness is an actual process of passing away and the true light is shining already and it will broaden into the fullness of day. So there's a powerful package there that and you go from scripture to scripture. I mean, Isaiah, you could spend days finding all the parts that talk about the total victory of Christ in it. Isaiah is not shy to promise that of the increase of his government and a peace, there should be no end. In other words, increasing peace, increasing government of Christ on his shoulder, no end to that and peace will then in Jerusalem still the moon be no more. These are also promises that talk about the increase of peace. Now, I know what people say. Well, look at, and we're filled up with this. Look at this passage here in Matthew 1034. You know, you say, I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword, right into war, battle, fire and all sorts of stuff like that. But the wordfulness is pay close attention to what the Lord actually says in Matthew 10. He didn't say, he says, basically, I said, I did not come to fling peace. It's the same word for flinging pearls before swine. It's not suddenly, bam, it's peace here. Snap of the fingers like Thanos or something, not really ridiculous like that. It's rather that the process of peace is there's a growth of peace of the increase of his government and peace. And as if government grows, peace grows as a result of more people being governed by Christ. And that's the way Warfield and others have pointed out, said, yeah, he's not going to fling peace suddenly because the earth doesn't deserve it. And that would simply confirm us in our sins and be able to go our pleasant way, sinning away. But God purifies us. He purifies the sons of Levi. And if he doesn't fling peace, the affliction is coming and division is coming. But the end game is peace, the total peace, but it had to go through these processes in order to get to that final peace at the end of time. And so we're all to be men of peace and Christ is the one who brings peace to anyway. He shall speak peace to the nations, Zechariah 9 verse 9 and 10. And his dominion will be from the sea to the sea, the river to the ends of the earth. That's a total dominion of Christ. And he's rules from heaven, not on earth. Hicking and lonely climbing Mount McKinley, so to entertain myself, I go to chummacassino.com. At Chumma Casino, I can play hundreds of online casino style games for free, like online slots, bingo, slingo and more. Plus, I get a daily login bonus. It's just too bad that up here, I don't have anyone to share my excitement with. Whoo hoo hoo hoo! 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And one day that prayer will be answered here in the world, but not this year, does it appears to me, serving up before the election. He's not famous nor lies that are flying around from all sides. So the upshot is, we need to trust God on these matters and get the word extraheated. And that's where Russia, where I keep saying that because they're associated in my thinking many times, but Warfield was very, very clear and he offers exegetical support for what he's saying. So if you want to dispute Warfield, you have to have what Boston called hand-to-hand exegetical combat with Warfield. But with that, we don't get. We get people simply saying, well, these verses contradict him. They'll quote from Second Thessalonians or something like that. And they don't even consult with Warfield, Warfield said about that passage. They simply think, I got a gotcha. I got a jail free card for my pessimism. It's not true. It's already been covered, but you don't know it. And therefore, you proclaim something that has already been defeated. And why is this the case? Because we keep forgetting our previous victories. We are not building on what was went before. We keep going back and starting reinventing wheels eschatologically. And that's not necessary. If you build on the best of the past, you probably will get a little bit farther forward for the next generation. But if we keep having to go back to the dig of foundation with a teaspoon, we're going to spend a lot of time rediscovering Warfield year after year, when in fact, we should have indicated that thinking into our minds. Like, we did the pessimist stuff. The pessimistic stuff has been integrated into our minds. Why would it be so hard to swap out a position that actually is more rigorously biblical upon examination? No, I'm not assuming everyone is hearing me right now. It's going to accept that. But if you look at it, be brilliant about it, you might be shocked and surprised what you missed in the scriptures specifically. Warfield wouldn't say, follow me. He would say, follow me as far as I'm faithful to the scriptures in expositing them. And espionage position will approach the scripture that defeats error and misunderstandings. We don't want to have that perpetual kindergarten that's described in Isaiah 511. The amount of time you should be teachers already, but said you're back to the basics, the rheumens. And that's modern Christen. I'm always going back to the rheumens. I always arguing things over and over again. And not progressing. And so Christian then did enter a kind of a second childhood. I think after the 19th century, we weren't prepared for all the things that hit us. Warfield was there at least batting away challenges from the higher textual criticism and things like that. He was fantastic at protecting the church from these fiery assaults from the evil one in the realm of academia and attacks on the trustworthiness of scripture. Now that we have a trustworthiness of scripture in our minds, what are we doing with what we have? Well, we need to build upon it. And I think that's the key. Isaiah 4812, those who shall who are of me shall be of me shall build. This will build the old waste places, right? And then raise up the foundations of main generations. You shouldn't have to raise those foundational generations all the time. You should raise them and then build the house and then finally the roof, right? The capstone is second Zebra rubber bull was told. Has it built the foundation and will build put the capstone in place with shouting, crying, grace, grace unto it? And that's why we despise the day of small things. Warfield comes around to that verse all the time, despise not the day of small beginnings, right? And why is that? Well, he points out that the seven eyes of God are on the plumb line, that little tin stone on a string that's used to see if the temple is being built straight, so the builders would take it around. It's the cheapest tool in the kit. But Zebra Raya informs everybody that God's eyes intentions on that one cheap stone that you looked overlooked, but that's used to build God's kingdom straight. And God's therefore in the work, even if you don't recognize it. And that's what's happening today. God's in the work when people are faithful. I take small forms. I'm home schooling my children. I pull them out of the public school. That's already in advance of the kingdom over the kingdom of darkness. And God's in that work, his eyes are on that plumb line too. And so God is working through his people. And it would be wonderful to wake them up to the privileges that they have. And that was what Warfield was doing. He's saying we are giving away all these points to the enemy, because we don't believe we can, victories in view. But we're not more than conquerors. We basically justify the defeats with more of the kind of victories. We don't need defeats that are being painted as victories when they're not. I think we don't have to evade things. So that's why knowledge of Warfield's position is important. Up until about 1984, when Betner wrote his revised edition of The Millennium, nobody was really supporting the Warfield position. He alone in the earlier version of the book, he actually mentions it, but then says, "But we all know that that's too optimistic to be true. And we would wish it were true. But we don't think so. However, I gave a full quote as a witness. I gave a full quote because I need to give such an important thinker the space to say his peace here. He's been dead 35 years at that point. But nonetheless, Betner thought it was important to include the entire Warfield position, even though he was pessimistic about it. The more that he and I communicated, the more he realized he was premature in his setting Warfield aside. And he rewrote the whole Millennium and edited it out and took all the pessimistic stuff out and made it more of a Warfield-friendly version in 1984. And that was something that PNR, the publisher, was surprised at that no one ever goes back and revise his entire book to fix the eschatology in it from Standard Post's Mill to Warfield Post's Mill. But Betner did that. And that started kind of like the log jam started to loosen and more and more people started to become more serious about Warfield because Betner, by changing his book, said this was important enough for me to re-edit this book and chew it up and spit it back out in a newer form that doesn't give away points to and say we're really on the road to an ultimate defeat at the end. And he too used the phrase, "It's an amylenial hangover. We've grabbed this feature of amylenism, pessimistic feature, at the end of history and kind of welded on to the backside of post-millenism. So it's merely a matter of whatever progress we make is going to be reversed because that's the way pessimism works. But Warfield was the one person who gave the way out and it wasn't because we wanted to look for a way out, but because the Scripture never actually justified that pessimistic outlook in the first place. So there are those who have then taken that and started to run with it and say, "Yeah, that's right. Francis and Agile, for example, you came to the same conclusion and a little bit after that, one of the same kind of influences, the victory is going to be total." And Rushdoni Swift shifted from the older post-mill to a Warfield post-mill saying it'll be a complete victory of the Gospel on Earth to the last man standing. So this position started to reintroduced among the post-mill academics, those who weren't afraid to call themselves post-mill because they were the laughingstock because they didn't walk by sight, they walked by faith and nobody could see. Everyone staggered at the promise. Why would Abraham think the 90-year-old woman would have a baby? But he didn't stagger at that promise. Why should we stagger the promise that God is all powerful and can pull these things off and that there were scriptures that allegedly teach negative, a very dim, dark view of the historic future that have been misconstrued or put in the wrong time frame? That's where Warfield becomes important because he basically says, "We cleaned house away from some of the pessimism, but we needed to get rid of all of it because it's not justified scripturally. The scripture actually supports the notion of a completely sad world at the end of time. And the more you look at it and the passages that are decisive and teach it, you find it conclusive. So that's why Warfield is important to this day." Yeah. So as I'm listening to this, two thoughts. Number one, and I'll talk to you about this after we get done recording, but I'm wondering why there has not been an updated edition pulling together a lot of Warfield's writings. For those who were in the publishing world that may watch this show, I think that's a great question. We'll talk after we get done recording on that one, but looking toward Warfield, though, it's so fascinating. You mentioned that you have to deal with the exegetical arguments. One of the big pushbacks against a lot of, especially modern post-millennial thought is that there is not strong scholarship behind it. There's not strong exegetical outworkings that are walked through in that. Number one, I find that untrue even for modern scholarship. I think that there is some great scholarship going on right now. Ken Gentry just released a, oh, 1800 page, I think a commentary on the book of Revelation from a post-millennial angle. So you've got like modern scholarship on that, but if you were to look to, because again, from Eschatology Matters here at this channel, one of our hopes has been that we can move toward more eschatological unity, specifically within the reformed world, but in general within Christendom, that we can move toward more of a nice, see-a-moment even of eschatological unity, not unanimity on every single point, but a clarity of vision that we've had at so many points throughout church history that we might be able to gain that with a vision toward the future. I think one of the things you have to deal with in order to accomplish even some modicum of eschatological unity within Christendom is to deal with the post-millennial arguments of those that have come from the past. Many are familiar with the Puritan arguments. They've read the Puritan hope by Ian Murray or something like that. They may be familiar with maybe some of the second generation coming out of that old Princeton crowd. They're familiar with the Marcellus kicks or some of those other fine scholars that came out, but it's dealing with not only the Hodges, but with BB Warfields writings. I feel like that is just indispensable just for a clear-headedly fair engagement of eschatological issues at this point in time. So I appreciate you bringing all of that to bear. I'm thinking toward there. There was one thing I wanted to make sure we touched on that I don't think we've touched on this one yet, but one of the things that Warfield talks about is eschatological realism. I found this really interesting and this may seem sort of passé to you, but just to kind of frame why I think this is worth engaging is that we've had a lot of interaction in our day with what's called full-preterism or thorough going-preterism or hyper-preterism. You can push that a lot of different ways, but essentially those views that would deny a future bodily resurrection of the dead, a future bodily return, visible return of our Lord Jesus Christ, a future day of final judgment before the throne, those sort of orthodox beliefs that the Christian faith has confessed for 2000 years. Warfield seems to push back pretty firmly against that sort of thing and say, "No, there's a realism toward what we're looking at." Would you touch on that just a little bit as well? Because I think this might help some of those who especially online are familiar with those arguments that in our day are cropping up quite a bit again. I think one should consider that, under say, an amylennial view, you would not be able to distinguish much between the consummation right before it versus today, except maybe things are a bit worse, maybe they're a bit better, maybe they're at the same, because the official position is as equal as 50/50 between good and evil. It's a stalemate, perpetual stalemate, and what full-preterism does is make that a truly perpetual stalemate, because if you understand that there is no climactic point in Scripture where the victory would be manifest in the world, then you could blend that into a full-preter. It's time for today's Lucky Land Horoscope with Victoria Cash. Life's gotten mundane, so shake up the daily routine and be adventurous with a trip to Lucky Land. You know what they say. Your chance to win starts with a spin, so go to luckylandslots.com to play over a hundred social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Get lucky today at luckylandslots.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void were prohibited by law, 18-plus terms of condition supply. Terrorist position is not a big hop, skip, and a jump. It's a fairly close distance. You simply say what things are going to continue as they are. We've already passed whatever thing is, and evil persist forever, et cetera, et cetera, that everything that was supposed to, the big things that we were talking about orthodox-wise, happened back in 70 AD. Well, that position, that full-preter's position, is pretty much obliterated if you adopt the Warfield position. Why is that? Because we're heading to a specific goal that's measurable, and that measurable goal is the conversion of war and war in the world until all of God's enemies are made as footstool, and only at all, not just any equivocation. So we're taking all the words exactly the way they are intended to be meant in Psalm 110, and in, say, Hebrews 10, 13, that he must remain in the heavens, henceforth expecting till all his enemies be made as footstool, all, not some, panta, all of them. And so, and then, at that point, then even death itself is destroyed. We can even argue something even more interesting that the work of does is that the victories of Christ don't just extend to a justified population at the end of the world, but that sanctification takes huge leaps and bounds forward, too, so that ultimately he came to get the law kept. And Warfield's rendering of Matthew 518 is fascinating, it's based on the writings of Meyer and other previous 19th-century Greek experts saying what's really going on there is that until heaven and earth pass away, not one and a giant or tittle shall fail from the law until all of them be accomplished, in other words, till all of them being walked in, until they're all observed. So the actual in-game is even something more profound, even in this conversion of the world, which is a prerequisite, because unless you're saved, you can't keep the law at all, right? You can't love God unless you're saved, but a saved world actually creates the precondition bird. In fact, sanctification can go to the next level, where God's law starts to be kept on a greater and greater scale by a redeemed population, and heaven and earth cannot pass away until all the law has been kept. So here we have an interesting passage in Matthew 518, the literal sense of it, actually, that it's not talking about the end of the law, talking about the end of the world universe, what it would take for it to pass away, and it would be the law being kept, and therefore Christ came to get the law kept, and it's not being kept right now. So we have a goal ahead of us, but when it is kept, some amazing things will be happened, and the men that living cannot die, and then the dead rise. So when you look at Warfield's position, it actually embraces a whole comprehensive picture that what the Scripture has been talking about since Genesis is forward, but they're all incompatible with philiporetism, because that means we're heading toward a goal of a converted world minimally, and arguably, at least briefly, a sanctified world, right? His view is that once everyone should, there should be a moment when everyone's keeping the law of God in the world, events will stay not. In other words, now the triggered, Lynch-Pinsman pulled, the triggers pulled, and boom, there's no real more reason for the dead in Christ to wait. They are suddenly resurrected at that point, and the great judgment occurs, and eternity is entered in at that point. But in Warfield's position, we actually have measurable goals that we can say today, we've not reached that yet. We have not converted the entire world yet, let alone anything close to a sanctified world. Therefore, Warfield is giving us a target that's a necessary concomitant of what the Scriptures teach. You would take seriously passages like John 1232, "And I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, shall draw all men unto myself." At such a point as all men living are drawn unto Christ, he has not achieved his goal yet, but when he achieves his goal, then something happens. So, the fact that this sets forward in time an event that we know for a fact hasn't yet to happen, but it's been promised, this means that the full preparation position that everything has been fulfilled is in error on this point. And the more people absorb, say, what Warfield is teaching, or even parts of it, sufficient to say that there is an in-game here. It's not just the second coming, but progress on earth that would indicate that would be very different than stalemate forever. In other words, progress toward the entire leavening of the world, and then beyond whatever that might be, that Warfield has nailed it. Because, again, he provides exegetical grounds for this. He goes through the texts. He explains Romans 11 to this end. He unboxed through the passages in Hebrews in 1 Corinthians 15, I'll read the 58th verse, and on the importance of them, and why they're based in Isaiah specifically. So, everything is of a piece. We have a network of things between old and New Testament that all mutually support each other comprehensively, and Warfield brings these things out. That's why I think there are folks coming to me and say, can I help you put together, or can we put together an anthology of Warfield's eschatology? So, those who are catching the vision saying, maybe we should do this, or maybe we can collaborate with others since it's public domain, there's no reason why you couldn't. The problem is no one wants to, because people simply say, oh, that's a Warfield we can ignore him. Safely ignored in most people's view. I think this is a danger. It's not safe to ignore someone who provides a biblical image of Jesus that's defensible. At that point, you might say, I at least need to take a look at it. So, if I'm going to disagree with it, I better at least understand it properly and fully. That's not how we go. We are shallow. Like I said, we're in that second childhood, and even scholarly disputes tend to have a very immature tone to them. That's why we try to be conciliatory and ironic in our approach to teaching it. We don't expect people to change over. Butner said, these changes can take centuries sometimes, theological change. You can step a fingers, and you certainly, the reformation was over. It took some time to negotiate those rapids as it were the big changes, and the resistance to the changes, because there are those who will get a rice bowl kicked over. If I have books out there that teach doctrine X, I'll give you an example. A pre-millennial scholar like G. Campbell Morgan, he has a bunch of books out there that are pre-millennial. He came to the conclusion pre-millennialism was an error, especially the dispensational form. But by that point, his books were still being published by Fleming Ravel. He was very sorry to hear that. Same thing with Murray. He adopted a post-millennial position during the end of his life, very strongly so. And that his writings tended to be amylennial and pessimistic, but there was no time to redo that work, even though he had to change a conviction. So, there's a younger generation coming up who is aware of Warfield, and who wants to put it in a consumable package, where it's all in one place, where you can get to it and you can make notes in the margin. You can look up his references, because he's sitting on the shoulders of giants too, all the way back to Owen, all the way back to the church fathers, even to Athanasius. And we would benefit from that background, that deep background that he is able to synthesize for us and pass to the next generation. We've simply ignored it now for 103 years. He died in 1921. So, the time to reverse this trend away from Warfield is now, in my opinion. He's too often dismissed and ignored. He needs to be engaged fairly and maturely. There should really be a conference about his stuff so that there can be presentations and debates so that we have the benefit of the cross-currents, the exchange of ideas, the iron sharp-burning iron. Because some of these things first glanced, I thought they were bizarre. You know, I'll admit to my due to every reader and listener here, when I first encountered them, they didn't pass the initial smell test. But it's because I didn't really recognize the scriptures were behind it so strongly, and I have actually had picked up an inaccurate position. It had a lot of reformed heritage. I have a book here just to write it in today's mail, which is the fourth issue of a systematic reform system methodology, I think, by Biki and Somali. I can tell you, I just checked the eschatology section over, and it's pretty much the usual amylennial material, very little integration of Warfield's position in detail. Some citations of scriptures say, obviously this can't, this is a death knell here for post-moleism. I look at the verses that they cited and said, "Those are all been dealt with." And you didn't even acknowledge the exegesis that would set aside your interpretation of these passages, and certainly challenged them, but I think actually set them aside, if they're allowed a fair chance to fight open battle, open hand, if you will, and engage. But we're not getting that engagement. I think people are saying, "I need to protect my book." See, if you would Kelsey and we participated in the publication of Gentry's new revelation commentary, I got to write the forward to that volume you alluded to. We're not partial-preterists, like Kent is, but we're very respectful of it. We're sympathetic critics, and we think that anything that advances the eschatological argument forward and helps us get our arms around it better and makes the best case for that position is good. We want to advance scholarship, not retard it. So we helped publish it. We contributed to the cost of the publication of the book, not because we believe he's correct. We think we politely demure from that, but we think it's an important book, and therefore, we needed to put our money where our mouth is when we say we support scholarship, even if it goes against our own direction, because we don't know. We see through a class directly as does everyone, but we're not getting this benefit with a warfield. No one is going through the mat and saying, "Even though I disagree with the warfield, I'll go ahead and put it in." Last guy he did that was Bettner in 1957. It hasn't happened since. So we kind of had to fight to get Warfield a foothold in the modern eschatological discussions, and that's unfortunate, because he's probably one of the best writers in the clear thinker too. As you've encountered, he's very nuanced. He's careful. He doesn't overstate. Sometimes I wish he would, but he doesn't. He's fair in other words, but we're not being fair with Warfield. He's fair to the scriptures. He's fair in presentations, things else, but we're not fair in evaluating him. And I think that's to our loss. If he has to be left to another generation, well, so be it. God let another generation wander for 40 years in the desert and let their bones bleach because they weren't fit to cross over the Jordan. I don't want us to be that generation, so I'm doing what I can, as among others, to try to share the news as you're doing, that there's something more here that puts an extra octane in the tank of the post-millial position of a victory, even though he might be technically beyond millennial, but his view of our obligations and crisis victories through the gospel exceed anything that most post-mill do, because most post-mills today are not eschatological universalists. They believe that it will not be to the last man. There'll still be significant minority that won't be saved. In Warfield's view, that's not even possible. It can even fly. There's too many scriptures that absolutely oppose in that position. And if you think there aren't any such scriptures, you don't know your Bible. I've got to encourage so many people, for example, that would tell me, I've read the Bible through and through 12 times. I say, oh, what do you think about the circumcision of fruit trees and that always stumps them, because they didn't read with understanding. So better, five words that are understood in 1,000 that aren't. And that's how we are with eschatology, in particular. And as you know well, too many people come to the faith, I think, through the wrong end of the telescope. They come because of the eschatology lecture and all of a sudden boom. They're Christians. They're converted. They want to avoid the great tribulation. And lo and behold, they have a whole bunch of stuff to have to sort out. So the thing that got them into the faith ends up being something that they see in a very different light come several years of study, particularly older scholars, right? There's a reason why Lindsey said, well, Calvin and Luther were in darkness about prophecy. If I announced that someone's in darkness about prophecy, you're not going to study him, are you? You're going to stick with Lindsey. And that's a mistake, by the way, because he was wrong in every prediction so far that I can see. He predicted a war between Egypt and Israel. And the next thing that happened was a peace treaty. So these are unreliable guides, blind guides. But what do they do? They tell you not to listen to A, B, or C, right? And so as we have people saying, Warfield is mistaken, don't bother reading him. He's blinded by some false notion of hope. No, the only thing blinds him is the scriptures. And he calls them as a see him. And that's his flaw. And that's a good flaw to have in my opinion, just to stick with the scripture at all costs. And that's what Warfield did. And that probably contributed to the general neglect of him in interviewing century. But I think that's going to reverse over time. Martin, this is, this is fascinating. But we should probably have an eye toward wrapping it up. Where can people, as we wait for kind of hopefully some more, some more traction on a sort of anthology or pulling together of some of his works, where can people find Warfield? I've got a couple of things in mind. But where would you suggest somebody's trying to brush up on some people Warfield? What's a good place to look and at the research? Online, you get some good resources on monurgism.com. To their credit, they have attempted to describe some of the material. You'll get Warfield's view on the millennium and the apocalypse there. I'm not sure the prophecies of St. Paul have been transcribed yet. But if they are, they'd be available there. Another good one is Sermon, the savior of the world. It's one on, it's actually a collection. He did a sermon on the Lamb of God, an exposition of John, the first gospel, where behold the Lamb of God who would take it the way the sin of the world, and shows that that actually is all to be taken extremely seriously. He is in fact taking away the sin of the world. That process will complete until the sin has been totally and utterly taken away out of this world and it will no longer encumber it and infect it. But it's not something that's the snap of the finger thing. It's a process that he is set in motion to remove it. Those are some good sources. Also, the books, if you have a budget and you can get these things used, the better book would be called "Biblical Doctrine." It's part of the 10 volume Oxford set. It has his discussions on the millennium, on the prophecies of St. Paul, a discussion of the Jesus' mission according to his own testimony, where we get his understanding of Matthew 5, 18, Matthew 10, 34, Luke 19 and 14. Also, some fascinating passages there that are indicative of the work of Christ in the prison era. So that would be, and then, there is the two volumes of shorter works. The first volume is edited by meter, M-E-E-T-E-R, the shorter writings of Warfield. The first volume has some excellent stuff on the Antichrist, the gospel in the Second Coming, and they're shorter easy to understand, but boy does he open up the scriptures. This is one example where he talks about the reconciliation of the world to himself from 2 Corinthians 5. He says, "Here we must take every word in its full sense." So he must be able to gloss through those words quickly and read it as a quick sense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He says, "Let's take each individual's reward and give each individual word the rate that Paul gave it." Then you see that what's being talked about is the reconciling of the entire world to Christ, and that we are part of that process as his ambassadors of reconciliation. So there's a mission being given to us to reconcile the whole world to Christ, and Christ will in fact reconcile the entire world to himself through his blood, and that's being done progressively as the church does its job. And so Warfield opens up each of these passages in a fascinating way that they might be decisive. You can mock it, but you cannot actually contradict it scripturally. So those would be the places that would go monetism. Those particular books, the shorter writings of Volume One, Biblical doctrines. If you can't get Biblical doctrines, you might try Biblical and Theological doctrines, which are later five volumes set, and that's one of the five that is called the combined things, but you lost something. You lose the Millennium discussion, where he explains the Millennium in their little season. And then once you penetrate Warfield, then you start to look at his sources. Who is he quoting from? He's quoting from H.A.W. Meyer, the German exegee. He's quoting from William Milligan, the Scottish Presbyterian thinker, who did such great work on such great work on Revelation that he got to do the Baird Lectures twice. I think at the time, he was the first person to ever be invited twice to do the Baird Lecture. And so indicating how the scope of Milligan's writings. And Warfield uses Milligan and just does some fine-tuning on some of it, but basically says he's correct. That what people are looking for in the thousand years is actually to be found in the little season. And Milligan gives the analysis out of Revelation how this comes about and how is the natural underway to understand it based on the internal cross-references inside the book, inside the prophecy. So those would be the places that we would go is that there's some books, but also Monogism has done us some human service in providing some transcripts. And then I could say, if you can get a copy of the 1998 Journal of Christian Reconstruction, I have an article there which synthesizes a bunch of this material in one place. It's slightly dated. It doesn't have the latest material that is available now. There's some more thinkers that come out in the meantime. You have Richard Baucom and his commentary on Revelation, indicative of a total victory of Christ too, that I can see, at least in the passage I've looked at. You know, other people like Tonstad that seem to be at least dancing on the edge of that in his discussion of several of the passages in his Revelation commentary. And there's a lot of commentaries in Revelation, plus 666 of them, the last count. And imagine that creates for some variety of viewpoint. If someone asks me, "Who do I like?" I say, "I actually use different resources and cull from the best of them to put together something because I think we don't have it yet." For a partial-preterious commentary, I think gentry is probably going to stand the test of time. We'll be seeing potentially Dr. Bunsen's posthumous version that the Galipus were found from, for those who, like, viewed that this book was written before '70 AD and describes the Vespasianic War. We feel that it is not correct, but like I said, we've helped co-publish the book because we believe scholarship needs to be advanced by every plausible argument on any side, because we haven't closed "grank" on eschatology yet. And therefore a pre-believer, some specialists who's homeschooling and advancing the cause of Christ is more my brother than a postmill who's sitting on his hands, because he's at least acting like he's serious about what God told him to do. He's serious about God's duties. So to me, you can be a functional postmill and be anything else, and I'm going to be much happier with you than someone who simply checked out for the battle and wants to eat the popcorn. I'm not here for the popcorn, neither are you. Hey, man. Mo, no, thank you for the resources. Martin, this has been super encouraging and super interesting. So thank you for the work you guys are doing. Anyplace anybody can keep up with what you guys have coming out through Calcedon and others. Yeah, yeah. Calcedon.edu. All our books are available for free online. If you're willing to sit there and read it as a PDF or a scriptee, we make it all available. We're doing, you know, Betner did something very similar. He removed copyright protections from his books because he says, "For the God's kingdom, I'm not going to sit here and try to make money off of it." So too, all our books are available too. There's a great book by Rushton. He called "God's Plan for Victory." It's actually a book lit. The meaning of post-malism. And I think it shows what the implications of a post-malial view are in terms of application in our daily lives. That's useful. And of course, that JCR, the Journal of Christian Construction I alluded to, is also available for free online. So if you don't want to buy a copy, you can read it online. And that article I wrote there is called "Reconstructing Post-malism." So it's 1998. Journal of Christian Reconstruction is called "A Symposium on Eschatology." And I do a lot there to push forward Warfield's views by name and attribution and just explain how important they were and how they were neglected and how they came back onto front and center through the efforts of yours truly here and Dr. Betner and then Rushtonie and others who suddenly the coin dropped and the light came on and said, "You know, we've been remiss in dealing with our brother Benjamin here. Benjamin Warfield had a lot of things to say exactly that we've ignored into our parallel and to our detriment and it's our loss. And it's the loss I think we need to recover from sooner to the better. But at least carefully, you know, let's just be careful with it. Jesus, we don't want to be reckless. We don't want to shift gears fast. Let me just point this out. I've been teaching this often with hostile audiences, but the people who became the most convinced took 10 years to change. Those who changed within a day or two, they didn't have deep convictions. They were easily liquid in their views and they didn't stick with it and they danched it to something else that sounded exciting to them. So it seems that if you have strong convictions, it might take longer for you to change a position, but then once you change a position, it's because you're convinced you have a better handle on it and therefore you will cleave to it more soundly and you'll be able to build your life on it, something that you're clinging to with that. So strong convictions sometimes means rejecting a new idea at first hearing, but being influenced by it over time and saying, you know, more look into it, the more I look at it, the more I'm starting to see it and it starts to voice its voice and you finally say, you know, I think I'm going to be in the process of theological change growth really. I hope they hope we're not working backwards, but I hope it's that we're moving forward and a simple referendum, right? And so that's the goal. And we can reformers katologies too, but I'm not calling for people from an instant change after all some of the things I've said are quite astonishing. If you haven't heard them before, if you had heard them before, you understand where they come from and you understand perhaps how they're developed eschatologically or energetically. And that's what we have to always go back to. Let's say at the scripture, and you get our best tools out to extract the meaning and make sure we have it in context and that there's not other considerations that need to be factored in. But I think on whole, the position of Warfield will bear up well if given a full hearing, it just never gets the full hearing. Oh, man. Well, Martin Martin Silverady, thank you so much for joining us. This has been encouraging. And yeah, just thank you for sharing just some of the some of the work you guys have been going through, but also just this glimpse end to be Warfield. I hope this is I hope this is helpful to people and that maybe we can recover some of, like you said, some of those some of those treasures we've laid by the wayside that we can do well to pick up and learn from. So thank you again for joining us today. Thank you for the invite. Appreciate it. [music] Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. 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