Father, we're thankful for just an opportunity to gather in freedom, to study your word, worship you. I pray you'll be with everything today from dawn till dusk here at Sugar Land Bible Church. I pray that you'll take these studies in your word to apply them to the needs of your people. We're thankful, Lord, that the Scripture has a very high claim. It promises to equip us for every good work. So we just ask, Lord, that the Word would do its work today here at Sugar Land Bible Church, both in the Sunday school hour and the main service that follows and in all the classes that are meeting, even as now I am speaking. We desperately need that illuminating ministry of the Spirit whereby the Holy Spirit takes the things of God and makes them applicable to us. In preparation for that ministry, Lord, we're just gonna take a few moments of silence to do personal confession before you, if need be, understanding that our position in you never changes. But we can do things in our natural selves that can alienate fellowship. And when that happens, we cannot receive from you the way you want to give to us. So we'll just take a few moments at this time. We remain grateful, Lord, for your provision for us and the comprehensiveness of that provision. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name, God's people said, amen. Well, let's take our Bibles today and open them to the book of Zechariah chapter 14 and verse four. Zechariah chapter 14 verse 4. And I don't know, probably over three weeks ago we completed our teaching on first and second Thessalonians. And so what we've moved into now during the Sunday school hour is a topical study. on the whole subject of neo-Calvinism versus the Bible. So in the first lesson together, I talked about how Calvinism has been a blessing in a lot of ways. But then we moved into part two, which is what we're still in right now. Why are we critiquing neo-Calvinism? And basically, we're giving a series of reasons why we think this movement needs to be critiqued. It's sort of a movement that wants to go back to the teachings of the Protestant Reformers, and they, like Calvin, become the gold standard. And they're going back to the teaching of the Protestant Reformers, not just the good that they did, but everything they did. and they're bringing this aggressively into evangelical Christianity. You see a lot of this mentality in a group called Together for the Gospel. You see a lot of this mentality amongst young people who call themselves the young, the reformed, and the restless. And so it's almost, very sadly, it's almost become a test of fellowship you know, if you're not a Calvinist the way they define it, then you're irrelevant. So, that's why we're getting into the subject, and I was in the process of explaining the prophetic implications of what we call neo-Calvinism. I mean, what happens in circles where, or in churches, that will completely hitch their wagon to these Reformers like, Well, one of the things that happens is there's an automatic de-emphasis of Bible prophecy. You'll hardly hear anything in their churches about Bible prophecy. And that kind of stands to reason because one of their heroes, Martin Luther, a man who did a lot of good, basically said, and I showed you this last week, that the book of Revelation is not even an inspired book. So if that's the mindset, obviously a church following him wouldn't say much about the book of Revelation. And I was showing you how Calvin, John Calvin, who lived a little after the time of Luther, They lived the same general time period. They're both considered Protestant reformers. Took passages of scripture and just completely and totally mishandled them, prophetic sections of scripture. I showed you how Calvin did this in the book of Amos, chapter nine, verse 13. I showed you how he did this in Isaiah, chapter 35. Those were very clear millennial passages, and he completely obscures their meaning. And let me just pick it up right there and show you how he treated Zechariah 14 in verse four. You all know Zechariah 14 in verse four, right? It says there, if your eyes are good at the top of the screen, you can see it, or else, worst comes to worst, you could look at it in your Bible. It says his feet, that's the Messiah's feet, shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof towards the east and towards the west. So a normal reading of that passage is that Jesus is coming back at the end of the seven-year tribulation period. His feet are gonna touch planet Earth. and then the Mount of Olives is gonna be, you know, severed from east to west. It's kind of interesting, there's actually a fault line, I've been told, on the Mount of Olives, waiting to split at any time. It's just waiting for Christ's feet to touch it. So that's how we would understand a passage like this, but I just wanna give you a flavor of how John Calvin treated this passage and others. He writes in his commentary on Zechariah, he says, for as we are dull and entangled in earthly thought, our minds can hardly rise up to heaven, though the Lord with a clear voice invites us to himself. The prophet then, in order to aid our weakness, adds a vivid representation. Now what does he mean here when he says the prophet in order to aid our weaknesses? What he's saying there is that we can't really understand what this passage means. So God is kind of communicating it to us at the simplest level. But at the end of the day, what it says is not what God meant. That's called accommodation. You know, we're all kind of at the kindergartner level. You know, we haven't learned, maybe we've learned to add and subtract, but we haven't learned multiplication and division. You know, maybe we've learned how to write some words down, but we certainly don't know how to write a sentence. or a paragraph, let alone a whole book. And God knows we're at that simple level, and so he just said, well, when I'm coming back, my feet are gonna touch the Mount of Olives and it's gonna split. But we all know, wink, wink, wink, that's not what God meant. That's called accommodation. And Calvin, it's funny, people put Calvin on a pedestal, he gets like a free pass on all these things. It's like people don't even wanna bring to the surface what the man actually said and believed about Bible prophecy. Which to me is troubling if you have a movement that wants to hitch its wagon completely and totally to John Calvin. Stands to reason that they'd bring back all this other junk without realizing it. So he says, the prophet then, in order to aid our weaknesses, adds a vivid representation, as though God stood before their eyes. Stand, he says, shall his feet, let's see, stand, he says, shall his feet on the Mount of Olives. He does not here promise a miracle such as even the ignorant might conceive it to be literal. So if you take this prophecy literally, Like me, for example, he's calling you there ignorant, because you don't understand this accommodation mindset that God is allegedly using. Which, by the way, in my mind, makes God a liar. If God says something, it means something different. Isn't one of the commandments, thou shalt not bear false witness? But this is typical Calvin in prophecy. Nor does he do this in what follows when he says the mount shall be rent in half to the east and to the west. In other words, you can't take this as an actual separation physically on the Mount of Olives. He says, this has never happened. He's right there, it has never happened. That's because Jesus is gonna make it happen. This has never happened, that mount has never been rent, but as the prophet could not, under those grievous trials which might have overwhelmed the minds of the godly a hundred times, have extolled the power of God. without employing a highly figurative language. He therefore accommodates, that's the key word. He therefore accommodates himself, as I have said, to the capacity of our flesh. It doesn't mean what it says, but God had to explain it that way, because that's the best people could understand. Now Calvin, as I'll show you, did not invent this method of interpretation. He largely got it from a man that lived over a thousand years before him named Augustine. But he carte blanche took a lot of Augustine's stuff. In some cases, it's almost blatant plagiarism. and brought it into the Protestant movement in Christianity. So the churches that started from the Protestant movement, even to this day, because they took these kinds of teachings and fossilized them, They made some good progress against Roman Catholicism, but then they took the progress and they fossilized it into creeds and confessions, like the Westminster Confession. And they kind of assumed that there was no further ground to be recaptured from Augustinian Roman Catholic allegorical interpretation. So they took some good things, but then they brought a lot of bad things into their churches. So you can go to some of their churches today and this same mindset prevails. It goes right back to their progenitor. So when people are venerating Calvin the way the New Calvinists do, that to me is bothersome. How about the 1,000 year kingdom that's coming? You guys believe in the 1,000 year kingdom that's coming? We actually did a whole study here on the coming kingdom. It took about 1,000 years to get through it all. But it's just a simple reading of the scripture. Jesus is coming back, Revelation 19. What follows will be a millennial kingdom, which will be 1,000 years. Premillennialism is what we call it. Jesus comes back first, then the millennial king comes second. and it will last 1,000 years. And that's spoken of in Revelation 20, verses one through 10. You might wanna turn there just for a minute. It says, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss, a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil, and Satan, and bound him for 1,000 years. That's the first of six references to 1,000 years. And he threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him so that he would not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were completed. After these things he, that's Satan, must be released for a short time. Then I saw thrones and they that sat on them and judgment was given to them and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God and those who had not worshipped the beast or his image and not received the mark on their forehead or on their hand and they came to life and they reigned for Christ for a thousand years. Are you guys keeping track? That's number three. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the 1,000 years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has part in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for 1,000 years. When the 1,000 years were completed, Satan will be released from his prison. will come out and deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for war. The number of them is like the sand of the seashore. And they came upon the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints in the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever. Now, you see these references to 1,000 years. Why would we take the 1,000 years at face value? Well, four reasons. John knows how to use indefinite concepts when he wants to. So back in verse 8, he describes a rebellion that's like a simile, in other words, the sand of the seashore. In verse 3, he uses the expression short time. So if John can say short time, how hard is it for him to say long time, right? But John doesn't do that. He gives you a specific number and he repeats it by my count six times. And it's not just the letter or noun years that's significant, it's the fact that it's attached to a number. We would call this like an ordinal numerical modifier, kind of like what you see in Genesis chapter one, first day of creation, second day, third day, a number attached to the Hebrew noun yom. And when you see that construction, every time it's used in the Bible, it's always literal, every single time. Number plus year or years is a literal time period. So why would it be non-literal here? Beyond that, if this number 1,000 is not literal, then what do you do with every other number in the book of Revelation? The floodgates are open and you can make up whatever you want. But the book of Revelation is filled with literal numbers. Two witnesses, 7,000 people, four angels, seven angels, 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from each tribe, 42 months, 1,260 days. I mean, if 1,000 doesn't mean 1,000 in Revelation 20, then you could just do whatever you wanted with every other number as well. And it is true, the book of Revelation has symbolic content to it. I mean, even here, the dragon is defined as the devil. But when the book of Revelation wants to be understood non-literally, it gives you like a little descriptive phrase. So for example, over in Revelation 17 verse 18, the harlot riding the beast. I mean, who is this harlot? Is this harlot literal? No, because he says at the very end of the chapter, chapter 17 verse 18, the woman, the harlot you saw, is the great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. So there's a clue that the harlot is not to be understood literally, but it represents something. Nothing like this happens with the phrase a thousand years. It's just a straightforward expression. John never says, you know, the thousand years really mean something else. So Robert Thomas in his commentary on the book of Revelation, which I think this is really good commentary, probably one of the best we have from our camp, He observes that no number in Revelation is verifiably a symbolic number. So with all of that being said, how did John Calvin treat the thousand years? Well, this is from his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he wrote at the ripe old age of 26. If somebody finds something I said or wrote at age 26, and praise God, I said and wrote things at age 26, but that was pre-internet, okay? No one knows they're out there. But if you ever find like a cassette tape, I mean the young people don't even know what a cassette tape is, but if you ever find one of those devices and you got something on it that I said at age 26, and people start making a religious movement out of it, I hope you'll rise up and condemn those people. Because that's in essence what people have done with Calvin. He's writing this at age 26. He's borrowing heavily from Augustine over a millennia earlier. And this is what he says about the thousand years. He says, but Satan, he uses the S word, Satan. And what he's saying is if you take this literally, you're under Satan's influence. I mean, this is John Calvin that everybody's venerating. But Satan has not only befuddled men's senses to make them bury with the corpses the memory of resurrection, he has also attempted to corrupt this part of the doctrine with various falsifications. Now, their fiction is too childish. either to need or be worthy of refutation. Why does he say childish? He says childish because we all understand that when God was speaking there, he wasn't intending to be understood literally. He just accommodated to the ignorance of the masses. He just wanted to communicate he's gonna be victorious over evil in the end, and so, yeah, he communicated in a way they would understand, because they're at the kindergarten level. But that's not really what God said. And if you take this at face value, then you're childish, and you're under the influence of Satan. And the apocalypse from which they, excuse me, undoubtedly drew a pretext for their error does not support them. For the number 1,000, which we've seen in Revelation, does not apply to the eternal blessedness of the church. So this has nothing to do with some kingdom age that's gonna manifest itself on planet Earth after Jesus comes back, but only to the various disturbances that awaited the church while still toiling here on Earth. Now that's the doctrine of amillennialism. Which is the idea that Jesus started the kingdom 2,000 years ago. And we're actually in the kingdom now. As my friend Thomas says, if this is the kingdom, I must be living in the ghetto section of town. But that's what amillennialism taught. That's what Augustine taught going all the way back to the fourth century. Calvin didn't invent the doctrine, but he's carrying it over. So in the Protestant Reform Movement, he corrected certain soteriological problems, but they never corrected this error. They just dragged it right on in to the Protestant Movement, and that's why their churches today think and teach this way. Those who assign the children of God a thousand years in which to enjoy the inheritance of the life to come do not realize how much reproach they are casting upon Christ and his kingdom. So those of you that are literalist, I mean, you're actually, in Calvin's mind, casting reproach on Jesus and the true kingdom, which we all know is happening in a spiritual sense now. So no restoration of Israel in the last days. That's why it's interesting, a lot of these churches standing in this tradition, I can think of two or three of them as I'm speaking, right now they're actually engaged in formal boycotts against Israel. They are participating in what's called BDS, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. trying to get the world to equate the nation of Israel with South Africa. You remember there was apartheid South Africa. The world logically and naturally rose up against that and boycotted goods there. And so when they pursue this BDS agenda, they want you to believe, well, Israel is doing just exactly the same thing. She's an apartheid nation. And if she's an apartheid nation, she's doing a really lousy job of it, by the way, because the Arab population within Israel has grown, not decreased, since 1948. And you can go to the Knesset and the Supreme Court, and you can see non-native people who aren't Israelis move to the highest positions in the land of Israel. Now, there's no apartheid state that would ever do that. In fact, under the Bush administration, they took a bunch of Ethiopian Jews, and these people are as black as black can be. They put them in planes, and they airlifted them out of Ethiopia to Israel because they were Jewish. Now, what kind of apartheid state does stuff like that? That doesn't even make any sense. Israel is racially diverse, pluralistic. I have a heart for Israel because of what God says about Israel in the last days, but what if I didn't have that interpretation of Scripture? And I think all of God's promises to Israel have been canceled, and I think this thousand-year kingdom where Jerusalem is gonna be the head and not the tail is all allegorical and it's happening right now. Well, if I thought that way, I'd probably be swept into the propaganda that's anti-Israeli today. And I may, God forbid, look at the Israelis as the Christ killers. when the truth of the matter is we're all Christ killers, when you think about it. Christ died for all of us. And I'd be involved in some church that's actually currently boycotting the state of Israel, which is increasing with all of the things that have happened in our world since October the 7th. With our campuses aflame with the idea from the river to the sea, the land of Palestine shall be free. If you have a Calvinistic eschatology, you're swept into Satan's propaganda. But if you have a non-Calvinistic eschatology, meaning you're actually interpreting what God says about the end literally, including the thousand years, then you have some kind of fortification for standing up against an anti-Israel mentality. So this is what you have in these Calvinistic circles. Here's a guy named Kenneth Gentry. I spent a lot of time on him, unfortunately. I wrote my master's thesis at Dallas Seminary against his interpretation of the beast, who he thinks is Nero. Okay, he doesn't believe in a future Antichrist. He's what you call a preterist. I wrote my doctoral dissertation against his interpretation of the harlot in Revelation 17, who he does not interpret as the literal city of Babylon. He thinks it's the city of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. And Kenneth Gentry is a very interesting guy. He's also the progenitor of a doctrine called Lordship Salvation. You guys already know a little something about that. Long before John MacArthur got his hands on Lordship Salvation, because John MacArthur didn't used to be a Lordship Salvationist. Lordship Salvation is the idea that you have to commit or be willing to commit in every area of your life to the Lordship of Christ to be justified before God, which takes the gospel of Jesus Christ and turns it into a man-made human work. It's no longer trusting in a gift provided by God to us. The focus is on what we do to get our foot in the front door, lordship salvation. John MacArthur probably did more than any other person I could think of to take the doctrine of lordship salvation and bring it into our circles, Bible church type circles. But long before John MacArthur got his hands on that doctrine, this guy Kenneth Gentry was academically developing it. So he's a key player not only in the area of eschatology, but he's a key player in the area of soteriology. And notice how he handles the thousand years. He's what you call a five-point Calvinist. I mean, he's hitching his wagon to John Calvin. John Calvin allegorized away the thousand-year kingdom. Is it any shock that Kenneth Gentry would do the same thing? This particular individual's Presbyterian. And I was invited to teach a Bible study once at a Presbyterian church when I lived in Southern California. I was so ignorant of all of these things. I think some people wanted me to teach there because they had heard something I did at another church and they said this would be great. at our church, and so I had to go in and schedule a meeting with the pastor, and he figured out where I was coming from, and he said, we can't have any of that heresy taught in our church. And he used the H word, heresy, dispensationalism. And I was a little bit taken aback by that, because I was sort of unfamiliar with all of these controversies. But what I'm saying is, when you look at it in retrospect, what they're saying is consistent, because Calvin himself, nor Luther, corrected these abuses. They just came out of Roman Catholicism, which they really didn't want to come out of to begin with. I mean, Luther and Calvin never wanted to start a Protestant movement. They were sort of trying to work on the inside to reform the church within. A brand new movement called the Protestant Movement was foreign to them. And so it wasn't until Luther and Calvin were kicked out of Roman Catholicism that they started the Protestant Movement. And when they started the Protestant movement, they brought into Protestantism some corrections that they had made in the area of salvation related to Roman Catholicism, but they never corrected these Augustinian eschatological abuses. In fact, when Luther in Wittenberg, Germany a little over 500 years ago posted his 95 thesis on the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany, I've actually been there, seen the door. It's now metal. It's been 500 years. He did it really, it's kind of like posting something on social media where you just want to start a conversation. He didn't know he would be called a heretic. He didn't know he'd be kicked out. He didn't know they were gonna give him the right foot of fellowship, because he was actually studying to be a Roman Catholic priest, as was Luther. So these guys are kicked out, and their thinking has changed in a few areas with Roman Catholicism, but their thinking is consistent in a lot of areas with Roman Catholicism. So they started the Protestant movement, and you can go into those churches today, and they'll be Protestant in some areas, but still Roman Catholic in other areas. So Kenneth Gentry writes, the proper understanding of the thousand year time frame in Revelation 20 is that it is representative of a long and glorious era. Well, why doesn't John say a long time then? And it is not limited to a literal 365,000 days. which I think is kind of strange there, because it should be 360,000 days, right? Because the Jewish year has 360 days on it, but I digress. The figure represents a perfect cube of 10, which is the number of quantitative perfection. I mean, all 1,000 years means, in his mind, is God wins. Perfect perfection. The number 10 times three. Which is kind of odd because I thought seven was the number of quantitative perfection. Now all of a sudden he's made 10 the number of quantitative perfection. You see the wiggle room that these guys have through their allegorical interpretation to convince people that the kingdom of God started in the first century? So this is neo-Calvinism. Here's another verse that is completely and totally mutilated in neo-Calvinistic circles. Let's go over to Matthew 24 verse 13. Jesus in the Olivet Discourse said this, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. Greek verb sozo. Now you can imagine what Calvinists do with that verse. They turn it into, you better make it to the end of your life in faith and works, in an upward ascent, or else you're not one of the elect. Well how many good works do I have to have, never defined? What about if I have doubts as a Christian? Never defined. But to prove you're one of the elect, you better be making it to the end of your life in belief and good works or else you can question whether you're one of the elect. Now, you teach that enough times and people start to second guess whether they're one of the elect. And it takes people and puts them in a emotionally bad place. In fact, there's an article you can find online by Minnerth and Meyer, two Christian psychologists. I'm not crazy about their integration of psychology with the Bible, but they have an article out published probably the late 1990s. I think the title of it is The Psychological Effects of Lordship Salvation. And they're saying this doctrine that all of these people, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, all of these people are teaching all of the time, that you better make it to the end of your life in good works to prove you're one of the elect, this is having a massive emotional and psychological impact on God's people. You now have a generation that really does, they don't accept their birthright, something that God wants to give them as their birthright, the assurance of salvation. I mean, I know 100% I'm saved. It's not that I don't have up days and down days, but I understand that my salvation has nothing to do with that. It has to do with what Jesus did for me. And I received what he did as a gift. Now, if I didn't have that kind of theology, I put all the focus on me instead of Jesus, then yeah, one day I think I'd be saved, the next day I think I wouldn't be saved. And you hear this stuff on TV or radio enough times, and there's a verse, they quote a verse, right? He who endures to the end will be saved. And you're the kind of Christian that hasn't been taught correctly. Yeah, there's gonna be some psychological impact on people who don't understand their birthright, the assurance of salvation. What is this verse talking about? The one who endures will be saved. Well, the three rules of real estate are location, location, location. The three rules of Bible study are context, context, context. All you gotta do is take that verse that your favorite preacher just let slip out of his mouth and put it back in its context and you'll see through this very quickly. The word save here is not talking about going to heaven when you die. Of course, the word saved elsewhere does mean that, but not here. The word save is not a technical word, meaning a word that's used the same way every single time it's used. It has nuanced meanings, and to look at the meaning, you have to insert the verse back in its context. You remember when Jesus and Satan got into a scripture quoting battle there in Luke 4? And Satan told Jesus to throw himself from the temple and the angels would catch him. And then Satan even quoted to Jesus the Bible. He even quoted the book of Deuteronomy. Wow, that's impressive. And then Jesus responded with another quotation from the book of Deuteronomy. Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test. What he was doing is he was calling Satan on the carpet for taking a verse, Psalm 91 verse 11 and 12, I think, and ripping it from its context. Yes, God does protect us from unknown harm, but that doesn't give me a right to lay out here on the freeway and to test God to see if he's gonna come through. To make it sound that way, I've got to rip it from its context. And folks, you can take the Bible and you can, everybody loves to quote the Bible because it has authority, but you can take the Bible and make it sound anything you want it to sound if you don't care about the rules of context. You know, Judas went out and hung himself. Go thou and do likewise. what you do, do quickly. So I just took three verses, I threw them together, and I made it sound like we're all supposed to commit suicide. This is the kind of thing that Satan does, and this is what these neo-Calvinists constantly do with a verse like this. The truth of the matter is this word save does not mean always gonna die and go to heaven. Here's the noun, sozo, verb, soter, savior, soteria, salvation. These are all coming from the same root. Notice how Paul uses sozo, or in this case, soteria, in Philippians 1 verse 19. For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance, soteria. through your prayers and the provision of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Now there he's using salvation and it's got nothing to do with dying and going to heaven. It's got to do with physical protection from prison. So when you use the word save, how are you using the word? Gee, we left our house early today and got to church early and we were saved from a traffic jam. Oh, when I was 16, I heard the gospel and I trusted in Christ and I was saved from hell. I mean, both are legitimate uses of the word save, it's just which one's in play. And the only way you can figure it out is by putting the words back into their context. Here is Hebrews 11 verse 7. It says, by faith being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation, there's soteria, of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Now here, Noah was saved from water. He built an ark and him and his family were physically protected from the flood. So their save has absolutely nothing to do with dying and going to heaven. And I'm saying that's exactly how Jesus is using the word save here in Matthew 24 verse 13. His target audience is the Jews in the tribulation period. And what he says to them that see the temple desecrated, which is described in a few verses later context, is if you physically, you Jews that I'm speaking of here, you know, let those living in Judea flee into the wilderness, that's who he's talking to. Once you see the temple desecrated at the midpoint of the tribulation period, if you make it through the next three and a half years, and you make it to the end, then Messiah, Yeshua, we would call Jesus, is gonna return, his feet are gonna touch planet Earth, and he's going to physically protect you from the beast. That's the meaning. So there I'm using save the way Hebrews 11, seven is using it and Philippians 1, 19 is using it. So this is talking about the events of the tribulation period that the Jews living on the earth have to experience. Make it to the end and you'll be physically protected from the beast who's trying to kill you by Jesus himself. Once you hit the midpoint, make it to the end and you'll be physically protected. in spite of all of these other judgments that are gonna be taking place during that time period. The saving is physical protection from death, and it's described in Matthew 24, 31, what Jesus is gonna do for the believing Jews at that time. It says, he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet, And they will gather together, gather is epi sunago, where we get the word synagogue, a Jewish gathering. They will gather together his elect, Israel, God's elect nation, from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. This will be the fulfillment of Isaiah 27 verse 13. which says it will come about also in that day a great trumpet will be blown. Now that's not the rapture. God has more than one trumpet, amen. It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown and those who are perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Now this Epi Synago, this gathering, is something Jesus wanted to do with the Jewish people when he came the first time. You see that at the end of Matthew 23, which comes right before Matthew 24. Matthew 23, 37 through 39, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Now who's he talking to there? Obviously Jews, right? He doesn't say Austin, Texas and Washington, D.C. It says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather, that's synagogue, epi-synago, your children the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling. The problem wasn't me, the problem was you. Jesus says to the Jews 2,000 years ago, you wouldn't have me. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. The house would be the temple. So he's saying here, it's not my house anymore, you threw me out of it. It's your house. For I say to you, you will not see me until, oh, there's a future for Israel. Until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, which is a Messianic Psalm, Psalm 118, verse 26. I'm not coming back for this nation until you acknowledge me as your Messiah. Once you do that, then I'll gather you. I'll physically protect you from the Antichrist. I wanted to physically protect you from Titus of Rome 2,000 years ago, but you wouldn't come to me on my terms. So when it says, he who endures to the end will be saved, that's the meaning of it. It's the physical protection of the Jews in the tribulation period. It has nothing to do with, boy, I better make sure I'm on the up and up with abounding fruit and works and faith, because if I'm not, maybe I'm not saved, maybe I'm not one of the elect. You know, in this study, I'm gonna be showing you some quotes from a doctoral dissertation that was done on this by the Puritans, concerning the Puritans. This man went through all of the Puritan writings, and he said, almost to a person, the Puritans, who were wonderful people, by the way. I mean, they founded the United States of America. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, those are all Puritan institutions. But he says almost to a man, almost to a person, they all went to their grave scared out of their minds. Why would they be scared on their deathbed? Because they were steeped in this Calvinistic theology. And they did not know if they were one of the elect because they had bad teaching, which indicated if you're one of the elect, if you're really going to be saved in the end, you've got to endure. And they didn't know if they'd endured enough. How could anyone, when you're given a subjective test like that, know if they've done enough? So on your deathbed, I mean, during a time when you really wanna be trusting in the promises of God, they're in a state of fear, because they don't know if they've individually persevered enough. That's the consequences of this type of warped Calvinistic theology that everybody today is so in love with. So watch what John MacArthur does here with Matthew 24. This comes from his commentary on Matthew. In all honesty, John MacArthur does a really good job with Matthew 24 until he hits verse 13. He who endures to the end will be saved. And it's like he becomes a different person. This is what he says. Now that you know what Matthew 24 verse 13 is actually teaching. He says, but the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved. His endurance will be a spirit-empowered product and proof of the reality that he is saved. Neither the high cost of discipleship nor the deception of false prophets nor the enticement of sin will cause true believers to renounce Christ because he himself will protect them from defection. Endurance is always a mark of salvation. The perseverance of the saints, in fact, is a very basic element of salvation teaching in the New Testament. It states that people who are genuinely saved do not depart from the faith, and here he quotes all these verses. All of them are outside of Matthew's gospel, you'll notice. But your average person reads that and says, wow, this guy really knows his Bible. not understanding that Satan knows the Bible pretty good too. And then he says at the end, endurance does not give evidence of the spiritual life that resides, excuse me, evidence does give, endurance, let's try this again, does give evidence of the spiritual life that resides in the believer. So what did John MacArthur just do, right in the middle of his commentary, in Matthew where he's doing a pretty good job overall with the Olivet Discourse. What did he just do with verse 13? He ignored the context and dumped into it, where the context doesn't warrant it at all, his Calvinistic teaching. And I bring this up because these types of people do this constantly. The careful exegesis that they demonstrate in other sections of Scripture, it's almost like when it comes to prophecy, they just throw it out. Because at the end of the day, they're interested in this, tulip, which we'll be talking through in detail in this series, but the last ingredient of tulip, is the perseverance of the saints, meaning if you're one of the elect, you have to endure till the end. In fact, there's a guy named James Boyce who's written some really good commentaries. I have his commentary on Genesis. It's several volumes on my shelf. And he's hooked in with this Calvinistic Circles with R.C. Sproul in the Ligonier Conference that they have in Orlando, Florida, where 5,000 people show up to hear this stuff. And R.C. Sproul, now deceased, gives this announcement that Jim, he called him Jim, Jim Boyce is dying. So let's all stop right now, 5,000 people, and let's pray that Jim dies still believing. That's what Sproul said. Let's all pray that he dies still believing in Jesus. Now why would a guy stand up in front of 5,000 people and say something like that? Because R.C. Sproul was completely steeped in this perseverance of the saints. And you cannot have a guy lapsing in faith at the end of his life. And anybody that's a little personal, for me, having my father-in-law and my dad die this year, Anybody that deals with someone at the end of life knows that people lapse in and out of consciousness constantly. They lapse out of mental acuity back and forth constantly. And if I was gonna take R.C. Sproul's belief system and apply it to my situation, I would have to say, well, maybe my dad was saved. Maybe my father-in-law was saved, maybe he wasn't. This is the impact of this perseverance of the saints idea. And it is a theology that is back loaded into Matthew 24. It's in John MacArthur's books, people read it, they think it's gospel truth. Because oh my goodness, look at all the verses he quoted. Yeah, he quotes a lot of verses there, but they don't have anything to do with the passage. And ultimately it's confusing and it's deceptive. Dave Anderson, I think he's a local Houstonian, did some good work on Augustine. where Calvin got a lot of his theology from. And he points out that Matthew 24 verse 13, he who endures to the end will be saved. When Augustine stopped seeing that as a tribulation verse for the Jews in the tribulation period, and instead saw it as fruit that you have to maintain towards the end of your life to prove you're one of the elect. He says, when Augustine switched his view on it, his whole theology changed. Calvin is getting a lot of his stuff from Augustine. Augustine had it wrong on Matthew 24, verse 13. And once he got it wrong on Matthew 24, verse 13, he started getting it wrong everywhere. So Dave Anderson writes this, he says, we choose Augustine as a case in point. Specifically, his reinterpretation of Matthew 24 verse 13, he who endures to the end will be saved as a spiritual salvation instead of a physical salvation to enter and populate the millennium, which is the right view of this, caused drastic changes in his soteriology. Perseverance of the saints, faithfulness until the end of one's physical life became the sine qua non, without which there is not, of his soteriology. One could believe in Christ, have the fruit of the elect, but prove he was not elect if he should not persevere in faithfulness until the end of his physical life. So rather than seeing this as a millennial tribulation period, millennial verse, who's gonna make it to the end of the tribulation, which Jews to be physically protected by Jesus, and then those saved Jews will go into the millennium and repopulate the earth, rather than taking it in its ordinary sense, he turned it into this monstrosity of the perseverance of the saints, And all John Calvin did over 1,000 years later at the age of 26 is said, well, this looks swell. I'll grab it from Augustine's work, The City of God, and I'll bring it into my theology. And sadly, the Protestant movement today is built on that corrupted understanding of Matthew 24, verse 13. It's Calvin and others, probably his followers after him, who said, well, this will be swell in our pee for the perseverance of the saints. So when you're talking to a Calvinist and they wanna defend perseverance of the saints, they typically go to Matthew 24, verse 13, when Matthew 24, verse 13 has absolutely nothing to do with what they're making the verse into. One other thing, and I'm trying to explain all the tentacles of this thing. So you'll understand why we're going into detail trying to uproot it. In our understanding of eschatology, we have four judgments. We get this from a literal reading of the Bible, because these judgments are all described differently. You've got the sheep and the goat judgment for surviving tribulation people. to determine if they're saved or unsaved. Unsaved, cast off the earth into Hades. Saved, left behind to enter the millennial kingdom. Matthew 25 verses 31 through 46. Then there'll be a parallel judgment of the surviving Jews in the tribulation period. Ezekiel 20 verses 33 through 44, where survivors that are believers pass under the shepherd's rod and enter the millennial kingdom. Unbelievers are cast off the earth into judgment. Then after the thousand years are over, if you go to the far right of the screen, there'll be something called a great white throne judgment. That's for unbelievers only. As their name is not found written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they're transferred from Hades into the Lake of Fire. If your name is not in the books, you're judged by the books. The books are a degree of your evil. So there will be different degrees of torment for people in the Lake of Fire throughout the ages based on that judgment. That's only for unsaved people. So sheep and goat judgment, surviving Tribulation period, Gentiles. Judgment of the Jews, surviving tribulation people, Jews. Great white throne judgment, unbelievers of all ages. The one in yellow is your judgment and my judgment. Where we'll stand post-rapture. stand before the Lord, and it's not an evaluation to determine if you're saved or not. That issue's already taken care of. It's just believers are rewarded differently. based on how they invested their lives now during their earthly sojourn. So we're not put through a fire there, 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 15, but our works are to test their quality. So in our way of thinking, and it's just, we don't just say, hey, this is a neat theology, let's try this on for size. A literal reading of the Bible yields this for future judgments. Now one of the things that's interesting about the neo-Calvinists is they don't have anything like this. They've got just one big judgment at the end. I call it the ram, jam, and cram method of interpretation. Anything you see about judgment, it's all got to be talking about the same event. So they don't really have a sheep and goat judgment. They don't really have a judgment of the Jews. They don't really have a great white, a beam of seat judgment. It's just one big great white throne judgment where you could actually show up there not knowing if you're going into the lake of fire or not. And they get that because they don't separate the judgments out. So Robert Congdon, who's done some great work in this, I like the title of his book, How Calvinism Serves Satan's Purposes. Wow, tell us how you really feel. He's commenting on this neo-Calvinist movement. In fact, we've gotten a lot of correspondence, people ask me, why do you keep calling them neo-Calvinists, new Calvinists? Because that's the nomenclature that Robert Congdon uses. He's talking about a new movement that's hitching its wagon to John Calvin, neo-Calvinists, and they're bringing in everything that Calvin ever said or did, good and bad. He writes, most new Calvinists do not believe that Christ will return on the earth for 1,000 years. Well, of course they don't believe that, because John Calvin didn't believe it. Nor do they understand that those of the church age will return to rule with him, that's us, following a review time before his judgment seat or bama seat when our roles and responsibilities will be determined. Most Calvinists, neo-Calvinists today, believe the great white throne judgment is for everyone of all ages. And I'm here to tell you that it's not for everyone of all ages. It's for unsaved of all ages. But because they're not rightfully dividing the word of God in this area, they just say there's one great big judgment at the end. It's the same thing people do with the trumpet. God can't have two trumpets. He can't have a trumpet for the church and a trumpet for the Israel at the end of the tribulation period. They just see the word trumpet and they merge it together, which is a very sloppy handling of the word of God. They would never do something like this in Galatians or Romans, this carelessness. But when it comes to eschatology, they do this all of the time. Most Calvinists believe that the Great White Throne Judgment is for everyone of all ages and it will determine whether one is truly saved or not. So you're gonna pop up at the Great White Throne Judgment and you don't even know what the ruling is gonna be. Maybe you're one of the elect, maybe you're not. Well, what if I died in unbelief like Jim Boyce perhaps did? Ah, he's out. What if I have a lapse like Peter did and I deny the Lord three times or I had a lapse like David did and I commit adultery and murder and then lie about it to cover it up? What if that happens? Ah, you're out. And what's interesting is now one of their own, Stephen Lawson, I don't know if you followed this story this week, teaching elder at a big Dallas church, a John MacArthur type church, well, it's come to the surface that he's had like a long affair with a 20-year-old, 20-something, when he was the dean at John MacArthur Seminary. See, if something like that happened to, I don't know, someone on TBN, someone that's outside of their theology, they would all condemn him just like that. But now they're kind of tripping over themselves trying to make excuses for him because he's one of theirs. That's how subjective this whole thing is. This guy's in, this guy's not. It gives way too much power to the clergy to make that decision. I mean, I don't like the theology for the simple reason that I would never wanna be in a position saying, well, they're the elect, they're not. So there's this one big judgment at the end. You really don't know if you're one of the elect or one of the non-elect. You're gonna show up at this great white throne judgment and you're sitting there nervous out of your mind with sweaty palms, because you don't know if you've done enough good works to prove you're one of the elect. Now, I could think that if I took all of the judgments and merged them together like they're doing. But my hermeneutic, my method of interpretation will not allow me to do that. You will not show up at the great white throne judgment if you're a believer in Jesus. I'll tell you that categorically. You should give that no thought whatsoever. Now, for your unsaved friends and family members, give it some thought, but not for yourself. The judgment in your future is the judgment seat of rewards. So the impetus today is let's use our lives wisely so we can be fully rewarded at the judgment seat of Christ. So there are some key eschatological issues in this neo-Calvinist movement, and that's why I'm devoting time to talking about this. This is very serious now. Cheer up folks, it gets worse. Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism. The irrational hatred of the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Well, I'll trace that through next week. Father, thank you for your Word, thank you for your truth. Keep us focused on what your word actually says in these last days. Help us to walk circumspectly. We'll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus' name and God's people said. And happy intermission.