Just don't know where, where
to begin When earthquake kings surrender You are the one who sought the
dawn of Jesus Heaven on earth is one stairway that can lead
us to Christ's fate We believe that our God reigns True believers stand on every
word you say To be released podcasting worldwide via the
internet from Lakeland, Florida, this is Whitfield Radio's True
Believer program. And now, here is your host, the
founder and president of Whitfield Theological Seminary, and senior
pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Lakeland, Florida,
Dr. Kenneth G. Talbot. Welcome to
our show and thank you for your prayers and support of this ministry.
Today, we have on our show, Mr. Jason Bradfield, web director
of WhitfieldMedia.com. My co-host is Dr. Bill Sullivan.
Welcome, Dr. Bill, to what I hope is another
invigorating show. And this one's going to be very
interesting, from what I understand. I'm going to learn a lot during
this program. So I'll be listening and I'll be asking questions
when you talk about something that I didn't quite get. Now
there's going to be some areas that I'm not too sure of either,
but we'll look forward to getting some answers and being able to
dialogue on areas of music that I'm not just familiar with. Listen,
we have some important news. Mr. Joel McDermott will be debating
with Dr. Don Preston on the issues related to hyper-preterism. This debate will take place on
July 19th through the 21st at Ardmore, Oklahoma. Don Preston
is a former Church of Christ minister whose soteriology is
semi-Pelagianistic. And Joe McDermott will be representing
a reformed soteriology and thus purporting to a partial preterist
post-millennial eschatology. Perhaps we can get Joel on in
a future show, be able to talk to him about his new book, Jesus
vs. Jerusalem, and about the upcoming
debate and what we can expect if we attend, or possibly it
might even be broadcast. Today's show is entitled, From
Orthodoxy to Orthodoxy, The Journey to and From Hyperpreterism. As
I said, our guest is Mr. Jason Bradfield. Jason briefly
attended Dwarlin's Theological Seminary, and is now enrolled
in Whitfield Theological Seminary as a student in the Master of
Divinity Degree program. Jason embraced Christ his senior
year of high school in 1993, served two years as a youth minister
in Anniston, Alabama and Houma, Louisiana with the Southern Baptist
denomination. During a stretch of around three
years, he took the good news of the kingship of Christ to
some of the most poverty-stricken areas of Anniston and Birmingham,
Alabama, as well as in New Orleans. In the form, Mr. Bell, hip-hop. Hip-hop music. Hip-hop? Boy,
I don't know what that is. Oh, I've heard it, but I still
don't know what it is. He embraced full preterism in
2003 and then renounced it in 2010. He serves as web director of
Reign of Christ Ministries, as well as I have noted, with WhitfieldMedia.com. Jason will also be joining Samuel
Frost, Dr. Bill, and I on our new radio
show that is soon to be launched, Last Days Madness. Jason is currently,
as I said, enrolled with Whitfield Seminary. He resides in East
Tennessee with his wife, Amanda. and children, Jordan, Alexis,
Kaylee, and Anna. Jason, it is good to have you
as a guest on True Believer here at Whitfield Radio, and I'd like
to express my gratitude for the work that you are doing on the
WhitfieldMedia.com site. Well, thank you, Dr. Talbot and
Dr. Sullivan. It's a blessing to be here, and
I appreciate you guys having me. Well, Jason, let me talk
to you just before we get into your journey on theological and
eschatological issues. in the area of hyper-proterism.
Let's talk, though, for just a few moments about your interest
in Christian hip-hop music, if you don't mind. First, if you
could, explain for at least some of us who do not know exactly
what hip-hop is, if you would, what is hip-hop music? Huge question. Well, obviously,
it got started about the time that I was born, there in the
70s. And so I came in it a little later, but from what I've heard,
I actually got to meet Curtis Blow, who's considered like one
of the grandfathers of hip hop. I think he had one of the first
commercial hits out. He's actually now a Christian.
And so I got to meet him down in Florida. And he shared a little
bit with us about its history. Some of it came out of New York. And of course, there's a big
debate on where exactly in New York it comes from, because you
have certain neighborhoods that claim it came from there and
the guys across the bridge are like, no, it came from here.
But essentially what it was, the way he explained it, was
back in those days, You know, it was popular for
the well-to-do people to go off to the clubs every weekend and
go to the discos and all this. And so the more impoverished
areas, the people couldn't afford to go to these clubs, they would
actually do like little block parties in the streets. And a lot of it was, I think
a lot of it came out of the disco movement. But at some point,
these people that were basically doing the music, the
DJs. It was very common for them to
dance during the breaks of certain songs. And so the DJs would actually
spin the records back and just loop a break over and over again.
And these people became known as break dancers. And then over
time, MCs started to step up on the stage and They would usually
voice their problems that they were having with the state or
with the government. I mean, it was basically just
a stage to voice the oppression that they felt like they were
under to the music. Anyway, it basically started
as just a big block party, like I said, for the poor people,
impoverished areas. Would it be right to say that
hip-hop eventually gave birth into rap? Yeah, hip-hop, that
actual phrase describes a subculture. And then within that, there's
usually four things that they associate with hip-hop. There's
the rapping or the emceeing, the DJing, the dancing or the
breakdancing, and then the graffiti writing. Curtis was telling us
as far as how the graffiti came about, Some of the apartments that they
lived in, I forget when, there was a big fire in New York, I
can't remember when it was, engulfed a great deal of the city where
these people lived, and because of, I think it was an insurance
scam, and these people had nowhere to go, so they're basically stuck
living in these buildings that are half burnt down, and so they
would actually take paint and mark their rooms because there
was no way to tell, you know, whose apartment was what because
of all the damage that was done to the fires. And so they would
actually take spray paint and mark their building like this
is my house. Keep out. Right. And so that
kind of developed into this graffiti writing and just kind of became
an art. Yeah, hip hop is just referring
to that whole subculture. And then wrapping is just a part
of it. So the subculture itself historically then would be within
the black community, most likely. Yeah, within particularly the
Bronx area of New York. Right. I don't think it was solely
just the blacks, but. It certainly caught on quickly
and spread. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, how did hip hop come
into the Christian music scene? And who were those early influences
from a Christian perspective? Well, I started following Christ
in 93, having grew up listening to rap, and at that time in 93,
there wasn't a whole lot out, at least in the bookstores. I
was in Alabama at this time. And to walk into a bookstore
in Alabama and ask for Christian hip-hop, they just looked at
you like, what are you talking about? We don't have a clue.
Now I'm sure in the areas of New York and stuff like that,
it was probably more well-known, but it just wasn't out in the
mainstream like it is now. When I first came into it, I
came in it just through whatever was available through the bookstores.
And at that time, there was only so many people out and a lot
of it I actually didn't like. It was kind of behind the time,
kind of corny. You know, like one of the groups,
for example, was DC Talk. And when I first listened to
them, I just kind of shook my head. It's like, it's just not...
not the kind of style that I'm used to. It was just more of
a flaky sound and lyrics were really simple, nothing complex. But, you know, DC Talk was, I
guess, big in churches like I was, you know,
in Alabama and areas like that. I eventually got a job at a Christian
bookstore and I was actually in charge of managing the music
section and through there I was able to get into a database through
a warehouse and actually started finding some of this hip-hop
that I didn't hear about that was available through the other
bookstores. But some of the early... Well, I'm trying to think of
some of the names now. Mine's going blank here. There
was a guy named T-Bone. He was pretty popular at that
time in 93. Then later on, there's a group
from Nashville called the Grits, and then the cross movement came
out. With cross movement, we finally
started hearing some music that I was more in tune with, more
of my style. The whole reason I actually got
into hip hop is because it just wasn't that popular and nobody
really knew anything about it and what was available I didn't
really care for. So I actually kind of went into
it myself just as sort of a dare from a youth minister. He was
like, well, if there's nothing available, why don't you write
yourself and do your own thing. Now, Jason, you mentioned four
things that make up hip-hop. Now, how would those be reflected
in Christian type of an approach? Well, yeah, well, they pretty
much all exist within Christian circles. Would this be kind of
a Part of the postmodern movement that we find in Christianity. Like the emergent church movement
and that kind of thing where it's more coffee shop and music
along with the concept of not preaching and not a formal church,
but dialogue and gathering together to interact and music to go along
with that. Yeah, there's definitely some
of that going on. I know early on, like T-Bone, for example,
I think he was in the charismatic Pentecostal circles and it seemed
to be pretty heavy among those circles early on. But I don't
know that it's all postmodern. Some of it's just... I mean,
I got into it and started doing it. I just seen the power to
take a rap song and just fill it with content and lyrics. I
mean, I would literally preach in a song. And so for me, it
was just a way to, you know, I could take that into a street
area. And it was it was just a tool
for me to kind of attract the fish, you know, to come out.
In other words, you were you were coming into their cultural
environment, but you were bringing the same music just with different
words. Right. And that's essentially
all that we're really doing. I mean, music-wise, beat-wise,
it's gotten to the point now where, you know, there's some
pretty good producers out there, and you're going to hear some
very professional stuff, but it's all about the lyrics. You
know, what exactly are you saying in your lyrics? And of course,
a lot of the worldly hip-hop music is Glorifying violence
and drugs and sex and and all that and and so essentially what
we're doing is we're just we're just taking it and You know some
some people do a little bit more like a positive type message
Right, and then you have some some artists that are actually
very aggressive and There's a group they're coming out with a new
album here at the first of November called Christ centric is one
of my favorite groups and And in their album, it's a concept
album, basically what they're doing is they're taking you through
the book of Ephesians where they're actually expositing some of the
key themes of Ephesians. So within Christian hip-hop,
you have a wide range and there's even a lot of debate among the
artists as to how preachy we should be or who exactly is our
audience. Are we rapping for the church
or are we rapping to evangelize? Some people see it totally as
an evangelistic tool. And then some people see it as
a way to edify the church. And then some guys do a little
bit of both. A wide range. What kind of response did you
get, generally speaking? Well, when I did my thing, of
course, I was real corny when I first started doing it. I mean,
my lyric was like, one, two, three, yes, it's me, the bonafide
thing, you know, kind of like that. But I was in Alabama, so
they thought it was neat. They thought it was cool. It
needed a southern twang to it. Yeah. I mean, if I had tried
to pull that off like in New York, they probably would have
laughed me out of the building. But there in Alabama, they liked
it. And next thing I know, the kids
are kind of they're telling their friends about me performing.
And I just started getting invited like crazy to different churches,
the schools I've done. prayer breakfasts for football
teams and see at the poll rallies and lock-ins and all kinds of
stuff. So, it just kind of grew. And, you know, over time, I kind
of developed my skills in writing, you know, trying to be a little
bit more complex because, again, there's a wide range within rap. You have some people that have
very simple lyrics and almost too simple, kind of dumbed down.
Sounds idiotic. Most of the stuff on the radio
I think is idiotic. And then you have certain guys
within the movement that are basically writing poetry. In
fact, some of the artists have actually been in college and
have studied poetry and literary structure and stuff and get really
creative with their lyrics. That's the type of style that
I tend to... Where do you get the music from
to put this with your writing and the lyrics and stuff you're
doing? Well, with me, I'm just borrowing tracks from artists
that already exist. You know, one of the things that's
popular within hip-hop is when people put out an album, they'll
provide like an instrumental so their fans can actually take
an instrumental and and write with it. One of the things that
a lot of people do is they call it remix tapes or remix albums
where artists will actually take music from other artists and
just write their lyrics on top of it and actually put that out
as a full album. So it's a common thing to do. Go ahead. I've never had the
resources or the ability to do my own music, so I basically
just took a lot of the music that I had growing up, a lot
of the instrumentals, and just started writing lyrics over the
top of them and just perform them. I wondered if in your studies
with Whitfield Theological Seminary, are you going to turn in your
assignments in Christian hip-hop? Yeah, it would be nice to. I
took a course from Covenant Seminary some years ago, and Dr. David
Calhoun was the teacher, and he told a story about a fellow
who turned in a paper on Christian history in rap form, and he said
it was really good. The guy got an A. Yeah, there's
actually, I think I've seen a video where a professor, I think it
was Southern, the Southern Baptist School there, the flagship school
in Kentucky. One of the professors actually did a rap in a class.
I'm just having fun with it. Well, listen, you've got one
of your songs for us you're going to perform. Tell us just a little
bit about the song you wrote and what it's about, and then
we'll give it a listen. Yeah, this is not a full-blown
song. This is just a lyric that I wrote
Like I said, I tend to gravitate more towards the quote-unquote
preachy end of hip-hop. And so I love to use the music
to get people's attention with certain doctrines and things.
And so this lyric here is basically a paraphrase from a chapter in
John Owen's book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ.
And it's basically going through his logical argument on limited
atonement. Let's listen to the song by Jason
Bradfield. And I think we're dead. Time
is going by really, really, really, really slow. Alright, yo, I got
a simple question for you theologians out there. For whom did Christ
suffer? For whom did he die? And how
did he die? Did he just die? to give the
possibility of salvation thinking well i hope they take advantage
of it or did he actually die in my place All the sins of all men don't
stall, and let's begin with the first verse. Weave the death
scenario. Consolidate with the crib by
getting cursed at the burial. Repeat the second option. The
Christ suffered to cover all the sins of those who re-elected
for adoption. That makes sense. Here's a conservative
case. We'd have to face the absurd
of an effectual grace. But wait, y'all said it's all
in the Greek. Because of unbelief, let's don't
daft all. Utterly all that Christ believed. If it's not, then Christ
didn't die. We're all sinning, and for none
of all men without flesh to be brought to stop. All right, Jason. Well, you know,
you sent the song to me. The good part was you put words
that I could read to it. So it really helps me out. I'm
just an old guy now, so you can call me an old fogey if you'd
like. Hey, Jason, has anyone else done a song taking Puritan
works like that, that you know of? Yeah, I wrote that in 03, and
I don't recall, I'm trying to think of when Lamp Mode came
out. There's a group up in Philadelphia called Lamp Mode, and there's
a couple of guys within that label that have a Reformed background. There's another guy, he's actually
a good friend of mine, Rick Roll Dan, who we're hoping is going
to co-host the show with me. He's got a long reformed background
and he's actually done some songs from that perspective. He did
a song on Tulip and I think it, I can't remember the name of
it now, but I think it's named after a book from R.C. Sproul. So yeah, there's a couple artists
out there that are doing a little bit of that. There's a guy named
The Voice, who I think actually did a song on the Heidelberg
Catechism. I think D.A. Carson even did a little hook or something he was
involved in just for fun. Oh, in that particular production
you mean? Yeah. Well, that would be worth
getting and listening to. Well, I know we have students
here. from the University of Florida
who also, and they use this as a means to spread the gospel
in the Reformed perspective among black students. They have a real
wonderful opportunity of getting and working within their own
community and it has been a real successful thing. It's been both
encouraging to those that have listened to it and it's been
challenging to those who have never heard the Reformed perspective
of the gospel. It's very important that we reach
out into these cultures and try to reach the people where they
are to bring them to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so that's it's very, very important. Well, listen, we thank
you for talking with us about that part. But let's move on
now to our topic that really is going to take up most of our
time. If you would, Jason, tell me just a little bit about your
background, your early childhood, and then eventually what led
to your conversion in Christ in 1993. Well, I was a bicentennial baby born
in Colorado Springs where my dad was stationed there in the
army. So I was an army brat and lived all over the country, and
we even lived three years in Germany. But we were basically
an agnostic home. My dad had some experience in
his childhood with church, but he had gotten away from it when
he joined the military. My mom, I don't think, had any
experience with the church. So we just, you know, my dad
being in the military and at least having some sort of experience,
we just tried to be good law-abiding citizens didn't do anything crazy
and I was basically under the impression that you know if there
is a God then and if he does decide to judge me then I should
be alright because I haven't killed anybody or robbed any
banks and I never did go the evolution hardcore atheist route
that just never did make sense to me but what finally happened in Two months into my senior year
of high school, which would have been 93, end of 93, this girl
from school asked me to go to church with her. And I kind of
had a crush on her. I don't know that I would have
agreed to it if some guy had asked me to go, but since she
asked me, I was like, yeah, I'll go hang out with you for a day.
I mean, go to church. So I went to church that Sunday,
and it turns out that that particular Sunday was a thing that this
Southern Baptist Church does every year. It's called Friend
Day. And basically, it was a setup.
What they did was every year on this particular day, they
would urge their members to bring as many lost people as they can. And the whole service was geared
around evangelism. So I go to this service and I
hear basically like a 45-minute presentation on just the general
gospel message about how we were created and what happened after
we were created and how God fixed the problem through Jesus Christ.
That I was a sinner and broken God's law and that I couldn't
earn God's favor through my own works and my own righteousness,
so-called. And it was really the first time
that I had heard all that explained to me, and even to my own surprise,
I just sat there finding myself believing it, believing every
word of it. So right there as I'm listening
to this, I'm repenting and crying out to Christ. acknowledging
His Lordship and seeking forgiveness and understanding again that
there's nothing that I can do. It's totally on the work of Christ.
So at the end of the service, they did an altar call. This
is a semi-Pelagian dispensational Southern Baptist Church. So yeah,
I went ahead and went down and said the little sinner's prayer.
But you know what's weird was even then I knew that was a little
weird because When I went down there and said, would you like
to pray and receive Christ, quote unquote, and I thought, well,
I've already repented in the pew. All right, but if you want
me to say this prayer, I'll say it, whatever. And so I was baptized a week
later in that church, and I naturally joined that church. I mean, because
I didn't have any background, I didn't know what a Baptist
was or Southern Baptist or Presbyterian. I didn't know any of that stuff.
So it was just natural for me to hook up with this group. And then I told my parents about
midweek that I was doing this, and I was a little slow in telling
them because I wasn't sure how they were going to respond, but
they actually were very positive about it. And then they came
to my baptism that Sunday. And then the very next day, Monday,
the church sent out an evangelism team to my house and sat down
with my mom, my dad, and my brother. I have one sibling who's three
years younger than me, Jeff. And basically sharing the gospel
with them and all three of them. Repent and confess Christ and
been faithful ever since. So it's kind of a household thing. Yeah. OK, after your conversion, did
you stay with this church? Yeah, I stayed with them, I think,
till about 97. OK, you identified their theology
as being Arminian and What was their eschatology? You said dispensational. I'm assuming it's a premillennial
dispensational type teaching on eschatology. Oh yeah, very
hardcore. Jesus is coming back any moment. In fact, I mean,
they pushed it so hard that there was no form of discipleship whatsoever
because they really didn't, I don't think, they wouldn't have came
out and said, well, there's no need for discipleship. But practically,
that's how it was. It was like, let's just get as
many people saved as we can because we're at the end. And that's
how I live my life. I didn't know to question that
because I didn't know anything. And so I naturally just believed
that. And I took the pastor's word for it. And it came to create problems for
me. After I graduated, I got a full basketball scholarship
at Gadsden State there in Alabama. And I left after the first year. And part of that was I just really
struggled with the idea of me playing basketball. I mean, if
Jesus is going to come back at any moment, do I really want
to be playing basketball when he comes back? Shouldn't I be
out there in the mission field saving people from this great
tribulation that's fixing to hit the whole world? And so I
actually gave up basketball and that was That dispensational
rapture ready mindset was a big part of that. I was raised in
that very same type of church most of my life up until the
time I turned reformed when I was 19 years old, 20 years old, going
to college. But, you know, one of the things
that I always seen is eschatology was also kind of used as a means
of trying to keep you in line ethically. Jesus is coming back,
therefore he's going to judge, and he knows what you're doing,
and you better be ready. It wasn't that I wanted to live
for Christ, who saved me, and that he was a holy God, and therefore
I was to be holy like him, and there was a love that was to
drive me, but the eschatology was used very strongly to say,
you've got to stay in line here, because their views were very
legalistic. And so for them, eschatology
was also a means of not only talking about the immediacy of
things. And what do you want Jesus to
see what you're doing when he comes back? And would he really
appreciate what you're doing? Would he see value in that? Rather
than a reformed answer and response would have been as if I'm doing
it to the glory of God. Of course he would have. He wouldn't matter
what part of life I'm working in. But for them, it wasn't. It was
that concept of you have to be doing something that they would
say, quote unquote, would be spiritual. You need to be out winning people
to Christ or doing bus work, or you need to be doing junior
church ministry or preaching, visitation ministry. If you're
doing those kind of things, those were the spiritual things. Mowing
the yard, washing the dishes, having a vocational job, that
was secular. And it was actually a truly more
of a Roman Catholic Thomistic dialectic. these two areas and
in one area spiritual and one is not. And the way to keep you
into that spiritual realm was to drive you with this immediate
expectation of Christ. Did you feel that also as a part
of the church's teaching in your life and how it was affecting
you as the way you're kind of talking about now? Yeah, well, you described
it perfectly. I mean, that that was. There
was just You know, there's this constant conflict in my mind, struggle.
Like you said, you know, is this is this really spiritual that
I'm I'm playing basketball and. And. Yeah, I mean, well, I can't
really describe it as good as you do. Yeah, you can't you can't
you can't play basketball and be a Christian because it's just
not what Jesus would have you to do. I'll give you an example. When I was in my senior year,
we had a very good youth pastor. We lost him. We had another guy
come in. He was very good, very nice. One of the things he said
is, as Christians, you ought not be going to the prom. We'll
have a prom. It'll be a Christian prom. We'll have it at church.
So most of our kids, me included, said, OK, well, this is spiritual. And we missed the prom. And doesn't
he get hired off about three weeks after our prom when he
was supposed to be setting up for one to have that's Christian?
And he's gone. He just transferred and never
gave a second thought to what he had had us remove ourself
from. Going to the prom that we were
graduating in the class our senior year with the people that we've
known a time to be able to be together have fun and And you
know that was just un-christian to be among lost people to have
non-christian music playing therefore You must go out and do something
different and we need to do it Christian and yet no follow-through
and I've seen it from a perspective that It was just that one of
those other tricks, you know Christ is coming, you know Would
you want to be at prom when it happened? Oh, you almost also
You have a tremendous sense of guilt if you're not constantly
It is trying to get people saved and that type of thing it is
largely hooked on guilt manipulation and And I think Jason's expressing
that very thing. Well, listen Jason. We know that
you are At some point, move along to Reformed theology. Would you
talk a little bit just about how you got involved in the study
of Reformed theology? Well, through the hip hop thing,
as I'm going to the inner cities and kind of baiting these people
to come out and I'd rap to them and I'd share the gospel with
them, over time, I actually would get some responses from people.
And one of the things that I struggled with was, all right, I've gotten
some teenagers to respond, now what do I do with them? And some
of them, it was hard for me to do anything with because they
would be in a city like, you know, 30 miles from where I lived
or sometimes it was even in another state. And so I would, I got
in the habit of when I'd go and perform of letting some of the
local churches in the area where I was performing, let them know
that I was coming and, hey, I might get responses and I would like
for you guys to step up and follow through with these people. And
I could not for the life of me, especially in the inner city,
get churches to do this. And I don't know if it was, you
know, kind of the whole prophet is without honor in his home
country, like, oh yeah, you know, That's great that Steve responded
to you and your message, but we've dealt with him before and
we don't want nothing to do with him. So over time, I kind of developed this desire
to actually get into discipleship with people and not just hit
an area and rap and get people to respond and then leave. But
I was trying to figure out some way that I can actually plug
these the people that have responded into some type of discipleship.
And so that's where I kind of got interested in youth ministry. So in 97, I actually took a part-time
youth minister job at a small Baptist church in Anniston. It
was like right on the edge of the inner city. And I thought
it was a great place to kind of operate as headquarters and
as I go out and perform and do my thing, then I'd have a place
where I can actually invite people that have responded to come and
sit under some teaching and stuff. So I did that for about a year
and my youth group only grew to like eight or nine people,
kids, but after doing it for a year, I finally realized that
I really didn't have any business being in that position because
I was still immature myself in the faith. There's a lot of things
I didn't know and add to that the fact that I had youth that
were, I think all but one youth came from a broken home. Some
of the youth had been involved in drugs and they're like 12,
13 years old. One of the girls had been sexually
molested by a family member and I was just lost. I was like,
I didn't know how to counsel these kids and what to do with
them. Right. So I finally told Amanda, who
I was dating at this time, like, I got to get some training somehow.
So in March of 98, we got married and two weeks later moved to
New Orleans. That was just... Was that with
the intent of going to New Orleans Theological Seminary? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That was just a school that was
recommended. I think it was one of the closer ones to where we
were at there in Alabama. And so I just went and. Well,
ideally, they would have liked for us to wait until the fall
to move down there, but we moved in March and so I had the whole
summer. They asked me just to take one class during the summer
and then we got to live on campus and all that. During that summer,
I knew that since I was going into the classroom and would
be discussing deep theological stuff, that I was just reading
my Bible like crazy from cover to cover. I must have read it
five or six times just in those summer months. About my third
trip reading through the scriptures, I just started noticing some
things that, you know, I'd read it and I'm like, did he just
say what I thought he said? And, you know, you know, like text
like Romans 9. Right. You know, there's one
in 2 Chronicles where it says that the that the Lord gave the
people the heart to do what the king had obeyed. And I was like,
he gave them the heart. So what if he hadn't given the
heart? Would they still obey the king? And so I just had these
questions and I didn't know anything about Calvinism or Reformed theology.
I didn't even know who Charles Spurgeon was. This was just stuff
that was coming out of the text. And, you know, I'd see the word
election and predestined. And I'm like, what do these words
mean? So. Where did they come from? Why
are they in my Bible now? First time you see them from that perspective,
it's like, wait a minute, I've never seen this word before.
I've never heard a preacher preach on this before. Yeah, never heard
it preached about, never... I don't think my pastor, my home
pastor even preached against it. I just never heard anything
about it, didn't know that there was alternative understandings
out there within Christianity. So, I basically, through those
months, pretty much studied my way into Calvinism, or what we
call the five points, not knowing that that's what it was called.
In fact, I remember bringing it up to a guy on campus there
who would play basketball every week, and I said, hey, what do
you do with this Romans 9 and this? And he said, well, you
sound like a Calvinist. And I said, what? I kid you not,
the name that actually popped up in my head when he said that
was Calvin Klein. That's the only thing I could
think of. I just didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
So I actually prayed, but now I had a label. I had something
I could work with, so I actually started praying to the Lord to
lead me to these people that are Calvinists. I don't know
who they are. I don't know if they're even still alive. Just, Lord, you
know, lead me to them. Was this all then just from reading
the Bible? Yes. Okay, you weren't reading
anything else particularly? No. And so I actually went to
the bookstore And I was just scanning the shelves, looking
for something. Calvin, Calvinism, some of the
key words like election. I don't remember what got my
attention, but I was in the evangelism section. I saw a book by John
Piper called Let the Nations Be Glad. And I don't even remember
exactly what was on that cover, the back cover that made me pick
it up. But I picked it up and I started flipping through it.
And there's one section there where Piper You know, he talks
about how missions exist because worship doesn't. And there's
a part where he kind of does a survey of the Bible, and he
asks the question, why does God do what he does? And he does
like a question and answer thing, and there's like 30 of these
questions. And every answer, he'll quote a scripture and say,
you know, why did God create the world? For his glory. You
know, why did God call out Israel? For his namesake. You know, why
does God save us? For His glory. So you see this
golden thread throughout the scriptures of God doing things
for His glory, for His namesake. And when I was reading it, I
was like, okay, this sounds like what I'm getting into. There's
a connection here I'm making with this book. And so I bought
it and took it home. I found out more about John Piper
and it was through Desiring God, his ministry. That was basically
my gateway into the reformed world because through Piper I
started hearing about Jonathan Edwards and Calvin and Spurgeon
and Luther and all these guys. And yeah, so he was kind of my
gateway and all that. Excellent. What were some of
the early books you bought besides Piper? I had bought a few – man, I can't – there's a book that
Piper edited, but it was a John Owen work. It was at the end
for which the world was created. That sounds correct. And I had bought quite a bit
of Spurgeon. And I bought some, you know,
some of the bookstores, they used to sell these real cheap
paperbacks of Spurgeon. Most of it was just a collection
of sermons and things like that. I had gotten hooked into Spurgeon
pretty early on. And then I think even John MacArthur,
which, you know, he's not reformed. I wouldn't call him reformed.
He is. He's got a little bit there going on. Right. Certainly a lot better than what
I was that I started off with. So I started reading some of
him and yeah, those are some of the early the Spurgeon was
a big, big influence. Yeah. Yeah. You also took an
interest in the writings of Dr. Gordon Clark. What caused you
to become a student of Dr. Clark's writings? Well, this actually would have
been after I embrace full preterism, but through full preterism I
became good friends with Sam Prost, who you guys have had
on the show. Sam's email used to be – I think it was gclark
something something at Yahoo. And I finally just asked him
one day. What is this G. Clark email thing? I mean, why
is your email not Sam Frost? So he told me, he's like, oh,
if you're excited, you know, you get all excited about theology
and preterism, wait till you read this guy. And I think we
were sitting in Bennigan's there in Brandon when he was telling
me about him. And he just started telling me
about some of Clark and some of the stuff he emphasized. And
I just instantly was hooked and interested. And so it was through
Sam that I started buying some books online of his. And I think the first year or
two, I must have read, I don't know, about 20 of his books.
And it took a while to, especially early on, a lot of it I just
didn't understand quite what he was doing, especially when
he had asked questions like, you know, what is a tree? Do
we even know what a tree is? And I'm like, what do you mean,
what is a tree? And I didn't understand that
there was a deeper thing he was addressing there with empiricism
and how do we come to know anything at all. Is data actually imparted to
our minds through the experience of the sight and the senses and
the sound? Exactly. I didn't know that that's
what he was addressing at first. But after about a year of reading
him, some of that just finally started to click. Makes sense
to me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's
just take a step back. When did you start to seriously
consider eschatology? You said your study of Clark
came later with Sam, but let's step back. You're starting to
move into questions about eschatology. Where did that take place? And
at what point in time did that begin to interact possibly with
Sam Frost or others? Yeah, well, like I said, by default
I was dispensational, not really a studied dispensationalist,
just what I latched on to early. And what really started to challenge
that for me was in 2001 with the 9-11 attacks. We're in Alabama and I'm managing
some apartments and this guy was coming to pay his rent. Obviously,
he was late. But he came to me and he said,
Jason, this is it. He said, I think Jesus is going
to be back within a week's time. And because I had already gone
through... Therefore, I won't pay you. I'm going to keep my
rent. So because I had already been
through one transition where I understood that there was an
alternative way of understanding salvation and predestination.
I was learning, by that time, to think more critically about
things. I was sitting there listening to it, and I was like, you know,
that just doesn't make any sense to me. I've read the Bible a
number of times by now, and it never occurred to me that the
attacks in New York would somehow be linked to the end of the world
and Jesus coming back. And then the other thing that
bothered me was I was a big subscriber to the Voice of the Martyrs newsletter,
which I had learned through Piper. And another question I thought
was, well, what is so important about our country that if we
get attacked, then that's it? You know, God's done and he's
ready to wrap this up. Exactly. To me, it seemed kind
of arrogant because you've got terrorism going on all over the
world and Christians being martyred and burned. And so why do we
not see those things as a sign of the end and Jesus coming back
next week? What's so special about us? So
those were just some of the questions that I started asking myself. I knew what he was saying was
wrong, but I didn't really know what the right answer was. It
would be like me asking you, what is 6.782 million times 182,482?
276,548. If I said it at four, you'd be
like, no, it's definitely not four. It's more than that. So,
you know, you know, it's the wrong answer, but you're not
sure what the right answer is. Let me get back to you on that.
And that's that's where I was at with this. And so. I started
just started reading, just going back to the scriptures and. Kind
of in a similar vein with the Calvinism, just through my own
reading, I I started leaning more towards like a post-millennial,
loosely a post-millennial preterist view. I could not help but see,
especially in Daniel, that there was something big that was supposed
to happen during the time of that fourth kingdom. And then
by the time you get to the Gospels, it just like hits the ground
and running, you know, Jesus immediately, the kingdom of God
is at hand and repent. And you had this strong imminency
thing going on. So, Jason, just for clarification, preterist post-millennialism,
just comment briefly on what you're talking about. Yeah, well,
basically, I say loose post-mill because I was seeing a strong
preterist element. I believe that there was something
that was fulfilled in the first century. And believe it or not,
You might laugh at this. I didn't even know that the temple
had been destroyed in 8070. And yet I couldn't help but read
Matthew 24 and some of these texts and think that whatever
it is these people are talking about, it was something that
was going to happen within their lifetime. There's certain things.
And because a lot of that I had understood as being fulfilled,
one of the reasons why I don't think I got too interested in
amillennialism Every version of amillennialism that I had
heard from my friends still interpreted like the Great Tribulation. A
lot of these things are still future. And so since I had that
in the past, I just kind of naturally was bent towards a postmillennial
type of thinking. So you were seeing things already
fulfilled that before you were being taught were yet in the
future. Right. Okay. you're seeing Christ
returning after these things happen, and they've already happened. Right. And, you know, a big question
for me, again, was like the rapture. You know, where is that taught
in the scriptures? Where is it taught in Matthew 24? And I'd go back
and read MacArthur, and, you know, MacArthur would make arguments
of silence from, like, the book of Revelation. You know, he'd
say, well, the church is not mentioned in chapters 4 through
11 or whatever, and so the church must be gone. And I was like,
I don't buy that. I had a hard time seeing where
the rapture thing was taught. So I was leaning in this direction
of preterism, post-mill, and then... Did you know what it
was called at the time? No, I didn't. You hadn't read
anything on preterism or post-millenialism. Right. And I went to... At church, I had a friend that
actually came from the same home church that I did and had become
a Calvinist. And so I was asking him, I was
like, where are you at on this issue of Rapture series you'd
be really interested in? And it was an eschatology conference
from Ligonier. I don't remember the year. Was
that 93 or something when that was done, that big eschatology
conference? I don't know the date. I just know they had one.
But he gave me this tape album set, and when I opened it up,
one of the first tapes I saw was this tape by some guy named
Kenneth Gentry. And it was on Matthew 24, and
the name of the tape was something like, Past or Future, or something
like that. And I was like, oh wow, this
looks interesting. So I immediately popped in that
cassette, and that was actually the first time I had ever heard
that the temple was destroyed in 1870. So when I heard that,
I was like, oh wow, this might actually work. Historically,
something actually did happen. So some of the pieces started
falling, So just as Piper was my gateway into Calvinism, Gentry
was my gateway into post-millennial thought. It was through him that
I started learning all these different names. At one point,
I actually drove over to Atlanta, because I was only like an hour
and a half away, and actually got to meet Gary DeMar and his
assistant at the time, I think it was Ralph Barker. Correct. I bought like $800 worth of books
from him that day. I was just... There was just
something about Gentry that just immediately, because of my experience
with dispensational and just people not wanting discipleship
and all this, you know, thinking long-term, that there was something
about the post-millennial world that just immediately attracted
me. Like, this is a full-orbed view, worldview, that just seemed
so rich to me. And that's why I just, when I
went to DeMar, I just said, give me everything you got. And I
started reading Chilton and DeMar and North and a little bit of
Rush Denny. And so that's kind of how I found
out that I was leaning in that direction of post-millennialism. What time frame are we in now?
Is this after 9-11? Yeah, this would have been there
at the end of 2001 into 2002. It was a short period. And that's
why I say loose post-mill. Because I think there are certain
things about post-millennialism that didn't quite understand,
that didn't take root. Because I eventually found out about a
Reformed Baptist church in Birmingham that was named Dominion. I was
just, you know, searching for churches online and trying to
find a fellowship that was teaching this kind of stuff. And I thought,
huh, Dominion Baptist, that sounds post-millennial. I've got to
check these guys out. And I went and visited their
church and just instantly fell in love with the people. And
so my wife and I plugged into that church there in Birmingham.
This would have been in, I think, towards the end of 2002. And
it was in that church that I shared with the pastor my experiences
with ministry and stuff like that. So he kind of took me up
under his wing and started discipling me. We started going through
some works and I was basically a pastor in training, I guess
you could say. I actually did a little bit of preaching and
Sunday school. But it was during this period,
one of the things that I wrestled with was We say that this passage here
is talking about AD 70 and then a couple of passages later we
say that this passage here is talking about Jesus coming at
the end of history. And I just couldn't for the life
of me figure out what was the hermeneutic behind determining
which coming passages were fulfilled and which ones weren't. And even the preterists or partial
preterists, whatever you want to call them, didn't really present
things consistently. I remember reading, I think it
was Andrew Sandlin, there was a verse in I think it was 1 Thessalonians
where he says that anybody that interprets this verse as being
fulfilled in the past robs the church of its hope, etc., etc. And then here he is endorsing
a book by Sariah, and in that very same book, Sariah says,
well, that same verse was fulfilled in AD 70. So I was like, you
know, I don't care what position you come from, that's a problem.
I mean, how can you have two guys saying that this referring
to the same verse and one of them saying it's fulfilled and
the other one saying it's not fulfilled. Right. And if you say it's fulfilled,
you're robbing the church of it. So it just really confused
me, like trying to figure out what was fulfilled and what wasn't.
And then during this time, I also read, I was reading Stuart Russell's
book that I found out through Sproul, The Teresia. And in that book, he reprints
a sermon by John Owen who interpreted 2 Peter 3 as being fulfilled.
And when I read that, my jaw just hit the ground. I was like,
well, if that's true, then I just don't know where else to go from
here. So this is what's moving you toward what is commonly called
hyper-proterism. Right. And so in the church that
I was in, they, as I began kind of slowly bringing this up and
wanting to talk about it, they were pretty hesitant to talk
to me about it. In fact, I actually shared with
one of the elders in the church that John Owen had taught this
about 2 Peter 3, and he didn't believe me. I printed the thing
out and brought it to him the next Sunday. He just kind of
looked at it and looked at me and just walked away. He's like,
well, you know, I just didn't even want to talk about it. And
I don't think, I mean, there were prejudice in this church,
but I guess they had never had anybody take it this far and,
you know, and asking, you know, where does this end? Where does
it stop? And so there was a lot of hesitation there and a lot
of fear, I think, just wanting to talk about it. And so naturally
that kind of fed into me. I can imagine you also had conflicts
within some of the systems because, you know, there are what are
called classical post-millennialists and there are also a group called
historicist post-millennialists and then preterist post-millennialists
are completely different. Not that they don't have a post-millennial
scheme of victory of the church, but how they view things in history
and time would differ. Therefore, If you're reading
Rush Dooney, who's a historicist, if you'd be reading Lorraine
Bittner, who was a classic post-millennialist, if you're reading Gentry, you're
reading three different concepts of processes to millennial thought. What they had in common was,
of course, those four areas of general eschatology that is essential
to orthodoxy. a visible manifestation of Christ
at the end of history, a consummation of history where he's victorious
over death and sin are destroyed, a resurrection of the dead, and
a final judgment. Now if they had those in common,
But the processes, just like amillennialism, differs. And
there are different variations of amillennial thinking on how
some things proceed, as you have both with premillennialism, which
you can have five or six different perspectives on processes. Processes
have never been judged as heretical. What has been judged as heretical
is the rejection of those four doctrinal positions that are
essential to all end times theories. But I can imagine there is –
because I went through it as I studied moving from dispensationalism
to eventually a – what I called a modified post-modernism that
was preteristic because at the time… weren't quite using that
term. Ken Gentry comes on the scene
sometimes later. When we have the seminary open,
he's one of the early guys who graduates, writes the book before
Jerusalem falls. And you hear this term, preterism,
start floating around. And I'm immediately, as I'm getting
his book, I'm reading Russell, Terry, and putting these things
together as well. And so it would be easy to see
how if you're reading all those different people, you're getting
different ideas. You're getting different concepts
in processes. How do we go from A to Z in history
to the consummation of all things? And so the answers aren't necessarily
consistent with one another, even if they're in the same camp
as an overview or an umbrella. Now, Jason, preterism has to
do with that which has already been fulfilled, passed, right? Right. So what what would make
preterism called hyper-preterism then? Well, after reading that from
Owen, one of the questions I asked, well, if the heavens and earth
has passed away, at least the one Peter is talking about, then
I always understood that as a parallel text to the end of Revelation. That's the same heavens and earth
that passes away. And so I basically just taken
this leap that the heavens and earth that passed away in Revelation
has also passed away and fulfilled and so we are living in a new
heavens and new earth in the full sense. And once you make
that jump, that's when you're starting to tinker around with
hyper-preterism. Because basically I'd come to
the conclusion, like there's a lot of things that I still
didn't quite have worked out in my mind as far as how it worked
out with my Calvinism and resurrection and things like that. But I don't
know. Part of it I think was immaturity and I think some of
it too was just impatience. with my church and you know,
because this is all this is all happening a very short time.
So right. But I basically just came to
the conclusion that, you know, there was one coming of Christ.
It happened. It was a single event in history. It was 80, 70. And so we are
living in this thing called the new heavens, new earth. And as
far as I know, from what I can tell, there's nothing after this. This is it. History just goes
on forever. And And so that hyper-preterism would
be defined as basically all prophecy is fulfilled. There's nothing
for which that we're looking towards. After 8070. After 8070. So how does that move you then
towards Samuel Frost? How did you meet Sam? And then
eventually, if I'm not mistaken, you were basically an associate
pastor with him. Yeah, of course, I eventually,
because I'm teaching and leading a Sunday school in my church,
I eventually call up the lead pastor there, teaching, and call
him up on the phone and say, look, this is where I am, this
is what I've embraced. And I even started crying on
the phone because I knew it was not going to be pretty. And so
I was done with that church, and they took me off the roll.
I guess it was an excommunication, Maybe it wasn't formal or whatever,
but that's essentially what happened. And also during this same time
period, I was at a gym playing basketball and ended up running
through a glass. running through some glass near
the door, the lobby entrance, and sliced my knee open. And
so here I was, like within this two or three week period, I lost
my church, lost pretty much most of my friends, and lost my job
because I was a foreman for a landscaping company and I couldn't work.
So I had one friend in the church that was kind of He was going
the same route and we were kind of bouncing ideas off one another.
Well, he decides to get online and search for, you know, full
preterist colleges or seminaries or whatever, trying to figure
out, you know, where do we go from here? And he's the one that found out about
Sam and his church, Christ's Covenant. And the thing that
immediately kind of attracted me to Sam was that he had the
Reformed background and had two degrees and So I knew this guy
was studied, and a lot of some of the other people that I was
seeing online, Googling, didn't have that, you know, to their resume. And
some of the Church of Christ people, I didn't want to have
nothing to do with that part of it, so. Right. Totally alien to Reformed
theology. Yeah, so I called Sam up one
day and just introduced myself and told him that I was interested
in what he was doing and wanted to get some of his material.
And I also shared with him that I had lost my church and my job.
Well, about two weeks later, I guess he had shared this with
his church. They had a small church going on down there in
St. Pete, Florida. And one of the men there, Michael
Grace, called me back and said, well, hey, listen, I've got an
appraisal business that's booming right now. And if you want to
come down here, I'd be glad to hire you. And you've got a church
that you'd fit into. And so I just did it. I didn't
have nowhere to go or I didn't know what to do. So I ended up
going down to Florida and getting plugged into that church and
with that job. And that's how I came to know,
become good friends with Sam. Now, eventually the church breaks
up. Did you leave before that or was it after the breakup of
the church? I'm sorry, what was the first part of that? I said
eventually the church breaks up. Oh, yeah. And did you leave
before it broke up or did you leave after the breakup of the
church? Because you moved on to back to Tennessee then. Correct. Yeah, we. Well, there's two things going
on with this chart. Number one, we're full preterists,
so... And full preterism, you know, it's not systematically
developed. Right. And number two, we're
a new church plant. And new church plants just by
themselves are difficult, you know, to keep going and start
up. And so we just had a lot of infighting. We didn't know what to do. Like,
do we baptize? Do we still baptize? Do we still
partake of the Lord's Supper? I mean, He said, do this until
I come. So do we stop doing it? And some said no and some said
yes. And then there were some issues about just practically
how we live out our lives and what's the mission of the church.
And so... And this is typical of hyper-preterist dialogue and
infighting as well. Right. And eventually people,
you know, a couple would leave and another one would leave and
just kind of do their own thing. And so eventually it just got
down to a small group of us. And of course, Sam had This really
kind of tore him up because, I mean, he left a business in
Orlando and came over to do this church and here it is dwindling
down to nothing. And so he eventually stepped
down and I actually stepped up and tried to lead things for
a little bit, actually did some teaching. But eventually I just
called the thing off. I was actually the one that called
it off and said, look, this is just not going anywhere. We might
just stop and regroup, rethink this stuff. And from there, there's a pastor
of a sovereign grace ministry church in St. Pete who knew Sam
and actually had come to some of our prophecy conferences that
we did, debates, Jerry Caesar. And so I called him up one day
and said, look, I want to be plugged into a church, but I'm
a full preterist. And so what do you think about this? And
is this going to be a problem? He said, well, we'd love to have
you, just don't talk about your full preterism to anybody. I was like, all right, I can
handle that. And so we went, we visited their church for about
a year. OK, but the great thing about their church is they did
take discipleship very seriously and they were into people's lives.
And eventually you just can't hide what you believe. And so
eventually had to come out. And I finally just decided to
leave the church and not I didn't want to cause any problems and
stuff. So we just left. And well, let me track you for
just a minute from the path you're on. You also played a very important
role in establishing sovereign grace preterism, the website,
did you not? Right. And that was probably
one of the more popular websites for the full preterist movement. When I first started going to
Sam's church there, Christ's Covenant, they actually had a
couple there that was doing the website stuff. Well, they left
the church shortly after I got there, and they didn't have anybody
to do the website. Nobody knew how to do anything
with websites and stuff. I was like, well, I can probably
figure it out. So that's how I got into doing
websites, just a little bit, just tinkering around with it
and learning some stuff. So I basically took over Christ's
Covenant Church's site and then when the church broke up we turned
into Reign of Christ because we still wanted to, even though
we didn't have the church going, we still wanted to offer something
up online, people with just articles and podcasts. So I took over
that and then Sovereign Grace Preterism came up. It's just, you know, obviously with hyper-preterist
A lot of them are not in churches. And so a lot of them are lonely.
A lot of them have been kicked out of their churches. And so
a lot of them express just the desire for some type of fellowship. And basically the only thing
we could come up with, because there's only like seven or six
full preterist churches in the States. Right. So there's a big
chance that you're not living near one of them if you're a
full preterist. Me and a guy came up with this idea of basically
creating just like a social network where people can join and they
can blog and write and share videos and photos and kind of
like a Facebook platform, for full preterist, using the Ning
platform. Yeah, I ran that for a couple
of years, and it's grown to about 400 people, and not all of them
full predators, some of them people looking into it, and some
people that are anti and just want to get in there and go after
the full predators. But, you know, the great thing
about running that site, when I look back at it, though, is
I was able, really, to gauge really good at where full predatorism
was, because just about everyone was there hanging out. And so
that was one of the things that kind of led to me leaving eventually.
You said earlier that you realized that there were things in Reformed
theology that you couldn't reconcile with hyper-productive. There
was no way to have a synthesis that would be systematic. It
was impossible. So when you begin to realize, I mean, really begin
to think through this question, reform theology, hyper-Protestant
incompatibility, what are other things like that that led you?
And how did you begin to move away from this movement itself? Well, one of the things I never
did as a full Protestant, I was never anti-Orthodoxy. I still, 99% of my library was
orthodox. And Clark especially, I was becoming
a big fan of Clark. And Robert Raymond was something
that I picked up systematically. So I'm reading these people all
the time. And eventually it just got to the point where I was
realizing that some of these, like you said, some of these
questions that I had up front that I just kind of in a wishful
thinking thought that I could somehow tweak a little bit and
fit within a full predator's framework, I began to realize
that it's just not going to work. And more and more, and then I
actually witnessed, especially through the Sovereign Grace Network,
that there was a more and more just ditching or doing away with,
you know, just standard Christian thought, like, I mean, sanctification,
for example. Well, you know, We were all sanctified
in 1870. That's done deal. So there's
no, we're perfectly sanctified now. And then I'm like, well,
what do we do with the presence of sin in our life? And what
about when we go to heaven and we die and, you know, are we
still going to be sinning? And some are like, well. Possibly. You know, just these crazy stuff
coming up. Everything was up for grabs.
And the further you had to fight against orthodoxy, the more you
have to realize you have to strip orthodoxy out of the system.
Right. And so I noticed that within
Preterism, you either had people that were openly willing to go
down that path, But then you had some people that were quote-unquote
conservative that said, well, we disagree with you, but we'll
still be open to that. That's possible. I had enough
reform thought in my mind where I was like, no, I can't go there.
I can't do that. So even though there was still
some immaturity in me, I still at least had something there,
a root, that I was able to hang on to that kept me from ditching
everything. Yeah, and finally, I just... Well, I ended up losing... I
ended up getting laid off in Florida, and my wife and I decided
to move up to Tennessee just to get away from the high prices
of Florida. I mean, I didn't have a church,
I didn't have a job, so there was no point being down there, really.
So we came to Tennessee, and it was here in Tennessee that
I took a trucking job in 2010. I was doing a little bit of over
road, and I did that just temporarily to get a local truck job. And
so while I'm out in this truck, it's basically just me, my clothes,
a little bit of food and whatever books I could bring. And so I
was just constantly reading, like Robert Raymond's Systematic
is one of my favorite things to read, go back through. And
again, all these questions just kept coming up is, you know,
the systematics of full preterism, how do I work this stuff out?
And I just kept hitting these walls. and realizing that if
I was going to stay true to this framework, everything's fulfilled,
that it was going to redefine everything. And I just couldn't
go there. And so that was the middle of
2010, well, beginning of 2010, around there, that I really started
questioning some things. And then Sam came along with
his infinity thing. You know, if God has an elect
group, which I believed in. How in the world do you mesh
that with the idea that history goes on forever? Because you've
got an infinite number of people. And I thought. And what it was
doing, it was driving me back to these questions that I kind
of put on the back burner, these systematic questions and that.
That by Sam forced me to. To rethink this, along with the
other things that were going on. And finally, at the end of
2010, I actually posted a video that my son helped me make. It
was a cheesy rap video, but it was that lyric that we just listened
to. I put that on RCM. And somehow, I'm not even sure
how it happened, but somehow that led to me saying, you know
what? I'm done with full preterism. It just systematically doesn't
work out. We keep harking time text, but
there's more to the Bible than Matthew 24, verse 34. We don't
have a clue what we're doing. We're wandering around. Another
thought I had was full preterists will They have no problem admitting
that full preterism has holes, that it's not fully developed.
And yet we still embrace the framework and we work towards
fixing that. But then I thought, well, why
did you leave orthodoxy then? Because when I ask you why you
leave orthodoxy, you say because it had holes and you didn't think
it was fully developed. Well, all right, so we've got
two views that, according to you, are underdeveloped and have
holes. Why take one over the other?
What's motivating you to embrace this other view? I just got to
the point where I realized that, man, I might have jumped ship
just too quick. I was just impatient. I just wanted to go back into
an orthodox framework, like you said, those four pillars. It worked from there. I don't
have it all worked out. But it just makes more sense
to me to work within what the church has offered for the last
2,000 years than to embrace this view that's basically just centered
around time text and doesn't know anything else about anything
else. And contradictory. To try to
bring in orthodoxy, to mix it, to blend it, synthesize it, it
just doesn't work. And then to defend one section,
you have to begin to strip away areas of orthodoxy. He's no longer
looking like the God of Scripture. He's being recreated. Redemption
has to be recreated. And what you see is really a
move, I think, toward the liberal concepts. And of course, we know
from Max King's writings, which was very influential in this
whole movement, he being Church of Christ, when he goes and looks
at people like Dodd, Bultman, Bruner, these different liberal
and neo-orthodox guys, and they don't believe in a resurrection,
it's because they're so triology. It's an orthodox or evangelical.
So for them it's no big issue. And if you're Church of Christ
being semi-Pelagian, putting you in the same camp, I'm not
sure it really dawned on you that this is a real track against
orthodoxy. But I find that those who have
been or come from an orthodox reform perspective, or even an
evangelical Protestant orthodox perspective, They can't reconcile
this. It becomes an impasse. Just what
you're talking about. And in as hard as they worked
at it, Sam Frost had come at different times as he was looking
at this and talked to me. And I would keep saying to him,
you know, be careful with this stuff because some of this stuff
is really, you know, way overboard. But he would say to me, you know,
there's things that I can't deal with election. You're right,
because if you have an infinite history that never stops using
that word infinity in that way, the way the Greeks talk about
it, then you've got to deal with the question either there is
a set body of elect and they're done. Which then brings up the
question, how does a person become saved now? Because that's a different
form of redemption at that point. You either have two forms of
redemption or you've got to make up something to try to figure
out how to resolve that. That means either doing away
with the concept of election. Now we're moving to Arminianism.
And eventually what we're going to move to is a semi-Pelagianism,
something that is like a liberalism or a neo-orthodoxy, but it's
no different than Roman Catholicism. And even though Roman Catholicism
has Orthodox elements left, their theology has become so overloaded
with different teachings that in essence they are unorthodox.
They're actually apostate in principle. So I can see how that
becomes a real problem. In all of this, let me just bring
our time to a conclusion. What has it meant for you to
return to Orthodoxy? How has it affected you and your
family? Well, it affected me in a number of ways.
And like I said, I still have a lot of questions. You know,
there's still some things that I got to work out. You know,
one of the things I'm considering is some of the work you've done
with preterism. And I acknowledge that within
partial preterism, there's still some issues. There are some key things now
that I can see that like, you know bodily resurrection was
something that I clearly Was redefining and trying to fit
into a time text and right and And then and then history, you
know the sovereignty of God if God is sovereign over all decrees
all things which I have always believed And you got to ask yourself,
well, to what end is he doing it? Exactly. You know, what's
the purpose? And full Protestantism doesn't
have any purpose. So. One of the things that it's brought
back for me is just really a sense of purpose. You know, my wife
and I are back into we're plugged into a really solid church here
in Knoxville. And just that whole sense of
purpose and and just being back with the body. I mean, you know,
I was basically, I remember, I think it was actually a Catholic
guy that told me one time when I was a full Protestant, I asked
him if he thought we were part of the body. He said, well, you're
like a finger that's been chopped off. You're laying in the floor,
bleeding to death. And of course, I didn't like
it at the time when he said that. But now I look back like, yeah,
that's that's exactly where that is, bleeding to death. and just
losing life out of me. So just being able to come back
to that, coming back to sound doctrine and things has invigorated
me and sparked excitement in life and purpose and realizing
that, hey, this is going somewhere. God's at work. Well, Jason, it's good to hear that
You've resolved some of these issues and you've always been
a student of the Bible, it sounds like, and you believe God's Word.
You're just trying to understand it. And so you're sticking with
the best way of understanding it that has been developed over
the years by godly people. And while we probably in this
life will never know all the answers, and people do have different
views trying to sort these things out, It's just really wonderful
to hear that you have made the move back to orthodoxy, and we're
looking forward to seeing what you do with your life in the
future, because you obviously have gifts and abilities, and
we're anxious to follow your career. Well, thank you. One of the things I struggled
with too when I recanted full preterism, there was a short time where
I actually got kind of depressed because it really rattles you
to think that I was involved in something for seven years
that was heresy and pushing this stuff. So part of me got really
down and depressed about it. But then, you know, that's where
I'm anchored into the sovereignty of God. And I can look back and
see that, OK, that was not a waste, you know. And there's. No, yes, he has a purpose and
he taught you something. Yeah, it's like like the resurrection,
for example, and the purpose of creation. These are things
that I once believed in and then left. But now that I've been
through that and been on the other side, and studied my way
back into it, I appreciate now what Orthodoxy has been teaching
a whole lot better and deeper than I did before. And so, you
know, if that's one of the reasons God put me through that. Absolutely. Well, we're glad. We really are
glad for you being back. We're happy. that you've associated
with us. You're doing a wonderful job
on the website, and we're just ecstatic about things that are
coming. We're building, we're growing,
and we want to see you be a part of that. You've got a lot to
offer people, to talk to them, to share with them these kind
of things, and opportunities to counsel them in the future
about making rash decisions in particular. One of the things
that we live in a society of is where we want that 15 minute
soundbite jump, make decisions, and sometimes we don't sit back
and say, do I really want to make this kind of a decision?
Do I just want to jump into these things? And then have to be standing
in the middle of it, look backwards and go, was this the right choice
for me? So I think you can really be helpful in influencing and
maybe even writing on that very subject in the future and talking
about that, that making rash decisions without really thinking
through. And that's a very important thing
to learn to do, to think not only of where you'll land, but
what are the implications of it? And then what will it cost
you to maintain it? Do you have to give up everything
you've believed in the past? No, people don't think in those
realms. People don't think about the negative implications as
well as the logical conclusions that you would have to go to
to maintain it. And I think that's something that you have to offer. And Sam Frost has to offer people
to say, look, we went down this road and when we got down this
road so far and then we ran into the brick wall. And then we begin
to say, why are we here? What was the purpose of this?
And of course, God has his reason and purpose. Who knows who you
will influence, who you will talk to, the people you will
keep from making those wrong decisions. But we're proud of
you. I love you. Thank you for the
work you do. And I'm looking forward to getting
the Last Days of Madness launched and ready to go here. It's been
a pleasure to have you on True Believer. Dr. Bill, I'd like
to thank you. And thank our supporters for
being here. Pray for us, please. Tell others
about our show. We can be listened to on WhitfieldMedia.com
or SermonAudio.com. And until next time, may God
bless you in his truth and grace. Are you considering seminary
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from you. A Puritan's Mind is a website
dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the glory of God.
located at www.apuritansmind.com, its purpose is to help those
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Puritan's Mind because it houses one of the largest selections
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as Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, Jeremiah Burroughs,
and a whole host of Westminster ministers of the Puritan age.
But that's not all. There are sections on the website
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out over into the reformed book market with Puritan publications. We have published over a dozen
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com. I just don't know where, where
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