I noticed that a number of the speakers have spent a little time in their introduction explaining their topic. Well, I have a very happy topic. It's isms in eschatology critiqued, but it doesn't tell you which isms. And that might lead you to think, well, he can talk about almost anything and at great length, and I can assure you I'm good at the latter. I'm not known for my brevity. I've occasionally been lucid, but seldom have I been brief. So I've never achieved Calvin's goal in public speech and in writing, which was the goal of lucid brevity. In fact, the students at the seminary say, don't ask Dr. Venema a question if there are less than 12 minutes until the appointed hour, lest we be dismissed late. So they don't ask questions within that time frame. But I've been asked to speak on isms. And that would seem to you to suggest that the field is ripe under the harvest, but Dr. Piper has asked me to zero in, in particular, on three isms. And I have to, before I tell you what they are, answer a question that was put to me over the break. Are you going to give us something of an explanation of the difference between what you call yourself a optimistic millennialist and a post-millennialist? And I said, well, no, that's not been assigned to me, but if you want to know the difference, it's between a man who has and a man who hasn't. the courage of his convictions. The optimistic amillennialist just doesn't want to own up to the fact that he's really a closet postmillennialist. But the three isms that I've been asked to address are the following, and you'll notice that the task is daunting, and I've already forewarned you about my lack of brevity, but we'll keep an eye on the clock. I was hoping that Dr. Dyer was going to loan me his 15 minutes, but he didn't, so I'll stay within the appointed time and bring it to a close abruptly if I have to, if I have more to say than we have time. But the three isms, that I'm asked to address are first of all dispensational premillennialism or dispensationalism. The second ism is something called hyper or some people prefer the term full preterism. a position that I don't think warrants as much attention as the other isms, but I'll give it my best in the time allotted. And then also lastly, something that Dr. Thomas in a most, as was stated earlier, both sobering and at the same time poignant and rich address last evening, one could not help but be moved by his words on the solemn subject of the doctrine of everlasting punishment. But the ism that I'm looking at is the ism of annihilationism. Now, he covered the field to some degree, and that will help me not to take too much of your time this afternoon. But first of all, the ism known as Dispensationalism, and let me just say this by way of a general observation regarding all of these isms. They all in one way or another have their finger on an element of the truth but they put it all out of proportion. A simple definition of an ism is when you exaggerate or throw out of all appropriate proportion where your angle of vision tends to make central what is perhaps only a thread of the scriptural teaching. And I think that's the one thing that might tie together the three isms that we consider this afternoon. Each in their own way takes a dimension of what is taught in the Word of God or a thread of scriptural teaching and it draws it out, if I may stretch the analogy, pulls the string out of its appropriate environment and it comes unraveled. And I think that's true of our first ism, dispensationalism. It's been noted earlier in the conference more than once that within the boundaries of historic reform confessionalism and under the scriptures, we allow for the views known as pre and ah and post-millennialism. But what about dispensationalism? The thing that distinguishes dispensationalism at its root, you might say, in terms of classic and even diverse millennial views historically in the Christian church, is the radical disjunction or cleavage or separation that is drawn between two peoples, God's earthly people Israel and God's spiritual people, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in this present dispensation. I'm going to argue tomorrow in an address on Romans 11 that it's not inappropriate to use language like Paul's to the Jew first and to the Gentile also, or to even as Paul expresses it, express a heart's desire that his kinsmen according to the flesh should be saved. Not every distinguishing between Israel and the church, between the Jew and the Gentile is altogether illegitimate. But the distinction that is prominent and at the heart of dispensationalism isn't so much a distinction as it is a tearing apart, a sunder of the one body of Christ of which Paul spoke and speaks in the text that was read just a moment ago from Ephesians chapter 2, where the dividing wall of hostility has been broken down between Jew circumcised and Gentile, the uncircumcised, and all are at the foot of the cross through the blood of Jesus belonging to a new humanity, a new race, of men and women, children of God, who belong to the new Israel of God in that sense. Now this is the root principle, and I'm not going to this afternoon pretend or even try to give you a quick sketch of dispensationalism. It's much too complex. It's far too rich. And there are too many different kinds of dispensationalists for us to even begin to get a handle on it. Happily, dispensationalism at least comes with its own canonical or sub-canonical interpretation. If you look at the 1909 edition of the Schofield Reference Bible, that's early dispensationalism. If you read the notes, you get a sense of what classic dispensationalism taught. Then this 1967 new revised Schofield reference Bible, which I think is probably the more likely candidate as representing the broad spectrum and the main position of dispensationalism today. It's a somewhat modified version of the older classic dispensationalism. And I might add, by way of a footnote, there's something today known as progressive dispensationalism. Authors like Bleising and Bach and others. It's a significant, if I might add to that, a significant development. Even though we may regard dispensationalism at certain points to be seriously in error by the standard of the Word of God, I do think we ought not to miss the fact that there has been historically within dispensationalism at least some movement. And as I measure the movement, it's always been, in my judgment, the right direction. And progressive dispensationalism almost merges with what we would call historic premillennialism. And so I think we ought to be as God's people concerned and even prayerful that that movement might actually issue in an emergence on the part of many people out of dispensationalism, though I'm certainly aware of the fact that the older dispensationalism certainly the 1967 version of the revised Schofield Bible remains very influential and pervasive in many churches in North America. Now just before I give my critique or evaluation of this root principle of dispensationalism, let me simply remind you of some of the principal tenets, broad themes and emphases that distinguish dispensationalism as a particular ism. The first is the term itself. I don't want to spend much time on the term, but as you know, it comes from a term in the scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, oikonomia, or economy. It has to do with the way in which someone who has responsibility for administers their household. And the idea of dispensationalism then broadly conceived is that God triune administers the course of history, particularly since the fall of man and Adam, according to seven distinct administrations, seven ways whereby God's redemptive purposes are in a particular manner achieved. Now one of the problems with dispensationalism in terms of interpreting it, and I don't want to miss or in any way misrepresent dispensationalism, is how radical the disjunction between these dispensations is. If you read the faculty statement of Dallas Theological Seminary Dispensational School, you'll notice that they do affirm There is but one mediator between God and man and there's one whose blood is shed for the redemption of his people throughout all the course of redemptive history. So it would be unfair to argue that even though that seems to be the implication that by these distinct administrations, dispensationalism is really tearing apart altogether and suggesting that there are seven different economies, even ways whereby we can be saved. I don't want to say too much more about the subject of dispensation or what's meant by dispensation. I think you could observe here that for all the practical intents and purposes, The dispensations among the seven that really matter are probably the dispensation of promise from Abraham to Moses, but more especially the dispensation of the law under Moses, from Moses to the Christ, and the dispensation of this present epoch from Christ's first coming until the rapture, the dispensation of the church where God's focus is particularly directed to his heavenly people, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ from among the Gentile nations, and then the dispensation of the coming kingdom or the millennium of Revelation 20 when God will once again resume and turn his interest and bring about his particular purpose of redemption for his earthly people Israel. Really those are the dispensations that are most significant and for our purpose most primary is the distinction between the dispensation of the church in this present period till the rapture and then the dispensation of the Millennium. The one having to do with the people of the church, God's spiritual people. The other, the people of Israel, God's physical people. That leads me to what I called earlier the root principle. Actually, if I were to use the analogy of a wheel, I think the distinction between the church and Israel, or Israel better, and the church is the hub. from which all of the various spokes of dispensationalism emerge. I'm going to say something in a moment about the hermeneutics of literalism, but in my judgment, that's really a child or a product fruit of this root principle. The hermeneutics of dispensationalism in some way are a way of reading the scripture that retains and honors the distinction between these two peoples of God, God's earthly people and his spiritual people. So the big distinction, the root principle within dispensationalism is that God has two diverse communities or peoples. I hesitate to use the language, but one of the earth, earthy, and the other of the heavens, heavenly. That's a bit of a misappropriation of the scripture at this point, but it perhaps gets at the issue. Israel is a physically distinct and identifiable racially and ethnically people, the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh. They are the Israel of God, the people to whom God came and with whom he covenanted through Abraham and under Moses throughout the period of the old covenant economy. Now that people is to be kept always separated from God's heavenly people, the church of the Lord Jesus, gathered from among the tribes and peoples and nations of the earth, the Gentiles. Some of the distinctive features of dispensationalism pop up at just this moment. The language, for example, of the Apostle Paul in his epistles regarding this mystery that God is now revealing in the fullness of time concerning the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and his administration of that gospel to the Gentile peoples. That's a mystery concerning God's interest and unique redemptive purpose in Christ for the church that was not promised, that was not known or anticipated by God's earthly people Israel under the old covenant economy, that has only now in the fullness of time been revealed. And we don't have time to look this afternoon at the way in which Daniel 9 verses 24 to 27 functions at this point where there's a distinction made in the text prophetically between the 69th and the 70th weeks and that distinction by dispensationalism is arguably an oblique, not explicit, no Old Testament believer would have ever found it, but an oblique tacit reference to this mystery of the dispensation of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, where there will be a parenthesis, or as some writers put it, an intercalation, which is just fancy language for an insertion into the divine redemptive calendar of God having a redemptive interest and purpose in Christ for the Gentiles. And that leads me also to mention another distinctive feature of dispensationalism, not the idea of the distinction between the 69th and 70th weeks, which introduces the parenthesis of God's mystery. purpose with respect to the Gentile nations during the dispensation of the church, there is also in that connection an appeal to 2 Thessalonians 3 which speaks at least in the Vulgate in translating the original language of 2 Thessalonians 3 of a rapture or a raptus of the saints that will occur when Christ comes. In my judgment, and you may take this to be a bit unfair, but I'll explain it to you if you want to talk to me over coffee or after the address this afternoon, it seems to me that reading of 2 Thessalonians 3 is, in some respects, reminiscent of the adage, necessity is the mother of invention. Because that reading of 2 Thessalonians 3 allows the dispensationalist to get the prophetic calendar ticking again. in order for God to resume after this interruption called the dispensation of the church, his program for Israel going again, he needs to remove through the rapture the church from the earth in order that in the subsequent 70th week now of Daniel 9, period of great tribulation at the center of which the Antichrist will emerge, that's a period that allows, in a manner of speaking, God to resume and give now renewed attention to his distinct purpose for the salvation in a literal sense of that term of his earthly people Israel. Now I've not said enough about dispensationalism but in some sense I've said too much because the clock is ticking. So I must get to my evaluation and I'm only going to focus, I'll focus, I should put it this way, let me just focus most especially on what I've called the root principle. If it can be demonstrated from the Word of God that the promises that God made to Abraham and subsequent to Abraham, his old covenant people, have, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians, their yes and their amen in Christ, and are being realized in this present dispensation, if I may use that language in a non-dispensational fashion, If that can be demonstrated, the house, in a manner of speaking, of dispensationalism begins to crumble. If it can be shown that the church is the Israel of God in the full sense of that language, and that God's purpose is both for Jew as well as Gentile to gather them together into one household of faith, Through the blood and through faith in the one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, dispensationalism as a distinct position falls away. Now, I would argue that a reading of the New Testament at various levels and in many different respects will confirm that that is indeed the case. One of the things we often miss is that in Matthew 16, when our Lord speaks of the church that he will build, against which the gates of hell will not prevail, very well-known text, he uses a term, ecclesia, that allows a kind of linguistic link to the Old Testament through the Greek septuagint. You could, in Old Testament language, say that our Lord speaking said, upon this rock, I will build my kahal, my assembly. That is, the congregation of Israel will be founded upon the testimony that you, Peter, speaking on behalf of the others, by the fathers revealing it to you, that you make concerning my person. That is to say, our Lord is, at the very least, implying there that he is the Christ, the Son of God, who has come to build the house, to gather and assemble the people that God had previously, through the ages, been gathering from the days of Abraham onward. But it's not only a passage like that. Throughout all the New Testament, the Apostle Peter in that well-known text in 1 Peter 2 speaks of the church. He says to the dispersion, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. The Apostle Paul variously in 1 Corinthians speaks of the church as the temple of God, the place of His dwelling by the Spirit. In the text that was read, Ephesians 2, the church says Paul is a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. The church is, says the writer of Hebrews, the Jerusalem. to which all the saints are being gathered, the spirits of just men made perfect. In other words, the language of the New Testament is richly drawing upon the language of the Old Testament in its description of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ as in full continuity with the old covenant people of God. Not only that, but there is within dispensationalism at this point a number of ideas like God has postponed, or God has put off, or God has suspended for this dispensation of the church, his particular interest, peculiar interest, in his earthly people, Israel. You can find very little evidence, in my judgment, for this idea of postponement. The notion that is, in some ways, the other side of the coin, that the church is a kind of afterthought in the plan and purpose of God. Or even the implication that by virtue of the unbelief of many of Jesus' own countrymen, the Jews, God thereupon turned his attention to his purpose for his spiritual people, Israel. I mean, the Gospels from the very beginning represent the coming of Christ as being in accordance with the scriptures, to use Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 15, so that it was necessary for him in fulfillment of prophecy to go the way that he went, all the way in his obedience to the cross. One of the things that I think we often neglect to notice here is, unlike the charge of some dispensationalists that The notion that Christ's building of his church is a fulfillment of God's work under the old covenant with his old people Israel suggests that God has displaced or God has forgotten his people Israel. What that misses is that the first and foremost member of the church, the head of the church, the cornerstone of the church, was son of David, son of Abraham, the seed according to God's promise. The nucleus upon which that church is built and founded by Christ's own appointment were all drawn, 12 apostles, the new Israel, from that same company of the people of Israel, even according to the flesh. In other words, it is not the case that God's so-called earthly people, as a people, rejected the Christ, whereupon God turned his attention to the Gentiles. But there was always, to use language that we'll see more of tomorrow when we look at Romans 11, a remnant, according to God's purpose of election, from among that people And so from the beginning the gospel went to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, not the one without the other, each together being joined in that one great temple and household people of God that the Lord is building. Well, there's a whole lot more I'd like to say about that subject, but I suppose, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I could commend to you the reading of the New Testament. Seems to me that that is, if one is not looking to sharply distinguish between Israel and the Church, the clear and compelling and comprehensive teaching of the New Testament Scriptures. I'm going to only make one other observation and critique of dispensationalism, and it has to do with my observation earlier about its hermeneutics. Dispensationalists always argue that corresponding to God's earthly people, Israel, we need to read the promises of the Old Testament prophets in likewise literal, physical, concrete, straightforward, plain terms. If I may insert a little biography here, I never approach the subject of dispensationalists or dispensationalists with, I trust, undue severity or harshness. I happen to have gone for three years to a dispensational high school academy in California, all of whose students, with myself an exception, who aspired to attend someday in Greenville, South Carolina, Bob Jones University. And I can remember how struck I was. The first day at school, I came home and I said to my father, I said, did you know that we're liberal? And he looked at me somewhat cross-eyed because no one had ever called him a liberal in his entire life. And said, what do you mean? I said, well, we don't believe the Bible. Because at this particular school, it was absolute dogma that if you didn't read the text literalistically, You didn't read the text with appropriate submission, with true regard for the Word of God. Now, that's one of the great appeals of dispensationalism. And I think the best response to that argument is to respond not by saying, well, we read the Bible literally as well. But by saying, if for a moment you suspend the principle that God has two radically different peoples and he speaks differently to them, and you read the Bible straightforwardly in a literal, that is, literary manner, and you allow the Bible to be its own interpreter, you will make progress. Because if you truly believe in the literal sense of the scriptures, one of the rules of exegesis is always going to be the rule of context. Verses are in paragraphs, paragraphs are in chapters, chapters are in books, and books are in testaments, and testaments are in canon. And that means all of the prophecies of the Old Testament have a broad canonical context so that you read the promises of the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament's disclosure as to their meaning and as to their fulfillment. It's part of the broader canonical context for comparing Scripture with Scripture and determining the meaning of the text. And if you can get a dispensationalist to at least, it's not easy, for a few moments let loose this radical disjunction between Israel and the church, and read the whole scripture in the fullness of its context, their eyes begin to open and you show them the fulfillment of Old Testament typology and the pervasiveness of the New Testament's appeal to the promises of the Old Testament as they're being now fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And you can, incidentally, say to them that, no, you don't unduly spiritualize the promises because the kingdom of God, which is already now a reality with Christ's ascension, is not reality in all of its fullness as it will be in the consummation. And so when you accuse us of spiritualizing the promises regarding that glorious new heavens and new earth that the Lord will bring about, you are too quick not to listen to what we have to say about the fullness of the promise of God in the age which is to come, an age that has already commenced here and now in the first coming of the Lord Jesus and by the working of his spirit as Dr. Wilborn so nicely emphasized in an earlier session today. Well, with that, I'm going to simply stop and shift gears and go to point two. Now, I say to our students in homiletics, a three-point sermon is one advantage. You know you're making some progress when you get to the second point. But you also look at your clock and you say, well, he's used half his time and he's only at point two. That's not hopeful. Well, I trust I can be more brief on these last two isms. The second ism I've been asked to comment on is hyper-threaterism. And Dr. Smith yesterday gave us a little vocabulary lesson, and I'll simply repeat it very quickly, to understand what this terminology, hyper-preterism, means. Remember that in the reading, particularly the book of Revelation, but also in terms of handling some of the texts and the scriptures regarding the signs of the times, there are those who take what is called a futurist view. And that simply means that these signs or these events prophesied lie in the future, whether near or distant, perhaps signals of the imminent return of Christ. So they are yet to be fulfilled. Idealism is a way of reading Revelation and many of these texts, prophetic texts in the New Testament regarding the signs of the time, Matthew 24 and so on, in a largely symbolical way. They simply describe principles that are operative in the whole period between Christ's first and second coming. And then there's the position known as historicism that regards these as prophecies of events, figures in the unfolding of God's purposes throughout history until Christ comes. And that brings me to preterism, which as Dr. Smith indicated, comes from a Latin root meaning past. And preterism is a view that regards New Testament prophecies regarding Christ's coming or signs that might accompany or precede His coming as referring to events that, though at the time of the writing of the New Testament were yet future on the near horizon, are from our vantage point now past. Classic example of that is in Matthew 24, at least in the first part of our Lord's answer to the disciples twofold question, when will the temple be destroyed and what will be the sign of your coming? He describes a number of signs of the times and then he describes what in my judgment is clearly the coming imminent destruction within that generation of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Now a preterist is a person, for example, on Matthew 24 who regards those signs as events in the past that occurred just before or at the time of the temple's destruction. They don't speak or tell us anything about the present or the future. It's in the past. It's been fulfilled. Now what if hyperpreterism or full preterism? Hyperpreterism is the view And I find it hard to describe this view because I'm reminded of something I once heard about a certain exegete. The observation was, he's either onto something or he's on something. And when it comes to hyper-preterism, I'm wondering if it isn't the latter. Because hyper-preterists are people who actually argue that as a matter of fact, every reference in the New Testament to a yet future event before or at the time of Christ's return was fulfilled, took place, and usually the point of reference is at the time of the destruction and the passing of the old order of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. That means every reference to Christ, parousia, revelation, appearing, and all of the so-called signs of the times, and all New Testament descriptions of things yet to come, the final judgment, the resurrection of the body, the coming of the new heavens and the new earth, all of these, to use that lovely expression of Charles Hodge, these concomitants of Christ's return or second coming, they've already taken place. The resurrection of the body has already taken place. We are, in a manner of speaking, in the eschatological final consummate state. The problem some of us have is that we just don't realize it. It's a kind of, if I may, if there were ever a position that deserved the opprobrium, over-realized eschatology, This is hyper-preterism. Now there are a number of authors, most of their books are self-published, and I don't think this is a movement, though it does have very aggressive representation and forceful exposition by a number of writers who've written large tomes, like Ed Stevens, Randall Otto, Max King, and many others. The book on this, by the way, is the book edited by Keith Matheson. That's, in my judgment, the best book as an introduction to this. But their position then is everything lies for us in the past. In fact, Ed Stephens offers the following propositions as a summary. The kingdom has arrived. The kingdom is spiritual. The kingdom must be entered and dwelt in through spiritual means. All things written about Christ in the Old Testament have been fulfilled. The Great Commission has been fulfilled. All things have been made new. The scheme of redemption has been consummated. The old heavens and earth have passed away. The new heavens and the new earth are here. The time of reformation has occurred, Christ has returned, the perfect has come, the bridegroom has returned, the first covenant become obsolete, the mystery finished, death and Hades thrown into the lake of fire, all things restored. Reminded of a speaker yesterday was quoting someone about this. What do you do? This is the millennium. Well, I simply enjoy it. Well, hyper-preterists would apparently believe that we as believers should enter into the enjoyment of the final consummate state. Now, there are all kinds of permutations. There are a variety of views within hyper-preterism, but that's the main idea. Let me just simply list and identify what I regard to be three insurmountable objections. I think you could probably, wouldn't have to be particularly imaginative, think of a lot more. But the first one is this. If hyper-preterism is true, the church from the first century onward has not gotten it right in eschatology. And by church, I mean east, west, north, and south. or I should say in the South, South and North. The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, no historic symbol of any branch of the Christian Church has ever taught anything approximately like hyper-preterism. This is truly heresy. I would call dispensationalism at certain points seriously an error. But this is heresy by the strict standard of the term, a departure from other than the historic consensus and understanding of the Christian church throughout the ages. It seems to me that it simply strains credulity that all of the books of the New Testament, without exception, were written before 70 AD. That's a given. because every single reference to Christ's coming in the New Testament was at the time of the writing of the New Testament, yet future. So you've got a burden of proof. You've got to show that the entire New Testament in every one of its books was written before 70 AD. But if that's a heavy burden of proof, imagine that you would have to show that both the New Testament writers and those who were present as believers at the time of Christ's coming seemingly mystic. They didn't notice. And the whole church with them, for the most part, sense. What I'm getting at is we don't ultimately determine rightness and wrongness in the Christian church by long-standing tradition, custom, confession. But it really is rather difficult to maintain the doctrines of the clarity and the perspicuity of the scriptures and hold a position which, if true, was lost upon vast, if not the preponderance of the Christian church throughout the centuries, none of whom have understood the scriptures correctly. So that's my first general observation. Another observation is that You might be thinking to yourself, well, if we've been raised, the resurrection of the body has already occurred at the time of Christ's coming, how did I miss it? Well, many of these authors tend to transmute the biblical doctrine to, again, use Hodge's language. When Christ comes, the dead will be raised, some to judgment, unto condemnation, some unto life everlasting. The new heavens and the new earth will commence, and we will enter immediately and together, because these are all concomitant events. They happen together at a point yet in the future. Well, hyper-preterism has to have the resurrection occurring individually. as we physically die, we experience, as some would have it, a kind of spiritual resurrection and union with Christ and the whole body, which is his church, which was raised. The resurrection of the body is actually, for some of them, the resurrection of the church. That's what happened in 70 AD. And we come into it, each of us individually, as we at death receive a kind of spiritualized form of resurrection existence. Well, that bumps its nose directly up against the, on the analogy of faith, common teaching of the Word of God, that the resurrection of the just and the unjust occurs concurrently, John 5, Acts 28. The resurrection of all the righteous who are alive at Christ's coming, together with those who come with Him, occurs as one great event prior to the consummate state. Now that, all of that, and all of the language of the scriptures regarding the event and its concomitance cannot be accounted for by hyperpreterism. The third observation that I want to make about hyperpreterism is, and I suggested it already, they have to, in a somewhat gnosticizing fashion, so spiritualize the kingdom of God that came in 70 AD and in which we participate, and the resurrection of the body as a kind of spiritual transformation, that the fundamental biblical teachings regarding the nature of the resurrection itself for the believer and the renewal, renovation of the whole cosmos when its groaning as a woman in travail is ended at the revelation of the sons of God, Romans 8. The hyper-preterist understanding of the resurrection and of the final state clearly does not find corroboration in the scriptures. Now we know of course that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into the heart of man what that final state will be exactly like. Or even for that matter, though we have some biblical indications, what exactly will be the nature of the resurrection body? Now there are many threads of scriptural testimony here, but I'll only mention one just to illustrate the point I'm making. It's not accidental or a matter of indifference to the resurrection of our Lord as the first fruits of those who sleep, that the tomb was empty. And that though glorified subsequent to his resurrection or in his resurrection, His resurrection body, glorious, was not absolutely continuous with the body that was his in the state of his humiliation. There is identity and continuity such that the tomb must be empty for the language of the resurrection of the body to be sensible. And what you have in hyperpreterism is a real denial of what is at really the core of the Christian understanding of the future, that God in the great work of recreation and the renewal of his own people in Christ and providing them a home in the new heavens and the new earth where they can dwell in each other's presence, but most importantly, in the presence of God, and in their flesh know that their Redeemer lives, that all has to, of course, fall away if you hold to the hyper-preterist position. There is no this cosmos, this world that God created and first called good, ruined through sin to be sure, ultimately renewed. And that's evident, in particular, in the way in which the whole doctrine of the resurrection of the body is radically reinterpreted. I'll leave hyper-preterism behind and come to my third ism. Happily, Dr. Thomas spoke at some length on the subject of annihilationism last evening, so I can hopefully keep my comments here to a minimum. I have to, however, begin again with definition. And when it starts with definition, things get sticky very quickly. What do we mean by annihilationism? In the broad and generic, a rather indefinite definition would be that when those who bear God's image, human beings, die, they cease to exist. Well, that's not the kind of annihilationism that we're interested in here. We're interested in a Christian at least within the framework of the Christian Church, teaching that not all those who bear God's image, but some only, are granted immortality and life in the fullness of their body and soul in the final state. What we're interested in is that form of annihilationism that teaches that whether immediately at death, and there are all kinds of variations here, and we don't have time and you don't have the patience to go into all the varieties of annihilationism, some teach annihilation after the intermediate state, some immediately at death, some only after a period of time of torment under God's displeasure in hell for a season before ultimate annihilation subsequent to the final judgment. There are a variety of forms of annihilationisms, but the one we're interested in is the one that denies that some, that is the unbelieving and the impenitent, are in the context of Christ's coming raised for judgment and condemnation to everlasting punishment in hell. It's most commonly taught in the form of what among evangelical advocates of annihilationism term conditional immortality. Only some, that is believers, who through faith union with Christ and by God's redemptive purpose obtain salvation for everlasting life in communion with God. All others, their punishment everlastingly in hell is that they are caused no longer to exist. God destroys, annihilates, causes them to cease to be. Now there are a number of theological arguments for this view, some of which Dr. Thomas answered last evening, and I'm not going to look at those. I do want, however, to mention quickly three arguments that are typically adduced from the scriptures for this kind of annihilationism, as I've broadly defined it, and give a short response or rejoinder to these arguments. The first is an argument that trades on the language of destruction. It goes like this, to destroy is to destroy is to destroy. If something is eternally destroyed, doesn't that mean it is extinguished? It ceases to be. And annihilationists, conditional immortality advocates will sometimes appeal here to the word used commonly in the New Testament for the destruction of the wicked. in parallel texts like Matthew 2.13 where Herod, we're told, plotted to kill the newborn babes in Bethlehem in order that he might destroy him, that is Jesus. Now there the term seems to mean cause him to cease to be, at least physically. And similar usages in the New Testament. The only thing I want to say by way of response to this particular argument is it's too quick and it's too restrictive. By that I mean it is true that the language of the Scriptures is often used here of destruction, but it begs the question as to the nature of the destruction. There are passages in the New Testament where the very word to destroy is used, where the sense of it is not to cease to exist, and so we have to ask the question, is there other biblical imagery and language for the final state respecting the wicked to which we must go for an answer to our question. And I would argue indeed there is. Now the second argument of annihilationists that you'll often come against is the argument from the imagery of a consuming fire, the fire that consumes. And the annihilationists, horrible as it is to contemplate, argues that what fire does is it extinguishes and completely destroys, puts out of existence, what it quote unquote devours. So you have scorched earth and no remainder. And so the very language commonly employed in the New Testament, the lake of fire, a fire that is eternal, that is indestructible. That language seems to imply, does imply, that the wicked cease to be. They are consumed by fire. Dr. Thomas mentioned last evening, he made a very good point regarding watching out not to press the imagery and the metaphor of the scriptures too strictly in this area. Outer darkness, he observed, is also a metaphor for the final state reserved to the wicked. And it trades on the idea that to be in God's presence is to be in the light of him who dwells in light unapproachable. And when God comes in blessing, his first word is, let there be light. So the withdrawal of God's presence, the absence of God, the turning away of God, the casting away by God, That's the imagery of outer darkness. But how do you associate outer darkness with a fire that burns fiercely? Or the existence, and in the Gospels, I found, I picked this point up from something that D.A. Carson says in his book, The Gagging of God. The language in Mark's Gospel is their, plural, their worm does not die. Again, a gruesome image. Horrible to contemplate. But how do you place that alongside a fire that is never extinguished? Outer darkness. Their worm never ceases to devour. All of these images and metaphors together comprehensively give us something of a sense from which we shrink back in horror of what it is to be cast away and put outside. of God's favor and presence in blessing. But it's a big mistake to argue literalistically, therefore, from the language and imagery of fire to annihilationism. As a matter of fact, the consistent language in the New Testament in this connection is that this fire never ceases to burn. As you know, fire, if you pressed it literally, once it has nothing upon which to exercise its energy is extinguished. But this is a fire that never ceases to burn. As a matter of fact, there are texts explicit to this effect. In Revelation 14, John sees that the beast is tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the torment, the smoke of their torment, goes up forever and ever. And they have no rest day and night. Similar text in the language of Revelation 20 where the beast and the false prophet and others are cast into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night forever and ever. Now what you find annihilation is doing at this point is they introduce chronology. God judges and then he punishes which punishment eschews in annihilation, which is then memorialized or remembered by means of the fire and the smoke of the fire. But they've ceased to be. Well, there's no suggestion in any of the texts, difficult though they may be for us, that there is any such chronological sequence These events occur, or these circumstances are coinciding. And so at one and the same time, as the judgment and displeasure of God is heaped out and upon those who are wicked, Their torment, their punishment, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 25, is eternal in the same way in which the life God grants His own is eternal life. However we might wish it in some sense, we're so. The inescapable impression of the teaching of the New Testament is that the historic confession of the Christian church that the wicked will be consigned to everlasting punishment under the felt displeasure of God is taught in the Word of God. And so this particular ism also, though like the others, it trades on, as I said at the outset, a moment of truth. Because the irony of the second death is that it's a dying that never ends. It's a death that is no form of life, but a kind of existence that is dis-ease, out of accord with that peace, rest, and happiness that awaits the people of God and the presence of God forevermore. And so Each of these isms, and I have to draw it to a close, my time is up, each of these isms, about them much more could be said, in my judgment, some more seriously than others, but all of them take a thread, an element of what is taught in the Word of God, a distinguishing between Israel and the church, the fulfillments of prophecy as well as its future ultimate fulfillment, the destruction of the wicked in hell and throws it out of proportion. And so what you get is a form of doctrine or teaching that represents a kind of eschatological error of greater or lesser seriousness. Thank you.