I split the titular question into two questions to illustrate how Pulliam (and amillennialists in general) seem to have fallen for (and therefore perpetuate) the fallacy of the complex question: where they ask a loaded question that should be split into 2 questions in order to prevent potential answers from being problematic. The classic example is “Have you stopped beating your wife?”, where “yes” or “no” would be equally problematic because both would imply that the answerer did beat their wife at some point; it should be split into: “Have you ever beaten your wife? If so, have you now stopped doing this?” Amillennialists likewise ask: “Is Jesus reigning now?” as if it’s an all-or-nothing situation — presumably because they don’t realize there’s a spectrum of conceivable answers, rather than a simple yes-no binary.
As I first intimated at the start of this series, the position I hold is between the extremes Pulliam offers: I accept (as he does) that Jesus is the Christ, is currently in heaven, and has authority and is ruling over Christians’ hearts (as well as Christian institutions, such as Christian households, churches, seminaries, parachurch organizations, etc.) now at the Father’s right side — but I also hold (in contrast to Pulliam) that upon his return, he will ascend to David’s throne and rule over the earth (including governments, societies, etc.) for 1,000 years before handing the Kingdom back to the Father for the rest of eternity. Let’s flesh this out more before dealing with Pulliam’s objections to Christ’s kingship being limited at present. Consider the following passages:
And I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.’ (Acts 26:15-18 1995 NASB, boldface added)
This tells us that before Gentiles come to God, they are under the dominion of Satan. The Apostle John agreed: “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19 1995 NASB, boldface added) It’s not that they worship Satan, or are even necessarily on the track to Hell (after all, what about so-called “virtuous pagans” who haven’t heard the Gospel? or Gentiles who don’t yet understand right from wrong because they haven’t matured enough, e.g., infants?), but that their lives are lived under worldly authority, which has belonged to Satan ever since he tricked Adam and Eve out of their rightful place of having dominion over the earth (see Hebrews 2:5-8). I suspect this is one aspect of a technical term for Adam & Eve’s Fall that’s used in 10 NT verses: “the casting down of the world order” (καταβολῆς κόσμου, incorrectly rendered “the foundation of the world” in most English translations, due to the phrase never appearing in the LXX or earlier secular Greek literature, and thus being prone to being interpreted and translated in light of the reader’s preconceived notions — which, in many cases, both early on and down through church history to the present, were/are rooted in pagan Greek philosophical ideas).
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12 1995 NASB, boldface added)
At first glance, this verse seems to have antiestablishment overtones (and some charismatics have tried to “take over” cities because they’ve taken that idea and ran with it). But the critical phrase here is “in the heavenly places”. Note that “places” is italicized, because it’s not actually in the Greek text: the Greek phrase is “ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις”, but since τοῖς is a definite article, ἐπουρανίοις is an adjective, and no noun is connected to it, the English translator must add a noun to make the phrase grammatically valid. As Tim Warner explains {scroll to Appendix C on p. 5-10 in the PDF}, most English translators add the word “places”, based on the fact that most lexicons follow the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) in defining ἐπουράνιος (G2032, the base form of ἐπουρανίοις) as relating to the “highest heavens”. This definition was influenced by the amillennial bias (of the TDNT editors) toward the concept of Christians having a “heavenly destiny” (as Pulliam also believes); dispensationalists haven’t corrected their faulty definition because they depend on that same concept to prop up their own eschatological system (with its notion of the Jewish nation having an “earthly destiny”, and Christians having a “heavenly destiny”). But the fact is, despite their loud proclamations of following a “literal” hermeneutic, dispensationalists are stuck performing the same hermeneutical gymnastics as their amillennialist counterparts on several passages where this definition utterly clashes with the context. Warner gives a sampling of these passages in the same PDF I just linked to:
If we assume Kittle’s [the TDNT’s] definition, we are left with the following absurdities:
Matt. 18:35 (Majority Text & TR) violates Sharp’s 2nd rule, making “The Father” synonymous with “the heaven” itself (“the Father heaven”).
Eph. 2:6 puts Paul and the entire church of Ephesus in heaven at the time he wrote to them, being seated snugly on the throne of God along with Jesus at the Father’s right hand.
Eph. 6:12 puts all the minions of hell in the highest heaven, where Paul and the Ephesians were allegedly seated beside Christ.
Heb. 11:16 claims that while Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were living in tents in the Land that God promised to give them as an age-enduring inheritance, they were instead longing for a city and inheritance in heaven. This contradicts both Genesis and the context of Hebrews 11. It makes the “promise” to Abraham (which both Genesis and Hebrews claim was the Promised Land inheritance) into a promise of a city in heaven, no hint of which can be found in the Genesis account.
{Scroll to p. 7 in the PDF, under “Appendix C: The meaning of “Heavenly” in Ephesians and Hebrews”. Boldface added}
The linguistic justification for the TDNT definition is that ἐπουράνιος is a compound of ἐπί (G1909) and οὐρανός (G3772). The latter word is the noun for “heaven”, while the former is a preposition to indicate superimposition or coverage, typically rendered “upon”, “over”, etc. The TDNT claimed that for this word, ἐπί acted as a superlative, yielding the sense of “highest heaven”, i.e., Heaven itself; but more recent scholarship has indicated that this prefix carries its usual meaning (superimposition, coverage) for this compound word, so the word instead refers to Heaven’s authority over things, i.e., the heavenly “sphere of influence”.
Now, if we go to every passage in the NT (and even the LXX) where ἐπουράνιος is translated as “heavenly places” and replace it with “heavenly dominions” (or in the case of Hebrews 11:16, replace “heavenly one/country” with “heavenly dominion”), something incredible happens: all the absurdities vanish, and every sentence that made sense before still makes sense! Warner showcases some examples of this on p. 8-10 of the PDF linked to above, and one of them is Ephesians 6:12.
So, finally returning to that verse: “For our struggle is… against the rulers, against the powers [or “authorities”; G1849], against the world forces [κοσμοκράτορας, the accusative plural masculine form of G2888, literally meaning “world-rulers”] of this darkness [Thayer explained that the phrase “τοὺς κοσμοκράτορας τοῦ σκότους τούτου” (“the world-rulers of this darkness”) is an epithet for the demons, including Satan], against the spiritual forces of wickedness, in the heavenly dominions.” I added that last comma in an attempt to clarify that the phrase “in the heavenly dominions” is acting as a qualifier for everything listed before it (not just “the spiritual forces of wickedness”). Far from being antiestablishment, this verse limits the scope of Christians practicing spiritual warfare to domains that are already under Christ’s authority — the important implication for us, of course, being that some things (particularly, most rulers and authorities; after all, rulers and authority figures who happen to be Christians should be on the same side as their fellow Christians in this spiritual war!) are presently not under his authority!
For He rescued [literally, “Who rescued”] us from the domain [literally, “the authority”] of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son [literally, “of the Son of His love”]. (Colossians 1:13 1995 NASB, boldface added)
This is another clear statement that things that are under the authority of darkness are not under the authority of Christ.
You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:4-6 1995 NASB, boldface added)
Again, Christians are under the authority of Christ now, but unbelievers are under the authority of the world — which, as we saw above, is under Satan’s dominion.
As if that’s not enough, the epistle to the Hebrews often talked about Christ’s kingly duties and priestly duties. And as I point out in my upcoming book:
in Hebrews, Jesus’ priestly duties or functions are talked about as past or present (e.g., Hebrews 4:14-15; 8:1-3; 9:11-14, 23-25) but his kingly duties or functions are talked about as future (e.g., Hebrews 1:13; 2:5-10); see especially Hebrews 10:12-13. {HIDMF p. ###. Boldface and italics in original.}
Pulliam has a proof-text against this point, which I deal with in the first half of another post. But there’s also a thing or two hiding in the Greek text of Hebrews 10:12-13: “And He, for sin one sacrifice having offered — to the end, did sit down on the right hand of God, — as to the rest, expecting till He may place his enemies as his footstool” (YLT, underlining added). Before I expound on the underlined phrases, note that these 2 verses bear out the quote I just gave from my book: “for sin one sacrifice having offered” refers to a past action pertaining to Christ’s priesthood, “expecting” is a present action pertaining to Christ’s current position, and “till He may place his enemies as his footstool” is a future action pertaining to Christ’s kingship.
The second underlined phrase in Greek is the accusative singular neuter phrase “τὸ λοιπὸν”, which Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines as follows: “left:… Neuter singular adverbially, τό λοιπόν what remains”. While Thayer categorized this instance under definition a, “hereafter, for the future, henceforth”, the sentence structure makes it more likely that definition c was intended by the author of Hebrews here: “τό λοιπόν, dropping the notion of time, signifies for the rest, besides, moreover (A. V. often finally), forming a transition to other things, to which the attention of the hearer or reader is directed” {boldface in original}. Thus, the author was telling us, first, that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for sins “unto the carry-through” [“εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς”, the last word being διηνεκής (G1336), a compound of διά (G1223, a preposition meaning “through”) and an aorist form of φέρω (G5342, a verb meaning “bear” or “carry”), emphasizing an action occurring at a point in time] — the first underlined phrase, which most other translations render “forever” or “for all time” — but the “carry-through” of what? Well, the author went on to say that after this sacrifice, Jesus sat down at God’s right side, awaiting “the remainder” until “He may place his enemies as his footstool”. Taken altogether, “the carry-through” refers to when the Father would carry out His promise to give His Son “the remainder” of what he was promised to inherit (i.e., the phrases in Psalm 110 that haven’t been fulfilled yet). Since this wouldn’t happen “till” Jesus’ enemies would be subjugated to him, these verses must be referring to when Jesus’ authority will be expanded to include everything that’s presently outside of it.
Well, everything except for his Father, per 1 Corinthians 15:27 — “for all things He did put under his feet, and, when one may say that all things have been subjected, it is evident that He is excepted who did subject the all things to him” (YLT, boldface added)! Pulliam might try to counter that the first verb (“He did put”) being in the aorist tense and indicative mood (which is normally equivalent to the English simple past tense) indicates that everything being put under Jesus’ feet is something that had already happened when Paul wrote it. But note the remark shortly before this verse that “it behoveth him to reign till he may have put all the enemies under his feet” (verse 25c YLT, boldface added), where “may have put” is translated from the two words “ἄν θῇ”; the former word in the latter phrase, (G302) indicates “a supposition, wish, possibility or uncertainty” {Scroll to “Strong’s Definitions”}, and the latter is in the subjunctive mood, which indicates “possibility and potentiality”. Either of these facts alone would be enough to establish that Jesus’ enemies being “put… under his feet” was still future from when Paul wrote this (and this sheer redundancy may explain why the NT criticaltexts of this verse follow manuscripts that have θῇ, but not ἄν)! The fact that the Greek word for “one may say” (εἴπῃ) in verse 27 is also in the subjunctive mood reinforces the conclusion that the aorist indicative verb Young rendered “He did put” was past-tense from the perspective of the future time when the possibility indicated by the 3 words just discussed would be realized. You could capture the sense using the English “future perfect” tense: “for all things He will have subjected under his feet…”
So, what else is under Christ’s authority at present? What’s my justification for including “Christian institutions, such as Christian households, churches, seminaries, parachurch organizations, etc.” in the summary at the start of this post, and not just Christians themselves? I’ll save that for the next post, since one of Pulliam’s proof-texts against what I’ve laid out here provides me with a golden opportunity to explain it.
I’ve already typed several of the articles that will be part of my series critiquing the book “In the Days of Those Kings”, by Bob Pulliam. But I decided to lead off with this one because there have been so many occasions where people have, in my presence, used the exact logic Pulliam uses on the first passage I’ll discuss in this post, and I’ve been saving my breath all this time because simply directing them to this post would treat them to a much more comprehensive response (not to mention, one that won’t be perceived as an interruption!).
So anyway, Pulliam makes a couple of interesting claims about three passages in Acts:
When Peter tells us that Joel 2 was fulfilled (Acts 2:14ff), we shouldn’t look for a further development 2,000 years later. When James tells us that the tabernacle of David has been rebuilt (Acts 15:13-21), we don’t second guess the way God did it, and wait for Him to add what we believe is lacking. Turning fulfilled prophecy into partially fulfilled prophecy is an interpreter’s way of “proving” his doctrine.
…When we turn to the New Testament, we find Jews gathered “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), and the days “announced” by the prophets had come (Acts 3:24). What days had been announced? The days when the “sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers” would be fulfilled (Acts 3:25). The last promise of the Abrahamic covenant is applied to the first century (“in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed”). Peter tells the multitude, “for you first” these things had been done (Acts 3:26; cf. Mt 15:22-24). A “first” implies something later, and the Gentiles are what God had planned for after the “first” (Acts 13:46).
{“In the Days of Those Kings: A 24 Lesson Adult Bible Class Study on the Error of Dispensationalism”. Pulliam, Bob. 2015. Houston, TX: Book Pillar Publishing. 36, 73. Italics in original.}
Did Peter say Joel 2 was fulfilled on Pentecost of A.D. 30? Did James say the tabernacle of David had been rebuilt by the time of Acts 15? Did Peter say in Acts 3:24 that the covenant God made with the Genesis patriarchs was fulfilled in the first century?
As you probably guessed, the proper first step in assessing these claims is to read the Acts passages in their original contexts. And doing so reveals something interesting:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?… we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others were mocking and saying, “They are full of sweet wine.” But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them: “Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this [nominative singular neuter form of οὗτος, G3778] is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:
‘AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,’ God says, ‘THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND [literally, “ALL FLESH]; AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY, AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS, AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS; EVEN ON MY BONDSLAVES, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, I WILL IN THOSE DAYS POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT And they shall prophesy. ‘AND I WILL GRANT WONDERS IN THE SKY ABOVE AND SIGNS ON THE EARTH BELOW, BLOOD, AND FIRE, AND VAPOR OF SMOKE. ‘THE SUN WILL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD, BEFORE THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS DAY OF THE LORD SHALL COME. ‘AND IT SHALL BE THAT EVERYONE WHO CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.’ (Acts 2:1-8,11c-21 1995 NASB, boldface and underlining added)
The lines in all-capital letters in this passage are quoting Joel 2:28-32a. Despite the fact that the actual word “fulfilled” (or grammatical variants thereof) is nowhere to be seen, Pulliam is clearly interpreting the boldfaced sentence (verse 16) as saying that the underlined statements before this verse are the events that fulfilled Joel’s prophecy. Indeed, this is a linchpin of his argument that the blood, fire, smoke, and darkened sun & moon associated with the Day of the Lord & Jesus’ parousia were never meant to be fulfilled literally {see his remarks on pages 34 & 205}. But while the people on the day of Pentecost were certainly speaking in tongues (which isn’t mentioned at all in Joel’s prophecy) and arguably “prophesying” in the process, where do we see them having visions or dreams here? And by what stretch of the imagination would the 120 people in the upper room (Acts 2:1, cf. 1:15) on whom the Holy Spirit was poured out before Peter’s sermon (2:33)–at a time when estimates for the global human population are in the range of 172-305 million {scroll to p. 168 in the PDF and see the row for “30”}–constitute “all flesh”? These are big discrepancies.
Why did I mention the parsing for the Greek word rendered “this”? You’ll probably figure it out as you read the context of the passage Pulliam brought up from Peter’s second sermon:
“And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence [literally, “the face”; πρόσωπον, G4383] of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until [achri] the period [literally, “times”; the word is plural] of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time. Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ [Deuteronomy 18:15,18-19] And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these [accusative plural feminine form of οὗτος] days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘AND IN YOUR SEED ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.’ [Genesis 22:18, 26:4, 28:14] For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one [literally, “turning each”; ἕκαστος, G1538] of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:17-26 1995 NASB, boldface and underlining added)
So in this passage, Pulliam is interpreting the phrase “these days” in the boldfaced sentence (verse 24) as referring to the time when the prophecies from Genesis mentioned after it were to be fulfilled, rather than the “times of refreshing” and “times of restoration of all things” mentioned before it.
This Is The Key — Literally, “This”
Did you catch that? Pulliam switched from interpreting οὗτος as referring to what’s mentioned before it to interpreting it as referring to what’s mentioned after it!
Pulliam himself talked in Lesson 12 as if this was a huge no-no! “If an inspired man said ‘this is that,’ meaning that something his hearers were witnessing was spoken by a prophet, we must respect that inspired declaration.” {p. 127} He explains in the footnote indicated at the end of that sentence that “Peter said ‘this is that’ regarding the events of Pentecost being a fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32.” {Ibid. Fn 3.} Yet here he is, starting at the bottom of the very same page, making this switch without a second thought:
Let’s begin with the great hope held out for all families of the earth: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:3) This is part of the covenant God made with Abraham. The Dispensationalist tells us that the Abrahamic Covenant must be fulfilled in an earthly, Millennial kingdom. Peter tells us that this is not true. He told his first century hearers that “all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days” (Acts 3:24). The days being announced was the fulfillment of “the covenant God made with your fathers,” including the blessing promise (v25). For all of the emphasis the Dispensationalist puts on the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises, you would think this text would settle the issue. Peter clearly announced the fulfillment in his own day. Jesus fulfilled the blessing promise as the great Messianic King. {Ibid. p. 127-128. Italics in original, boldface mine.}
But despite this hypocrisy, Pulliam has actually stumbled onto something here. In fact, this is the key to explaining these passages in a manner that coheres with the rest of Scripture! You see, in ancient Greek, the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος, just like its English counterpart “this”, could be used either way! For instance, the singular form could be rendered “this”, referring to something mentioned previously, or “here”, referring to something about to be mentioned. Most of the time, the context makes it pretty obvious which way the term was intended (e.g., compare the English phrase “This is crazy” in response to some wild occurrence at a party, versus “This is (or “Here’s”) what you need to understand” before explaining something). But these are two of the trickier instances. (See how what “these” refers to is obvious in that sentence?)
So what happens if we flip around which way we take οὗτος as being used in these two passages?
Suddenly, “this” in Acts 2:16 (“but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel”) is merely referring to the prophecy of Joel that’s quoted immediately after this verse — as distinguished from the events of Pentecost, which is reinforced by οὗτος being used alongside the word “but” and the clear reference to the events of Pentecost in verse 33c as “this” with the additional qualifier “which you both see and hear” (1995 NASB, underlining added). Indeed, the LGV makes this more explicit by rendering verse 16 as “But here is what has been declared through the prophet, Joel:” {Boldface mine. Scroll to p. 5 in the PDF}.
On the other hand, “these days” in Acts 3:24 (“And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days”) is referring neither to the time in which Peter was giving this sermon, nor to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, but to the “times of refreshing” and “times of restoration of all things” — which are still future (per the use of the word achri, referring to the time intervening until something happens) from when “heaven must receive” Jesus (and as far as I’m aware, all Christians agree that Jesus is in heaven right now), and during which “every soul that does not heed [Jesus] shall be utterly destroyed from among the people”.
Linking οὗτος to what comes before it in Acts 2, but to what comes after it in Acts 3, makes these passages consistent with Pulliam’s position that Joel’s prophecy and the Abrahamic Covenant have already been fulfilled. Linking οὗτος to what comes after it in Acts 2, but to what comes before it in Acts 3, makes these passages consistent with my position that Joel’s prophecy and the Abrahamic Covenant are not yet fulfilled. Contrary to Pulliam’s claims, these texts on their own don’t settle the issue, and Peter didn’t clearly announce their fulfillment in his own day; Pulliam’s claims about both passages are equivocal. Therefore, additional information is needed to determine which way Peter intended the term on each occasion.
The Logical Next Step That Amillennialists Don’t Take
Now, what additional information was available to the original hearers (and thus, that they would’ve understood Peter’s statements in light of) that would enable us to settle this question? You guessed it: Biblical precedent. Bear in mind that both of these sermons were given to Jews. This means that whenever Peter quoted phrases from OT prophecies, his hearers would’ve internally recalled the fuller contexts of those prophecies (just as they were used to doing whenever rabbis in general quoted distinctive phrases from OT passages); hence, they would’ve understood Peter’s use of these passages in light of their original OT contexts. As noted earlier, Peter cut off his quotation of Joel 2 partway through verse 32 of that passage. In the Masoretic Text, the solitary Hebrew letter ס appears at the end of Joel 2:27, and the next time this happens is at the end of 3:8; hence, Joel 2:28-3:8 is all one continuous minor train of thought. So let’s look at that whole train of thought:
“It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind [literally, “all flesh”]; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. “Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke. “The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. “And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord Will be delivered; {Now comes the part that Peter left out, but that his Jewish listeners would’ve recalled in their heads:} For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As the Lord has said, Even among the survivors whom the Lord calls. “For behold, in those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes [literally, “the captivity”] of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat [literally, “the vale of YHWH’s judgment”]. Then I will enter [Myself] into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land. “They have also cast lots for My people, Traded a boy [literally, “And then they gave the boy”] for a harlot And sold a girl [literally, “And they sold the girl”] for wine that they may drink [literally, “wine, and then they drank”]. Moreover, what are you to Me, O Tyre, Sidon and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering Me a recompense? But if you do recompense Me, swiftly and speedily I will return your recompense on your head. Since you have taken My silver and My gold, brought My precious treasures to your temples, and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks [literally, “to sons of the Javanim”; i.e., to people of Greek descent] in order to remove them far from [literally, “from upon”] their territory, behold, I am going to arouse them [literally, “behold My rousing them”] from the place where you have sold them, and return [literally, “and then I will bring back”] your recompense on your head. Also [literally, “And then”] I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the sons of Judah, and [literally, “and then”] they will sell them to the Sabeans [a nation on the Arabian Peninsula; see Gesenius’ entry for the Hebrew word for further explanation], to a distant nation,” for the Lord has spoken. (1995 NASB, boldface added)
As if I even need to point it out, there are MAJOR PROBLEMS with the idea that this passage was fulfilled at Pentecost of A.D. 30! For starters, neither Judah in general nor Jerusalem in particular was in captivity “among the nations” on the day of Pentecost, A.D. 30 (and that the Hebrew word’s literal sense of “captivity” was intended, rather than its figurative sense of “fortune”, is clear from the fact that the Greek word in the LXX of this passage — which was translated at least2 centuries before Peter’s statements and is therefore free of any Christian eschatological biases, whether premillennial, amillennial, preterist, etc. — always means “captivity”, but never “fortune”!). So how can they be restored from a captivity spent “scattered among the nations”, “in those days and at that time” when the prophecy would be fulfilled, if the time in question was Pentecost of A.D. 30?!
This is an especially good question in light of how often Pulliam uses the time when a prophecy was given as an excuse to bend the genre and/or language of the prophecy to his preconceived notions. For instance, he claimed at that Wednesday night Bible study I attended that Ezekiel 37:11-14 refers merely to the return from the Babylonian exile, based merely on the fact that there were living Jews captive in Babylon when Ezekiel saw the vision in verses 1-10 (his full argument was substantially the same as the one that Church of Christ minister — and amillennialist — Norm Fields presented on page 8 of this PDF; Tim Warner refutes Fields’ points on pages 12-14 of this PDF). Pulliam seems to think that this one fact is important enough to warrant abandoning the commonsense communication rule that you must explain what a metaphor or allegory means in literal terms; otherwise, you’ll just confuse your audience even further. Even Pulliam himself admits this when interpreting Revelation 17:18 as referring to the city of Rome: “This statement is an explanation of symbolism already revealed. An explanation of symbolism always requires a use of the non-symbolic. To use more symbolism would explain nothing at all. When we make mysteries out of explanations, we deny that an explanation has been given.” {“In the Days of Those Kings”. 235.} Yet Pulliam’s claim that the terms “open(ed) your graves” and bringing “up out of your graves” in Ezekiel 37:12-13 referred to God bringing them back from the Babylonian exile amounts to claiming that God explained the metaphor/allegory of verses 1-10 by giving another metaphor/allegory! I mention in my upcoming book that I went to great lengths to ensure that I never contradicted myself within its pages {HIDMF p. ###, Footnote ####}. Evidently, Pulliam didn’t do the same with his!
Also notice that, despite the geographic spread of the nations mentioned in Acts 2:9-11 (from which Jews had traveled to Jerusalem in order to observe the Mosaic holiday of Pentecost) — as shown in the map at the start of this blog post — the area covered by “Tyre, Sidon and all the regions of Philistia” isn’t covered — as you can see in the map on this webpage — and none of these regions are mentioned anywhere else in Peter’s sermon. Far from being a poster child for the idea that the Apostles took Old Testament prophecy mystically {scroll to definition 1a} instead of at face value, Joel 2:28-3:8 exposes the fact that Pulliam’s hermeneutic must utterly ignore whole swaths of pertinent information to have a semblance of feasibility!
On the other hand, it’s clear once you look at this map that the Jezreel Valley (which is right next to Megiddo, making it a viable candidate for the valley where armies will gather for the Battle of Armageddon, a battle that I peg as occurring on the Day of the Lord) is a prime candidate for “the vale of YHWH’s judgment”. This is especially true once you realize that 7.3 billion people can fit, with 10 people per square meter on average, in the land covered by New York City alone, which is only about 3 times the size of Jezreel Valley. Of course, it’s clear from reading the book of Revelation (in a straightforward manner) that the world population is going to decline dramatically during the apocalypse, so it’s quite feasible that all of the wicked still alive by the end of it could fit in that land. However, I suspect there will be plenty of wicked people around the world who don’t go up with the armies; note that Joel 3:2 says that the vale of YHWH’s judgment is where God will enter into controversy {scroll to the section on the Niphal form under the word’s Brown-Driver-Briggs entry} with the nations – this valley is where the judgment will start, but it will certainly move elsewhere (e.g., Zephaniah 2:4 {click on “Using the map” under “Read Zephaniah 2:4-7.”}; it’s significant that the cities being judged in this verse are in the present-day Gaza Strip, which is – as of this writing – inhabited by Palestinians, not Israelites).
Clearly, this passage is referring to events that a straightforward interpretation of the Olivet Discourse (which Peter had been present to hear, meaning Peter himself would’ve linked Joel 2:31 with Matthew 24:29) places at the end of the apocalypseand during its aftermath (except for Joel 3:4-6, which is referring to what Tyre, Sidon, & Philistia had done to Israel by Joel’s day, and 3:7-8, which had already been fulfilled some centuries before Peter’s sermon {Scroll to the last paragraph under “Joel 3:2”}; also, the human trafficking mentioned in verse 3 obviously startswell before the end of the apocalypse). Peter was simply saying that the miracles his audience was observing on the day of Pentecost in A.D. 30 was a microcosm of what would be the norm once the entirety of Joel’s prophecy has been fulfilled. Similarly, Peter was saying in Acts 3 that at that same time (when Jesus’ Kingdom has arrived and so everyone in all nations must answer to him), everyone who refuses to acknowledge Jesus’ authority will die then and there (because they’re guilty of treason against the King of Kings and Lord of Lords). Bear in mind that the people hearing Peter’s second sermon had also been present at Pentecost to hear his first one (after all, every devout Israelite man was obligated to be present at Pentecost!): they already knew Peter’s former pronouncements about the Christ’s kingdom going into this speech, so they would’ve understood Peter’s statements here in light of his statements there.
A Quick Exercise
So the next time someone tries to tell you the Apostles interpreted Old Testament prophecies allegorically when the original OT context of one would suggest it was meant literally, you can prompt them to think about it by asking them: “Can you give me an unambiguous/unequivocal example?” If they cite Peter’s use of Joel 2:28-32a, you can tell them what I just explained about the word for “this”, and conclude the explanation with: “So that’s an ambiguous/equivocal example. Can you give me an unambiguous/unequivocal example?” It’s my contention that they’ll never be able to.
(But if they can come up with one that stumps you, feel free to tell me about it in the comments; I understand the psychological pain that can come with obsessing over that stuff, so I’ll get back to you about it ASAP!)
Claims About James’ Quotation In Acts 15
Oh, and Acts 15:13-21? Ironically, Pulliam’s own argument concerning it tacitly admits that it isn’t airtight:
In addition, we need to consider the application of Amos 9:11 by James when he said, “And with this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written, ‘After these things I will return, And I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen, And I will rebuild its ruins, And I will restore it, In order that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, And all the Gentiles who are called by My name’” (Acts 15:15-17). At the time that Amos prophesied, David’s house was “fallen down” due to destruction and captivity. God told Israel, I have not forgotten about David’s house. It is a fallen tent now, but I am going to “restore it.” Putting the Messiah on David’s throne is how God would rebuild the tabernacle of David. The Dispensationalist agrees that Amos 9:11 refers to the Davidic covenant of II Samuel 7. What he fails to admit is that James declares this prophecy of David’s throne fulfilled. James quoted Amos 9:11 for a reason, and we need to determine that reason. In context, it was all about God doing what he said He would do. James did not make His point with a prophecy God had not yet fulfilled, or had even partially fulfilled. This important point depended on fulfilled prophecy, and James used it to great effect. {“In the Days of Those Kings”. 86. Italics in original. Underlining and boldface mine.}
For starters, Amos prophesied nearly two centuries before the Babylonian exile (Amos 1:1, which mentions that he prophesied when Uzziah/Azariah was king of Judah and Jeroboam II was king of Ephraim; see 2 Kings 14:23, 15:1,13), not during it; this point about the historical context means all the phrases underlined in that last quote are false. Not the most crucial detail to this discussion, but it certainly reinforces my point that Pulliam is rather cavalier about the context of Old Testament prophecy (so we should think twice before accepting his claims about what the context is in the first place); indeed, you’re about to see that he was equally careless with the textual context of the prophecy of Amos that James was quoting, and even the New Testament context in which James quoted it!
Also notice that James actually said “with this the words of the Prophets agree”, not “have been fulfilled”. The verb isn’t πληρόω (G4137; the usual Greek word for “fulfill”), but συμφωνέω (G4856; meaning “sound together”, i.e. harmonize, be in accord; the English word “symphony” is derived from this word). James’ choice of words notwithstanding, Pulliam brings up the Amos passage on two more occasions further into his book:
…Peter wasn’t alone in the early use of prophecies about the Davidic throne. James quoted from Amos 9:11-12, stating that the events of that time fulfilled God’s promise to “rebuild the tabernacle of David… that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord.” (Acts 15:15-17) The “tabernacle of David” is agreed by all to refer to the “house of David” and had specific application to the Messiah taking His place on the throne of David. Peter and James say, “Prophecy fulfilled!”
…Many passages are used as “proof texts” of a future Millennium. Do they really prove what the Dispensationalist claims? We will use some of the more commonly used passages to briefly discuss prophetic fulfillment in Scripture. Several common passages will be omitted since they have already been (or will be) dealt with in this book (i.e. Isa 2:1-5; Jer 31:1-40; Amos 9:11-15; Zech 9:10).
{“In the Days of Those Kings”. 128, 158. Italics in original. Underlining added.}
The discerning reader will notice that the underlined claims in these two quotations entirely hinge on the boldfaced statements from the quotation preceding them! So if Pulliam’s interpretation on p. 86 is refuted, then so are all his other claims about Amos 9:11-12… er, 15?
The Context of Amos 9:11-12
Did you notice that the last time Pulliam cited Amos 9, he claimed that he’d already dealt with verses 11-15 — despite the fact that he only ever quotes verses 11-12 in his book? Once we look at all 5 of these verses together, it becomes obvious why he never quotes verses 13-15:
In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and will rebuild the ruins of it, and will set up the parts thereof that have been broken down, and will build it up as in the ancient days: that the remnant of men, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, may earnestly seek me, saith the Lord who does all these things.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when the harvest shall overtake the vintage, and the grapes shall ripen at seedtime; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall be planted. And I will turn the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities, and shall inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and shall drink the wine from them; and they shall form gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them on their land, and they shall no more be plucked up from the land which I have given them, saith the Lord God Almighty. (BLXX, emphases added; since James’ quotation of verse 12a (“That the residue of men might seek after the Lord”) substantially agrees with the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text, which instead reads: “That they may possess the remnant of Edom” (1995 NASB) the Septuagint version of this passage should be regarded as preserving the original, divinely-inspired reading)
Again, Israel wasn’t in captivity at the time of the Jerusalem council; moreover, the Israelites weren’t rebuilding ruined cities (in accordance with verse 14) in Apostolic times. But even more importantly, verse 15 foretold of a time when “my people Israel” would be planted “on their land, and they shall no more be plucked up from the land which I have given them” — something that has never been fulfilled to this day (after all, the modern nation of Israel doesn’t possess all of the land that ancient Israel did; and the current political situation in the Middle East doesn’t allow us to confidently say they’ll never be “plucked up from the land” they do have again by the time of Jesus’ return)! Pulliam can’t explain away this passage by claiming that the “captivity of my people Israel” that God would turn back to the land was the Babylonian exile, since the Israelites were “plucked up from the land” after that by the Romans!
No wonder Pulliam tried to sneak in verses 13-15 as being fulfilled by the time of the Jerusalem council along with verses 11-12! It utterly disproves his claim that the Bible never promised a restoration for the nation of Israel after Jerusalem’s second destruction in A.D. 70 — a claim he had the audacity to make to my face! It’s clear that making this claim requires him to ignore or allegorize away the greater contexts of the very OT prophecies he relies on when making his case. If you ask me, Pulliam’s citation of verses “11-15” instead of “11-12” on p. 158 was either the most unfortunate coincidental typo I’ve ever encountered, or a deliberate attempt on Pulliam’s part to get his readers to skip past the facts that undermine his view!
But the question remains: why did James quote this prophecy at the Jerusalem council? Look back at the boldfaced statements in my quotations from p. 86 of “In the Days of Those Kings”; these statements suggest that the thrust of Pulliam’s argument is as follows: “Sure, James didn’t explicitly say that this prophecy was fulfilled by the time he quoted it here; but can you think of a better reason why James would’ve quoted this prophecy when he did?”
As a matter of fact, I can.
Why James Quoted Amos 9:11-12 LXX At The Jerusalem Council
This is where Pulliam completely overlooked the greater context of James’ quotation. I explain in Chapter 6 of my upcoming book that the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 settled, once and for all, the question of which Mosaic Laws carry over into the New Covenant (verses 19-20, 23-29). This question had been prompted by early Judaizers who were claiming that Gentile converts to Christianity should obey the Mosaic Law (verses 1-6); it was during the time that Paul and Barnabas disputed with these Judaizers (mentioned in verse 2) that Paul must’ve written his epistle to the Galatians, since it deals extensively with the topics of Jews & Gentiles in relation to the Mosaic & New Covenants, yet never once appeals to the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 — undoubtedly because that council hadn’t happened yet. Peter said at this council that one thing he’d learned from his bringing the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts 10 was that God “made no distinction between us [Jews] and them [Gentiles], cleansing their hearts by faith.” (Acts 15:9c 1995 NASB) Also, you may have noticed that when Pulliam quoted verse 15a (“With this the words of the Prophets agree”), he failed to consider what “this” (the dative singular neuter form of οὗτος) referred to! The verses on either side of the quotation from Amos make it clear that οὗτος here refers to what was mentioned before:
Simeon [a variant of “Simon”; i.e., Peter] did declare how at first God did look after to take out of the nations a people for His name, and to this agree the words of the prophets, as it hath been written: After these things I will turn back, and I will build again the tabernacle of David, that is fallen down, and its ruins I will build again, and will set it upright — that the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the nations, upon whom My name hath been called, saith the Lord, who is doing all these things.
Known from the ages to God are all His works; wherefore I judge: not to trouble those who from the nations do turn back to God,” (Acts 15:14-19 YLT, boldface and underlining added)
The word for “nations” here is rendered “Gentiles” in most other translations. All of this makes it clear that the real reason James quoted this prophecy at the Jerusalem council was to make the point that Jews and Gentiles had both been prophesied to participate in the Messiah’s Kingdom. As far as faith is concerned, God doesn’t make any distinctions between Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, James concluded, we in the church shouldn’t make any such distinctions either.
Nothing in the text of Acts 15 indicates whether the prophecy James quoted was fulfilled by the time he said it, or if its fulfillment was still future from the Jerusalem council. This question about the timing of the fulfillment can only be determined in light of other passages. And in any case, the immediate context of the prophecy James quoted indicates that there would come a time when faithful Israelites would be in their land, never again to be driven out of it — a time that didn’t come in the first century A.D. (indeed, exactly the opposite occurred then!), and still can’t be conclusively said to have arrived yet.
Conclusion
The interpretation of these passages that I’ve laid out in this post is perfectly consistent with the rest of the Bible, including OT prophecies when interpreted according to the grammatical-historical method (i.e., words are meant literally unless the genre or context demands otherwise). The only remotely good reason for assuming that prophecies as a genre are to be taken symbolically by default (rather than letting the context inform us on that point) was refuted in Tim Warner’s response to something that Norm Fields said in the course of their 2008 debate:
Fields: “What my opponent fails to acknowledge in his noble statement of harmony between Old and New Testament Scripture is that Old Testament Scripture must be understood in light of its New Testament usage.”
If I have failed to acknowledge this, let me do so now. Old Testament prophecy must be understood in the manner in which the New Testament writers interpreted it. However, what you will see from Bro. Fields is not clear examples where New Testament writers interpreted such prophecies allegorically (thereby diminishing their literal sense, which is essential to amillennial eschatology). On the contrary, New Testament writers understood Old Testament prophecy literally. What you will actually see is Bro. Fields imposing his own presuppositions on the Apostles, as he has already demonstrated in referencing Peter’s words in Acts 2:29-30.
Fields: “Premillennialism seeks to interpret New Testament Scripture so as to make it comply with Old Testament context. This is reverse to the manner in which proper interpretation is to occur. The Old is subservient to the New, not vice versa.”
What Bro. Fields actually means is you should violate the context and language of the Old Testament prophecies, under the supposed precedent of the Apostles’ doing so. But, the Apostles absolutely respected the contexts and language of Old Testament prophecy. They did not play fast and loose with Old Testament prophecy, as do amillennialists. Bro. Fields has indeed put his finger on the crux of this entire debate. But, he has not shown why his method is right. {Scroll to p. 7-8 of the PDF. Boldface in original. Italics mine.}
Neither has Pulliam. And as far as I can tell, Pulliam’s mindset (at least as it pertains to the passages in Acts I’ve investigated here) was excellently summarized by Warner’s latter remark: Pulliam feels free to “violate the context and language of the Old Testament prophecies, under the supposed precedent of the Apostles’ doing so” — a precedent that, on closer inspection, doesn’t even exist.
I think the titular question of this post deserves an answer. I’ve seen countless bogus arguments online over the years, and managed to save my breath on a decent percentage of them. Why should this book be among the remainder?
Well initially, my main reason for publishing a blog series on this book, “In the Days of Those Kings: A 24 Lesson Adult Bible Class Study on the Error of Dispensationalism” {2015. Houston, TX: Book Pillar Publishing.}, is that I’ve attended two Sunday worship services and a Wednesday night Bible class that the author — Charlotte Church of Christ evangelist Bob Pulliam — preached at. And the congregation at large seems like it’s comprised of decent people who sincerely desire to live according to the truth; aside from Pulliam himself, they were very welcoming of me! So I feel bad that Pulliam doesn’t allow debate in his congregation, thereby depriving these wonderful people of the opportunity to hear what he’s getting wrong. Ironically, when I repeated Pulliam’s words to me on this – “we can debate this; just not in the church” — to Russ McCullough, pastor at the Archdale Church of Christ, he said: “Oh, please! Paul regularly debated people in the synagogues to correct their errors.” (And lest Pulliam think that this feature of ancient synagogues doesn’t carry over to Christian assemblies, “synagogue” comes from the Greek word συναγωγή (G4864), meaning “assembly”, just like the usual word for “church”, ἐκκλησία (G1577); indeed, James 2:2 uses συναγωγή with reference to the Christian assembly!)
Now, allow me to clarify right off the bat that the position being criticized in this book, traditional dispensationalism, is not the position I maintain (and was not at the time Pulliam handed me my copy). So right off the bat, we can see that his claim that he was giving me “a book that explains why you’re wrong” — yes, those were his exact words — is off-base. When I pointed this out to him, he told me that the arguments I was using were “things that a dispensationalist would say.” Maybe dispensationalists would say such things, but that doesn’t mean I’m in their camp on everything else! Indeed, amillennialists seem very prone to this error: they give arguments disproving dispensationalism in particular, and think that in doing so, they’ve disproven premillennialism in general! (Indeed, even McCullough, who I quoted above, often teaches against ideas specific to dispensationalism, but, to my annoyance, calls it “premillennialism” when doing so. He once defended this dangerous mislabeling to me by saying “I need to use terms most people are familiar with”. However, this fails to account for the fact that every Church Father of the first and second centuries — people who lived within living memory of the Apostle John’s ministry — who said anything about eschatology held to a teaching known as “chiliasm” — more colloquially called the “Millennial Week” — which is explicitly premillennial!)
I’ve also read how Pulliam explains away the “first resurrection” and its implication of a second resurrection in his book {p. 258-261}; he has to do this because he believes there will only be one future resurrection of the dead. Actually, he outright redefines the word “resurrection” to not require a physical body {p. 148}, despite the Greek word, ἀνάστασις (G386), meaning “a standing up again”; the “again” part implies that they’ll return to a state they’d previously been in! Is Pulliam willing to argue that Christians have already been totally immaterial spiritual beings, just to maintain the appropriateness of saying they’ll become such beings “again”? My upcoming book contains further discussion on the etymology of words for “resurrection” and the fact that most ancient Jews believed the dead would be resurrected bodily {HIDMF p. #, #; I’ll come back and add the page numbers to these posts once it’s published}. It’s getting pretty easy to see why Tim Warner says of amillennialists: “allegory is their default hermeneutic”! {Scroll to p. 7 of the PDF} Indeed, symbolism seems to be Pulliam’s “on-off switch” (and that of preterists and amillennialists in general, for that matter!) in precisely the same way that he calls dual fulfillment (or, to use his phrasing, “double reference”) the on-off switch for dispensationalists {p. 31} — they flip the switch to “on” in some passages and “off” in others, with no hermeneutical justification for which passages get which setting (i.e., they’re flip-flopping arbitrarily to suit their preconceived notions)! And, as I mention in my book {HIDMF p. #}, you can explain away darn near any not-yet-fulfilled prophecy just by claiming that an otherwise-unfulfilled detail symbolizes something else that has happened. Indeed, full preterists do exactly that to claim that every prophecy in the Bible was fulfilled by A.D. 70!
In contrast, I interpret the Bible in a straightforward fashion: where words carry their literal meanings unless the context (or in cases where God concealed the meaning at the time, later revelation shedding light on earlier revelation; e.g., Hosea 6:2 in light of John 7:2,10,33-37 & the doctrine of chiliasm, as I explain in Appendix D of my book) suggests otherwise. While we take this rule for granted in our everyday spoken and written language, many Bible translators make the mistake of ignoring this rule in several places due to what I call “translational inertia”: where Bible translators don’t fix an erroneous translation of a word in a particular passage because the erroneous rendering is so generally-accepted and ingrained in Christendom at large (and, of course, has been critical to the interpretations of so many expositors), that they know such a change to a word or phrase that’s been there for so many decades (or in most cases, centuries!) can be controversial enough to cause bad reviews and hurt their sales numbers (of course, I don’t care how controversial my corrections might be; all I care about is the truth!). Some prime examples occur with the words ψυχή (G5590) and πνεῦμα (G4151), often rendered by their more figurative/abstract meanings (“soul” and “spirit”, respectively) in contexts where their literal meanings (“life” and “breath”, respectively) would work just fine. This is presumably one reason Pulliam has gotten away with teaching his congregation (trust me, I’ve personally witnessed him doing so) that Ezekiel 37:1-14 has no future fulfillment in a bodily resurrection of the dead — Hebrews 4:12, if translated in a straightforward, word-by-word manner, blatantly proves otherwise: “For living is the Word of God [i.e., Jesus], and active, and sharper beyond any double-edged knife [used to expose every part of an animal when processing it for food], and penetrating until the distribution of life and of breath and of joints and of sinews, and is a judge of thoughts and sentiments of the heart.” The word for “until” is ἄχρι (G891), which refers to the time intervening before something happens — it’s never used for distance or extent. The word usually rendered “dividing”, “division”, or “separation” is μερισμός (G3311), which actually means “distribution” (think “dividing the spoils”); “distribution(s)” also works on all 3 of the other occasions this word appears in the Greek Bible — Hebrews 2:4, where most translations render the plural form of the word as “gifts”; Joshua 11:23 LXX, referring to when “Joshua gave them by inheritance Israel [i.e., the land of Israel, per the first part of the verse], by distribution according to their tribes” (my word-for-word translation of “ἔδωκεν αὐτοὺς Ἰησοῦς ἐν κληρονομίᾳ Ισραηλ ἐν μερισμῷ κατὰ φυλὰς αὐτῶν”); & Ezra 6:18 LXX, referring to “the Levites in their distributions on the basis of service of the God in Jerusalem” (my word-for-word translation of “τοὺς Λευίτας ἐν μερισμοῖς αὐτῶν ἐπὶ δουλείᾳ θεοῦ τοῦ ἐν Ιερουσαλημ”). So while Pulliam claims Ezekiel’s “Valley of Dry Bones” vision was fulfilled in the return from the Babylonian exile and has no future fulfillment, Hebrews 4:12 referred to “the distribution of life and of breath and of joints and of sinews” (a blatant reference to Ezekiel’s “Valley of Dry Bones” vision) as something that was still in the future from when the epistle to the Hebrews was written! The only reason this isn’t blatant in English is because the underlined phrase in this paragraph is persistently mistranslated due to translational inertia.
Now, while Pulliam seems careful in his book not to explicitly call himself an amillennialist, he evidently sides with them at least on a distinction he draws between dispensationalism & amillennialism in Lesson 1 of his book:
Dispensationalists tell us that Jesus is the Christ, but are still awaiting His ascension to the throne of David. Amillennialists contend that Jesus has ascended to the throne of David, and rules in heaven over a kingdom comprised of the hearts of men. Is He a King in waiting, or a King in realization of fulfilled prophecy? You must decide. {p. 11}
So right in the introduction to his book, we already have a false dichotomy — undoubtedly due to the fact that nearly all of Christendom (“nearly” being the operative word) holds to some form of either dispensationalism or amillennialism, probably not even realizing there are any alternatives!
As you may have guessed (I never actually make my position on this explicit in my book), my position on Christ’s kingship status is between the two that Pulliam presents as the only two possibilities: I accept that Jesus is the Christ, is currently in heaven, and has authority and is ruling over Christians’ hearts (as well as Christian institutions, such as Christian households, churches, seminaries, parachurch organizations, etc.) now at the Father’s right hand — but that upon his return, he will ascend to David’s throne and rule over the earth (including governments, societies, etc.) for 1,000 years before handing the Kingdom back to the Father for the rest of eternity. I’ll give Biblical exposition on this view later in this series.
This is similar (if not identical) to what Pulliam calls the “‘already-not yet’ concept.” {p. 106} He lists an entire table of verses on p. 107 where some refer to Christ’s kingdom as present & others refer to it as future (although his remark on 1 Corinthians 15:24 is erroneous, as he claims that passage mentions the kingdom as present and future; the verse just before this one places everything in verses 24-28 after Jesus’ παρουσία (parousia; G3952), which must be still future, as this word referred to a visit from a ruler or official, which requires the ruler himself to be physically present — so much for the preterist idea that Jesus’ parousia was his non-physical presence at Jerusalem’s second destruction!) — only to dismiss these distinctions (without even trying to reconcile the present-vs-future distinctions with his own view!) with the claim that “To say that there is a future, earthly kingdom of Christ, assumes that these texts refer to a kingdom upon this earth.… No passages implying a future kingdom even hint at that kingdom being on earth.” {p. 108. Italics and boldface in original.}
Pulliam makes a good case that all the erroneous doctrines of traditional dispensationalism can be undercut by refuting their view of a single starting premise: namely, the time range over which the Abrahamic Covenant was to be fulfilled {p. 21}. It’s ironic, then, that most of Pulliam’s views on eschatology can also be undercut by refuting a single starting premise: the idea that the future kingdom of Christ will be in heaven, not on earth. I can bring up one verse that conclusively disproves this assumption. As long as Pulliam told me he typically uses the NASB (indeed, the Scripture quotations in his book are all from the 1995 NASB), why don’t I quote that version of this verse, including its margin note? “For He did not subject to angels the world [literally, “the inhabited earth”] to come, concerning which we are speaking.” (Hebrews 2:5, boldface added) The Greek word for “world” here is οἰκουμένη (G3625), which means “inhabited earth” or “inhabited land”. This word has physical land built into its definition! I have yet to see ANYONE reconcile a “heavenly destiny” for Christians with the use of this word in Hebrews 2:5 (let alone cogently and conclusively).
With this, we see that, contrary to Pulliam’s insistence, the eternal Kingdom of God will be on the physical earth we inhabit now. This is also borne out by 2 Peter 3:13 referring to the end result of the judgment by fire as “new heavens and a new earth”, with “new” being the Greek word καινός, which refers to freshness, not youth (as I explain in my book {HIDMF p. #}, the fire that burns the heavens and the earth — verses 10 & 12 — doesn’t annihilate them, but rather purifies them); moreover, when Peter said “we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth” (verse 13b KJV, boldface added), the “promise” in question had been recorded in Isaiah 65-66 (65:17 & 66:22 LXX use καινός, too!), which makes it abundantly clear that this “new earth” will be a physical one in which “flesh” dwells1 (66:23-24)! As if all that isn’t enough, Jesus himself strongly implied that his Kingdom would be on Earth at the start of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.… Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:3,5 1995 NASB) There are only 2 ways that both of these Beatitudes could come true: either (a) the poor in spirit and the gentle (“meek” in most English translations) willhave mutually-exclusive destinies (which makes one wonder about the fate of a Christian who displays both qualities!) or (b) the kingdom of heaven will be on the earth. Is anyone out there willing to mount a serious case for (a)? (I’d love to see someone try!)
It therefore is possible (indeed, certain in light of the Matthew and Hebrews verses), despite Pulliam’s insistence, for the participants in the Abrahamic Covenant (which includes Christians, not just Jews, per Galatians 3:14-18; see {HIDMF p. #} for further explanation) to have access to the land promised to Abraham for the rest of eternity.
But while that may be the most glaring problem with the eschatology outlined in “In the Days of Those Kings”, and all the flip-flopping between literal and allegorical interpretation regardless of how each text’s context would have us take it is the most pervasive problem, neither of these is actually the most serious problem. For a handful of weeks I was considering following church practices more strictly, by being respectful and limiting my harshness when trying to persuade him of his errors as a brother in Christ. But I changed my mind about that when I came across a statement Pulliam wrote that tells me he’s actually preaching against Christ — by teaching an outright heresy!
Paul says that we will not only be raised from the dead, but we shall also be changed in an instant. We will not be physical, or mortal. We will be immortal. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so we will obviously be spiritual beings. This agrees with John’s description of that great day when “we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.” Although Jesus was raised in the flesh, He was glorified before ascending to the Father. That state to which we shall be transported is far beyond anything that our mortal minds can imagine. Paul also described it as a transformation that will bring our humble state into conformity “with the body of His glory.” On that day, all that once held substance will be gone and the unseen realities of the spiritual realm will endure. Judgment will commence for both righteous and wicked. {p. 148-149. Italics added}
…logically, if we are to be changed in seeing Him (I John 3:2), then He must no longer be flesh and blood. Otherwise, no change would be necessary. In reverse, if we are to become imperishable in our change (I Corinthians 15:51-53), then Jesus must have already undergone this change for us to become “like Him” (I John 3:2). {p. 148, fn 27. Italics added.}
Now, anyone who knows me can attest that I hardly ever accuse anyone of “heresy”, precisely because it’s such a strong word, and I’d rather give people the benefit of the doubt on their motives. But in this case, the Apostle John himself, in the very letter that Pulliam quotes here, strongly condemned anyone who teaches that Jesus isn’t in the flesh now:
By this you know the Spirit [literally, “Breath”] of God: Every spirit [literally, “breath”] that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit [literally, “breath”] that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit [literally, “is that”] of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. (1 John 4:2-3 NKJV, boldface and underlining added)
Each instance of the verb for “has come” in verses 2 & 3 is a perfect-tense active participle, indicating a past completed action resulting in a present state. So John was here condemning anyone who didn’t teach that Jesus had come in the flesh, or still was in the flesh when John wrote this decades after Jesus’ ascension! Moreover, the phrase “this is that of the Antichrist” becomes especially pointed when you consider that in Koine Greek, the prefix “anti-“ didn’t mean “against” (as we generally use it today), but “instead of” or “in place of”, having connotations of substitution or exchange {“Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament”. Wallace, Daniel B. 1996. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic. 364-368.}. Thus, the Apostle John not only branded an idea that Pulliam built his view of the believer’s destiny on as a heresy, but claimed that anyone who teaches that idea is preaching an alternative (i.e., counterfeit) Christ! In fact, John wrote the verses I just quoted to call out one of Christianity’s earliest ideological enemies: Gnosticism! And anyone who’s studied the first couple centuries of church history would recognize many of the ideas in the paragraph I just quoted from p. 148-149 of “In the Days of Those Kings” as being eerily reminiscent of Gnostic beliefs! Indeed, when I quoted some of the things Pulliam said to me in person to McCullough, he beat me to this point by interjecting: “He almost sounds like a Gnostic”. (Also, this is slightly off-topic, but when I talked on the phone with a friend of mine who’d spent the last year or so studying the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their doctrines — he feels called to reach out to them with the truth — and I paraphrased a statement of Pulliam’s about the time gap between the 69th & 70th weeks of Daniel 9 {it’s the quote from p. 167 specifically} — I couldn’t find the actual quote during the phone call — as “the only reason for thinking there’s a time gap here is because dispensationalism demands it”, he chuckled: “He sounds like a Jehovah’s Witness!”)
Wow. With the points I’ve brought up in this post alone, the majority of the arguments in Pulliam’s book collapse upon their foundation of false premises! But as implied above, it isn’t really sufficient for me to just show Scriptural passages that refute my opponent’s position. I must also show how the passages he offers to support his own position don’t contradict mine; otherwise, neither of us has been established as teaching the truth. And so, most if not all of the remainder of this series will be spent doing just that (but if you haven’t already, check the Footnote of this post for one example).
P.S.: Debate Challenge
If Bob Pulliam still thinks his understanding of eschatology is correct after reading this series of blog posts (and, ideally, at least Appendices D & E of my upcoming book), and continues to think (as he said to my face that fateful Wednesday night) that I’m “not qualified to teach about this”, then let him try showing me up in a public debate. I’m still relatively new to the Charlotte area, but McCullough has already suggested a couple of possible debate venues!
Pulliam tries to disprove this idea by partially quoting 1 Corinthians 15:50: “Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1995 NASB) However, the underlying Greek phrasing (“Τοῦτο δέ φημι, ἀδελφοί, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομῆσαι οὐ δύναται οὐδὲ ἡ φθορὰ τὴν ἀφθαρσίαν κληρονομεῖ.” — NA28, boldface added) doesn’t demand the conclusion Pulliam is trying to reach here. This sentence literally means: “But this I am saying, brethren, since flesh and blood doesn’t have power in itself to inherit the kingdom of God nor does the corruption inherit the incorruption.” Note that “inherit” is aorist active infinitive the first time, but present active indicative the second time; only the latter verb is a mere statement of fact. The phrase usually rendered “cannot”, οὐ δύναται, is the particle of absolute negation, followed by the present middle indicative 3rd-person singular form of G1410, the verb for “be able” or “have power” (the corresponding noun gave rise to English words like “dynamo”, “dynamic”, and “dynamite”). The indicative mood of this verb tells us it’s the statement of fact that “to inherit” is acting as a qualifier for, while the middle voice tells us the subject (“flesh and blood”) is both doing and receiving the action in some sense; overall, the idea is that flesh and blood can’t inherit the kingdom of God under its own power. This in no way rules out the possibility of God enabling flesh and blood to do so. Indeed, Paul could’ve easily conveyed that sense simply by writing G1410 in the passive voice, in which case the boldfaced phrase would mean “flesh and blood can’t be empowered (or “enabled”) to inherit the kingdom of God” — yet he didn’t. ↩︎
This is admittedly a strange choice for my very first post on this blog. I won’t normally waste my time talking at length about political commentators, “influencers”, extremists, or conspiracy theorists, since there’s too many of them spouting too much idiocy for me to pick one to focus on. Besides, God has given me bigger fish to fry. But this case hits close enough to home that I feel compelled to say something.
Nick Fuentes admittedly flew under my radar until it was brought to my attention not only that he posted “Your body, my choice. Forever. ” on Twitter/X in the aftermath of Trump winning the 2024 U.S. election, but also that he grew up in La Grange Park, Illinois and attended Lyons Township High School. Having grown up in Brookfield, Illinois (the town bordering La Grange Park to the east) and attended Riverside-Brookfield High School (a rival school to LTHS), it feels kinda fated that I should weigh in on this. It seems that, as usual, someone from RB will have to keep someone from LT in check (I was too emotionally-incompetent to handle school rivalries when I was actually in high school, but I’ve since matured to the point where I can joke about them)!
I won’t address every position I’ve seen reports of Fuentes taking, simply because some of them pertain to issues I don’t have an official position on. My aim with this post is threefold:
Take a trip down memory lane, using this post as an excuse to talk about my school days (something I rarely get to do anymore);
Speculate on what factors in our neighborhood may have contributed to Fuentes turning out the way he has, in the hope of prompting readers who actually grew up around Fuentes to do the same and more openly discuss what actually went down to lead him on the path he’s taken, so they can prevent their own kids from falling into the same traps; and
Warn Christians how attitudes like the ones Fuentes holds that I do cover here can help set up the societal situation the Bible describes existing at the onset of the apocalypse.
Hilariously Bad Logic
I admittedly had to look up a fair amount about him on Wikipedia (and the page was updated quite a few times in the course of my research, might I add! {note how many edits were made between November 12th and 16th, 2024}); while we probably grew up somewhere between a few blocks and a couple miles away from each other, we’ve admittedly never met each other, due to the difference in our ages (he would’ve entered kindergarten the same year I entered 7th grade). But I must say, many of his claims would come across as hilarious if there weren’t people out there who took them seriously!
For example, consider his attempt to explain his position that being an “involuntary celibate” was “more heterosexual” than having intercourse with someone of the opposite sex:
“Having sex in itself is gay, I think. I think that it’s really a gay act. Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses … I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s a little sus. …I think, really, I’m like the straightest guy.”
Those who went to high school in the late 2000s (like me) may remember when “gay” was thrown around as a slang word to describe an object or situation, typically as a substitute for “stupid” (e.g., “that looks so gay” instead of “that looks lame”; “this is so gay” instead of “this sucks”). LGBT ideology wasn’t taught as vigorously in those days as it has been in recent years, so most people who used the word this way got away with it. Regardless of whether one condones using the word “gay” with this definition, Fuentes’ line of reasoning is clearly using it when referring to “need[ing] cuddles”, “need[ing] kisses”, and “need[ing] to spend time with a woman” as “gay”, only to switch it to being a synonym for “homosexual” in order to reach his conclusion that he’s “the straightest guy” (of course, a hug-obsessed person like me thinks he’s depriving himself with his attitude on cuddles!). This is even worse (in the sense of “more blatant“; subtle equivocation fallacies are more dangerous because they’re easier to fall for) than the equivocation fallacies on the word “homosexuality” that I bring out in Chapter 13 of my upcoming book; in those cases, the equivocation is subtle enough where you need to actively pay attention for it!
Insights From A Local
Fuentes claims to be Catholic. Let’s take that at face value, and consider the possibility that he may have gone to St. Louise de Marillac School in La Grange Park (which closed down after the 2019-20 school year). I don’t know whether Fuentes ever went to the school or its Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) program at any point between kindergarten and 8th grade, so it’d be nice if anyone who grew up within his circle(s) could confirm or deny this, since it would determine the relevancy of what I’m about to discuss. That school was built in 1956, with the church building having opened the previous year. According to this heritage page, the St. Louise de Marillac Church (now the North Campus of the Holy Guardian Angels Parish) is the second-oldest church building in the village of La Grange Park, after St. Michael’s Lutheran Church (which I attended with my mom and step-dad in my early twenties, incidentally), which opened in 1953. My dad and some of his siblings were students at St. Louise in its earlier years, and my sister and I attended its CCD program on Wednesday nights for a handful of years, to the point where each of us went through the “First Communion” ritual (although we were pulled out before going through the “Confirmation” ritual, like my best friend eventually did at the Catholic congregation his family attended). Moreover, I attended kindergarten through 4th grade at Brook Park Elementary School, whose playground is directly across the street from the main entrance to the church building. In fact, the very first general election I was old enough to vote in (2012), the easternmost entrance hall of St. Louise’s school was the poll location where I cast my ballot!
As I explain in Chapter 1 of my upcoming book, my mother pulled my sister and I out because shortly after I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, one of the teachers was talking with my mother and casually mentioned that “Karl can be a bit disruptive, but I just yell at him and he stops” (apparently, the CCD teachers hadn’t received the memo about my diagnosis, and so assumed — as they had in previous years — that I was just another troublemaker). And even while I was attending, I recall asking quite a few questions of my CCD teachers in an effort to understand what they were teaching better, and half of my questions were perceived as “disruptions”! (In hindsight, I suspect this is one of the reasons I got so into apologetics once I was exposed to it in 2003 — I legitimately wanted the answers!) I even remember some nights when our class was shown videos, and I’m disturbed in hindsight about the propagandistic emotionalism of some of them (e.g., a cartoon about a group of friends in a culture where Christians were persecuted, where one of them ends up captured and killed after they cut corners while praying the Rosary {scroll to “The steps to praying the Rosary are:”; wherever it says to “Pray” “the ‘Our Father'”, “Hail Marys”, or “the ‘Glory Be'”, they just said the name of the prayer the number of times stated}; and a short live-action film about a kid who wants his grandma’s famous dessert at his First Communion party where she dies before his First Communion, but the family finds her recipe book and is able to have her cooking at his party after all). Even worse, I recall an older acquaintance or two who attended their school around the same time as my dad who said he was offended that a certain priest never molested him, thinking it was because he “wasn’t pretty enough” compared to the boys who were (I think it goes without saying that they dodged a bullet)! Also, my dad is left-handed, and the Nuns tried to teach him to write right-handed, evidently having bought into the entirely un-Biblical idea that Satan was left-handed; the teachers eventually gave in, but none of them had experience teaching a lefty to write, so my dad has bad handwriting to this day.
Long story short, I have good reasons to think that St. Louise produced at least as many apostates as it did devout Catholics. If whatever Catholic upbringing Nick Fuentes had in La Grange Park was anything like how things were done at St. Louise, I can understand why he latches on so readily to ideas with no basis in sound Biblical teaching (and ideas contrary to it, to boot!), and why his attempts to defend his positions can get as incoherent as the example quoted in the previous section! Indeed, Ken Ham & Britt Beemer’s book “Already Gone” dug into the reasons why 2/3 of American Millennials who used to attend church on a regular basis have since left it behind, and the survey they conducted along the way revealed that it was generally due to the very factors alluded to above: people not sufficiently answering their sincere questions, and hypocrisy, legalism, and/or self-righteousness in the congregations they attended; how they were taught even comes in for special mention in their chapter on Sunday School {Scroll to “Taught but Not Caught”}. The cruel irony is that this book was published in 2009, when Nick was just entering his formative years; so his life trajectory very well could have been altered for the better if his parents had gotten a copy of this book and utilized its recommendations.
Speaking of books, it’s also possible that LT psychologically broke him, if its reading curriculum was anything like what my Freshman class at RB had to read. I was in Honors English 9, admittedly, so maybe the regular English 9 courses had a curriculum that wasn’t so actively depressing. What do I mean by “actively depressing”? They gave us pretty much all of the most depressing books possible: The Pearl by John Steinbeck, 1984 by George Orwell, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Night by Elie Wiesel — it was as if whoever designed the curriculum was trying to make us all emo! I got a “D” on the work I handed in for Night (the book with the happiest ending of the four listed above!), with a note from the teacher that said, in part: “You cannot dodge the assignment.” Believe me, I would’ve done the assignment correctly, if reading dozens of pages of first-hand eyewitness accounts of what people were put through at Auschwitz hadn’t emotionally overwhelmed me to the point where I couldn’t focus on doing the assignment correctly, and just wanted the whole ordeal to be over! While working through the third set of chapters (my class was assigned starting and stopping points each week), I was having a meltdown and told my dad that I was upset over the book, and he told me “Then stop reading it! They shouldn’t be making you read stuff that makes you this upset.” Alas, the course I was reading it for was required for graduation, so I included my dad’s remark in the portion of the assignment I wrote that night; obviously, my teacher didn’t agree — and there was even a built-in excuse for making 14-and-15-year-olds, people who are extremely prone to severe mood swings and just starting to figure out how to navigate more adult emotions, read books like this: Elie started going through the stuff described in the book when he was younger than us. And bear in mind that during the year I read these books (and a handful of years on either side of it), one of the meds I was on was Zoloft — an antidepressant that made my normal disposition in those years “deliriously happy”, to quote my mother.
If my Freshman reading curriculum got that close to psychologically breaking me, just imagine how much it could’ve messed up someone even more psychologically unstable! If anyone who went to LT in the early-to-mid 2010s can confirm or deny that their required reading curriculum was similarly depressing, I would greatly appreciate it. For all we know, Fuentes’ current status as a Holocaust-denier may have started out as an overreaction to being so traumatized by reading Night when he wasn’t emotionally-ready to handle it, that he wanted to convince himself it was a work of fiction!
It’s scary to think that if that CCD teacher had never mentioned yelling at me to my mother, if I’d never been introduced to Biblical apologetics, and if I’d been on a different combination of drugs in my Freshman year that left me just a little more emotionally-unstable, just a couple more bad influences may have been all I needed to end up like Nick Fuentes. Praise God that it all worked out for me!
Those Who Don’t Know Their History…
I think it’s also worth taking a detour to address the claim that Fuentes’ goal is to turn the Republican Party into “a truly reactionary party”. Granted, I’ve only been able to trace this quote to an article by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has become more and more unreliable over the last several decades; however, Fuentes seems to be in one (heck, several) of the categories where the SPLC still gets things right for the most part (I bring up the categories where they’ve abandoned all integrity in Chapter 12 of my upcoming book). And granted, I’m not a Republican, so how that party bills itself is of no consequence to how I live my life. But reactionary movements, more often than not, end up being just as in the wrong as the problems they’re reacting to. Tim Warner brings this up in a context that brings this discussion back into my wheelhouse {Scroll to pages 13-14 in the PDF, under “The Rise of Modalism in Phrygia: Praxeas, Noetus, & Sabellius:“}:
The opposition in Phrygia of Asia Minor where Montanism began [in the third quarter of the 2nd century A.D.] was in part concerned with the multiplying persons of the Godhead and the apparent obfuscation of monotheism. AS WITH MANY REACTIONS AGAINST GROSS HERESY, THE OPPOSITION OVER-CORRECTED BY GOING TOO FAR IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. The “fix” took the earlier (Jewish & Christian) concept of the Spirit as being a limited manifestation of God Himself and emphasized it to the point of applying the same idea to the Son. The new doctrine sought to stress rigid monotheism by claiming the unity of God as one Person against charges that (Montanist) Christianity was a form of poly-theism [sic]. According to this view, God has always manifested Himself through a limited aspect of His own Person, sometimes referred to as Logos, or Son, or Wisdom, or the Messenger of the Lord, or the Spirit of God. None of these manifestations had an individual identity apart from the Father Himself. (This was in contrast to the earlier view that Logos was “begotten” by God, and thus had become a distinct Person at the beginning of creation). Consequently, Jesus in the flesh was also a limited manifestation of God Himself. God simply manifested some portion of Himself in a form that temporarily assumed flesh. The new interpretation was intended to oppose Montanus’ multiplication of the Godhead to three distinct Persons.
This reactionary form of monotheism has had a revival of sorts in modern times among Oneness Pentecostals. The official modern theological term is “Modalism,” indicating that the Son and Spirit are merely “modes” through which God has interacted within the creation and with man. The churches which teach this view today often refer to themselves as “Apostolic Churches.” Yet this concept is anything but “apostolic.” It actually appeared first outside of Christianity in apostolic times with the claims of Simon Magus whom Peter denounced in Acts 8. Simon Magus was designated the father of Gnosticism by several of the earliest writers. Irenaeus wrote that Simon was “glorified by many as if he were a God; and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit.” Thus Simon Magus was the first to teach this concept. However those who held this view in Asia Minor [circa A.D. 175] had no apparent link to Simon or his teaching earlier heresy.
{Italics, boldface, underlining, and content in parentheses in original. All-caps and content in brackets mine.}
Of course, I’m not surprised that Fuentes is ignorant of the history behind views of the Godhead that pre-date the Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Trinitarianism that Catholicism and most if not all of its daughter denominations hold to be so unquestionable. Quite frankly, most of Christendom is! {If you’d like to educate yourself on this, click here and scroll to “The Evolution of God Series:“; the article I just quoted from is part 5.} But as we all know — yet all too often fail to heed — those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.
With how badly the Democratic party and its adherents have been messing up our society for quite some time now, what do you suppose the odds are that a “reactionary” Republican party will only go as far as reasonably necessary in the opposite direction? Our nation is at a point where I see no way that such reactions won’t backfire. The Republicans who now control the Presidency, the Senate, and (more narrowly) the House can change as many laws as they want, but no change brought about will last for any significant time unless hearts change — otherwise, they’ll just change all the laws back, and then some! This battle needs to be fought in the heavenly dominions where spiritual warfare applies (Ephesians 6:12; I explain this verse here), not the earthly dominions where political maneuvering gets things done (for better or worse). And the reality is, 4 years is not enough time to change the hearts of the sheer number of people in the U.S. that the demonic forces have successfully brainwashed into calling evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). And when the Republican party wields lawfare as a weapon and cite Christian beliefs (actual or purported) as the reason for it, they’re setting Christians up to be persecuted once the shoe inevitably comes back on the other foot.
Why do I say “inevitably”, when Trump’s win so clearly showed that people are fed up with the direction that Democratic leaders have been taking things? Well, as I demonstrate in Appendix D of my upcoming book, the 70th “seven” of Daniel 9:27 will already be underway 5 years from now. Maybe Trump (or Vance, if an assassination attempt on Trump eventually succeeds; I said sometime back in the 2020 campaign season that I expect whoever wins in 2024 to be assassinated in 2025, based on my assessment of the U.S.’s societal situation at that time — and I’m hoping more than ever that I’m wrong!) will enforce Christian nationalism to the extent that the wicked will revolt against it all after (or even before!) the 2028 election, leading the U.S. into enough chaos that another nation (perhaps the 10-king confederacy mentioned in Daniel 2:41-44, 7:7,23-24; & Revelation 17:12-17) can conquer it, throwing the U.S. Constitution out the window and enabling Christians to be killed in the very place that’s prevented Christians from being persecuted more than anywhere else in history. Or, maybe one of the nations that will ultimately merge with others to become the 10-king confederacy will do so before the U.S. can even have another election in 2026, and Christians will already be tortured and killed in this land before the 10-king confederacy even officially exists.
There are quite a few different ways the U.S. could cease to be a (prominent) nation (nothing recognizable as the U.S. is ever mentioned in end-times prophecy, implying we’ll no longer be a world superpower by the time any end-times prophecies are fulfilled), and the 10-king confederacy could come into being as the new domineering world superpower; but the only details we know for sure are the ones the Bible actually gives us, which don’t pick up until a time when the 10-king confederacy is already underway, per the Aramaic text of Daniel 2:42 specifying that it’s describing “part of the kingdom’s end” (מִן־קְצָת מַלְכוּתָא) as being “strong”, and part as being “broken” (I’ll give an obsessively-accurate word-for-word translation of Daniel 2:31-45 — seriously, I spent 2 nights translating the whole passage as accurately as possible from the Aramaic! — in a post that I’ve already written but haven’t posted yet, so you’ll get more clarification then); hence, the 10-king confederation could even exist for a little while before the apocalypse starts. What chain of events will get the world to that point, the Bible simply doesn’t say.
As such, I won’t pretend to predict (much less know) all the details behind which public figures have to make which (geo)political maneuvers, in what order, at what times, to bring about the situation the Bible describes at the onset of the apocalypse. But God knew all those details from the beginning of the universe’s existence (Isaiah 46:9-10), so I’ll just let Him surprise me. As long as I can (with God’s grace and providence, of course) withstand any and all devastation that happens to come my way, just knowing when it will unfold is enough to keep my sanity grounded. My priority is to spiritually-prepare myself to depend on God and follow His instructions through it all, and to help others to do the same.
That said, I have been researching about and paying attention to the trajectory that tolerance toward Christian beliefs has been taking in the U.S. over the last few decades, so I can make some reasonable guesses as to what will contribute to Christians here starting to be persecuted as badly as they have been in most other places throughout the Christina Era. Indeed, Jesus warned his followers that by the first half of the apocalypse there wouldn’t be any nations where Christians are generally safe.
“See to it that no one misleads you.5 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many people.[Note that the quotation marks around “I am the Christ” were added by the translators; if they’re omitted, then this verse is referring to people who profess Jesus, but teach false doctrine — and how many preachers like that have there been throughout the Christian Era?] 6 And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.8 But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pains [i.e., the apocalypse will be preceded by a period in history when everything mentioned in verses 5-7 is happening all over the world, simultaneously].
9 “Then they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.10 And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another.11 And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people.12 And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold.13 But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved.14 This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
(Matthew 24:4c-14 2020 NASB, boldface added)
“All [the] nations” includes the U.S.A. (or whatever’s left of it by that point). And Nick Fuentes embodies many of the “ideals” that I suspect will get the U.S. (or at least a significant fraction of its citizenry) to finally abandon the 1st Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause wholesale when it comes to Christians. More on that later.
Gen Z Mindsets At Their Worst
Fuentes evidently has some method to his madness: when answering viewers’ questions, he often bills them as “jokes”. Click here for a prime example that someone posted on X. He’s even gone on record explaining that this gives him probable deniability in a segment that gives us some additional insight into his worldview. {Watch starting at the 1:04 mark; skip to the 3:22 mark when you reach the first ellipsis (…) }
I don’t know if I’ve ever explained this — and I don’t know if I should, even — but, irony and post-irony is [sic] so critical for a variety of reasons. …beyond that, irony is so important for giving a lot of, like, cover and plausible deniability for our views. That’s what these people don’t understand… Earnestness, this sort of academic filibustering, obfuscating — this is not effective political communication, especially not when you’re dissident [I originally misheard this word as “dissonant”], and especially not for young people. What is required is somebody who is tactical with their language. Tactical, okay? Use irony because — you know, when it comes to something like Holocaust revision — I mean, this is a subject that you cannot deviate from the popular consensus on, but you also, you also can’t, like — I also think you really can’t (chuckle) tell the truth if you adhere to that. …When it comes to a lot of these issues you need a little bit of maneuverability that irony gives you. Oh, well, you know, “what does that mean?” Well, I was being ironic. Well, I was joking. Well, it’s whatever. Well, you don’t understand the tone. Well, you don’t understand humor. And that’s true — and it is true, to a great extent. …Irony is a very important, like, linguistic and rhetorical weapon, so that we can be subversive. And that is what they don’t understand. We are dissidents. And as dissidents, they want to crush our ideas, our modes of communication, our organizing, our networking, that is why we must subvert those rules. We must be tactical. I use sardonic humor to convey a point subversively. I’ve never, you know — well, I do actually, literally, on my show say “Just kidding! That’s a joke, whatever.” But the point is made, but the point is delivered. It’s all a joke, bruh! (Laughs)
When watching the video and transcribing what Fuentes said, I originally misheard him as saying that academic filibustering and obfuscating is ineffective politically, “especially when you’re dissonant”. In my defense, “dissident” and “dissonant” both make sense in the context. But I do think Fuentes’ “sardonic humor” is an attempt to make his own cognitive dissonance palatable. You’ll see in my upcoming book and as I post more on this blog that I’d rather take the intellectual high road by going out of my way to reassess my worldview until I’m not dissonant! Of course, in a book he wrote in 2002, Ken Ham spent a chapter discussing the mindsets of different groups of people in our day, in terms of obstacles to successfully evangelizing to them. Consider some of his warnings about people in the final category:
I believe this group represents where our culture is heading. In my opinion, it is probably the hardest group to reach. These people are the products of our universities and public education. They are now starting to get positions of power in the government at local and national levels. As they are the products of the influence of Group 6, they have provided the mystical element they need: the universe (or nature) is ‘god.’ This is all part of the New Age religion that is sweeping the world. Of course, in one sense it’s nothing other than a form of Hinduism, but because it’s been birthed in our Western culture, it’s often entwined with our scientific mindset.
…If ‘god’ is nature, then how can ‘god’ be both good and evil, health and disease, full of joy and suffering? The universe seems very contradictory. It’s only the Bible that explains why this is so. The Bible not only explains the origin of evil but also the reason for the existence of death. Because this group of people is interested in supernatural things, sometimes they will listen when you argue authoritatively from the Bible. However, sometimes they will accept what you say and yet accept what they believe at the same time. Because truth is relative [in their view], they live in the world inconsistently anyway. They are happy to live illogically and inconsistently.
{Boldface and content in brackets mine.}
I think Ham’s prediction was spot-on. And speaking of “the influence of Group 6” (click the phrase “a chapter” above and read the description of Group 6, so their connection to the quote below will be more clear), Fuentes gave us some additional insight into his worldview and the thought process of many people in Gen Z (Nick Fuentes is definitely in Gen Z; I was born around 2/3 of the way through Gen Y) earlier in that same video:
my generation is completely nihilistic, I mean that is really the backdrop of what we’re talking about — all of it is contextual. Nobody gets that; everything is contextual, okay? …Our generation, my generation [in] particular’s coming up where everything has been destroyed, I mean, we are living in the ruins of everything earnest, everything sincere, everything that actually had meaning — religion, ideology, nationalism, all of that, it’s all gone — you know, even the family, we have nothing, okay? I came up in school, and it’s like, literally like a dystopian, like liberal, Fukuyama wasteland where it’s about holding hands and the diversification of America and all the — you know, lab coat feminist, all this s***. And so, that being the backdrop of my generation, being ironic is sort of the language of this nihilistic era. I, I think, at least… talking in a post-ironic, ironic way, is very much symptomatic of that condition. You know, earnestness, sincerity, this sort of “true belief” — that, that doesn’t exist for this generation, so I think irony is actually very important for communicating with young people, I think other young people understand that… Why do you think it is that young people watch my show? As opposed to, you know, watching Fox News or, even things like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder? It’s because I am speaking the language of other Zoomers.
Indeed, the comment section of this YouTube video was full of people calling Fuentes “based” and expressing desire to go check out more of what he has to say! (Checking the profile of the video’s uploader reveals that his sense of humor — and so, likely, that of the people who tend to watch his uploads — is typical of someone from Gen Z or late Gen Y; trust me, I’ve seen stuff from way too many of the channels listed under his “Subscriptions” and “Favorite Channels”!) After hearing from my sister and her friends about what was going on at RB in their senior year (the second year after I left), I can confirm that Fuentes’ description of school became more accurate there pretty much just after I graduated in 2009. And from being involved with Snowball during all 4 years I was at RB, I can confirm that the “holding hands and the diversification of America” part was reasonably accurate even while I attended. I would honestly be surprised if anything about his description of LT in the early-to-mid-2010s was inaccurate!
That point Ham made about people who are “happy to live illogically and inconsistently” may explain why Fuentes was willing to say “Your body, My choice” {italics added}, despite the fact that he’s not calling any of the shots with abortion policy. I also can’t resist pointing out that his statement is more accurate under a pro-choice regime, if you understand “My” as meaning “the man’s” (as all the pro-choice women who had this message spammed to them after Trump’s victory were clearly meant to take it). I’m still having conniptions over how masterfully Ham brought this out just a few months ago when responding to a statement by Pete Buttigieg:
Men are more free in a country with access to the murder of children? Yes, men are “more free” to abandon the women they use sexually, with no consequences. More free to “sleep around,” refuse to marry, or selfishly use their time, resources, and finances for themselves, instead of the child they helped create. Yes, more free to have affairs and cover them up or “pimp out” women and girls through sex trafficking and prostitution. Yes, men are “more free” when they can sacrifice their own children on the altar of their own pleasure—more free to sin against women, against their own children, against their own bodies, and against their Creator.
Fuentes having no problem with inconsistency in his views may also contribute to why he has so many white supremacist beliefs, yet claims not to be a white supremacist, passing off the term “white supremacist” as an “anti-white slur”. Unfortunately, the Anti-Defamation League documents that “Rather, Fuentes positions himself as [a] ‘Christian conservative’ who opposes societal shifts – on immigration, abortion and more — as nefarious efforts, led by the left, to fundamentally erode America’s Christian values. This cloaking of ideology is a ploy to attract mainstream support.” {Content in brackets mine.} And that’s where I fear Christians are going to really start getting screwed over in the years ahead.
Extreme Views Provide Excuses For Extreme Measures
You see, while I agree that many (though not all) of those “societal shifts” are part of deliberate efforts to erode the Christian values the U.S. was founded on (after all, the key players throughout the 20th century who got the ball rolling for many of those shifts said as much in their own writings!1), Fuentes’ calling himself a “Christian conservative” as an alternative label for “white supremacist” gives the impression that white supremacy is part and parcel of the Christian faith (or at least, a “conservative” version of it; of course, those who throw around this word never seem ready to specify exactly what “conservative” people are trying to conserve!). Of course, the Bible teaches exactly the opposite about white supremacy (indeed, “races” and racism in general) and hardly promotes wholesale opposition to immigration:
and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation [and the Bible leaves open the possibility that God’s process here may in some cases involve immigration on the part of someone and/or their parents], that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:26-27 2020 NASB, boldface added)
But in a world that’s getting increasingly intolerant of Christian beliefs, we can expect more than a few people to pounce on statements that give such false impressions about Christianity and use them as excuses to persecute Christians.
For instance, some of his anti-Semitic remarks could be exploited by anti-Zionists to further their own cause, and “pro-Israel” Americans (not to mention Orthodox Jews) could be killed for dissidence in the event that Fuentes’ views ever become official policy. Or, anti-Zionists could be killed in a “guilt by association” scenario where someone decides that “people like Fuentes” should be killed. I can honestly see this going either way, since both of the mainstream views on how to relate to Israel are unbiblical. It also doesn’t help that denying or downplaying what Hitler did to Jews hinders interpretation of the 7 kings of Revelation 17:10 (I’ll explain this in a later post, too).
Fuentes has spoken in support of Catholic monarchy. He obviously doesn’t understand that the U.S. specifically included the Establishment Clause at the start of the 1st Amendment because they knew full well how much havoc the presence of a state church (including Catholic monarchies) had wreaked in Europe over the centuries; for crying out loud, that’s the whole reason the Pilgrims fled to America in the first place!
He’s also a Christian Nationalist and Catholic integralist. I was technically a Christian Nationalist myself (I wasn’t aware of the term at the time), before I started more thoroughly investigating the connections between Biblical covenants. This led me to realize that Biblical covenants don’t apply to unbelievers, except for the Edenic, Adamic, and Noahic Covenants, which apply to all of humanity because they were given to the heads of all humanity. (You can get a more thorough explanation in Chapter 6 of my upcoming book.) Hence, imposing any Biblical standards on society that aren’t included in those 3 covenants (see Genesis 1:28-30; 2:2-3,15-18,24; 3:14-21; & 8:22-9:17 — note that Genesis 9:5-6 in particular was where God instituted civil governments for humanity) is to apply those standards beyond their divinely-approved scope. That won’t remain the case forever, though: Jesus will be calling the shots for all nations once he returns (Psalm 2:8-9 LXX; Daniel 7:13-14,27; Revelation 19:16, etc.)! Sadly, I fear that many Christian Nationalists are effectively trading 1,000 years of ruling in Christ’s Kingdom and then enjoying the results for the rest of eternity, for 4 years (maybe 5) of living in a bastardization of that Kingdom.
Conclusion
Given all the articles I’ve cited that link Fuentes with Trump, I think it’s appropriate to close out by giving you some perspective on how I’m approaching Trump’s second term. After all, I never said much about what I thought about Trump during his first term (mainly because, living in the deep blue state of Illinois, I’d be chewed out for saying anything remotely positive about him)! Both then and now, my attitude would be best described as “cautiously optimistic”, but at the very least, I’m definitely going into it with more insight this time. In a comment on a post of his going into more detail on some of the things I bring up and/or allude to in this post, I think Warner said it very well:
I agree that the fervor in supporting Trump is misplaced, almost to the point of “worship.” Many Christians are putting their trust in a man instead of in God. I do not deny that Trump is being used as God’s tool. But I question whether that tool is actually to “Make America Great Again,” or as a test leading to judgement. My wife and I will vote for Trump, because the alternative is almost unthinkable. However, we will do so with the knowledge that God raised up both Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar for His own purposes of judgement.
P.S.: Regarding Post Length
Just a heads-up: compared to the other posts I’ve already written over the last few months, but have yet to post here because I just set up the website this last week, this post is pretty close to average-length for me (it’s about 6,500 words, including the paragraph you’re reading right now). Some of the posts I’ve already typed are little more than 2,000 words, and others are more in the ballpark of 10,000 words; one that’s still in progress is already so long that I plan on uploading it as a PDF! So if you’re a fan of longer “long-form content”, you’ve come to the right place!
As just two examples, consider Margaret Sanger and John Dewey. Ironically, Fuentes and Sanger probably would’ve gotten along really well, assuming his parents didn’t immigrate to the U.S.! (In 1916, she opened her very first birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn because her target clientele was “immigrant Southern Europeans, Slavs, Latins, and Jews”. {Click the link on the phrase “Margaret Sanger” and scroll to “Racism and birth control clinics”. Boldface mine.}) ↩︎
