What the Early Church Fathers Said About the End Times

Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond  

Three Views on the Rapture 

Michael J. Svigel, The Fathers on the Future: A 2nd-Century Eschatology for the 21st-Century Church 

John Walvoord, 

Commentary on Daniel  

Commentary on Revelation  

Bundle of Walvoord’s Commentaries on Eschatology 

Kymberli Cook:
Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director of the Hendrick Center. And today we are talking about what the early father said about the end times, and we are joined by two eminently qualified scholars who have dedicated their lives to the text of Scripture, Drs. Michael Svigel and Dr… well not Drs., there's just one of him. Dr. Michael Svigel.

Michael Svigel:
Thank goodness.

Paul Weaver:
But in writing you do put doctors.

Kymberli Cook:
And Dr. Paul Weaver, it's good to have you all here. Thanks for joining us at The Table.

Michael Svigel:
Thanks for having us.

Paul Weaver:
It's great to be here.

Kymberli Cook:
So to let our listener get to know each one of you a little bit better, would you mind telling us a bit about yourself and how you ended up thinking about the Bible and the end times and Dr. Svigel for you, particularly the early fathers. So let's start with you though, Dr. Weaver.

Paul Weaver:
Sure. I have been here at Dallas Seminary for five years. I did my ThM here. Then I spent 18 years with Word of Life Bible Institute. I was the director of the Bible Institute in Hungary for many years. Then five years academic dean at the campus in New York and then Dallas picked me off and it's been great to be here. I continue to teach internationally and I love Bible and theology, all things Bible and theology.

Kymberli Cook:
Awesome. And then Dr. Svigel.

Michael Svigel:
Yeah. I've been teaching here at Dallas Seminary for 18 years, theological studies. We do systematic theology and church history. From about the first year on, I've been teaching eschatology, which is a required course here and it's a good combination of my interest in theology as well as patristic studies, which is study of the church fathers and with a particular interest in what they believed and taught about end times events, eschatology, the technical term for that, and then how they understand Scripture.

Kymberli Cook:
Okay, very cool. Yes, I was first introduced to church history and eschatology in my internship with Dr. Svigel when he made me go find some, it was either resources or basically you knew what you were talking about and you said, I need you to go find these sources because they say this, I just need the page number essentially.

Michael Svigel:
Sounds like something I would do.

Paul Weaver:
It's nice to have those students.

Michael Svigel:
That's right.

Kymberli Cook:
But it was so good. I loved it. It was so fun. It was a great assignment, but I never knew anything about John Darby or any of that until I worked on that article. So that's a little bit about you with eschatology. Dr. Weaver, how did you end up thinking about the end times and dwelling in that space with biblical interpretation as well?

Paul Weaver:
Sure. So I did teach in Hungary. I taught Bible and theology, so I taught bible Exposition courses. I didn't mention this, but of course I'm in the Department of Bible Exposition. So currently I teach typically the three New Testament courses we teach. So the Gospels, Acts and Pauline Epistles and Hebrews to Revelation. So it touches on all of that prophecy. I also teach a course on the book of Daniel internationally and different campuses. So I do love eschatology. I do think it's significant and it's downplayed in most churches and seminaries as well. So it's an important part of our curriculum here at Dallas Seminary.

Kymberli Cook:
And you're with all of those Bible classes, you're like knee-deep in all of that. You can't help but run into eschatology. All right, so let's turn to the matter at hand. We've got a combination between early fathers and eschatology and the end times that we see in Scripture. And so both of those are actually, we could even do separate podcasts on them because they're pretty deep cuts into the biblical studies and biblical theology and to a degree abstract topics. So before we go too far, I want us to help our listener understand why does a conversation about the early fathers and specifically what they even thought about the end times, why would that have any impact or how does it have an impact on their life right now? How should it have an impact on their life right now? Dr. Svigel, you want to go first?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I think if anybody starts to even look into this at an even informal level, just watch YouTube videos or hear sermons or read books on end times. They will learn really quickly that there are a lot of different views on this. It can get very confusing very quickly and a lot of people, they say, "Well, there's about 10 views on this issue and 24 views of the 24 elders and different views on the millennium, and so therefore there's no way I'm going to be able to figure this out." So people get exasperated very quickly.
Taking a look at how the earliest church, the New Testament, as well as those who were overlapping those New Testament authors in that earliest consensus, the way they kind of viewed things together might clear away a little bit of the fog, I think, that's my approach. And it gives us a little bit clearer picture on, "Okay, there are some constraints." I mean people read these symbolic images and all of these things and they read all kinds of things into it and they come up with all kinds of wild interpretations and there's a need to kind of place a couple of guardrails I think on this and it helps encourage people to say, "Look, no, maybe we can, maybe not understand all the details of it, but at least we can understand the big picture in the way that the original apostles left to the original church."

Kymberli Cook:
So it's almost like serves as a search engine filter where it's like all of the different YouTube videos and then you allow the early fathers and the earliest communities and how they understood all of this to inform that. And so then all of a sudden, "Oh, I only have to watch 1500 YouTube videos instead of 22,000."

Paul Weaver:
And not all YouTubers are equal either.

Michael Svigel:
That's right? That's right.

Kymberli Cook:
Absolutely not. What would you add, Dr. Weaver?

Paul Weaver:
Well, I would just start by saying eschatology is important, right? If we could back up to that to say it was important to God, I know it is certainly important to Paul as we think of the earliest writings Paul the Apostle gave, depending on whether you take Galatians early or not, it's the second and third epistle written by Paul. So early writings and Paul even alludes to when he was in Thessalonica that he told them these things about the day of the Lord. So the tribulation was in his three-week visit to Thessalonica. So it's important to God, certainly important to Paul early on and it's motivational, right? It's knowing God's plans and purposes for the future as John says, when we know that when he appears we'll become like him and see him as he is.
I think even looking upon the glorified state of Christ, we're transformed into our glorified bodies. And then John goes on to say, "Therefore purify yourselves as see as pure." So eschatology has a motivational implication for us today, and as Paul writes in First Thessalonians, "While we're watching and waiting, we're serving." They turned from worshiping pagan idols to the living God, to do what? To serve and to wait for the return of Christ. So it's very motivational. Then as it relates to we'd expect, we believe the Bible is the absolute authority on these matters. We want to do a careful exegesis of these biblical texts, but we would expect that the first and second century, the disciples of the disciples would have views that relate to this if our view is correct, right?

Michael Svigel:
So kind of like checking our math a little bit, right?

Paul Weaver:
It is. Yes. Yeah. So it's confirmatory, it's helpful. And I know Fathers on the Future by Dr. Svigel does that very thing.

Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, I feel like eschatology even from the earliest times, but definitely in Scripture it kind of gives or it shows you not as much gives, but it shows you the cosmic stakes of what it is that we're living, like this truth and the gospel and all of this and down to choosing to do the righteous thing rather than the unrighteous thing. When I'm at the coffee shop, there really are cosmic stakes and this is important in how we live and it's a part of God's whole story. And so it very much impacts our daily life. We just might not be aware that it is. And we actually talked a little bit more about this in a different podcast called What You Believe About the End Shapes How You Live Now.
So if this is interesting to you or if we haven't convinced you that it's worth your time, go listen to that podcast and then come back. So let's talk about those earliest Christian communities that we have referenced a couple times, what was involved especially, so Dr. Weaver, let's start with you. Can you talk a little bit about what it looked like when certain biblical books were being written and especially the eschatological books and what was in the mind of the authors at that time when it was being written, when those texts were being written, especially New Testament? I know Old Testament's very important in this conversation as well, but for the New Testament ones.

Paul Weaver:
Yeah. Well the earliest church was a Jewish church, right? In Acts we see the development of the growth of the church in Jerusalem and then Judea Samaria then to the ends of the earth as the Apostle Paul then becomes the apostle to the Gentiles and takes that gospel around the world. So I would say the earliest church would be studying the Scriptures and the Scriptures to them before Paul's writings would've been the Hebrew Bible. So they would be acquainted with the Abrahamic covenant and the Davidic Covenant and the book of Daniel. So important to eschatology and as we will discuss is understanding the book of Daniel. And I love our second president at Dallas Theological Seminary had a commentary entitled Daniel the Key to Prophetic Revelation I think it was.
And so the subtitle is that Daniel is so foundational, it provides us the framework to understand all of the New Testament prophecy. So the earliest church I think would be studying the Scriptures and to them prior to the writings of Paul and Peter and John and the gospels being recorded, that would be the apostolic teachings audibly taught, but then also the Hebrew Scriptures. And so Paul has alluded to already in one Thessalonians deals with the rapture of the church, the catching up of the saints, and each of the New Testament epistles were written for an occasion, right? So the occasion in Thessalonica, I believe, was that they were concerned about their dead loved ones.
And so in response to their concern about their dead loved ones, Paul provides them with the doctrine that we call the rapture, the assumption, the catching up of the church to meet the Lord in the air. And so First Thessalonians is key to that to then of course shortly on the heels of that, Paul writes Second Thessalonians, which deals with the day of the Lord. And so those would be important apostolic teachings that are written down pretty early around 50, 51, 52. And so then it'd become apostolic teaching, I think distributed and used by the early church. Then you add to that the book of Revelation later, certainly Matthew is recording of the Olivet Discourse and Luke's recording of that as well.

Kymberli Cook:
Do you feel like those in the area you're specifically talking about, do you feel like they thought they were living in the end times?

Paul Weaver:
Yes, I think they were expecting the imminent return of the Lord. We here at Dallas Theological Seminary, I believe in a pre-tribulational rapture. And by imminent we mean it could happen at any moment, that Christ could return at any moment, could happen right now or right now or right now, but nothing has to take place before it and it obviously can't happen in the past. So the Imminency, I think the early church was expecting Christ's return at any moment and Paul said, "We who are alive and remain will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. I think that's what he meant. He didn't know exactly when Christ would return, but he was living and encouraging them again to serve while they're waiting on the return of the Lord. And I would say First Thessalonians has five different times once in each chapter where the imminent return of the Lord is emphasized.

Kymberli Cook:
To serve and to particularly hold firm in the midst of persecution and things that they were-

Paul Weaver:
Yeah, the church was born in tribulation. The Thessalonian church was born in not the tribulation, but the trials and persecution. And so Paul's given them doctrine that, "All this is happening to you, but be encouraged, God sees and cares about your pain, and one day the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked will be judged."

Kymberli Cook:
Okay. So during that time and later so overlapping a bit of the time that you're talking about, Dr. Weaver, there were also some other voices in the church writing things and instructing. It didn't end up becoming a part of the canon, and you're welcome to talk about why that or didn't happen, but what were some of those other voices that people may not be aware of and what were they saying about end times?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah, so I like how Dr. Weaver emphasized that the earliest, the very first slate of Christians called baptized were Jewish. The church was Jewish for a little while and they expected Christ to set up a kingdom on earth in fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies. And the Apostles said, "Yes, that's going to happen, but kicking it down to Christ's return, first we have to evangelize the world." So they're going around planting churches, et cetera. In the course of that, they're teaching these things like in One Thessalonians and the coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the day of the Lord judgments and this kingdom, they don't have clear concepts of what's exactly that's going to entail, but they know it's going to be a fulfillment of all these Old Testament promises. And in the midst of this, we have a couple of writings that are actually written around the same time as the New Testament writings themselves.
So there's something out there called the Didache, which was written somewhere between 50 and 70 roughly, which the very end of that says basically the same thing these other New Testament writings say, there's going to be evil, some sort of a dictator that's going to come along this wicked tyrant who's going to terrorize the world. We call that person the antichrist. And then following that Christ is going to come and raise the dead and establish his kingdom. And then you see something called the Epistle of Barnabas, which has the same kind of thing. There's going to be some period of tribulation with this wicked ruler who's going to persecute and then that Christ is going to come destroy that time of the lawless one and usher in his thousand-year kingdom explicitly. So you see this pattern already developing consistent with what we would say a pretty literal reading of the New Testament texts that we've been mentioning, some of them.
And so it's kind of to me very reassuring that what we're reading in the New Testament just applying a straightforward hermeneutic or way of interpretation that would read it just like anybody would read it in that day. We're seeing that these earliest church writings confirm that that's how it was being read, that's how it was being interpreted. So to me that means that yes, we're expecting a future judgment that's coming, we're promised to be rescued from it, spared from that, but also it's going to refine the wicked call people to repentance and usher in a kingdom of Christ, that thousand-year kingdom, what we call the Millennium, and then ushering in the eternal state. So I think we're seeing a pretty clear, pretty comprehensive and consistent picture in the earliest Christian writings of the first century itself.

Kymberli Cook:
So earlier we talked about how this conversation matters partially because it provides the search engine filter, it provides guidelines for how we approach eschatological conversations and in the midst of all of the hubbub that can happen in those conversations. And growing up as a child who was terrified of left behind and all of that, I was a kid during those times and it was gripping. What guidelines that we've been discussing, so you guys were laying out some of the basic teachings, basic understandings. So just kind of connecting those two lines of thought, so in light of what you said, what are some of the guidelines that we should keep in mind, Dr. Weaver?

Paul Weaver:
Well, I grew up with a thief in the night, so few years before that.

Kymberli Cook:
Yeah. Everybody has something.

Michael Svigel:
Before that, I remember that too.

Paul Weaver:
Yes, I remember leaving with my mother when the guillotine came out. I must've been like six years old, and my mother said, "That's enough. We're going to leave this church event." And so the question, again, the guidelines to parameters. Well, I would say I appreciate the emphasis upon a normal reading of Scripture. We don't want to read the Scripture we… well, we want to say what did authorial intent is so important. What did the original authors intend to communicate to the original recipients? We're not trying that meaning is not in me as the interpreter or even the text when sometimes it becomes, you say it's the text, but then you're really saying, it's my reading of the text.
The meaning is what the original author intended to communicate to the original recipients. So we want to try to understand how the Thessalonians understood Paul's writings, how did the disciples, Matthew 24, when Jesus is talking to them about this antichrist, this abomination of desolation, these rumors of wars and this cosmic battle at the end that leads to vultures dining on the corpses of the dead bodies of those who are the enemies of God. So I think when we look at Jesus and how Jesus interpreted Daniel, I think that's a good key. Jesus interpreted Daniel's abomination of desolation mentions Daniel by name. So I think the apostles in Jesus themselves help us to understand and interpret these prophecies.
Daniel took Jeremiah when he's reading Daniel nine, when we read Daniel nine, he mentions Jeremiah, right, Jeremiah the prophet, and they've been in Babylon for almost 70 years and the 70 years is almost up and Daniel's praying for the restoration of his people back to the land. So there are indicators I think that are method of interpretation, not trying to find some deeper meaning, but what the original author communicated. And we believe that God can and does communicate in a way that we can understand. And so we could use technical terms for the interpretive method, but I think we're trying to avoid technical language.

Kymberli Cook:
What is the technical term for that?

Paul Weaver:
Well, we talk about historical grammatical or grammatical historical, sometimes said in that order, that the words have meaning and we often will use it normal or plain. Some people use literal, but that doesn't mean we don't believe in figures of speech or metaphors. It just means communication.

Michael Svigel:
How it would've been understood.

Paul Weaver:
As laws of communication.

Michael Svigel:
At the time. Yeah.

Kymberli Cook:
What would you add as far as just the guidelines?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I agree with all of that a hundred percent. A couple of things I would say too is you have to interpret the passage and your interpretation has to match the text. So sometimes what happens is people do a cursory reading per passage and say, "Oh, that word sounds like this." And they'll jump out into some other passages, or they'll start reading into it other meanings of other passages that aren't really what this passage is talking about. Sometimes they come up with wrong answers, sometimes they come up with right answers. It's just not what the passage is about. So those kinds of things attend to the details of the text. This is why a high view of Scripture is important. If you have a low view of Scripture and say it's just as general truth as true or it's general assertions, that kind of gives people the freedom to not really worry about word order and grammar and syntax and what is related to what these words really mean.

Kymberli Cook:
Can I pause you for a second?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah. Hm-hmm.

Kymberli Cook:
So what about how the earliest Christian communities conducted themselves gives us the understanding that they had a high view of Scripture?

Michael Svigel:
They're constantly going back to Scripture. According to the Scriptures, Christ die for saying, "According to the Scripture, this is going to happen according to the script." In fact, when the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter three tells his Jewish audience that one day Christ, the Messiah who's appointed them is going to return and establish this kingdom, this times a refreshing and restoration of all things he says as recorded in the prophets long ago, he basically footnotes the entire Old Testament. So they're constantly going back to the Scriptures and they speak about the Scriptures as God speaking through the holy Scriptures, as the Holy Spirit spoke through the Scriptures. And Paul says that the Scriptures are inspired by God. They're a God bread. So the earliest Christians as well pointed back to Scripture as the basis for their… although those end times passages that you see in writings outside the New Testament, you can see they're either directly quoting from or they're weaving in biblical language and imagery. So Scripture is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice.

Kymberli Cook:
They took it very seriously and it shows up-

Michael Svigel:
Took it very serious.

Kymberli Cook:
Yeah, repeatedly.

Paul Weaver:
Could I add one more thing?

Kymberli Cook:
Please.

Paul Weaver:
I would say the progress of Revelation, it's very important from our vantage point that new prophecy doesn't change old prophecy, that it's progressive. It's the Abrahamic covenant. It was made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And so new revelations shouldn't contradict old revelation or so we would, sometimes Dr. Vlock will use the word passage priority, I think, and many of us will say the progress of revelation, right? We need to say, how's that passage being used in its context? Then we see this progress of revelation. So more, excuse me, more detail becomes, we become more aware, right? The mystery of the church that wasn't developed, the rapture wasn't in the Old Testament. There was no church in the Old Testament in our estimation. And so these kind of things, new revelation, I don't think changes, doesn't contradict old revelation. Now, those that would interpret the Old Testament by the New Testament and do New Testament priority probably wouldn't like the way I said it just there that New Testament changes Old Testament, you would be able to say it clearer than I could.

Michael Svigel:
Yeah, I mean that's the other thing I would say as well is Scripture interprets Scripture, but we take the Old Testament if we believe in the clarity of Scripture, there's a fancy word called the perspicuity of Scripture. If that's true, it's always been true. So the way these prophecies in the Old Testament, we're talking about this glorious messianic age when Israel would be restored and the land would be bountiful and there'd be prosperity and all these kinds of things. Those things are very clear and repeated over and over and over again. It's clear and comprehensive and you see a very compelling picture of this coming kingdom and those things still stand. It's not to be interpreted spiritually or allegorically as applying to spiritual truths just in the church today or in heaven. This is why we anticipate as the early church did an actual literal fulfillment of these things in this present world when Christ returns. So I think you can read these things in a way that they hold all together and present a very consistent picture.

Paul Weaver:
Yeah. So the land seed and blessing of the Abrahamic covenant, we believe that will be a literal blessing in the future where all nations will be blessed and there'll be a king that rules from the throne of Daniel, David, excuse me, in 2 Samuel 7. So these will be, I think the way that Abraham understood it is how we should understand it too.

Kymberli Cook:
So we've talked about several passages already. Thessalonians has come up and Daniel has come up, and that's not a passage in the book, but what would you all say? And now I know scholars don't like to be put in boxes, but what would you all say top five passages in the Bible?

Michael Svigel:
Do you want to take turns. You go, I go

Kymberli Cook:
What would you say? Top five of these are some of the key passages that… Oh, oh goodness, my bad, Jalen. Top five that somebody who says, "You know, I don't really know a ton about the end times like you're talking about, and I haven't really dug into that, but I do take the Bible seriously. I have a high view of Scripture. As you're describing it, that's kind of how I feel about the Bible." And so if I wanted to dig in and think through the end times in the Bible, what are the five places you would encourage me to look at. One, Dr. Weaver?

Paul Weaver:
Well, it's really, really hard because-

Kymberli Cook:
This doesn't have to be number one.

Paul Weaver:
You can't get an exhaustive understanding. The whole of eschatology with five passages, and I might cheat here, but I would go just as 1:26 to 28, which is really eschatological, but it's so incredibly foundational because it gives us a purpose statement for why God created humanity. And it says God created man and women to rule. So in the image of God, the Mango Day, so the image of God, God created us not just as loving beings as he's loving or creative beings as he's creative or intelligent beings as he's intelligent, but as Dr. Merrill who's here for many years at Dallas Seminary, would say that goes to your function as well as attributes. So God created us to function as his image bearers on earth ruling.
And this is before sins enters into the world, what Adam failed to do, the second Adam will accomplish. And that's why when we look at the story of Scripture, we have two different professors that teach a story of Scripture and we have a kingdom and covenants course. They're all developing this. This is why it's all connected. That's why the story of the Bible is so important because what started in Genesis 1:26, 28 will finally be realized in the book of Revelation when Christ rules and we get to rule and reign with him. So I would say it's so foundational. I would say Genesis 1:26 28, because that's a key theme, I think the unifying theme of all of Scripture is the kingdom.

Kymberli Cook:
Understanding the whole story because the end times is again, it's the end. So it's the conclusion of this whole story, but understanding the beginning, see that was a really good one. All right. Number two.

Michael Svigel:
It was unexpected, but it was absolutely right.

Kymberli Cook:
It was.

Michael Svigel:
You can't understand the end apart from the beginning is absolutely right. So let me jump to the end then. Since Dr. Weaver started.

Kymberli Cook:
Revelation 21.

Michael Svigel:
Revelation and all of Revelation, it says in the very opening verses, this was given to show his servants things which must happen very soon. So all of it is about eschatology and times things, but primarily I would say look at Revelation 20. Well, let's just start middle of 19, 19:11, the return of Christ is the judge sets up his kingdom. Revelation 20, the millennial kingdom, this is the passage where you have that thousand year kingdom and then the eternal state. Just read that, meditate on it. It is hopeful. It is beautiful. One day God is going to wipe away all our tears and there will be no more death nor crying or pain.
I mean if that doesn't minister to you, nothing will. But that's really foundational to understand where all of this is headed. Look, people are going to disagree on what Scripture teaches with regard to the path that it's going to take to get there. Is the tribulation this long or that long? Is it this rapture now or then? And how long is it? In the end it all ends up the same. We all believe in the new heavens of the new earth. There's no more death, no more sin, no more Satan, no more suffering. And I think that those two things need to be really firm. That where this started, how it went wrong, where it's going to end, then we can start filling in the details with the next writing. Where would you go?

Kymberli Cook:
Well, real quick. And the whole point is that God is dwelling with human beings, that that's the very end.

Michael Svigel:
The presence of God.

Kymberli Cook:
And that's the important conclusion to this whole story. All right, number three.

Paul Weaver:
I want to say Abrahamic covenant because of the importance of the land seed and blessing. But if we stick to purely eschatological-

Kymberli Cook:
Oh, that cheating.

Paul Weaver:
Daniel 9.

Michael Svigel:
Did you see how he did that?

Kymberli Cook:
Hm-hmm. Go ahead. Sorry. You said Daniel what?

Paul Weaver:
Daniel 9. We were talking about the millennium. That's really, really important. Daniel 9 gives us more understanding of the tribulation that precedes in our estimation, the millennium. So it gives us the starting point of the 70th week of Daniel. I like to use the word heptad more technical to say 70 sevens. Because a week isn't really, it's not really a seven, it's not really a week. It's seven years, seven 70s, right? And so it's offering an issuing of a covenant to rebuild Jerusalem until the entrance of the Messiah is the first 69 sevens or 483 years, not a covenant, sorry, issuing of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the entrance of the Messiah that's 69 sevens or 483 years. And then it gives us the start of the last seven years, which is a confirmation of a covenant. We believe it's with the Antichrist because there are some indicators in the text.
He's the one that's going to violate his covenant at the halfway point, the midpoint Daniel 9:27 offer set himself up to be worshiped. We learned that later in other prophetic passages and a demand to be worshiped then at the end, and that's going to happen for then… there's going to be additional horrible time of tribulation on the earth followed by Christ's return. So Daniel 9 gives us the framework of the tribulation when it's going to start with the confirmation of covenant, what's going to happen at the midpoint, the breaking of that covenant, which I think the text speaks of stopping the sacrifices that are taking place, which indicates there must be a temple and setting himself up to be an abominable event in the wing of the temple or a part of the temple, of course, just later. And Paul, give us more clarity of what that is as they build on that prophecy of Daniel 9.

Kymberli Cook:
But you're not going to tell us those passages. That's right. Okay. So Daniel 9.

Michael Svigel:
Okay.

Kymberli Cook:
Number four.

Michael Svigel:
Let's jump forward to Matthew 24 and its parallels in Mark 13 and some passages. And most scholars even in our circles, the dispensation, we'll say he is, Jesus is talking about some things in the Olivet Discourse that are going to be fulfilled with the destruction of the temple in the first century. But even that is playing double duty. It's pointing forward ultimately to what we would call the great tribulation that's coming. And that corresponds to the Daniel's 70th week, which is what the earliest Christians believed as well, that the 70th week of Daniel's yet future. So I would go to Matthew 24 to get to a lot of that imagery that the Christ coming, the son of man coming in the clouds, the power and great glory, and he destroys the wicked and establishes his kingdom throw in there at Matthew 25 as well. That whole sustained treatment of the return of Christ as judge and king.

Paul Weaver:
And of course he's at the Mount of Olives where the Messiah's going to return according to Zechariah.

Kymberli Cook:
But is Zechariah the number five passage?

Paul Weaver:
No.

Kymberli Cook:
Okay. What's the fifth passage?

Michael Svigel:
That's another bonus. See how he stick that one in to?

Paul Weaver:
Slipped that under the door. First Thessalonians 4:13 to 2 Thessalonians 2:8.

Kymberli Cook:
Okay.

Michael Svigel:
There you go.

Kymberli Cook:
And this is the passage you were already talking about earlier, right?

Michael Svigel:
Resurrection rapture.

Paul Weaver:
Yeah, the rapture passage. But I threw in there 2 Thessalonians because it deals with the day of the Lord. But that wasn't fair either.

Kymberli Cook:
I don't think that was the whole books. If you didn't-

Paul Weaver:
I would have.

Kymberli Cook:
Well, we're at five. You weren't getting another.

Paul Weaver:
That's right.

Kymberli Cook:
So I do want to just highlight for the, because earlier we were talking about the earliest Christians and really the earliest, earliest Christian churches were Jewish. And so specifically you were mentioning Daniel 9. So the Daniel conversations and Zechariah and then Genesis, all of that would've been the fundamental bedrock. Then they received more information with Matthew and Jesus' teaching in Matthew 24. And then they received more information with John in Revelation, add that to the end, and then also Paul. And so you can see how you were talking about progressive revelation all of a sudden like, "Oh wow, okay, now that makes even more sense as we see that."" So I just wanted to pull all that.

Michael Svigel:
And it's building on itself, it's not setting aside and starting over. It's continuing to build on. Its one continuous story which is really important to keep in mind.

Paul Weaver:
I think the abomination of desolation is perfect example of that because Daniel 9:27 mentions it, then Jesus quotes from Daniel and mentions it and gives more clarity. It's in the holy place. Then Paul says, not only holy place, but the place where God sits, which seems to be the holy of holies. And then Revelation with the mark of the beast and the demanding worship. So it's not like we're coming up with this idea of an Antichrist out of one passage. We've got four very substantial passages that are saying the same thing. So it's not just sensational off set people.

Kymberli Cook:
And what a remarkable time in the history of people following God to where they see they're having to pull together all of those threads. For the earliest Christian communities where God, by His Holy Spirit is speaking to them through Paul and through obviously not Holy Spirit. Jesus was present with them and teaching and the Holy Spirit through John, but they're also pulling from all of these other, what we now refer to as Old Testament passage. And they're saying, "Oh my goodness, look at all of that." And so it was just a really cool time-

Michael Svigel:
How it all fits together.

Kymberli Cook:
… in the history of God's people to just be like, "Oh, oh my goodness, I can't believe all of this has actually meant this all along, but we didn't know it until now."

Paul Weaver:
So if your eschatology is built on one main passage, it's a problem, right? Wouldn't you say?

Michael Svigel:
Right. Yeah. It was never intended to be that way. Right?

Paul Weaver:
Some time it happens that way. Some people do it that way.

Michael Svigel:
It's interesting when you look at writings of the early church, for instance, like I mentioned, Didache 16 and Barnabas 15. Didache 16 is a classic example. You see imagery in there from Second Thessalonians and you see some Matthew 24 and you see some, this is somebody who is aware of all of these passages or these treatments of this and kind of beginning already to put them together.

Kymberli Cook:
So with the time we have left, what is your favorite? So we don't actually have time to walk through the different interpretations of everything that we're talking about. For the record, we have podcasts that talk about that too, where we dig into the differences in different views of the end times. And we actually unpack dispensationalism, which I think we've thrown around that term just a couple times here. And a lot of the perspective that we're presenting here would be a dispensationalist read on these passages. And in a podcast, it's called Understanding Dispensationalism, we unpack that entire hermeneutic. So if that's interesting to you, be sure to check that out. But with the time that we have left, what is y'all's favorite and favorite being in major quotations. Just this is more general interest.

Michael Svigel:
I'm nervous.

Kymberli Cook:
Favorite off the wall interpretation of the end times that you've read or heard where you were like, "I don't know how you got there, but this does not honor the guidelines that we have been talking about here."

Michael Svigel:
Oh man, there's so many.

Kymberli Cook:
Because it's a wacky world, right?

Paul Weaver:
Well, I just got an email recently from someone that listens to my podcast. I'll throw that plug in there.

Kymberli Cook:
Go for it. Yeah.

Paul Weaver:
And he wanted to know about the recent, as we're recording this, the agreement that occurred, peace agreement in Israel right now, and does that relate to Daniel 9:24 to 20 verse 27. So I explained him, he wouldn't know if that's how the dispensational perspective would be on this. And I'm like, "This has nothing to do with the covenant." Because the restrainer must be removed before the lawless one must be revealed. And then also it has to do with the temple and offering sacrifices. So this has nothing to do with the recent events at the time of the recording where the hostages from Hamas had been released. So that's recent. That's not the most crazy part.

Kymberli Cook:
So the constant, "And it's today, right? And it's today, right?"

Paul Weaver:
Yes.

Michael Svigel:
That's right.

Paul Weaver:
And Trump is the Antichrist, right?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah. You hear all kinds. Yeah. So as Dr. Weaver mentioned finding fulfillments in current events, which has been going on for about 2000 years, I'm going to shift to the other kind of parallel lane on that. And that is setting dates. So as we all know, and you don't even have to live very long as a Christian for the next, every five years or so, a new date to set. But my favorite date setter in quotes is Samuel Hopkins, the New England Puritan Scholar, very well respected in American early American history, but he was a date setter. And he calculated with some kind of magic math for the beginning of the millennium was 2016. So that was my favorite one. I found that after 2016. So spoiler alert, it was not correct. And this podcast was recorded after that. So he was, but yeah, but that's a long, almost a 2000-year history of setting dates by calculating some of these numbers that we are taking more. Literally they would take them, 1,260 days as actually 1,260 years. And then you find the beginning and it leads to nothing but tears.

Paul Weaver:
Of course, on my shelf I keep this little pamphlet that says 66 reasons why Jesus is going to return in 1966, right?

Michael Svigel:
Yeah.

Paul Weaver:
Just to show that that's not where we want to go.

Kymberli Cook:
That's not the point of the conversation. That's not-

Paul Weaver:
That's not unique to dispensation.

Michael Svigel:
Correct, I agree, Sam Hopkins was a post-millennialist. He had nothing, no relationship to us.

Kymberli Cook:
Everybody takes their random places.

Michael Svigel:
Everybody has people like that.

Kymberli Cook:
All right, so if people wanted to dig into more of just the biblical texts and thinking through end times and what the Bible has to say about that, or what the early fathers have to say, where might you direct them as far as resources go? Podcast, books. essays.

Michael Svigel:
I won't push my own book, but I'll let Dr. Weaver do it.

Paul Weaver:
Sure. I was going to. I agree, fathers on the Future is a great place where dovetails exegesis of biblical passages, along with what the early church fathers, which would be those first generations, the first two generations, the Apostolic Fathers is what you're focusing on mostly. But a course at Dallas Theological Seminary would be great.

Kymberli Cook:
Oh, Dallas Seminary, that might not be possible for a lot of people.

Michael Svigel:
There are a handful of free online courses as well that we have-

Kymberli Cook:
That's true.

Michael Svigel:
… available for everybody.

Kymberli Cook:
We have a lot of resources for the church.

Michael Svigel:
We cover a lot of these topics in the books of the Bible that we've mentioned, you can take free online courses as well.

Paul Weaver:
Yeah, I mentioned John Walvoord's book on Daniel. It's still in print, I believe.

Michael Svigel:
He also has one on Revelation.

Paul Weaver:
That's right. And so there's a lot of good commentaries—

Kymberli Cook:
Sorry, Walvoord or Dr. Weaver?

Paul Weaver:
Walvoord.

Kymberli Cook:
Okay.

Paul Weaver:
I do have a survey through the whole Bible, so you can check that out if you like, from a dispensational perspective. It's called Learn the Word Bible Survey. But yeah, so you always want to know who the author is, right? What's their theological perspective they're coming from? So not all commentaries are equal, so you want to make sure you can read different views. There's different view books as well, right? Four views on the Millennium and on the Rapture and things like that. So you can hear people defend their view and criticize in an iranic way.

Kymberli Cook:
Iranic, not ironic.

Michael Svigel:
Sometimes ironic too. Yes, it does get that way.

Paul Weaver:
So those four views, three views are helpful in that regard too.

Kymberli Cook:
Wonderful. Well, gentlemen, it has been a lovely time. Thank you for taking us 1900, 2000 years in church history and to this particular moment where again, all of those threads were being pulled together and a lot more understanding was being given. And just thank you for your time and for joining us today. We really appreciate you all being here.

Michael Svigel:
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

Paul Weaver:
My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.

Kymberli Cook:
And we want to thank you, our listener, for joining us, and we ask that you be sure to show up next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.