Pre-Trib vs. Amillennialism: What the Bible Really Says

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, let's be ready to carry on from where we were. And we've been talking, of course, about the Kingdom. And I always have to be reminded that we do have a television audience out there. You know, unfortunately, I forget about that camera. I think most of you know that by now. But anyway, to those of you who are watching us on television, we just want to let it be known we're an informal Bible study. We don't try to be theological per se. And I think if I can take credit for anything at all, it's that we've gotten a lot of people to study their Bible who didn't before. And yeah, I got some heads nodding. And after all, that's the only reason I do this. Nothing thrills me more than when someone writes and says, Well, I never studied my Bible until I started watching your program. And that's all we want to do, because I've found that when people get into the Book, that makes all the difference in the world, in their lives and in everything. Well now, we've been talking about the Kingdom, and I have become aware more than once from my class people, and now of course an occasional letter or a phone call from our television audience, that we know that there are those who stand so rigidly against the concept of an earthly kingdom. They have spiritualized the Scriptures, and everything pertaining to the Kingdom is spiritual, and consequently they refuse to accept the fact that the Bible is teaching a literal, physical, yes political, earthly kingdom, on which, as we said in our last program, there will be the animal kingdom, there will be families, there's going to be tremendous reproduction, beginning of course with the believing parents. And just the other night one of the fellows in one of my classes showed me a little book that his pastor had given him. And all I have to do is leaf through these, and I see the same things over and over, and I say, Oh yeah, I've read all this before. And I make no apology for the fact that I read all of the opposition. It's just like a college or a pro football coach. As soon as one game is over on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, right away if not Sunday night, at least early Monday morning, what do they start looking at? Well they start looking at the films of the next opponent, who they're going to play next weekend. And they study them, and they study them, and they study them, so that they know what their next opponent is going to throw at them. Well that's what I do. I have the Book of Mormon at home. I read it, I study it, so I've got a pretty good idea of what's in that one. I've read good bits and pieces out of the Koran, so I know some of what's in there. I've read a lot of what Armstrong's have written, Jehovah's Witnesses material. I read every bit I get my hand on, because I want to know where they're coming from. Well the same way with these people who are absolutely contrary to, and in opposition to this concept of an earthly kingdom, and Christ's Second Coming ahead of it. And so I'm going to take this half hour program to enlighten people, because as one of my dear students the other night, who is the dean of one of the colleges at one of our universities here, came up at break time, and he said, Les you're breaking new ground. And I guess I looked at him kind of quizzically, and he said, well now you're a farmer. And I said, well yeah I sure am, but what are you talking about? Well he said, didn't you ever break new ground? Of course now he was a farm boy himself, but in a different part of the world than I came from. And he said, when you break new ground it takes a lot of work, getting everything cleaned off that doesn't belong there, and breaking up the clods, and getting everything all ready for that first crop. And I said, well yeah I hear you, I know where you're coming from. Well he said, you're breaking new ground. He said, I've been talking to people here all evening now during the break, and he said, you're throwing stuff at us that they've never heard before. And I said, well I'll have to take that into consideration. Well that's going to come up on the television program, not this time, but maybe in the next program or the one after. I never know exactly how far we're going to get. But for these next few moments I'm going to enlighten at least you people, and hopefully even some that are out there in television, as to the two opposing views with regard to end time events. I'm going to put a couple of words on the board to start with. Number one, those who are along the same line of thinking as myself, we call pre -tribulation and pre-millennial. Now what we're talking about of course is the return of Christ. For us as believers in the church age, we believe that Christ is going to come from heaven to meet us in the air, to take us out before the tribulation. And so we speak of a pre-tribulation rapture of the church, but then we speak in the next term of the second coming of Christ actually coming to the Mount of Olives as being pre-millennial. Now that just simply means that He's going to return before this thousand year kingdom on earth is established. Now the opposing view to all this are referred to as amillennial. And in the English language when you put an A in front of something, what does it mean? No, or without. And so you have against the pre-trib, pre-millennial concept of the Scriptures, the amillennial. That there is no such thing as an earthly kingdom. There is no thousand years out here. There is no return of Christ to set up an earthly kingdom. I remember several years ago, and it's long enough ago that I can safely refer to it now. I haven't really since. But there was a pastor in the town of one of my classes, who of course was strictly amillennial. And I knew that, and it was no secret, but I had a lot of his church members in my class. And as I want everyone on television to know, you see I never get people to just follow me. I'm just simply having a freelance Bible study, and we leave people in whatever denominations they're in, and they continue to their Sunday school work and so forth. But I had a lot of this gentleman's people in my class, and so I guess to refute my teaching, he handed out a little type written, 2 or 3 page treatise on ridiculing my stand on the millennium, and the rapture, and so forth. And you bet I read it. I read it 2 or 3 times. I want to know exactly what he was thinking. And what it really boiled down to was, that this whole concept of the rapture and the tribulation, and the setting up of an earthly kingdom, had its beginnings with some little teenage girl in Spain, who had dreamed it all up. And it just sounded so good that a lot of people listened, and out of that they concocted, I think was the word he may have used, this whole idea of a millennium. And so several of those people said, Now really, is there any basis for this? Because you don't find any teaching concerning the rapture and the millennium, back at the time of the reformation of Luther, and Calvin, and so forth. And that's true. But what people do not understand and realize, is that for the first 250 years of Church history, that is from you might say 40 or 50 A.D., all the way to the end of the year 299, or going into the 300's, the Church stood solidly on what we call pre-millennialism. Only they had a different word for it, they called it Chileasm. From the word Chileoi in the Greek, which meant 1,000 again, just like milli means 1,000. So the word still meant the same thing. Now in those first 250 years then, we had all kinds of the so-called Church Fathers who stood adamantly on the fact of the soon departure of the Church, beginning with Paul, who actually thought it would take place in his lifetime, and the writings of Barnabas, who was a contemporary of the Apostle Paul, and John. Now I had to write down a few of these names, normally I don't depend on the written page, but I had to write a few of these names down so I don't miss them. But they had fellows by the names of Justin, Irenaeus, Nepos, Victorinus, Tertullian, and many, many others. In all of their writings, they stood on the whole Millennial earthly rule of Christ, without any apology. Now that was for the first 250 years of the Church history. Now the amazing thing is that in that same 250 year period of time, there was not one single writer in opposition. Not a one. In other words, as one of these most strongly held opponents of this wrote, and the guy's name was Whitby, and if any of you have to have some bibliographies of that, you can call me and I can give them to you, but I'm not going to take time for it here. But this Whitby, who was totally amillennial, he wrote that premillennialism passed amongst the best Christians for 250 years. He admitted it. Another one of the great proponents of all millennialism was a guy by the name of A.L.L.I.S. And he too admitted that in the early Church writings, there was nothing but the concept of the millennium. So we're prone to ask, and I've explained this to my classes over and over, we're prone to ask, Well then what happened? If for 250 years, especially from the apostles, now you know the Twelve looked for the Kingdom. I've shown you that verse in Acts more than once, that they were looking for the Kingdom. Remember Acts chapter 1? Let's look at it a minute, because I always like to use the Scripture just as much as we possibly can. But in Acts chapter 1, now the Lord of course has been crucified, He's been raised from the dead, and He has spent 40 days with the apostles. And now of course Luke is rehearsing this in the book of Acts. So if you've got that, turn to chapter 1, and drop down to verse 3 first off. Acts 1, verse 3, where Luke writes, "...to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs," in other words that he had risen from the grave, "...being seen of them 40 days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom." Now you want to remember, the Kingdom is the Kingdom is the Kingdom. It's been on the mind of man since the dawn of human history, you might say, of this period of time when the earth would be regenerated, the curse would be lifted, and it would be the utopia that everybody's been looking for. That's the Kingdom. Then verse 6, in order for saving a little time, "...when they therefore were come together," that is Jesus and the eleven, now remember Judas is gone, and Matthias is not yet in his place, so it's Jesus and the eleven, "...were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" Now of course in the thinking of the Jews of Jesus' day, what kingdom stood as the high point in all of Israel's history? David's and Solomon's. Solomon's especially. My, it was just arrayed in such glory. What did the Queen of Sheba say? Why the half hasn't even yet been told. Well you see the twelve understood that that kind of a kingdom was once again going to be brought back to the nation of Israel, but instead of a Solomon, it would be a greater than Solomon, it would be the Messiah who would be their King. And so they're asking Him, well now since all this has been accomplished, you have died the crucifixion, you've been raised from the dead, are you now going to give us the Kingdom? Now you remember in our last program, I think the last verse we looked at, let's take time and look at it, because all of this is what makes the Scriptures fit so beautifully. If you'll come back to Matthew chapter 19 again, and this is where we ended our last program. Matthew 19. We're in verse 28, remember Jesus speaks to the... well He's got the twelve here yet, but I would leave Judas out, because we know He's not going to stick with them anyway. So basically He's speaking to the eleven, And He said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration... Now a lot of people just sort of slip over that word, without really knowing what He's talking about. Now listen, if you have got a dead battery, a dead car battery, and you want to make it useful, or you want to restore it to its original condition, what do you do to it? You generate it. That's where we get the name generator. Now we call them alternator, but when I was younger we called them generators. Basically because it generated a flow of electricity going into that battery, and made it like new. Now the word means the same thing here. That one day the earth is going to be made like it was in the beginning. It's going to be regenerated. It's going to be restored. Now He's speaking of the Kingdom, when the curse is lifted. So He says, "...in the regeneration, when the Son of Man, the Christ, shall sit in the throne of His glory..." Now look at the next couple of words. "...you also..." Now He's talking to the twelve, or the eleven, and He says, "...you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, ruling..." Who? The twelve tribes. Now all of this written in the Gospels, all rests on that Abrahamic covenant. Now I wish we had a lot more time, but we'll burn up what we have to. Come back to Genesis 15. Genesis 15, and I call this the chapter of Israel's title deed. Most of you already have that written in your margin. So in Genesis 15, when God has now come down, and as He did so often in the Old Testament, He appeared to Abraham, and He literally went through the rites of transferring title deed to Abraham. And then after He has done that, it comes down to verse 18, and it says, "...in the same day that He had transferred the title deed of the land to Abraham, in the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying..." Now watch these next three verses. "...unto thy seed..." In other words His offspring. "...I have given this land from the river of Egypt..." Now I don't think we're going to take advantage of this and say the Nile, because at this time there was another river a little bit east of the Nile, but it's down in that neck of the woods. "...so from the river of Egypt all the way out to the great river Euphrates." Now most of you know your geography well enough. That's clear out there going through present day Iraq, down to the Persian Gulf. That's all going to be Israel's homeland when the Kingdom is set up, because she's never had it yet. David and Solomon got part of that, but not near all of it. So the day is coming when the land of Israel will actually cover that whole Middle East. Now we know it's going to cover all that area to the south and across to the tip of the Red Sea, and over to this river of Egypt by virtue of these tribes that are listed. it. All that territory of the Middle East that was inhabited by these tribes was given as title deed to Abraham, and it will not become fulfilled until Christ sets up the kingdom, and that will then be the homeland of Israel. The twelve apostles will sit under Christ�s throne there at Jerusalem, ruling these twelve tribes. Now that�s the kingdom as the twelve apostles understood it, and then of course Paul picks it up and he speaks of the kingdom, and naturally since the kingdom is not now on earth, it�s in heaven, Paul now speaks of our citizenship as being where? In heaven. And he says in Colossians 1 so plainly that at the moment of our salvation, we were translated from darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son, which is in heaven. But when Christ returns to the earth with His kingdom, where will we be? We�ll be with Him. And that�s the whole concept of when the kingdom is set up, we�ll come back with Him, and of course we won�t be in physical bodies of reproduction or male and female. Jesus said we�ll be as the angels, but nevertheless we�re going to be bodily present, and this will be another future half hour, but we�re going to interface with the people living, raising children, the animal kingdom, and all that. So the early apostles were adherents of this earthly kingdom. Paul taught it, John taught it, and one who wrote the Book of Revelation. Then what happened? Well you want to remember that shortly after 300 A.D. or 315 A.D. if you know your history, something fantastic took place. Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, and when Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, what did that do to the Church? Well it exploded it in numbers, and people just came in by droves, because after all it was a thing to do. It now had the sanction of the Emperor. Now then the Church Fathers, Oregon being the first one, he was down there at a big seminary in Alexandria, Egypt. Now when Oregon saw that Christianity was just exploding across the Roman Empire, and he reflects back, and the Jewish Temple had been totally destroyed, the Jew had been uprooted out of his homeland, and was sent as vagabonds and almost like the gypsies throughout the Roman Empire, Oregon got the great light bulb explosion in his mind, and evidently God was all through with the Jew. He was going to have nothing more to do with them, and consequently all of the promises that God had given to the nation of Israel and to Abraham had now been abrogated, and he gave them instead to the Church. Now what does that do? Well that destroys all end time prophecy, because as I stressed when we first started prophecy several months ago, all prophecy is directed solely to the Jew. So when you take the Jew off the scene, what do you do with prophecy? You blow it out of the water, and that's exactly what they did. They took away all references to end time prophecy, and said it can't be because Israel is no longer a viable thing. Then some years after Oregon and after Constantine had opened the Roman Empire to Christianity, a great Roman Catholic Bishop by the name of Augustine, a tremendous man, and I'll even make reference to some of his writings once in a while. But Augustine also followed this concept that since Christianity was now just usurping the planet, evidently that is how the Kingdom would be brought in, and there would be no more need for the Tribulation or the Second Coming because the Church is the literal Kingdom. He even went so far as to feel that Satan was defeated and locked up at the time of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, so that they were already in the Kingdom. Well it wasn't too long after Augustine and the world was already starting to slip deeper and deeper into sin, and they realized that wasn't true. But anyway, Augustine precipitated then what we call Amillennialism, that all the promises given to Israel had now been given to the Church, and there was no prophecy per se left to fulfill. The Reformers came along, Martin Luther, Calvin, and all the rest. Well you see they were so caught up in this whole concept of salvation and faith, and doing away with the excesses that Roman Catholicism had brought in at that time, that they never even got to the place where they considered what we call eschatology or end time events. And so even from the Reformation there was nothing taught concerning the end time. And then about in the middle 1800's a fellow by the name of Joseph Meade, and his lifetime was from 1586 to 1638. Now you remember the Reformation and Luther started in about 1511. Joseph Meade then began to write concerning the nation of Israel, going back to the land, and that there would be a thousand year reign on the earth. Well he wasn't paid too much attention to, but from Meade on more and more men began to recover what we call Millennialistic teaching. And then in about the middle 1800's, beginning with a gentleman in England by the name of John Darby, who many feel wrote one of the best translations of the Bible that's ever been written. John Darby became the tremendous proponent of what we call pre-tribulation and pre-millennial coming of Christ. Since Darby of course there have been literally thousands of tremendous theologians, and with everything that's happening on the earth tonight, and we can see the whole prophetic plan coming together, it's just so much easier to embrace these things now as it is to say, well God's all through with the Jew. But let me remind you, there are large groups in Christendom, and I use that word to involve all cults and denominations, Roman Catholicism and all the rest. I imagine that 80% of Christendom is still holding to Amillennialism. They still have not come to the place where they recognize that the nation of Israel is viable. In fact most of these groups will say that the Jews in Israel tonight have nothing to do with the Israel of Scripture. And of course I violently disagree with that. I maintain the Jews in Israel tonight are the fulfillment of this Book. They are the very stamp that this Book is true, and we can rest on it. And so now with Israel back in the land, and now they're constantly talking about, they're planning for the rebuilding of their Temple, and the whole world political and economic system is being set up according as we see it in the Scripture, so that I make no apology for my stand on the Millennium, and on Christ's return, on the Rapture, the Tribulation, or everything else that I've been teaching. Amillennialism is fine for those that want it. But as for me, no way. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.